Shuttle Flight Scheduled For July

The space shuttle is going to fly again, this time in July.

"There was a strong, concerted opinion from several folks that we should wait until we have a good design on these pieces of foam and then change them before we go flying," Mr. Hale said, "That's not without merit and we considered it very strongly.

"But at the end of the day, it is appropriate to make one change at a time with the biggest problem we have, and then work our way to the next situation."

Reducing falling fuel tank debris has been a priority for NASA since the loss of the shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003. Foam insulation falling from the tank during the launching damaged Columbia's heat shield, causing the destruction of the craft and the deaths of seven astronauts as the ship attempted to return through the atmosphere from a science mission.

When Discovery flew last July on the first mission since Columbia, a greatly reduced but hazardous amount of foam still fell from its redesigned tank during the launching. Afterward, engineers removed more than 37 pounds of foam that formed two air ramps, or deflectors, that protected pressurized fuel lines and a tray guiding cables down the side of the tank, places from which the biggest pieces of foam fell in the last mission.

Mr. Hale said removing the ramps was "the largest aerodynamic change that we have made since the shuttle first flew" and its effects needed to be well understood before making more modifications.

"We're in a flight test program," he said. "When you make a major change, you should fly that major change and if you have to make additional changes then you make them after the flight."

Mr. Hale said a major factor determining when to launch Discovery is completing wind tunnel tests to confirm computer predictions that it is safe to fly the fuel tank with the large foam ramps removed. A final determination may not be made before the middle of June, he said.

There must be enough political pressure to keep this thing flying in piste of the significant risks. I can't watch any more. It's going to be the annual heart-attck-watch for the next few years as they keep flying these birds.

The Moon Is An Expensive Mistress

NASA says the moon's gotta pay for its own way.

Shana Dale, NASA's deputy administrator, said one clear goal was to do business.

"The teams recognize the critical importance of space commerce -- having real companies going to the moon and making money," Dale said at a telephone news conference. "The government needs to be a trailblazer and enabler (with) a desire to see commerce take off."

Other essentials for a global space strategy include public involvement and participation by international partners, Dale said.

The strategy workshop was the first of several scheduled for this year that aim to set out specific goals for future space missions to the moon and Mars, as described by President George W. Bush in 2004 in a sweeping "Vision for Space Exploration."

Delivered less than a year after the fatal 2003 shuttle Columbia accident, Bush called for a human return to the moon by 2020 and eventually a human flight to Mars.

Since the Columbia disaster, in which seven astronauts died, only one space shuttle has flown, and the shuttle fleet is to be retired by 2010.

A new Crew Exploration Vehicle meant to return humans to the lunar surface is still on the drawing board, and may not be ready until 2012 or later.

The last time humans went to the moon was aboard NASA's Apollo 17 in 1972. Since then, China has begun its own human space program and also sent representatives to this meeting, though Dale said they apparently did not attend the smaller working sessions.

Aside from the central issues of commerce, international cooperation and public engagement, the working groups also noted the need for lunar law early in the process.

David Beatty of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said an international legal framework would be helpful in the area of property rights, interoperability standards and making hardware from various countries work together.

Such laws could govern more prosaic issues as well, Laurie Lesin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said.

"At our group, we did mention once briefly how we're going to decide which side of the road we drive on, on the moon," Lesin said with a laugh.

Just reporting...

Gorby Goes To Bat

Solar Is The Way, He Says...
Mikhail Gorbachev who must be one of the most outstanding figures of late the Twentieth Century is pitching for better energy policy. Specifically, going Solar.

GENEVA (AFP) - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev urged the world's biggest industrialized nations to set up a 50-billion-dollar (44-billion-euro) fund to support solar power, warning that oil or nuclear energy were not viable energy sources for the future.

Gorbachev -- who chairs an environmental thinktank, Green Cross International -- called on leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations to invest in renewable energy sources, in a statement marking the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

As leader of the Soviet Union in 1986, Gorbachev led the immediate response to the world's worst nuclear disaster, which led to at least 4,000 deaths and sent a radioactive cloud over parts of Europe.

The Green Cross proposals were contained in a letter sent to the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations who are due to meet in Russia in July. Some of the proposals were reported last week in the Financial Times.

"This idea reflects our vision of a way of helping the energy-impoverished in the developing world, while creating concentrations of solar energy in cities that could be used to prevent blackouts," Gorbachev said.

Solar energy would also "lower electricity bills, and would provide a source in the future for generating renewable hydrogen fuels," he added.

"The fund could easily be raised by cutting subsidies for fossil fuels like oil and coal."

Rising oil prices and supply concerns, as well as the growing need to combat global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, have raised the profile and economic viability of some renewable energy sources.

Those concerns have also sparked renewed interest in nuclear power as a source of climate-friendly energy.

The debate has been amplified by the need for some European countries to plan soon for the replacement of earlier generations of nuclear power stations that are due to come to the end of their lifespan in the next two decades.

But Gorbachev has said that nuclear power "doesn't add up economically, environmentally or socially".

"Nuclear power is neither the answer to modern energy problems nor a panacea for climate change challenges," he claimed.

Green Cross said nuclear technology requires huge amounts of initial capital, while decommissioning plants is hugely expensive and costs continue to be incurred long after a nuclear power station is closed.

