Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Author Archive

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released the following report and testimony today, all worth a read:

1)

NASA: Assessments of Selected Large-Scale Projects. GAO-15-320SP, March 24.

In 2015, five of NASA’s largest, most complex projects, several of which are at critical points in their development, are expected to consume 78 percent of the funds for NASA’s major projects.

Therefore, existing and new projects will be competing for remaining funds.

 

 

 

 

For the full report, go to:

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-320SP

Highlights are available here:

http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/669206.pdf

A special Podcast from GAO is here at:

http://www.gao.gov/multimedia/podcast/669216

2)

Testimony: James Webb Space Telescope: Project Facing Increased Schedule Risk with Significant Work Remaining, by Cristina T. Chaplain, director, acquisition and sourcing management, before the Subcommittee on Space, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

GAO reports that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project is now in the early stages of its extensive integration and testing period. Maintaining as much schedule reserve as possible during this phase is critical to resolve challenges that will likely surface and negatively impact the schedule.

JWST has begun integration and testing for only two of five elements and major subsystems.

While the project has been able to reorganize work when necessary to mitigate schedule slips thus far, the GAO reports that this flexibility “will diminish as work during integration and testing tends to be more serial, as initiating work is often dependent on the successful and timely completion of the prior work.”

GAO-15-483T, March 24 is available at:

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-483T

Highlights of the document can be read at:

http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/669192.pdf

 

China rocket engineers are reporting completion of the second and final ground test of the power system of China’s next-generation carrier rocket – the Long March 5.

This booster is central – among duties – to expanding China’s three-pronged Moon exploration program – orbiting, landing upon, and returning to Earth lunar surface samples.

Long March 5 is slated to have a payload capacity of boosting 25 tons to low Earth orbits, or 14 tons to geostationary transfer orbit. The launcher is also to lift segments of China’s 60-ton space station in the future.

As reported March 23 by the state-run Xinhua news agency, Long March 5 uses non-toxic, non-polluting liquid propellant. The engines of Long March 5 were first test-fired on the ground in February. Maiden flight of the rocket is scheduled for next year.

Moon sample mission

Meanwhile, China’s Chang’e 5 lunar sample return mission is undergoing intensive development.

According to Xinhua, that Moon mission would be launched with a Long March 5 booster departing China’s new spaceport in south China’s Hainan Province “around 2017,” said Xu Dazhe, head of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

Go to this CCTV video report on the booster at:

http://english.cntv.cn/2015/03/25/VIDE1427226841928266.shtml

 

Think of it as a new form of “networking” – a method of snagging an uncontrolled, tumbling satellite.

Engineers at the European Space Agency (ESA) are moving beyond powerpoint chatter and carrying out weightless net testing for derelict satellite capture. The use of deployable nets to snag discarded satellites as they tumble in space was explored recently in weightlessness.

To trial-run the technology in a condition of microgravity, a Falcon 20 aircraft was flown for two days earlier this year. The aircraft is flown in such a manner that for 20 seconds at a time it falls through the sky, effectively cancelling out gravity inside the aircraft.

“We shot nets out of a compressed air ejector at a scale-model satellite,” explains ESA engineer Kjetil Wormnes.

The behavior of the nets was appraised, with 20 nets fired at various speeds during 21 parabolas over the two days. Packed inside paper cartons, the nets were weighted at each corner, helping them to entangle the model satellite.

Control of debris levels

“Everything was recorded on four high-speed HD cameras,” Kjetil adds. “The aim is to check the simulation tool we have developed, so that we can use it to design the full-size nets for a debris removal mission.”

The work is geared to support ESA’s “e.Deorbit” in 2021, an initiative that will test the feasibility of removing a large item of debris — either a large, derelict spacecraft or rocket upper stage — to help control the debris levels in busy orbits.

It’s an element of ESA’s Clean Space initiative.

“The main advantage of the net option, whether for e.Deorbit or other debris removal missions in future,” Kjetil explains, “is that it can handle a wide range of target shapes and rotation rates.”

Take your own video look at the ESA orbital debris collection idea at:

http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2015/03/Weightless_net_testing_for_derelict_satellite_capture

 

THE WOODLANDS, Texas – Earth’s Moon is rife with huge lava tubes – tunnels formed from the lava flow of volcanic eruptions.

