Archive for July, 2014
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July 6th, 2014
Suborbital: Industry at the Edge of Space by Erik Seedhouse; Springer/Praxis, New York /Heidelberg; $34.99; 2014.
As the dawn of commercial suborbital flight draws closer, author Erik Seedhouse has written an informative book on the topic.
The reader will find splendid accounts of such groups as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems, and XCOR Aerospace – all vying to create a profitable commercial suborbital spaceflight industry.
Seedhouse is a former astronaut training consultant for Bigelow Aerospace, and has also developed astronaut-training protocols for future spaceflight participants. In addition, he is a certified commercial suborbital astronaut who will fly a payload mission in the near future, as well as training director for Astronauts for Hire.
This volume delves into numerous topics, such as how the commercial suborbital industry is poised to develop and mature into a fully fledged and viable market. It also details how the new suborbital vehicles will operate in the suborbital environment and how basic and applied research will be conducted in during suborbital flight.
Seedhouse notes that “vehicle builders still face rigorous shake-out schedules, flight-safety hurdles, as well as extensive trial runs of their respective craft before suborbital space jaunts become commonplace.”
You’ll find this read enjoyable and fact-filled, whether Seedhouse is outlining how to make the most of four minutes of microgravity, the risks of suborbital flight, dealing with motion sickness, or tips on flying payloads on suborbital vehicles.
I particularly enjoyed a brief history tutorial on suborbital flight. Similarly, very edifying are details regarding the various spaceports popping up around the globe.
For more information on this book, go to:
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This free-air gravity map shows deviations from the mean gravity that a cueball Moon would have.
Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/S. Goossens et al.
A “free-air” gravity map of the Moon’s southern latitudes has been developed from data returned by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission.
The free-air gravity map shows deviations from the mean gravity that a cueball Moon would have.
The map extends from the south pole of the Moon up to 50°S and reveals the gravity for that region in even finer detail than the global gravity maps published previously.
The image illustrates the very good correlation between the gravity map and topographic features such as peaks and craters, as well as the mass concentration lying beneath the large Schrödinger basin in the center of the frame.
The terrain in the image is based on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) altimeter and camera data.
The view is south-up, with the south pole near the horizon in the upper left and the crescent Earth in the distance. The terminator crosses the eastern rim of the Schrödinger basin. Gravity is painted onto the areas that are in or near the night side. Red corresponds to mass excesses and blue to mass deficits.
Launched as GRAIL A and GRAIL B in September 2011, the probes — renamed Ebb and Flow — operated in a nearly circular orbit near the poles of the Moon at an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers) until their mission ended in December 2012.
The distance between the twin probes changed slightly as they flew over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and by masses hidden beneath the lunar surface.
July 20, 2014 – 45 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on another world.
Credit: NASA
UPDATE:
Where were you 45 years ago – on July 20, 1969?
For some readers, you became part of an estimated 600 million people – at that time, the world’s largest television audience in history – glued to the TV screen as Apollo 11’s Eagle lunar lander touched down on the Moon.
That unprecedented endeavor involved Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – the first two humans to set foot on another world.
To commemorate the 45th anniversary of that heart-stopping achievement, Buzz is launching the #Apollo45 social media campaign to not only remind people of the Moon landing feat, but also to get individuals to share their memories of this historic event…or how Apollo 11 inspired them.
NOTE: This campaign doesn’t launch until Tues, July 8. So stay tuned for a special video that you’ll find inspirational and participational!
Videos can be shared through YouTube, or on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Instagram.
For the special YouTube Channel URL that becomes open asking for your comments on Tuesday, July 8th, go to:
Some of the notable personalities who will be sharing their stories include, Quincy Jones, John Travolta, Stephen Colbert, Tim Allen, Jared Leto, Sir Richard Branson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, HRH Prince Sultan of Saudi Arabia and London Mayor Boris Johnson, with more to come.
Buzz will be doing a countdown leading up to the anniversary, releasing new videos every day starting from July 10 leading up to July 20th.
More information on Buzz can be found at www.buzzaldrin.com, on twitter @TheRealBuzz and Facebook at www.facebook.com/BuzzAldrinOfficial
Dropping in on Mars: The ‘dropship’ quadcopter and mockup rover.
