Determining the scope of the project:

As determined in 2009 and presented at the recent Exploration Gateways Conference, JAXA has created a comprehensive overview of their strategy for developing their space program both in the manned and unmanned arenas.

Capitalizing off their success with the Kibo lab complex (two pressurized, habitable modules and an external experiment pallet), the HTV transfer vehicle, Hayabusa, and three (3) residency stays on the International Space Station – with at least two more upcoming in 2012 and 2013/14, Japan is looking to make their space program more robust – an approach that began in 2009 with the Space Basic Plan.

Under this plan, JAXA aimed to understand and enhance their Land, Sea Observing Satellite system coverage in the Asian region, their Earth Environment, Weather Observing Satellite systems, their Advanced Communication Satellite system, their positioning satellite system, and their National Security Satellite system.

A Program Research and Development group also set out to enhance JAXA’s Space Science, Manned, and Space Solar Power System (SSPS) programs.

To accomplish the task of enhancing their Space Science and Manned programs, JAXA conducted “a one year study of [their] strategy for lunar exploration by robotic and possibly human” activity.

Seeking to capitalize from their recent exploration of the moon – a field of study for Japan which greatly increased from 2007 to 2009 with the SELENE (or Kaguya) lunar orbiter mission, the one year lunar exploration study group  – comprised of members from the industry, jurists, academics, astronauts, and sociologists – created three main objectives for the one year study.

These objectives included the clarification of the exploration objectives and roadmap for technological development; the proposal of a “concrete plan for robotic lunar exploration for science and utilization, foreseeing manned lunar exploration afterward;” and the establishment of a strategy for international cooperation.

For this study, the group was organized under the Minister of State for Space Policy. The group worked on the study from August 2009 to July 2010 before issuing their report.

Since the filing of that report in July 2010 until the Exploration Gateways Conference later in the year, budget requests for the implementation of the proposals from the report were not forthcoming.

Nevertheless, the proposal itself recommended a three phased approach to JAXA’s lunar exploration program.

The proposal would begin in 2015 with the launch and initial operations of the SELENE-2 mission – a direct follow-up to the SELENE mission from 2007-2009.

The mission would represent the first lunar landing for Japan and would be classed as a short-term investigations mission. At this time, a 2015 launch date is still possible – but only if funding materializes quickly.

This SELENE-2 mission would, under the recommendations of the study participants, lead to the SELENE-X mission in 2020 – a robotics exploration mission based on the assemblage of a base on the south polar region of the moon for long-term investigation and sample return.

This mission would require a lunar robot capable of collecting samples from the lunar surface and a sample return craft.

Together, these two proposed missions would allow Japan to fulfill the third part of the phased approach for the robotics side of the lunar exploration proposal: demonstrating leadership in the international collaboration arena.

But the lunar robotic exploration missions were not the only recommendations brought forth by the study group. Human space exploration approaches were also highlighted, including the research and development of “basic technologies for human transportation systems by around 2020.”

This basic technology includes safety enhancement of rocket engines, the study and incorporation of emergent escape technologies, the development of a human-rated reentry system, and the development of Environment Control and Life Support System (ELCSS) technologies.

These emergent technologies would enable the leveraging of other JAXA space activities, including robotic lunar exploration, H-IIA/B launch operations, and ISS utilization and operation for technology demonstration – thus fulfilling the usefulness of the International Space Station as a test-bed for future missions beyond Low Earth Orbit.

Importantly, for this phase of the project, the JAXA study team emphasized, as did the presentation panel at the Exploration Gateways Conference, that “International cooperation is mandatory for human space exploration!” – again pointing out the need to come together for the betterment of all (the ISS as the shining example) than to try to attempt things on our own.

Implementing the proposals - Building from past success:

In addition to the proposed/recommended process by the study group, the roadmap for space exploration for JAXA also includes desires for the exploration of what are labeled “primitive bodies.”

Building on the success of Hayabusa at an S-type asteroid, Nozomi at Mars, Ikaros (the solar sail craft), and Planet-C (the in-progress Venus Climate Orbiter mission which will enter orbit of Venus later this decade), JAXA is looking to continue its asteroid sample return success with the Hayabusa-2 and Hayabusa-Mk2 missions – the first of which would be to a C-type asteroid and the second to a D-type asteroid.

Also on the table for consideration is the BepiColombo mission in conjunction with ESA (European Space Agency) for the exploration of Mercury. The MELOS mission, a Martian orbiter, and a currently-unnamed Jupiter and Trojan asteroids exploration mission – classed as a joint international mission – are also under consideration.

Of the five missions outlined as potentialities for JAXA, only Hayabusa-2 has a proposed launch date (July 2014 with a June 2018 arrival at an asteroid and a December 2020 Earth Return date). No launch dates or proposed theoretical mission execution dates for the other four missions are available at this time as funding is not in place.

The Exploration Gateways Conference presentation also revealed that JAXA will – as always expected – continue its fervent commitment to the International Space Station via crewmembers Hoshide in 2012 and Wakata in 2013/2014.

The presentation also showed the rough launch schedule for the remaining five (5) HTVs – with HTVs 3-7 all represented with flights from 2012 through 2015.

After that, JAXA does list the possibility of further HTVs as TBD (To Be Determined) through the end of the Station’s lifetime – something that will be greatly dependent on US and Russian funding commitments past the 2020 life extension already granted by the Congress of the United States.

Technology development drive:

To foster this more robust space program, one that will hopefully include human-flight capabilities, certain and specific technological development scenarios will have to be realized – the first of which would be the development of human reentry and return capabilities.

“Thermal protection and lifting flight control of human vehicle during the atmosphere re-entry,” will need to be developed, notes the Exploration Gateways Conference presentation from JAXA.

“Slow descent, soft and precision land at the predetermined area of the earth,” will also be of high priority in the technological arena.

In fact, JAXA hopes to have an HTV-R (H-IIb Transfer Vehicle with return capability) by the middle of the decade – a vehicle which would demonstrate and prove the new technologies needed for human reentry and return processes.

In the long term, JAXA hopes to develop a true human-rated spaceship sometime in the late 2020s.

For this new spaceship, a new human-rated launcher will need to be developed.

“The human safety technologies are key for human launch vehicle,” notes the JAXA presentation. “Simple, reliable, and low cost cryogenic engine, FDIR (fault detection, isolation & recovery) technologies, Launch abort system for emergency escape,” are all of paramount importance.

Key technological develop is expected to continue through the 2010 decade, leading to a debut of the “next primary launch vehicle” in the early 2020s and full capabilities for human launch by the 2027/28 timeframe.

Likewise, ELCSS development will continue through the mid-2010s on the ground before moving up the ISS for in-space demonstrations of air and water revitalization equipment. CO2 removal, water recovery, and toilet and shower technology development will begin shortly thereafter and continue into 2021 before human spaceship, lander, and pressurized rover development begins.

JAXA is also aiming to develop new human orbital transfer technologies for low boil-off cryogenic propulsion technologies to be used for an orbital transfer vehicle set to debut in the late 2020s.

A pre-breathe-less spacesuit is also under development at this time, as is space medicine technologies to “verify medical safety techniques needed for human presence and establishment of long duration stay on the lunar surface.”

Specifically, a space radiation monitor, regolith and lunar dust control, mental and psychological support, telemedicine care, and space food are being drawn-up/analyzed.

For this space medicine part of JAXA’s development, two tech demos are scheduled on the ISS – one in approximately 2015 and the second in 2021.

