Posted on by Jason Rhian

Flawless Launch of STP-S26

NASA successfully launched its first 'FASTSAT' on Nov. 17, 2010. Image Credit: NASA

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While the U.S. Air Force unsuccessfully tried to get a Delta IV off the ground in Florida – things worked out far better for NASA at the Kodiak Launch Complex located in Kodiak, Alaska. Friday’s Minotaur 4 rocket launch successfully accomplished its mission of placing not one – but six satellites into orbit some 400 miles above the Earth.

The mission took off just before sunset from Launch Pad 1. After launch the $170 million flight turned southeast from its launch site going out over the Pacific Ocean. The launch took place under a clear sky with the moon lighting its way.

The payload for this flight was a rather mixed bag of NASA, military and university experiments. All six of the launch vehicle’s payloads were released right on time about 30 minutes after launch. The so-called ‘FASTSAT’ for Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite automatically switched itself on upon deployment. The project is a demonstration of ways to deploy experiments and other payloads cheaply and effectively to orbit.

Four of the satellites that were onboard the STP-S26 mission included the “ESPA-class:” STPSat-2, FalconSAT-5, FASTSAT-HSV01 and FASTRAC.

The FASTSAT program is NASA’s first microsatellite designed to provide multiple customers with access to orbit – at a lower cost. The main goal of the FASTSAT flight is to prove the viability of this capability to various government, academic and industry customers. The intent is to show that you do not have to invest millions of dollars into a single, large-scale satellite to conduct experiments on orbit.

The launch vehicle itself is also rather cheap as it is comprised of spare Peacekeeper missile tech. The STP-S26 mission was powered to orbit by a Minotaur IV launch vehicle, which was provided by the Rocket Systems Launch Program. The Minotaur IV is produced by Orbital Sciences Corporation.

One of the ‘firsts’ on this flight was the utilization of the Hydrazine Auxiliary Propulsion System (HAPS) to allow for dual-orbit capabilities. It is hoped, that in future flights this could be used to allow satellites to other orbits to give them far greater flexibility.
Another first employed on this mission was the first to use the Multi-Mission Satellite Operations Center Ground System Architecture. This center is capable of operating various satellites at the same time at a minimal cost. Indeed, the overriding theme of this launch would appear to be providing access to orbit – for less.

Posted on by Jason Rhian

Launch of Delta IV Delayed; Shuttle Launch Options Weighed

Rocket Science
The Delta IV rocket now scheduled for launch on Nov. 21, 2010. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

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Those waiting for a launch from Florida’s Space Coast will have to wait a little more. The liftoff of a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket has been pushed back yet again, and is now scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 21 at 5:58 p.m. EST (2258 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC 37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The rocket will carry a National Reconnaissance Office payload.

Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today.

Delayed from the 18th, the next countdown started on Friday, but this too was not to be. As technicians started to fuel up the rocket’s twin strap on boosters encountered temperature anomalies. Engineers did not want to give an estimate as to when the rocket will be ready for launch – until they had a chance to unload the fuel and give the vehicle a closer look.

The Delta IV with a NRO payload. Photo Credit: Universe Today/Alan Walters - awaltersphoto.com

The payload for this mission is a classified spy satellite. In media advisories released by the 45th Space Wing it is described only as a ‘Galaxy 3.’ The 45th is stationed out of Patrick Air Force Base. The Delta IV Heavy is the largest rocket in the Delta 4 family, with three booster cores combined to form what is essentially a triple-bodied rocket.

As far as space shuttle Discovery, NASA managers are still keeping all their options open. Inspectors this week found a fourth crack in support beams on the external fuel tanks of the space shuttle. The work to repair the cracks is ongoing, but the teams will need to complete an engineering review and develop the necessary flight rationale in order to launch with a damaged tank. On Thursday, NASA announced that the flight will launch no earlier than Dec. 3, four days after the opening of a short end-of-year launch window.