Credit: Airbus Defence & Space
The European Space Agency (ESA) has undertaken the work under the StarTiger project – a task that involves developing and demonstrating a European precision-landing capability for Mars and other targets.
This latest team was hosted at Airbus Defense & Space’s facility in Bremen, Germany, joined by engineers from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Spin.Works – an aeronautics company in Lisbon, Portugal, and Poland’s Poznań University of Technology Institute of Control and Information Engineering.
StarTiger stands for ‘Space Technology Advancements by Resourceful, Targeted and Innovative Groups of Experts and Researchers’ working within the Agency’s TRP Basic Technology Research Program.
Credit: ESA/Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Vision-based
Starting from scratch for the eight-month project, the Dropter team was challenged to produce vision-based navigation and hazard detection and avoidance for the dropship.
It has to identify a safe landing site and height before winching down its passenger rover on a set of cables.
This sound familiar for those that survived “seven minutes of terror” brought to you by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover?
The Skycrane that lowered Curiosity rover onto Mars showed the potential of this approach, precisely delivering rovers to their science targets while avoiding rock fields, slopes and other hazards.
Commercial components
According to an ESA overview of the work, the dropship was customized for the project from commercial quadcopter components, with a smaller drone used for preparatory indoor testing.
Using GPS and inertial systems to fly into position, it then switched to vision-based navigation supplemented by a laser range-finder and barometer to land its rover autonomously.
This demonstration having proved the concept, the dropship approach is now available for follow-on development by planetary missions to come.
Perhaps this concept might also find use for future expeditions to Mars – astronaut-guided drones to distant or dangerous spots on the Red Planet.
For a video view of this work, go to:
http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2014/07/Dropship_offers_safe_landings_for_Mars_rovers
Earth clutter. This artist’s view shows the broad scope of space debris circling the planet, hundreds of miles above sea level, at the same height where low-Earth orbit satellites operate. The spatial density of debris objects increases at high latitudes. Note that the size of the debris elements in this image is greatly exaggerated compared to the size of Earth.
Credit: European Space Agency.)
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado is part of a collaborative effort to help satellites dodge space junk.
Testing is under way for implementation of a system that models the effects of space weather on satellite orbits.
The Atmospheric Density Assimilation Model (ADAM) is designed to take into account real-time information on satellite tracks and space weather to predict future satellite paths as much as 72 hours in advance.
ADAM has been commissioned by the U.S. Air Force and brought into testing mode this summer.
Atmospheric drag
The ADAM project is being spearheaded by the private firm, the Atmospheric & Space Technology Research Associates, LLC in Boulder, in collaboration with NCAR, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center also in Boulder.
“Space debris is a big problem for satellite operations,” said Liying Qian, NCAR’s principal investigator on ADAM.
Another NCAR participant, Stan Solomon, noted that interest in the problem is on the rise: “There is more concern and awareness of space-junk issues, and more recognition that atmospheric drag is the major uncertainty in tracking it.”
Steer around debris
As you read this, there are roughly 19,000 pieces of space debris being tracked. But there’s nothing that can be done to change any path of a chunk of space junk. Instead, satellite operators have to adjust spacecraft orbits to steer around the debris.
As noted in an NCAR press statement: “To project those orbital adjustments accurately, scientists need to know how the density of the atmosphere is evolving in the low-Earth orbit (LEO) zone, several hundred miles above the surface. Both everyday heating by the Sun and occasional solar storms cause the upper atmosphere to expand. This exerts added drag on LEO satellites, pulling their orbits closer to Earth. Atmospheric waves propagating from below can also influence upper atmospheric density, a topic now being studied in the DEEPWAVE field project.”
The international DEEPWAVE project makes use of novel instruments — based in New Zealand – that will provide an unprecedented view of gravity waves, a major shaper of atmospheric variability at multiple heights.
Cone of trajectories
Similar to NOAA hurricane guidance, ADAM will help users produce a “cone” of possible future trajectories of space debris, together with projected satellite tracks, according to the NCAR release.
With the initial ADAM model now complete, the next phase is a round of testing that began in June and will continue through the summer of 2015 at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Once finalized, ADAM could eventually be used in both military and commercial settings.
Look for the issue on newsstands, but you can order it here:
