Don’t miss Pat Duggin’s Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program

On 7 February 2008, Space Shuttle Atlantis (flight STS-122) was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to bring the Columbus space laboratory to the International Space Station, ISS. Columbus was permanently attached to the ISS and taken into operation on 11 February 2008, as the first European space laboratory for long-term research under space conditions.

Columbus is Europe’s main contribution to the ISS. It is expected to remain in service for at least ten years. Immediately after it had docked to the ISS, research on board Columbus began. From February to March 2008, for instance, the WAICO experiment (Waving and Coiling of Arabidopsis) was carried out. This gravitational biology experiment aims to establish the orientation of plants in the absence of gravity. WAICO was the first of a range of biological research experiments to be conducted in Biolab, one of the experiment racks in the Columbus laboratory. WAICO 2, the follow-up experiment, has been scheduled for summer 2009.

DLR experiments in the Columbus laboratory

The Expose-EuTEF facility, used to conduct radiation biology and astrobiology experiments, has been operational since February 2008 as well. It currently accommodates experiments such as DOSIS, investigating radiation dosimetry, ADAPT, investigating adaptation strategies of microorganisms, and PROTECT, investigating the resistance of spores to extraterrestrial conditions. All three experiments are provided by the Institute of Aerospace Medicine (Institut fuer Luft- und Raumfahrtmedizin) of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). Another DLR experiment is SOLO. This human physiology experiment investigates if an increased dietary intake of salt intensifies the bone resorption that already occurs in weightless conditions even further.

In total, some 40 German experiments have been started on board the ISS since 2001, and in some cases they have already been completed as well. This research has focused on the fields of biotechnology, aerospace medicine and plasma crystal research. At the moment, some 60 additional German experiments are awaiting implementation. In short, the astronauts have more than enough research work to do.

Columbus Control Center: On duty 24 hours a day

When Columbus was taken into operation, the Columbus Control Center (Columbus-Kontrollzentrum), located within the German Space Operations Center (Deutsches Raumfahrt-Kontrollzentrum) at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, also became fully operational. The Columbus Control Center controls the operation of the space laboratory and coordinates its scientific programme on behalf of ESA. Since last year, more than 75 scientists and engineers of the Industrial Operator Team (IOT) have been on duty for the European space laboratory, in order to ensure its round-the-clock operation. In total, they have already invested 240 000 working hours in the Columbus project. This has allowed the control centre to gain some important experience already.

“The Columbus module has been operational for a year now, providing a platform for experiments in weightless conditions. However, constant monitoring from Earth is required to ensure a pleasant and safe working environment for the astronauts”, says Dr Dieter Sabath, Head of Mission Operations at the Columbus Control Center. “The Flight Control Team has successfully prepared and carried all of the work required to operate Columbus during the first year. It has also provided support for the necessary maintenance work. It has become clear, however, that to ensure Columbus’s long-term operation we need to spend almost exactly the same amount of time on preparatory work as on shift work at the terminals. For the moment, though, shift work still constitutes the greatest part of our activities.”

Six astronauts on board ISS at all times from May 2009

The experience gained so far has also made it possible to shape the cooperation between the different ground teams (the Flight Control Team, or FCT, the Ground Control Team, or GCT, the European Planning Team, or EPT, and the Engineering Support Team, or EST) in a more efficient way, and to develop concepts for future improvements. This increased efficiency is essential for handling the intensified payload operation on board Columbus that will begin when Belgian ESA astronaut Frank de Winne boards the ISS for the European long-term mission OasISS in May.

From that moment, the resident crew of the ISS will double in size from three to six astronauts. This means that astronauts will have more time to operate the experiments (an increase from about 30 to about 100 hours of astronaut labour hours per increment for ESA experiments). This in turn means that more work is required to prepare the additional experiments, and that more ground-based support is required during their operation, as it is possible that several experiments will be conducted at the same time. Frank de Winne’s presence on board the ISS also brings about a substantial increase in the Columbus Control Center’s workload, since it is the main point of contact for European astronauts.

Cost overruns and development delays are jeopardizing NASA’s plans to send a sophisticated, nuclear powered robot to Mars.