The window closes Dec. 6. If NASA cannot get Discovery off the ground in the next available launch window, there is only one other planned launch at KSC/CCAFS for this year. This is the Dec. 7 launch of SpaceX’s Falcon-9 with its Dragon spacecraft payload. If this launch happens before the end of this year, it will mark the first demonstration flight of the $1.6 billion Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract that the private space firm has with the space agency.

Photo Credit: Universe Today/Alan Walters - awaltersphoto.com
Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Anti-hydrogen Captured, Held For First Time

The electrodes (gold) of the trap used to combine positrons and antiprotons to form antihydrogen.N. MADSEN, ALPHA/SWANSEA

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Can warp drive be far behind? A paper published in this week’s edition of Nature reports that for the first time, antimatter atoms have been captured and held long enough to be studied by scientific instruments. Not only is this a science fiction dream come true, but in a very real way this could help us figure out what happened to all the antimatter that has vanished since the Big Bang, one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe. “We’re very excited about the fact that we can actually now trap antimatter atoms long enough to study their properties and see if they’re very different from matter,” said Makoto Fujiwara, a team member from ALPHA, an international collaboration at CERN.

Antimatter is produced in equal quantities with matter when energy is converted into mass. This happens in particle colliders like CERN and is believed to have happened during the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe.

“A good way to think of antimatter is a mirror image of normal matter,” said team spokesman Jeffrey Hangst, a physicist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “For some reason the universe is made of matter, we don’t know why that is, because you could in principle make a universe of antimatter.”

In order to study antimatter, scientists have to make it in a laboratory. The ALPHA collaboration at CERN has been able to make antihydrogen – the simplest antimatter atom – since 2002, producing it by mixing anti- protons and positrons to make a neutral anti-atom. “What is new is that we have managed to hold onto those atoms,” said Hangst, by keeping atoms of antihydrogen away from the walls of their container to prevent them from getting annihilated for nearly a tenth of a second.

The antihydrogen was held in an ion trap, with electromagnetic fields to trap them in a vacuum, and cooled to 9 Kelvin (-443.47 degrees Fahrenheit, -264.15 degrees Celsius). To actually see if they made any antihydrogen, they release a small amount and see if there is any annihilation between matter and antimatter.

The next step for the ALPHA collaboration is to conduct experiments on the trapped antimatter atoms, and the team is working on a way to find out what color light the antihydrogen shines when it is hit with microwaves, and seeing how that compares to the colors of hydrogen atoms.

CERN Press release

ALPHA collaboration

Nature article.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

It Could Be Our Only Hope for True 3D Holograms

This is great: Now anyone can send holographic appeals to Obi Wan Kenobi just like Princess Leia. A team from the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences has developed a system that can produce truly three-dimensional images and the viewer is not required to wear special 3D glasses. The system allows the projection of a three-dimensional, moving image that refreshes every 2 seconds. So in many respects it would be very similar to R2D2’s projected holographic message in Star Wars.

“Holographic telepresence means we can record a three-dimensional image in one location and show it in another location, in real-time, anywhere in the world,” said Nasser Peyghambarian, who led the research team.
Continue reading “It Could Be Our Only Hope for True 3D Holograms”

Posted on by Steve Nerlich

Astronomy Without A Telescope – Warp Drive On Paper

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The Alcubierre drive is one of the better known warp drive on paper models – where a possible method of warp drive seems to work mathematically as long as you don’t get too hung up on real world physics and some pesky boundary issues.

Recently the Alcubierre drive concept has been tested within mathematically modeled metamaterial – which can provide a rough analogy of space-time. Interestingly, in turns out that under these conditions the Alcubierre drive is unable to break the light barrier – but quite capable of doing 25% of light speed, which is not what you would call slow.

OK, so two conceptual issues to grapple with here. What the heck is an Alcubierre drive – and what the heck is metamaterial?

The Alcubierre drive is a kind of mathematical thought experiment where you imagine your spacecraft has a drive mechanism capable of warping a bubble of space-time such that the component of bubble in front of you contracts bringing points ahead of you closer – while the bubble behind you expands, moving what’s behind you further away.

This warped geometry moves the spacecraft forward, like a surfer on a wave of space-time. Maintaining this warp dynamically and continuously as the ship moves forward could result in faster-than-light velocities from the point of view of an observer outside the bubble – while the ship hardly moves at all relative to the local space-time within the bubble. Indeed throughout the journey the crew experience free fall conditions and are not troubled by G forces.

Standard images used to describe the Alcubierre drive. Left: Want to make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs? No problem - just compress the Kessel run into 12 parsecs. Right: The Alcubierre concept can be thought of as a spaceship surfing on a wave of space-time. Images sourced from daviddarling.info.

Some limitations of the Alcubierre drive model are that although the mathematics can suggest that forward movement of the ship is theoretically possible, how it might start and then later stop at its destination are not clear. The mechanism underlying generation of the bubble also remains to be explained. To warp space-time, you must redistribute mass or energy density in some way. If this involves pushing particles out to the edges of the bubble this risks a situation where particles at the boundary of the bubble would be moving faster than light within the frame of reference of space-time external to the bubble – which would violate a fundamental principle of general relativity.

There are various work-around solutions proposed, involving negative energy, exotic matter and tachyons – although you are well down the rabbit-hole by this stage. Nonetheless, if you can believe six impossible things before breakfast, then why not an Alcubierre drive too.

Now, metamaterials are matrix-like structures with geometric properties that can control and shape electromagnetic waves (as well as acoustic or seismic waves). To date, such materials have not only been theorized, but built – at least with the capacity to manipulate long wavelength radiation. But theoretically, very finely precisioned metamaterials might be able to manipulate optical and shorter wavelengths – creating the potential for invisibility cloaks and spacecraft cloaking devices… at least, theoretically.

Anyhow, metamaterials capable of manipulating most of the electromagnetic spectrum can be mathematically modeled – even if they can’t be built with current technologies. This modeling has been used to create virtual black holes and investigate the likelihood of Hawking radiation – so why not use the same approach to test an Alcubierre warp drive?

It turns out that the material parameters of even so-called ‘perfect’ metamaterial will not allow the Alcubierre drive to break light speed, but will allow it to achieve 25% light speed – being around 75,000 kilometres a second. This gets you to the Alpha Centauri system in about seventeen years, assuming acceleration and deceleration are only small components of the journey.

Whether the limitations imposed by metamaterial in this test are an indication that it cannot adequately emulate the warping of space-time – which the Alcubierre drive needs to break light speed – or whether the Alcubierre drive just can’t do it, remains an open question. What’s surprising and encouraging is that the drive could actually work… a bit.

Further reading: Smolyaninov, I. Metamaterial-based model of the Alcubierre warp drive.

Posted on by Jason Rhian

ISS Particle Detector Ready to Unveil Wonders of the Universe

The AMS-02 will be mounted on the outside of the International Space Station's S3 Truss element. Image Credit: NASA

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The Principal Investigator (P.I.) for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS-02) experiment, Professor Samuel Ting, says that the experiment is already accruing data as it awaits its February 2011 launch date. Scheduled to fly aboard the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour, STS-134, AMS-02 will search through cosmic rays for exotic particles, antimatter and dark matter. The experiment will be mounted to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and will require no spacewalks to attach.
Continue reading “ISS Particle Detector Ready to Unveil Wonders of the Universe”

Posted on by Jason Rhian

NASA’s Ames Director Announces “100 Year Starship”

NASA's Ames Center Director, Simon "Pete" Worden has announced that development of next-generation propulsion technologies are underway. Image Credit: NASA

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The Director of NASA’s Ames Center, Pete Worden has announced an initiative to move space flight to the next level. This plan, dubbed the “Hundred Year Starship,” has received $100,000 from NASA and $ 1 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He made his announcement on Oct. 16. Worden is also hoping to include wealthy investors in the project. NASA has yet to provide any official details on the project.

Worden also has expressed his belief that the space agency was now directed toward settling other planets. However, given the fact that the agency has been redirected toward supporting commercial space firms, how this will be achieved has yet to be detailed. Details that have been given have been vague and in some cases contradictory.

