Category: Space Exploration

Image credit: ESA
Will swarms of co-operating robots one day be exploring some of the most intriguing worlds in the solar system? James Law, an engineer who is a doctoral student at the Open University, supports the idea that using whole teams of robotic explorers working together offers distinct advantages, especially when it comes to tackling the challenges presented by remote bodies such as Europa and Titan. In a presentation on Wednesday 31 March at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting at the Open University, he will be reviewing some current ideas on co-operative robot technology and suggesting how it might be applied to a Titan mission with a concept for a ‘Master’ robot controlling a bevy of ‘Slaves’.

Of the 17 landers sent to investigate Mars, only 5 have survived to perform their missions. In spite of this, scientists are already looking for their next planetary targets, with Saturn’s moon Titan and Jupiter’s moon Europa being distinct possibilities. Given both the greater distances involved, and extreme climatic conditions, how can the likelihood of a successful robotic surface mission be increased? Although robotic rovers have become the preferred choice over static landers, due to their greater versatility, the addition of motion systems increases their weight and reduces the reliability of these already complex mechanisms.

Advantages of teamwork
One alternative, proposed in 1989 by Rodney Brooks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is finally coming to fruition – the idea of replacing solitary rovers with swarms of cooperative robots. With scientific equipment evenly distributed between them, each rover can be made smaller, lighter, and less complex. These robots can then work together or independently, in order to complete the mission objectives.

This approach has several distinct advantages. Launch costs could be reduced and soft landings achieved by delivering lighter payloads. Robustness is improved, since a critical failure on any rover is isolated from the rest. Although losing a rover may restrict the capabilities of the swarm, it is not likely to result in termination of the mission. Indeed, in many cases the affected rover will still be able to play a useful, though limited role.

Robotic swarms permit a variety of new missions, such as simultaneous measurements over wide areas, useful in climate monitoring and seismic sounding, or multiple experiments performed concurrently by different robots. Rovers can also work together to access areas of greater scientific interest, for example cliff faces. James Law cites David Barnes of the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, who is developing a swarm of aerobots – flying robots which could be used for terrain mapping or deploying smaller micro rovers. Another benefit of using small cooperative rovers is that additional robots can be launched and integrated into the swarm to extend a mission, enabling new experiments, or replacement of lost and damaged rovers.

Robots for Titan
In his talk, James Law will present his own vision for a mission to Titan. Though we have to wait for the Huygens probe, due to land on Titan early next year, to discover the true nature of Titan’s surface, it is likely to be mixed. “In this situation, a Master-Slave robot configuration with a variety of transport modes could be favourable,” he suggests. “A ‘Master’ lander supplying power and communications provides an outpost for a number of small ‘Slave’ rovers and balloons. The lander would be equipped with a range of scientific packages, which it could distribute amongst its slave robots depending on the environment around the landing site. These subordinate robots are then able to act either cooperatively – for example, to dig and image a trench in order to investigate its geological layers – or on their own, analysing or collecting samples and returning them to the lander for more in-depth analysis. The rovers would return to the lander to recharge their batteries and change their scientific payloads. Robots capable of operating in a liquid environment could be dispersed on any Titan sea to measure wave motion, perhaps by balloon, then be sacrificed, by ‘drowning’, to measure conditions below the surface.”

Exploring Europa
Among schemes proposed by others that James Law will review is one for the exploration of Europa, devised by Jeff Johnson of the Open University and Rodney Buckland of the University of Kent. It involves Self Organising IMAging Robots, or soimars, small cube-shaped robots each carrying a single-pixel imaging device (such as a photodiode) and weighing as little as 10 grams. Each one is able to communicate with its neighbours and is capable of moving in water, using small propulsion screws. A swarm of these tiny robots could be deployed into a sub surface ocean on Europa to image the environment.

A transport craft containing communications and power facilities would land on Europa’s ice crust and release an ice-penetrating device containing the soimars. This device would bore through the ice and release the soimars into the ocean. The soimars then self-organise into a stack, aligning their imaging devices. By cooperatively swimming, the stack scans an area under the ice. If a single imaging device fails, the faulty soimar is simply released and the swarm reorganises to form an error free array. This also enables more soimars, perhaps from subsequent landers, to join the swarm and improve the image resolution. In this configuration, the soimars are physically attached to one another. An alternative use would be to equip them with touch sensors and have them swim as a dispersed cloud along the ocean floor, mapping its elevation. A simulation has been developed at the Open University to demonstrate the self-organising behaviour of the swarm.

A mechanical workforce for Mars
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has research underway on cooperative robot teams, including robotic work crews for carrying large items, robotic excavation teams, and robots that can rappel one another down steep cliff faces. An objective of this work at JPL is to deploy a robotic workforce on Mars to construct mining and refining facilities, which will provide fuel for future human missions. With proposals to land men on Mars, and eventually more distant locations, these robotic work crews will be indispensable in both investigating the destinations, and creating outposts to support our arrival.

Original Source: RAS News Release

Image credit: NASA
Sludge. That’s what most people think of when they envision the gray, powdery soil ? called regolith ? covering the airless surface of the Moon. Not Dr. Mike Duke. He sees gold.

Gold in the form of rocket propellant, power, and even breathable air ? all things that will be as valuable as gold to the first Moon-dwellers.

