31 August 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶STS-115 Update
You'll notice that the countdown clock in the upper left is running again.
Sept. 6 is now official. 12:28:49 p.m. EDT.
There will be three chances to launch -- five minutes each on Wednesday, Thurday and Friday.
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Orion Update
Per NASA:
In what amounts to one of the most significant NASA procurements in more than 30 years, two industry teams have spent the past 13 months refining concepts, analyzing requirements and sketching designs for Orion. On Thursday, managers of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate will reveal which of the two teams has been chosen to build it.
The two competitors are a Northrop Grumman/Boeing team and a Lockheed Martin team. The announcement will be made at a 3 p.m. CDT press conference, which will be aired on TV and the Web via NASA TV.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶STS-115 Update
Still technically no official launch date, but they're working towards Sept. 6, weather allowing.
The window has been extended through Sept. 8, meaning there will be three launch opportunities. After that, who knows?
30 August 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Martian Party Line
So that whole 90-day lifetime thing for the two Mars rovers -- they didn't really believe that, did they?
As that initial estimate has proved so far to be over an order of magnitude off, people have asked how that number was derived, and whether it wasn't an intentionally ridiculously low figure.
Regardless of how confident they were in exactly 90 days, it appears they really didn't beleive there was a chance the rovers would last this long -- it turns out the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was built using a spare transmitter from Spirit. What that means is that the two use the exact same frequency, and, thus, if they transmit at the same time, basically talk over each other. The move was seen as a reasonable way to save money and time, and nobody thought that Spirit would still be alive when MRO started transmitting.
The problem can be worked out, but is a testament to the surprising durability of the rovers. (And, hopefully, a lesson learned for future Mars exploration -- one would hope that next year's Phoenix lander will have its own dedicated frequency.)
+ 1 - 1 | § ¶Regular Richie Feature -- Special Space Edition
Among the search strings that have brought people to ATW in the past couple of days:
- space blog cev winner
- crew exploration vehicle orion rumors
- CEV rumor
- CEV Orion award contractor winner build
- orion cev winner
- cev rumor
For the lay readers out there, NASA will be announcing on Thursday whether the Grumman/Boeing team or the Lockheed Martin team will be getting the contract to develop the Crew Exploration Vehicle, and apparently there's a fair bit of interest in who's going to get it. Some of the recent searches on that topic have been from people that work in the involved companies.
Folks, they're gonna announce it Thursday. You're not going to find out their decision on some space blog. I have no clue.
(Well, actually, I have heard a rumor, and I'd say I'm about 50 percent confident it's right.)
Also in the last 20 search strings:
- xena the planet,
- NASA xena
- xena
- Xena planet
- Xena planet
- xena nasa
Sorry, folks -- it's not a planet. Well, I've been saying that the whole time, but it's
officially not a planet now. Go on with your lives.
Non-space searches in the last 20:
- richie younce (Yay for Richie making his own feature!)
- woman driving (Which is actually a not-uncommon one in the image searches)
- disney ears
- funny hair
- nick cage wife
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶STS-115 Update
So, maybe a week from today. If not the 6th, the window closes on the 7th, though NASA is reportedly trying to negotiate with the Russians to get maybe an extra day or so.
If that doesn't happen, right now the next window would open in late October. That brief window, and another short one in November, would make it possible to still keep STS-116 on schedule for Dec. 14. However, another option would be to change the lighting requirements for this launch.
Allowing a night launch would create several new possibilities. (Plans are currently for STS-116 to be a night launch, so it would only be dropping the lighting requirements one flight earlier than planned.)
29 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶STS-115 Update
Rollback should be underway right now.
There is currently not a scheduled launch date for STS-115.
More as it develops.
As mentioned the other day, this one should be interesting, folks.
28 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Iron Supplements
In The Houston Chronicle, the headline for a story was "
Variety adds a little spice to meals on the shuttle"
In the daily NASA News Summary, though, they titled it "Space Food Includes New Items, Old Staples"
Uh, ow... And you thought that old astronaut ice cream was bad.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶STS-115 Update
Per NASA:
NASA mission managers Monday morning decided to scrub Tuesday's scheduled launch attempt of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.
Preliminary preparations are also under way to roll the orbiter back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, although no final decision has been made to allow for possible changes in Tropical Storm Ernesto's track. That decision is expected by midday Tuesday.
