Maven gets inserted 9/21/14

Oh you have such a dirty mind!  NASA's MAVEN, a Mars science package, will enter the Martian atmosphere at an altitude of 236 (what wildly accurate shooting huh?) to begin a 33 minute deceleration burn that will consume more than half of the on-board fuel carried by the satellite.   This combination of  atmosphere and  engine burn will insert Maven into a 35 hour capture orbit.  

MAVEN will then begin a calibration phase a part of which includes maneuvering the spacecraft into its final 4.5 hour orbit.  During this period, controller, will  test its instruments and science-mapping commands.  After-which MAVEN will begin its one-Earth-year mission to take measurements of the composition, structure and escape of gases in Mars’ upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and solar wind.

NASA Maven article   HERE

Sat Comm for Mars?

 

Wow, tell me that this in not an innovative idea!  It seems that NASA may be trying to get out of the Sat Comm business, as far as Mars is concerned. 

NASA has ask for information from commercial partners to supply satellite communications on future Mars rover missions.  The commercial partner would own and operate a satellite communications network that would provide communication to NASA.  

NASA is not just limiting the field to US commercial entities but also, universities, nonprofits, NASA centers, federally funded research and development centers, in addition to U.S. government and international organizations. 

This call for information on alternative communications network does begin to make sense when one takes into account that NASA is concerned about communications gaps in the 2020s.  

At this time, NASA has the  Curiosity and Opportunity rovers on the Martian surface.  For high speed communications with these rovers, NASA uses the high gain and high power relay radios aboard  Odyssey, which was launched in 2001, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter(MRO), launched in 2005. These two will be augmented by  the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft which arrives Sept. 21, and the 2016 arrival of the European Space Agency’s ExoMars/Trace Gas Orbiter.  This should more than double the communication bandwidth.  But NASA has nothing scheduled after MAVEN arrives.  

From the NASA article:

• This creates the need to identify cost-effective options to ensure continuity of reliable, high-performance telecommunications relay services for the future

Read the complete article from NASA HERE

India Can Launch a Mars Mission for Less That Than the Cost of a Holliwood Blockbuster!

Saritha Rai, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote recently that India had recently launched  a spacecraft to Mars.  There are many facets that makes the  Mangalyaan satellite unique however:

• "...it is the $75 million mission’s thrifty approach to time, money and materials that is getting attention." Saritha writes

Furthur on Sarita write:

• [Recently] NASA sent off its own Mars mission, five years in the making, named Maven. Its cost: $671 million. The budget of India’s Mars mission, by contrast, was just three-quarters of the $100 million that Hollywood spent on last year’s space-based hit, Gravity.”

Complete Saritia Times article HERE

Close Call for NASA's Fermi Gamm-ray Space Telescope!!

NASA's $690 million Fermi Space Telescope was nearly lost last year (4/3/2012) when a defunct one

and a half ton Soviet era reconnaissance satellite (cosmos 1805) missed the space telescope by only 700 feet. 

A much worse scenario was avoided when engineers instructed Fermi to perform a maneuver that took the satellite barely out of harms way.  

To get an idea of just how close this was to total destruction of the Fermi Telescope, at the speeds that both  objects were travelling, 700 feet equates to a difference of 30 milliseconds between one spacecraft entering and leaving the collision point, before the next craft enters the very same space.  Due to their size, this meant that a sizable portion of each craft would still be in the collision zone. 

As luck would have it, Fermi had onboard thrusters that were specifically designed to move the satellite out of  way of potential threats.   A one second burn of all thrusters changed Fermi's attitude enough that when April 3 2012 arrived, it missed the defunct satellite by 6 miles.  

This occurrence  only goes to heighten awareness of the growing threat to manned and unmanned spacecraft in orbit of colliding with a piece of space junk.  NASA now tracks 17,000 object larger than 4 inches across with only 7% being active satellites.  

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/02/russian-space-junk-almost-destroys-nasa-telescope/#ixzz2SB7Vp1YM

Thanks to Xnewsman for the heads up!

