A Mars Odyssey

September 5, 2008, will be ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft’s big day—meeting the asteroid 2687 Steins, with the doors open to all media by the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, in order for the public to be able to participate in the first images and results on Saturday, September 6 at 12:00 CEST (Central European Summer Time).

With the asteroid being Rosetta’s “first” nominal scientific target, it will rendezvous in the first incursion course in the asteroid belt—located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter—on its way to the comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This study is considered highly important as it represents a “sample of Solar System material” at the different stages of evolution, which is considered a key to understanding the origin of Earth and the universe, with Stein possibly being an “evolving asteroid” which means it may be part of another planet body.

The closest location that Rosetta will have to the asteroid is from a distance of 800 km at 20:58 CEST, during which there will be no communication between the Rosetta and Earth until 22:23 CEST. But with the Rosetta being the first step toward the European venture into studies of asteroids and comets, the images coming down on Saturday and Sunday will be considered their new frontier. The reason is because asteroid Steins is a rareee E-type asteroid, with many clues about planetary formations. Steins is composed of mainly silicates and basalts, with unknown properties, which is why it was one of two asteroids chosen by ESA to be studied.

ROSETTA Agenda by ESA:

Rosetta Steins Fly-By
Doors open to the media
5 September 2008, 18:00, Building K
ESA-ESOC
Robert-Bosch Strasse 5, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany

18:00 - Doors open
18:00 – 19:00 Interview opportunities
19:00 – 20:15 Buffet dinner
20:15 – 20:30 The Steins Fly-By, Introduction by Paolo Ferri, Head of Solar and Planetary Missions Division (Mission Operations Dept.), ESA
The crucial role of Flight Dynamics, by Trevor Morley, Rosetta Flight Dynamics Team, ESA
20:30 – 21:00 Live from Rosetta’s control room (loss of telemetry signal at 20:47)
22:23 - First telemetry on ground: signal of successful fly-by
23:00 - End of event

Rosetta Steins Fly-By Press Conference
6 September 2008, 12:00, Building D
ESA-ESOC
Robert-Bosch Strasse 5, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany

11:00 - Doors open
12:00 - Welcome and introduction, by David Southwood, Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, ESA
12:10 - Rosetta: the status of the mission, by Gerhard Schwehm, Rosetta Mission Manager & Head of Solar System Science Operations Division, ESA
12:20 - Rosetta and the study of asteroids, by Rita Schulz, Rosetta Project Scientist, ESA
12:30 - The fly-by of Steins – stretching Rosetta’s limits, by Andrea Accomazzo, Rosetta Spacecraft Operations Manager, ESA
12:40 - Steins: first images and results, by Uwe Keller, OSIRIS camera Principal Investigator, Max Planck Institut für Sonnensystemforschung
12:50 - ESA’s plans for asteroid and space debris monitoring, by Gaele Winters, Director of Operations and Infrastructure, ESA
13:00 - Questions & Answers session
13:20 - Interview opportunities
15:00 - End of event

UNIQUE NEWS:

PARIS - French scientists have devised a way of using particle accelerators to authenticate vintage wines, one of France’s top research bodies said this week.

A particle accelerator’s ion beams are focused on a wine bottle to determine the age of the bottle’s glass, which provides a date for the vintage of the wine inside. Particle accelerators take a particle, such as an electron, speed it up to near the speed of light and smash it into an atom to discover its internal workings.

The new test extends existing radioactivity tests on the actual wine itself, which are currently incapable of identifying vintages prior to 1950.

At this present time, our government has been completely unable to move on a legislative that would allow NASA to purchase seats for their astronauts on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft past the year 2011. Why, I do not know unless it is because our presence on the International Space Station is not of importance to our legislature–being at a “virtual standstill” means we will NOT be a presence, regardless of how important it is. I’ve been taught as a young child to question what seems to be the obvious, and only a few will accept anything or anyone at face value.