NASA's lighted launch window extends to Sept. 13, but mission managers are hoping to launch by Sept. 7 to avoid a conflict with a Russian Soyuz rocket also bound for the International Space Station. Officials are talking with our Russian partners about the issue.
I really don't know what exactly is going on, but this one could end up having an unusual solution, such as possibly a back-to-back roll-back and roll-out to avoid the storm and sill meet the window. Also talk of trying to get the Soyuz up ahead of schedule so that they can get up and back down to let Atlantis launch before the max window deadline without the two overlappping at station.
Stay tuned.
27 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Orion Update
So it turns out that the Orion logo that I'm not terribly keen on was
created by Mike Okuda.
Which may explain the current state of Trek.
26 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Mike Brown, Destroyer of Worlds
My thoughts about astronomer Mike Brown have been greatly influenced by his Huntsville origins.
When he discovered 2003 UB313, he was a hero, and I was proud to see someone from my hometown accomplish something like that.
On the flip side, while living here, he attended Grissom High School (named, natch, for Gus Grissom), which, for me at least, was my alma mater Huntsville High School's biggest rival. So when he tried to call that small ice ball a planet, my reaction was along the lines that it was typical arrogance of a Grissom alum.
This week, though, I'm once more proud to call him a Huntsvillian. I really admire the stand he's taken that Pluto, and thus the other KBOs, should not be planets. By standing up for his convictions, he may well have cost himself a place in the history books as the discoverer of perhaps multiple planets. With a different definition, he could perhaps have been the most significant astronomer, with respect to our solar system, since Galileo. But he fought against that for what he felt was right.
The Huntsville Times had a great story yesterday about him, but it was a combination of AP and local reporting, so its neither on the wire nor on the HT Web site, with some great quotes from both Brown ("It's all my fault. I may go down in history as the guy who killed Pluto.") and his mom, but I can't post it here.
I can, though, post
The Times' story today about Pluto, with a lead I was less than impressed with: "For years, Davina Mann, a Madison County Elementary School teacher, has collected three-dimensional models of the solar system showing Pluto hovering at the edge of the galaxy."
Well, I mean, yeah, I guess it's kinda near the edge of the galaxy, but, um, not so much relatively speaking compared to the rest of the solar system. (In fact, I guess sometimes less so than the rest of the solar system, as it reaches the part of its orbit opposite the galactic rim.)
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶STS-115 Update
SCRUB!
On the good news front, though, they did manage to get
my STS-115 stories online Friday, before the launch. (Barely. [Hopefully.]) So that's something.
24 August 2006
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶SoaLM
Heh.
I would
so watch that.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶Our Eight Planets!!
OK, I'll admit it, now that it's done, there's a part of me that has a sort of sentimental melancholy about
Pluto's demotion. Yeah, it's gonna be tough getting used to the idea that it's not a planet anymore. And it's kind of sad that our solar system no longer has that cool thing where which planet is the ninth changes from time to time.
That said, I'm am very pleased that the IAU has done the right thing, and made what had to be a difficult decision.
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶STS-115 Update
Meant to post this a while back, but lost it.
Per The AP:
Atlantis’ six astronauts were supposed to fly to the international space station more than three years ago.
But the Columbia disaster in early 2003 and problems with the three remaining shuttles kept them on the ground.
Through it all, the six astronauts stuck together, and their 4˝ years of training set a record.
Just a reminder -- the official countdown begins today at 5 p.m. CDT.
23 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Our Eight(?) Planets
According to The New York Times, it's looking increasingly like the 12-planet-plus proposal is going to be nixed, and
Pluto will lose its planetary status.
Which makes me happy.
Nothing personal, Pluto.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶Orion Is Official
Per NASA:
NASA announced Tuesday that its new crew exploration vehicle will be named Orion.
Orion is the vehicle NASA’s Constellation Program is developing to carry a new generation of explorers back to the moon and later to Mars. Orion will succeed the space shuttle as NASA's primary vehicle for human space exploration.
Orion's first flight with astronauts onboard is planned for no later than 2014 to the International Space Station. Its first flight to the moon is planned for no later than 2020.
Orion is named for one of the brightest, most familiar and easily identifiable constellations.
So, thoughts about the name?
22 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Our Dozen Eight Planets?
Stephen Colbert and Neil De Grasse Tyson
trash talk the "planets."