“As a young man, I wanted to go to the Moon,” says 68-year-old Duke, who was one of the first geologists to study samples from Moon rocks collected during the Apollo missions in the 1970s. I may be too old to make the trip when Americans return to the Moon, but the research I am leading will help the first lunar settlers take what’s there and make something practical.”

Duke is an expert in what space explorers call “in-situ resource utilization” or ISRU ? living off the land of an alien world. In 2003, he was named director of the Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in Space Centers at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden ? one of NASA’s 15 Research Partnership. He joined the partnership center in 2000 and uses skills he honed during his 25-year career as a NASA geologist. In 1965, he was a candidate for NASA’s Scientist Astronaut Program, made the finals, but wasn’t selected to fly. He went on to help other space explorers, from 1976 until 1990 as the director of the Solar System Exploration Division and from 1990 to 1995 as the chief scientist for the Human Exploration Program ? both at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“We can’t take everything to the Moon or Mars with us,” Duke says. “Today, it would take about 100,000 dollars to get a couple pounds of material moved from Earth to the Moon. So making propellant on the Moon would make trips back to Earth or on to Mars less expensive.”

Before you can process the lunar soil and turn it into rocket propellant or other useful materials, you have to figure out a way to mine it. For four years, Duke and a team of graduate students have been working on a robotic excavator. They built a prototype that weighs around a hundred pounds and has a chassis similar to the NASA rovers ? Spirit and Opportunity ? on Mars now. An arm-like boom extends from the vehicle’s front end. It sports a wheel of buckets that scoop up soil. The dirt falls out of the buckets and into a conveyer system that takes it up the side of the boom. The arm moves from side to side and excavates a swath of dirt one and a half feet wide, the width of the excavator.

The current model can dig up several hundred pounds of dirt in an hour, but the team is working to increase the excavation rate. They also are designing a system to shoot the dirt from the excavator to a “lunar dump truck.” The truck would carry the soil to a processing facility to extract hydrogen ? a component of the fuel that powers the Space Shuttle and could fuel a lunar rocket.

Duke and his students also have completed a model that identifies lunar resources and their potential uses. The team even examined how a company could make money on the Moon, and came up with a scenario for a “space filling station” ? where in-space tugs would be loaded with lunar-made propellants and used to boost communications satellites to high orbits.

Why is Duke concerned with space business ventures? Collaborating with industry to explore the solar system is one of the goals of the Research Partnership Centers managed by the Space Partnership Development Program at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., for NASA’s Office of Biological and Physical Research, Washington.

“NASA’s Research Partnership Centers bring together industry, academia and government to advance exploration in space,” says Duke. “These collaborations are an effective way to create new technologies at lower costs.”

One of the aspects Duke most enjoys about his job is creating new opportunities for students to conduct original research that will help advance space exploration.

“I studied geology at Caltech because I loved California ‘s mountains and deserts,” recalls Duke, a Los Angeles native who earned his doctorate degree in 1963 from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “But the university was a hotbed for planetary science, and my professors inspired me to study the geology of meteorites and the Moon. I want my students to become the next generation of scientists and engineers who take America to the Moon and beyond.”

One recent project that students helped design was the water mist investigation, conducted in space to examine how to fight fire with a fog-like mist of water ? instead of large amounts of water that can damage computers and other equipment. The STS-107 Space Shuttle crew completed the experiment during their January 2003 flight.

Although the experiment equipment was lost in the Columbia accident, the team received data from video sent back to Earth during the mission. They are using the data to design a space fire extinguisher for contained environments such as spacecraft, space habitats and submarines.

For more information visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in Space

http://www.mines.edu/research/ccacs/

Office of Biological and Physical Research

http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/

Space Partnership Development Program

http://www.spd.nasa.gov

Original Source: NASA News Release

Image credit: ESA
In the course of its meeting in Kiruna (Sweden) on 24 and 25 March, the ESA Council approved the accession of Greece and Luxembourg to the ESA Convention.

The two countries are expected to become full members of the Agency by 1 December 2005, after their national approval procedures have been completed.

The Hellenic Republic officially applied to join ESA last October, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in December. The ESA Council unanimously approved both applications.

Greece and Luxembourg were granted observer status to attend meetings of ESA?s Council and all its subordinate bodies, to enable them to familiarise themselves with the Agency?s procedures and working practices.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Image credit: NASA
Expert witnesses before the House Science Committee today endorsed the broad outlines of the President’s space exploration initiative, but called for changes and refinements in some of its elements.

Specifically, several witnesses criticized the reductions proposed in NASA’s space science programs to pay for the initiative, and they urged NASA to come up with new ways to get fresh ideas into the program, including from entrepreneurs and the public. The witnesses also agreed that understanding and counteracting the effects of radiation in space on human physiology is one of the most serious hurdles to sustained human activity in space. Two of the witnesses argued that the moon might not be a sensible interim goal for the exploration initiative, but others endorsed the approach outlined in the President’s plan – first the space station, then the moon and then Mars.

Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Ranking Democrat Bart Gordon (D-TN) both emphasized their continuing concerns with the potential costs.

“I think all I need to say about my views this morning is to reiterate that I remain undecided about whether and how to undertake the exploration program. I would add that, as the outlines of the likely fiscal 2005 budget become clearer, my questions about the initiative only become more pressing,” said Boehlert.