Direct subsidies to nuclear energy in the United States totalled 115 billion dollars between 1947 and 1999 with a further 145 billion dollars in indirect subsidies, according to the non-governmental agency.

It said they dwarfed those spent on solar or wind power.

Solar energy is one of those beautiful promises that never seeems to take off. There's way too much invested in combustion aroudn the world. At least Gorbachev is pithing for a better energy regime than continuing carbon combustion.

NASA"s New Bird

It Could Be As Early As 2011...
Michael Griffin, the NASA administrator has been talking to Congress about the next program to replace the aging Shuttle fleet.

Currently, the target date for building a new vehicle is 2014.

With his pitch to Congress, Griffin underscored a point he has made previously about completing the spaceship on a faster time frame.

Pressed by Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., Griffin acknowledged an additional $1 billion could accelerate the program's completion.

The shuttle is to be retired in 2010, and lawmakers are concerned about when a replacement will be ready.

"If money were not an issue — going back to Apollo kinds of days — then I think it would be no technical problem to have an operational system available in five to six years," Griffin said after testifying before a subcommittee that oversees NASA spending.

Which is nice to know.

President Bush's budget calls for a 3.2 percent increase in NASA spending over last year. The House and Senate have authorized an additional $1.1 billion, but that is only a guide. The money must be appropriated by both chambers.

A Senate appropriations subcommittee was to scheduled to meet Wednesday to consider the proposed increase.

NASA will be shelving its three aging space shuttles in four years. The next generation of spaceships is supposed to carry astronauts to the moon by 2018 and eventually to Mars.

The so-called "flight gap" between the shuttles and their replacement could affect research and American space competitiveness, lawmakers said.

"We don't want a hiatus because we think that puts us in a security risk position," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas).

What Hutchison is really saying is he doesn't want a break in the flow of government money into Aerospace industries. Well, we'll see if he has any influence. The old shuttle? That's bad juju.

Second Scramjet Successful

Here's the Link.

Australian scientists have developed an advanced supersonic jet engine that could profoundly revolutionize warfare and jet travel. The Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday that a University of Queensland team headed by Professor Allan Paull launched their HyShot program -- a two-stage Terrier-Orion rocket carrying their innovative supersonic scramjet -- skyward more than 200 miles to a height of more than 180 miles before it crashed as planned into the desert 250 miles down range.

Scramjets use atmospheric oxygen to burn hydrogen fuel. If such engines were fitted to commercial aircraft they could eventually cut the traveling time between Sydney and London to two hours.

Within a decade. Think of the economic impact of that one!

Scramjet Tests At Woomera

I always complain we don't have a proper space programme in Australia, but there's the scramjet research going on, which occasionaly surfaces in the headlines.

A supersonic jet engine known as a scramjet, which could dramatically reduce the time of air travel around the world, has been tested in South Australia's far north.

Seconds after the jet set off, there was a supersonic boom across the Woomera test range.

It travelled more than 300 kilometres into the air before crashing ten minutes later, 400 kilometres down the range.

The University of Queensland is heading an international team testing the scramjet technology, which travels up to 8,000 kilometres an hour - almost eight times the speed of sound.

Team leader Allan Paul says the flight went well but it will take several months to analyse the data they have collected.

He says the team is happy with the result so far.

"I haven't seen them on such a high for a long time," he said.

"It's been a hard couple of weeks, in fact it's been hard since Christmas, and the team has really responded well."

He says the launch went according to plan but there were a few tense moments.

"You're looking at it as it goes up, and you're worried if it's going to make it," he said.

"It's probably a very unnerving feeling actually."

Dr Paul says they should have some preliminary results by tomorrow.

That's kind of cool that the scramjet project is still going on.
What's really interesting is that JAXA have their own scramjet engine ready to be tested in Australia:

The test in Australia was the first of three flights planned for this year by the international Hyshot consortium.

Another Hyshot engine designed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) will be next, followed in June by an engine capable of reaching Mach 10 designed by the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO).

The success of the weekend's test spurred researchers from the University of Queensland to run a second scramjet test in South Australia this week.

Scramjets were first tested in 2001, but the trial failed as the rocket carrying the engine flew off course.

Hmm. That'ss interesting. I did see that Woomera was one of the places where JAXA did their experiments.

Hard To Do

...Rockets Of Any Size
After having seen the JAXA facilities and spoken to the folks who do rockets, I can appreciate how diffciult it actually can be to launch rockets. So when I noticed this, I thought it was worth posting.

March 25, 2006— The low-cost, built-from-scratch Falcon 1 rocket faltered a minute after liftoff on Friday, dashing the hopes of Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk that after four years and roughly $100 million, his creation would be spared the fate that awaits most debut rocket flights.

"We had a successful liftoff and Falcon made it well clear of the launch pad, but unfortunately the vehicle was lost later in the first-stage burn," Musk, the founder of California-based Space Exploration Technologies, wrote in a blog shortly after the 5:30 p.m. ET liftoff from a remote launch site in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands.

The cause of the failure was not known. Claimed in the accident was a $750,000 science satellite built by U.S. Air Force Academy cadets that was to monitor how space plasma disrupts communications and navigation satellite signals.