TWO NASA SATS Crashed

The GRAIl satellites, refereed to, affectionately as Ebb and Flow, entered service in late 2011 early 2012 produced highly detailed gravity maps that shows a scarred surface rivaled only by an even more battered interior. The Moon's crust is thinner than expected and that it is shot through with lava-filled cracks evidence that the Moon expanded early in it's history.

NASA has for a year had a pair of satellites orbiting the Moon. NASA's Gravity


Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) enabling scientists to make detailed gravity maps that aided researchers to better understand the sub-surface lunar makeup.


On December 17 the Grail probes were instructed to impact a mountain at the northern pole, which the did within 20 seconds of each other at 5:28 p.m. EST.


















Wikipedia GRAIL link HERE

The Earth Makes Noises Like Crickets and Chirping Birds!

Carole sends in a note concerning the twin Van Allen probes,  formerly known as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes    Theses probes were launched recently to study the harsh radiation surrounding the planet.   Though barely into their mission the probes have made very high resolution  measurements of high-energy particles and radio waves. 

Scientist have already found that the radio waves and the radiation belts interact.  The radio waves seem to add energy to the high energy particles in the "belts".   The added bonus comes in the form of the frequency of these waves which interact and produce signals within the range of human hearing. 

University of Iowa physicist Craig Kletzing played a recording of these high pitched radio waves at a recent conference.  Kletzing says it sounds like the chirping of 'alien birds" and crickets.

For the most part, these background sounds were undetectable most of the time, however amateur radio operators had reported these odd bird chirps and cricket sound.  It is the unprecedented clarity of the new recordings  that is unprecedented. 

What the satellites have already uncovered is  the outer radiation is proving to be much more dynamic and rapidly changing than had been anticipated. 

 Yahoo news article

July 12, 1962: The Day Information Went Global

Hey, how many of you out there remember when TelStar went up? All of a sudden we were using space faring satellites for communication not across the state but AROUND THE WORLD!!! Plus if you were lucky you could see it in the early evening hours climbing brilliantly into the heavens! This miricle of space age technology took place July 12, 1962. From the article:

• launched by NASA on July 10, 1962, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and was the first privately sponsored space-faring mission. Two days later, it relayed the world's first transatlantic television signal, from Andover Earth Station, Maine.

Of course living in Maine gave it special meaning.  (Matter of fact, the last time I went up there in the early 90s, a great deal of the facility was still there.  Along with some of the (ahem "lesser known") other buildings associated with the Earth Station. 

Telstar was the first satellite to carry a commercial payload to demonstrate the 

demonstrated the feasibility of transmitting information by satellite.  

Many people even today thought Telstar was operational for several years when in fact it was only operational for  a few months.  During that period it relayed television signals of a brief duration as well as pictures and audio.

Read the complete NASA article here

GRB 090429B The Most Distant Object in the Universe

The photo to the right is of a gamma-ray burst with the unassuming name of GRB 090429B. This faint red object has the title of the most distant object in the observable universe and therefor the oldest. GRB 090429B's light has been traveling 13.2 billion years or 96% of the age of the Universe itself.  First observed by the Burst Alert Telescope aboard NASA's  Swift satellite when it observed a  five-second-long burst of gamma rays from the constellation Canes Venatici.

What fascinates me about these vast times and distances is that they have very little in common with where and when the object really is now. 13 Billion years ago GRB 090429B was 17 billion light years closer to us and as the light reaches us from 13.2
billion years, the object is in truth more like about thirty billion light-years away!
How is that for a mind bending thought exercise!

Read More at the Daily Galaxy Blog's page

Want a Free Satellite? Here is How To Get One!

Well I may be a bit disingenuous with the title, but as a recent Dvice article points out that NASA has a habit of making things that last well past their envisioned mission parameters. What usually happens then is NASA runs out of money and the Satellite or whatever is abandoned in place.

From the article:

• In an uncharacteristically common-sense move, NASA has decided to explore ways of continuing the science payoff of missions that it would otherwise have to scrap due to budget constraints.

Here is an example that the article pointed out. GALEX, an ultraviolet space telescope launched in 2003 to make an ultraviolet map of the sky is about finished with it's mission.  For all intents and purposes the spacecraft is almost completely functional, but since it is so far down on the funding list NASA would have turned it off and walked away from the complete system.   However, again from the article:

• NASA is considering the unprecedented move of transferring GALEX and its associated ground equipment to the California Institute of Technology (for free) so that the telescope can continue to collect data.

