Remembrance: They Were Flying for Me

Twenty-eight years. Seems like so long ago, and yet so vividly close as to still seize my heart. Although the anniversary was a couple of days ago, the moment did not pass by me unnoticed - rather, I just chose not to comment until today. I thought about letting it pass, but a stray reference brought my attention to a song that commemorates the day and the people whose pioneer spirit still lifts some of us today.

The pursuit of the heavens through human space flight is at its lowest ebb in two generations, at least sometimes it seems that way. Perhaps it is just changing. But I am glad that for some, that dream remains alive, if not vibrant as yet to recapture the imagination of the people.

I somehow had never heard this song before. But it captures so much:


I have to be reminded from time to time that the pursuit of dreams, while not always fulfilled, nevertheless enriches us in the pursuit itself. Yet the pursuit must have a prize, an aim, lest the energy for the pursuit be lost. And so we must reawaken and nurture those dreams, whatever they may be, whosever they may be. May we never stop reaching for the stars, literally and figuratively.

Far Out!

Voyager 1 has left the building.

Or rather, the heliosphere surrounding our solar system.

I first wrote about Voyager 1's travels this time last year, when NASA scientists speculated that the venerable old spacecraft was on the verge of passing beyond the heliosphere. Today comes the official news that yes, indeed, Voyager is going where no man has gone before:

The debate is over. The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered the uncharted territory of interstellar space.

A team led by Don Gurnett, a space physicist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, reports compelling evidence that Voyager has exited the heliosphere, the Solar System’s protective bubble of charged particles. The findings, published online today in Science1, settle an argument that has raged among members of the Voyager team for more than a year.

“This is a milestone,” says Ed Stone, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who has been the project scientist for the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft since 1972, five years before their launch. Voyager 1’s entry into interstellar space “ranks with circumnavigating the globe and the first steps on the Moon,” says Stone, who was not involved in the latest study.

Forgive me, but I simply cannot help but to find this, fascinating.

GALEX Greatest Hits

It has been a while since I've had a post on a space topic, but the news this week that NASA has decommissioned the Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft (GALEX) after a decade of operation affords me such an opportunity. Once again, a program designed around a 29-month mission far exceeded its original scope, operating a full ten years first under NASA, and then under Caltech in Pasadena.

GALEX indeed contributed significantly to our knowledge of astronomical phenomena:

Some of the mission's highlights include helping astronomers identify the largest known spiral galaxy in the universe, a behemoth called NGC 6872; catching a black hole in the act of gobbling up a star; and discovering a missing link in galaxy evolution, a sort of "teenage stage" between young and old.

GALEX observations also independently confirmed the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force thought to be causing the accelerating expansion of the universe, NASA officials said.

During its year in Caltech's hands, GALEX searched the sky for feeding black holes and the shock waves from long-ago star explosions, or supernovae. Among other tasks, the ultraviolet telescope also monitored how the bright, active centers of galaxies change over time.

Some of GALEX's greatest hits can be found on nasa.gov. They can also be found here. Below are some of my favorites (click to enlarge). Wonderful.

M31 - The Milky Way's Largest Galactic Neighbor (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Cygnus Loop Nebula (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

CW Leo - The Runaway Star (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

I love this stuff.

Awesome Image of Coronal Activity

I came across the image below following a link to dallasnews.com. At first, it looked a little too fantastical, and I was sure it was simply the fine work of a graphic artist.

Au contraire. I poked around on NASA's website and found the posted image. The image was indeed captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. While the image has been "enhanced" to make additional wavelengths visible, it is altogether real.

And very awesome.

This image provided by NASA shows an image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory of a blast of plasma streaming from the sun in August 2012. (NASA)

A Title Goes Here

Sorry, folks. I've been absolutely buried by a corporate relocation, a flurry of decision making on the house, and a final review on a proposal. As a result, I now have the mental acuity of a bowl of oatmeal. No room to process sequestration, North Korea nukes, or an asteroid fly-by.

So here's a pretty picture instead. TTFN.

Relive the Moon Landing

Here is a neat little diversion. Well, it's neat if you're up to a little Apollo 11 geek-out. It is a website that allows you to relive the Apollo 11 moon landing from a unique, interactive perspective:

This project is an online interactive featuring the Eagle lunar landing. The presentation includes original Apollo 11 spaceflight video footage, communication audio, mission control room conversations, text transcripts, and telemetry data, all synchronized into an integrated audio-visual experience.

