Mars Lander Gets Another Sample In Oven
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has successfully dumped another sample of surface dirt into its ovens for analysis, mission scientists reported this weekend.
Phoenix's robotic arm delivered dirt Thursday from a trench informally named "Rosy Red" through a narrow opening to a screen above the No. 5 oven on the lander's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). TEGA heats up the samples in its oven and then analyzes the vapors given off to help determine the composition of the Martian dirt.
The $420 million Phoenix mission is designed to analyze the surface dirt and underlying ice in the arctic regions of Mars to assess whether or not the area might have been habitable at some point in the past.
A few particles of the sample passed through the screen on Thursday, but not enough to fill the oven and allow analysis of the sample to begin. The Phoenix team sent commands for TEGA to vibrate the screen again on Friday, and more material reached the oven, though still not enough to proceed with analysis.
"There appear to be clumps blocking the opening," said Phoenix science lead Doug Ming of NASA Johnson Space Center, in Houston, on Friday.
Vibration of the screen on Saturday finally succeeded in getting enough dirt into the oven to begin analysis. The team sent instructions to begin analysis of the sample on Sunday.
Phoenix scientists will be looking for signs of perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance that was detected in dirt samples by the lander's wet chemistry laboratory. The last sample analyzed by TEGA found no indications of any chlorine present
On Friday, the spacecraft also extended the width of an exploratory trench informally named "Neverland," which runs between two rocks on the surface of the ground.
Phoenix also took overnight measurements of the conductivity of the Martian regolith that were completed on Wednesday. A fork-like probe inserted into the dirt checks how well heat and electricity move through the dirt from one prong to another.
Phoenix's mission, originally slated to end at the end of August, has been extended to Sept. 30.
Source link: Yahoo news
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The phenomenon that causes a diamond to sparkle could be used to find large bodies of water on rocky, Earth-like planets, says Darren M. Williams, lead author of a paper in Icarus that describes the process.
The trick, he says, is to look for planets when they are in crescent phase, ideally in orbits that lie at an edge-on angle to Earth. In that position, the glare bouncing off the water would make the planet seem unusually bright.
"Crescent phase is where the starlight would be glancing off the edge of the planet toward our telescopes," says Williams, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Penn State Erie. "That would be when the light is coming at the surface at a very steep angle, and the specular reflection would be the strongest and most intense."
Williams ran simulations of idealized, cloud-free planets with three types of surfaces: unfrozen land, snow and ice, and water. His goal was to see to what extent the presence of water would contribute to the light coming from a planet in another solar system.
He found that for slightly tilted systems the reflection from water would be the most powerful signal, particularly if the planet were observed in crescent phase. When a star appears directly over a body of water, almost all the light is absorbed. But from a glancing angle, most of the light is reflected. The shape of the light curve would help distinguish Earth-like planets with water from those without.
More than meets the eye
At the University of Florida, Dr. Eric Ford has also been learning about how light can reveal the presence of ice, sand, vegetation and water. Asymmetry in a planet's light curve over time could indicate major seasonal transformations or weather patterns caused by the ebb and flow of clouds.
Warmer, ice-free planets, for example, might experience a large blooming event of plants or oceanic algae, changing the way the planet reflected light. Scientists could detect those changes by looking for certain signatures in the planet's colors and measuring their intensities. While fluctuations would signal some type of surface feature, scientists would need a lot more follow-up before they could say for sure what was causing it.
"It could be water and land, it could be some other liquids, particularly where it's further out where you might have methane, like on Titan," says Ford. But, he explains, scientists could rule out many alternatives using other methods.
"If we have an idea of how far away the planet is from the star, and how bright the star is, then maybe we could say methane would not be liquid at those temperatures," for example. Scientists could narrow the possibilities by comparing their findings and might conclude the only logical explanation is the presence of water, "particularly if there was spectroscopic evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere," says Ford.
Experiments from Interplanetary Space
Looking at Earth-sized planets beyond our own solar system will require advanced new telescopes using modern technology to its full potential. Two proposed efforts, NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Darwin mission, will both have instruments capable of picking up the sparkle of an ocean.
The way those instruments are designed and built will be based, in part, on the results of what Williams sees of Earth from Mars and Venus.
Williams is using observing time on ESA's Venus Express and Mars Express orbiters, to look at Earth from interplanetary space. From Mars, all of Earth's phases can be seen, but from Venus, only Earth's gibbous (more than half-full) and full phases are visible. Regardless, Williams can use the results to test his predictions.
"That's the most exciting application from my standpoint," he says, "the observation of extreme glint off the Earth's oceans as seen from Mars Express."
Looking at terrestrial planets while they are in crescent phase, when only a small fraction of their disk is illuminated, will be extremely difficult, perhaps taking two or even three weeks of observing time. But, as Williams points out, of all the extremely difficult measurements astronomers plan to do, it might be one of the easiest.
Source: YN
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NASA says liquid confirmed on Saturn's moon Titan
Scientists positively identified the presence of ethane, according to a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which manages the Cassini mission exploring Saturn, its rings and moons.
Liquid ethane is a component of crude oil.
Cassini has made more than 40 close flybys of Titan, a giant planet-sized satellite of the ringed world.
Scientists had theorized that Titan might have oceans of methane, ethane and other hydrocarbons, but Cassini found hundreds of dark, lake-like features instead, and it wasn't known at first whether they were liquid or dark, solid material, JPL's statement said.
"This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," Bob Brown, team leader of Cassini's visual and mapping instrument, said in the statement.
The instrument was used during a December flyby to observe a feature dubbed Ontario Lacus, in the south polar region, that is about 7,800 square miles, slightly larger than North America's Lake Ontario.
Cassini reached Saturn in mid-2004 and at the end of that year launched a probe named Huygens that parachuted to the surface of Titan the following January.
The mission is a project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
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NASA uses remote sand dunes as stand-in for moon
Space agency officials certainly think so. NASA scientists and contractors recently spent two weeks here field-testing some of the vehicles and robots that will be used when humans return to the moon later this century.
"Believe it or not, this place has a lot in common with the moon," Robert Ambrose, deputy division chief for NASA, said of the unusual sand dunes in central Washington.
The key element is the soft, powdery soil that is mixed with volcanic ash and similar to lunar dust, he said. The soil forms high, slippery dunes similar to the lunar hills the vehicles will have to climb.
"Mainly we've got slopes, soft soils and wide open spaces," Ambrose said. "That's what we needed to test our machines."
The big drawback? Moses Lake has normal gravity, while the moon has about one-sixth of Earth's gravity, he said.
Moses Lake is a town of about 17,000 located 170 miles east of Seattle along Interstate 90 in the arid Columbia Basin. Many french fries served at restaurants nationwide are grown and processed here, but Moses Lake is otherwise a synonym in much of Washington for the middle of nowhere.
NASA is no stranger here, said Bill Bluethmann of the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The giant runways at a closed B-52 base serve as an emergency alternative landing site for the space shuttle. And Moses Lake was considered as a home for the planned X-33 spaceplane that was supposed to replace the space shuttle, but NASA canceled that program, he said.
The space agency has been tasked to return to the moon by 2020, and the tests in Moses Lake brought together numerous prototypes from laboratories nationwide to see how they worked in the field and how they worked together.
The tests started in late May in the Moses Lake Sand Dunes, a 3,000-acre off-road vehicle park.
NASA intends to collect buckets of the powdery soil, much of it blown here from volcanic eruptions in the nearby Cascade Range, so astronauts who have already walked on the moon can determine how closely the soil resembles lunar dust, said Lucien Junkin, director of the lunar truck project.
The lunar truck is a 12-wheeled, gold-colored vehicle that weighs 4,500 pounds and can carry four astronauts in spacesuits. With a top speed of 10 mph and the ability to attach various implements, it is designed to perform civil engineering on the moon, Junkin said.
The battery-powered truck, which can move in all directions, can be controlled from Earth or by the passengers, he said. And unlike the lunar rover of the Apollo era, crew members will stand in the vehicle and be secured into the frame so a bump does not send them into flight.
One recent day, two men in 300-pound spacesuits drove across the dunes, practiced collecting sand in bags and deployed a small robot down the ramp of the truck.
Other NASA equipment included the crablike ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra Terrestrial Explorer), which can roll or walk across the ground carrying a cylindrical living pod for astronauts, and the K10, a robot scout used to explore and map key places for astronauts to visit.
The Scarab, an unmanned vehicle that looks like a race car, is intended to operate in complete darkness at the bottom of craters to determine if they contain ice that can be converted into water for human use.
NASA considered dozens of sites for the testing before settling on Moses Lake. One reason was that temperatures were expected to be a manageable 80 degrees with no rain. Instead, the coldest, wettest spring in decades surprised the scientists.
Still, they were happy to avoid the triple-digit temperatures of the desert Southwest and enjoyed working close to a town, Bluethmann said.
Most of the year, vehicles are tested at various sites that cover a few hundred meters, he said.
"At some point you get tired of driving in the same circle over and over again," he said.
Ambrose said it is unclear if NASA will return to Moses Lake. Test sites are dictated by the specific needs of the scientists, and the space agency has many options.
"When we design a test, we figure out the right site for the test," he said.
Source: NASA
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Virgin Galactic shows off mothership aircraft
The photo-op was the public unveiling of the White Knight Two mothership before a crowd of engineers, dignitaries and space enthusiasts at the Mojave Air & Space Port in the high desert north of Los Angeles.
The four-engine jet, with its 140-foot single wing, is an engineering marvel. The space between its twin fuselages is where SpaceShipTwo, the passenger rocket being built for Branson's Virgin Galactic, will be mounted.
White Knight Two, billed as the world's largest all-carbon-composite airplane, is "one of the most beautiful and extraordinary aviation vehicles ever developed," Branson proclaimed.
White Knight Two is the brainchild of Rutan, who made history in 2004 when his SpaceShipOne became the first private, manned craft to reach space. SpaceShipOne accomplished it with help from White Knight Two's smaller predecessor, White Knight. After winning $10 million for the feat, Rutan partnered with Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, to commercialize the prototype.
White Knight Two's long-awaited rollout, a year after a deadly explosion rocked Rutan's test site, is the first tangible sign of progress toward making space tourism a reality. Despite the glitz surrounding the event, significant hurdles remain.
The aircraft must undergo at least a year of rigorous flight tests starting in the fall. In addition, workers have to finish building SpaceShipTwo, which will be flown by two pilots and carry six passengers.
Matthew Upchurch, 46, who reserved a future flight, said he felt goosebumps when he saw White Knight Two.
"It was very emotional for me," said Upchurch, who heads a luxury travel company that works with Virgin Galactic. "I thought, `Oh my God, we're getting closer.'"
The mothership rollout also moved Rutan, who has made a career of designing unconventional aircraft.
"Even though this is a pretty weird airplane, we all expect it fly very well," said Rutan, who traded his usual leather jacket for a white button-down shirt with a Virgin Galactic logo.
Meanwhile, SpaceShipTwo, which is 70 percent complete, remained under wraps. It sat in a hangar several hundred feet away from White Knight Two shrouded in a black tarp. A sticker on it read "Coming Soon ... To A Spaceport Near You."
In the history of spaceflight, most astronauts have been in government programs. In recent years, a handful of wealthy people have paid about $20 million each to ride Russian rockets to the international space station.
Virgin Galactic envisions a future where space voyages will become as common as airplane travel. It wants to fly 500 people into space in the first year for $200,000 a head. If it succeeds, that would be on par with the same number of people who have gone up in 45 years of space travel.
So far, more than 250 wannabe astronauts have paid the full amount or put down a deposit to fly with Virgin Galactic, but when they will float in zero gravity is unknown. Rutan has declined to release a schedule. Virgin Galactic stopped predicting after it said in a 2004 press release that flights could begin in 2007.
Virgin Galactic renamed White Knight Two after Branson's mother, Eve. After the rollout, Branson and his mother popped open a bottle of Champagne next to the craft, which sports a decorative motif of a blond woman flying a Virgin flag.
White Knight Two has a wingspan of 140 feet, about the same as a World War II B-29 Superfortress bomber.
The mothership is designed to tuck SpaceShipTwo under the center of its wing and release it at 50,000 feet. After separation, SpaceShipTwo will fire its hybrid rocket and climb some 62 miles above Earth, the internationally recognized boundary of space.
The spaceflight — up and back down without circling the Earth — will include about five minutes of weightlessness. The total trip, from White Knight Two's takeoff to SpaceShipTwo's unpowered landing, will last about 2 1/2 hours.
Monday's unveiling was bittersweet for Rutan's company, Scaled Composites LLC. A year ago, three technicians were killed in an explosion while testing SpaceShipTwo's propellant system. Scaled, which was since bought by Northrop Grumman Corp., held a ceremony last week in honor of the fallen workers.
Source: YN
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NASA Envisions Huge Lunar Telescope
Telescope mirrors made from lunar dust could help realize dreams of stargazing from the far side of the moon.
Creating gigantic lunar telescopes would normally carry an astronomical price tag, but NASA researchers used a mix of epoxy, simulated lunar dust and carbon nanotubes to demonstrate how to use materials already found on the moon.
"You can go to the moon with a few buckets, and build something far larger than anything a rocket can carry," said Peter Chen, a physicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Orbiting vs. moon-based
Astronomers have argued about which is better in the future: building additional orbiting space telescopes such as Hubble or setting them up on the moon. Both types of telescopes would be beyond the interference of Earth's atmosphere, although the moon has the added advantages of being a stable platform with a far side shielded from Earth's cluttered radio background. On the other hand, getting to the moon represents more of a challenge than simply launching a space telescope.
However, the debate so far has been "limited by launching from the ground," Chen told SPACE.com, because Earth's gravity places both size and cost limits on what rockets can carry into space or to the moon.
The solution: Get much of the needed building material from the moon itself. Chen had already started working with epoxy and carbon nanotubes to create "smart" materials that can flex or change shape when an electric current passes through, but ended up adding simulated lunar dust called JSC-1A Coarse Lunar Regolith Simulant to the mix.
Chen used the resulting lunar concrete as the foundation of a foot-long disk, and poured more plastic epoxy on top of it. Then he spun the mirror at a constant speed that formed the epoxy into a parabolic, slightly bowl-like shape as it hardened. The mirror's finishing touch came with a thin layer of reflective aluminum applied inside a vacuum chamber.
Making a Hubble-sized mirror would require bringing 130 pounds (60 kg) of epoxy to the moon with 3 pounds (1.3 kg) of carbon nanotubes and less than 1 gram of aluminum, according to Chen's calculations. Meanwhile, 1,300 pounds (600 kilograms) of lunar dust could provide the bulk of the material. The moon's lack of atmosphere also suits the vacuum conditions needed to make the mirror.
Base considerations
Astronomers may imagine telescope mirrors half the size of a football field, but realizing such dreams depends heavily on whenever NASA returns human explorers to the moon and sets up a moon base.
Other challenges include getting the necessary manufacturing equipment to the moon, such as the spinning table on which the mirror gets created. Future astronauts would also have to ensure that none of the free-floating lunar dust contaminates the mirror.
"It's a great idea in principle, but nothing is simple on the Moon," said James Spann, physicist heading the Space and Exploration Research Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, in a NASA statement.
Chen and his colleagues will try to scale up their demonstration by creating 1.64-foot (0.5 meter) and 3.28-foot (1 meter) mirrors using the simulated lunar dust. They also plan to figure out ways to hone the quality of the finished mirror's surface, and are already speculating about ways future explorers and robots could build even larger telescope mirrors on the moon — perhaps within an impact crater.
"It's totally out-of-the-box, but it's fun to think about," Chen said.
Source: Yahoo News
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Astronauts handle explosives on daring spacewalk
Spacewalkers Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko managed, in the end, to safely disconnect the bolt from the Soyuz capsule that will be their ride home this fall. They immediately slid it into a blast-proof container.
"It is in," one of the Russian spacewalkers called out.
"Good. Thank God," someone replied in Russian.
Before the spacewalk, flight controllers in Moscow assured Volkov and Kononenko that the bolt would not explode and that the unprecedented job would help ensure their safe return to Earth in the Soyuz. Nonetheless, Mission Control repeatedly urged them to be careful as they worked near the explosives.
"Take your time," Mission Control warned. "Be careful; be careful, please."
NASA said that its own engineers were convinced the spacemen would be in no danger, and that it would be all right for them to put the explosive bolt in the blast-proof canister and take it into the international space station for eventual return to Earth.
The past two Soyuz descents have been steep, off-course and bone-jarring, and the Russian Space Agency wants to avoid the problem when Volkov and Kononenko fly home in October. The capsule currently docked at the space station ferried up the two Russians in April.
Kononenko used a serrated knife to cut away the thick shiny insulation surrounding the bolt — a tool normally shunned by spacewalkers because of the possibility of piercing their pressurized suits or gloves. It was a messy job, with shreds of the multilayer insulation floating every which way.
Next, the astronauts installed devices to eliminate static electricity, struggling at times in the small, cramped area. Finally, four hours into the spacewalk, Volkov pulled out a socket wrench and removed the 3-inch pyrotechnic bolt, one of 10 used to separate two parts of the module during re-entry.
During Soyuz descents this past April and in October 2007, these two sections did not separate properly, leading to so-called ballistic entries that subjected the crews to far higher gravity forces than normal.
Russian engineers suspect some of the explosive bolts did not fire. By disabling the bolts in this suspect location, there should be no mechanical hang-up during the October descent, officials said.
The lone American on board, Gregory Chamitoff, was inside the Soyuz for the entire six-hour spacewalk in case an emergency required the two Russians to join him in the capsule. Chamitoff took books, music and a laptop computer with him to while away the time, and could hear everything that was going on.
Each pyrotechnic bolt has the force of a large M-80 firecracker, NASA officials said.
A high-ranking flight director at Russian Mission Control outside Moscow told the crew Wednesday that the bolt could withstand shocks of up to 100 times the force of gravity and would not fire, even if they hit it with a big hammer. "You should not be concerned at all," he said.
The blast-proof container is made of stainless steel. It will remain sealed, with the bolt inside, until it is returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz for analysis.
"We dream of a lot of wild things to do, and after much analysis, sometimes we do them and sometimes we don't," Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager, said earlier this week.
"We have quite a bit of confidence in this particular case that we're perfectly safe," Suffredini told reporters.
NASA has a keen interest in the Russian-built Soyuz capsules because they sometimes transport Americans to and from the space station, and also serve as lifeboats. Once the space shuttles are retired in 2010, the Soyuz will be the sole means of human space transportation until 2015, when America's new rocketship starts carrying crews.
Before floating back inside, Volkov and Kononenko attached a patch over the cut insulation on the Soyuz. As they wrapped up their work, Mission Control congratulated the pair and noted that Volkov was now "a full-blown crew commander" with his own grenade.
The two Russians will take another spacewalk Tuesday to perform much more routine space station work.
Source: Yahoo News
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Space probes show solar system dented, not round
Information from Earth's first space probes to hit the thick edge of the solar system — called the heliosheath where the solar wind slows abruptly — paint a picture that is not the simple circle that astronomers long thought, according to several studies published Thursday in the journal Nature. Surprised astronomers said they will have to change their models for what the solar system looks like.
In 1977, NASA launched two space probes on missions beyond the solar system. Voyager 1 went north and Voyager 2 went south. What startled astronomers is that when the two of them hit the heliosheath they did so at different distances from the sun.
Voyager 2 hit the southern edge of the solar system nearly 1 billion miles closer to the sun than Voyager 1 did to the north. Voyager 2 hit the edge at 7.8 billion miles from the sun.
"We used to assume that it's all symmetric and simple," said Leonard Burlaga, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's literally like a hand pushing."
That push is from the magnetic field that lies between star systems in the Milky Way. The magnetic field hits the solar system at a different angle on the south than on the north, probably because of interstellar turbulence from star explosions, said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone.
Both spacecraft still have several more years before they completely exit the solar system and continue deeper into the space between stars, said Stone, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
Source: yahoo news
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The Future of Space Robots
A spaceship descends with a thunderous roar and deposits a futuristic probe before taking off again. The Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) soon activates and begins flying around, scanning the barren surface for signs of life.
Scientists today can only dream of having a robotic explorer like EVE from the Disney/Pixar film "WALLE." But some researchers are working on autonomous spacecraft, airships and rovers that can cooperate intelligently while exploring distant worlds.
"The orbiter gives you global perspective, the aerial platform a more regional perspective, and that helps determine where to deploy ground assets in a targeted fashion," said Wolfgang Fink, a physicist at Caltech in Pasadena, California.
Fink's vision of "tier-scalable reconnaissance" starts with an orbiting spacecraft to make a global survey for interesting scientific targets, before deciding on its own where to deploy an airship such as a dirigible. The airship could look even closer at a region to find the best landing site, and finally drop a rover or some other surface explorer. That surface explorer could then move quickly to the target area.
A demonstration of how such a surface explorer might deploy will take place in the Mars Science Laboratory mission, slated for a 2009 launch. NASA's Sky Crane carrier will hover above the surface of Mars on retrorockets while lowering an SUV-sized rover using a winch and tether.
Some Mars missions have already demonstrated the advantage of coordinating orbiters with surface explorers. Scientists used data from three Mars orbiters to determine the landing site for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, and also turned orbiter cameras on the lander as it descended to the surface. Of the three orbiters, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has even helped NASA's separate Spirit and Opportunity Rovers navigate around obstacles on the Martian surface.
However, Fink and his collaborators want to take humans out of the loop and develop robots which can decide independently when and where to go. That becomes crucial for future missions to distant places such as the moons of Saturn or Jupiter, where a command signal from Earth can take over an hour to reach robotic explorers.
The key rests with software algorithms that help robots make command decisions on their own. Fink's group has begun testing such algorithms by using three small rovers and a camera that looks down on a simulated indoor landscape. The camera identifies both targets and obstacles, which allows the rovers to deploy and drive around obstacles to reach their targets — all without human intervention.
"Integration is the biggest challenge," Fink noted. "At Caltech, we are now at the point where we're implementing a test-bed outdoors to develop the software to demonstrate this in action."
The outdoors test would involve a miniature airship taking the place of the camera. Researchers from around the world would be able to give commands to the airship via Internet and watch it move and deploy the rovers on its own.
The field tests may pave the way for using similar command software on the proposed NASA and European mission to Titan or Europa. Fink and other researchers involved with the planning have begun discussing how such a mission might shape up by the 2017 launch date.
"A Titan mission would have the orbiter deploying a balloon, and we're already thinking about having a lander," Fink explained. "There you have a three-tier mission."
The tiered approach may eventually take the form of a robot that "does its own reconnaissance, goes out and looks for anomalies, finds something interesting and makes contact with the sender," Fink said, pointing to the Imperial probe from "The Empire Strikes Back" which lands on the ice planet Hoth.
Perhaps best of all, intelligent robots could react quickly to surprises and investigate anomalies — such as a geyser on Saturn's moon Enceladus, or a landslide on Mars.
"Curiosity in itself is not present in any of our machine systems," Fink said, remarking upon WALLE's childlike tendencies which appear to distract EVE but eventually help her mission. "That curiosity drives action."
Via yahoo news
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Delta 2 Rockets to Remain Competitive Until 2015
United Launch Alliance (ULA) has enough unsold Delta 2 rockets in inventory to meet NASA's forecasted demand through at least 2015 and could wait until 2012 to decide whether to restart production of the reliable but increasingly expensive workhorse, a top company executive said.
Dan Collins, ULA's chief operating officer, also said the company is considering ways to reduce the Delta 2's price tag as well as developing a less powerful, lower-cost variant of its larger Atlas 5 or Delta 4 rockets. Speaking June 25 here at a meeting of the National Research Council's Space Studies Board, he said ULA of Denver has no intention of ceding the medium-lift launch market it has dominated for decades to new rockets being developed Orbital Sciences Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).
"There's been a lot of talk about [how] we need to go fill the gap [with] the demise of Delta 2," Collins told the board. "Part of my message for you today is we don't know of any gap. We have Delta 2s in inventory that are unsold. We plan on continuing to sell those. With the change in the requirements that we will see as the [U.S. Air Force Medium Launch Vehicle 3] program goes away, we are adjusting Delta 2 and bringing the price down."
The Air Force has been using the Delta 2 since 1989, primarily to launch GPS navigation satellites. With the last of the current-generation GPS satellites slated to lift off aboard a Delta 2 later this year, ULA's long-running Medium Launch Vehicle contract is coming to an end.
An internal study conducted by NASA in 2007 concluded that Delta 2 launch prices, already hovering in the $80 million range, likely would soar once the Air Force abandons the program in favor of manifesting future generations of GPS satellites aboard ULA's larger Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets. NASA has been the other big Delta 2 customer in recent years.
The NASA study, conducted by the agency's in-house rocket buyers, recommended following the Air Force's lead by phasing out Delta 2 and shifting more payloads to Atlas 5 or Delta 4 until a more affordable medium-lift launcher comes along.
While the Air Force has been the anchor customer for Delta 2 since the beginning, Collins said the service's abandonment of the program gives ULA the opportunity to reduce costs without compromising reliability.
"There have been requirements in the government mission set that have driven cost," Collins said, citing as an example the Air Force's insistence that the Delta 2 be kept ready to launch within 40 days of call up.
"That drives significant cost into a program," Collins said. "For instance, it drives having two launch pads at Cape Canaveral. We will not continue to operate two launch pads."
Collins said dropping the 40-day call up requirement also would permit ULA to "significantly lower" the number of people it needs on hand to launch Delta 2.
"So we will see significant changes in the cost structure on the Delta 2 with a significant inventory to continue flying," Collins said. "We plan on being exceptionally competitive in the medium market for the foreseeable future."
ULA has "around half a dozen" unsold Delta 2 rockets on hand, a sufficient inventory, Collins told the board, to meet NASA's scaled-back demand through 2015.
"We don't see any need to guess what the market is going to be in 2016," Collins said, later adding, "When people actually start having programs of record you can start at the time bringing the right vehicle to market."
If by 2012, NASA and other potential customers are forecasting a combined eight to 10 medium launches a year beyond 2015, Collins said, ULA could financially justify restarting Delta 2 production. But if forecasted demand is only four to seven launches annually, Collins said, ULA would be more likely go after that market with a vehicle that combines a new low-cost upper stage with an Atlas 5 or Delta 4 booster core.
Collins said the medium-lift launch market will be extremely competitive for at least the next several years.
"There are six launchers out there trying to split a market of about six launches a year," Collins said. "We're all going to be out trying to make a living in this market and it's going to be difficult."
Collins told the board ULA is determined to stay in the medium market and make Delta 2, or its successor, competitive with the price point Orbital Sciences is shooting for with its planned Taurus 2 rocket.
"We think there's a premium that comes with the experience and reliability record [of Delta 2], but there's only so much that premium can demand, so we need to get down in that same area," Collins said. "Can we get all the way there? I hope so. But if not I think we can get pretty close."
ULA does not disclose Delta 2 pricing, but Collins said NASA pays the company less than what the agency requires its programs to budget for a Delta 2 launch.
Appearing alongside Collins were executives from Orbital Sciences and SpaceX who gave the board updates on their efforts to field Delta 2-class competitors.
Robert T. Richards, vice president of Orbital's Launch Systems Group, said Orbital and its investors are prepared to spend $200 million developing Taurus 2, a medium-class rocket the company expects to launch from Virginia's eastern shore in December 2010 as part of a NASA-funded demonstration. He said Orbital also has hardware in production for a second rocket that could fly a few months earlier if the company finds a customer that needs to launch a medium-sized satellite then.
He said Orbital of Dulles, Va., is aiming to offer Delta 2-class performance at a lower price, or around $65 million a launch.
"There are some edges of the envelope where a Delta 2 Heavy might have a little more performance, but essentially you should think of it as a Delta 2," Richards said.
ULA used a Delta 2 Heavy to loft NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope into orbit June 11 from from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The 4,230-kilogram spacecraft required a Delta 2 augmented with nine strap-on boosters.
Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, the rocket start-up created six years ago by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, aims to price its Falcon 9 rocket significantly below Taurus 2.
SpaceX, like Orbital, is getting financial assistance from NASA under the agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.
Larry Williams, SpaceX vice president of strategic relations, told the Space Studies Board that the company is offering Falcon 9 launches for $36.75 million to $57.75 million depending on the size of the payload and desired destination.
International Space Station-bound cargo flights involving the company's reusable Dragon capsule, Williams said, will cost between $80 million and $100 million
Williams said SpaceX believes it can deliver on its promise of lower launch prices by taking the "Wal-Mart approach," which he characterized as doing hundreds of things 1 percent cheaper than the competition rather than trying to do one thing 90 percent cheaper.
SpaceX has conducted two launches of the smaller Falcon 1 rocket to date, neither of which succeeded in reaching orbit. A third Falcon 1 launch had been tentatively slated for June, but Williams said that attempt has been pushed off until late July or early August due to "a bit of a range issue" at the Kwajalein missile range, where the company has a launch pad.
The first Falcon 9 rocket is expected to arrive at Cape Canaveral by the end of the year for an early 2009 launch for a U.S. government customer SpaceX says it is not permitted to name.
Source: SPACE.com
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Mars Lander eyes ice on Mars, scientists believe
Eight small pieces of a bright material "have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it," said a statement from Jet Propulsion Laboratory's website.
"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."
The bright dice-sized bits were left four days ago in a trench scientists dubbed "Dodo-Goldilocks" and were not there when the lander took a new later image of the trench. Scientists believe the ice evaporated when exposed to the sun.
Phoenix's robotic arm also on Thursday in another trench made contact with a hard surface scientists believe could be an icy layer.
"We have dug a trench and uncovered a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in our other trench," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, co-investigator for the robotic arm.
After trying to crack further into it, the arm became immobilized, which is the expected programmed reaction for when it hits a hard surface.
A third technical glitch but the mission Tuesday; it landed near the Martian North pole on May 25. The two previous ones involved two US satellites orbiting the Red Planet that relay information between the probe and Earth.
Yet "the mission is well ahead of schedule. We are making excellent progress toward full mission success," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein.
The three-month Phoenix mission is hoping to find evidence of the existence of water and life-supporting organic minerals in the polar region.
If water filtered down on Mars it would have left its mark on surrounding minerals. Impurities in any ice detected could tell a great deal about the climactic history of this region of the planet.
Mars is currently too cold for liquid water but it is possible that in some distant past the polar regions were warmer, scientists posit.
Water is a main ingredient for life and the polar region at some point may have been habitable: that is a puzzle Phoenix is exploring
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Satellite for tracking sea levels set for launch
Weather permitting, the high-tech oceanography space lab will be launched aboard a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base from 1946 GMT, when a nine-minute window of opportunity for the launch opens.
Fifty-five minutes after take-off, it will reach its orbit some 1,335 kilometers (830 miles) above the Earth.
"We are set to fly," NASA launch manager Omar Baez said on the Spaceflight Now website.
Jason 2 is programmed to maneuver into the same orbit as its predecessor Jason 1, which was launched in 2001, and eventually replace the older craft.
Rising sea levels is one of the most serious consequences of global warming, threatening dozens of island nations and massively populated delta regions, especially in Asia and Africa.
Data from previous missions showed that sea levels have risen on average by 0.3 centimeters per year since 1993, or twice as much as they did in the whole of the 20th century, according to marine measurements.
But 15 years of data is not enough to draw accurate long-term conclusions, say scientists.
The three-year OSTM (Ocean Surface Topography Mission)/Jason 2 mission will help create the first multi-decade global record of the role of the ocean in climate change, according to scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
It will also provide more accurate forecasts of seasonal weather patterns, and near real-time data on ocean conditions.
"Without this data record, we would have no basis for evaluating change," said the mission's project scientist, Lee-Lueng Fu, in a statement.
Fu compared the sea level record begun in 1992 with the continuous measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide initiated in the 1950s at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
"The Mauna Loa data proved that carbon dioxide levels were indeed rising as had been predicted, and they were the basis for our understanding of the greenhouse effect," Fu said.
"The height of the ocean is another fundamental measurement of our climate. The key is to have rigorous, well-calibrated data collected over a long period of time."
Global sea levels are expected to rise in the coming years as the Earth warms, scientists have said.
The oceans act as the planet's thermostat, and absorb more than 80 percent of the heat from global warming, with the rest absorbed by the atmosphere, land and glaciers, NASA scientists have found.
Warming water and melting ice are the two main factors contributing to rising sea levels.
The OSTM/Jason 2 mission is a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the French National Center of Space Studies (CNES) and the European satellite agency EUMETSAT.
Jason 2's most powerful onboard instrument is CNES's Poseidon 3 radar altimeter, which can measure the height of ocean surfaces in relation to Earth's centre with a margin of error of 3.3 centimetres (1.3 inches).
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Nasa's eye on the 'violent cosmos'
| By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News |
A US space agency (Nasa) mission is about to go one better than Superman.
While the comic-book Kryptonian had to make do with X-ray vision, Nasa is set to launch a space telescope called Glast which will enable astronomers to view the Universe with "gamma-ray glasses".
Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light, vastly more energetic than the light we see with our eyes, or even X-rays.
The upper end of this energy range is almost unexplored in astronomy. So the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope will open up a high-energy frontier where important discoveries are almost guaranteed.
 |  If Glast were a piano, it would have about 23 octaves  Dr Steven Ritz, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center |
These include massive explosions that release as much energy in a second as the Sun will release over its 10-billion-year lifetime and supermassive black holes that hurl matter vast distances across space at close to the speed of light.
According to Dr Steven Ritz, project scientist for the Glast mission, one of the most interesting things about the gamma-ray sky is that it is always changing.
"If you look up at the night sky, once a decade or so you might see a comet. You might notice that things are moving incredibly slowly. But it looks fairly placid and unchanging," Dr Ritz told BBC News.
| WHAT GLAST WILL STUDY  Active galaxies and blazars Gamma-ray bursts Neutron stars, including pulsars Cosmic rays Gamma-ray background radiation Dark matter The early Universe |
"Supermassive black hole systems are flaring brightly, changing their brightness very quickly. You would see objects pulsating - what we call pulsars."
Dr Dave Thompson, one of the deputy project scientists on Glast, told BBC News: "Our Sun, except when it has a big solar flare, is pretty dim in gamma-rays - almost invisible. So we don't see objects like that. What we do see are things with lots of 'oomph' - lot's of energetic activity."
Historically, Glast follows in the footsteps of another American satellite, the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO). But Glast represents a major step up in capability, covering an incredible range of energy.
"If Glast were a piano, it would have about 23 octaves," explains Dr Ritz.
Dr Thompson adds: "One of the big mysteries left over from the CGRO mission is that half the sources were unidentified - we don't know what they are. That's something we'll be out to solve."
Keeping watch
Gamma-rays are far too energetic to capture in the conventional way. The main scientific instrument on Glast is a telescope without lenses or mirrors: the Large Area Telescope, or Lat. It uses technology adapted from ground-based particle accelerators.
It has 16 so-called tower modules assembled in a four-by-four array. Each tower contains layers of silicon detectors interleaved by thin sheets of tungsten foil.
| THE GLAST MISSION  Five-year mission, but spacecraft could last for 10 Will look at the Universe in highest-energy form of light Spacecraft is 2.8m (9.2ft) high and 2.4m (8.2ft) in diameter Orbits at an altitude of 565km (350 miles) The mission cost about $690m (£350m) Lat instrument scans entire sky in two orbits of Earth Could pick up about 200 cosmic explosions each year Mission is a team-up between Nasa and US Department of Energy |
The electron and positron travel down to a calorimeter which measures their energies - and therefore the energy of the original gamma-ray.
Lat's field of view is comparable to the human eye - seeing about 20% of the sky at a time.
"We are sweeping that field of view across the entire sky every three hours. Each region will be exposed for something like 30 minutes," Dr Ritz explains.
"We're keeping watch over the entire sky all the time. And over time, we are able to see dimmer and dimmer things. We're very excited because there are lots of questions as to how variable things are, and the variability is the key to how some of these incredibly powerful engines work."
The other instrument on Glast is the Glast Burst Monitor (GBM), designed specifically to shed light on gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).
Despite lasting only a few milliseconds to several minutes, these are the brightest gamma-ray phenomena known to science. Missions such as Nasa's Swift space telescope have greatly extended our knowledge.
GRBs lasting two seconds or longer are thought to be associated with the explosive deaths of massive stars. Those lasting less than two seconds may arise through a variety of events, such as the merger of two neutron stars, or the merger of a black hole and a neutron star.
But crucial questions remained unanswered.
"Some bursts have a mysterious delayed emission of high energy gamma-rays. That's something we're going to learn about on this mission," says Charles "Chip" Meegan of Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the chief scientist on the GBM.
The GBM will detect about 200 of these fleeting events each year, providing real-time locations for follow-up by ground-based and other space-based telescopes.
But Glast's "bread and butter" will be studying active galactic nuclei, or AGN for short. These are galaxies with extremely luminous cores powered by monster black holes.
"Just to give you a sense of the brightness, the power output in gamma-rays of one of these objects is equivalent to all the power of all the stars in an ordinary galaxy shining over all their wavelengths," Dr Ritz explains.
| [Pulsars] are some of the most exotic laboratories in the Universe: extreme gravity, extreme magnetic fields, extreme electric fields, high speeds Dr Dave Thompson, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center |
When these are pointed almost directly at Earth, they are known as "blazars": "In a sense, we're looking down the barrel of a gun," says Dave Thompson.
Despite the fantastic scale and speed of the jets, astronomers have not been able to explain how black holes interact with their environment to accelerate matter to more than 99% the speed of light.
Glast should also shed new light on pulsars, a neutron star emitting powerful beams of radiation that sweep across the Earth's line of sight like lighthouse beacons.
 GRBs can result from the collision of two neutron stars |
They are formed when the core of a massive star collapses and matter is squeezed so tightly that an amount of material the size of a sugar cube would weigh more than one billion tonnes - about the same as Mount Everest.
"We want to know how particles are accelerated in pulsars. They are some of the most exotic laboratories in the Universe: extreme gravity, extreme magnetic fields, extreme electric fields, high speeds - all of these things are found in pulsars," says Dave Thompson.
"So they are like cosmic labs for things we can't come close to producing on Earth."
The spacecraft will probe the origin of cosmic rays, particles from deep space that bombard the Earth's atmosphere. Glast will test the theory that these particles are created when massive stars explode in supernovas.
Searching for the identity of dark matter, one of the most persistent problems in physics, is also on Glast's to-do list. Despite accounting for 22% of everything in the Universe, the fundamental make-up of this dark "stuff" continues to elude physicists.
Unknown unknowns
A leading candidate is the weakly interacting massive particle, or Wimp. According to one model, when two Wimps collide, they destroy - or "annihilate" - one another. This should generate two gamma-ray photons with a combined energy equal to the mass of the original dark particles.
If astronomers see too many gamma-rays in a particular high-energy range, they will know that dark matter is involved.
This observation could be very difficult to make. Most of the radiation released by Wimp collisions should emerge over a broad range of energy. So this signal will swamped by the radiation produced by all other gamma-ray sources in the Universe.
But gamma-rays from dark matter annihilations should have a distinctive spectrum and distribution. They should clump together near the centres of galaxies, and this bias may aid their detection.
The most exciting discoveries, however, might be those that no one expects.
"Are there new classes of objects producing gamma-rays in ways we didn't know about? Are there types of things we know about but which we didn't know produced gamma-rays? These are some of the big questions," Dave Thompson tells me.
The mission's scientific promise has attracted researchers from six countries and a variety of scientific backgrounds.
"There are particle physicists and astrophysicists and astronomers all working together to design, build, operate and use the data from Glast," Dr Ritz explains.
"That's exciting, because it forms a nexus of these areas and great things come out of that."
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While the number of confirmed extrasolar planets is now approaching 300, the tally of extrasolar moons so far identified is still a rather disappointing zero.
Planets beyond our solar system are incredibly challenging to find. Moons are nearly impossible with today's technology, given that they are generally expected to be quite small compared to their parent worlds.
Even Earth's moon is invisible on the famous "pale blue dot" image obtained by Voyager 1 from the comparatively small distance of 3.7 billion miles — a photograph taken from well within our solar system.
But the search is not impossible, says Darren Williams, associate professor of physics and astronomy at Penn State Erie, the Behrend College. Williams believes a moon in orbit around a known extrasolar planet will also be detectable if we look hard enough with the right techniques.
"It will add a periodic component to the combined infrared signal" of the planet-moon system, he said.
Why it matters
Finding moons is more than just an academic quest to count them up. Planetary satellites can be highly interesting in their own right.
It's possible, for example, that life could exist on extrasolar moons, researchers say.
And it has been suggested that the ocean tides induced by Earth's moon may have been necessary to create the conditions for life on our planet to begin. At the least, the evolution of life has been affected by our moon's constant tugging.
"We certainly owe our present climate stability to the Moon and its stabilizing influence on the spin axis, but I'm not convinced that big moons are a requirement for simple or advanced life," Williams said. "I do think that Earth would have evolved advance life even with greater seasonal extremes, but it may have taken a different evolutionary path."