New theoretical work suggests that lunar lava tubes are large enough to house cities that may be structurally stable on the Moon.

These features could support future long-term human space exploration on the Moon, offering shelter from cosmic radiation, meteorite impacts and wild swings of lunar day and night temperatures.

The assessment made use of lunar gravity data from the NASA Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft, suggesting the possibility of lava tubes on the Moon with diameters in excess of one kilometer.

Study details by Purdue University researchers were presented during the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held here March 16-20.

Really big

According to Jay Melosh, a Purdue University distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, the edges of the lava cool as it flows to form a pipe-like crust around the flowing river of lava.

When the eruption ends and the lava flow stops, the pipe drains leave behind a hollow tunnel.“There has been some discussion of whether lava tubes might exist on the Moon,” Melosh noted in a Purdue press statement on the new research. “Some evidence, like the sinuous rilles observed on the surface, suggest that if lunar lava tubes exist they might be really big.”

The presence of sublunarean voids has recently been confirmed via the observation of “skylights” in several lunar maria.

Structurally sound

David Blair, a graduate student in Purdue’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, led the study that examined whether empty lava tubes more than one kilometer wide could remain structurally stable on the Moon.

The Purdue team found that if lunar lava tubes existed with a strong arched shape like those on Earth, they would be stable at sizes up to 5,000 meters, or several miles wide, on the Moon.

“This wouldn’t be possible on Earth, but gravity is much lower on the Moon and lunar rock doesn’t have to withstand the same weathering and erosion,” Blair reported. “In theory, huge lava tubes — big enough to easily house a city — could be structurally sound on the Moon.”

Stability factors

Blair and his team found that a lava tube’s stability depended on the width, roof thickness and the stress state of the cooled lava. They modeled a range of these variables.

The researchers also modeled lava tubes with walls created by lava placed in one thick layer and with lava placed in many thin layers.

Moreover, the study findings about lunar rock and the Moon’s environment were applied to civil engineering technology used to design tunnels on Earth.

Future work, Blair advised, will provide a more accurate picture of the maximum possible size of lunar lava tubes.

 

NASA’s Curiosity rover has wheeled itself into an area of great interest.

A deserved up-close inspection is now underway of an area of possible vein fracture fills – fractures filled with minerals that precipitated from solution.

More data on this location is in the offing…but stay tuned for a better appreciation of these features.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile. the robot is taking a series of close-up images of the site.

 

 

The Wheeler Historical Museum in Wheeler, Texas is set to unveil a statue dedicated to Apollo 12 moonwalker, Alan Bean.

Bean became the fourth man to set foot on the Moon in November 1969. He explored the desolate landscape of the Ocean of Storms. His Apollo adventure was followed by being commander of Skylab Mission II in 1973, spending 59 days in Earth orbit.

Alan Bean resigned from NASA in 1981 to devote all of his time and energy to painting, capturing his experiences on the Moon.

As a Wheeler, Texas legendary artist and astronaut, Bean spoke at a St. Patrick’s Day Banquet in Shamrock, Texas on March 13th, then a day later was Marshall of the 69th Annual St. Patrick’s Parade. That same day the Wheeler Historical Museum honored his presence with a reception and dedication of the Alan Bean statue: “Tiptoeing on the Ocean of Storms.”

The American Legion building which is located on U.S. Hwy 83, along the northern edge of the city of Wheeler, Texas, has been preserved and rehabilitated to house the Wheeler Historical Museum.

 

“The new statue in Wheeler, the Johnson Space Center, and SpaceX’s announcement that it is building a launch facility in Brownsville bodes well for space tourism in Texas,” observes Stew Magnuson, author of the enlightening book, The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83.

“U.S. Highway 83 as it passes through Wheeler is named Alan Bean Boulevard,” Magnuson told Inside Outer Space.

Swift Hill Productions traveled to Houston, Texas to interview Alan L. Bean. In this promo Bean talks about his birth in Wheeler, Texas and the importance of the future.

Go to this video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlSH7BbwSEI

It is called NIROSETI for near-infrared optical SETI.