The Ames Director went on to expound how these efforts will seek to emulate the fictional starships seen on the television show Star Trek. He stated that the public could expect to see the first prototype of a new propulsion system within the next few years. Given that NASA’s FY 2011 Budget has had to be revised and has yet to go through Appropriations, this time estimate may be overly-optimistic.

One of the ideas being proposed is a microwave thermal propulsion system. This form of propulsion would eliminate the massive amount of fuel required to send crafts into orbit. The power would be “beamed” to the space craft. Either a laser or microwave emitter would heat the propellant, thus sending the vehicle aloft. This technology has been around for some time, but has yet to be actually applied in a real-world vehicle.

The project is run by Dr. Kevin L.G. Parkin who described it in his PhD thesis and invented the equipment used. Along with him are David Murakami and Creon Levit. One of the previous workers on the program went on to found his own company in the hopes of commercializing the technology used.

For Worden, the first locations that man should visit utilizing this revolutionary technology would not be the moon or even Mars. Rather he suggests that we should visit the red planet’s moons, Phobos and Deimos. Worden believes that astronauts can be sent to Mars by 2030 for around $10 billion – but only one way. The strategy appears to resemble the ‘Faster-Better-Cheaper’ craze promoted by then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin during the 1990s.

DARPA is a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense whose purview is the development of new technology to be used by the U.S. military. Some previous efforts that the agency has undertaken include the first hypertext system, as well as other computer-related developments that are used everyday. DARPA has worked on space-related projects before, working on light-weight satellites (LIGHTSAT), the X-37 space plane, the FALCON Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) and a number of other programs.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA has been involved with a number of advanced technology projects. Image Credit: DARPA

Source: Kurzweil

Posted on by Steve Nerlich

Astronomy Without A Telescope – Space Towers

(Caption) The Seattle space needle pokes through the cloud tops (well, just fog really… it's only 184 meters high). Credit: Liem Bahneman, pixduas.com

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Arthur C Clarke allegedly said that the space elevator would be built fifty years after people stopped laughing. The first space tower though… well, that might need a hundred years. The idea of raising a structure from the ground up to 100 kilometers in height seems more than a bit implausible by today’s engineering standards, given that we are yet to build anything that is more than one kilometer in height. The idea that we could build something up to geosynchronous orbit at 36,000 kilometers in height is just plain LOL… isn’t it?

Space tower proponents point to a key problem with the space elevator design. It may only be after we have spent years inventing a method to manufacture 36,000 kilometers of flawless carbon or boron nanotube fiber – which is light enough not to break under its own weight, but still strong enough to lift an elevator cabin – that we suddenly realize that we still have to get power to the cabin’s lifting engine. And doesn’t that just mean adding 36,000 kilometers of conventional (and heavy) electrical cable to the construction?

Mind you, building a space tower brings its own challenges. It’s estimated that a steel tower, containing an elevator and cabling, of 100 kilometers height needs a cross-sectional base that is a 100 times greater than its apex and a mass that is 135 times greater than its payload (which might be a viewing platform for tourists).

A solid construction capable of holding up a launch platform at 36,000 kilometers altitude might need a tower with ten million times the mass of its payload – with a cross-sectional base covering the area of, say, Spain. And the only construction material likely to withstand the stresses involved would be industrial diamond.

A more economical approach, though no less ambitious or LOL-inducing, are centrifugal and kinetic towers. These are structures that can potentially exceed a height of 100 kilometers, support an appreciable mass at their apex and still maintain structural stability – by virtue of a rapidly rotating loop of cable which not only supports its own weight, but generates lift through centrifugal force. The rotation of the cable loop is driven by a ground-based engine, which can also drive a separate elevator cable to lift courageous tourists. Gaining altitudes of 36,000 kilometers is suggested to be achievable by staged constructions and lighter materials. But, it might be sensible to first see if this grand design on paper can translate to a proposed four kilometer test tower – and then take it from there.