(Images via JAXA)

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Ongoing Russian Soyuz problems and delays:

Following what was an extremely challenging 2011 due to numerous hardware failures – including the Progress M-12M and Fobos-Grunt spacecrafts – the Russian space agency Roscosmos continues to have bad luck in its quest to get its programs back on track.

Last week, reports emerged in the Russian media that the Soyuz TMA-04M/30S spacecraft, set to launch the next trio of Russian and American crewmembers to the ISS, had suffered a failure during routine testing.

It is understood at this time that the Descent Module (SA) of Soyuz TMA-04M was over-pressurised during leak checking, which, coupled with poor quality materials, caused welds to break in the hydrogen peroxide thruster propellant system. Specific causes of the over-pressurisation are unknown at this time, and a Russian commission is currently investigating the matter.

Due to the nature of the failure, pressure integrity of the Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft is believed to have been compromised beyond repair, which means that the SA is question can no longer be used and must be scrapped.

Roscosmos have decided not to swap out the damaged SA with the SA intended for Soyuz TMA-05M/31S, as has been done in the past, and have instead opted to replace the entire Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft – including SA, Orbital Module (BO), and Instrumentation and Propulsion Module (PAO) – with the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft, as swapping the entire spacecraft is quicker than de-integrating and re-integrating the SA from one Soyuz to the other.

Due to this swap-out of vehicles, the Soyuz TMA-04M launch must now be pushed back, since there is insufficient time to ready hardware originally intended for Soyuz TMA-05M for launch on Soyuz TMA-04M’s date. Also, since the Soyuz spacecraft originally intended for the Soyuz TMA-05M mission will now be used for Soyuz TMA-04M, the spacecraft for Soyuz TMA-05M must come from Soyuz TMA-06M, thus creating ripple-like delays for future Soyuz flights.

As detailed by NASA’s ISS Program Manager Mike “Suff” Suffredini at an ISS status press briefing late last week, following consultations between all the ISS international partners, it has been decided to push the Soyuz TMA-04M launch back from 30th March to 15th May, a delay of around 45 days for Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka & Sergey Revin, and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba.

In order to avoid a large gap of three-crew station operations between the return of the Soyuz TMA-22/28S spacecraft and the launch of Soyuz TMA-04M, the Soyuz TMA-22 return will also be delayed by around 45 days, from 16th March to 30th April.

The 45 day mission extension is not an issue however, since Soyuz TMA-22 arrived at the ISS back in mid-November 2011 around 45 days later than originally planned, due to the launch failure of the Progress M-12M/44P spacecraft in August. Thus, the delay in the Soyuz TMA-22 return only restores the mission to a normal duration, and thus doesn’t present any issues with leaving the Soyuz on-orbit past its 200 day orbital lifetime.

As for other Russian launches affected by the “ripple” of delays, The Soyuz TMA-05M/31S spacecraft will be delayed for 45 days, from 30th May to 15th July. Soyuz TMA-06M/32S will slip by roughly 20 days, from 26th September to 15th October, with Soyuz TMA-07M/33S slipping by roughly 10 days, from 26th November to 5th December.

As one Soyuz must depart the station before another can launch, the undocking and landing of Soyuz spacecraft prior to the launches noted above will slip by a similar amount to the delay of the launch in question, in order to preserve the preferred two-week gap of three-crew station operations between Soyuz landings and launches.

This means a roughly 45 day slip for the Soyuz TMA-03M landing, from 16th May to 1st July, a roughly 5 day slip for the Soyuz TMA-04M landing, from 12th to 17th September, and no slip for the Soyuz TMA-05M landing, which will still occur as originally planned on 12th November.

Click here for ISS Articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/iss/

Other flight activities for early 2012:

With the first crew rotation of 2012 now via the Soyuz TMA-22 undocking and landing on 30th April and the Soyuz TMA-04M launch on 15th May, the next three months on station will be devoted to a spacewalk, and visits from Russian, European, and commercial cargo ships, all of which must be co-ordinated with each other to ensure no conflicts in the complex schedule.

The first item on the order of ISS flight events for the next few months is Russian Extra Vehicular Activity-30 (EVA-30) on 16th February.

During this spacewalk, the first of 2012, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Anatoly Shkaplerov will spend roughly six hours outside the Russian Segment (RS) of the ISS, preparing for the arrival of the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) “Nauka” in 2013.

The MLM will dock to the Service Module (SM) “Zvezda” Nadir docking port, where Docking Compartment-1 (DC-1) “Pirs” currently resides.

Due to this, DC-1 will need to be undocked and disposed of prior to MLM’s arrival, and so the two manually-operated Strela cranes currently attached to DC-1 must be relocated to elsewhere on the station in order to preserve them for future use.

Thus, during EVA-30, the Strela-1 crane will be relocated to the Mini Research Module-2 (MRM-2) “Poisk”, a task originally planned for last August’s Russian EVA-29.

Strela-2 will move to the Functional Cargo Block (FGB) “Zarya” during a later EVA. Other tasks for EVA-30 including installing debris shields on the SM, setting up external experiments, and, as a get ahead, transferring an EVA ladder from DC-1 to MRM-2.

Following EVA-30, the next big task for the ISS will be to receive the European Automated Transfer Vehicle-3 (ATV-3) cargo carrier.

Currently planned for launch atop an Ariane V from Kourou Space Center in French Guiana on 9th March, ATV-3 will dock to the ISS following a 10 day free flight, on 19th March.

ATV-3 is somewhat controlling the debut launch of the new European Vega rocket, currently planned for 13th February, by limiting the number of days that the Vega launch can scrub before it must be stood down until after ATV-3, due to the need to have enough time to reconfigure Kourou launch site assets to support the ATV-3 launch. ATV-3 cannot move to make way for Vega, as that would cause problems for the already jam-packed and highly complex ISS flight manifest.

ATV-3, which has been upgraded to carry more internal cargo than pervious ATVs, will be the first vehicle to dock at the SM Aft port since the Progress M-11M/43P spacecraft prior to STS-135 last June, since the failed Progress M-12M/44P was supposed to dock there following Progress M-11M’s departure in August. ATV-3 will remain at the ISS through to August 2012, during which time it will provide propulsive support for ISS attitude control, reboosts, and Debris Avoidance Maneuvers (DAMs).

Following the ATV-3 docking, and with the Progress M-15M/47P launch now accelerated from 25th April to 20th April, a full month of time will be free in the ISS schedule for what will likely be the most watched mission of the year – the inaugural visit of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to the station.

SpaceX ongoing delays and potential launch date:

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule had at the start of the year been planned for launch on 7th February, on the now approved combined COTS-2/COTS-3 (C2/C3) demo mission.

However, ongoing delays, related mainly to software testing, integrated simulations, refinement of flight procedures, and closeout of various “open items” on the spacecraft and launch vehicle, have pushed the launch to the right.

The ISS is now fully ready to support Dragon, however, with the Enhanced Processor & Integrated Communications (EPIC) card installations and both the X2_R10 and X2_R11 software transitions now completed, the latter of which includes Mobile Servicing System (MSS) 7.1 software, which updates the MSS, of which the SSRMS is a part, to support Dragon robotics activities.

Officially, the target launch date for Dragon at this time is 20th March – the day after the planned ATV-3 docking, so as to avoid any conflicts with that vehicle.

However, this date is merely a placeholder with the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) Eastern Range, and at last week’s ISS status press briefing, NASA ISS Program Manager Mike Suffredini said that due to the volume of work still to be completed, an April launch date is more likely for SpaceX.

