Voyager's long journey into interstellar space

By Michael J.W. Stickings

NASA launched its Voyager 1 spacecraft on September 5, 1977, the year both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind amazed moviegoers on the silver screen. Today, a little over 36 years later, NASA confirmed that the 1,590-pound probe recently left our solar system and entered what is known as interstellar space, the first spacecraft ever to do so:

By today's standards, the spacecraft's technology is laughable: it carries an 8-track tape recorder and computers with one-240,000th the memory of a low-end iPhone. When it left Earth 36 years ago, it was designed as a four-year mission to Saturn, and everything after that was gravy.

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Even among planetary scientists, who tend to dream large, the idea that something they built could travel beyond the Sun's empire and keep grinding away is impressive. Plenty of telescopes gaze at the far parts of the Milky Way, but Voyager 1 can now touch and feel the cold, unexplored region in between the stars and send back detailed dispatches about conditions there. It takes 17 hours and 22 minutes for Voyager's signals to reach NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory here...

The lonely probe, which is 11.7 billion miles from Earth and hurtling away at 38,000 miles per hour, has long been on the cusp, treading a boundary between the bubble of hot, energetic particles around the solar system and the dark region beyond. There, in interstellar space, the plasma, or ionized gas, is noticeably denser.

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At a news conference on Thursday, NASA scientists were a bit vague about what they hope to get from Voyager 1 from now on. The answer, to some extent, depends on what instruments continue to function as the power supply dwindles. [NASA Voyager expert] Dr. [Edward] Stone expects Voyager 1 to keep sending back data — with a 23-watt transmitter, about the equivalent of a refrigerator light bulb — until roughly 2025.

One hope is that Voyager 1's position will allow scientists to more accurately study galactic cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles that originate outside the solar system. They would use the information to make judgments about what interstellar space is like at even greater distances from Earth.

In its heyday, Voyager 1 pumped out never-before-seen images of Jupiter and Saturn. But it stopped sending home pictures in 1990, to conserve energy and because there was no longer much to see. A companion spacecraft, Voyager 2, also launched in 1977, has stopped sending back images as well. Voyager 2 is moving in a different direction but is also expected to exit the solar system.

Eventually, NASA said, the Voyagers will pass other stars, coasting and drifting and being pulled by gravity. The next big encounter for Voyager 1, in around 40,000 years, is expected to be a dwarf star dispassionately known as AC+793888 in the constellation of Camelopardalis.

Amazing. Truly amazing.

Maybe one day someone, or something, will find this humble little creature and bring him home. Either way, whatever its future, Voyager is at the very forefront, literally, of our exploration of space, our first ambassador into the known and unknown that lies beyond our relatively tiny solar home.

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon, has died at the age of 82.

Other than teaching at the University of Cincinnati for a number of years after leaving NASA, he didn't do a great deal of note in his non-astronaut years -- unlike, say, John Glenn -- but, then, he didn't have to. He was part of both the Gemini and Apollo programs at NASA, and he walked on the Moon.

That, and that alone, is enough to establish his place in history.

"Neil was among the greatest of American heroes," said President Obama. "And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time, he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten."

I think back to how excited I was when Curiosity landed on Mars a few weeks ago. That was pretty amazing, and hugely significant.

But back in 1969... before I was born... two men, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with Michael Collins circling overhead in Columbia, actually flew to the Moon and walked on it. That was truly historic -- one of those "where were you?" moments in history.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." And then, of course, a bit later:

"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." (He had planned to say that but at the time unintentionally omitted the 'a'.)

Simply, and undeniably, awesome.

Here's the ABC News report:

Scary, and yet...

By Carl 

You're all familiar with the Hubble Telescope, that marvel of engineering and science that has created some of the most spectacular and iconic space images of the past decades.

It's about to die, not from some catastrophe, but merely from old age and lack of life support. Now that the shuttle program is terminated, no one much feels like flying up to it to do maintenance and repair.

We would be blind to beauty, except for something that has happened that is at once creepy and wondrous:

The National Science Foundation has just revealed the existence of not one, but two pristine, Hubble-class space telescopes, still in their original wrappings, in a warehouse in Rochester, N.Y. The pair was originally built for the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency in charge of spy satellites, to look down at Earth rather than up into space. But the NRO has moved on to bigger and better instruments, and decided to hand the telescopes over. "It just blew me a way when I heard about this," says Princeton astrophysicist David Spergel, a member of the National Academy of Science's Committee On Astrophysics and Astronomy. "I knew nothing about it."

Two points to notice here:

The Hubble makes your 50x military grade binoculars look like the magnifying glass they used to put in Cracker Jack boxes. Imagine one of those pointed down at you sunbathing nude in your backyard. Now imagine a telescope that puts the Hubble to shame. That's what the NRO had in a warehouse, waiting to be deployed.

Second, note that they never deployed them because they found an improved way of spying on us!

Let that sink in for a minute. Despite the obvious budget concerns -- why are we holding not one but two perfectly good telescopes in a warehouse in Rochester, NY never to be deployed because they became obsolete? How much were they and where in the budget do they show up, if at all? -- our government is handing down the best telescope we've ever invented, from a spy ring to our science division.

Why wasn't that working the other way around? I mean, I get that you can't be too public with your intelligence gathering, but on the other hand, science is important to our security, too, and particularly space. That's why NASA even exists in the first place! You could, for example, publicly misrepresent the level of technology on the telescope, and gift it from NASA to the NRO.

I know, the military gets the best candy, even if like a goose fatted for pate, it has to be rammed into its gullet, but come on, Congress. This is science. This is (mostly) good for us.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Spaced out: Newt promises U.S. moon base and manned mission to Mars

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For your musical pleasure, make sure to watch the clip below. It's Sinatra, dammit!)