The blame game by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is Russia’s invasion of Georgia, combined with the inability of our government to put into place the needed contract, which will leave the United States segment of the U.S.S. to be unmanned for some part of 2012. Griffin said the problem is “very serious. We have been literally working this issue all year long. I need a contract vehicle in place by early ‘09 if we are to fly American and international partners on Soyuz in early ‘12.”

Currently, NASA is totally dependent on Russia to use Soyuz seats to bridge the five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the beginning of the 2014/2015 Orion-Ares vehicle. The end year 2011 is the end of the current exemption to the “Iran-North Korea-Syria Non-Proliferation Act”, forbidding United States purchase of high technology goods from Russia, with new legislation needed for approval within a very short time, and needed contracts by early of next years. Otherwise, there will be no NASA presence on-board the ISS.

As of now, two alternatives are available—no presence after December 31, 2011 or we will continue flying with the shuttles, receiving enough money to continue with no dependence on Russia. According to Mike Griffin, “A third possibility is we could be told to keep flying shuttle, not be given any extra money, in which case we don’t get Ares and Orion anytime soon and we still have a gap, it’s just further out in time. All right? And all of these things ignore the fact that flying shuttle does not ameliorate in truth our dependence upon the Russians because we still need them for crew rescue. So if we continue to fly shuttle, either we’re flying without crew rescue capability, in other words putting crew on station and then leaving them there without a way to get home in an emergency, which we have never done, or our tenure on station is only during the two weeks you get when the shuttle visits a couple of times a year.’

“My own guess is at this point we’re going to have some period in 2012 where there’s no American or international partner crew on station, that there’s only the Russians there,” he said. “That period always ends three years from when we have a contract with the Russians. So if we can get through all this by June of next year and have a contract with the Russians, then in the latter part of 2012 we can fly a Soyuz flight and restore things to normal.”

One of the most famous quotes of Albert Einstein was, ” Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” Looking at CERN’s LHC experiment and mankind brings this to my mind because the infinite universe will no longer be as we know it—with “infinite” taking on a whole new meaning. So who is going to take the front seat on stupidity?

Many feel the front seat presently is being occupied by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory — CERN1–who on next Wednesday, September 10, 2008, will perform their first attempt to circulate the LHC beam–a quiet little statement that is almost mouse-like, but full of so much power. The dreaded fear mongers and Devil’s advocates are excitedly spreading their woeful words of doomsday happenings while technical experts gleefully herald the upcoming “ever-so-hopeful but not quite sure” scientific developments which may or may not inform us of who we are and how we got here.

God is not involved and God has never been involved–as God is not part of science. He cannot be seen, smelled, heard or seen, yet a small fortune has just been spent by a global field of scientists on such a non-existent entity for the past fifteen years—in order for us to find a fifth dimension that we “think” may be there but we are not sure. A search, I may say, which may or may not bring the Earth and its universe to her knees.

But even if (alas) “nothing” happens next week in CERN’s controversial tunnel located 300-feet underground near the French-Swiss border, the grid developed from this £4.4billion project will bring holographic video conferencing and an Internet 10,000 times faster than broadband for telecom providers, all levels of governmental agencies, research institutions, and businesses that specialize in large amounts of data. The only way nobody will win is if the Earth is destroyed, and whether it is or is not is not up to the average citizens of the world. I know for sure, if that much money and time has been spent on a “questionable” theory, we are not being told the whole story. Somebody knows something, and they are not talking—at least the entire truth.

As of August 8^th, CERN ended the cooling down phase of the LHC—and not an easy task, believe me–with next Wednesday’s process actually beginning with the properly cooled-down of each of the eight engine sectors. Once this is done, electrical testing of the 1600 superconducting magnets will begin with each powering to nominal operating currents. The joint powering-up of each of the eight sector’s circuits will then began, with all of them operating as one single machine in unison. The goal of next week’s experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is to take a serious look at the actual nature of mass and the possibility of extra dimensions, while resolving some long-asked fundamental physic questions.