SpaceX has until late April to play with, since the Progress M-15M launch and docking is planned for 20th and 22nd April, respectively, and after that, the Soyuz TMA-22 undocking and landing on 30th April.

Following the TMA-22 undocking, ISS will be at three crew operations, which may preclude the Dragon berthing at the ISS due to the need to have two trained crewmembers aboard the station to perform the Dragon capture with the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS).

It is not understood at this point whether ESA astronaut André Kuipers would be able to fulfil the role of a trained crewmember, along with NASA astronaut Don Pettit, but if not, the next time two trained US crewmembers would be aboard the station is 17th May, following the 15th May launch of Soyuz TMA-04M, carrying NASA astronaut Joe Acaba.

Following arrival of Soyuz TMA-04M, the ISS schedule is free through the rest of May and all of June, whereupon another Soyuz rotation will occur in early through mid-July, followed by Russian and Japanese resupply flights.

Flight activities for later in 2012:

Another vehicle to feel the fallout of the recent Soyuz problems is Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle-3 (HTV-3), which was previously scheduled to launch on 26th June, for a rendezvous with and berthing to the ISS on 1st July.

Since the Soyuz reshuffle placed the HTV-3 rendezvous and berthing on the same date as the Soyuz TMA-03M undocking, following which ISS will be at three-crew operations, that meant HTV-3′s arrival would cause conflict issues, and violate the flight rule to have two fully trained US crewmembers available to support capture operations, since only one US astronaut would be aboard the ISS following the Soyuz TMA-03M undocking (Joe Acaba).

Thus, HTV-3 now has to wait for Soyuz TMA-05M, carrying NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, to dock with the ISS on 17th July, prior to launching on what is now scheduled to be a late July or early August date.

The months of August and September will then be a very busy time on ISS, with the scheduled undocking of ATV-3 on 27th August, and the unberthing of HTV sometime in late August or early September.

During this time, Orbital’s Cygnus vehicle could also visit the ISS on its maiden flight, as much as ongong delays with launch site readiness mean that no firm date is set for that flight at this time.

Also during August, Russian EVA-31 will be performed, along with the recently added US EVA-18. This EVA had been scheduled for summer 2012 before, but was pushed back to 2013. However, a recent external hardware failure, namely the Main Bus Switching Unit-1 (MBSU-1) located on the S0 Truss, caused NASA managers to reconsider.

MBSU-1, which along with three other MBSUs distributes power around the station’s electrical system, started displaying erratic behaviour late last year, such as resets and loss of communication. MBSU-1 has now completely lost communications with the ISS, although it is still functioning and distributing power correctly.

It is clear, however, that MBSU-1 is slowly degrading, and could be on the verge of total failure. While source information shows that the ISS could tolerate a complete MBSU-1 failure via the crew installing internal jumpers to re-distribute power around the station, this would leave the ISS in what is a single fault tolerate situation, as a failure of another MBSU would require an emergency EVA to Remove & Replace (R&R) the failed MBSU.

Source information shows that MBSU-2 has previously displayed errors similar to those seen on MBSU-1, such as bit errors, and thus MBSU-2 is vulnerable to the same type of failure as MBSU-1, which would not be recoverable via jumper installation.

Due to this fact, NASA managers have decided to go ahead and R&R MBSU-1 this year, in order to reduce the risk of a complete failure leaving the ISS MBSUs single fault tolerant.

This means that, although EVA-18 will include an R&R of failed hardware, it is classed as a planned EVA, not an unplanned EVA – the best example of which is August 2010′s three epic EVAs to R&R the failed Loop B Pump Module (PM). Procedures for a contingency EVA do already exist however, should MBSU-1 fail prior to its scheduled R&R and thus require an immediate R&R.

EVA-18 will be significant since it will be the first US ISS spacewalk in the post-Shuttle era, an era which will see the ISS crew have to halt their research activities in order to deal with outside problems themselves, instead of leaving it to a visiting Shuttle crew as was done in the past.

Thus, NASA’s strategy of pre-positioning ample spare Orbital Replacement Units (ORUs) outside the ISS prior to the Shuttle’s retirement is already proving to be a good strategy, as source information shows that two spare MBSUs are currently available outside the ISS – both stored on External Stowage Platform-2 (ESP-2), with one having flown to the ISS on STS-116 in December 2006, and the other on STS-120 in October/November 2007.

Two spare MBSUs are also available on the ground, one of which is planned for launch on HTV-4 in July 2013, and the other planned for launch in 2017. Both of these MBSUs are not susceptible to the bit errors noticed on MBSUs 1 and 2.

NASA is currently in the process of reviewing specific EVA timelines, and source information shows that two main paths are being considered – one involving the R&R of MBSU-1 using just the two spacewalkers, and the other involving the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator (SPDM) “Dextre” doing some of the preparation tasks prior to the EVA, including retrieving the space MBSU from ESP-2 and positioning it near the EVA worksite, to be installed by the EVA crew (it is not possible for the SPDM to perform the entire R&R).

Without the use of the SPDM, a standard EVA timeline could accomplish the MBSU-1 R&R in 6 hours 30 minutes, around the standard time for an EVA. However, a streamlined timeline could accomplish the MBSU-1 R&R in only 4 hours 30 minutes, leaving around an additional 2 hours for some extra tasks outside the station. With prior assistance from the SPDM however, an additional 3 hours 30 minutes would be available for additional tasks.

Source information shows that the additional tasks that could be performed include those deferred from the single STS-135 EVA in July 2011, such as the FGB Power & Date Grapple Fixture (PDGF) 1553 cable install, FGB PDGF grounding wire inspections, and SSRMS Camera Light Pan/tilt Assembly (CLPA) R&R. Some of these tasks could also be conducted during US EVAs 19 and 20 however, which have now been brought forward to February 2013, for reasons unknown at this time.

Following US EVA-18, the remainder of 2012 will then see the usual traffic of Soyuz and Progress flights, along with possibly the first operational resupply flights of the Dragon and Cygnus vehicles under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) Program.

Overall, despite claims that the ISS was going to be slowing down in the post-Shuttle era, the station is in fact as busy as ever, playing host to a wide array of international and commercial Visiting Vehicles (VVs), as well as the usual heavy schedule of maintenance and research activities.

While delays in Russian and commercial vehicles continue to have an impact on the ISS, it is vital that both these systems demonstrate reliability this year, since both are now being heavily relied on to provide vital crew and cargo transportation to the ISS in the wake of the Shuttle’s retirement.

(Images: L2 Content, NASA, Roscosmos and Orbital)

(NSF and L2 are providing full transition level coverage, available no where else on the internet, from Orion and SLS to ISS and COTS/CRS/CCDEV, to European and Russian vehicles). 

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NASA’s Remembrance:

This time of year serves to remind the human race that there is nothing routine about space flight, with three tragic anniversaries – Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia – all falling within five calendar days of each other early into each new year.

While the accidents, their causes, and the drive to mitigate repeat disasters are all well documented, the reminder – marked by NASA’s Day of Remembrance on the last Thursday of each January – serves to remind the current space program workforce that they have a job to do: to ensure no more names are added to the list of the fallen astronaut heroes.

KSC Director Bob Cabana knows what it’s like to put his life on the line for a mission into space. The retired USMC Colonel flew on four Space Shuttle missions and personally knew some of the lost heroes. He also was in charge of the spaceport that witnessed the final launches of the three surviving orbiters, each of which returned their crews home safely.

