Sent from my iPad
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: October 24, 2014 10:50:20 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday – October 24, 2014
Happy Friday everyone. Enjoy the great fall like weather and enjoy the weekend.NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsFriday – October 24, 2014NASA TV:NASA TV will provide coverage of two preflight briefings Sunday for the Orbital Sciences/Cygnus launch out of Wallops at noon and 1pm CT, respectively.NASA TV will provide coverage of the ISS Progress 56 undocking early Monday morning at 12:30am CT.NASA TV will provide coverage of the launch of the Orbital Sciences/Cygnus craft Monday beginning at 4:45pm CT.HEADLINES AND LEADSConstruction of ISS-bound Cold Atom Lab on Tap for 2015Dan Leone - Space NewsA $52 million physics experiment NASA plans to send to the international space station in 2016 is scheduled for a critical design review — the last milestone before hardware construction begins — in January.China launches moon probe test flightWilliam Harwood - CBS NewsA Long March 3C rocket launched a robotic Chinese space probe Thursday, setting the stage for a looping flight around the moon and a high-speed dash back to Earth to test technology and procedures needed for a planned lunar sample return mission in 2017.Report: KSC must do more to succeed as spaceportJames Dean – Florida TodayKennedy Space Center has made progress transitioning into a multiuser spaceport but must do more to compete with a growing number of alternative launch sites, according to a NASA audit report released today.Spaceport America rocket launch deemed a successFlight tops company's previous altitude recordDiana Alba Soular - Las Cruces Sun-NewsA rocket launch to suborbital space from Spaceport America on Thursday morning was deemed a success.Buzz Aldrin Says One-Way Trips to Mars Could Actually WorkMiriam Kramer – Space.comApollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin wants to send people on a trip to Mars, and he doesn't want them to come home — at least not at first.How the Oculus Rift could make grueling trips to Mars more tolerableDominic Basulto - Washington PostWhen you think of the Oculus Rift, you probably think of interactive gaming or entertainment experiences made possible through virtual reality. But NASA is also considering how those same types of virtual reality experiences could be used during long-haul missions to address the unique psychological and physiological problems encountered by astronauts traveling in small teams through cold, dark space over extended periods of time.Russia to spend around $50 billion on space program in 2016-2025Most ambitious space program projects for 2016-2025 will cost about $7.5 billionItar Tass, of Russia
Russia's Roscosmos space agency estimates the costs of most ambitious space projects in the federal space program for 2016-2025 at about $7.5 billion, a source in the space rocket industry told TASS.Method Could Rid Spacecraft of Tough Microbial Cling-OnsIan O'Neill – Discovery.comImagine looking for life on Mars and turning up a hardy microbe that bears a striking resemblance to the E. coli bacteria we know and love. Where the heck did that come from?China's dash to moon a dress rehearsal for sample returnLing Xin - Science InsiderChina raised the curtain today on the most ambitious act yet of its lunar exploration program. At just about 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, the Chang'e-5 Test 1 (CE5-T1) spacecraft lifted off aboard a Long March rocket for an unmanned dash to the moon and back that aims to test technology for a sample return mission planned for 2017 and, a decade from now, possibly landing astronauts on the moon.COMPLETE STORIESConstruction of ISS-bound Cold Atom Lab on Tap for 2015Dan Leone - Space NewsA $52 million physics experiment NASA plans to send to the international space station in 2016 is scheduled for a critical design review — the last milestone before hardware construction begins — in January."We just went through preliminary design, and we're marching to critical design review in January of next year, a few months from now [with] launch in September 2016," Mark Lee, fundamental physics science lead at NASA headquarters here, told the National Research Council's committee on biological and physical sciences in space Oct. 7.The Cold Atom Lab is being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and will be carried to the ISS aboard a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Dragon capsule. Once unpacked, astronauts will install the science payload inside one of the space station's standardized Express experiment racks. The Cold Atom Lab is designed to be operated remotely from Pasadena.The experiment, slated to run at least one and as many as five years, will take advantage of microgravity to cool atoms to temperatures impossible to reach in Earth