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A mock-up of the Orion space capsule heads to its temporary home in a hangar at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

In late 2008, the full-size structural model will be jettisoned off a simulated launch pad at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to test the spacecraft’s astronaut escape system, which will ensure a safe, reliable method of escape for astronauts in case of an emergency.

NASA’s Constellation program is building the Orion crew vehicle to carry humans to the International Space Station by 2015 and to the moon beginning in 2020.

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Scale models of the Orion crew exploration vehicle recently were tested at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, or NBL, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and at a wave tank at Texas A&M University in College Station.

NASA conducted a series of buoyancy and flotation characteristics tests using the NBL and a 1/4-scale model of the Orion crew capsule. The model was lowered into the NBL’s 6.2-million-gallon pool and was floated in a series of positions. This testing will allow the engineers and the NBL team to develop their full-scale crew training mock-up that will be used for mission training and for creating the crew safety procedures for water-based landings of the Orion crew capsule. (Courtesy of NASA)

a

Ares I is the essential core of a safe, reliable, cost-effective space transportation system — one that will carry crewed missions back to the moon, on to Mars and out into the solar system.

A backup transportation plan to the International Space Station once the shuttles are taken out of commission is being sought by three U.S. Senators before the Orion program takes effect in 2015. The new Constellation program is off to a slightly rocky start as its July 24^th Ares I drogue parachute test was perfect, yet its July 31^st test failed after not inflating, which caused it to develop parachute failure—forcing it to crash into the Arizona desert. With the upcoming NASA budget rather shaky, none of this adds up to good news.

Three U.S. Senators have sent off a joint letter to President Bush, regarding the status of NASA’s new budget in relation to the time constraint for any NASA measure to be enacted. Senators John McCain, Kay Baily Hutchison, and David Vitter are requesting that NASA hold onto its present space shuttle program—hardware, systems, and services—after the program is scheduled to end in 2010, regarding the present situation with Russia’s conflict with Georgia.

The concern of the senators is that, ” Our concern is that we do not have a guarantee that such cooperative and mutually beneficial activity will continue to be available, and the successful utilization of the ISS may be jeopardized,” their letter to President Bush states. The three senators believe that the Russian partnership is still the best plan for the alternative space program replacement, but feel under the present situation another form of transportation should be considered.

Their letter to President Bush also requested that the means for flight hardware, engineering and support services “not be completely and irretrievably lost through destruction or deterioration, at least until a clear path to alternative launch capabilities is in hand. At a minimum, we ask that you direct NASA to take no action for at least one year from now that would preclude the extended use of the space shuttle beyond 2010.”

Newly released new internal timelines for the shuttle’s replacement, the Constellation program, has been given out but they depend on the space agency’s budget reauthorization for 2009. The three senators had nothing in play for the program if the new budget does not pass, but they did say that there was strong support in the Senate and House if the reauthorization bill did not pass, that would allow preservation of the United State’s ability to travel to the International Space Station.

Born on September 5, 1908, soon to be one-hundred years ago, one of the fathers of Italian physics and a pioneer in nuclear research, Professor Edoardo Amaldi, died on December 6, 1989 at the age of 81 years of age. Studying under Enrico Fermi, recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1938 for his research on nuclear fission, Amaldi was also a physics professor for 41 years at the University of Rome. The reason this is so important is because he played a key role in CERN’s development and also that of the European Space Agency.

In Italy, Amaldi led the development of gravitational wave research which led to the development of the long-term hosting of the “Explorer gravitational wave detector” at CERN. Recognized for forging the first links between the “gravitational wave community-and-high energy physics community, his links traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to develop detectors at Stanford, Louisiana, and Rome” (IOP Electronic Journals). Later on, they went to the Niobe detector at Perthe. The international research links and collaborations of which he supported have now extended over the years to the GWIC, the Gravitational Wave International Committee—presently the official sponsor of the Amaldi Conferences.