As you may have heard, because the story was flying around the Twitterverse and pretty much ever other -verse seemingly at the speed of light, Newt Gingrich said yesterday that he would establish a permanent U.S. base on the moon by the end of his second term -- which is to say, within nine years:

In a speech pandering to Florida's aerospace community ahead of the state's primary, GOP contender Newt Gingrich made a bold pledge to establish a permanent U.S. base on the moon "by the end of my second term." He further promised that if he becomes president, America will get a man to Mars "in a remarkably short time." A budget-conscious President Obama ended the program for a lunar colony and moon trip after NASA reported it didn't have the money for any part of the plan, "and even if it were to get a budget infusion, the schedule was unworkable." Gingrich rebutted the charge that he is "grandiose" by comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, the Wright Brothers and John F. Kennedy. ThinkProgress has previously reported on Gingrich's curious space fetish, which has included an idea for a "mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons" for nighttime driving.

While this particular pledge is crazy, if only because it's so ridiculously unrealistic given the current fiscal situation, I'm actually willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this and to credit him for being one of the very few major political figures in the U.S. committed to space exploration.

Sure, he may have been pandering for votes, but it's not like it was his first foray into space policy (if I may call it that). And while I certainly understand the limitations imposed by the current fiscal situation and the need to focus on other, more earthly priorities (e.g., fighting climate change, fighting poverty), I am fully supportive of a strong, well-funded, and visionary U.S. space program (working in collaboration with other countries' programs), with the federal government taking an active leadership role in making it happen, just as it has in the past with the Apollo and shuttle programs, among others.

It is only human to quest, to explore, to reach out into the darkness, into the unknown. Think where we'd be today if there hadn't been that commitment to go to the moon. Or if previous generations of explorers had just stayed home. We are richer for our quest to discover, and our future, it seems to me, if we have one, lies in space as much as it does here on earth.

But... let's get back to Newt. I followed the story initially on Twitter yesterday, and I present to you here some of the best tweets that came my way (cleaned up slightly). First there was disbelief (wait, did Newt really say that?), but then the comedy virtually wrote itself:

-- Rick Klein: "Newt (really) today: 'By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American.'"

-- ThinkProgress: "Gingrich rebuts the charge that he is 'grandiose' by comparing himself to Lincoln, the Wright Bros, and JFK #nottheonion"

-- Josh Marshall: "Romney responds with plan to take over moon, load it up with debt and close it down."

-- LOLGOP: "What will Newt do if he finds aliens on the moon? What if they've been there like twenty or thirty years?"

-- Richard Skinner: "At the base, 8-year-old lunar children will #minethemoon to learn a work ethic."

-- David Corn: "Will an American born on the moon be eligible to run for president in the year 2060? #QuestionsforNewt"

-- Molly Ball: "We laugh at Newt's moon-base plans now, but our children growing up in the Pres. N.L. Gingrich Moon Colony won't be laughing."

-- Greg Sargent: "Breaking: Obama to vow to wrap the moon in US flags by the end of his second term to prove his devotion to American exceptionalism."

-- John Cole: "I think liberals should compromise and agree to permanently station Newt Gingrich on the moon."

All very funny. And of course there were many others.

But let me wrap up this post with this, if I may speak to Gingrich directly:

Newt, dear egomaniacal Newt, it's fine and even rather admirable, in a way, that you're talking up space exploration and promising a moon base, but, uh, let me be blunt: You're no Lincoln, you're no JFK, and there's no way you would have gotten that plane off the ground at Kitty Hawk. Now please get back to kicking Romney's ass as hard as you can.

Where no man has gone before

By Carl

...at least in the last thirty years:

Reports say when the White House releases their budget proposal, there will be no money for the program that was supposed to return astronauts to the moon by 2020.

Reports say NASA will instead look at developing a new "heavy-lift" rocket that one day will take humans and robots to explore beyond low Earth orbit.

One year ago President Obama had backed a Moon return mission in the NASA budget.

There's an abounding irony in the fact that a Republican president, desperat to reverse his sagging polls numbers amidst the long-standing accusation of intellectual uninterest in the world around him, propsed not only a return to the moon, but an eventual manned landing on Mars, while the Democratic president whose intellectual curiousity teems across his life has proposed stifling that ambition.

The budget, you see, affects more than just our paychecks. It affects our humanity.

I grew up in the Space Age. The world had a future. Space had a future. Mankind had a future.

Forget colonizing other planets in our solar system! Yea, we'd establish outposts and such and do experiments. Maybe hippie communes might spring up, but space had a wealth of resources that we could use to improve the human condition.

Offshoring manufacturing would take on a whole new meaning as we'd head out to the asteroid belt, pick an appropriate rock and as we dragged it back to high earth orbit, begin to refine out metals and chemicals, processes that pollute our environment horribly. The dollar cost of the mission would be more than offset by the real savings to the environment, to the air, earth, and water, to Gaia.

We would beam back energy from solar panels floating at Lagrange points around the earth in stable orbits. No more war for oil. Sure, there'd be money to be made, but if someone tried to corner the market, someone else would fire up a rocket and deploy his or her own satellite.

And that's just the beginning. The technologies that grew out of the space program, everything from Tang to hazmat equipment to the modern computer, have served us well and one can only imagine what new technoloies could come from the needs of the astronauts.

A country is suffering a drought? It might be cheaper to drag a comet to low earth orbit and make it rain into that country's reservoirs than to bring it by the bottle or boatload across a sea. A nation needs a tourist attraction, a way to bring people to it? Well, if it has a nice climate and a lot of flat open space, it could offer to build a spaceport.