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶STS-115 Update
The
official countdown for STS-115 will begin Thursday at 5 p.m. CDT, at T -43 hours.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Heart Of The Matter
"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible..."
Per NASA:
As a rule, scientists seek certainty. So it's rather unusual that for more than 70 years, many astronomers have wagered the universe is primarily made of dark matter -- a mysterious and unproven substance.
It's a bet that finally paid off, because a team of scientists working with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found direct evidence that dark matter is as real as the rings around Saturn.
The discovery cements dark matter's status as the biggest building block in the universe, while also putting to rest the nagging worries of many astronomers that they gambled wrong.
21 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Official Announcement
Most ATW readers already know this, I'm sure, but here's the official word,
from collectSPACE:
Outward Odyssey
A History of Human Space Exploration
To be published by the University of Nebraska Press
Information release by series editor Colin Burgess, Sydney, Australia
I am pleased to announce the imminent release of the first books in a major undertaking by the University of Nebraska Press, which will detail the social history (human, rather than technical) of space exploration. This series of important books will be released under the series title of Outward Odyssey.
Many of the series' writers, carefully selected over the past three years, are first-time book authors, but all are long-time space enthusiasts ...
The first two books, to be titled Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era 1961-1965 and In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility 1965-1969 will be released in the spring and summer of 2007. These two books, which I have co-authored with Francis French, include forewords by Paul Haney and Walt Cunningham respectively. They tell the story of human space flight from Yuri Gagarin to the day that Apollo 11 set down on the moon. Being a social history of that enterprise, they contain the stories of the men and women involved in the Space Race between the United States and what was then the Soviet Union. The personal stories of the cosmonauts and astronauts are told through their words, and those of colleagues and friends who knew them well. What were the motivations and inspirations in their lives that led them to wanting to ride rockets into the silent sea of space?
...
The Skylab book has been written by David Hitt, together with Skylab astronauts Owen Garriott and Joe Kerwin, and features original contributions from other Skylab astronauts, including an important section based on the personal in-flight diary of Alan Bean. The foreword has already been written by Homer Hickam.
...
There will also be two books on the social history of the space shuttle program. The first will discuss the origins and early days of the shuttle program, and will cover the period up to and including the Challenger tragedy. This book will be written by David Hitt, in his second book of the series.
...
There will be a large function held to launch the space book series in the summer of 2007, and I will release details once full details of the dates and venue have been determined.
Each of the books is designed to stand alone, but also to be an integral part of the entire space book series.
Further details will be announced as they become known.
Keywords: books,collectspace,history,outward_odyssey,skylab,space_shuttle
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Our Eight Planets?
There appears to be strong support for an alternate proposal brought before the IAU that would
demote Pluto from "real" planet status, labelling it instead as a "dwarf planet."
Reports coming from the IAU meeting indicate that it's going to be a close decision, with the participants about evenly split on whether or not Pluto should remain a planet. (Even with Pluto supporters, though, the term "pluton" is apparently proving unpopular.)
So, perhaps there's hope yet.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶STS-115 Update
Atlantis'
KU antenna bolts have been replaced, and everything is on track for launch at 4:29:55 EDT Sunday.
If everything continues to progress on schedule, one week from now, Atlantis will be on her way to the ISS.
This bolt situation, while relatively minor news, is an excellent example of one of NASA's greatest strengths.
The discussion basically went like this:
"If there's a problem with those bolts, there's no way to fix it on the pad."
"Well, there is a problem with the bolts, but we need to fix it on the pad."
"OK, done."
There are similar stories throughout the Skylab book. The station suffered failures of its attitude control gyroscopes. And each time, before it happened, it was understood that if one failed, they couldn't control the station. And it would fail, and the CMG people would come back and say, OK, here's how you handle it.
For all the criticism NASA gets about its faults, people often overlook the agency's continued ability to do the undoable.
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶COTS In The Act Update
Per NASA:
NASA is making an unprecedented investment in commercial space transportation services with the hope of creating a competitive market for supply flights to the International Space Station (ISS).
Two industry partners will receive a combined total of approximately $500 million to help fund the development of reliable, cost-effective access to low-Earth orbit. The agency is using its Space Act authority to facilitate the demonstration of these new capabilities. NASA signed Space Agreements Aug. 18 with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of El Segundo, Calif., and Rocketplane-Kistler (RpK) of Oklahoma City to develop and demonstrate the vehicles, systems, and operations needed to support a human facility such as ISS. Once the space shuttle is retired, NASA hopes to become just one of many customers for a new, out-of-this-world parcel service.