gravity, Lee said."In space, you can have a very stable, stationary atom. With that, this atom is very cold. When an atom becomes very cold, it becomes a quantum system. It's not a regular atom. By doing that in the microgravity, we really can probe very deep into the atom, and other fundamental physics," Lee said.Cold atom physics is the type of research for which former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu won a one-third share of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics. NASA's contribution to the field will be funded by the agency's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, Lee told the NRC panel.In January, NASA spread $12.7 million among seven Cold Atom Lab science investigations under the Research Opportunities in Fundamental Physics program, and the agency is already looking ahead toward building the next Cold Atom Lab.However, the first discussions about Cold Atom Lab 2 will not begin until December 2015, Lee said, when NASA has notionally scheduled a science definition workshop for the follow-on physics project.China launches moon probe test flightWilliam Harwood - CBS NewsA Long March 3C rocket launched a robotic Chinese space probe Thursday, setting the stage for a looping flight around the moon and a high-speed dash back to Earth to test technology and procedures needed for a planned lunar sample return mission in 2017.Chinese news agencies reported the 184-foot-tall Long March booster blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, but the launch time and other details were not immediately available. The ascent was intended to put the solar-powered spacecraft, known in some quarters as Chang'e-5 T1, on a "free return" trajectory around the moon.iCrossChina, a website associated with the Xinhua News Agency, reported "the test spacecraft separated from its carrier rocket and entered the expected orbit shortly after the liftoff." The report was attributed to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.The uncrewed test vehicle is expected to swing around the moon and return to Earth in about a week, slamming into the atmosphere at nearly 7 miles per second, or roughly 25,000 mph. Touchdown is targeted for China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region."The mission is to obtain experimental data and validate re-entry technologies such as guidance, navigation and control, heat shield and trajectory design for a future touch-down on the moon by Chang'e-5, which is expected to be sent to the moon, collect samples and return to Earth in 2017," iCrossChina reported."It is the first time China has conducted a test involving a half-orbit around the moon at a height of 380,000 kilometers (236,000 miles) before having the spacecraft return to Earth."A spokesman for the Chinese space agency said before launch the precursor Chang'e-5 T1 spacecraft will come in at an angle that will allow it to skip one or more times off the top of the discernible atmosphere, somewhat like a stone skipping across still water.The idea is to use one or more atmospheric dips to slow the vehicle and avoid the most extreme temperatures generated by atmospheric friction.The "skip re-entry" technique requires precise flight control and alignment. If the entry angle is too shallow, a spacecraft can skip off the atmosphere with enough velocity to return to space on a trajectory that would prevent another entry attempt. Conversely, if the entry angle is too steep, a spacecraft can be subjected to extreme braking forces and temperatures, possibly triggering the vehicle's destruction.But the Chinese say if the technique works it will help pave the way for the robotic lunar sample return mission.Jiang Jie, a rocket "expert" quoted by the Chinese news agency, said the lunar return flight represented an engineering challenge because "the mission requires that the rocket send the spacecraft to a fixed spot in space.""Any inaccuracy will mean that the spacecraft will fail to enter the moon's orbit," she said.The lunar flyby and return mission is the latest in a series of flights intended to perfect the technology and procedures needed for more advanced moon missions, including a sample return flight and eventual crewed missions. The Chang'e-1 spacecraft, launched in 2007, was the first Chinese craft to orbit the moon. Chang'e-2 followed suit in 2010.More recently, the Chang'e-3 spacecraft landed on the surface of the moon in December 2013 and deployed a small rover, known as Yutu, or Jade Rabbit. It was the first spacecraft to successfully touch down on the moon since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976.A backup spacecraft, Chang'e-4, was not launched, but presumably could be used in a future mission or some other capacity.James Lewis, director and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a blog hosted by the University of Nottingham that China's long-range goal is a crewed lunar