“If Kennedy said ‘we will go to the Moon…some time before the century ends,’ what is… what is that? That’s not ambition. That’s pandering.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson, Fight for Space
Here we are on the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing, with no more shuttles flying, slashed space program budgets and no real targeted plan to get people off this world and onto another. American students score abysmally in science and math, and the general public thinks NASA is dead. What’s happened to America’s drive? What’s happened to the nation’s sense of wonder, its devotion to science, engineering, education and its man-on-the-Moon motivation?
Film producer Paul Hildebrandt wants to find out. But he needs your help.
Hildebrandt and his team from Eventide Visuals in Chico, CA, are creating an independent feature-length documentary about America’s space program, called “Fight for Space”. It’s not a collection of launch videos and CGI solar system shots, though; Hildebrandt is digging deeper into what originally made the U.S. space program great — and what has happened to it since then.
“We are producing a documentary that will examine the reasons why our space program is not all it can be. We are also going to show that space IS worth the time, money, and energy that it needs, not for only exploration and scientific reasons but for economic, planetary security, and cultural reasons as well,” writes Hildebrandt.
Hildebrandt has been attending space symposiums and traveling to interview key figures in science and space outreach, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Robert Zubrin and Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. He’s talked with scientists, astronauts, educators and regular everyday Americans about the importance of the space program. But in order for the Fight to continue, he needs our help.
Fortunately, that’s what Kickstarter is here for. Fight for Space is looking to get a little backing from interested and like-minded space fans to keep the process moving, and hopefully see the film become a fully produced, publicized, and possibly broadcasted reality.
“With your help we can bring awareness to this issue and come closer to making our space program a priority for this country once again.”
You can pledge any amount, from $10 to $10,000 or more (and see the incremental rewards of doing so) on the Fight for Space Kickstarter page here, and visit the Fight for Space website here.
“Please, support our film by donating above and share this project with your friends, family, and anyone you know who cares about space exploration or cares about the future economic and national security of this country.”
– Paul Hildebrandt, Fight for Space producer
After completing 193 days in space as a member of the Expedition 30 and 31 crews, astronaut Don Pettit returned to Earth on July 1, 2012. Don is not your average, ordinary, fighter-pilot astronaut: he’s got a penchant for science, with a unique way of looking at things. He spent his expedition performing crazy zero-gravity experiments, grappling the first commercial spacecraft to visit the ISS, and blogging as his alter-ego, a zuchinni plant, among other things. Universe Today had the chance to talk with Pettit this morning about his experiences:
Nancy: Good morning Don. It’s an honor to talk with you. Congratulations on such a successful expedition.
Don Pettit: It’s great to talk with you!
Nancy: You did a lot of science experiments during your stay in space, both the official ISS program experiments and also your own “Science off the Sphere” experiments. Of the official ones, which was the most interesting and engaging or perhaps what you felt was the most important experiment that you did?
Don Pettit: There were two categories of experiments that really captivated me. One is the human life science experiments that we do on ourselves, where we poke and prod ourselves and take blood and other samples, trying to figure out how this thing called the human being operates in a weightless environment. The other category of experiment that I thought was really fascinating was combustion. That’s a fancy way of saying ‘fire’ which of course is what is required to power our current civilization.
Caption: Pettit working with the Structure and Liftoff In Combustion Experiment (SLICE) in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Pettit conducted three sets of flame tests, followed by a fan calibration. This test will lead to increased efficiency and reduced pollutant emission for practical combustion devices. Credit: NASA
Nancy: What was your favorite Science off the Sphere experiment that you did?
Don Pettit: Oh, probably the one that has to do with the knitting needles and looking at charged droplets in a stable orbit around the knitting needles. That was really fun and simple and a fun demonstration of what you can do when you remove gravitational forces and replace them with small forces like charged forces.
Nancy: I think that was my favorite one too!
I want to say thank you on behalf of everyone, I think, on planet Earth, for the amazing images you took during your mission– the star trails, the aurorae, the transit of Venus are just a few examples — your images were just spectacular. How important is the photography that the astronauts do as far as documenting your expedition and being able to share your experiences with the public?