“Each year as I pause on our Day of Remembrance to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in our quest to explore space, I dedicate myself to ensuring that I do my very best to help prevent the loss of another life, whether as a crew member or in the line of duty supporting America’s space program,” noted Director Cabana in an address to the workforce.

“The business we are in is very demanding and terribly unforgiving of any mistakes we make.

“After laying the wreath, I took time to read the names on the mirror. They were some of my closest friends. They trusted us to do our best to protect them and keep them safe; they left loved ones behind who will always have an empty space that they once filled.”

KSC is currently transitioning to launch humans into space once again. As much as the new vehicles – ranging from commercial spaceships to NASA’s Orion capsule via the Space Launch System (SLS) - will be deemed “safer” than the Space Shuttle, it is unlikely the word “safe” will be taken for granted for decades to come, at least not when it involves sending crews uphill, riding on top of an explosion.

While the reminders this time of year are painful, the lessons from the three major disasters serve as motivation to ensure no more mistakes, to bring each crew back home safely and avoid another disaster which may result in the end of NASA in this risk adverse era.

“As we transition to a new future of commercial space operations and exploration beyond Earth, we cannot forget the lessons of our past,” added Director Cabana.

“They must be captured and passed on to ensure we do not repeat the same mistakes; that we do not take for granted our ability to launch humans into orbit; that just because we escaped harm in the past, it is no justification for success in the future; and that we have no hesitancy to share our concerns with anyone above or below us in the chain of command when it comes to the processing of critical space hardware that impacts the lives of our crew members, coworkers, and ourselves.

“We do amazing things at KSC, and we will continue to excel in the future because we have a culture of trust and integrity that binds us together. Let’s not lose that. Let’s not add any more names to the mirror. Let’s continue to do our best to ensure the health and safety of our crews and everyone else who works here at KSC.

“Thank you for your dedication to NASA, to KSC, and to human space exploration.”

Columbia’s loss remains the freshest in our minds. The beloved flagship which pioneered the Space Shuttle Program earned high praise from veteran commander John Young for her debut mission in 1981 and again from her inaugural pilot Bob Crippen who delivered a highly emotional tribute to Columbia during STS-107′s memorial speech – an amazing human tribute to a machine, one which is unlikely to be surpassed.
 
To vast amounts of people, both those who worked with the orbiters and those which followed their missions, the orbiters were living machines, almost differently sentient via their own personalities and quirks driven by a willingness to fight against the laws of physics to protect their crews.

Columbia had won that battle 27 times previous, before being mortally wounded during STS-107′s launch – a wound that sealed her fate during reentry 16 days later. Despite the gaping wound in her left wing, Columbia fought to the last during those final moments nine years ago today, as recognized by one of her engineers.
 
“Columbia’s lasting memorial in my eyes was her bravery that often gets over-looked,” noted one United Space Alliance engineer assigned to Columbia and who asked not to be named. “It was like she knew. I know that may sound strange – given she’s a machine, but I can’t – no matter how many times I look at the data – work out how she stayed mainly in one piece for so long, with her left wing terribly mis-shaped.
 
“Even with what we believe was – and I pray – an unconscious crew, and with her structure collapsing all around her, she still made multiple RCS (Reaction Control System) firings and rudder movements, fighting all the way to try and correct the drag. She should have been pulled over before she finally broke up, but she fought back, again and again.
 
“When I first got to see the data, I cried my eyes out. She was so brave to the end – I’m so proud of her and I’ll never forget her.”

Nine years later, Columbia continues to remind KSC’s current workforce of the need to work toward ensuring their future vehicles are in the best possible state for successfully launching and returning crews. Her remains continue to be held in a special room inside the very Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) she and her surviving sisters were processed in for their missions.

However, Columbia’s AND Challenger’s spirits remain in space – and while it may take a stretch of the imagination, their memories were honored as they watched over each one of their three sisters as Discovery, Endeavour, and Atlantis each enjoyed their victory laps around the planet one final time before descending into the atmosphere to conclude their service lives with a successful reentry and landing.

Sadly, the future which Columbia strived to create is currently less than desirable. As the U.S. Space Agency struggles to find a proper sense of direction, the future of NASA and humanity’s crewed exploration of space remains locked in PowerPoints and developmental contracts.

While political bickering continues over how to budget the future, its impact on the relatively small percentage of funding for what remains an admired space program threatens to disrespect the very heroes honored at this time of year.

Such frustrations were brilliantly captured in an article written by former SSP manager Wayne Hale.

“Do you think that they (the fallen astronauts) would be proud of their country which can no longer send humans into space? Do you think they would be proud of their space agency which has no coherent plan to continue with exploration?” Mr. Hale wrote in on his site.

“Do you think that they would be proud of their government which has fallen into bickering so badly that even the half of 1 percent of the federal budget that used to enable the future has been significantly reduced?  Or do you think that they would be proud of a commercial sector that is long on PR and short on delivering new commercial spacecraft?”
 
A proud nation such as the United States needs to honor its heroes and provide the inspiration of the next generation to step up to the plate to become part of the legacy and push forward humanity’s future in space.

*Discuss this article here*

To read about the orbiters -  from birth, processing, every single mission, through to retirement, click here for the links:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=25837.0

(Images: NASA, L2, Associated Press).

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Gearing up for an ambitious mission on Mars:
 
Like its twin rover, Spirit, Opportunity’s mission was based on 90-solar day mission on surface of Mars. A solar day is based on planetary Mars timekeeping based on Mars’ orbital rotation rate.
 
A solar day on Mars is clocked at 24 hours 39 minutes 35.24409 seconds. Compared to Earth’s 24 hour 00 minute 00.002 second solar day length, the difference in the Earth-Mars solar day results in the Martian solar day lasting 2.7% longer than Earth’s with a conversation factor of 1.027491 days to sols.
 
Thus, since landing on Mars, Opportunity has operated for 2,844 sols, equivalent to 2,922 standard Earth days (Earth sols).

In turn, this long-duration mission puts Opportunity 2,754 sols over its predicted and planned 90 sol-day mission – meaning that Opportunity has functioned 30.6 times longer than anticipated as the rover and its mission control team celebrates its 8th Earth-year anniversary on Mars.

Over these 8 Earth-years on Mars, Opportunity has searched for scientific knowledge based on its original mission objectives, including the search for and characteristic of rocks and soils.

Other objectives of Opportunity’s ongoing mission include the determination of the distribution and composition of minerals, rocks, and soils surrounding the landing site (and beyond, at this point); determination of what geologic processes have shaped the local terrain and influenced the chemistry, including water or wind erosion, sedimentation, hydrothermal mechanisms, volcanism, and cratering; and the performance calibration and validation of surface observations of Mars made by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to help determine the accuracy and effectiveness of various instruments that survey the Martian geology from orbit.

Moreover, Opportunity’s objectives have and continue to revolve around the search for iron-containing minerals, including the identification and quantification of the relative amounts of specific mineral types that contain water or were formed in water; the characterization of the mineralogy and textures of rocks and soils to determine the processes that created them; the search for geological clues to the environmental conditions that existed when liquid water was present; and the assessment of whether the past Martian environment was conducive for life.

To accomplish the tasks given to it, Opportunity was truly built to last. At a height of 4.9 ft, a width of 7.5 ft, and a length of 5.2 ft, the six-wheeled utility craft was constructed to power itself via solar panels installed on its “back.”