...

Visitors begin the experience by hearing the words of Buzz Aldrin while simultaneously viewing the moon through the lunar module window. Moments later, the audience hears capsule communicator Charlie Duke inform flight director Gene Kranz that the astronauts are on schedule to start the descent engine. Throughout the presentation, visitors are able to customize their experience by jumping to key moments in the timeline. The timeline guides visitors to the crucial moments in the mission, including: program alarms (computer alerts), famous Go No-Go polls in the control room, low level fuel milestones, and landing.

Total play time is around 20 minutes or so. Neat stuff!

SpaceX Dragon Capsule Splashes Down

During my lunchtime browsing, I saw this report on the splashdown of the SpaceX Dragon capsule (emphasis mine):

HAWTHORNE, California -- SpaceX's Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean in full view of waiting cameras Sunday afternoon to end a successful supply mission to the International Space Station. Spashdown was at 2:22 p.m. CDT about 250 miles off the coast of Baja California, Mexico.

The plan was for SpaceX to offload frozen science samples in Los Angeles, then ship the Dragon to the company's test facility in McGregor, Texas for processing. The rest of the capsule's cargo will be offloaded in Texas.

The Dragon's flight marked the first scheduled resupply of the station by a commercial contractor. The mission went off without any hitches from NASA's perspective, although one engine on the Falcon 9 booster rocket was shut down during launch. That led to a lower-than-planned deployment of a commercial satellite. SpaceX is still analyzing the engine issue.

As I have stated before, I think there is much to be said for allowing America's space flight program to be a venture based on strategic collaboration between private enterprise and NASA. Small steps forward are still good steps in the right direction. Here's hoping anyway.

One neat aside about this particular mission is that - albeit from a great distance - we got to see the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket that put Dragon into orbit. On October 7, the night of the launch, my family and I were sitting at the Rose & Crown Pub in Epcot at Walt Disney World having dinner and waiting for the fireworks show. From some 75 miles away, we could see this:

We watched as that bright point of light lifted up over the horizon until it disappeared from view behind some residual cloud cover. Obviously, I'd like to go see a launch from considerably closer range, but we enjoyed some excitement in getting to see what we did.

Neat stuff.

Voyager on the Verge

They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Talk about the final frontier.

Tomorrow marks the 35th anniversary of the launch of the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Launched in 1977, along with its twin, Voyager 2, this venerable, nuclear-powered spacecraft is over 11 billion miles away and on the verge of crossing out of our solar system and into true interstellar space:

When NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 first rocketed out of Earth's grip in 1977, no one knew how long they would live. Now, they are the longest-operating spacecraft in history and the most distant, at billions of miles from Earth but in different directions.

Wednesday marks the 35th anniversary of Voyager 1's launch to Jupiter and Saturn. It is now flitting around the fringes of the solar system, which is enveloped in a giant plasma bubble. This hot and turbulent area is created by a stream of charged particles from the sun.

Outside the bubble is a new frontier in the Milky Way — the space between stars.

I remember, as a kid, the early flybys of Jupiter and Saturn, and later Uranus and Neptune (Voyager 2). That both spacecraft are just now at the far reaches of the solar system, after all of these years, just brings to bear the expanse that is our corner of the galaxy.

Voyager 1 is currently more than 11 billion miles from the sun. Twin Voyager 2, which celebrated its launch anniversary two weeks ago, trails behind at 9 billion miles from the sun.

They're still ticking despite being relics of the early Space Age.

Each only has 68 kilobytes of computer memory. To put that in perspective, the smallest iPod — an 8-gigabyte iPod Nano — is 100,000 times more powerful. Each also has an eight-track tape recorder. Today's spacecraft use digital memory.

68kb of memory. That is almost unbelievable. And an 8-track! Voyager is still sending us data today.

Who knows how long it will last, or how far it will go, or what it will find out there.

Or even, who will find it!

Curiosity: The Movie Trailer

Okay, this is cool. The Curiosity landing with a Hollywood flair. All it needs is a voice over by Gary Sinise.


Courtesy NASA Video Gallery.

JPL Does it Again

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is on a roll. The Mars missions over the last decade, although not problem free, have been simply remarkable. From the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and now mega-rover Curiosity, JPL continues to show what NASA is capable of accomplishing even in this age of shrinking budgets. Early this morning, Curiosity was set safely on the surface of Mars:

PASADENA, Calif. — In a show of technological wizardry, the robotic explorer Curiosity blazed through the pink skies of Mars, steering itself to a gentle landing inside a giant crater for the most ambitious dig yet into the red planet's past.