The cultural impact of space exploration cannot be ignored. Neither can it be put off. Eventually, someone is going to realize that we don't have a lot of time or space left on this planet, and if we start now, it will be cheaper in the long run. While I can appreciate the budgetary needs of the Federal government in this time of belt-tightening and counting pennies, this is something that needs to be kept on the table year after year, as a reminder of what it means to be human.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Refurbished Hubble telescope yields spectacular images

By Carol Gee

It was worth the wait! NASA has posted the first new images released by the Hubble ERO folks, following the refurbishment of the space telescope. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) had the honor of presiding at this long awaited unveiling. With the help of Digsby, Twitter, and NASA's award winning website, I was able to grab one of several wonderful images for your viewing pleasure. The image above is called "Stephan's Quintet -- Galactic wreckage."

STS-128 has completed its mission to the International Space Station, exchanging members of the ISS Expedition 20 team, and resupplying the space station. With good weather in Florida, the crew will land early Thursday evening.

Supplemental links -- Hat tip to my regular contributor, Jon, for the links marked with a (#):

• "Astronauts pack Buzz Lightyear for ride home,"# is from Yahoo! News (9/7/09).
• "Space Sights and Smells Surprise Rookie Astronauts,"# is from Yahoo! News (9/5/09).

Links in boldface are important new elements to the NASA stories to be explored in a subsequent post. The links indicate the Augustine Commission's recommendations to the Obama administration regarding the future of U.S. space flight, jeopardized by a lack of money. I highly recommend the NPR article (below) as a first look at the panel's findings. And here is the intro to the Augustine Commission's Summary Report. To quote:

Summary Report
A summary of the report from the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee was provided to the Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and NASA Administrator on Tuesday, September 8. The summary's text is consistent with presentations made during the committee's final public meeting on Aug. 12. The summary has been posted on this website for the public.

Transmittal Letter for Summary Report (pdf, 32K)

Download a copy of the Summary Report. (pdf, 152K)

For media questions regarding the Summary Report, contact Dr. Edward Crawley at MIT at 617-253-7510.

The full Final Report is still being prepared and will be released when complete. NASA is working with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and other representatives of the Executive Office of the President to plan the next steps leading to a decision by the President about future U.S. human space flight policy.

Additional news links:

• Panel Tells Obama Moon Return Is A No-Go (npr.org)
• New Look at a Colossal Cosmic Collision (space.com)
• Refurbishments Complete, Astronauts Let Go of Hubble (nytimes.com)

(Cross-posted at Southwest Progressive.)

Intertwines

By Carl

A curious nexus of events is occuring right now, coincidences abound.

Today marks, as you undoubtedly know, the 40th anniversary of the first moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

It's hard to believe that it's been forty years. It's harder still to believe that the promise of those early space explorations has been strangled in the cradle by bureaucrats and people without dreams, pragmatists.

Less hard to believe is that Walter Cronkite, one of the voices of the American space program, has been stilled on the very threshold of this anniversary.

Cronkite reported on many tragic events in a turbulent American landscape at a time when change was something real, not a campaign slogan. Through it all, from assassinations to war to student unrest to politics, Cronkite kept his composure, at times when a lesser man would have broken down (and indeed, many did).

If you look closely at the time he reported on the death of John F. Kennedy, you can see him fight his tears back, because he knew his job was to tell us what happened, not to feel it.

In fact, the only time I can recall Cronkite being so overwhelmed by the news was on this date, 40 years ago, as man stepped out onto the surface of another celestial body for the first time.

Part of that, no doubt, was the monumental task involved and the effort America dedicated to it. Three astronauts died testing Apollo 1. Millions and millions of dollars were spent honing and refining technology. A nation that had come of age with the death of its youngest President, his brother and a man of peace, all at the hands of gun violence, was in desperate need of a spark and the shiny metal boxes of the space program provided welcome relief.

A nation cheered Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, less for their achievement than for the relief from our losses.

But I think a larger part is unspoken often when discussing what the moon landing meant to us. We were set upon the task by that youngest President, who saw the competition that the Soviet Union had laid down upon his table and rose to the challenge. We were scared not only of the world around us, but of ourselves. America revealed an uglier side with the use of the atomic bomb, no matter whether such use was justified or not and continuing right into a war of aggression that was probably pointless.

Cronkite's brain cramp, his "wow" moment, was undoubtedly largely influenced by all this: the tears he had been unwilling to shed that November day were exhaled on this July day.


There was a sense of completion that day, to be sure. The entire nation had been ramped up for the exploration of space for so long and as 1968 closed and we saw images of our earth from Apollo 8, at the end of a year of violence and unrest, it was almost as if the entire country stood still and clasped hands. We really were all in this together on this little blue marble.

That image marked the pursuit of the moon in earnest. Hell, even SNOOPY was an astronaut!

The decade closed much as it had opened: with promise and hope and new beginnings. Sadly, that promise was broken, the hope quashed and the new beginnings became "nothing in the street looks any different to me." History didn't change, at least not for the better. We ended up in the morass of self-righteousness and moral lecturing that we've seen these past forty years grown and morph this country from one that looked forward to one yearning to move backwards, past the moonwalk, past the assassinations, back to a time when men were men, women were silent, and minorities were at best ignored.

The promise of space is a promise of progressivism. The promise of space is liberalism writ large, on a cosmic scale. What we learned going to the moon, indeed the benefits we've accrued...it always makes me laugh to read a criticism about space exploration written on a computer using the very microchips that grew out of Apollo...have been massive, and I think we've only just begun to understand technology's promise from space.

We really have no choice, we humans. We must move forward. We must move outward. We must seek space.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Walter Cronkite -- Congruence

By Carol Gee

Walter Cronkite passed away on Friday. The voice of the nation for so many years was 92 years old. From the time he was named the "anchor" of the CBS evening news program, he began to build a reputation for honesty and integrity than set a standard for all the major news anchors who were to follow in his footsteps.