landing mission. Not for military gain or direct economic benefit, but for national pride."The economic rationale for lunar exploration is dubious," he wrote. "Nor is there any military advantage to a lunar presence. However, it is hard to see how a global audience will interpret a Chinese landing on the moon while the U.S. sits on the sidelines as anything but the arrival of a new leading power."Discussions with NASA administrators and members of Congress suggest U.S. political leaders are at least for now, entirely indifferent to this, perhaps itself an indication of a waning global role."For the Chinese, however, an aggressive lunar program provides "invaluable results.""Two bombs and a satellite was Mao's way of demonstrating that China was also a great power," Lewis said. "For his successors, the manned (space) program plays the same role. Unlike the Apollo program, it may not demonstrate the superiority of the Chinese system to the world, but it successfully demonstrates it to the Chinese themselves, a conspicuous display of national power and wealth that asserts China's return to confidence and authority."Report: KSC must do more to succeed as spaceportJames Dean – Florida TodayKennedy Space Center has made progress transitioning into a multiuser spaceport but must do more to compete with a growing number of alternative launch sites, according to a NASA audit report released today."The better Kennedy can position itself now as a commercial-friendly launch site, the more competitive it will be in the future," says the report by NASA's Office of Inspector General.Read the full 33-page report here: http://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY15/IG-15-003.pdf.KSC has leased about half of the 23 facilities it no longer needs after the shuttle program's 2011 retirement, including giving SpaceX control of launch pad 39A.But in interviews with the auditors, six companies and KSC's closest government partner, Space Florida, continued to raise concerns about bureaucracy, high costs and potential mission conflicts that can hamper commercial operations at KSC.The companies have not abandoned the spaceport given limited options available today, but "this may change as the commercial space industry grows and additional non-Federal launch sites become available," the report says.A recent example of that is SpaceX's groundbreaking on a private launch complex on Texas' Gulf Coast, where the company wants to concentrate its commercial launch activity (while continuing to launch government missions from two Cape pads).The audit undercuts one of NASA's primary reasons for resisting a state proposal to develop a competing site that might make the Cape more attractive for commercial launches.Space Florida two years ago sought NASA's permission to develop one or two pads on up to 200 acres at the north end of KSC and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, in an area known as Shiloh before the federal government seized the land in the 60s for the Apollo moonport.While NASA let the state start an environmental review of the proposed site, it continues to claim that it needs the land as a safety buffer zone and to support future missions.When questioned by auditors, however, "Kennedy personnel were unable to provide any details as to the need for a buffer zone of information about specific future missions involving the property."The report notes that Shiloh is located farther away from Titusville than KSC's existing two pads.NASA agreed with three recommendations aimed at improving how the agency leases unneeded facilities and reducing "costs and burdens on commercial partners."In a response, Richard Keegan, associate administrator for the Mission Support Directorate at NASA headquarters, said the agency would "look for streamlining opportunities" that could benefit commercial partners."However, NASA will not reduce its safety or security policies or standards or public safety requirements," he wrote.The auditors backed NASA's lease of pad 39A to SpaceX, a process that Blue Origin formally protested. But they said informal discussions earlier on with potential tenants had caused confusion.Another deal with Space Florida to take over one of KSC's three former shuttle hangars was unclear about the criteria that would be used to pick a winner, resulting in complaints.The report said NASA should provide better guidance about how and when leases are competitively awarded and improve communication with partners to "help the process run more smoothly and lessen any perception of favoritism."Spaceport America rocket launch deemed a successFlight tops company's previous altitude recordDiana Alba Soular - Las Cruces Sun-NewsA rocket launch to suborbital space from Spaceport America on Thursday morning was deemed a success.The flight of the 20-foot-long rocket reached a new altitude record for the launch company, the Denver-based UP