These solar panels, at peak operating condition (clear of Martian dust and dirt), were designed to produce 140 watts of power for four hours per day. The energy produced from the solar panels is then transferred to the Opportunity’s lithium ion batteries for storage and distribution – thus allowing the rover to conserve power when not needed and use energy during non-sunlit portions of the day.

Weighing in a 400 lbs, the craft was built with mobility in mind, needing to not only drive itself to specific locations determined by its control team, but also to navigate around obstacles while driving toward specific targets of interest.

Thus, each wheel on Opportunity was given its own motor as well as steering at the front and rear drive sections.

With a maximum speed of 2 in/s (with an average speed about one-fifth of this), Opportunity was also built with the ability to navigate grades on the Martian surface of up to 30 degrees.

Opportunity was also affixed with nine scientific experiments, including a panoramic camera to examine the texture, color, mineralogy, and structure of the local Martian terrain; a navigation camera for driving purposes; the Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer to identify “promising rocks and soil” for examination; and two Hazcams with 120 degree views for “additional data about its surroundings.”

Opportunity’s robotic arm was fixed with the Mossbauer spectrometer for close-up investigations of the mineralogy of iron-bearing rocks and soils; the Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer for close-up analysis of the abundances of elements that make up rocks and soils; magnets for collects magnetic dust particles; a Microscopic Imager for close-up, high-resolution images of rocks and soils; and the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) to expose fresh rock material for examination by instruments on-board the rover.

Getting to Mars:

Like the Space Shuttle orbiter Endeavour and the Mars rover Sojourner before it, the Mars Rover ‘Opportunity’ was named through a student essay competition. The winning entry was written by a Russian-American student who spoke of the spirit and opportunity to achieve her dreams in the United States after living a portion of her life in an orphanage.

With its construction and ground test/validation complete, Opportunity was transported to Florida where the rover underwent final testing and preparations for its trip to Mars.

With final preparations complete, Opportunity was folded up inside its aeroshell. Following the launch of Opportunity’s twin rover Spirit on 10 June 2003, Opportunity was transported to Launch Complex 17B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where the assembly was hoisted up and placed atop a Delta II Heavy rocket in mid-June for a June 28th launch.

Bad weather, an insulation problem, and a battery issue on the Delta II rocket forced a nine day delay to Opportunity’s launch.

On 7 July 2003, Opportunity’s launch team targeted the first of two instantaneous launch windows for the day. With just seconds to go in the countdown, an automatic cutoff was ordered by the launch computers when a fill-and-drain value on the Delta II indicated a sluggish response.

The launch team backed out of the terminal count and reconfigured for the second of only two instantaneous launch windows of the evening.

With the fill-and-drain valve issue fixed, the “go” was given to proceed with the count, and the Delta II Heavy rocket lifted off at 23:18:15 EDT with the Opportunity rover.

The launch was the first flight of the Delta II Heavy rocket configuration and occurred six days before the close of the Earth-Mars planetary alignment launch window.

After a 6.5 month cruise to Mars, Opportunity hit the Martian atmosphere just before midnight Eastern Standard Time on 24 January 2004.

Confirmation of a successful landing on Mars was received at 00:05 EST (05:05 UTC) 25 January 2004.

A Hole-in-One landing and the first 90 sols on Mars:

After descending through the Martian atmosphere, Opportunity’s encasement was engulfed in airbags to cushion the rover for the drop down and bounce/roll onto the Martian surface.

Landing on the Meridiani Plamun 25km downrange of its targeted landed sight, Opportunity’s airbag enclosed capsule rolled into an impact crater on the Martian surface before coming to a complete stop.

Upon opening of Opportunity’s encasement, the rover’s control team was amazed to find the rover sitting in the bottom of an impact crater and quickly described the landing as an inter-planetary “hole in one” – even though the rover was not targeting that specific area for landing.

After landing, Opportunity’s landing team christened the crater “Eagle crater,” and, in following with twin rover Spirit’s landing site, officially named Opportunity’s landing site “Challenger Memorial Station” in honor of the Space Shuttle Challenger and her crew who were lost in the Challenger/STS-51L launch accident – the 18th anniversary of which was just 3 days after Opportunity’s landing.

Upon examination of the landing crater, Opportunity showed that the crater was the darkest landing site ever visited by a spacecraft on Mars.

However, the landing presented a challenge for Opportunity’s control team as the rover would now have to climb a relatively steep embankment to get out of the crater.

From a stationary position on its landing bed, Opportunity observed a rock outcropping along the rim of the crater and a compilation of course gray grains in the otherwise reddish sand within the crater.

During this stationary checkout time, Opportunity’s control team discovered a problem with the rover’s robotic arm in the Joint 1 heater – specifically, that the heather on the joint that controls the side-to-side motion of the arm was stuck “on.”

An investigation revealed that the heater most likely failed during final assembly, test, and launch operations.

Since the rover was built with a safety device for this possibility, the T-stat box on the rover terminated the heater at a specific temperature and reactivated the heater once the joint’s temperature fell below a certain degree point.

This meant that Opportunity’s Joint 1 heater turned all for the duration of the Martian night and turned off for significant portions of the Martian day – a not ideal but “livable” issue.

By Sol 15, Opportunity was mobile and examining the rock outcroppings at Eagle crater. Observations made by Opportunity at the time led to the hypothesis that the rocks were formed from “fine grain or dust” instead of compacted sand as Earth sandstone is.

This hypothesis in turn led to the belief that the rocks were formed from volcanic flow, wind, or water. With water as a potential forming agent for the Eagle crater rock outcroppings, Opportunity’s goal of determining the potential that water had once existed on the surface of Mars for a long enough period to effect local geology was underway.

While Opportunity’s exploration at Eagle crater continued, the rover used its robotic arm RAT for the first time on Sol 30. Examination of the cut rock, located at the El Capitan outcropping, indicated signs of erosion (small, elongated voids in the rock visible both on the surface of the rock and in its interior after Opportunity’s drilling) that suggested the presence of liquid water at one point in Mars’ past.

Specifically, scientists revealed that the voids were similar and “consistent” with vugs on Earth rocks.

Furthermore, Opportunity found evidence of water from the MIMOS II spectrometer. This instrument found evidence of the mineral jarosite, a mineral that contains hydroxide ions.

Opportunity’s crew also took this time to dig the first-ever trench by the Mars Rover pair by using the Opportunity’s front wheels. The process, which took less than an half-hour, created a trench 20 inches long by 4 inches deep.

The resultant dig revealed a “clotty texture” to the soil in the upper part of the trench and bright soil in the trench’s bottom.

The dig also revealed rounded, shiny pebbles and fine-grained soil particles too small for the rover’s microscope to discern.

Beyond the 90-sol-day warranty - Opportunity at Endurance Crater:

After leaving its landing site behind, Opportunity reached Endurance crater on Sol 95 – five days beyond its expected life time on Mars.

After completing a circumnavigation of the crater, Opportunity was directed toward the rock Lion Stone, which it arrived at 12 days after making it to Endurance crater.

Opportunity’s investigations of this rock found that it had a similar composition as those found at Eagle Crater.

By 4 June 2004, Opportunity’s team made the decision to send the rover itself into Endurance crater to examine an interesting area of rocks. This decision was made with the knowledge that the rover may not have been able to climb back out of the crater.

Opportunity began its descent into Endurance crater on 8 June 2004 before immediately backing out of the crater to test its descent angle. The information provided by this drive in/drive out maneuver confirmed that the angle of the crater’s surface was well within Opportunity’s operating limits.