Don Pettit: If a picture is worth a thousand words and we take thousands of pictures that certainly says something in terms of the magnitude of communication we can have in conveying this amazing environment to people on Earth, who are of course, the ones collectively who makes this happen, and we are the lucky ones that get to go into space.
Part of any explorations, when you are going into the frontier and you come back you need to explain to people what the frontier is like, you need to share the stories and experience. Images now are one of the prime ways of doing that. I think the taking of both still images and video in space is not only an important pastime for the astronauts to do, but important to convey to the public that ultimately funds the space program, what is going on up there and how wonderful an environment this is. And eventually our technology will move to the point where people, wholesale, can jump in their rockets and go into this frontier.
Caption: Petit left his camera shutter open for long periods of time to capture star trails and trails of lights on Earth.
Nancy: We sure hope so!
You were an integral part of the SpaceX Dragon grapple and berth, the first commercial spaceship to visit the ISS. After being a part of that, what are your thoughts about the private industry becoming perhaps a vital part of human spaceflight, and in particular for space station operations?
Don Pettit: The commercial space is a natural flow for going into a frontier environment like space. You can see analogs of the wild west in the United States getting settled with a combination of both government programs and government sponsored commercial programs and I think we are going to see the same thing going into space. It’s an important aspect of opening the frontier so that more than just a few government-born programs can operate in this environment.
Nancy: Thanks Don, great to talk with you!
Don Pettit: It’s a pleasure.
I also wanted to ask him a few other questions, but ran out of time. At a reader’s suggestion I was going to ask him about the eggs on the Angry Birds Space video, and how he got them into space. Robert Pearlman from collectSPACE later asked him that question, however, and Pettit replied coyly that all astronauts has some personal items they can bring up, but as to how they got up there, Pettit said he’d leave that one unanswered.
I loved Pettit’s analogy about being an explorer of the frontier and in later interviews he had a great comment about Tweeting and exploring:
Don Pettit: Part of any exploration, like when the Antarctic was explored, they’d return home and tell their stories, spread their experience with those who didn’t have the good fortune get to go, and we are using what is available to us now. If Shackleton had the ability to Tweet, I’m sure he would have Tweeted during his expeditions to Antarctica. On station we have limited time and bandwidth and have help from people on the ground who will help get our information out.
I do get feedback (from his social media posts) and some of the comments will get condensed and sent up to me in an email message, and I take the time to read those. Some bring a pretty big smile to my face. And it is neat to see that you are having an effect, that people are following what you are doing and listening to some of the stories you have to tell.
Pettit talked more about his opportunity for photographing unique astronomical events in space:
Don Pettit: One of the most amazing things is to be able to see something like a comet. We saw a comet, saw a solar eclipse and the transit of Venus, so had a number of fairly rare natural astronomical phenomena. When you see it from space, the vantage point is slightly different and allows you to see the physics of the situation– the shadow of the Moon appears as a dark spot on Earth, and lets you know that, gosh, the guys who wrote the textbooks about this figured all this out without seeing it from this vantage point.
Pettit added that the Transit of Venus was an amazing opportunity, and he brought a full-aperture solar telescope just for the occasion. He said he hopes the images they were able to collect hopefully will be useful in the whole ensemble of images that people took from Earth of the event.
Pettit has now spent a total of 370 days in space, more than a year of his life, and he was asked if he would like to go back:
Don Pettit: I would love to fly back to station again, but there is a bunch of folks standing in line, and everyone needs to wait their turn — there is certain fairness on how this happens. I will throw my name in the hat and get back in line and see what happens. The assignments now go out to about 2015, so if space station has a lifetime to about 2020, about half of all the people going to station have already been assigned.
Later Pettit said: I would go back to space in a nano-second. That’s what I do for a living and give me a few days to get my feet on the ground and I’m ready to go again.
