Help Name Cassini's Final Mission

Carol sent me a link to an interesting NASA site.

The Cassini probe at Saturn will be entering the final phase of its mission in 2016.  NASA is looking to the public to "name" this final phase which now goes by the moniker “the proximal orbits”.

For a more complete description of the final phase of the Cassini probe and how to get instructions on submitting a "name" check out this NASA site.....HERE 

NASA to Europa

Things are looking very good for a NASA mission to Jupiter's very enigmatic icy moon Europa.

IO9 reports that NASA announced:

• $15 million will be allocated for "pre-formulation" work on a mission to Europa, with plans to make detailed observations from orbit and possibly sample its interior oceans with a robotic probe. 
• (Europa has a) massive subsurface ocean contains almost twice as much water as found on Earth. The water is kept in liquid state owing to the gravitational forces exerted by Jupiter and the moon's turbulent global ocean currents.

IO9 article HERE

 

NASA Hoping to Scrape Up Enough Cash for a 2018 Mars Mission

Since President Obama eviscerated NASA's 2015 budget, chopping it down to 189 million.....(yes, drop chin to chest and groan)

Wait!  Before I go any further, let's put NASA's PRESENT budget into perspective.  Not the chump change that they will be allotted.  The Army (just the army now) spends more just for air-conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan in that region's summer months than NASA's entire yearly budget! I am not busting on the military,  I just get tired of people telling me that all that money NASA spends is just so wasteful!  And to find out it doesn't even cover the AC bill for one arm of the armed forces!? Un frackin believable!

Anyway, NASA science chief John Grunsfeld wants to scrape together funds from the human spaceflight program and the space technology division to come up with about $700 million to make something happen by 2018.  Why the fascination with that date?   Well it all comes down to orbital efficiency.  Between Earth and Mars, a close approach happens about every two years and once in every sixteen years you have an optimal positioning of the planets that requires the least amount of fuel to transfer from Earth to Mars.  2018 just so happens is one of those super optimal times.  So now it comes down to a mission that can do as much as it can with extremely limited funds.

<- dvice article ->

****UPDATE*****
There seems to be some disparity between the Dvice article and the Nature article from which it was based.  Taking my information mostly from the DVICE reference lead to a bit of misunderstanding and I feel it best to clarify.   The budgetary numbers in question are for NASA's Mars program.  This is how the Nature article stated the cuts:  

• the Mars programme from $587 million in 2012 to $189 million in 2015

If you would like to read the Nature.com article - it can be found here  

Was There Every an Apollo 18?

No you say? Just some science fiction movie maker's fever dream! Well as Xnewsman points out that if we want to get very literal there was indeed an Apollo 18 flight.

In July 1975 there was indeed an Apollo mission. It was the last Apollo mission and the last manned US space mission until the first Space Shuttle flight in April 1981.

This last mission was called the ASTP and it was the first joint U.S./Soviet space flight.

From the WIKI

• The mission included both joint and separate scientific experiments (including an engineered eclipse of the Sun by Apollo to allow Soyuz to take photographs of the solar corona) and provided useful engineering experience for future joint US/Russian space flights, such as the Shuttle–Mir Program and the International Space Station.

Ultimately though it's main purpose was symbolic; the ASTP was a symbol of that the two superpowers were trying to get along. But it did prove useful to understanding how the two very dissimilar systems could be harnessed to work together.

It was also the only space flight taken by one of the original Mercury 7 astronaut candidates. Deke Slaton was removed from consideration early in the Mercury selection due to a heart irregularity. Not to say that there still wasn't some politics going on. Jack Swigert was removed as a crew member for just such political reasons. I would suggest looking up the Apollo 15 stamp scandal.

Does the US have what it takes to put a man on Mars?

Carl Sagan once said "All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct." a truly pesimestic or hopeful opinion depending on your point of view. It only took eight years for JFK’s dream to land a man on the moon to be fulfilled, but plans to to land a man on is going to take just that little bit longer -24 years to be exact. Casey Kazan writing in The Daily Galaxy blog puts down this caustic but fair "glove" asking in a recent post does the Us have "the right stuff" to get a human footprint on the surface of Mars.

Kazan isn't putting any new information on the table and even less speculation. What he is doing is putting all the most important interest points together and the general opinions help by the general populace. All the major mission facets from returning to the moon to stepping off on Mars with comment on what equipment and other problems have to be overcome to get this mission "off the ground and flying" Nothing new, except maybe a clear set of eyes and for that reason, I would give the article a read to get a well rounded look at the problems facing NASA as it pushes for a Mars landing

Astronauts should 'ski the Moon'

Astronauts heading to the Moon should learn the art of cross-country skiing, a scientist who flew on the last lunar Apollo mission claims.

Harrison Schmitt, part of the 1972 Apollo 17 crew, said it would allow them to explore faster and more easily.

Addressing scientists in San Francisco, he said his knowledge of Nordic skiing had allowed him to glide effortlessly across the dusty lunar surface.

The US space agency (Nasa) will send manned missions to the moon by 2020.

Talking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, Dr Schmitt said that because gravity was just one-sixth that of Earth, astronauts would not need skis themselves.

"Poles would be nice to have for stability," said Dr Schmitt, the first and only scientist to land on the Moon.

To stop, a lunar explorer would just have to dig into the powdery lunar dust, he said.