Musk, who made his fortune designing and selling the electronic services firms PayPal and Zip2, had said many times prior to the launch that it would take more than one failure to derail his plans to build and fly a family of low-cost, mostly reusable rockets.

At least the man is willing to try.
The Falcon rocket is powered by Liquid Oxygen and Kerosene. It is multi-staged and this version was to have two stages. If you read the article, they discuss a nine stage model.
Looking at the photo above, the control facilities seem awfully close to the blast off area...

Back From JAXA Part 2

Rocket Science Ain't Rocket Science
The old adage "it's not exactly rocket science" implies that Rocket Science is difficult. Well, it's Ballistics so it's not like the science of it is much harder than High School Physics. Even the engineering is something quite comprehensible. So why is rocketry so hard? It turns out that launching rockets is difficult because so many things have to be coordinatedd perfectly; so System Engineering as it is known is the bit in rocketry that is truly difficult.

Here's an example. The main engines of the HII-A rocket consists of Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Hydrogen engines. The explosive power is derived from controlled combustion of the LOX and Liquid H2, and this much is high school chemistry. The actual appartus of making and storing LOX and Liquid Hydrogen are also old chemical engineering problems. The fuels must be refrigerated to -150degrees celsius to keep them liquid.

The thing is, with rockets, the super-cooled liquid fuel has to be delivered to the fuel tank of the rocket on the launch pad without leaks and breakages. Organising it so that the rocket arrives for the launch window in time with the fuel in place to be poured in to the rocket's fuel tank takes a chunk of system enginnering, and in turn this is why you build a space center.

Tanegashima Space Center
The most remarkable aspect of the Tanegashima Space Center is how far from the centre of civilization it feels. If not for the constant references to the space center and its rockets, the township of Minamitane is one of the furthest outposts from Tokyo. The place is historic in its own way, forever linked ballistics as the place where the Portuguese brought the musket to Japan; and it is here ballistics gets a second breath in the story of Tanegashima.

Tanegashima Space Center houses the facilities where they do the final assembly of the rocket; do the launch; but also test engines and assemble satellites. It's a big sprawling complex built on one of the most beautiful shorelines.

Surprisingly, the staff at Tanegashima are young. If you're used to meeting middle-aged men running institutions in Japan, you will get a rude shock here. There are many young men and women involved in important tasks; they're not window dressing. They have their degrees in rocket engineering and they are filled with hopes and ambition for the space program. One gets a sense of dynamism and activity quite unlike the stodgy bureaucratic feeling one gets from dealing with the main JAXA office. These operatives mean business. At one point I felt I missed my calling - I should've done rocket engineering.

What Is JAXA Like?
This is strictly my experience and therefore my own observation:
JAXA as an organisation is still very young.
You talk to the PR department and mostly they are enthisastic. You talk to the people on the ground actually running the rocket systems and they are incredibly enthusaistic. Even the big boss of JAXA has a long term vision as to where Japan's space program should be going.

Alas the thing that lets JAXA down is the level of management that is still a holdover from NASDA. It's really hard to get them to understand how important Public Relations can be for a space program. So even with the help of the PR department, you end up hitting strange, arbitrary walls that are set up by people who would rather keep things simple in their own minds by saying 'no'. Unfortunately, that's not good enough when Discovery Channel is spending big bucks to give you a 50minute commercial of your wares.

Some departments are very happy to show you what they are worrking on> Others say irrational things like "we can show it to you but you can't shoot it."
Well, what's the good of that? It's that kind of weird response that makes you think, "how seriously do they take the media?"

Indeed , it's symptomatic of large organisations in Japan that they do really bad PR, so JAXA are not an exception when their PR department can't convince their department heads to show off their wares. While I sympathise with the actual PR people I encountered the long term outlook on it is not very encouraging. If anything, it seemed they were drawing the wrong lessons and conclusions.

Other than that, JAXA is a young, dynamic organisation doing amazing things.

Back From JAXA Part 1

Here's that Photo Again...

33 Days On The Road - What Did I Find?
It was a tough little road trip, hopping from island to island, covering 2 documentaries for a very big documentary company. We went from Sydney to Narita to Okinawa (via Nagoya), then to Tanegashima (via Kagoshima) where they have the Space Center, then to Nagoya (via Kagoshimaa once more) and onto Tsukuba (via Narita), and then back to Sydney from Narita.

So Which bits exactly were JAXA? All of it except for Okinawa and Nagoya - Nagoya is where Mitsubishi Heavy Industries build rockets for JAXA. JAXA scatters itself widely across the Japanese archipelago. They have observations stations in Okinawa, and they have high altitude engine test-firing facilities, north of Sendai.

JAXA is what the old NASDA and a sundry bunch of organisations has been rolled into in ordert o be a more unified organisation. In the wake of the HII Rocket program being shutdown, a total re-organisation took place. Installled at the head of the organisation was Keiichi Tachikawa and theoretically, the whole organisation is meant to have unified into one big space development agency.

The Launch
The HII-A No. 9 launch we saw on the 18th of February represents a milestone accomplishment in many areas for JAXA. The No.9 launch delivered the largest payload into orbit, and it was part of a double launch that happened within a month of the 23rd January launch of the No.8 vehicle. In other words, it was the first time rockets were assembled parallel to one another in the big Vehicle Assembly Building and wheeled out to launch one after the other.