And then he was asked if he would go on a mission away from Earth:
Don Pettit: I’d be willing to immigrate into space and not come back as long as we would have the technology to survive. Going one way to Mars and then running out of air to die is not in the cards. If you went to Mars like people went from continental Europe to the New World, I’d load my family up in the next rocket and we’d immigrate into space.
Caption: Another star-trail image by Pettit.
Another question was if being in space ever gets routine.
Don Pettit: It can be both special and routine. Take your breakfast for example. I found that humans like to have a routine for breakfast, and that gives you certain amount of comfort. But it doesn’t get routine as far as living and working in space. Every day has another eye-opening piece of excitement and you learn something new and that is part of being on a frontier.
About his blogging from the perspective of a zucchini plant in space:
Don Pettit: I wanted to write from the equivalent of a potted plant in the corner, and I wanted to write about it because the technology associated with it is not necessarily straightforward, and I could make it like a gardening manual in space. I decided to write the story of how you grow plants in space from the eyes of a zucchini.
Pettit was asked which transition is harder: going to space or coming back to Earth:
Don Pettit: The adjustment going to space is easier than coming back down to Earth. It takes a while to get rid of this heavy feeling.
Later he said that his first thoughts on landing were, “Welcome back to gravity this is really tough,” and then “when do I get to hug my boys?”
What does the ISS smell like?
Don Pettit: Part machine shop, engine room, laboratory and then when you are cooking dinner and rip open a pouch of stew you can smell a little roast beef.
Caption: The integrated vehicle stack for a deep space human mission concept. Credit: NASA
There are all sorts of details to take into consideration when traveling in deep space, such as where to go, what to do, and how to get back. Since starry-eyed dreamers often don’t take into account the practical realities of putting a human into such an environment, steely-eyed engineers are left to decide the gritty details of such a mission, such as how many pairs of socks are needed. Fortunately, NASA employs engineers who are both steely-eyed and starry-eyed, and their work has just produced an interesting report discussing the human side of deep-space exploration.
The paper, written by Michelle Rucker and Shelby Thompson of Johnson Space Center, focuses on the requirements of a ship that will take the first wave of deep-space human explorers to a near Earth asteroid (NEA), hopefully in the near future. The team stressed that they were only looking at very basic requirements and the paper only provides a basis to work from for more specialized teams that will design individual sub-systems.
To develop the basics, the team had to make some assumptions, and these assumptions are revealing for anyone interested in NASA’s future human exploration plans. The team assumed a 380 day round-trip mission to a NEA, crewed by 4 people, with just 30 days of the mission spent at the asteroid. They assumed the availability of a variety of mission-specific vehicles as well as the ability to perform extra-vehicular activities and dock with the Orion crew module, still under development at NASA. Nevertheless, such assumptions could lead to an exciting mission if they hold throughout the design process.
Caption: Two weeks worth of clothing in a crew transport bag. Credit: NASA
In addition to the assumptions, the team took advantage of knowledge gained from years of working on the International Space Station, and helped in considering details like how many packets of powdered drinks are needed for the duration of the trip as well as how much toothpaste a person uses daily in space. All of these numbers were crunched to derive overall dimensions for the craft.
Although, the sum of these volumes produced an over-sized spacecraft, the team evaluated activity frequency and duration to identify functions that could share a common volume without conflict, reducing the total volume by 24%. After adding 10% for growth, the resulting functional pressurized volume was calculated to be a minimum of 268 cu m (9,464 cu ft) distributed over the functions.
Those dimensions resulted in a 4 story structure totaling almost 280 cubic meters (10,000 cubic feet) of pressurized space that looks like it could have come right off the set of Prometheus.
Caption: Conceptual Deep Space Habitat layout. Credit: NASA/Michelle Rucker and Shelby Thompson.
The various subsystems can be broken into seven different categories. The largest is the equipment section, which takes up 22% of the spacecraft. This space would include things like the environmental control panel and navigation and communications equipment. However, the designers thought that the propulsion system, most likely a solar electric propulsion system, and all required control equipment would be part of an attachable module and would not make up part of the main living space of the habitat.