Read the complete WP article

And speaking of Mars missions — here’s an opportunity to see Mars like you never have before: Jim Bell’s Postcards from Mars: The First Photographer on the Red Planet
The most fantastic of all journeys——the Spirit and Opportunity mobile robot missions to the surface of Mars——produced over 150,000 astonishing photographs. While the images were made available on low-resolution computer screens as they were sent back across millions of space miles, no one until now has done the painstaking work of editing, cropping, and processing these massive (often larger than 100 megabytes) images.
The person to do it is Jim Bell, the scientist and photographer who led the photography team on this historic expedition. With his unique perspective, these photographs take us from the brave launches of these robots, to the alien landscape they discovered and the mysteries of the planet that they have helped to solve.
Over 150 lavish full-color-process prints bring the colors and textures of Mars to vivid life on the page. Four of the most impressive pictures are presented in their entirety as gatefold images—— which extend over three feet in width——providing a view of the surface of another planet unprecedented in its detail and clarity. Postcards from Mars is the perfect gift to give readers who have their feet on the ground and their eyes on the heavens.

Death Gliders

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Whether it’s Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, or the iconic space station from 2001: A Space Odyssey, science fiction has always provided inspiration and ideas for the scientists and engineers that design and build real spacecraft.
 
The, at times, fine line between science fiction literature and the developments in real life space activities provides the backdrop to ESA’s latest Space-in-Bytes video lesson release, titled ‘Science fiction – science fact’. Taking inspiration from well-known science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, the video compares factual and fictional space stations, manned spacecrafts and explains how science fiction interplanetary travels could inspire future generations of scientists and engineers.

‘Science fiction – science fact’ is part of a series of short video lessons called Space-in-Bytes developed by ESA’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight. Aimed at upper secondary school students and their teachers, the Space-in-Bytes series presents ‘bite-sized’ scientific information, offering a starting point for further individual or classroom investigation.The video is accompanied by lesson notes which include scientific explanations of some of the concepts illustrated in the video. The lesson is intended to provide teachers, and their students, with more information about the topics covered in the video, and to suggest curriculum-relevant exercises which can be carried out in class.

‘Science fiction – science fact’, and the previous Space-in-Bytes videos, are available for download in 12 ESA Member State languages.
 
 
View the European Space Agency’s ’Science Fiction, Science Fact’ Video Film online : Science fiction – science fact »»
 

Death Gliders

Find this and other exciting images as posters, framed art prints, 2009 calendars, and greeting card sets. Visit the PatriArt Gallery today — your one-stop shopping site for military and patriotic themed holiday gifts. Worldwide delivery available.

Boeing has successfully reconfigured an on-orbit U.S. Navy satellite, adding 30 percent more communications capability. The satellite, the 11th in the Ultra-High Frequency Follow-On (UFO) series built by Boeing, was launched in 2003 and supports the Navy’s global communications network, serving ships at sea and a variety of other U.S. military fixed and mobile terminals.

UFO 11 has the most sophisticated digital signal processor in the constellation. Its ability to reprogram existing user channels allowed Boeing to exploit small, unused portions of the allocated radio frequency spectrum to add 10 channels, for a total of 54.

“Given the extremely high demand for tactical communications in Southwest Asia, our Navy customer asked us to investigate ways to maximize the current capabilities of the UFO 11 spacecraft,” said Craig Cooning, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems. “After a series of careful analyses and rigorous testing, we found a way to achieve this goal at no additional cost to the customer.

“The military’s need for communications bandwidth continues to rise,” Cooning added. “Our unique combination of highly capable satellite hardware and experienced, highly skilled engineers allowed us to provide additional bandwidth that will directly support our men and women in uniform.”

The satellite reconfiguration was accomplished in conjunction with U.S. Strategic Command, the Navy’s Program Executive Office — Space Systems, and the Naval Satellite Operations Command.

Boeing received the UFO contract in July 1988. By November 1999, all options had been exercised and the company began production of UFO 11. The spacecraft features both ultra high-frequency and extremely high-frequency payloads, which provide protected communications. Boeing UFO satellites have provided the Navy with a total of more than 100 years of service to date.

Find this and other exciting images as posters, framed art prints, 2009 calendars, and greeting card sets. Visit the PatriArt Gallery today — your one-stop shopping site for military and patriotic themed holiday gifts. Worldwide delivery available.