A lot of emphasis was made by the publicity people that what wass significant in this process was how two rockets were launched in quick succession; much more so than the issue of payload. Rocketry, it turns out is not comlex in its concept or in its component parts. If anything theey use tried and tested materials and parts. What is truly cutting edge about any rocket technology lies in the system engineering aspect, managing the diverse technological needs that go into successfully organising and assembling for launch. At the critical stages, at 270 seconds from laucnh the system goes into full automatic. People take shelter in the blockhouse or over 3.2 kilometres away.

The Rocket
The HII-A Rocket is the successor to the HII rocket. The HI Rocket was a rocket made mostly of imported technology. So the HII was developed during the 1990s with fully domestic Japanese technology. The problem was it turned out to be a very complex machine with too many parts, which in turn meant it was a very expensive machine to fire. This meant it was more vulenrable to failure and so when the HII program was cancelled, a concerted effort was made to streamline the cost of the rocket as well as reduce the number of parts. The result is the HII-A rocket.

The HII-A rocket has far fewer parts than its predecessor. The most important 'part reduction 'took place in the black ring you see in the above ph0to. A quick way to tell apart the HII and HII-A is the 'interstage section'. The HII had a yellow metal ring. In the HII-A, it has now been replaced by a composite black material that has 80% fewer parts.

The payload of the HII-A rocket is 10 tons for Low Earth Orbit and 4 tonnes for Geostationary Orbit. In the future, they are hoping to make the HII-B rocket with up to 16.5 tons of payload to Geostationary Orbit.

The HII-A rocket is a 2 stage rocket with a main drive using a Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Hydrogen drive. In addition to the liquid fuel are the Solid Rocket Boosters and the secondary strap on boosters that fire solid rocket at launch. What makes the HII-A interesting is how the second stage engine is turned off and on during its flight. The rocket itself weighs in at 285tons, but the combined thrust of the first stage liquid fuel engine and the boosters is in the vicinity of 500 tons. With the HII-A rocket, Japan's aerospace lift capacity matches that of the ESA's Arianne 5, and the USA's Delta. What's remarkable about it is the cost with which they achieve their lift-offs. However, I'll leave that discussion for tomorrow.

From The Road

After a 12 day stay on Tanegashima Island, I have emerged from the IT Blackhole that has kept me from posting up these pictures.

I really have to knuckle down and sort through some photos and tell the tale of how I came to see Japan's HII-A Flight 9 launched into space. In the mean time, please enjoy these official pickies from JAXA.

By the way, here's a video clip I took.

REVISIONS IN NEED OF REVISING: WHAT WENT WRONG IN THE IRAQ WAR

This is a report from the Strategic Studies Institute. I've only started reading it and already it has won me over:

...critics also have neglected the larger lesson thatthere are certain limits to
what military power can accomplish. Forcertain purposes, like the creation
of a
liberal democratic societythat will be a model for others, military
power is a
blunt instrument,destined by its very nature to give rise to
unintended and
unwelcomeconsequences. Rather than “do it better next time,”
a better lesson
is“don’t do it at all.”

The full report is here.

Off On Sunday

Just a quick note to let you all know I fly out on Sunday 5th Feb and return on 9th Mar. It's the longest roadtrip I've been on. Don't knoww if can post aanything while I'm over there. I will take my laptop with me, so we'll see.

There have been some amazing changes of schedule within that block but as of this minute I think we're on top off it ... right now. Of course it may blow up on us tomorrow morning, but for now, we're on top. Yay.

So if you don't hear from me this month, apologies in advance.
Peace,
Art

H2-A Launches Successfully

H2-Away
After an anxious night of waiting, the H2-A rocket made its launch today at 10:33 as re-scheduled.

宇宙航空研究開発機構（ＪＡＸＡ）は２４日午前１０時３３分、Ｈ２Ａロケット８号機を鹿児島県南種子町の種子島宇宙センターから打ち上げた。約１６分後、搭載した陸域観測技術衛星（ＡＬＯＳ）「だいち」を計画通り分離し、打ち上げは成功した。ＪＡＸＡは２月中旬にも大型ロケット２機の打ち上げを予定している。１カ月間に３機連続の打ち上げは国内初で、衛星打ち上げ市場参入など、日本の宇宙開発の今後を占う試金石として注目を集めている。
　◇２月中旬の２機打ち上げに弾み
　ロケットは太平洋上を東南に向かって上昇。予定通り高度約７００キロで第２段ロケットから衛星を分離、衛星は地球を南北に周回する軌道に乗った。今後、観測機器の動作確認などをして、約３カ月後に運用を始める予定。
　８号機は当初、昨年９月に打ち上げ予定だったが、衛星に不具合が相次ぎ、今月１９日に延期された。この影響でＪＡＸＡは８号機のほか、２月１５日に種子島宇宙センターからＨ２Ａ９号機を、同１８日に内之浦宇宙空間観測所（鹿児島県肝付町）からＭ５ロケット８号機を打ち上げることになった。Ｈ２Ａ８号機は今月１９日の打ち上げも機器などの不具合や天候不良で延期されていた。
　今回の打ち上げ費用は約１０１億円で、衛星開発費は約５４７億円。【河津啓介】
　【ことば】Ｈ２Ａロケット　宇宙開発事業団（現ＪＡＸＡ）が開発した２段式ロケット。全長５３メートル、重さ３２１トン（衛星除く）。燃料の液体水素を液体酸素と反応させて推進力を得る。地球を回る高度３００キロの軌道に約１０トンの大型衛星を打ち上げられる能力がある。固体補助ロケットの種類や数を変えることで、さまざまな重さの衛星に対応できる。第１段ロケットを大型化し、国際宇宙ステーションへ物資を補給する１７トン級の輸送機を打ち上げられる「Ｈ２Ｂ」を開発中。
　【ことば】陸域観測技術衛星「だいち」　高度７００キロから地表を観測し、２万５０００分の１の地図作成のための地形データ収集などを行う。４６日ごとに同じ地点を同じ時間帯に観測できる軌道を回る。地表の２・５メートルのものを見分ける光学センサーなど３種類のセンサーを搭載。昼夜、天候に関係なく観測したり、災害時、３日以内に観測したい地点で緊急観測する機能も備えている。重さ約４トンで、国内打ち上げ衛星で最重量。