Boehlert added that the fiscal 2005 NASA budget proposal needed to be reviewed in the context of the entire federal science budget. “My strong feeling, and I think it’s shared by others on this Committee, is that a society unwilling to invest in science and technology is a society willing to write its own economic obituary. So we’re looking in the broad category of science?and then NASA is a subset of that, and a subset of our investment in NASA is human versus unmanned. And so we’re trying to get answers to some very specific questions involving cost and risk – answers that are not easy to come up with.”

Gordon stated, “I support the goal of exploring our solar system. However, until I am convinced that the President’s plan to achieve that goal is credible and responsible, I am not prepared to give that plan my support.”

Witnesses had differing views on the costs. Dr. Michael Griffin, President and Chief Operating Officer of In-Q-Tel, said budget estimates of the cost of the President’s initiative – “$50-55 billion to rebuild a basic Apollo-like capability by 2020” – were overestimated. He noted this estimate was considerably higher than a 1991-1993 lunar outpost study he was involved in of which top-level cost estimates were about $30 billion in 2003 dollars, or 40 percent less than the President’s proposal.

Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) asked Dr. Griffin what he would “predict it would take us to go to the moon and then to go Mars?” Griffin answered, “I believe that the first expeditions to Mars should be accomplishable within an amount of funding approximately equal to what we spent on Apollo?in today’s dollars, about $130 billion. Certainly that would envelope it. I believe that it should be possible to return to the moon for in the neighborhood of $30 billion in today’s dollars. And those are both fairly comfortable amounts.” Griffin said those missions could “easily” be accomplished within those dollar amounts in 10 years, but “you would have to decide to do it and to allocate the money, but I think that’s the level of resource commitment that’s required.”

Dr. Donna Shirley, Director of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle and former Manager of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said she thought Dr. Griffin’s numbers were “pretty good, provided that we do the stepping-stone to the moon and we don’t stop there and we don’t start building infrastructure and don’t start doing what we did with Space Station. If we go to the moon and then right on to Mars?those are not bad numbers.”

“I do not have the figures to either agree or disagree with Dr. Griffin’s. I do however fear that once committing to go back to the moon we’ll never make it to Mars,” added Dr. Laurence Young, Apollo Program Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Founding Director of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston.

Dr. Lennard Fisk, Chair of the National Research Council’s Space Studies Board urged policymakers to consider a “learn-as-you-go” approach. “Deciding on these answers – how fast you go back to the moon, how much does it cost you, whether you go to Mars, is going to depend on each incremental step that we go?the moon appeals to me for the simple reason that we have an opportunity to go there and try out some of our technical solutions on the way and decide whether they’re going to be adequate?The cost of this thing should not – I don’t think we should try to find a number. We should try and find a number of what are the steps that we should take on which we learn something and we adjust our program to take the next logical step – incrementally walk through this thing,” said Dr. Fisk.

Mr. Norman Augustine, chair of the Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program and former Chief Executive Officer of Lockheed Martin, expressed his strong support for such a “stepwise” approach over such a long-term program. “If, for example, we are to pursue an objective that requires twenty years to achieve, that then implies we must have the sustained support of five consecutive presidential administrations, ten consecutive Congresses and twenty consecutive federal budgets – a feat the difficulty of which seems to eclipse any technological challenge space exploration may engender. This consideration argues for a major space undertaking that could be accomplished in step-wise milestones, each contributing to a uniting long-term goal?It is this consideration which justifies a mission to Mars with an initial step to the moon – as philosophically opposed to a return to the moon with a potential visit to Mars.”

Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Ranking Member Nick Lampson (D-TX) noted, “Mr. Augustine states in his written testimony that ‘it would be a grave mistake to try to pursue a space program ‘on the cheap.’ To do so is in my opinion an invitation to disaster.’ I could not agree more.”

Young discussed one of the most difficult challenges facing human missions to the moon or Mars: the impact of spending long periods in space on the human body. Dr. Young stated, “Overall, the current suite of exercise countermeasures, relying primarily on treadmill, resistance devices, is unreliable, time consuming, and inadequate by itself to assure the sufficient physical conditioning of astronauts going to Mars. Radiation remains the most vexing and difficult issue.” He discussed some research being conducted, but noted much remains to be done. He also argued, “The proposal to limit [International Space Station] research to the impact of space on human health and to end support for other important microgravity science and space technology seems short-sighted.”

Shirley also expressed several concerns with the President’s plan, noting, “The costs of the program are difficult to evaluate but there appear to be several strategic flaws, including a possibly premature phase-out of the shuttle and premature focus on a specific approach. There is no real information on which to judge the impact of exploration on other NASA missions.” She recommended that the Administration revisit the nation’s space exploration goals and suggested a process including workshops and studies that would bring in a wide-range of new stakeholders and fully engage the public in the effort.

Original Source: House Committee on Science News Release

Image credit: Scaled Composites
The House of Representatives today approved legislation, sponsored by Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), designed to promote the development of the emerging commercial human space flight industry. H.R. 3752, The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, would put in place a clear, balanced regulatory regime to promote the industry while ensuring public safety. The legislation now heads to the U.S. Senate.

“Through our hearings and other work on the bill, I have come to see this as one of the most important measures this Committee will move this year,” stated House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY). “This is about a lot more than ‘joy rides’ in space, although there’s nothing wrong with such an enterprise. This is about the future of the U.S. aerospace industry. As in most areas of American enterprise, the greatest innovations in aerospace are most likely to come from small entrepreneurs. This is true whether we’re talking about launching humans or cargo. And the goal of this bill is to promote robust experimentation, to make sure that entrepreneurs and inventors have the incentives and the capabilities they need to pursue their ideas. That’s important to our nation’s future.” Boehlert’s full statement follows this release.