This sounds like a really great idea and pretty much a win win for any participating institution.  I imagine that there are unseen complications that I am not privy to, but just knowing that there are scientific equipment platforms  that could and will be abandoned....(like, for instance, when the Hubble is finally decommed, I wonder just how much science it could still do if they just gave it to someone?  I know, extreme but you see where I am going.) 

Plainly someone at NASA is thinking outside the box.......

First Video of Moon's Far Side

NASA's twin spacecraft GRAIL mission has sent back video from the "Ebb" half of the twin orbiter mission. This is Ebb's first video of the far side of the moon. The imagery was taken on Jan. 19 by the MoonKAM aboard the mission's "Ebb" spacecraft. Flow's MoonKAM is to be tested at a later date, yet to be announced.

As the article points out, the Grail mission is in part an educational mission. From the NASA article:

• Thousands of fourth - to eighth-grade students will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego. Photos of the target areas will be sent back by the satellites for students to study.

Hexagon Finally Declassified

Wow, when Xnewsman drops a bombshell he drops a big one! Now I, as a general rule, don't often post about cold war politics or the skunkwurkz that went on during that period...but when I started reading a post from the Canadian Business page written by Helen O'Neill for the Associated Press that X sent me, I was transported as well as transfixed...how bout that for conflicting emotions! lol.

The article tells about a gathering of technical personnel, engineers, scientists, draftsmen and inventors, that worked for Perkin-Elmer Corp., an optical design company in Danbury Connecticut. These highly skilled men worked on an ultra top secret project called Hexagon KH-9 during the cold war era from the mic 60s to the late 80s designing cameras for spy satellites. The technicians were sworn to secrecy so stringent that none of their family members knew what they were working on and only those with extremely high government clearance had any idea what so ever.

The specs alone are stunning considering that the system was envisioned in the 60s and was 60 feet long, 30,000 pounds in weight and had to handle film transport speeds of 200 feet per second!  Putting something this size into Earth orbit even today is no mean feat.

Hexagon remained classified for 45 years which meant that many of the people who worked on the project took the secret of their involvement to their grave, the rest are only now speaking about what has to be one of the most fascinating projects to come out of the cold war.

Check out the article here  for a top notch read.  I really thought I was reading the opening pages of a spy novel - this was written so well.

And the WIKI article here
Truly facinating!

New Satellites For Old!

Putting a satellite in orbit is massively expensive. Far from getting cheaper as the tech aged, the cost however still hovers around 10k for every pound launched. Estimates have it that there are roughly 300 billion dollars of hardware in geosynchronous orbits with a large portion of this total non functioning hardware.

DARPA is hoping to lower satellite cost significantly. How they plan to do that is elegant in it's simplicity. DARPA wants to harvest the dead hardware, which is more than likely 90% functional, for parts and build new satellites in place.

Here is what the Dvice article wrote:

• That 90% of stuff represents a lot of useful and expensive hardware. (the most useful) is the satellite's antenna, which represents the single biggest contributor to both functionality and launch cost. What DARPA wants to do is send a harvester satellite called Phoenix up to (harvest) things like antennas and solar panels from dead platforms and turn them into operational ... satellites. Tiny new controller modules called "satlets" will ride along with the harvester and be used to create new brains to get the ... parts all working together properly, effectively creating an entirely new satellite.

Now there is something I can get behind!

Complete article here

Incoming! rosat due to burn in with in months

Hey, bummin you didn't get smacked by a chunk of GOES? Good news for you then. From the Boing Boing blog:

• ROSAT will probably have more pieces survive the ride down because its mirrors had to be shielded from heat to operate. That means the odds of it hitting someone will be slightly higher than from UARS, about 1 in 2000. Bear in mind that’s still really small odds! The chance of a specific individual getting hit are still something like only 1 in 14 trillion.

Compared to GOES, the ROSAT is a lightweight at only roughly 2 tons, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

It will be a couple of months until we know for sure the wheres and whens so keep looking up...

UARS incomming!