After driving into Endurance crater on 12 June 2004, Opportunity spent 180 sols inside the crater examining the various rock formations – and even observing Earth-like wispy clouds in Mars’ atmosphere.

During this time, Opportunity returned valuable scientific data on the soil composition and sedimentary geology of Endurance crater.

A Stellar Find for Opportunity and a drive south:

After completing operations at Endurance crater, Opportunity’s team commanded the rover to begin driving toward its own discarded heat shield that protected it during Martian atmospheric entry almost one year prior.

While conducting this examination of its heat shield, Opportunity stumbled upon a rock that would prove to be one the rover’s most significant finds: a meteorite on the surface of Mars.

Discovered on Sol 345, the meteorite was the first one ever discovered on a planet other than Earth (though two meteorites had already been discovered on the Moon), and was first identified an “unusual” because it had an infrared spectrum similar in appearance to a reflection of the sky of Mars.

Measurements and examinations by Opportunity showed the meteorite was composed of 93 percent iron and 7 percent nickel.

Because of a lack of knowledge of Mars’ environment, whether the meteorite fell to Mars relative recently or several millions if not billions of years ago is unknown.

Opportunity has since found, to date, five similar meteorites.

After this discovery, Opportunity’s team directed the rover to dig another trench before setting off for Vostok crater.

After reaching Vostok crater and spending a few days in the vicinity, Opportunity was commanded southward to the “etched terrain.”

During this time, Opportunity set a single-day distance driving record by travelling 772 ft.

Stopping for six days to investigate soil surface ripples on the Meridiani Planum, Opportunity became the unwitting victim in a sand trap approximately 20 Martian days after leaving the rippled sands.

Opportunity became stuck in the sand on 26 April 2005 after attempting to climb over a dune that measured only 12 inches (30 centimeters) in height.

The dune was quickly dubbed “purgatory dune” because of the predicament it now posed.

Spending an agonizing 38 Sols stuck in the sand, Opportunity was eventually able to free itself after ground controllers simulated the condition here on the Earth.

Through a precise series of commands and maneuvers, Opportunity painstakingly moved only centimeters at a time so mission controllers could monitor progress and assess a best next move scenario after each labored movement forward.

After being freed, Opportunity spent 12 Sols studying purgatory dune before continue southward toward its target of Erebus crater.

The road to Victoria crater:

While Erebus crater was, in-hindsight (considering Opportunity’s longevity), always a stop-over on the way to Victoria crater, the year-long period between Opportunity’s arrival at Erebus (October 2005) and arrival at Victoria (September 2006) crater was a year filled with notable milestones for the mission, including the first dust storm endured by the rover, a cleaning event on its solar panels, and further problems with the rover’s robotic scientific arm.

During this time, a new program was uploaded to Opportunity that would prevent the rover from becoming stuck in another sand dune.

This program proved invaluable on Sol 603 when the program triggered an “all stop” command to Opportunity when the rover’s wheel-slip percentage reached 44.5 percent – thus preventing Opportunity from getting stuck in another sand dune.

By Sol 628, though, the rover was engulfed in a dust storm that lasted three days. The storm deposited numerous quantities of dust onto the rover’s solar panels and reduced total power generation on the rover.

However, as luck would have it, a sudden cleaning event took place less than three weeks after the dust storm, restoring Opportunity’s power generating capabilities to 80 percent of maximum.

The cleaning events occur when Martian winds blew the dust off the solar panels.

But by this point, Opportunity’s control team was battling a further issue with the rover’s Joint 1 heater.

As Opportunity approached its first Martian winter back in May 2004, the control team commanded the rover into deep sleep at night, a procedure which disconnected Opportunity’s systems from the main battery – thus preventing the Joint 1 heater from remaining “on” throughout the day and night as temperatures dropped in the Martian winter.

However, this procedure exposed the mechanical joint to extreme temperature swings during the day and night and eventually led to the stall of the Joint 1 motor on 25 November 2005.

At this point, Opportunity’s control team commanded the rover to send a higher-than-normal electrical current the arm to unstow it. This approach worked, though the joint would occasionally stall.

By late March 2006, after 760 sols on Mars, Opportunity departed Erebus crater for Victoria crater, arriving 191 sols later.

Time at Victoria crater – A struggle for survival:

Upon arriving at Victoria carter on 16 September 2006, Opportunity photographed the crater and returned the first substantial views of Victoria’s 7 kilometer wide impact crater.

During initial observations at Victoria, Opportunity revealed a dune field at the bottom of the crater as well as a slope leading into the crater itself.

While Opportunity investigated the rim of Victoria crater, mission controllers sent a software upgrade package to the rover that allowed it to make internal decisions on whether or not to transmit images back to Earth and whether or not to extend its robotic arm for scientific investigation.

By mid-May 2007, while crater rim observations and investigations continued, a series of significant cleaning events allowed for unprecedented power increases to the rover to levels not seen since Sol 18 of the mission.

This dramatic increase in power generating capability came at the best time possible as residual daily power was stored in Opportunity’s batteries just a month before devastating dust storms nearly claimed the rover.

Beginning in June 2007, Mars’ six Earth-year dust storm cycle began, clouding the Martian atmosphere in dust and blocking 99 percent of sunlight from reaching Opportunity’s solar panels – while at the same covering the rover’s solar panels and significantly reducing the rover’s ability to gather the small amount of sunlight actually reaching it.

As power level dropped to dangerously low levels, NASA released a statement saying, “We’re rooting for our rovers to survive these storms, but they were never designed for conditions this intense.”

Normal solar panel generation of 700 watt-hours energy per day dropped to only 128 watt-hours on 18 July 2007 on Opportunity. As a result, Opportunity began draining its batteries to preserve system power and heating requirements.

The rover’s control team, in response, commanded the rover to only communicate with Earth every three days to converse power for its heaters.

By late-July 2007, Opportunity was barely getting enough solar energy each day to survive, and the temperature in the rover’s electronics module was dropping. At this point, NASA stated that if temperatures continued to drop, Opportunity’s low-power fault program could trip, disabling the rover’s batteries and putting Opportunity into sleep mode.

“There is a real risk that Opportunity will trip a low-power fault. When a low-power fault is tripped, the rover’s systems take the batteries off-line, putting the rover to sleep and then checking each sol to see if there is sufficient available energy to wake up and perform daily fault communications.

“If there is not sufficient energy, Opportunity will stay asleep. Depending on the weather conditions, Opportunity could stay asleep for days, weeks or even months, all the while trying to charge its batteries with whatever available sunlight there might be.”

At this point, NASA also stated that there was a real chance that Opportunity, if placed into sleep mode, would never wake up.

But despite these abysmal odds, Opportunity never tripped its low-power fault, and by 7 August 2007, with the dust storms beginning to subside, power levels were sufficient for Opportunity to start taking pictures of the Martian dust storm again.

By 21 August, Opportunity’s batteries were fully charged, and the rover began driving again for the first time since the dust storm began – an amazing endurance story for the rover that had, by this point, survived the “un-survivable” scenario on Mars’ surface during full-fledged operations three years beyond its expected 90 sol day death date from low power levels because of predicted dust accumulation on its solar panels.

Recovering from the dust storm, Opportunity began its descent into Victoria crater on 11 September 2007 to test the terrain’s stability and slope gradient.