His legacy for me was one of congruence. For decades his reports on so many of the key events here and around the world turned out to be congruent with the eventual meaning we all took to be the core significance of the most important events. In both emotional tone and the facts, his reporting was in agreement and coincided with that of most of the rest of us.

As a kid from the country in Wyoming, I did not experience television until I moved to Texas as a nursing student in 1955. From my first black and white, small screen television viewing I was hooked. And I was always drawn to the hard news. Like millions of others I wanted to know what was happening. I has a curiosity and a need to know, so I always watched the evening news. My choices were NBC and CBS. NBC got on the list because that was the network that would come in on our radio growing up. But CBS quickly became a close second as I listened to Edward R. Murrow, and then watched, his weekly broadcast.

Walter Cronkite succeeded Murrow. The managing editor of his own program, he was trained as a print journalist and comfortable on camera, a dynamite combination. And we soon found that he could tell us what was happening in ways that were congruent, clear, unbiased, simple and believable.

It was Walter Cronkite who told me that John F. Kennedy was dead, and showed his own devastated feelings silently and without shame. He was openly angry when his news crewmen were roughed up on the floor of a Democratic Convention in the searing sixties. He went to Vietnam and said out loud the truth of that awful war. President Lyndon Johnson was convinced of the reality of his lost leadership by that broadcast. Walter Cronkite went to the moon's dusty surface with the astronauts with the rest of us. He gaged it as a most significant event for humankind. But he missed by just a few days the 40th anniversary celebration of the moon landing that will be coming up on Monday. I am moved by the congruence of that. Last night the new NASA administrator, Charles Bolden released a lovely and poetic tribute to Walter Cronkite, noting that it was Walter Cronkite who inspired him to want to become an astronaut so many years ago. And I am moved by the congruence of that, as well.

Walter Cronkite, according to a contemporary, was not happy about having to retire. But he did it without public complaint. Acclaimed by most everyone, he popped up every now and then until he was well up in years. He was a sailor and loved to have the wind at his back and the bow of his craft splitting the waves. He lost his beloved wife, Betsy a few years ago. He was one of a kind and I feel grateful that I was able to find much of my truth from his take on the significance of all those momentous life changing events.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Landing on Mars was a 50-50 chance

By Carol Gee

(NASA image -- Mars "Sol Zero")

The Phoenix mission's planners thought it was going to be that tough and so did I. All of us who are long time "space junkies" sat through another nail-biter as the robotic effort played out millions of miles away on the polar ice cap of the planet Mars. "NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Lands at Martian Arctic Site" was NASA's understated news release title. To quote from the story about how difficult the challenge was expected to be:

Among those in the JPL control room was NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who noted this was the first successful Mars landing without airbags since Viking 2 in 1976.

"For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars," Griffin said. "I couldn't be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement."

. . . Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity. Earlier in 2002, Mars Odyssey discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.

Space junkie bloggers are having fun with the news. "Heaving Mars," was the clever post title by DarkSyde at DailyKos; it refers to frost heaving. A Texas Kaos post, "Phoenix has landed on Mars," has some good video links by "boadicea," a proud grad of the University of Arizona. Robert Roy Britt at Live Science blogs on Space and Astronomy worries that talk of life on Mars will start up again.

This mission is scheduled to be active for about three months. It is a study in organizational cooperation between NASA's launching the lander, Lockheed Martin developing the spacecraft, and the contributing academic community. Peter Smith of the University of Arizona is the principal investigator for the Phoenix Mars Mission, the first winner of NASA's Scout Program competition among 20+ proposals. Washington University in St. Louis is also deeply involved in this Mars weather study.

NASA's latest report says that communication has successfully been reestablished between Mars and Earth, after period of being on standby for some unknown reason. It is through this complicated communication that we have the privilege of seeing the imagery from the Phoenix mission that is so spectacular!

Hungry for more pics? Tariq Malik at Space.com, reports on "The Top 10 Martian Landings of All Time," culminating with kudos to Mars rovers, "Spirit" and "Opportunity." To quote:

Reaching Mars is a hard and unforgiving endeavor, with little room for error. More than two-thirds of the 36 missions launched toward Mars have been lost due to failed components, rocket glitches or grievous errors that sent probes crashing into the martian surface or missing the planet altogether.

References:

NASA May 27 News Items from FLORIDA SPACErePORT. This post includes good summaries of:

• the comparison of what Iraq war spending could have purchased for the space program;
  
• the space program as a progressive cause for the Netroots Nation;
  
• plans by Russia and Europe to build new manned spacecraft;
  
• Senator Nelson on Presidential candidates and space policy; and
  
• the latest news about Soyuz.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Here and there from the Southwest USA

By Carol Gee

The southwest region of the United States sometimes makes the national headlines, for good or for ill. Three events captured national attention this past week. A West Texas polygamist sect's compound was raided in order to protects its vulnerable women and children from sexual abuse. Hundreds of passenger flights in the region were canceled in order to do safety inspections on airplane electrical wiring. And NASA in Houston is transitioning their three-person crew aboard the International Space Station.

Texas polygamist sect story: Monday brings a Washington Post story of what will happen next in these troubling events regarding custody of the children, protection of spouses, etc. It will come under the auspices of the state courts, and even the governor could weigh in. To quote:

An investigation of abuse at the private ranch of a polygamous sect is moving to a San Angelo courthouse this week as the state argues to retain custody of 416 children removed from their parents. Texas bar officials say more than 350 attorneys from across the state have volunteered to represent the children for free.

"The size, the scope of this effort is unprecedented," attorney Guy Choate said. "It's terribly important to the State Bar of Texas that everyone have access to justice."

. . . Three mothers have appealed to Gov. Rick Perry for help in a letter the sect said was mailed to him on Saturday.