Rohrabacher noted, “It is my sincere hope that this bill will encourage individuals like Burt Rutan and others to continue leading the way in pushing the boundaries of technology and safety by building and flight testing hardware, something NASA has yet to do. This fine piece of legislation carries forward my goal of promoting this new industry and cutting back bureaucratic red tape, while protecting the public health and safety.”

“No one can say for certain whether commercial human space flight will become a major industry. However, I believe that the provisions in H.R.3752 will help nurture its growth while at the same ensuring that public health and safety are protected,” said Science Committee Ranking Democrat Bart Gordon (D-TN).

Major provisions of the legislation are designed to:

* eliminate any confusion about who should regulate flights of suborbital rockets carrying human beings by explicitly locating all commercial space flight authority under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST);
* make it easier to launch new types of reusable suborbital rockets by allowing AST to issue experimental permits that can be granted more quickly and with fewer requirements than licenses;
* extend government indemnification for the entire commercial space transportation industry (including licensed, non-experimental commercial human space launches) for a period of three years, but the bill will not grant indemnification for flights conducted under experimental permits, which will be more lightly regulated; and
* require a study on how best to gradually eliminate indemnification for the commercial space transportation industry by 2008 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Today’s House passage represents the culmination of a long and thorough process beginning last July with a joint House-Senate hearing, a Space Subcommittee hearing last fall and a policy roundtable with experts in the commercial space transportation industry late last year.

“Today, the U.S. House of Representatives has led the nation toward a significant next step in developing space and creating a major new economic engine for powering our nation’s economy. With the passage of HR 3752, the House has demonstrated real vision for America’s future in space. This bill helps define the critical framework for a commercial space regulatory process and authorizes the very important federal agency that is responsible for commercial space regulation. The leadership of both the House Subcommittee on Space and the House Committee on Science should be highly commended for their work in passing this bill,” said Tim Huddleston, Executive Director of the Aerospace States Association.

“H.R. 3752 is precisely the kind of legislation Congress should enact in order to give investors like me confidence that our space tourism ventures will be regulated in a fair and streamlined manner. I hope the Senate takes up this bill soon and sends it on to President Bush for his signature.,” stated Dennis Tito, the first space tourist in history.

Jeff Greason, President of Xcor Aerospace, a private rocket firm with goals of sending human beings into space said, “We think H.R. 3752 is very carefully crafted legislation which will help commercial human spaceflight develop in America. Confirming the FAA’s definition of suborbital flight, establishing a ‘fly at your own risk’ human spaceflight regime, and creating the new ‘experimental permit’ framework are all important steps which we fully support. We hope the bill moves through Congress swiftly retaining these key provisions.”

Original Source: House Committee on Science

An explosion at a solid fuel booster plant caused a large fire at the main Indian space complex; reports about the number of dead and injured are still coming in. ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair rushed to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota to survey the damage and assist the recovery. Not more than seven people were known to be in the building. Three were sent to hospital with burns, and rescuers are searching for 3 more who were in the booster plant when the explosion occurred.

Image credit: NASA
NASA has a mystery to solve: Can people go to Mars, or not?

“It’s a question of radiation,” says Frank Cucinotta of NASA’s Space Radiation Health Project at the Johnson Space Center. “We know how much radiation is out there, waiting for us between Earth and Mars, but we’re not sure how the human body is going to react to it.”

NASA astronauts have been in space, off and on, for 45 years. Except for a few quick trips to the moon, though, they’ve never spent much time far from Earth. Deep space is filled with protons from solar flares, gamma rays from newborn black holes, and cosmic rays from exploding stars. A long voyage to Mars, with no big planet nearby to block or deflect that radiation, is going to be a new adventure.

NASA weighs radiation danger in units of cancer risk. A healthy 40-year-old non-smoking American male stands a (whopping) 20% chance of eventually dying from cancer. That’s if he stays on Earth. If he travels to Mars, the risk goes up.

The question is, how much?

“We’re not sure,” says Cucinotta. According to a 2001 study of people exposed to large doses of radiation–e.g., Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors and, ironically, cancer patients who have undergone radiation therapy–the added risk of a 1000-day Mars mission lies somewhere between 1% and 19%. “The most likely answer is 3.4%,” says Cucinotta, “but the error bars are wide.”

The odds are even worse for women, he adds. “Because of breasts and ovaries, the risk to female astronauts is nearly double the risk to males.”

Researchers who did the study assumed the Mars-ship would be built “mostly of aluminum, like an old Apollo command module,” says Cucinotta. The spaceship’s skin would absorb about half the radiation hitting it.

“If the extra risk is only a few percent? we’re OK. We could build a spaceship using aluminum and head for Mars.” (Aluminum is a favorite material for spaceship construction, because it’s lightweight, strong, and familiar to engineers from long decades of use in the aerospace industry.)

“But if it’s 19%? our 40something astronaut would face a 20% + 19% = 39% chance of developing life-ending cancer after he returns to Earth. That’s not acceptable.”

