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Discovery’s final mission delayed till end November

November 6, 2010

 

Space Shuttle Discovery approaches ISS for doc...

Discovery approaching ISS:Image by TopTechWriter.US via Flickr

 

BBC News:

The final mission of the space shuttle Discovery has been postponed again because of a fuel leak. After 26 years of service, the vehicle is due to make one last flight to the International Space Station (ISS) before being retired to a museum. Escaping hydrogen detected midway through fuelling left Nasa no choice but to stand Discovery down once more.

The agency is now planning a launch date on 30 November, to give plenty of time to fix the leak. Nasa has simply run out of time in the current launch window, which ends on Monday. There then follows a three-and-a-half-week period of unfavourable sun angles at the orbiting platform that make a docking very difficult because of the heating experienced by an approaching shuttle. The leak occured at the ground umbilical carrier plate, an attachment point between the external tank and a 18cm pipe that carries vented hydrogen safely away from Discovery to a flare stack, where it is burned off. Discovery’s six astronauts had yet to board the spaceplane when the leak was detected. When the ship does get up, she will deliver a storeroom to be attached to the ISS, along with much needed supplies and spares.

Discovery is the oldest of the surviving ships. First launched in 1984, it has since completed 38 missions, travelling some 230 million kilometres in the process. Its commander on the final mission, Steve Lindsey, says Discovery is probably the most important of three remaining shuttles. “It is obviously a very historical vehicle, having flown the ‘return to flight’ test missions after both the Challenger and Columbia accidents,” he said. “It deployed Hubble (and) it’s the fleet leader in terms of number of flights – it’ll have flown about a year on orbit by the time we’re done with it, which is pretty remarkable for a space shuttle.”

After Discovery returns, only the Endeavour shuttle has a firm date to launch, in February next year. Atlantis could fly in June if the budget allows. Beyond that, American astronauts will use Russian Soyuz rockets to get into space until a range of commercial US launch systems are introduced in the middle of the decade.

Robonaut 2, a dexterous, humanoid astronaut helper, will fly to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery on the STS-133 mission.


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Robonaut 2 on Discovery’s last flight (rescheduled launch on 4th November)

November 2, 2010

Update!

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wednesday greenlighted a launch of space shuttle Discovery on Thursday 4th November, to begin its 11-day mission to the International Space Station. The Prelaunch Mission Management Team (MMT) now is confident since a main engine controller problem on Discovery has been solved, said Mike Moses, chairman of the MMT. Therefore, the team gave a unanimous “go” for Discovery’s launch due to start at 3:29 p.m. EDT (1929 GMT) on Thursday.

Robonaut 2, a dexterous, humanoid astronaut helper, will fly to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery on the STS-133 mission. Although it will initially only participate in operational tests, upgrades could eventually allow the robot to realize its true purpose — helping spacewalking astronauts with tasks outside the space station.

 

Face-Off

Face-off with Robonaut 2: Image Credit: NASA/JSC Robert Markowitz

 

Associated Press:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA celebrated 10 years of continuous human presence at the International Space Station on Tuesday while readying shuttle Discovery for one last trip into orbit. Lift off is set for Wednesday afternoon.

Discovery is bound for the space station, currently home to six U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts who fielded calls of congratulations on this special anniversary.

Breaking !

On Tuesday an electrical problem cropped up again aboard space shuttle Discovery and could jeopardize Wednesday’s launch. The trouble appears to be with a backup controller for one of the shuttle’s three main engines. NASA ordered last-minute reviews and hurriedly scheduled a mid-afternoon meeting of top managers.

A NASA spokeswoman said it’s too soon to know whether Wednesday afternoon’s planned launch will remain on track. Discovery’s final launch originally was scheduled for Monday, but was delayed by shuttle gas leaks.

The controller was sluggish early Tuesday morning. But after turning a circuit breaker and switch on and off several times, everything seemed to be fine. Later, voltage irregularities were noted.

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Lunar activity: Chang’e-2 starts mission and Nasa revives 2 satellites

October 29, 2010

Xinhua reports

Scientists successfully activated four attitude control engines on Chang’e-2 and sent the satellite into the orbit with a perilune of just 15 kilometer above the moon, according to a flight control official in Beijing. It will photograph the Bay of Rainbows region with its CCD cameras from Wednesday, according to the center.