陸域観測技術衛星「だいち」を搭載したＨ２Ａロケット８号機。打ち上げから約１６分半後に、高度約７００キロで分離され、地球を南北に約１００分で回る軌道に投入された（２４日午前、種子島宇宙センター）（時事通信社）12時03分更新

And this is good because it means it won't impact on our shooting schedule. It also means the thing works pretty well so weather permitting, she'll fly according to schedule on the 15th of Feb too.

Pluto Probe Launch

Finally, the probe is launched and underway towards Pluto.

According to the NASA press release, the Atlas V rocket carrying the vehicle lifted off at 14:00 EST. It separated from the solid fuel "kick motor" a tad under 45 minutes later. Five minutes after that, radio signals from New Horizons confirmed that all was well.

Dr Colleen Hartman, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, enthused: "Today, NASA began an unprecedented journey of exploration to the ninth planet in the solar system. Right now, what we know about Pluto could be written on the back of a postage stamp. After this mission, we'll be able to fill textbooks with new information."
Dr. Alan Stern, New Horizons' principal investigator, indulged in a bit of flag-waving with: "The United States of America has just made history by launching the first spacecraft to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt beyond. No other nation has this capability. This is the kind of exploration that forefathers, like Lewis and Clark 200 years ago this year, made a trademark of our nation."

I'm glad that one's underway. The JAXA launch is now sitting on the pad, waiting to go tomorrow morning.



宇宙航空研究開発機構は２３日、陸域観測技術衛星「だいち」を搭載したＨ２Ａロケット８号機の打ち上げを、２４日午前１０時３３分に再延期すると発表した。

２３日の打ち上げに向けて最終的な準備を進めていた２２日深夜に、衛星を保護するカバー内の空調温度を監視する地上のシステムが、温度の上限を上回っているとの警告を発したため。

　同機構が、カバー内に送り込まれる空気の温度を別の複数のセンサーで測定したところ、正常な温度だった。同機構では「監視システムに誤った温度が設定されていることが判明したが、なぜそうなったかは不明」としている。同機構では、温度の監視を目視に切り替え、２４日の打ち上げに臨むとしている。

　８号機は当初１９日に打ち上げる計画だったが、ロケットの送信機に不具合が見つかって延期された。今回で２度目の延期となった。

The gist of that one is that there were some ground to tower problems.
So we'll see how that one goes.

We Are Stardust

Mission personnel remove a canister, bottom section, containing comet dust as they dismantle the Stardust capsule in a clean room Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006, at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The seven-year project collected particles from a comet. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

We Have Fallen
NASA's Stardust Mission has returned to Earth. After a seven year mission to collect comet debris, NASA are describing the return of the stardust probe as a victory.

The Stardust capsule survived a fiery plunge through the atmosphere early Sunday, parachuting to the Utah salt flats. It bounced three times in soft mud before coming to rest on its side.

The landing chipped off a piece of the capsule's heat shield, meant to protect it as it re-enters Earth. But the capsule and its canister were in otherwise good shape, said Joe Vellinga of Lockheed Martin, which built the capsule.

"Everything is very clean. It looks very pristine," Vellinga said Monday.

Stardust's homecoming with the first comet particles ever captured in space was a relief for NASA, whose Genesis space probe carrying solar wind particles crashed and split open in 2004 after its parachutes failed to open. Despite the accident, scientists were able to salvage some of the fragile solar samples for analysis.

Two years ago the other probe just went bung on the way down and that was that. It's also the first bit of space rock to be brought back to Earth since the last Apollo Mission to my knowledge.

Getting Back To The Garden
I'm just going to jot down some headline that I've been unable to write about here. Well, it's life, y'know, I got busy. :)

The Propsed probe to Pluto is about to be launched.

It will be the fastest spacecraft ever launched, zooming past the moon in nine hours and reaching Jupiter in just over a year at a speed nearly 100 times that of a jetliner.

Its target is Pluto - the solar system's last unexplored planet, 4.8 billion kilometres from Earth. And the New Horizons spacecraft, set for liftoff on Tuesday, could reach it within nine years.