The error bars are large, says Cucinotta, for good reason. Space radiation is a unique mix of gamma-rays, high-energy protons and cosmic rays. Atomic bomb blasts and cancer treatments, the basis of many studies, are no substitute for the “real thing.”

The greatest threat to astronauts en route to Mars is galactic cosmic rays–or “GCRs” for short. These are particles accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions. The most dangerous GCRs are heavy ionized nuclei such as Fe+26. “They’re much more energetic (millions of MeV) than typical protons accelerated by solar flares (tens to hundreds of MeV),” notes Cucinotta. GCRs barrel through the skin of spaceships and people like tiny cannon balls, breaking the strands of DNA molecules, damaging genes and killing cells.

Astronauts have rarely experienced a full dose of these deep space GCRs. Consider the International Space Station (ISS): it orbits only 400 km above Earth’s surface. The body of our planet, looming large, intercepts about one-third of GCRs before they reach the ISS. Another third is deflected by Earth’s magnetic field. Space shuttle astronauts enjoy similar reductions.

Apollo astronauts traveling to the moon absorbed higher doses–about 3 times the ISS level–but only for a few days during the Earth-moon cruise. GCRs may have damaged their eyes, notes Cucinotta. On the way to the moon, Apollo crews reported seeing cosmic ray flashes in their retinas, and now, many years later, some of them have developed cataracts. Otherwise they don’t seem to have suffered much. “A few days ‘out there’ is probably safe,” concludes Cucinotta.

But astronauts traveling to Mars will be “out there” for a year or more. “We can’t yet estimate, reliably, what cosmic rays will do to us when we’re exposed for so long,” he says.

Finding out is the mission of NASA’s new Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL), located at the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. It opened in October 2003. “At the NSRL we have particle accelerators that can simulate cosmic rays,” explains Cucinotta. Researchers expose mammalian cells and tissues to the particle beams, and then scrutinize the damage. “The goal is to reduce the uncertainty in our risk estimates to only a few percent by the year 2015.”

Once the risks are known, NASA can decide what kind of spaceship to build. It’s possible that ordinary building materials like aluminum are good enough. If not, “we’ve already identified some alternatives,” he says.

How about a spaceship made of plastic?

“Plastics are rich in hydrogen–an element that does a good job absorbing cosmic rays,” explains Cucinotta. For instance, polyethylene, the same material garbage bags are made of, absorbs 20% more cosmic rays than aluminum. A form of reinforced polyethylene developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center is 10 times stronger than aluminum, and lighter, too. This could become a material of choice for spaceship building, if it can be made cheaply enough. “Even if we don’t build the whole spacecraft from plastic,” notes Cucinotta, “we could still use it to shield key areas like crew quarters.” Indeed, this is already done onboard the ISS.

If plastic isn’t good enough then pure hydrogen might be required. Pound for pound, liquid hydrogen blocks cosmic rays 2.5 times better than aluminum does. Some advanced spacecraft designs call for big tanks of liquid hydrogen fuel, so “we could protect the crew from radiation by wrapping the fuel tank around their living space,” speculates Cucinotta.

Can people go to Mars? Cucinotta believes so. But first, “we’ve got to figure out how much radiation our bodies can handle and what kind of spaceship we need to build.” In labs around the country, the work has already begun.

Original Source: NASA Science Story

Image credit: NASA
The flight of NASA’s X-43A has been postponed, due to an incident with the rudder actuator on the booster. On Feb 11, during setup at Orbital Sciences Corporation for testing of the rudder and its actuator, an anomaly caused the actuator to go hard over and hit its mechanical stop, exceeding the torque to which the units were qualified.

Although the actuator may still function normally, it will have to be replaced. A joint government/contractor incident investigation is under way to determine the cause and corrective actions.

Before this incident, the program was considering a delay of the flight to late March to retune the booster autopilot, to optimize its performance based on the latest test data. With the requirement for a replacement actuator, the two activities will now be done in parallel. Planning is now focused on a late-March to early-April flight.

The X-43A is a high-risk, high-payoff flight research program. Designed to fly at seven and 10 times the speed of sound, and use scramjet engines instead of traditional rocket power, the small, 12-foot-long X-43A could represent a major leap forward toward the goal of providing faster, more reliable and less expensive access to space.

The stack, consisting of the X-43A and its modified Pegasus booster, will be air-launched by NASA’s B-52 carrier aircraft at 40,000 feet altitude. The booster will accelerate the experimental vehicle to Mach 7 at approximately 95,000 feet altitude. At booster burnout, the X-43 will separate and fly under its own power on a preprogrammed path. The flight will take place over a restricted Navy Pacific Ocean test range off the coast of Southern California.

Original Source: NASA News Release

The commission appointed to investigate the feasibility of US President’s Bush’s new space initiative held its first public hearing on Wednesday, and heard testimony from five aerospace experts. The testimony from Norman Augustine, retired chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp, said that a human mission to Mars would be very expensive, probably on the order of $150 billion over the next 10 years. He urged the commission to make sure this doesn’t get done “on the cheap”; and pointed to NASA’s history of underestimating the costs for major new projects. The commission is expected to deliver its report in approximately 120 days.

Image credit: NASA
On January 14, President George Bush gave a speech at NASA headquarters outlining a new strategic orientation for the American space agency. While some of the initial ideas for implementing the new space policy can and should be substantially improved upon, the policy overall clearly represents a significant and long-overdue step in the right direction for the American space program. The Steering Committee of the Mars Society therefore welcomes the new policy as presented in Presidential Directive entitled ?A Renewed Spirit of Discovery,? and strongly urges Congress to provide the funds requested for the initial steps requested for the program over the next fiscal year.