There are also inflatable space towers, proposed to be capable of achieving heights of 3 kilometers with hot air, 30 kilometers with helium or even 100 kilometers with hydrogen (oh, the humanity). Allegedly, a 36,000 kilometer tower might be achievable if filled with electron gas. This is a curious substance argued to be capable of exerting different inflationary pressures depending on the charge applied to the thin-film membrane which contains it. This would allow a structure to withstand differential stresses – where, in a highly charged state, the highly excited electron gas mimics a molecular gas under high pressure, but with a reduced charge it exerts less pressure and the structure containing it becomes more flexible – although, in either case, the overall mass of the gas remains unchanged and suitably low. Hmmm…

An inflatable 100 kilometer high, 300 kilometer long space pier, built to launch spacecraft horizontally. Humans might survive the G forces required to achieve orbit - which they certainly wouldn't do if the same trajectory was attempted from sea-level. Credit: Josh Hall, autogeny.org/tower/tower.html

If this all seems a bit implausible, there’s always the proposed 100 kilometer high space pier that would enable horizontal space launch without rocketry – perhaps via a giant rail gun, or some other similarly theoretical device that works just fine on paper.

Further reading: Krinker, M. (2010) Review of new concepts, ideas and innovations in space towers. (Have to say this review reads like a cut and paste job from a number of not-very-well-translated-from-Russian articles – but the diagrams are, if not plausible, at least comprehensible).

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Ars Electronica Festival – Don’t Miss September 6!

Ars Electronica made its debut on September 18, 1979. This festival of art, technology and society spotlighted the emerging Digital Revolution. In his preface to what was going on then, Mayor Franz Hillinger wrote (with specific reference to music): “Ars Electronica is giving rise to a new tonal coloration in which state-of-the-art technology is dovetailing with the intellectual spirit of the age to open up undreamt-of expressive possibilities. […] I am absolutely convinced that this new melodic parlance will ultimately be widely understood. After all, with the help of electronic music, it can even be made visible, be implemented in color, contour, line and rhythm that can be followed onscreen.” He would be proven correct.

Within a few years, Ars Electronica developed into one of the world’s foremost media art festivals. And its growing success was paralleled by the expansion of its annual lineup of events. The 1979 festival proudly presented 20 artists and scientists; in 2008, no fewer than 484 speakers and artists from 25 countries were in attendance. Don’t miss this year’s Live Stream on September 6 at 14:00 UT!

For more than three decades now, this world-renowned event has provided an annual setting for artistic and scientific encounters with social and cultural phenomena that are the upshot of technological change. Symposia, exhibitions, performances and interventions carry these inquiries beyond the confines of conventional conference spaces and cultural venues and take them out into the public sphere and throughout the cityscape. In this process of pervading public spaces and staging festival activities in interesting and appropriate physical settings, Ars Electronica has consistently displayed extraordinary imaginativeness. From the harbor to the mines, from factories to outlying monasteries, unusual locations have repeatedly served as sites of performances and interventions, and have, in turn, been reinterpreted by them.

But the attractiveness of Ars Electronica isn’t attributable solely to participation by renowned scientists and artists from all over the world. Or to remarkable venues. Above all, it’s the international audience that makes the biggest contribution to the festival spirit: the colorful mix of old friends and new faces who conjure up extraordinary circumstances – a “fruitful state of emergency” – every September in Linz.

Be sure to tune in on Monday, September 6th when the Ars Electronica Festival will be featuring Repair dealing with the issues of light pollution!

Orignal Source: ARS Electronica
Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Explore the Solar System on Foot with New iPhone App

Another new iPhone app for astronomy, and this one, called SpaceWalking combines a 3D scale model of the Solar System with location-based data from GPS satellites to place a virtual scale model of the Solar System in your neighborhood to explore. For more info, check out the Spacewalking website. If you’re quick, follow the @SpaceWalkingApp on Twitter
 for a special deal.

Also, I have two of these apps to give away. First two commentors who can answer this question correctly win: How far is Jupiter from the Sun?

Here’s a link to a 3D Solar System.