This new instrument can record levels of light over time so that patterns can be analyzed and assessed for potential signs of other civilizations.

For more than five decades, scientists have been on the lookout for radio signals from other starfolk. But instruments capable of capturing pulses of infrared light have only recently become available.

NIROSETI has been installed at the University of California’s Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton east of San Jose and saw “first light” on March 15 – but months of fine-tuning are ahead.

The Nickel 1-meter telescope at Lick Observatory is where NIROSETI has been deployed.

Shelley Wright, an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of California, ‘San Diego, led the development of NIROSETI while at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Altruism in the universe

Infrared light penetrates farther through gas and dust than visible light. So this new search will extend to stars thousands rather than merely hundreds of light years away.

NIROSETI could uncover new information about the physical universe as well – as well as help shape an answer to some big questions: Are we alone? Just how crowded is it out there?

The group making the NIROSETI campaign possible also includes SETI pioneer Frank Drake of the SETI Institute and UC Santa Cruz who serves as a senior advisor to both past and future projects and is an active observer at the telescope.

Regarding use of NIROSETI there is one downside, Drake observes. “The extraterrestrials would need to be transmitting their signals in our direction,” Drake said in a Univ. of Calif. San Diego press statement, although he sees a positive side to that limitation.

“If we get a signal from someone who’s aiming for us, it could mean there’s altruism in the universe. I like that idea. If they want to be friendly, that’s who we will find,” Drake adds.

Funding for the project comes from the financial support of Bill and Susan Bloomfield.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is taking a look at intriguing, eye-catching features on the Red Planet.

Images relayed to date suggest they are vein fracture fills – fractures filled with minerals that precipitated from solution, according to Mars researcher, James Rice.

Curiosity was launched in November 2011, landing on Mars in August 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE WOODLANDS, Texas – You would think the battered Moon doesn’t need one more crater.

But thanks to data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, a massive crater has been found, provisionally named the crater Earhart after the famous aviator Amelia Earhart.

A team from Purdue University has been testing a new technique that sharpens the GRAIL data to see smaller-scale features, like ridges and valleys. Diving into the data, they noticed an unusual circular feature, said Rohan Sood, a graduate student in Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics who worked on the project.

Note: Go to the aeronautics and astronautics master’s program homepage (the department with which Mr. Sood is affiliated: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ProEd/programs/masters-degrees/aeronautics-astronautics

Sood presented the findings being held here March 16-20, here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Zooming in

The crater discovered is 124-miles wide.

“The feature turned out to be the rim of an ancient crater, but it was so big we did not even recognize it as that at first,” Sood said. “We were zoomed in on one little piece of it. We first tried to model it as a small crater, but we had to go bigger and bigger and bigger to match what the data was telling us.”

More discoveries ahead?

The Purdue group plans to extend the search to the entire Moon to reveal other buried craters and small-scale features beneath the surface.

That search could uncover underground tunnels formed by lava flows — called lava tubes – that have been proposed as a possible shelter for human habitats on the Moon.

Crater Earhart is the provisional name as names of planetary features must be submitted and approved by The International Astronomical Union.

Notable alumni at Purdue include astronauts Neil Armstrong, Gus Grissom, and Eugene Cernan.Earhart was a Purdue career counselor and adviser to the Department of Aeronautics from 1935-1937.

Purdue is also home to the world’s largest compilation of Earhart-related papers, memorabilia and artifacts.

The collection includes documents related to Earhart’s 1932 solo Atlantic flight, her second and fatal attempt at a world flight in 1937, and items related to her time at Purdue.

 

 

A software application based on an algorithm created by a NASA challenge has the potential to increase the number of new asteroid discoveries by citizen scientists and amateur astronomers.

If you want to take part in the search to help protect Earth from threatening asteroid impacts an application is now available that enables everyone, everywhere, to help solve this global challenge.

The desktop software application was developed by NASA in partnership with Planetary Resources, Inc., of Redmond, Washington. The application is based on an Asteroid Data Hunter-derived algorithm that analyzes images for potential asteroids.

To download the app and join the hunt for asteroids, go to:

http://www.topcoder.com/asteroids/#