...
The demonstrations are scheduled to begin as early as 2008 and continue through 2010 or later. COTS will be carried out in two phases. Phase 1, unveiled Aug. 18, will include safe disposal or return of spacecraft that successfully dock at ISS and deliver cargo. A follow-on option to demonstrate crew transportation also is planned. Once demonstrated, NASA plans to purchase transportation services competitively in Phase 2.
Obviously, I'm a little disappointed that SpaceDev, which I've invested in, was not one of the teams selected, but it looks like NASA has picked two good proposals. (And I have a soft spot for the Rocketplane-Kistler team, since the management includes George Mueller, who, as the head of manned spaceflight at NASA in the '60s was extremely integral to the development of Skylab.)
Most of all, though, it's just incredible to think that, regardless of who got picked, NASA had that many strong options for commercial launch services. Things really are changing. Exciting times.
18 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Ares I
I've been meaning to post this, but keep forgetting -- This week, Marshall Space Flight Center had on display a 25-foot-tall mock-up of the Ares I, the new crew launch vehicle currently under development. Some
pictures of the display have been posted at collectSPACE.
Keywords: ares,collectspace,constellation,marshall_space_flight_center
+ 0 - 1 | § ¶COTS In The Act
NASA today will announce contracts for commercial delivery services to the International Space Station, in which NASA will hire private spacecraft to deliver cargo to the ISS. Six finalists are in the running: Andrews Space, Rocketplane Kistler, SpaceDev, Spacehab, SpaceX and T/Space.
(I mentioned earlier in the week that after hoping for a jump in the value of my Apple stock from WWDC it ended up being a disappointing week or so. I fear I may be looking at the same situation with my SpaceDev stock today. Regardless, though, there are some strong teams with great proposals, and it will be exciting to see what comes of this.)
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Planetary Schism
Space.com has an article about the fact that
astronomers are divided on the proposed guideline for what constitutes a planet.
My favorite part: "It is ironic that we are left with more, not fewer objects for which we are uncertain of their 'planetary' status," Charbonneau told SPACE.com. "Perhaps astronomy will undergo a schism, with sects of astronomers proclaiming different numbers of planets."
16 August 2006
+ 1 - 0 | § ¶STS-115 Update
Launch is now officially scheduled for August 27, with a caveat or two.
Details will be
here, but haven't been posted as of this writing.
The ATW Countdown is now showing 10 days, 23 hours and 31 minutes.
+ 1 - 1 | § ¶Our Dozen Planets
Per NASA:
The International Astronomical Union, currently meeting in Prague, is expected to vote on the definition of a planet. The organization, which has named planets and moons since it was founded in 1919, is debating a plan to establish that our solar system has 12 planets.
The designated dozen would include eight of the traditional nine -- Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune -- plus Ceres, the largest known asteroid. Pluto would still be a planet, but in a category to be called "plutons." It would be joined in that category by two other planetary newcomers: Charon, formerly known as Pluto's moon, and the recently-discovered 2003 UB313. The International Astronomical Union says a dozen additional objects are under consideration for planethood, and even more may be added later on.
I am unimpressed.
What a cop-out.
Faced with a very difficult problem, the IAU is apparently planning to respond with a non-answer. Rather than creating a precise delineation of what is and isn't a planet, this rule comes up with the broadest possible definition -- "round things that go around stars." (And, while answering the planet question for things like Pluto and 2003 UB313, it leaves issues on the other end of the spectrum, which will have to be dealt with as we discover more extrasolar worlds: a planet has to orbit a star, but not be a star. As we find bodies that hug the line between gas giant and brown dwarf, how do we decide what's a planet and what's a star? Easy -- planets are the ones that aren't stars. Oh, thanks for that.)
Regardless of size, Ceres has more in common with asteroids than with planets. Regardless of size and shape, Pluto and UB313 have more in common with KBOs than with planets. Rather than create these artificial delineations, we should create definitions that group like objects together. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are like each other. They are rocky planets. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are like each other. They are gaseous planets. While those two groups are diferent, I have no problem with both being grouped under the term planet, nor with that term being applied to extrasolar bodies that fit within those two categories. Asteroids are asteroids. KBOs are KBOs. Co