How to find them
Williams has modelled an Earth-like planet with moons of varying sizes and concluded that satellites as small as Earth's moon could be detectable in the infrared data, owing to their large surface temperature variations. By studying an extrasolar planet and building up a picture of that world's infrared output, any sizable moons present should be detectable in this way.
So far, however, no planet as small as Earth has been detected around another star. But astronomers expect that barrier to be broken soon. Future missions, such as NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder and The European Space Agency's Darwin, will have the ability to return the valuable data required both for finding other Earths and, Williams figures, some moons.
"The present goal is to build instruments capable of seeing something as large as the Earth or possibly Mars. Smaller Mercury- or Titan-sized objects fall below that first-order threshold," Williams said.
So could these missions cut to the chase and spot an extrasolar moon directly?
"They might, if the light collectors are big enough and if the moons are big enough. It will be easier to see moons that happen to transit the face of a star, such as what the space telescope Kepler will attempt to do starting next year," Williams explained. The space-based Kepler observatory will note dips in starlight caused by planets crossing in front of stars. If the planets are aligned in such a favourable manner, then thinking goes, moons ought to transit the stars too.
A similar conclusion is reached by Szab, Szatmry, Diveki and Simon in a paper published in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2005. They conclude that the Kepler mission should identify a few extrasolar moons using this method of detection.
Upon reflection
Yet even if we are not lucky enough to catch an extrasolar moon in transit, these future space-based planet hunters will be able to do the observational groundwork, in visible light and in the infrared, needed to search for satellites.
These planet finders will even be capable of detecting the glint of starlight reflecting off any oceans of liquid water an extrasolar planet may harbor.
"Water is extremely dark in the infrared except when the light reflects from the surface at a glancing angle," Williams told SPACE.com.
This glint will be most apparent when the planet is in a crescent phase, when the starlight hits the reflective surface at an oblique angle. (Mercury and Venus, as seen from Earth, go through phases similar to our moon. Observations of other planets around distant stars will undergo phasing, too.) Observing such reflections can help map the planet's thermal output and infer the distribution of oceans and continents.
Indeed the Mars Express spacecraft is set to observe crescent Earth's ocean reflection this summer and in fall of 2009 to help understand the phenomenon.
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Stranded in space? Japan's space lab too roomy
HOUSTON (Reuters) - The new Japanese laboratory on the International Space Station has one drawback: It's so spacious that astronauts floating in the middle of the room can get stranded, space shuttle Discovery's commander said on Friday.
"You have to be a little extra careful," commander Mark Kelly said during an inflight interview. "You can get out in the middle of it and you can't reach a handrail and you could possibly get stuck there for a little while."
When moving around in the weightlessness of space and the cramped confines of the space station, astronauts usually use handholds to pull themselves along or push off stationary objects and float a short distance to a new location.
The $1 billion Kibo lab, which was installed on Tuesday, is the largest component of the space station at 37 feet (11 meters) long and just over 14 feet wide.
Kelly said he and his crew, which delivered the Kibo laboratory during Discovery's ongoing mission to the space station, don't have much time for orbital antics.
The astronauts, who have been aboard since Monday, have conducted two spacewalks to install and outfit Kibo, and tackled a list of chores to help maintain and upgrade the $100 billion orbital outpost.
Kibo's storage room, which was delivered during the last shuttle mission in March, was due to be moved to its permanent hub on top of Kibo. A final spacewalk to work on the station's cooling system was planned for Sunday.
The work is not without its rewards.
"As a kid I used to dream of what it would be like to fly around like Superman," Kelly said. "That's one thing you can do here. ... You got to be careful because it's easy to get out of control. You can actually hurt yourself if you went too fast. But it's fun."
(Editing by Jim Loney)
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Japan's space lab about to get bigger
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The newest space station addition, a giant Japanese science lab, is about to get bigger.
After installing TV cameras and removing covers during a spacewalk Thursday, the astronauts at the linked shuttle and station got ready for their next challenge: attaching a storage shed to the bus-size lab. The 210-mile construction job was set for Friday afternoon.
The lab, named Kibo, Japanese for hope, is so big that it had to be split into three shuttle missions to get to the international space station. Its 14-foot storage shed was delivered in March and left in a temporary parking spot. The third and final section, a porch, will be launched next spring.
Spacewalkers Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan Jr. looked like puffy white dolls Thursday against the 37-foot-long, 14-foot-wide lab, which is now the space station's biggest room.
It was their second spacewalk in three days.
"I feel like I'm on a camping trip trying to pack up a wet tent on a Sunday morning," Fossum said as he wrestled with some of the lab's insulation. He and Garan removed thermal covers from the lab's robot arm and added them to a variety of attachment points.
As the spacewalkers toiled outside, their eight colleagues hauled more experiment racks into the billion-dollar lab, and flight controllers near Tokyo monitored the power systems.
"Lots of people at work in there," astronaut Kenneth Ham informed the spacewalkers.
"No, there's not. I don't see anybody," one of the spacewalkers said.
"They got tired of your banging on the roof," Ham answered.
Even with all the racks moving in, Kibo was still noticeably bigger than the eight other rooms at the space station. "We have not seen that much space in space since Skylab," Mission Control told the astronauts in a written message. Skylab was NASA's first space station, back in the 1970s.
Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts delivered and installed Kibo earlier in the week. There are now three labs at the orbiting complex, supplied by NASA, the European Space Agency and, now, the Japanese Space Agency.
On Saturday, the astronauts will test drive Kibo's 33-foot robot arm. The two TV cameras that were set up on the lab's exterior Thursday will be instrumental in those robot-arm operations.
And on Sunday, one final spacewalk will be conducted to replace an empty nitrogen-gas tank at the space station. Fossum and Garan got a head start on that work Thursday.
Just before the seven-hour spacewalk ended, Fossum checked the solar wing rotating joint on the space station's left side. He found streaks of white grease, but no metal shavings like those that are clogging an identical joint on the right side.
Flight director Annette Hasbrook said the left joint looked to be in fine shape and noted that the leaked grease actually may be preventing a buildup of friction between the moving parts.
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