With final checks complete, Opportunity descended the Duck Bay ramp into Victoria crater on 13 September 2007 where it explored, for the next Earth-year, the rock composition of Duck Bay and the face of Cape Verde in great scientific detail.

By 15 April 2008, while still inside Victoria crater, Opportunity’s robotic arm once again failed to respond to commands, and the Joint 1 motor stalled at the beginning of unstowing operations.

The motor stalled on all follow-up unstow attempts – something the differed from previous unstow stalls where the motor worked on subsequent attempts.

A month of testing followed, during which controllers monitored resistance on the joint at various times in the day.

After rover wake up on Sol 1531 (14 May 2008), Opportunity was commanded to unstow its robotic arm. The command worked, and the arm extended from underneath the rover.

At this point, the decision was made to never stow the arm again, and a safe, arm-extended drive configuration was determined and implemented.

Thus, since May 2008, nearly 4 years ago and for half its time on Mars, Opportunity has driven across the surface of Mars with its robot arm fully extended out in front of it.

A new mission target - Endeavour crater:

With the rover in good health, Opportunity’s control team elected to send the rover on a 14 mile (22 kilometer) trek to Endeavour crater.

Emerging from Victoria crater between 24-28 August 2008 (Sols 1630-1634), Opportunity began the impressive trek for Endeavour crater, stopping along the way to investigate various “dark cobbles” on the Meridiani Planum.

Endeavour crater was chosen in large part due to expectations that deeper stacks of rocks would be seen at Endeavour crater than at Victoria crater. Furthermore, the team opted to send Opportunity to Endeavour crater following the discovery of phyllosilicate, clay-bearing rock at Endeavour crater – rock that is hospitable to life.

During the predicted two year drive to Endeavour crater, Opportunity was temporarily out of contact with Earth during the Solar conjunction of November/December 2008 at which time Earth and Mars were on opposite sides of the sun from one another.

By March 2009, Opportunity’s cameras could see the rim of Endeavour crater, as well as Iazu crater – which was 38 kilometers (24 miles) away from the rover at the time.

By 18 July 2009 (Sol 1850), Opportunity was directed to reverse course away from Endeavour crater and toward a large, black rock.

The rover reached the rock ten Earth-days later, at which point it was discovered that the rock was yet another meteorite.

After examination of the rock, Opportunity was again commanded to drive toward Endeavour crater, but was stopped again on Sol 2022 when it found yet another meteorite. After examining this meteorite for 12 Sols, Opportunity found yet another meteorite on Sol 2038.

This time, the rover did a “drive by” investigation, taking photographs of the meteorite while continuing on toward Endeavour crater.

Opportunity again stopped on Sol 2061 (10 November 2009) to investigate a rock target that’s identity was not initially clear.

It was eventually determined that the rock was rock ejecta material from deep within Mars.

Investigation of the rock ejecta concluded on Sol 2122 (12 January 2010), and the rover arrived at Concepcion crater on 28 January 2010.

After circumnavigating the crater, Opportunity once again set out for Endeavour crater.

By 5 May 2010, a new route to Endeavour crater was plotted to avoid potentially hazardous sand dunes.

Then, on Sol 2246 (19 May 2010), the Opportunity rover, despite arriving on Mars after its twin rover Spirit, became the longest-surviving surface mission on Mars, surpassing the previous 2245 Sol duration set by the Viking 1 mission from the late 1970s to early 1980s.

On Sol 2420 (14 November 2010), Opportunity’s odometer passed the 25 kilometer mark – shattering all estimates for how far the rover would actually drive on the surface of Mars.

In mid-December 2010, Opportunity began several weeks of observations at Santa Maria crater – observations that were compared to orbital data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

At the conclusion of the 2010 Earth-year, Opportunity had driven more miles since leaving Victoria crater in August 2008 (the equivalent of 1 Martian year) than it had in any previous year – all while being 4-6 years beyond its originally estimated life span.

Opportunity spent the two-week solar conjunction of early 2011 at Santa Maria crater before beginning the final 6.5 kilometer journey to Endeavour crater in late March 2011.

By 1 June 2011, Opportunity passed the 30km life-time traverse mark – a distance 50 times greater than its operational designed traverse distance.

By 17 June 2011, Opportunity had driven 20 miles on the surface of Mars.

After 3 years of travels, Opportunity safely and successfully arrived at Endeavour crater on 9 August 2011 after traveling 13 miles from Victoria crater – a distance more than half of its total traversed distance on Mars.

The rover’s arrival point at Endeavour crater was quickly named “Spirit Point” by Opportunity’s control team in honor of Opportunity’s twin, Spirit, which did not survive the 2010 Martian winter.

Upon arriving at the crater, Opportunity quickly confirmed that the rocks on the rim of crater were older than any other rock previously studied by the rover, and quickly discovered Martian phenomenon not previously seen.

And then, in early December 2011, Opportunity made what is, at this time, its most important discovery while analyzing the “Homestake” formation.

Instruments on the rover were able to confirm that the “Homestake” formation is composed of gypsum – a mineral that does not occur except in the presence of water.

The rock was quickly nick-named “slam dunk” as it finally provided hard evidence that liquid water once flowed on Mars – thus providing substantial support for one of Opportunity’s primary mission scientific objectives.

An enduring legacy:

Throughout its eight year tenure on Mars, the rover Opportunity has greatly and in many ways drastically increased our knowledge of Mars as well as how our technology survives on the Martian surface.

Based on its tremendous scientific finds, life-span, and endurance beyond all odds, several honors have been conferred upon the Opportunity rover. Asteroid 39382 was officially named Opportunity in honor of the rover.

Furthermore, Opportunity is one of only 13 robots to be inducted into the robot hall of fame alongside the da Vinci Surgical System, fellow Mars rover Sojourner, Unimate (the first industrial robot which worked on the General Motors assembly line in 1961), and twin rover Spirit.

Moreover, while Opportunity’s landing site paid tribute to the Space Shuttle Challenger and her crew, Opportunity itself stands as a tribute and memorial to the men and women lost in the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, as metal from the twin towers was repurposed and used as cable protection shields on the twin rovers Opportunity and Spirit.

But perhaps the best way to continue to remember Opportunity, even though its time on Mars is not yet over, is the tremendous distance and longevity of the rover.

Travelling 21.33 miles, Opportunity has exceeded by more the 50 times the driving distance it was built for, it survived a severe Martian dust storm despite legitimate fears that it would not, it has conducted long-term investigations of four craters and entered, under its own power, two craters (not including the hole-in-one landing in Eagle Crater), and it has survived 30.6 times longer than originally planned.

(All Images via NASA, NASA JPL, NASA APOD).

No related posts.

Design Reference Mission – Roadmap Work:

As the plan currently stands, 14 Design Reference Missions (DRM) have been created as part of the ongoing SLS Concept Of Operations (Con Ops) process and Exploration Roadmap evaluations, under what is known as “Cycle C” evaluations. (Update Area – L2 Link).

Opening with the politically-requested support for the International Space Station (ISS) – which would result in the overkill of using the Space Launch System (SLS) Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLV) being used to send what is now a Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) Orion to the orbital outpost, in the event of a major failure of the commercial ISS support contracts – the plan quickly moves on to the Moon.

With SLS-1 and SLS-2 trips to Lunar Orbit effectively being the test flights for the uncrewed and crewed opening missions, refinements have been made to bring the Deep Space Hab (DSH) earlier into the roadmap, pointing once again at the ambitious “Gateway Platform” potentially becoming part of what is tagged as the CIS_LP1_1A/B/C DRMs.