Friday afternoon is the latest for the NASA Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will fall to Earth. No info yet where, but "certain" North America is not a "target"

Here is a YouTube video I found on IO9 showing the orbital path.

Most Detailed Photos of Apollo Landing Sites Taken

Photos taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of Apollo 12, 14 and 17 have proved to be some of the sharpest ever taken of the landing sites.

Photos taken of the Apollo LEM's landing sites, from an altitude as high as 15 miles, clearly show the astronaut's paths as well as the tracks of the Luna "buggy". Experts in Apollo hardware can even identify the PLISS (portable life support system) backpack worn by every astronaut who ventured onto the Luna surface. (due to weight restrictions of the accent module, the packs could not be recovered)

NASA site

Thanks to Dan for the heads up.

Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite Will Soon Visit Lower Atmosphere

NASA's 6.5-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite will be re-entering Earth's atmosphere in what NASA has described as "an uncontrolled fall" (don't you just love these euphemisms?) — but precisely when and where the satellite will re-enter remains a mystery. (excuse me but is this not the very nature of an uncontrolled fall?)

It is a bit too early to say with any accuracy where or what exactly will come down. There is little doubt that some of the satellite will make landfall sometime between late September and early October.

From the article:

• Much of the satellite which measures 35 feet long and 15 feet wide, is expected to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, but at least one computer analysis has predicted that as many as 26 components — weighing in at a total of over 1100 pounds — will actually break atmosphere and make landfall, falling within an estimated debris footprint length of 500 miles.

Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite article

First Time Photograph of Comet Hitting the Sun

Tim Sayell sends in this great link from Yahoo News detailing the first time ever photograph of a comet striking the sun!

The picture was taken July 6 by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a satellite launched on February 11, 2010 who's mission is to observe the Sun for over five years.

From the article:

• One of the SDO spacecraft's high-definition imagers "actually spotted a sun-grazing comet as it disintegrated over about a 15 minute period, something never observed before.....
• The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint NASA-European Space Agency spacecraft, also spotted the comet's demise and recorded a video of the event.

Read the full article here

Argentine Sat Wants to Know How Salty the Briny Blue Is

Well all kidding aside, Tim Sayell sent in this interesting article from Yahoo News. An Argentine-built satellite was boosted into low Earth orbit atop a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force base shortly before 7:30 PT 6/10/11.

The Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft is a An ocean-mapping satellite who's mission is to chart the saltiness of the sea from space. The information gained from the satellite, according to the article:

• NASA will produce monthly maps detailing changes in salt levels over three years. Scientists hope the data will help them better predict future climate change and short-term climate phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina.
• Besides Aquarius, seven other instruments will collect environmental data including a camera that will make images of volcanic eruptions, wildfires and nighttime light.

Besides Argentina and NASA, other countries participating in the 400 million dollar mission include Brazil, Canada, France and Italy.

This launch marks a first of five that United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of rocket builders Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., will carry out for NASA this year. The other projects will be - according to the article:

• Juno spacecraft to Jupiter, the Grail probe to the moon, the NPP environmental satellite and the Mars Science Laboratory to the Martian surface.

Refueling Geosync Sats?

Now this is something I never thought I would see... according to Space News blog, MDA of Canada has contracted with Intelsat to deliver 1000kg (half of the 2000kgs available) of fuel to Intelsats otherwise healthy satellites, adding several years of useful life to four or five satellites. In truth, only about 4 year of extended service are the mission's goal, as the electronic and solar arrays degrade due to the harsh conditions. Most satellites are designed to last about 15 years. Even though they could be fully refueled, the likelihood that the satellite would fail long before the 30 year period would be high.

Also at this point is still isn't clear who is libel should the MDA vehicle damage a satellite which would leave a catastrophic amount of debris in orbit.

Gamma Ray Explosion Blinds Swift

Long before our sun and planets formed and massive star collapsed to form a black hole. On June 21 of this year, the gamma ray burst from this explosion reached Earth and promptly raised havoc with several satellite systems including the Swift Observatory.

"Light" from the explosion was was 140 times brighter than the brightest steady source of X-rays currently known making this the most powerful source of x-rays ever recorded.

The burst was so bright that it temporarily blinded the Swift satellite.

The Telegraph via Dvice