Mission Operations and Spacecraft Operations make up the next largest chunks of the habitable space, each clocking in at 20%. These areas are reserved for mission specific tasks that are not yet defined and general tasks that are necessary no matter what type of mission the habitat is launched on, such as basic maintenance and repair.
Much consideration was given to the psychological and privacy needs of the inhabitants of the ship and as such about 30% of the total habitable space is devoted to the care of the people on board, with 18% going to “individual” care and 12% going to “group” care.
Caption: Group living and operations area of a conceptual deep space habitat module. Credit: NASA/Michelle Rucker and Shelby Thompson.
Individual care includes basics such as beds, full body cleansing and toilets. Group care is more for multi-person activities, such as a dining hall, food prep and meeting areas. The last 2% of the area on board was allotted to “contingency” planning. It fits its namesake well, as the design team hopes never to have to use the space whose primary purpose is to deal with cabin depressurization, crew fatality or other unforeseeable disaster. There is also a shielded area in the interior of the habitat for refuge for the crew during a solar radiation event.
With the basics laid out, it is now up to the specialist teams to develop the next set of requirements for the sub-systems. The final design will only be completed after a long and iterative process of calculation and re-calculation, design and re-design. Assuming the teams persevere, and the space agency receives adequate funding for developing a deep space mission to an asteroid, NASA’s detail-oriented engineers will have developed a very flexible habitat module to use on the next step of human space exploration that dreamers everywhere can get excited about.
Our friend Andrew Chaikin is passionate about space exploration and like many, is concerned about the budget cuts that threaten to starve NASA’s planetary science program. He has created this new video as a call to action for those of us in the US to contact our representatives, and anyone around the world to make a statement of how important exploration is to humanity. “I’m fighting back with passion,” Andy says, “Passion for the incredible adventure that began half a century ago and has given us countless wonders and amazing discoveries…Please share it with your friends and family. And tell Washington, ‘We Must Explore!'”
This artist's illustration gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Kornmesser (ESO)
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For many of us who grew up listening to Carl Sagan, watching robotic spacecraft travel to other worlds, and indulging in science fiction books and movies, it’s a given: one day we’ll find life somewhere else in the solar system or Universe. But are we being too optimistic? Two researchers say that our hopes and expectations of finding ET might be based more on optimism than scientific evidence, and the recent discoveries of exoplanets that might be similar to Earth are probably getting everyone’s hopes up too high.
Astrophysicist Edwin Turner from Princeton and researcher David Spiegel from the Institute for Advanced Study say the idea that life has or could arise in an another Earth-like environment has only a small amount of supporting evidence, most of it extrapolated from what is known about abiogenesis, or the emergence of life, on early Earth. Their research says the expectations of life cropping up on exoplanets are largely based on the assumption that it would or will happen if the same conditions as Earth exist elsewhere.
Using a Bayesian analysis — which weighs how much of a scientific conclusion stems from actual data and how much comes from the prior assumptions of the scientist — the duo concluded that current knowledge about life on other planets suggests Earth might be a cosmic aberration, where life took shape unusually fast and furious. If so, then the chances of the average terrestrial planet hosting life would be low.
“Fossil evidence suggests that life began very early in Earth’s history and that has led people to determine that life might be quite common in the universe because it happened so quickly here, but the knowledge about life on Earth simply doesn’t reveal much about the actual probability of life on other planets,” Turner said.
So, if a scientist starts out assuming that the chances of life existing on another planet is as large as on Earth, then their scientific results will be presented in a way that supports that likelihood, Turner said.
“Information about that probability comes largely from the assumptions scientists have going in, and some of the most optimistic conclusions have been based almost entirely on those assumptions,” he said.
Therefore, with all the exoplanets being found, and as our discoveries have become more and more enticingly Earth-like, these planets have our knowledge of life on Earth projected onto them, the researchers said.
How does an exoplanet researcher feel about this? Turner and Spiegel found a sympathetic soul in Joshua Winn from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said that the two cast convincing doubt on a prominent basis for expecting extraterrestrial life.
“There is a commonly heard argument that life must be common or else it would not have arisen so quickly after the surface of the Earth cooled,” Winn said. “This argument seems persuasive on its face, but Spiegel and Turner have shown it doesn’t stand up to a rigorous statistical examination — with a sample of only one life-bearing planet, one cannot even get a ballpark estimate of the abundance of life in the universe.
It is true that science is about facts — not about what your gut feelings are. But there’s a strong argument that we need inspiration to do the best, most engaging science. Writer Andrew Zimmerman Jones blogged today at PBS about how many scientists were spurred to follow their careers by reading science fiction when they were young.
“The finest science fiction is inspired by the same thing that has inspired the greatest science discoveries throughout the ages: optimism for the future,” wrote Jones.
And perhaps that is what is mostly behind our hopes for finding ET: optimism for the future of the human race, that we really could one day travel to other worlds, and find new friends — “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before…”
Turner and Spiegel do say they are not making judgments, but just analyzing existing data that suggests the debate about the existence of life on other planets is framed largely by the prior assumptions of the participants.
“It could easily be that life came about on Earth one way, but came about on other planets in other ways, if it came about at all,” Turner said. “The best way to find out, of course, is to look. But I don’t think we’ll know by debating the process of how life came about on Earth.”
Poster art for the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission. Russian Federal Space Agency)/IKI
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Russia says “eish odin ras”* for its Mars moon lander mission, according to Roscomos chief Vladimir Popovkin.
If the European Space Agency does not include Russia in its ExoMars program, a two-mission plan to explore Mars via orbiter and lander and then with twin rovers (slated to launch in 2016 and 2018, respectively), Roscosmos will try for a “take-two” on their failed Phobos-Grunt mission.
“We are holding consultations with the ESA about Russia’s participation in the ExoMars project… if no deal is reached, we will repeat the attempt,” said Popovkin on Tuesday.
Phobos-Grunt, an ambitious mission to land on the larger of Mars’ two moons, collect samples and return them to Earth, launched successfully on November 9, 2011. It became caught in low-Earth orbit shortly afterwards, its upper-stage engines having failed to ignite.
After many attempts to communicate with the stranded spacecraft, Phobos-Grunt re-entered the atmosphere and impacted on January 15. Best estimates place the impact site in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern Chile.
The failed mission also included a Chinese orbiter and a life experiment from The Planetary Society.
Russia is offering ESA the use of a Proton launch vehicle for inclusion into the ExoMars mission, now that the U.S. has canceled its joint participation and Atlas carrier. Roscomos and ESA are scheduled to discuss the potential partnership in February.
Artist's concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Or, more appropriately, Voyager 1 is cooling its instruments. To help conserve power, the mission managers at NASA have decided to cut the electricity to a heating element – one that’s part of the nearby infrared spectrometer that’s not been in operation for some 14 years. This power cut will lower the temperature of the ultraviolet spectrometer by about 23 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit)… a temperature that’s mild compared to the below minus 79 degrees Celsius (minus 110 degrees Fahrenheit) that the instrument has dropped to in previous times. It’s not a drastic measure, however, but all part of a crucial plan to manage electrical power to keep the spacecraft operational and transmitting data for another 13 years.
Just because the power is cut back doesn’t mean the instrument quit working. At the present, the spectrometer is continuing to gather and transmit data. The resilient system was designed to work in temperatures as frosty as minus 35 degrees Celsius (minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit) and has even operated beyond the call of duty when heaters were switched off over the last 17 years. While it was taking a chance that the equipment might malfunction, the engineering team was confident since the spectrometer has worked at minus 56 degrees Celsius (minus 69 degrees Fahrenheit.) since 2005. “The spectrometer is likely operating at a temperature somewhat lower than minus 79 degrees Celsius, or minus 110 degrees Fahrenheit,” says the team. “But the temperature detector does not go any lower.”
While it has been awhile since Voyager 1’s encounter with Jupiter and Saturn which made the spectrometer busy, that doesn’t mean its data will be disregarded. Both scientists and mission management specialists will continue to monitor performance levels and an international team of scientists will further review spectrometer data.