There is a new twist to the polygamist ranch story. Americans have been subsidizing the group with millions of their tax dollars, according to McClatchy. My Representative, Kay Granger, should probably urge an investigation, although what action might come out of it is unknown. To quote:

American taxpayers have unwittingly helped finance a polygamist sect that is now the focus of a massive child abuse investigation in West Texas, with a business tied to the group receiving a nearly $1 million loan from the federal government and $1.2 million in military contracts.

. . . A large portion of the awards were preferential no-bid or "sole source" contracts because of the company's classification as a small business, according to online databases that track federal government appropriations.

. . . U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, the Fort Worth Republican who sits on the House Appropriations Committee that deals with issues of defense, military and homeland security, said she is surprised that the federal government is doing business with a group accused of mistreating women and children.

"It makes me very uneasy," Granger said. "It needs to be investigated without a doubt."

Is it yet safe to fly? Travelers in the Southwest and elsewhere were affected deeply by the FAA safety inspection problems presented to Southwest and American Airlines. There is plenty of blame to go around in both the FAA and the airline companies. "Safety problems in grounded jets known for years by FAA," was written by Bob Cox at McClatchy Newspapers, April 12, 2008. To quote:

Airline safety regulators have known for years that MD-80 airliners could have a potentially serious electrical wiring problem like the one that led to the sudden grounding of American Airlines planes last week.

But a review of Federal Aviation Administration documents indicates that the agency was in no hurry to force airlines to make fixes.

NASA's Space Program is located in the Southwest region of the United States. Missions are controlled primarily out of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas as well as number of facilities in Europe. The current mission is ISS Expedition 17, now transitioning a new crew to be aboard the Space Station. Two members of the new rookie crew and a visitor from South Korea arrived at the station on April 10. To quote from Space.com:

Crewmembers aboard the International Space Station (ISS) welcomed the arrival of a Russian spacecraft bearing their replacements and South Korea's first astronaut early Thursday.

Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, and South Korean spaceflyer So-yeon Yi pulled in at the station aboard their Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft, which docked with the outpost's Earth-facing Pirs module at about 8:57 a.m. EDT (1257 GMT). The two vehicles were flying over northern Kazakhstan when they connected.

. . . Volkov, the first second-generation spaceflyer to reach space, received congratulations in Russian from his father, famed cosmonaut Alexander Volkov.

. . . Whitson, who served as ISS Expedition 16 commander, and Yuri Malenchenko, Expedition 17 flight engineer, will be relieved by Volkov and Kononenko. The third current station inhabitant, U.S. astronaut Garrett Reisman, will stay onboard as a flight engineer for the new Expedition 17.

. . . Yi, Malenchenko and Whitson are slated to land on the steppes of Kazakhstan next week after a 3 ½-hour journey home from the space station.

NASA has launched a beautiful new science web site: NASA SCIENCE . . . for the benefit of all. Researchers, educators, kids and citizen scientists are invited to delve into the sections on Earth, Heliophysics, Planets and Astrophysics. Full featured, it also includes an image of the day, spotlights one of the science missions, and focuses on "NASA Science and Kids."

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Fascinations With Space

By Carol Gee

People have all been explorers at one time or another. We have a fascination with seeing what is new over the mountain, with climbing the peak itself. Inner and outer space comprise the newest frontiers for humankind's next risky endeavors. In so-called "developed" countries, we use technological, intellectual and physical breakthroughs to help us go beyond where we have been able to go before. And we do these things as trusting and interdependent members of groups. Today's post will lay out this particular "Space Nut's" fascination with space.

Exploring possibilities of technology -- South Pacific islanders had to learn to make better boats in order to reach South America. In order to escape gravity, 20th century rocket scientists had to harness the technology of explosive materials. They has to learn to go safely, farther and faster. They had to learn to manage the vast amounts of information generated by such complex projects; computers solved that. I am deeply grateful for my laptop. I was deeply moved by discovering that the Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon had poetic souls. These were men who marked the silent night of Christmas and appreciated the profound experience to seeing our "blue marble planet" from far away.

Risking lives and expensive equipment -- People had to learn how to survive in explosive environments. And it was expensive to keep people intact and able to maintain the normal activities of living while traveling so far and fast. The equipment for space travel must be able to provide an artificial life-sustaining environment. There must be room for enough supplies to make the trip and a way to keep in touch with those at home. And the equipment must perform almost flawlessly for crew members to stay alive. I live in Texas and on Feb. 1, 2003 I heard the shuttle Columbia explode before it fell in piece into the East Texas piney woods.

Cooperating with former enemies -- Rocket scientists migrated from Germany to the United States after World War II. Those very smart men and our own very smart people founded America's space exploration program; it eventually became NASA. Meanwhile Russia was making its own breakthroughs, sending the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit around the earth. The Cold War space race was on. In 1957 the first seven Mercury astronauts were named The United States finally sent the first men to the moon. Eventually the Cold War ended. After a time, Russia and the U.S. joined forces in space. Earth's wisdom dictated that space was to be used peacefully and that we had to work together. It was too risky and expensive to do otherwise. Unfortunately the war in Iraq has cut into the U.S. space budget so badly that there will be no way for ISS crew members to get back and forth to duty except via a Russian Soyuz module from the years 2010 to around 2015, when the new U.S. Orion replacement spacecraft for the retired shuttles should be ready.

Inhabiting the Space Neighborhood together -- Until just a few days ago the International Space Station's Expedition 16 was populated with an American woman commander, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut. Every night when the fliers drift off to sleep workers all over the globe watch out for them from consoles in Europe, Russia and the United States. Canada and Japan also have active and vital space programs including astronauts, robotic support and science experimenters. Language translators are sometimes needed to supplement English. Everyone in space is at peace and entrusting their very lives to the good faith participation to their international partners. I am firmly convinced that, no matter what tension there might be between U.S. and Russian leaders, having the world's astronauts and cosmonauts dependent on each other country's indispensable contributions to the ISS will keep the peace.