The son of Edoardo Amaldi–Ugo Amaldi –is a particle physicist at CERN who works on developing hadron-therapy techniques with the TERA Foundation, and writes a wonderful article in Physics World about his father. Useful and economically valuable technologies that have arisen directly or indirectly from gravitational wave research are :

• Improved SQUID magnetometers: brain scanning and many other applications
• Low noise microwave oscillators: improved radars
• Sapphire clocks: flywheel oscillators for atomic clocks
• Low outgassing vacuum materials: high performance vacuum systems
• Ultra-precision mirrors and coatings: improved optical systems
• High efficiency lasers: numerous present and future applications from materials cutting to medicine and metrology
• Improved vibration isolation: electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and semiconductor manufacture etc
• Low acoustic loss materials: metrology systems
• Gravity gradiometers: mineral exploration
• High performance position sensors: accelerometers, tilt sensors, seismometers
• Laser stabilization: metrology systems, time standards
• Data analysis: weak signal detection
• Very low optical absorption materials: high laser power applications

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This cartoon is from FoxTrot.com –go on over and see some of the latest cartoons!!

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~ Results of damage testing ~

It seems the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane’s windshield at approximately the speed the plane flies.

The theory is that if the windshield doesn’t crack from the carcass impact, it’ll survive a real collision with a bird during flight. It seems the British were very interested in this and wanted to test a windshield on a brand new, speedy locomotive they’re developing.

They borrowed the FAA’s chicken launcher, loaded the chicken and fired. The ballistic chicken shattered the windshield, went through the engineer’s chair, broke an instrument panel and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine cab. The British were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything was done correctly.

The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation: “Use a thawed chicken.”

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~ Trouble with plane engines ~

While cruising at 36,000 feet, the airplane shuddered, and a passenger looked out the window.

“Oh no!” he screamed, “One of the engines just blew up!”

Other passengers left their seats and came running over; suddenly the aircraft was rocked by a second blast as yet another engine exploded on the other side.

The passengers were in a panic now, and even the stewardesses couldn’t maintain order. Just then, standing tall and smiling confidently, the pilot strode from the cockpit and assured everyone that there was nothing to worry about. His words and his demeanor seemed made most of the passengers feel better, and they sat down as the pilot calmly walked to the door of the aircraft. There, he grabbed several packages from under the seats and began handing them to the flight attendants.

Each crew member attached the package to their backs.

“Say,” spoke up an alert passenger, “Aren’t those parachutes?”

The pilot confirmed that they were.

The passenger went on, “But I thought you said there was nothing to worry about?”

“There isn’t,” replied the pilot as a third engine exploded. “We’re going to get help.”

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~ There are lawyers on the flight ~

An airliner was having engine trouble, and the pilot instructed the cabin crew to have the passengers take their seats and get prepared for an emergency landing.

A few minutes later, the pilot asked the flight attendants if everyone was buckled in and ready.

“All set back here, Captain,” came the reply, “except the lawyers are still going around passing out business cards.”

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Ten Things to do in your spare time in the ISS

The Top 10 Things To Do While Confined In A Space Station

Guest writer, Julie-Ann Amos’s article can be found in its entirety at “Space Tourism and the World of Robert Bigelow.”

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“Two of the many large giants in the space industry, Bigelow Aerospace and Lockheed Martin, have entered into a joint deal to move towards using Atlas V for private manned space flight–which would include space tourists and other paying passengers. The highly-established non-private firm Lockheed Martin is considered typically a big developer of NASA space technology, with this move by Lockheed seen that they may be moving where the money is—the space tourism market. An open area, the only big player until now has been Russia’s Soyuz, with Bigelow feeling after more than a decade since the Apollo 11 Moon landing made space travel history, it was time to advance forth into space with something besides memories. Presently there is a huge potential in orbital tourism marketing for big money to enter, as it has pretty much been the domain of small “New Space” business companies.