It may sound like science fiction, or just odd even, but that is the idea behind a new proposal by NASA for an alternative to the solar and nuclear powered missions common today. The bacteria could provide a long-lived energy source which could sustain a tiny robotic probe; the amount of energy generated would also be small however, not enough to power larger probes like the Mars rovers for example. The microbial fuels cells could last a long time however, as long as the bacteria themselves had an adequate food supply.
The microbe being considered for the project is Geobacter sulfurreducens, which does not require oxygen for its survival.
Electron microscope image of Geobacter sulfurreducens, the microbe to be used in the new fuel system. Credit: Naval Research Laboratory
A research team at the Naval Research Laboratory would like to have a working prototype of just such a robot within the next ten years that would weigh about 2 pounds (1 kilogram). There are technological hurdles, as with any new mission concept, to be overcome which will take several years.
Another major concern however, is the problem of contamination. Planetary probes, especially ones going to Mars, have been sterilized before launch according to a long-standing protocol, to minimize the introduction of earthly bacteria to the alien environments. So what would happen if a bacteria-powered probe was sent? It seems counter-productive then to deliberately send microbes which not only hitch a ride but are actually the fuel.
According to Gregory Scott at NSL: “There are planetary protection concerns, as well as concerns about protecting the microbes themselves from radiation. Sometime down the road we also have to consider whether the microbes we’re looking at are most effective for radiation environments or extreme temperatures.”
Any bacteria-based fuel system would have to take the contamination issue into account and be developed so as to try to minimize the chances of accidental leakage, especially in a place like Mars, where such organisms would have a decent chance at survival.
The concept is an innovative and exciting one, if the various technological and environmental concerns can be addressed. If so, our tiny friends may help to open a new chapter in space exploration.
Scott continues: “As we move forward in the utilisation of MFCs as an energy generation method, this research begins to lay the groundwork for low powered electronics with a long-term potential for space and robotic applications,” says Scott. Microbial fuel cells coupled with extremely low-power electronics and a low energy requirement for mobility addresses gaps in power technology applicable to all robotic systems, especially planetary robotics.”
First Ever Portrait of the International Space Station and docked Shuttle Endeavour from Soyuz capsule. This image of the International Space Station and the docked Space Shuttle Endeavour, flying at an altitude of 220 miles was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011. It is the first-ever image of a space shuttle docked to the International Space Station. Endeavour at left. European ATV cargo carrier at right. Credit: NASA/Paolo Nespoli
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2011 was a picturesque year! The year brought us new discoveries, a new supernova, the end of an era in human spaceflight, and much more. Here’s a look back at some of the best images we’ve posted on Universe Today in 2011, listed in no particular order:
Above, is one of the first-ever images of a space shuttle docked to the International Space Station. The images were taken by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli on May 23, 2011 through a window inside the Soyuz TMA-20 vehicle as he and two crewmates were departing the ISS for their return trip to Earth. See the entire gallery of images of this event here.
Supernova PTF11kly in M101. Credit: Rick Johnson
A new supernova showed up in 2011 in the Pinwheel galaxy, and skywatchers around the world tried to capture it. Amateur astronomer Rick Johnson submitted this image for our new “Astrophoto” feature this year on Universe Today. Called the SN PTF11kly, the new Type Ia supernova was spotted by Caltech’s Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey in the M101, and is located 21 million light years away. You can see the supernova marked in the southern part of the galaxy.
Atlantis launches one last time on July 8, 2011. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today.
2011 saw the end of an era: the space shuttle program is now history. Universe Today photographer Alan Walters captured this stunning view of the last shuttle launch ever. Read our articles about the final launch and landing of the space shuttle era.
A portion of the Lagoon nebula imaged by the Gemini South telescope with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph. Credit: Julia I. Arias and Rodolfo H. Barbá Departamento de Física, Universidad de La Serena (Chile), and ICATE-CONICET (Argentina).