Living at the edges of anxiety -- Humans have primitive built-in mechanisms that warn of danger. Feeling of anxiety and fear let us know that we are not safe. Climbing the tallest mountains or going into earth orbit means leaving the earth's atmosphere and going away from the pull of gravity. At-the-edge exploration is very dangerous. Every human will experience anxiety under these circumstances. With space exploration death can lurk just over the horizon, or in the next few minutes if things do not go as planned. All of us have the memories of tragedies that have taken the lives of space explorers in both Russia and the United States. Each launch and each landing will find me in front of my television, watching the countdown, listening for trouble, and feeling thankful for another successful "controlled plummet from space" that is the mark of the old workhorse shuttles. It is equally fascinating to watch the tiny 3-passenger Soyuz capsules drift down to a remote field in the steppes of Russia.

Working very, very hard -- Space explorers have been willing to work very hard at the enterprise. It takes years of education and experience to get a job in the industry of any nation. Astronauts and cosmonauts compete for a limited number of slots. And they must continue to work very hard from then on. They must stay very physically, mentally and emotionally fit. People supporting the astronauts from the ground must do so 24-7, weekends and holidays. The agency has to work very hard to get the huge amounts of money needed to explore space and to provide smart human resource management. Universities and research facilities must expend extraordinary amounts of brain power to solve the technological, physical and human relations challenges inherent in the work. The story of astronaut Lisa Nowak illustrates that NASA has had to learn to monitor mental, as well as physical health. As a retired counselor I applaud NASA's commitment to the overall health of their astronaut corps.

Learning by doing and tweaking -- Each space explorer, astronaut or ground support, stands on the shoulders of the pioneers that went before them. They have had to learn through expensive scientific experimentation, research and trial and error. Errors can be fatal and have been. These very smart people hope not to repeat mistakes. They set very high performance standards for themselves and each other, and these women and men are always striving for improvement. Ever since the U.S. began a serious space program I have been listening to their doings on the radio or on TV. Over all these years I have learned a lot of the language, the lingo, the shorthand terms, so that I now understand a lot of what is said and not said about what is going on. Dextre, the SPDM, is the newest permanent crew member aboard the ISS. "CanadaArm," where Dextre will hang out, is pronounced "canadarm."

Trusting the systems but verifying -- There are reasons why there is so much attention to detail and documentation at all space programs around the world. Success depends on well-designed systems of all kinds, along with constant performance monitoring of these systems. People must learn to trust that instruments are not faulty, that they understand garbled instructions, and that they have been told the truth, no matter what. For example, I learned to sit on myself a bit this morning as the "CapCom" told ISS Commander Peggy Whitson that the carbon dioxide remover had "failed." A few minutes later it was back on line. It had happened before, they recognized the tell-tale telemetry signature and fixed the problem. Whitson seemed cool as a cucumber throughout the episode. She had to leave this one to the ground.

Knowing when to pull back, start over or press ahead -- After the Columbia crew was lost in 2003 the shuttle program grounded itself for some period of time to figure out what happened. Significant safety engineering changes to equipment and procedures were made that rely on new kinds of image verification that the shuttle's thermal protection system can withstand the trip back to earth. It was shocking to many of us that it became necessary to bring in a new administrator after the Columbia disaster. His management methods now make sure that the safety opinions of regular people in the agency have appropriate standing in the go or no-go decisions of space flight.

Thinking and feeling larger earth questions -- Space exploration is primarily about people. It is people who want to venture out and explore, but they cannot do it without their fantastic machines in space. It is the rookie astronaut, outside the ISS in his or her space suit for the first, who says "wow" and becomes speechless. It is the Apollo astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, a man of strong faith who became famous and even controversial after his retirement. It is the NASA scientist who has had to fight to tell the truth about what they know about global warming. It is for me, going some years ago to our local Childrens' Museum to marvel over the traveling Russian Space exhibit , or taking our young kids to see the Johnson Space Center in Houston. And it is Commander Whitson, watching after the space walkers as if they were her own, as she helps them prepare to go outside the airlock. And most profound, it is Commander Peggy Whitson and Mission Specialist Dan Tani doing a space walk outside the station to fix something, while the Russian crew member stayed inside to watch carefully after them. Subsequently Dan Tani lost his mother in a car accident after he had been in orbit for some time. His first formal mourning ceremony took place as he floated in a station"room" near a window looking at the earth below moving past at 17,000 per hour. He then listened to an audio recording of his mom's funeral service. And Peggy and Yuri probably provided much welcome support to this earnest and fine young man who wants to be the best there is, and who couldn't attend his mom's funeral.

Applications for the next astronaut class are due in to NASA by July 1, 2008.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Europe to deploy into space

By Carol Gee

Columbus to fly and EU to deploy satellite network

Expedition 16 crew at the International Space Station, "Columbus" will soon become its newest part, via NASA's STS-122 mission. To quote NASA:

The real event is targeted for Dec. 6 on a flight to the International Space Station, but astronauts and flight managers and contractors routinely run through a complete practice to get ready for a liftoff.

. . . The Columbus laboratory the crew will ferry to and install on the International Space Station is already bolted into the shuttle's cargo bay. Columbus is ESA's primary contribution to the space station. It will be part of a dedicated suite of science modules at the heart of the station.

That will be the actual beginning of another big dream for ESA, the European Space Agency. ESA astronauts, Hans Schlegel and Leopold Eyharts will be part of the STS-122 crew. Schlegel has not been in space since 1993. To quote from his bio:

Schlegel --

NASA SPACE FLIGHT EXPERIENCE:

04/26/93 -05/06/93 -- Served as payload specialist on STS-55 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. Nearly 90 experiments were conducted during the German-sponsored Spacelab D-2 mission to investigate life sciences, material sciences, physics, robotics, astronomy, and the Earth and its atmosphere.