Aerospace, said company spokeswoman Tracey Larson. That may have been because the payloads were lighter than in past launches."We set a record of 77.4 miles," she said. "Previously the record was 74."About noon, the rocket — which parachuted back to earth and landed at White Sands Missile Range — was transported back to Spaceport America. Payloads were being returned to the UP Aerospace customers, Larson said.UP Aerospace officials said they were seeking not only for the rocket to fly right but for four scientific experiments on board — part of NASA's Flight Opportunities Program — to be carried out without a hitch."The launch was successful both in-flight and also with regards to the payloads," Larson said.The aim of the NASA program is to test new technologies that are expected to be useful in spaceflight and space exploration.The flight was the 21st launch from Spaceport America, according to the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, which manages the spaceport."It's great to see NASA return to Spaceport America for another successful 'Flight Opportunities' suborbital launch mission," said NMSA Executive Director Christine Anderson in a statement.In addition to experiments, cremated remains of about 30 people were carried as part of a memorial flight through the company Celestis Inc.Among the cremains rocketed to space were those of CJ Twomey, a late serviceman whose family is carrying out a unique social media campaign to have his ashes spread across the globe.Twomey, who served in the Air Force, died by suicide in 2010 at age 20, said his mother, Hallie Twomey of Auburn, Maine. In coping with the painful tragedy, Hallie Twomey said the family had the idea to memorialize her son by asking family and close friends to take small amounts of his cremains and leave them in different places they traveled to. That turned into a Facebook page, which soon began gathering interest from strangers. In about one year, thousands of people have stepped forward, taking CJ's remains to places on all seven continents, she said.Celestis Inc. contacted the family, offering to send some of CJ's remains on the Spaceport America flight, Hallie Twomey said. She said she didn't even realize that was possible before getting the email from the company."It's been pretty remarkable watching this process and being able to know that, as much as we wanted his ashes to go all over the world, we never imagined they could reach space," she said.Twomey watched video feed of the launch Thursday."It literally brought tears to my eyes," she said.The liftoff happened shortly after 7:30 a.m., according to Celestis Inc."Celestis will return the flown capsules with the cremated remains inside to family members and loved ones, providing them with a flown keepsake," that company said in a news release.A different payload included yeast that will be used by an Oregon brewery to make so-called space beer.The launch was UP Aerospace's 13th from the state-owned Spaceport America. Nine of those, including Thursday's launch, were of the company's SpaceLoft XL rocket.The spaceport is a $219 million launch site for suborbital space vehicles that's located in southeastern Sierra County, just north of Doña Ana County.Buzz Aldrin Says One-Way Trips to Mars Could Actually WorkMiriam Kramer – Space.comApollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin wants to send people on a trip to Mars, and he doesn't want them to come home — at least not at first.The time and resources that will be used to get humans to the Red Planet only make sense if the astronauts stay there and help to jump-start an outpost on the new world, Aldrin said during a panel here at MIT's AeroAstro 100 conference Wednesday (Oct. 22)."It [will] cost the world — and the U.S. — billions and billions of dollars to put these people there, and you're going to bring them back?" Aldrin said. "What are you going to do when you bring them back here that can possibly compare [to] the value that they would be if they stayed there and Mars wasn't empty? And then, they helped to work with the next group and it builds up a cadre of people. When we've got 100 — or whatever it is — then we start bringing people back."Not all of Aldrin's fellow panelists agreed with him, however: "At the very least, I think that people need a fighting chance to return," former astronaut and Aldrin's fellow panelist Vance Brand said.The organization Mars One is planning on launching a one-way trip to Mars in order to begin establishing a colony on the Red Planet by 2025. The spaceflight group has more than 200,000 applicants willing to fly to Mars, but a study from MIT recently found that the Mars One plan might not be entirely possible.Growing food and harvesting oxygen would be major obstacles that Mars One would need to overcome before launching on a trip to Mars."We're not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible," study co-author