Our analysis of the important strengths and required areas for improvement of the new policy is presented below.

Analysis
As stated, the new Bush space policy offers both opportunities and pitfalls to those interested in furthering human exploration and expansion into space in general, and Mars in particular. While not representing the start of an actual Moon/Mars program, since nearly all serious spending for hardware systems other than the crew capsule is deferred to administrations coming into office in 2009 or beyond, it does in fact clear the ground for the initiation of such a program should the 2009 administration be so inclined. It also provides a certain amount of free energy that, if handled properly in the 2004-2008 period, could be used to help insure the emergence of a powerful human exploration initiative within the time frame of the 2009 administration.

In his speech, Bush redefined the purpose of the American space program as the ?establishment of a human presence throughout the solar system.? This statement may seem to some like a mere rhetorical flourish, but it actually has important concrete programmatic significance, as it legitimizes NASA spending supporting technology development for human exploration of the Moon and Mars. Such spending was forbidden under the previous order of things, and for the past ten years technologists seeking funding for important human Moon/Mars exploration technologies had to justify them by arguing their value for other established programs, such as the JPL-led robotic exploration program or the ISS. This has made it impossible to obtain adequate funding for many technologies, such as planetary in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), and has led to disasters such as the promising JSC-led Transhab inflatable habitation program, which was derailed when the discovery that planetary exploration technology work was being done under ISS cover led to cancellation by congressional staff. It is for this reason that the Mars Society has had since its Founding Convention in 1998 campaigned for the establishment of a NASA line item for the support of human exploration technology development, so that such activity could take place openly. Bush?s initiative fully accomplishes this objective, with healthy initial program funding. For this reason, if no other, Bush?s move must be seen as an extremely positive development.

The new policy will also create a program organization at NASA headquarters, called Code T, which will significantly raise the level of NASA efforts to develop efficient plans for human planetary exploration. This is also a welcome development.

In addition, the Bush policy also provides a basis for including human exploration research requirements within the design of robotic planetary missions. In the late nineties, representatives of the human exploration missions office at JSC attempted to utilize flight opportunities aboard the JPL-led robotic Mars exploration landers, but as the JSC researchers had neither a mandate nor money, they had neither force nor funds to back up their requests, and were dealt with accordingly. Under the new space policy, both a mandate and funds should be available to support human exploration related research and technology flight experiments aboard robotic lunar and planetary spacecraft. This could allow such payloads to either fly as paying customers aboard the JPL/Code S sponsored science spacecraft, or alternatively, support the funding of human exploration program-controlled robotic landers whose primary mission would be to provide engineering data for the human exploration program, with other science payloads carried on a space-available basis.

The Bush policy also identifies where the funds required to support a true human exploration initiative will come from, to wit the redirection of the existing Space Shuttle and ISS budgets. Currently, the Shuttle budget runs about $4 billion per year, while the ISS budget is between one and two billion. This total of $5-$6 billion per year is more than sufficient to get humans to both the Moon and Mars within ten years of actual program start. Thus the initiative can be done within the existing NASA budget of about $16 billion per year in 2004 dollars, a level found supportable by presidents and congressional majorities of both political parties for the past four presidential terms. Thus the financial basis for the program is clear, and is not a budget buster or in any way fantastical.

In his speech, the President invited all nations to join with the United States in pursuing the proposed program. We welcome this statement, as we fully agree that the exploration and settlement of the solar system is a great goal that can help bring humanity together, one that is worthy of, and requires, the mobilization of the best talents of all the peoples of the Earth.

For various political and diplomatic reasons, the Bush policy delays the phase out of the Shuttle and ISS until 2010, thereby delaying substantial human exploration program start until about that time. Thus the choice on whether or not to really start a Moon or Mars human exploration program, and what its pace or objectives should be, is effectively being placed in the hands of the 2009 administration.

The merit of this decision is debatable. A key point however, is that the 2009 administration will have a choice. By making clear that the fundamental purpose of the human spaceflight program is to allow humans to FLY ACROSS SPACE (the Apollo era vision) to explore other worlds, rather than to allow humans to EXPERIENCE SPACE (the Shuttle era vision), the Bush policy (should it be sustained by either his reelection or the concurrence on this issue of an alternative 2005 administration) effectively precludes the commitment of NASA to a second generation Shuttle (?Shuttle 2?) as its next major program. As recently as a few months ago, substantial factions within space policy circles in both congress and NASA projected such a Shuttle 2 program as the agency?s next major project after ISS. Had that occurred the future would have looked like this: the present decade would be consumed with returning the Shuttle to flight and building ISS. The next decade would be devoted to extending the life of Shuttle and developing Shuttle 2. The 2020?s would then be a repeat of the 1980?s, attempting to make Shuttle 2 operational, leading to a decision in 2030 on the next major project, which probably would have been ISS-2. Thankfully, this ?Groundhog Day? scenario for perpetual stagnation in space has now been foreclosed on.