A gorgeous new look at the “Southern Cliff” in the Lagoon Nebula from the Gemini South Observatory.
Saturns moons and rings, in color. Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI. Edited by Jason Major. Click for larger version.
The Cassini spacecraft continues to crank out spectacular images, and this stunning image of a “flash mob” of moons strung along Saturn’s rings is just an example.
ATV2 (Johannes Kepler) as it departs the ISS against the backdrop of Earth. Credit: NASA/Ron Garan
Real image or from a movie? The ATV-2 Johannes Kepler looks like an X-Wing fighter from Star Wars as it departed from the International Space Station.
A new image from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows an ethereal landscape near Mars north pole. Credit: NASA/HiRISE team
Incredible landscapes are specialties of the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and this observation shows dune gullies laced with beautiful swirls of tracks left by dust devils. Just like on Earth, dust devils move across the Martian surface and expose the underlying darker material, creating a striking view.
A new image from ESO of the reflection nebula Messier 78. Credit: ESO and Igor Chekalin
Here’s a “Hidden Treasure” from the European Southern Observatory, from the astrophotography competition where amateurs create images from unused ESO data. In this new image of Messier 78, brilliant starlight ricochets off dust particles in the nebula, illuminating it with scattered blue light and creating what is called a reflection nebula.
Series of transits taken on May 20, 22 and 23, 2011 from different areas of France, showing variations of orientation of the ISS with Endeavour docked. On May 23, the ISS passes besides a sunspot which is larger than the Earth. Credit: Thierry Legault
This series of images is just an example of the great work by award-winning French astrophotographer Thierry Legault. During shuttle Endeavour’s final mission, Legault traveled through Germany, France and Spain to find clear skies and good seeing to capture the shuttle’s voyage to the International Space Station. See more incredible images here.
The 'Rock Garden' at the rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars as seen by the Opportunity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech, color by Stu Atkinson
The Opportunity rover is now exploring Endeavour Crater and this color view of shows a stunning landscape on Mars. This view of a Red Planet “rock garden” is the colorized handiwork of Stu Atkinson, a member of Unmanned Spaceflight and author of the Road to Endeavour blog. This is actually an ejecta field of rocks thrown about after the impact that created this huge crater, and has been an exciting region for the MER scientists to explore.
Dense filaments of gas in the IC5146 interstellar cloud. This image was taken by ESA’s Herschel space observatory at infrared wavelengths 70, 250 and 500 microns. Stars are forming along these filaments. Credits: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE/PACS/D. Arzoumanian (CEA Saclay) for the “Gould Belt survey” Key Programme Consortium.
Its true there is no sound in empty interstellar space, but the Herschel space observatory has observed the cosmic equivalent of sonic booms. Filaments like this have been sighted before by other infrared satellites, but they have never been seen clearly enough to have their widths measure.
A huge and spectacular prominence eruption on the Sun, June 7, 2011. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory
On June 7, 2011 an amazingly massive and spectacular event took place on the Sun: a huge prominence eruption, marked by a solar flare and release of energetic particles. It was an event that was heretofore unseen on the Sun, but the Solar Dynamics Observatory saw it all.
A view of a recent aurora from the ISS. Credit: NASA
With the Sun’s activities ramping up, we saw more aurorae. What better place to see them than from the International Space Station? This view taken by astroanut Mike Fossum shows a stunning aurora, with two Russian vehicles docked to the station in the foreground.
The star cluster NGC 2100 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Credit: ESO
A brilliant cluster of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, open cluster NGC 2100 shines brightly, competing with the nearby Tarantula Nebula for bragging rights in this image from ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT).
Martian Vista from Opportunity nearing Endeavour Crater on Sol 2678 - August 2011 Large ejecta blocks from the nearby, small Odyssey crater are visible in the middle, foreground and are Opportunity’s next science target in this photo mosaic taken 2 martian days ago on Sol 2678 (Aug. 6). Opportunity is now less than 400 feet from the foothills of Endeavour Crater and will soon make first landfall at Spirit Point - off to the left. At Endeavour, Opportunity will investigate the oldest minerals deposits she has ever visited from billions of years ago and which may hold clues to environments that were potentially habitable for microbial life. This photo mosaic shows portions of the discontinuous crater rim – Cape Tribulation at right. Mosaic Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Kenneth Kremer
Universe Today’s Ken Kremer helped bring this stunning image of the hills around Endeavour Crater to light, as the Opportunity Rover headed towards the crater in August.