Aircraft capable of flying 20 km above the surface of the Earth are being used to test instruments that could be carried on satellites to improve our understanding of how atmospheric chemistry and climate are linked. These types of high-altitude experiments support the candidate Earth Explorer PREMIER mission.

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Find this and other exciting images as posters, framed art prints, 2009 calendars, and greeting card sets. Visit the PatriArt Gallery today — your one-stop shopping site for military and patriotic themed holiday gifts. Worldwide delivery available.

XMM-Newton has caught the fading glow of a tiny celestial object, revealing its rotation rate for the first time. The new information confirms this particular object as one of an extremely rare class of stellar zombie – each one the dead heart of a star that refuses to die.

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Imagine flying from California to Florida with nowhere to sit, no air conditioning, no place to store your bags — not even a bathroom.

NASA keeps two 747s, known as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), set up this way on purpose. The downstairs passenger area of these jetliners are kept as hollow inside as possible in order to carry a special cargo: a Space Shuttle orbiter.

One of these specially-modified SCAs brought the orbiter Discovery home to Kennedy Space Center in Florida after completing the historic Return to Flight mission. The SCA ferried the orbiter from Edwards Air Force Base in California, where it landed Aug. 9.

Ferry flights are few and far between these days, but don’t let the light work schedule fool you: These aircraft have to work twice as hard as a normal 747 to get the job done.

“It’s brute force that keeps us flying,” explains Larry LaRose, a flight engineer on the SCA. “When we’re carrying an orbiter, we have to use twice the power and a lot more fuel to maintain flight.”

The passenger area has been stripped of many creature comforts, such as galleys, carpeting and even part of the inside temperature ductwork — all for the sake of reducing weight. But the planes still weigh more than 250,000 pounds, and the drag created by the shape and weight of the orbiter — 176,000 pounds or more, depending on any onboard payload — negates the small amount of lift it adds.

During a normal flight, the SCA might use 20,000 pounds of fuel an hour; with an orbiter on its back, that number doubles.
The piggyback arrangement might look cumbersome, but how does it fly compared to a normal 747?

“It handles remarkably the same,” says SCA pilot Gordon Fullerton. As chief pilot at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, his daily job involves flying jets for high-performance aircraft research. But Fullerton’s experience with the orbiter and SCA dates back nearly three decades. In addition to being a Space Shuttle commander and pilot, he was one of four NASA astronauts to land the Enterprise during the Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Test program in 1977.

“It’s obvious [the orbiter] is up there, because there’s a constant rumble that you can feel because of the wake of the orbiter hitting the vertical stabilizer of the 747,” Fullerton says of ferry flights. But other than long takeoff rolls and the need for some extra care in steep turns, “it’s pretty much the same.”
A small team of six specially-trained pilots and four flight engineers has the critical task of making sure this precious cargo has a safe trip from alternate landing sites.

Those who serve on SCA crews are former military aviators who are qualified to fly several types of aircraft, such as the Shuttle Training Aircraft, Super Guppy, zero-gravity aircraft and T-38 jets. Most are based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, although LaRose is stationed in El Paso, Texas, and two are based at Dryden. Since ferry flights are seldom required, crew members train twice a year using simulators belonging to United Airlines.

Perhaps the biggest challenge the crew faces during a ferry flight is the weather. The orbiter cannot be exposed to moisture, turbulence or temperatures below -9 Centigrade and these restrictions determine the flight path and altitude. To meet those conditions in the winter months, they sometimes fly as low as 10,000 feet.

A “Pathfinder” aircraft, usually a U.S. Air Force cargo plane, flies 100 miles ahead of the SCA carrying weather officers and Space Shuttle personnel from Kennedy. Also onboard is an experienced SCA pilot, whose expertise helps the ferry flight crew keep to the safest route.

Adverse weather came into play on Discovery’s recent ferry flight. Storms and hail at Edwards kept the piggybacked pair grounded for a few extra days. But every step of the way, people gathered to catch a glimpse of the odd-looking duo.

“You don’t sneak into town with an orbiter,” LaRose says, grinning. “It brings out a big crowd everywhere we go. It’s a life experience for a lot of folks who have never seen something like this before.”

Anna Heiney (NASA)

J083026+524133 stood out because it was so bright. While checking visual images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the team could not find any obvious nearby galaxy in that location. So they turned to the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona and took a deep exposure.