Olivier de Weck, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, said in a statement. "But we do think it's not really feasible under the assumptions they've made. We're pointing to technologies that could be helpful to invest in with high priority, to move them along the feasibility path."How the Oculus Rift could make grueling trips to Mars more tolerableDominic Basulto - Washington PostWhen you think of the Oculus Rift, you probably think of interactive gaming or entertainment experiences made possible through virtual reality. But NASA is also considering how those same types of virtual reality experiences could be used during long-haul missions to address the unique psychological and physiological problems encountered by astronauts traveling in small teams through cold, dark space over extended periods of time.While work with virtual reality for the space program is still in the early stages, interdisciplinary researchers at Dartmouth are currently working on a solution that will integrate the Oculus Rift with other efforts NASA has made to understand the impact that space travel has on the human brain. As part of a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), researchers at Dartmouth's Digital Arts Leadership and Innovation (DALI) lab are working on building virtual reality experiences for the Oculus Rift that can later be integrated with other interactive multimedia tools (the Virtual Space Station) that were originally created by NASA's National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) to help counteract the negative psychological effects of long-duration missions — everything ranging from common stress to more severe mood disorders.Lorie Loeb, executive director of the Dartmouth DALI Lab, told me about some of the experiences that they are working on to ease the problems of long-duration space missions. The first step is creating film content that can be ported to a virtual reality interface such as the Oculus Rift. Film content from a beach scene might be combined with other elements, such as the smell of sunscreen and the feel of an ocean breeze, to recreate a virtual beach experience that totally immerses the senses. Astronauts running on a treadmill within a space ship would be able to strap on an Oculus Rift VR headset and actually see their environment change around them in response to their motions, giving the sensation of being somewhere else while hurtling through the cosmos.That's the first step of the process – building in the types of generic experiences (hanging out at the beach, walking through the woods, or viewing beautiful scenery) – that just about anyone would find relaxing. The harder step, says Loeb, is to create the types of virtual reality experiences that are specifically attuned to the personal experiences of each astronaut. This might include imagery from a specific locale — say, the path of a favorite morning jog — or from a highly personalized experience — like taking the dog for a walk in the neighborhood. Where things get really interesting is when you start tapping into personal memories of your spouse or other loved ones to build out customized experiences.There are obviously a lot of known unknowns — and maybe even more unknown unknowns — when it comes to virtual reality, but the initial signs are encouraging that VR can have some therapeutic effects during long-duration space missions. One of the leaders of the Dartmouth VR efforts is Jay Buckey, who is himself a former astronaut and currently a doctor at Dartmouth Medical School who has studied the mental and physiological effects of being in space. As Buckey told me via e-mail, the VR content being created by DALI has been informed by the latest scientific research, "Recent data suggest that exposure to natural settings can be used for relaxation, and to relieve cognitive fatigue." That's why VR experiences based on nature are the current focus of Dartmouth's research efforts, explains Buckey: "These findings form the basis for attention restoration theory, which proposes that exposure to nature provides a fascinating and relaxing environment that allows directed attention mechanisms to recover."Essentially, "tricking" the brain into relaxing is exactly what the Oculus Rift might help astronauts to do. While the work with VR is new, NASA has been studying the impact of space missions on psychological and cognitive states of astronauts for some time. The Virtual Space Station was originally envisioned as a package of self-help and diagnostic software to help astronauts counteract the impact of depression, mood disorders or personal anxiety. The longer you stay in space, the more the risk increases. Based on his own personal experiences as an astronaut, Buckey points out the potential risk of longer missions: "These days, six-month missions on the international space station are routine, and, by and large, go well. But, missions