NASA has revived 2 satellites that were dying and sent them to the moon creating the ARTEMIS mission:

A pair of NASA spacecraft that were supposed to be dead a year ago are instead flying to the Moon for a breakthrough mission in lunar orbit. “Their real names are THEMIS P1 and P2, but I call them ‘dead spacecraft walking,'” says Vassilis Angelopoulos of UCLA, principal investigator of the THEMIS mission. “Not so long ago, we thought they were goners. Now they are beginning a whole new adventure.”

The story begins in 2007 when NASA launched a fleet of five spacecraft into Earth’s magnetosphere to study the physics of geomagnetic storms. Collectively, they were called THEMIS, short for “Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms.” P1 and P2 were the outermost members of the quintet. Working together, the probes quickly discovered a cornucopia of previously unknown phenomena such as colliding auroras, magnetic spacequakes, and plasma bullets shooting up and down Earth’s magnetic tail. These findings allowed researchers to solve several longstanding mysteries of the Northern Lights.

The mission was going splendidly, except for one thing: Occasionally, P1 and P2 would pass through the shadow of Earth. The solar powered spacecraft were designed to go without sunlight for as much as three hours at a time, so a small amount of shadowing was no problem. But as the mission wore on, their orbits evolved and by 2009 the pair was spending as much as 8 hours a day in the dark. “The two spacecraft were running out of power and freezing to death,” says Angelopoulos. “We had to do something to save them.”

Because the mission had gone so well, the spacecraft still had an ample supply of fuel–enough to go to the Moon. “We could do some great science from lunar orbit,” he says. NASA approved the trip and in late 2009, P1 and P2 headed away from the shadows of Earth.

With a new destination, the mission needed a new name. The team selected ARTEMIS, the Greek goddess of the Moon. It also stands for “Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun.”

The first big events of the ARTEMIS mission are underway now. On August 25, 2010, ARTEMIS-P1 reached the L2 Lagrange point on the far side of the Moon. Following close behind, ARTEMIS-P2 entered the opposite L1 Lagrange point on Oct. 22nd. Lagrange points are places where the gravity of Earth and Moon balance, creating a sort of gravitational parking spot for spacecraft.

 

Artemis (Lagrange Points, 550px)

The ARTEMIS spacecraft are currently located at the L1 and L2 Earth-Moon Lagrange points: NASA

 

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/27oct_artemis/

 

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Lunar crater “Cabeus” contains more water than the Sahara

October 22, 2010

The New York Times reports on the latest results from the $79 million Lcross mission. Last October, as it neared impact, the Lcross spacecraft released the empty second stage and slowed down slightly so that it could watch the stage’s 5,600-mile-per-hour crash into a 60-mile-wide, 2-mile-deep crater named Cabeus.

 

Debris ejected from the Cabeus lunar crater about 20 seconds after the Lcross impact: image Science / AAAS

 

A series of articles reporting the Lcross results appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

Last November, the team reported that the impact had kicked up at least 26 gallons of water, confirming suspicions of ice in the craters. The new results increase the water estimate to about 40 gallons, and by estimating by amount of dirt excavated by the impact, calculated the concentration of water for the first time. The Sahara sands are 2 to 5 percent water, and the water is tightly bound to the minerals. In the lunar crater, which lies in perpetual darkness, the water is in the form of almost pure ice grains mixed in with the rest of the soil, and is easy to extract. The ice is about 5.6 percent of the mixture, and possibly as high as 8.5 percent of it, Dr. Colaprete principal investigator of NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite —  Lcross – said.

In lunar terms, that is an oasis, surprisingly wet for a place that had long been thought by many planetary scientists to be utterly dry. If astronauts were to visit this crater, they might be able to use eight wheelbarrows of soil to melt 10 to 13 gallons of water. The water, if purified, could be used for drinking, or broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel — to get home or travel to Mars.

Also surprising was the cornucopia of other elements and molecules that Lcross scooped out of the Cabeus crater, near the Moon’s south pole. Lying in perpetual darkness, the bottom of Cabeus, at minus 370 degrees Fahrenheit, is among the coldest places in the solar system and acts as a “cold trap,” collecting a history of impacts and debris over perhaps a couple of billion years.

“This is quite a reservoir of our cosmic climate,” said Peter H. Schultz, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University and lead author of one of the Science papers. “It reflects things that hit the Moon.”

By analyzing the spectrum of infrared light reflected off the debris plume, Dr. Schultz and his colleagues identified elements like sodium and silver.