Sure enough, they found a cluster of galaxies. So the team calculated a distance of 7.7 thousand million light-years and the cluster’s mass using the XMM-Newton data. This was not a surprise because XMM-Newton is sensitive enough to routinely find galaxy clusters at this distance. The surprise was that the cluster contains a thousand times the mass of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

“Such massive galaxy clusters are thought to be rare objects in the distant Universe. They can be used to test cosmological theories,” says Lamer. Indeed, the very presence of this cluster confirms the existence of a mysterious component of the Universe called dark energy.

No one knows what dark energy is, but it is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. This hampers the growth of massive galaxy clusters in more recent times, indicating that they must have formed earlier in the Universe. “The existence of the cluster can only be explained with dark energy,” says Lamer.
 
 
Yet he does not expect to find more of them in the XMM-Newton catalogue. “According to the current cosmological theories, we should only expect to find this one cluster in the 1% of sky that we have searched,” says Lamer.

In other words, the team have found a cosmic ‘needle in a haystack’.

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft will make a historic encounter with asteroid (2867) Steins on 5 September 2008. The doors of ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, will be open to the media as of 18:00 on 5 September to follow the fly-by events.
 
First images and results will be available for presentation to the media during a press conference which will be held at ESOC the following day, Saturday 6 September at 12:00 CEST.

Steins is Rosetta’s first nominal scientific target. The spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid in the course of its first incursion into the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, while on its way to comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The study of asteroids is extremely important as they represent a sample of Solar System material at different stages of evolution – key to understanding the origin of our own planet and of our planetary neighbourhood.  
 
The closest approach to Steins is due to take place on 5 September at 20:58 CEST (Central European Summer Time), from a distance of 800 km, during which the spacecraft will not be communicating with Earth. First ground contact with the spacecraft and announcement of successful fly-by will take place at 22:23 CEST. The first data and images collected by Rosetta will be sent to Earth throughout the night of 5 to 6 September and will undergo preliminary processing in the morning of 6 September. The first images will be made available for broadcasters via a special satellite feed on Saturday 6 September (details will be given on http://television.esa.int).

To register for the events, please use the form linked from the right menu. The press conference on 6 September will also be streamed on the ESA web: at http://www.esa.int/rosetta.
 
 
Rosetta Steins Fly-By
Doors open to the media
5 September 2008, 18:00, Building K
ESA-ESOC
Robert-Bosch Strasse 5, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany

18:00 – Doors open
18:00 – 19:00 Interview opportunities
19:00 – 20:15 Buffet dinner
20:15 – 20:30 The Steins Fly-By, Introduction by Paolo Ferri, Head of Solar and Planetary Missions Division (Mission Operations Dept.), ESA
The crucial role of Flight Dynamics, by Trevor Morley, Rosetta Flight Dynamics Team, ESA
20:30 – 21:00 Live from Rosetta’s control room (loss of telemetry signal at 20:47)
22:23 – First telemetry on ground: signal of successful fly-by
23:00 – End of event
 
 
Rosetta Steins Fly-By Press Conference
6 September 2008, 12:00, Building D
ESA-ESOC
Robert-Bosch Strasse 5, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany

11:00 – Doors open
12:00 – Welcome and introduction, by David Southwood, Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, ESA
12:10 – Rosetta: the status of the mission, by Gerhard Schwehm, Rosetta Mission Manager & Head of Solar System Science Operations Division, ESA
12:20 – Rosetta and the study of asteroids, by Rita Schulz, Rosetta Project Scientist, ESA
12:30 – The fly-by of Steins – stretching Rosetta’s limits, by Andrea Accomazzo, Rosetta Spacecraft Operations Manager, ESA
12:40 – Steins: first images and results, by Uwe Keller, OSIRIS camera Principal Investigator, Max Planck Institut für Sonnensystemforschung
12:50 – ESA’s plans for asteroid and space debris monitoring, by Gaele Winters, Director of Operations and Infrastructure, ESA
13:00 – Questions & Answers session
13:20 – Interview opportunities
15:00 – End of event
 
 
For more information:
 
Jocelyne Landeau-Constantin,
Head of Corporate Communication Office, ESA/ESOC
Phone: Tel: +49-(0)6151 902861