to Mars which can be up to three years long with limited communications present a major challenge."The plan, says Buckey, is to eventually integrate the Oculus Rift as part of astronaut training missions in remote locales – such as volcanoes on Hawaii or the desolate world of Antarctica — that would provide the closest analogue to destinations of future manned space exploration missions. For example, testing on a simulated Mars habitat recently started on Oct. 15 at the HI-SEAS III location in Hawaii, where astronauts are training in an isolated dome-shaped building on a Hawaiian volcano. That would be the perfect place to test how well virtual reality experiences can keep people from developing serious disorders.Once the data has been collected as part of the three-year grant program, components of the VR experience being developed at Dartmouth may be used as part of long-haul space missions, possibly to Mars and beyond. If the therapeutic effects of VR actually work, that could have huge implications for manned space travel. If you've ever seen a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster where one of the characters on a long space mission flips out during the middle of the movie, you'll appreciate why this is so important.The exciting thing is that research and findings from this unique collaboration between NASA and Dartmouth on the Oculus Rift could eventually help people who are not astronauts. It might be possible to import similar types of VR experiences into schools, prisons, military bases, or any far-flung destination around the globe. As Loeb told me via phone, the hope has always been that VR could be used to help everyone from military veterans suffering from PTSD to people dealing with phobias and other mental issues. Essentially, the Oculus Rift may lead to the creation of a "virtual therapist" on call 24/7 no matter where you are in the universe.Russia to spend around $50 billion on space program in 2016-2025Most ambitious space program projects for 2016-2025 will cost about $7.5 billionItar Tass, of Russia
Russia's Roscosmos space agency estimates the costs of most ambitious space projects in the federal space program for 2016-2025 at about $7.5 billion, a source in the space rocket industry told TASS.Roscosmos has requested about $50 billion from the federal budget for the program, while another $6 billion is to be spent from manufacturers' own funds and incomes from commercial projects. In contrast to the previous program (for 2006-2015) Roscosmos hopes to draw thrice as much funds from the treasury and extra-budgetary sources.Most of the money is to be invested in research and development - about $36 billion, the agency's source said. The money will be enough to implement the innovative option. The conservative one, according to Roscosmos, will cost about $7 billion less for the budget, the source said. "However, the conservative option reserves no funding to devise technologies for a manned mission to the Moon, and the overall share of ambitious projects is close to zero," he warned. The source did not mention any of the projects he was referring to, though.As for the economic effects of the program, Roscosmos estimates it at about $31 billion - a similar parameter in the draft of the previous program stood at less.Method Could Rid Spacecraft of Tough Microbial Cling-OnsIan O'Neill – Discovery.comImagine looking for life on Mars and turning up a hardy microbe that bears a striking resemblance to the E. coli bacteria we know and love. Where the heck did that come from?Well, erm, bad news alien-hunters, that little single-celled lifeform came from Earth. It actually hitchhiked on the last Mars lander and now it's vacationing on the Red Planet tens of millions of miles away from the nearest bottle of antibacterial handwash!Though this scenario may be a little farfetched, it is a contamination scenario that strikes fear into the hearts of the world's space agencies, all of which have dedicated teams that oversee decontamination processes for any hardware we sent into space, particularly hardware that we physically land on an alien world.But decontaminating every component that we send into space is an arduous task and some microbes have a special knack for surviving in extreme environments, including the most stringent of decontamination methods currently employed.However, last week at the European Astrobiology Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, Ralf Moeller from the German Aerospace Center presented a novel spacecraft sterilization method that could kill any Earth-born microbe regardless of how tough they are.Currently, sterilization chemicals and ultraviolet radiation are used as the key step to rid spacecraft interiors and exteriors of any Earth germs. But according to several recent studies, some bacteria can survive the ordeal.In 2010, for example, researchers at the University of