One of the outcomes of the Space Shuttle scuttlebut and dealys has been that many of the scheduled payloads haave not made their way into orbit. For instance, this European space laboratory here.

The US shuttle is the only vehicle that can carry large equipment to the International Space Station and its grounding has left the European Space Agency wondering how else it might send the Columbus research centre into orbit.

"What we hope is for the Columbus to be launched as quickly as possible," Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency, told a news conference on Monday.

US space agency Nasa halted shuttle flights for more than two years after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas in February 2003, killing seven astronauts.

It launched the Discovery shuttle last July but the fleet was quickly grounded again because of new problems.
The next shuttle flight is tentatively scheduled for May. But Dordain said there are other countries with scientific projects waiting to catch a ride.

"There are others in the queue, notably the Japanese who want their laboratory launched as quickly as possible," he said.

So that's been drag.

Here's an interesting story on doing EVA.

The heavy reliance on orbital hardhat crews to build the station has raised the stakes for each journey out of the hatch. Now "assembly" walks, which last 6 to 8 hours, are packed with chores, and an unfinished job could affect construction for years to come.

During his time in space, the dangers were secondary, says astronaut and four-time spacewalker Michael Foale. "I'm not anxious about my life. I'm anxious about the task."

There is so much work to do that spacewalkers, who always go outside in pairs, no longer tackle all their tasks together. Instead they split up and may not see each other for hours, "a lonely feeling ... especially at night," Tanner admits.

Adding to the crew's burden, the chill of space will ruin some cold-sensitive parts of the station if they are not quickly installed. So spacewalkers race the clock, knowing that a $500-million piece of equipment could be a pile of space junk if they dawdle.

"The mental stress shouldn't be underplayed," says consultant Leroy Chiao, who left the astronaut corps in December. "When you're out there doing the work, you can't help but feel the pressure."

It's tough up there.
Here's another on EVA, this time with a cosmonautical flavour:

In a country where vodka is consumed in industrial quantities, officials at Russia's medical space research establishment said the consumption of alcohol in space was not only a right but a positive advantage.

"Folks are flying in orbit for half a year or so," a spokesman said. "They do tons of work. Especially exhausting are space walks where they can lose several kilos in several hours. That's why, many of us think that it won't be that bad to have a little drink to replenish one's strength."

Russian cosmonauts and space officials welcomed the idea of lifting the ban, but cautioned that weightlessness multiplies the effect of alcohol.

Yuri Lanchakov, commander of the Cosmonaut Corps at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow, told the Sunday Telegraph: "Twenty grams of a good cognac [about one pub measure] would be good." He intends to issue a tot to anyone returning after a space walk, and to allow astronauts to drink alcohol to toast New Year.

Champagne, however, will remain prohibited because the pressure could turn bottles into small missiles if opened in the gravity-free atmosphere of the space station.

An official at Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) said: "Not only could the recoil be unpredictable, but the bottle could explode even before you open it."

He welcomed the idea of allowing alcohol on the space station but said "everything should be in moderation" - perhaps remembering how in 1994 President Boris Yeltsin failed to emerge from his plane at Shannon Airport in Ireland after imbibing too much.

And that about wraps it up.

My JAXA Trip

I've been rather busy and unable to post too much stuff here, so my deepest apologies.

It's been on the cards for a month now, but it's suddenly looking solid. I'm going to tag along on a shoot covering the 15th of Feb launch of the HII-A Rocket from Tanegashima Space Center (amongst other things). So hopefully, I'll be able to bring back some pictures for your all to see, andd hopefully some interesting insigght into Japan's Space Program which got revamped.

The more I reflect on it, the more I feel Australia let go of something big when they actually had Woomera running sending satellites into space and then stopped following it up. Australia was the fourth nation into space and it has to be said that we're nowhere near clawing back the lost distance. The lack of vision in this country is dissappointing on both sides of the political fence and there doesn't seem to be a single politician even remotely conversant with Space policy beyond satellite bandwidths. It's truly pathetic.
Anyway, that's my rant of the day.

Cat Evolution Unlocked

Hi Gravity Traininng In This Thing? No Way!
That confused look on the kitten in the clothes drier isn't a look of consternation; it's more like the confusion of being annointed most successful lineage of the entire felidae 'cat' family.

Researchers have gained a major insight into the evolution of cats by showing how they migrated to new continents and developed new species as sea levels rose and fell.

About nine million years ago - two million years after the cat family first appeared in Asia - these successful predators invaded North America by crossing the Beringian land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska, a team of geneticists writes in the journal Science today.

Later, several American cat lineages returned to Asia. With each migration, evolutionary forces morphed the pantherlike patriarch of all cats into a rainbow of species, from ocelots and lynxes to leopards, lions and the lineage that led to the most successful cat of all, even though it has mostly forsaken its predatory heritage: the cat that has induced people to pay for its board and lodging in return for frugal displays of affection.

This new history of the family, known as Felidae, is based on DNA analyses of the 37 living species performed by Warren E. Johnson and Stephen J. O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute and colleagues elsewhere.