A chorus of cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Sunday night after the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever built sent a signal to Earth. It had survived a harrowing plunge through the thin Mars atmosphere.

"Touchdown confirmed," said engineer Allen Chen. "We're safe on Mars."

...

It was NASA's seventh landing on Earth's neighbor; many other attempts by the U.S. and other countries to zip past, circle or set down on Mars have gone awry.

The arrival was an engineering tour de force, debuting never-before-tried acrobatics packed into "seven minutes of terror" as Curiosity sliced through the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph.

In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground at a snail-paced 2 mph.

There are plenty of other places to go to satisfy your, uh, Curiosity. Here is a gallery of images from NASA, the JPL Homepage, and one of my frequent web-stops, Universe Today. Here is a video on YouTube that condenses the live feed from mission control, showing the excitement from before and after confirmation of touchdown, complete with a simulated animation (which runs a little ahead of the live action).

These folks are going to have a lot of fun over the next several months, and longer. Funny thing, though. Everytime we go to Mars, it seems, this guy shows up.

Little Black Spot on the Sun Today

Well, okay, it was yesterday. I missed the Venus transit across the sun, but if you search online, you'll find a number of fantastic photos and images of the event. And since we won't be around 100 or so years from now to see it again, we'll just have to enjoy the pictures. By far, the best one I've seen yet is the one below, taken by Eric Snitil of WSFA News in Montgomery. The photo itself was taken in my old Prattville stomping grounds. Click to enlarge.



(h/t: Eric Snitil)

Capture the Dragon!

Dragon-Flight! No, I'm not talking about the beloved Anne McCaffrey novel from my childhood. I'm talking about the first private sector space capsule called Dragon, built by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. A few days ago, Dragon was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Falcon 9 rocket, with a planned mission to dock with the International Space Station.

I'm working from home this morning, which gives me the benefit of having the television on in the background. Of the large number of otherwise useless channels I get on the satellite dish, one of them happens to be NASA TV. Ten minutes of this channel was enough to send my brand new 9-year old back to his room to play. It may be dull, but there is something mesmerizing in watching the capsule approach ISS with the earth turning steadily below. When I first tuned in, the capsule was at 70 meters and holding, and while I made my first cup of coffee, it moved to 30 meters. According to the mission guide, the Dragon is to close at 10 meters at which point ISS engineers will operate the station's grappling arm to pull Dragon in for docking.

NASA and SpaceX both have gone out of their way to characterize this exercise as a test flight only, but there are various supplies aboard the capsule for the station crew.

As I have said before, I believe the future of manned space flight is going to require a partnership or consortium of government and commercial interests. From what I have read, there are more private venture startups lining up behind SpaceX, which I think is a good thing (not the least reason as providing employment opportunities for NASA employees and contractors as NASA ultimately downsizes due to budget pressures, and the minimization of the loss of institutional knowledge).

There was a fascinating discussion between the station and Houston as Dragon approached the 10 meter point, as the pair was passing into twilight. But not surprisingly, the space station crew has no fear of the dark, so the go to capture in the dark was given. Slowly and steadily, the grappling arm reached out toward the capture (at which point my young son came back in the room, of course). Closer, closer …

And … Capture is confirmed! Historic stuff, and way cool!

Next up, docking. And now back to work for me.

Supermoon

What do you do when it has been 10 days since your last post, and the mental faculties aren't functioning well enough to write extemporaneously? Why, post a picture of the moon, silly. I missed the supermoon on Saturday, in part because of some cloud cover. But the photo below by Tavi Greiner, courtesy of Universe Today, captures the moment. Follow this link to see other shots of the oversized satellite.

(h/t): Universe Today
Image Credit: Tavi Greiner

Moon View

I really love images like this. From the International Space Station:

(h/t): Universe Today

Space Digest

I needed a little diversion this morning, as we prepare to dive knee deep into the remains of our belongings currently held in storage. Not too long ago, I came across a site called Universe Today. UT aggregates space and astronomy news, among other features. A couple of neat items caught my attention this morning:

First, there are compiled videos of the Aurora Borealis captured from the view of the International Space Station. Here's a sample:


As have many others, I've caught myself gazing at the western sky in the evenings, watching the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus as they dance in the heavens. Their presence and their bright, steady reflection of the sun's light is mesmerizing, and stands out against the normal view of the night sky. Amateurs have captured the conjunction on camera, and the UT post has several to view. I like many of them, but below I think is my favorite (image credit Tavi Greiner):

Back to the real world, I suppose. But I admit, it's nice to blog about something else for a change.