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La Niña chills out the Pacific – could cause drought

October 4, 2010

“The tropical Pacific Ocean has transitioned from last winter’s El Niño conditions to a cool La Niña, as shown by new data about sea surface heights, collected by the U.S-French Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 oceanography satellite” writes Science Daily.

La Niña continues to strengthen in the Pacific Ocean, as shown in the latest satellite data of sea surface heights from the NASA/European Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 satellite. The image is based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Sept. 3, 2010. Higher (warmer) than normal sea surface heights are indicated by yellows and reds, while lower (cooler) than normal sea surface heights are depicted in blues and purples. Green indicates near-normal conditions. (Credit: NASA/JPL Ocean Surface Topography Team)

“This La Niña has strengthened for the past four months, is strong now and is still building,” said Climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “It will surely impact this coming winter’s weather and climate.

“After more than a decade of mostly dry years on the Colorado River watershed and in the American Southwest, and only one normal rain year in the past five years in Southern California, water supplies are dangerously low,” Patzert added. “This La Niña could deepen the drought in the already parched Southwest and could also worsen conditions that have fueled Southern California’s recent deadly wildfires.” NASA will continue to track this change in Pacific climate.

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“You left spacedock without a tractor beam?”: Mysterious force holds back NASA probes

September 19, 2010

Star Trek Generations

Star Trek Generations:

Kirk: You left spacedock without a tractor beam?
Harriman: It doesn’t arrive until Tuesday.

The Telegraph:

A space probe launched 30 years ago has come under the influence of a mysterious force that has baffled scientists and could rewrite the laws of physics. Researchers say Pioneer 10, which took the first close-up pictures of Jupiter before leaving our solar system in 1983, is being pulled back to the sun by an unknown force. The effect shows no sign of getting weaker as the spacecraft travels deeper into space, and scientists are considering the possibility that the probe has revealed a new force of nature.

Tractorbeam arriving on Tuesday

“If the effect is real, it will have a big impact on cosmology and spacecraft navigation,” said Dr Laing, of the Aerospace Corporation of California. Pioneer 10 was launched by Nasa on March 2 1972, and with Pioneer 11, its twin, revolutionised astronomy with detailed images of Jupiter and Saturn. In June 1983, Pioneer 10 passed Pluto, the most distant planet in our solar system.

pt:Trajectória da sonda Pioneer 10 em Jupiter

Pioneer 10 trajectory

Research to be published shortly in The Physical Review, a leading physics journal, will show that the speed of the two probes is being changed by about 6 mph per century – a barely-perceptible effect about 10 billion times weaker than gravity.

Assertions by some scientists that the force is due to a quirk in the Pioneer probes have also been discounted by the discovery that the effect seems to be affecting Galileo and Ulysses, two other space probes still in the solar system. Data from these two probes suggests the force is of the same strength as that found for the Pioneers.

Dr Duncan Steel, a space scientist at Salford University, says even such a weak force could have huge effects on a cosmic scale. “It might alter the number of comets that come towards us over millions of years, which would have consequences for life on Earth. It also raises the question of whether we know enough about the law of gravity.”

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Son of Hubble — getting expensive

September 18, 2010

Successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope is now slated for launch in 2014. The $5 billion mission is once again plagued by cost overruns.

Science News reports:

How can astronomers advise NASA on how to trim the costs of developing missions if no one will tell them how much the costliest mission of all, the James Webb Space Telescope, is running over budget?

That’s what Alan Boss, chair of the independent NASA Astrophysics Subcommittee, would like to know. When the subcommittee met in Washington, D.C., on September 16 and 17, Boss and his colleagues already knew that the $5 billion infrared space observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope’s successor now set for launch in 2014, was once again in need of a monetary transfusion.

What Boss wanted to know was how much. But no one in room 3H46 at NASA headquarters was willing to talk dollars and sense — when Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., asked if anyone in the room could cite a dollar figure, his question was met with a silence as deep as any in the vast empty reaches of intergalactic space.

Fear of making a huge and embarrassing error like the one that produced Hubble Space Telescope’s infamously misshapen primary mirror may be causing JWST scientists and engineers to go overboard and do too much testing, Weiler said. The comprehensive report on JWST due next month, led by John Casani of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will cite instances where engineers on the mission may be overzealous in testing equipment.

JWST gobbles up about 40 percent of NASA’s astrophysics science budget.

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