Before DNA, taxonomists had considerable difficulty in classifying the cat family. The fossil record was sparse and many of the skulls lacked distinctiveness. One scheme divided the family into Big Cats and Little Cats. Then, in 1997, Dr. Johnson and Dr. O'Brien said they thought most living cats fell into one of eight lineages, based on the genetic element known as mitochondrial DNA.

Having made further DNA analyses, the researchers have drawn a full family tree that assigns every cat species to one of the lineages. They have also integrated their tree, which is based solely on changes in DNA, with the fossil record. The fossils, which are securely dated, allow dates to be assigned to each fork in the genetic family tree.

Knowing when each species came into existence, the Johnson-O'Brien team has been able to reconstruct a series of at least 10 intercontinental migrations by which cats colonized the world. The cheetah, for instance, now found in Africa, belongs to a lineage that originated in North America and some three million years ago migrated back across the Bering land bridge to Asia and then Africa.

Dr. O'Brien said the cats were very successful predators, second only to humans, and quickly explored new territories as opportunity arose. Sea levels were low from 11 million to 6 million years ago, enabling the first modern cats, in paleontologists' perspective (saber-tooth tigers are ancient cats), to spread from Asia west into Africa, creating the caracal lineage, and east into North America, generating the ocelot, lynx and puma lineages.

The leopard lineage appeared around 6.5 million years ago in Asia. The youngest of the eight lineages, which led eventually to the domestic cat, emerged some 6.2 million years ago in Asia and Africa, either from ancestors that had never left Asia or more probably from North American cats that had trekked back across the Bering land bridge.

Sea levels then rose, confining each cat species to its own continent, but sank again some three million years ago, allowing a second round of cat migrations. It was at this time that the ancestors of the cheetah and the Eurasian lynxes colonized the Old World from the New.

Chris Wozencraft, an authority on the classification of carnivorous mammals, said the new cat family tree generally agreed with one that he had just published in Mammal Species of the World, a standard reference. Dr. Wozencraft, a taxonomist at Bethel College in Indiana, based his classification on fossil and zoological information, as well as on DNA data already published by Dr. O'Brien's laboratory.

Cat fossils are very hard to tell apart, because they differ mostly just in size, and the DNA data emerging over the last decade has helped bring the field from confusion to consensus, Dr. Wozencraft said.

Despite their evolutionary success, most of the large cats are in peril because their broad hunting ranges have brought them into collision with people. "With the exception of the house cat and a few other small cat species, nearly every one of the 37 species is considered endangered or threatened," Dr. Johnson and Dr. O'Brien write in the current Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics.

Right.
Let's face it, the common housecat is more likely to go to space than any of the big cats - but that applies to dogs, pigs, chickens and most anything that is domesticated. Or maybe, put simply there's something in being domesticated that gives unnatural survival advantages to a species called human protection.

Second Year For Rovers

Rover Enter Second Year On Mars
Spirit and Opportunity are no longer Rookies.

In two years, they have traveled a total of seven miles. Not impressed? Try keeping your car running in a climate where the average temperature is 67 below zero and where dust devils can reach 100 mph.

These two golf cart-sized vehicles were only expected to last three months.

The rover Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 3, 2004, and Opportunity followed on Jan. 24. Since then, they’ve set all sorts of records and succeeded in the mission’s main assignment: finding geologic evidence that water once flowed on Mars.

Part of the reason for their long survival is pure luck. Their lives were extended several times by dust devils that blew away dust that covered their solar panels, restoring their ability to generate electricity.

Like most Earth-bound vehicles, these identical robots have their own personalities.

The overachieving Opportunity dazzled scientists from the start. It eclipsed its twin by making the mission’s first profound discovery — evidence of water at or near the surface eons ago that could have implications for life.

The rock-climbing Spirit went down in the history books by becoming the first robot to scale an extraterrestrial hill. Last summer, it completed a daredevil climb to the summit of Husband Hill — as tall as the Statue of Liberty — despite fears that it might not survive the weather.

The little machines just keep going like the duracell bunny. Watch out for the 'Sophomore jinx', I guess.

Festive Season Space News

Titan Has A Halo



The thick distended atmosphere gives Titan a halo effect.

Images taken using blue, green and red spectral filters were used to create this enhanced-color view; the color images were combined with an ultraviolet view that makes the high-altitude, detached layer of haze visible. The ultraviolet part of the composite image was given a purplish hue to match the bluish-purple color of the upper atmospheric haze seen in visible light.

Small particles that populate high hazes in Titan's atmosphere scatter short wavelengths more efficiently than longer visible or infrared wavelengths, so the best possible observations of the detached layer are made in ultraviolet light.

The images in this view were taken by the Cassini narrow-angle camera on May 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Titan and at a sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 137 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.

So that's the Cassini update of the month. A picture.

These Are The Rules
The rules for Space Tourism, that is.

More than 120 pages of proposed rules, released by the government Thursday, regulate the future of space tourism. This don't-forget list touches on everything from passenger medical standards to preflight training for the crew.

Before taking a trip that literally is out of this world, companies would be required to inform the "space flight participant" — known in more earthly settings as simply a passenger — of the risks. Passengers also would be required to provide written consent before boarding a vehicle for takeoff.