LÉOPOLD EYHARTS (General, French Air Force)
ESA Astronaut (Mission Specialist) .

To quote from his bio:

NASA EXPERIENCE:

In August 1998, Léopold Eyharts was assigned by the European Space Agency to train at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. As part of the international astronauts of the 1998 class, he attended Astronaut Candidate Training which included orientation briefings and tours, numerous scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station systems, physiological training and ground school to prepare for T-38 flight training, as well as learning water and wilderness survival techniques. Initially assigned to the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch. Léopold Eyharts' assignments include serving as a flight engineer to the Expedition-12 and Expedition-13 back-up crews.

According to ESA, Columbus will:

Undertake a European experiment programme

Léopold Eyharts and Hans Schlegel will undertake a number of experiments for the European scientific community, including runs of the first experiments to be carried out in the experiment facilities in Columbus. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko will carry out additional European experiments. Eyharts will also carry out a number of educational activities.

The first experiments to be conducted using the experiment facilities inside Columbus
The experiments requiring the weightless environment inside the ISS are in the areas of human physiology and biology, fluid science and radiation dosimetry. The experiments that need exposure to the open space environment outside the ISS cover a number of scientific areas including exobiology, solar science and material science, in addition to various monitoring and sensor technologies.

(Photo from GPS Daily.)

Space satellite communication

The other big space news from Europe happened just last week. Officials have decided to use unspent public funds to help deploy Eaurope's own "GPS" network. To quote from the story:

"EU agrees public funding for satellite project" By Paul Taylor and Jeff Mason. Fri Nov 23, 5:31 PM ET Yahoo! News (Reuters) -

European Union nations clinched a deal late on Friday to fund an ambitious satellite navigation project to rival the U.S. Global Positioning System using unspent cash from the EU budget, a presidency spokesman said.

The Portuguese spokesman said budget ministers agreed to finance a 2.4 billion euro ($3.55 billion) shortfall in start-up costs of the Galileo system by redeploying unspent money for farm subsidies and competitiveness projects.

The world's continued peaceful use of space is something to give us all comfort and hope in times that are marred by conflict and killing. It is with pleasure that we can take this space news from Europe. To them we can say, "Congratulations!" on many jobs well done.

European Space Agency links of interest:

1. Columbus Mission
2. Arctic ice animation
3. Earth's true colours

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

The bridge so far

By Carol Gee

NASA's space shuttle "Discovery" (Mission STS-120) has backed away from the International Space Station (ISS). It will be back home to earth on Wednesday. Crew members' said their emotional good-byes to each other yesterday, men and women alike expressing great respect and admiration for each other's capacities and dedication to hard work. To quote from MSNBC,

Tearful farewells
The 10 astronauts aboard the station and shuttle bid each other tearful farewells Sunday before closing the hatches to prepare for Discovery’s departure.

It was an especially poignant goodbye for astronaut Clayton Anderson, who is headed home after five months in orbit. He was replaced on the station by Daniel Tani, who is starting a two-month mission.

The two commanders, Whitson and the shuttle’s Pamela Melroy, also were teary-eyed as they hugged one another. They are the first women to simultaneously manage two spacecraft in the 50-year history of spaceflight.

To do the very dangerous and intensely challenging work of space flight takes the best they have to offer, but they have not had long to savor success. Today is Monday and back to work for everybody up there and down here. Incidentally, I totally realize my job as a blogger is child's play compared to those admirable astronauts'.

"Cooperation and teamwork bring success to NASA" was the title of yesterday's post. Today's post will bridge from the enthralling (for me, at least) world some 200+ miles up to the earth-bound tangle of current events. One of my regular blog friends gave me a wonderful opportunity to write it because of his comment. To quote The Future Was Yesterday, who said:

As I've said here before, that program leaves me in awe. But it also leaves me depressed at times. We can do that, in conjunction with so many other countries, and do it so well, but we can't figure out a way out of a meaningless desert war that is sucking our very life blood out of our national body?

"Future's" rhetorical question was thought provoking and very pertinent. Here is part of what I replied:

Future, I have often had that same sadness. You put your finger on it perfectly. . . It is a valid point that I want to explore more at length. Thanks for this opportunity to make a "bridge."

To continue -- think about what the current administration's incredibly inept policies have left behind all over the Middle East and elsewhere in this tiny world of ours. Compare it to the performance of the world's space programs.

• NASA astronauts were chosen from many among competitors. They get the best. George W. Bush emerged from a very competitive election because of arbitrary decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court. Untrained for the job, his poor performance as Texas governor was not widely enough known for the election to be decisive. We did not get the best for the job.
  


• After becoming astronauts, these men and women prepared and trained to do the well-planned tasks of their mission. Then multiple unexpected crises appeared, which they handled by fact-finding and then changing course with a new plan. Training and massively cooperative teamwork around the world on the ground made the success possible. On the other hand, after becoming our current president (OCP), Mr. Bush had no clue, no plan. However, he had an overly active Vice-President who had a plan, always a secret from the rest of us. The administration's responses to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 involved going it alone, though the world was ready to cooperate and help. We are still going it alone and making it up despite the facts.


• NASA's method of operation has been relatively transparent, within a budget and generally accountable. Misbehaving astronauts are let go. The agency has had to make do with what it has in a starved budget. The administrator has to go before an angry Congressional committee to explain a botched airline safety report. Mission program managers are questioned daily (live) by members of the Press. Astronauts are questioned as they orbit, by the press and sometimes by their very tactful and supportive managers. They know how to take direction in public. OCP and the Veep operate behind closed doors, without regard for the budget process or deficits, and few in his administration have been held accountable. Rarely forthcoming before Congress or the Press, this administration uses obfuscation, deception, testimonial filibustering and selective press leaks to communicate with those outside the White House. Their methods do not signify that grown-ups are in charge here.