Central Florida tried to terminate with extreme prejudice a selection of bacteria by freezing them, drying them, blasting them with ultraviolet light and exposing them to extremely low pressures. Although the vast majority of microbes died, a few tough Escherichia coli (E. coli) braved the storm.Although the surviving E. coli weren't exactly happy campers (they didn't want to reproduce, for example), just the fact that a few could survive in similar conditions to Mars, it's not a massive leap of the imagination that they could eke out an existence in the joints and circuitry of Mars rovers and landers.Other laboratory experiments have also shown that some bacteria can survive long periods of extreme hardship by producing endospores, non-reproductive structures with thick walls designed to preserve DNA. In the absence of ultraviolet light (i.e. if they find themselves in the shade of a rock or robotic casing) and the addition of water, these structures come back to life to reproduce.The ultimate way to kill microbes would be to cook all the components of a spacecraft to high temperatures. Unfortunately, this option is often not practical and many components of high-tech robotics are extremely heat sensitive.Moeller, however, has a plan.According to Air and Space Magazine, Moeller's team has carried out tests using low-temperature plasma (an electrically charged gas) to kill any would-be bacterial cling-ons. In the laboratory, the researchers found the plasma quickly destroys bacteria and the spores produced by Bacillus subtilis. The appealing things about this potential sterilization method are that it can be done at low temperatures, no toxic chemicals need to be used and it can be done in under a minute.So this seems to be a step in the right direction if we are to avoid infecting alien worlds with Earth Brand™ germs, not only safeguarding experimental results in the search for alien life, but also protecting any indigenous lifeforms from being wiped out by a sneeze from our biosphere.Source: Air and SpaceChina's dash to moon a dress rehearsal for sample returnLing Xin - Science InsiderChina raised the curtain today on the most ambitious act yet of its lunar exploration program. At just about 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, the Chang'e-5 Test 1 (CE5-T1) spacecraft lifted off aboard a Long March rocket for an unmanned dash to the moon and back that aims to test technology for a sample return mission planned for 2017 and, a decade from now, possibly landing astronauts on the moon.CE5-T1 marks China's fourth lunar mission in the Chang'e series, named after a moon goddess in Chinese mythology. Chang'e-1, launched in 2007, spent 16 months in orbit snapping the nation's first images of the lunar surface. Previous Chang'e probes were left in space. Guiding CE5-T1 back to Earth poses a new challenge; entering the atmosphere at a speed of 11.2 km/s is nearly 50% faster than the return speed of China's Shenzhou spacecraft, which has carried orbiting astronauts safely back to Earth's surface."Earthbound experiments can't effectively simulate the complexity of the atmospheric environment," Hao Xifan, deputy chief designer of the CE5-T1 and Chang'e-5 missions, told China's S&T Daily newspaper shortly before the launch. He says CE5-T1 may be the sole spacecraft launched for engineering testing during China's unmanned lunar exploration program.According to Hao, a skip-reentry technology will be used to slow down CE5-T1. Comparing the technology to skipping a stone on a lake, he explained that the spacecraft will first dip into the atmosphere, then jump up, and finally make a gliding reentry toward touchdown. "The jump must be well controlled. If it's too low, the probe may be burnt. If too high, it won't be able to land in the targeted area."CE5-T1 is expected to arrive in lunar orbit on 26 October. It will orbit the dark side of the moon and then head home, with a parachute-assisted landing somewhere in middle Inner Mongolia 8 days after its departure."Although the upcoming mission is very risky, I have full confidence [in our success]," Liu Jizhong, deputy commander of China's lunar exploration program, told S&T Daily.Joining CE5-T1 atop the Long March 3C rocket today are two small probes from Europe. One is a radio beacon known as 4M. Developed by LuxSpace in Luxembourg, 4M will start transmitting radio signals back to Earth for amateur space enthusiasts soon after the liftoff. The other microsatellite is PS86X1 from the virtual organization Pocket Spacecraft. They will bid farewell to CE5-T1 on the way to the moon and conduct separate lunar flyby experiments.CE5-T1 is a steppingstone to Chang'e-5, China's last planned uncrewed mission to the moon. Among many other tasks, Chang'e-5 is slated to collect about 2 kilograms of lunar soil and return to Earth.ENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
No comments:
Post a Comment