X-ray Image of Tycho's Supernova Remnant. (NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K.Eriksen et al.)
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory took a brand new, deep look inside the Tycho Supernova Remnant, providing a nearly three-dimensional view of the iconic space object.
Venus. Image Credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
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In the mid-1960s, before any Apollo hardware had flown with a crew, NASA was looking ahead and planning its next major programs. It was a bit of a challenge. After all, how do you top landing a man on the Moon? Not wanting to start from scratch, NASA focused on possible missions that would use the hardware and software developed for the Apollo program. One mission that fit within these parameters was a manned flyby of our cosmic twin, Venus.
As one of our neighbouring planets, a mission to Venus made sense; along with Mars, it’s the easiest planet to reach. Venus was also a mystery at the time. In 1962, the Mariner 2 spacecraft became the first interplanetary probe. It flew by Venus, gathered data on its temperature and atmospheric composition before flying off into a large heliocentric orbit. But there was more to learn, making it a destination worth visiting.
A scale comparison of terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. That Earth and Venus are of a similar size led many to draw comparisons between the planets before better scientific experiments revealed Venus is closer to the Earth inside out. Image Credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
But beyond being relatively practical with great potential for scientific return, a manned mission to Venus would prove that NASA’s spacecraft and astronauts were up for the challenges of long-duration interplanetary flight. In short, it would give NASA something exciting to do.
The mission proposal was published early in 1967. It enhanced the Apollo spacecraft with additional modules, then took the basic outline of an Apollo mission and aimed it towards Venus instead of the Moon.
The crew would launch on a Saturn V rocket in November of 1973, a year of minimal solar activity. They would reach orbit in the same Command and Service Modules (CSM) that took Apollo to the Moon. Like on Apollo, the CSM would provide the main navigation and control for the mission.
Going to the Moon, Apollo missions had the crew turn around in the CSM to pull the LM out of its launch casing. On the mission to Venus, the crew would do the same, only instead of an LM they would dock and extract the Environmental Service Module (ESM). This larger module would supply long-duration life support and environmental control and serve as the main experiment bay.
An artist's impression of the Mariner 2 probe. Image Credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
With these two pieces mated, the upper S-IVB stage of Saturn V would propel the spacecraft towards Venus. Once its fuel store was spent, the crew would repurpose the S-IVB into an additional habitable module. Using supplies stored in the ESM, they would turn the rocket stage into their primary living and recreational space. On its outside, an array of solar panels would power each piece of the spacecraft throughout the mission.
The crew would spend 123 days traveling to Venus. Ten hours of each day would be dedicated to science, mainly observations of the solar system and beyond with a telescope mounted in the ESM. UV, X-ray, and infrared measurements could create a more complete picture of our corner of the universe. The rest of each day would be spent sleeping, eating, exercising, and relaxing — a full two hours of every day would be dedicated to unstructured leisure, a first for astronauts.
Like Mariner 2 before them, the crew would flyby Venus rather than go into orbit. They would only have 45 minutes to do close optical observations and deploy probes that would send back data on the Venusian atmosphere in realtime.
After the flyby, the spacecraft would swing around Venus and start its 273 day trip back to Earth. Like on an Apollo lunar mission, the crew would transfer back into the Command Module before reentry taking anything that had to return to Earth with them. They would jettison the S-IVB, the ESM, and the Service Module, switch the CM to battery power, and plunge through the atmosphere. Around December 1, 1974, they would splashdown somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
Though worked out in great detail, the proposal was a thought experiment rather than something NASA was seriously considering. Nevertheless, Apollo-era technology would have managed the mission.