The decision to punt the responsibility for implementation, and thus the control, of the program to the 2009 administration promises to make the next five years an extremely interesting time for space advocates. In his speech, Mr. Bush defined human expansion into the solar system as NASA?s goal, and posed the idea of a lunar base initiated by 2020 as the strategy by which this objective might be approached. That is one plan, but the next five years will see other plans put forward for consideration by the political class as efficient means by which the desired overall goal can be achieved with maximum speed, reliability, and at minimum cost. The great debate on what our strategy for reaching the Moon and the planets should be has thus not been closed by Bush?s speech, but opened.

The victory in this healthy battle of ideas will go to those people who convince the players, not merely of today, but of 2009 and beyond, of the merit of their concepts. The Mars Society welcomes this challenge, and will seek to actively participate in this discussion to contribute its technical expertise and to convey an understanding to the political class, the technical community, the press, and the public that within the context of the new space policy, that the near-term human exploration of Mars is feasible, affordable, and truly worthy of the efforts and risks required.

In transitioning from one kind of space program to another, every effort should be made to prevent unnecessary collateral damage to valuable parts of the old program. The decision announced by NASA headquarters late last week to abandon the planned Shuttle mission to upgrade and reboost the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is an example of the kind of mistake that needs to be avoided. The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and Widefield Camera 3 designed to bring the HST to its full potential have already been built and tested, and promise an enormous scientific return upon delivery to orbit. If the Bush plan were to stand down the Shuttle immediately, and save the $24 billion required to operate it through 2010 so as to initiate the Moon/Mars program with substantial funding immediately, that would be one thing. But given the decision to return the Shuttle to flight, canceling the Hubble upgrade would only save about $200 million, or 1% of the Shuttle program?s budget, while destroying about 90% of its scientific value. This is extremely foolish.

Safety arguments won?t wash either; if the Shuttle is safe enough to fly to the ISS, its safe enough to perform its mission to Hubble. Indeed, while Shuttle missions to the Hubble may lack the on-orbit safe-haven of the ISS, the low-inclination of Hubble flights enables launch aborts to warm tropical waters, where crew survival chances are much better than in the frigid north Atlantic abort sites required by ISS launches. Moreover, it is difficult to understand how an agency which is too risk adverse to undertake a Shuttle mission to Hubble could possibly be serious in considering a mission to the Moon or Mars.

The cancellation of the Hubble mission can thus only be described as a serious mistake, apparently committed in the name of the desire to appear ?decisive? in breaking from the old paradigm in favor of the new. In addition to the harm done to astronomy, it would be a very bad thing for the infant new space policy to begin its life with a such a distasteful record. Under no circumstances should the alleged impending availability of the James Webb Space Telescope be accepted as a rationale for abandoning Hubble, either. That would be to repeat the mistake NASA made in abandoning the Saturn V for the supposedly superior Shuttle, or Skylab for the ISS ? errors which set back the space program by decades of time of tens of billions of dollars. If NASA?s leadership will not see reason on this issue, Congress should take forceful action to reverse this very bad decision.

Technological Issues
The right way to do a program whose objectives encompass both a permanent lunar base and the human exploration of Mars is to design a set of transportation hardware that can accomplish human Mars missions, a modified modular subset of which can be used to support lunar activities. Approaching the problem in this way can save a great deal of time and money, as only one hardware set needs to be developed instead of two. It also maximizes the value of the Moon as a testing ground for Mars, since under this approach to Moon missions will be done using the Mars hardware, and serve directly to shake it out. Provided this is the approach adopted, a program initiated in 2009 could easily achieve piloted lunar landing by 2015 and launch the first human Mars expedition by 2018. The build up of a permanent lunar base and continued Mars missions could then occur simultaneously. Since it is only possible to launch to Mars every other year in any case, the implications of a running concurrent programs are simply that the lunar program launch rate would be reduced somewhat during Mars launch years. Concurrent launch programs would also serve to minimize launch costs by maximizing the rate of production of the booster production lines, as the cost of running a launch vehicle manufacturing facility increases only marginally with a higher production rate. To use a mundane analogy, it takes very little extra labor to cook two steaks instead of one, provided you cook them both at the same time. In the production of launch vehicles this kitchen parable holds even more force, as labor costs overwhelmingly dominate those of materials.

Within the context of such a well-planned Moon/Mars program, there are certain technologies that are essential. We address only two of the most critical, heavy lift boosters and ISRU.

Heavy Lift Boosters
The key technical instrumentality required to make lunar bases and Mars missions feasible is a heavy lift vehicle with a hydrogen/oxygen upper stage capable of throwing payloads in the 50-tonne class on Trans-lunar or Trans-Mars injection. This is the capability demonstrated during the 1960?s by the Saturn V. Once such a vehicle is available, roundtrip Lunar missions or one-way delivery of habitations and other heavy payloads to the lunar surface can be readily accomplished with a single launch. Piloted Mars missions can also be accomplished using multiple discrete Trans-Mars launches of such a system, with no on-orbit assembly, as shown by the Mars Direct plan (Zubrin and Baker, 1990), the Stanford Mission plan (Lusignan, et al 1992), or the JSC Design Reference Mission 3 (Weaver et al, 1994).