Legislation signed a year ago by President Bush and designed to help the space industry flourish prohibits the Federal Aviation Administration from issuing safety regulations for passengers and crew for eight years, unless specific design features or operating practices cause a serious or fatal injury.

"This means that the FAA has to wait for harm to occur or almost occur before it can impose restrictions, even against foreseeable harm," the proposal says. "Instead, Congress requires that space flight participants be informed of the risks."

Physical exams for passengers are recommended, but will not be required, "unless a clear public safety need is identified," the FAA says in the proposed regulations.

Passengers also would have to be trained on how to respond during emergencies, including the loss of cabin pressure, fire and smoke, as well as how to get out of the vehicle safely.

Pilots, meanwhile, must have an FAA pilot certificate and be able to show that they know how to operate the vehicle. Student or sport pilot licenses would not qualify.

Each member of the crew must have a medical certificate issued within a year of the flight, and a crew member's physical and mental state must "be sufficient to perform safety-related roles," the rules say.

The FAA also would require each crew member to be trained to ensure that the vehicle will not harm the public, such as if it had to be abandoned during a flight emergency.

The legislation that Bush signed last year tasked the FAA with coming up with rules to regulate the commercial space flight industry, which has been slowly getting off the ground.

Laws governing private sector space endeavors, such as satellite launches, have existed for some time. But there previously has been no legal jurisdiction for regulating commercial human spaceflight.

In 2001, California businessman Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist when he rode a Russian Soyuz capsule to the international space station. Mark Shuttleworth, a South African Internet magnate, followed a year later on a similar trip, also paying $20 million for the ride.

Last year, in a feat considered a breakthrough for the future of private spaceflight, Burt Rutan won the $10 million Ansari X Prize by rocketing his SpaceShipOne to the edge of space twice in five days.

Two months ago, Greg Olsen, who made millions at a Princeton, N.J., technology company, became the world's third paying space tourist, also on a jaunt to the international space station.

The 123-page proposal was published Thursday in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of rules and regulations, and will be subject to public comment for 60 days, through Feb. 27.

Final regulations are expected by June 23.

Anyway, you have to be a millinaire at this point to indulge in space tourism.


Galileo Satellite Launched



I've been slack with the festive season. The ESA has luacnhed its Galileo GPS satellite using Russia's Soyuz rockets.

The launch marked the start of Galileo, €3.8 billion ($A6 billion) European challenge to the monopoly of the US military-based Global Positioning System.

GPS is the only worldwide system offering services ranging from driver navigation to aid for search-and-rescue missions. But the GPS service offers civilians less precision than for military or intelligence purposes, and it is controlled by the US military, which has the power to degrade or switch off the signal.

Galileo will be a highly accurate civilian system, run by a private consortium. It is expected to go into operation in 2010.

Because it has a more penetrating signal that can work indoors (which GPS rarely does), offers better coverage of northern Europe and assesses its own accuracy, supporters believe it will usher in a new range of safety-critical services, such as aircraft and emergency vehicle guidance systems.

Galileo, which can pinpoint positions to within a metre, is designed for a host of new satnav applications, including ones from mobile phones. With the help of Galileo, it will be possible to find local theatres, shops, restaurants and cash machines on a mobile.

Tourists will be less likely to get lost with multimedia maps and directions delivered to their phones. Other services may locate children separated from their parents.

Galileo will also improve air traffic control and it could pave the way to nationwide road tolls.

Backers say it could create more than 140,000 jobs in Europe by 2013. But there are doubters, with one sceptic famously dubbing Galileo the "common agricultural policy of the sky".

The most important items in the rocket's payload are two rubidium atomic clocks and a navigation signal generator capable of transmitting codes and frequencies to be used by the 30 satellites that will eventually make up the Galileo network.

Great. More ways to extract tolls from moving around.

It Mightn't Have Been Water

Volcanoes Or Impacts?

Two scientific teams are claiming it might not have been water that gave rise to the features seen on the surface of Mars. Here's the Link.

Rather than abundant surface water over significant stretches of planet's history, as has been widely reported, Opportunity's observations might represent the results of a meteor impact or volcanic activity on an otherwise very dry world.

The counterarguments, presented in two papers in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, go to the very heart of the ultimate question about Mars: Was it ever warm and wet enough to support life?

The new reports, however, are based on the initial data from the Opportunity rover during its first 45 days on Mars.

The Mars rover mission’s principal investigator, Steven Squyres of Cornell University, said both of the new studies could not take into account more recent data from Opportunity that were not available to the researchers.

So the stage is set for more arguments.

Cargoship Sent To ISS

In all the shuffle we tend to forget there's an International Space Station up there which is still under construction. Well, here's the update.

Russian engineers want to use the additional time to stow additional garbage and unused equipment on the unpiloted cargo carrier. That Progress and its contents will be destroyed as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere in early March.
The Progress 20 cargo craft is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Dec. 21 and dock with the station on Dec. 23. The new Progress will bring supplies of food, water, fuel and air to the station as well as holiday gifts for the crew.

Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev wrapped up last week with more stowage of items in the Progress 19 cargo ship. McArthur also assisted Tokarev as he began Lower Body Negative Pressure testing, using special garments to draw blood down to his lower extremities to counteract the effects of weightlessness.

Life in space goes on. It's amazing how mundane this seems.