• The world seems generally committed to the cooperative peaceful occupation of Space. Russia and the U.S. had to admit to each other that they could not get along without each other in pulling off these dicey and dangerous missions. Not only that, but all the cooperating space partners have to put an enormous amount of trust in their foreign partners. They trust their lives to each other as people. They are forced to trust the performance of another's plans, technology and equipment. And they all pitch in together when things go awry. The only reason doors are locked is to keep out the vacuum of space. Translators help with language mix-ups. Items are bartered between national budgets. People are stationed in foreign lands for years at a time, but as workers not occupiers. In stark contrast, however, OCP and the current administration seem generally committed to the perpetual occupation of the Middle East. Iraq and the U.S. cannot admit that things are not working out well between us in a dicey and dangerous war. Mistrust across and within borders is absolutely rife. The U.S. trusts and does not verify in countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Israel. The U.S. mistrusts the internal dynamics in Iran and Palestine when the opposite would do better. And we have never but enough attention to engaging Iraq's neighbors as part of the solution, rather that becoming permanent armed occupiers of Iraq and Afghanistan. One would think that we wanted to be more successful with war than with diplomacy.
  

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Cooperation and teamwork bring success to NASA

By Carol Gee

NASA Makes Space Station Repairs

In A Dangerous Emergency Mission Astronaut Fixes Ripped Solar Panel. NASA Makes Space Station Repairs. From CBS/AP:

Astronauts successfully unfurled a torn solar power wing at the international space station on Saturday after space walker Scott Parazynski cut loose a tangled clump of wires and patched everything up. His emergency surgery saved the solar energy panel — and the space station. In the tense buildup to the spacewalk — one of the most difficult and dangerous ever attempted — NASA repeatedly warned that station construction would have to be halted if the wing could not be fixed.

The prospect was so grave that NASA felt it had no choice but to put Parazynski practically right up against the swaying power grid, which was coursing with more than 100 volts of electricity. No other astronaut had ever been so far away from the safe confines of the cabin.

Even before Parazynski made his way back inside, the radio traffic was full of cheers and congratulations. Shouts of "Yay! All right! Beautiful! Great news!" streamed from the linked shuttle-station complex once the wing was unfurled to its full 115-foot length. Mission Control promptly relayed thanks from NASA's top brass.

Harmony -- Other countries contribute a great deal to the U.S. space programs at NASA. Scott Parazynski rode to the farthest reaches possible to make the repair on a jury-rigged combination of robotic and sensor arms. First developed by the Canadian Space Agency in 1981, this work horse has undergone modification and improvement all along the way and is still the star of orbital space whether outside the shuttle or on the ISS. Canadian astronaut Dave Williams flew recently on STS-118. Sarmad Aziz, loaned from CSA, serves as the lead in the robotics control center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The International Space Station is a truly international enterprise. Russia and Italy are currently the "accented" voices we hear from the International Space Station in earth orbit. Japan will come on board next year. Yuri Malenchenko is the Russian crew member currently aboard the ISS. He has been an important and integral part of ISS Commander Peggy Whitson's support for the current Shuttle Mission 120, helping to handle space walkers as they went outside and returned inside yesterday. (See S/SW link to biographies of the STS- 120 crew).

Nations around the earth cooperate in a number of ways in space. The European Space Agency, for example, provided ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli and the Node 2 module (named "Harmony," the first European-built module to be permanently attached to the Station) that headed for the International Space Station on 23 October 2007. Nespoli has served during the entire mission as the Inter vehicular Astronaut handling the choreography of the several Mission-120 space walks, as well as major support for egress and ingress to the ISS.

The next module to be joined to the ISS will be the Japanese Space Agency's inside/outside module called KIBO set for the spring of 2008, complete with a crew member, Takao Doi, to go along.

The European Space Agency -- ESA also provided tracking for the new Chinese moon orbiter satellite. Thirty six countries are involved in some form of space exploration. "Space Exploration 3.0 is about to begin," according to Nicolas Peter, a research fellow at the European Space Policy Institute. To quote:

Peter said there had been two phases of space exploration since the first Sputnik satellite was launched 50 years ago. The first phase, up to the early 1990s, was driven by Cold War rivalry between the US and the former USSR with cooperation extended to political allies of the two principal space powers. The second phase, up to the present, has seen the emphasis shift to scientific and practical applications of space with many new countries developing space programmes.

The number of space agencies in the world has been steadily rising since the 1990s and reached 36 in 2005. Bilateral and multilateral agreements between agencies are also growing. The advent of the International Space Station has it made it possible for many countries to take part in long-term, structured programmes of space research.

What Peter described as �Space Exploration 3.0� is about to begin.

He said that while humans will play a major role in space in future it would no longer be in the context of competing states but in cooperation between many parties. �It will involve industry, universities and other non-governmental organisations. This adventure will be driven primarily by a quest for knowledge, involving not only the hard sciences but arts and humanities as well.

Cooperating nationally as well as internationally, NASA consists of ten different centers across the nation, along with several other special facilities, such as the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Nor could NASA be successful were it not for a broad range of cooperative efforts within the U.S., collaborating with business and education interests in dozens of locations.

Great links for "space junkies":

• MSNBC -- "Human Space Flight News"
• Space.com -- page with link to NASA TV via computer, if you do not have satellite or cable
• NASA -- RSS feed page for breaking news
• CSA -- Canada Space Agency
• Russia's Federal Space Agency - English and Russian language
• EurekAlert -- Space -- international space news
• Xinhua Chang's Project -- China's space exploration
• "Space and Astronomy" at Zyra.org site -- a gazillion links to everything spacey (terrific)
  

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)