Spectacular Time-Lapse from ISS

This is cool enough that I don't really need to comment. I suggest watching it in full screen mode (the button on the bottom right of the video player). And turn up the volume. What would it be like to see such things with our own eyes?


(h/t: Aaron Miller)

Size is Relative, I Suppose

This is mind-bogglingly cool, and disturbing enough that I'm using a suspect word like "boggingly".


(h/t: @JohnPiper and 22 Words)

Carina, Carina

Simply beautiful. Another stunning image from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. According to the image caption, the Carina Nebula is "a star-forming region in the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way that is 7,500 light years from Earth." The Observatory has detected more than 14,000 stars in that particular region. Click image to enlarge.

Look Out Above

2011 has certainly been anything but uneventful. We've had record snowfall and tornados. We've had hurricanes and floods. We've had earthquakes and wildfires. Now, the sky is falling:

NASA space junk experts have refined the forecast for the anticipated death plunge of a giant satellite, with the U.S. space agency now predicting the 6 1/2-ton climate probe will plummet to Earth around Sept. 23, a day earlier than previously reported.

The defunct bus-size spacecraft is NASA's Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS), which launched in 1991 and was shut down in 2005 after completing its mission. The satellite was expected to fall to Earth sometime this year, with experts initially pegging a weeks-long window between late September and early October, then narrowing it to the last week of this month.

While NASA expects much of it to disintegrate upon re-entry, as many as 26 large pieces are expected to survive and make impact with the surface of the planet. With any luck, the satellite formerly known as UARS will fall into the ocean. However, there is a 1-in-3200 chance of debris hitting a person on the ground. And although experts assure us that these are "extremely remote" odds, it would be nice if there were just a few more zeros at the end of that 3200 number. As a point of fact however, when Skylab fell in 1979, the odds of it hitting anyone was 1-in-152. NASA and JSOC (Joint Space Operations Center) won't know for sure where until just 2 hours before reentry.

So while you are going about your week, worrying about the economy, the Middle East, or the performance of your favorite college football team, you might want to look out above.

NASA Looking to Retain Institutional Knowledge

I've written previously about my concerns with regard to the potential loss of scientific and engineering know-how that may be inevitable with the (temporary?) grounding of NASA's manned space flight program. While the privatization of space flight capabilities carries with it the opportunity to press forward into that last frontier, it does not in itself negate the impact of losing 6 decades of knowledge and experience in the design of vehicle and propulsion systems. This is a real possibility if the program stays grounded for too long.

Fortunately, NASA is taking steps to retain that technical knowledge, through the creation of the National Institute for Rocket Propulsion Systems (NIRPS):

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - There's an urban myth in the rocket world that today's engineers couldn't recreate the mighty Saturn V F-1 engines that took Americans to the moon if they wanted to. Critical technology has been lost, the story goes.

Not exactly true, say today's propulsion experts at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Some techniques are no longer available, it's true, but better ones exist.

"Building on the knowledge base left to us by those old-timers," Marshall's Dr. Dale Thomas said Wednesday, "we can today build a better F-1 than they did."

The key to understanding Marshall's new push in propulsion is in the first phrase of that sentence: "Building on the knowledge base left to us."

That's the first thing that Thomas, Marshall's associate director for technical issues, and his boss, center Director Robert Lightfoot, want to do with Marshall's planned new National Institute for Rocket Propulsion systems (NIRPS). They want to preserve today's expertise so it can be there tomorrow.

...

Lightfoot wants the institute to be a "strategic asset" for the country, and he said basing it in Huntsville at Marshall just makes sense. There's already Department of Defense and industry knowledge nearby, and there's the treasure trove at Marshall, NASA's home of propulsion.

This strikes me as a brilliant, common sense idea. If indeed NASA is reverting to more of an R&D business model, less oriented around the sustainment of an operational supply and delivery system, then it strikes me as wise to capture the critical knowledge of propulsion technologies and engineering that produced the systems of the past, to inform the design decisions of the future.

Here's hoping the idea, er, takes off.