Considered a beginning phase of technical and business model studies, a future study was developed to look at Atlas V’s ability to be used in space tourism, which would include deciding whether or not 16 annual launchings was even possible. This move was seen as a major step to transform the traditional launching marketplace and the idea of what “New Space” was all about. By the end of January of the following year, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) was studying and promoting the use of Atlas V for the transportation of commercial passengers. This study includes transportation and space tourism to the site of Robert Bigelow’s Aerospace orbital station and transportation-part of the original deal with Lockheed Martin.”

Guest speaker, Julie-ann Amos has written an excellent article on “Space Tourism & Space Travel - How Far Off Are We?”

************************************************************************************************************ “There was very little known about space tourism until the late 1900s with a major impact on the media developing about five years ago. Space shuttle launches have always caued a media frenzy, however, and more and more commercial space enterprises have recently developed, largely in part due to the excess prize amounts given by the Ansari X Prize to stimulate private sectors.

But it is nothing new to mankind, who have had a long-time love affair with outer space exploration - going to the Moon and Mars. Space travel for the public sector is the hot thing in the world for those who can and cannot afford it. The Ansari X Prize was a $10 million dollar plus award in which the X PRIZE Foundation sought the first NGO (non-government organization) able to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space.

The goal had to achieved not once, but twice within a two week timeframe. This mimicked the 1919 contest of the $25,000 Orteig Prize, originated by another hotel man, Raymond Orteig, to a pilot who could fly “non-stop” from New York to Paris. As we all know, Charles Lindbergh won it in 1927. The prize was actually won on October 4, 2004, (which was a signifcant date because it was also coincidentally the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch), by the Tier One project designed by Burt Rutan and financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, using the experimental spaceplane SpaceShipOne. $10 million was awarded to the winner, but more than $100 million was invested in new technologies in pursuit of the prize. Another such prize going on at the present time is the Google Lunar X PRIZE, listed by Google as “a $30 million competition for the 1st privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth.

The prize requires that each team is 90% privately funded with a deadline of December 31, 2010 to register for the competition.” Considered a class in itself, the Ansari X Prize has the ability of “framing a challenge” and then providing some sort of stimulus for the solution. Google’s stimulus will award the first team to land on the moon and complete its objectives $20 million dollars, available until December 31, 2012. From that moment on, the prize amount will drop–first prize will be $15 million, the second team which can accomplish this will receive $5 million with another $5 million in bonus prizes. The absolute final deadline for the competition is December 31, 2014. (For more on Space Tourism & Space Travel - How Far Off Are We?)

“We want to focus on helping bridge the gap of US vehicles traveling to the ISS (International Space Station) as efficiently as possible,” wrote John Coggeshall, manager of manifest and schedules at Johnson Space Center in Houston, in the e-mail sent Wednesday.
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Last March, NASA’s Mike Griffin told the Senate that a four to six month delay would occur for the Orion crew spacecraft and the Ares launch vehicle—pushing them into the year 2015. The reasons given were the 2007 budget which denied NASA half of more than the needed $900 million increase they needed for their exploration program. “The reduction does not halt any planned work we were going to do on [Orion and Ares] but it does stretch it out,” Griffin told the Senate Commerce space and aeronautics subcommittee.

What “was involved” was the planned April 2009 test flight of the Ares I-1 rocket to the actual first operational flight, targeted no later than 2014. Capable of launching astronauts crews to not only the International Space Station but also to the moon, the spacecraft of NASA’s Orion was to replace the aging three shuttles of the space agency. Lockheed Martin was the contractor to build the Orion, which is to launch on-top of the originally planned Ares I rocket. The Ares V is a larger booster, used for hardware launches and unmanned cargo.

Meanwhile, NASA has also delayed the launching of an unmanned spacecraft until February 27, 2009, when the next launch window opens. This delay will cost NASA about $7,000 a month but for nobody to worry, as the money was built into the program’s reserves.