Such Saturn V class launch systems can be readily created at this point either by converting the Shuttle launch stack through elimination of the orbiter and its replacement with a LOx/H2 upper stage, or the creation of new, all-liquid propulsion booster systems. The Mars Society was recently shown plans by one major aerospace company for evolving its existing line of medium lift boosters to create a family of modular heavy lift boosters with payloads ranging through quarter, half, and full Saturn V capabilities. Based on this company?s experience with previous successful launch vehicle developments, the entire development program to create the whole family of boosters could be accomplished in five years with a development cost of about $4 billion. The recurring launch cost for the Saturn V class system design was $300 million per launch, or less than $1000/lb for payload delivery to LEO. The methods of creating such booster families are obvious to experienced launch vehicle engineers, and we have no doubt that this company?s competitors have plans for creating similar hardware sets with comparable development costs and schedules.

The claims by certain pundits opposed to any exploration initiative that a new heavy lift booster would cost tens of billions to develop can thus readily be shown to have no basis in fact. Such heavy lift vehicles would also have many applications outside of the human exploration program.

ISRU
Both lunar bases and Mars expeditions are strongly benefited through the use of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) techniques for the production of return propellant, human consumables, and vehicle fuels and oxygen for use in extended missions on a planetary surface. The mission mass savings for either lunar bases or Mars missions resulting from ISRU has been demonstrated in numerous studies, and significantly exceeds that offered by advanced propulsion concepts with much higher development and recurring system costs.

Effective ISRU require both chemical processing systems and reliable sources of power, for which space nuclear systems offer the greatest promise. We therefore strongly commend the administration for its Prometheus project to create such space nuclear systems. However we note that up until now, the sole applications considered by NASA for its space nuclear power systems have been spacecraft power and nuclear electric propulsion (NEP). Without dismissing the important value of NEP for outer solar system robotic missions and other missions involving large velocity changes undertaken across extended time frames, we note that the size of NEP units required to supply propulsion for human exploration missions are on the order of 10,000 kilowatts. In contrast, when used to produce chemical propellants on planetary surfaces, the required reactor size to support human exploration is reduced to about 100 kilowatts. This is because a much smaller reactor stationed on a planetary surface making propellant can emit energy over a long period of time prior to flight, store it as chemical propellant, which then can release the energy as fast as it is needed under flight conditions. The mission mass leverages achieved by such ISRU supported chemical propulsion options are greater than those offered by NEP, while for inner solar system missions, the flight times are less (two orders of magnitude less for Lunar applications). In addition, the ISRU-supported chemical systems can be used not only for orbital transfer, but for planetary ascent.

Thus while space nuclear power is enabling for ISRU, it is ISRU that greatly reduces the cost, and increases the value of space nuclear power in supporting human exploration. The two technologies should thus be pursued in parallel, and an appropriate fraction of the Prometheus budget applied towards bringing ISRU applications of space nuclear power to flight status, and to support robotic missions demonstrating such technology on the Moon and Mars.

Furthermore, requirements should be written into the Prometheus program to insure that the power systems developed are compatible for operation on the surface of the Moon and Mars, since their use on the planetary surface to produce propellants and consumables represents by far the most advantageous method of employing them to support near-term human space exploration, and their power is needed on the surface to support base operations in any case.

Both ISRU technology and heavy lift booster development should thus be central priorities of the Code T effort over the immediate period.

Other systems should be developed with similar concern for maximum commonality of hardware and technology across lunar and Mars mission applications.

Political Implications
The train of events set in motion by the new space policy will create a decision point circa 2009 that will offer three alternatives for future action. These are;

1. The 2009 administration could choose to abort the Moon/Mars program altogether, and simply use the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) as a capsule launched atop expendables as a way of continuing to visit the ISS. This would lead to a Mir-type extended ISS program, conducted at lower cost than possible using Shuttle launches, but with no discernable purpose. This would result in stagnation in space for however long such a programmatic decision prevailed, and probable retrogression on heavy lift, ISRU, and other programs necessary for human exploration.

2. The 2009 administration could decide to proceed in accordance with idea of building a lunar base, starting 2020, without concern for the Mars mission except to make claims that lunar experience will no doubt be useful later when others contemplate going to Mars. This would result in the development of mostly incompatible lunar program hardware (except the booster), making it necessary to start developing an entire new hardware set circa 2030, or possibly 2040, given the budgetary entanglements such a stand-alone lunar program would create, making it likely that the first Mars landing would not occur before the middle of the 21st Century. Alternatively, given the limited interest provided by repeated dead-end Lunar expeditions, the program could simply expire.

3. The 2009 administration could decide to launch a humans to Mars program, with the objective of reaching Mars within ten years, with expeditions to the Moon using a modified subset of the Mars flight hardware beginning around program year 7. Because only one hardware set would need to be developed instead of two, and because in aerospace cost equals people times time, this represents a much lower cost approach to achieving the goals set forth in the new space policy than alternative (b). Moreover, it is the only approach that will result in human explorers walking on Mars within the working lifetime of any adult today.

It is therefore imperative that everyone who wishes to see the human exploration of Mars become a reality do everything he or she can to fight for the bold course represented by option C. In the labs and engineering organizations, in the press, in the classroom and the committee room, in the Arctic and in the desert, in the halls of congress, and in every venue of public opinion ranging from books and technical papers to internet newsgroups and late night talk radio, each will need to play their part.

A door has been opened, and a battle of ideas that will determine the shape of the human future for many years to come has now been truly joined. Where it will lead is up to us. Contending visions that two weeks ago were mere hypothetical debates among space activists have now entered the center of political discourse. We welcome the challenge. For as reason is our witness and courage is our guide, we shall prevail.

Original Source: Mars Society News Release