Again showing its strength of late, the push to return humans to the lunar surface are listed as LUN_SOL_1A for Polar Access and LUN_CRG_1A for cargo to be sent to the surface of the Moon.

It is hoped that such missions could be enabled by the early 2020s, with an eye on setting up a lunar base, likely via international cooperation and commercial ambitions.

“Minimum” to “Full” capability missions to a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) have five DRMs currently under evaluation, likely ahead of being traded down.

These missions would all require its own giant leap in planning – not least from the aspect of life support and contingency evaluations – as the flights would result in crews traveling the great ever distance from Earth in human history.

These DRMs will be expanded on in future articles during the evaluations to solidify the roadmap.

Design Reference Mission – Mars:

By far the greatest challenge, Mars is not being shown as part of the Cycle C evaluations, as much as they are listed under “Forward Work” – with the DRM tags of MAR_PHD_1A and MAR_SFC_1A.

However, these DRMs alone provide clues into the thinking of the Exploration Roadmap team, which appears to be following the Flexible Path approach – a presentation which remains the most recent and comprehensive outline into achieving a crewed mission to Mars, built out of the recommendations from the Augustine Committee into Human Space Flight.

“A human Mars Orbit/Phobos Mission represents an intermediate step between human exploration missions in near-Earth space and human missions to explore the surface of Mars,” opened the expansive section on the manned missions to Mars/Phobos in the 65 page NASA internal “Flexible Path” presentation (available to download in L2 – Link).

“Key features could include demonstration of in-space hardware elements designed for Mars missions while accomplishing scientific and exploration objectives both at Mars and on Phobos.”

The debut manned mission to the Mars region would likely use a “short stay” trajectory (“opposition class”). Total mission durations for the short-stay missions range from 550-650 days, with 30 to 40 days in the vicinity of Mars.

During this scenario, over 95 percent of the total mission time is spent in the deep-space interplanetary environment with the balance spent in the vicinity of Mars. Duration of the transit legs ranges from a minimum of 190 days and maximum in excess of 400 days.

Conjunction-class missions (about 20-40 percent longer in total but with over 12 times the stay) are also feasible for a Phobos mission.

A Phobos mission – used as a precursor to a crewed mission to Mars – may be the main initial focus by proxy, primarily from two standpoints; a learning curve for a future mission to Mars, and the Mars science that can be gained from Phobos.

Phobos also presents a number of Mars-like challenges to a manned mission, allowing NASA engineers and astronauts to learn how to approach a subsequent Mars mission.

“One of the significant advantages a Phobos mission would be to demonstrate many of the technical and operational approaches needed for Mars missions without yet having all the required systems, or committing the crew to a full-duration surface stay,” added the presentation. 

“A Phobos mission could drive and demonstrate solutions of these items.”

The Phobos element is reviewed in greater detail via the previous article covering this element of the Flexible Plan.

For additional Flexible Path articles – See also:
Part 1: Battle of the Heavy Lift Launchers – Monster 200mt vehicle noted
Part 2: Manned mission to construct huge GEO and deep space telescopes proposed
Part 3: NASA Flexible Path Evaluation of 2025 human mission to visit an asteriod

Multiple Launches and Challenges For Mars Surface Mission:

A fleet of SLS’ would be required for a single crewed mission to Mars mission, including other numerous vehicles, most of which are very much at the conceptual stage of design.

NASA Glenn teams are understood to be reworking a baseline video into a Mars mission (Nine minute CGI video available on L2 – Link), in order to provide a general baseline using SLS – a video which already shows the challenges of an actual crewed mission to Mars.

Currently, there is no agreed baseline approach for setting up a mission to Mars, with the Flexible Path noting the requirement of 10-15 HLV launches – via the use of chemical (LH2/LOX) rockets, while the video shows a launch campaign using seven HLVs, sporting nuclear propulsion stages.

“Due to the wide variability of the short stay class trajectories the number of propulsive stages varies with opportunity, as will the number of HLV launches. Assuming hydrogen-oxygen in-space propulsion, the number of HLV launches varies between 10 and 15,” noted the Flexible Path approach.

The Mars campaign video shows seven HLVs launching the major elements of three vehicles using NTR (Nuclear Thermal Rocket) propulsion, namely the MLV Cargo Vehicle – created from two HLV launches, the MLV Habitat Vehicle – created from two HLV launches, and the MTV Crew Transfer Vehicle – created from three HLV launches. All three vehicles are assembled in Low Earth Orbit.

Via the mission campaign outlined in the video, the first two HLV launches are focused on sending up the two major elements known as propulsive stages. These stages are placed into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), in order to wait for the rest of the vehicle elements to arrive for rendezvous.

HLV launches 3 and 4 are used to deliver the Habitat and Cargo Landers, large elements of hardware which are depicted as sitting on top of the HLV without the need for a fairing.

Each of these elements rendezvous and dock with their propulsion stages in LEO and depart enroute to Mars, each displaying one large solar array and two smaller arrays.

According to the video, these two vehicles both arrive at Mars, with the cargo lander separating from its propulsion stages ahead of a decent to the Martian surface aided by three large parachutes and six descent engines – as much as this is all via a notional design via NASA Glenn teams.

Numerous vehicles are hosted on the cargo lander, including Space Exploration Vehicles (SEV) which may debut during a Moon surface mission.

As seen in the video, a robotic cart can be seen leaving the cargo lander and setting up the deployment of the Fission Surface Power System (FSPS) and radiators, again working under the notion of a mission utilizing nuclear power.

As noted by NASA, power requirements for human-tended surface outposts and bases are expected to range from 25 to 100 kWe during the early build-up phases. As the base becomes fully operational with in-situ resource production and closed-loop life support, power requirements could approach 1 MW.

The most mass-efficient means of providing high power for surface missions is through the use of nuclear fission systems.

With the stage set on the Martian surface for the arrival of the crew, three HLVs are tasked with launching the major elements of the Mars Transport Vehicle (MTV), with the hardware deployed and rendezvous in LEO.

This vehicle includes a Deep Space Hab and the Orion the crew will eventually splashdown in upon their return to Earth.

The crew is then launched to the assembled vehicle on another Orion, which is undocked as the crew ingress the MTV.

Ahead of departing LEO, the MTV is seen deploying four large solar arrays for the transit to Mars.

This mission profile does concur with the Flexible Path approach, as much as it is obvious: “Once all of the in-space propulsive stages are assembled in LEO, the crew is launched via Orion and the crew departs for Mars.”

However, with no Ares I available – since its cancellation – and the HLV being mainly used to launch the large MTV/Cargo elements, a potential change may be to launch the Orions via a Delta IV-H, for example.

Arriving at the Red Planet aft first – to allow for deceleration – the MTV carries out a propulsive Mars Orbit Capture manuever.

The crew then enter the attached Orion, undock from the MTV and dock with the orbiting Habitat Lander waiting for them in Mars orbit.

The Orion then undocks unmanned and redocks with the MTV, as the Habitat Lander – now containing the crew – begins its descent to the Martian surface.

Using Hypersonic Aero-assisted Deceleration, the lander enters the Martian atmosphere, separates its aeroshell and carries out Supersonic Retro-Propulsive braking – again deploying three large parachutes prior to a powered landing.

Under this mission profile, the crew spend 500+ days exploring Mars (Surface Exploration Phase) via EVAs both on foot and via the use of SEVs – stationed at a Martian base consisting of the two landers, and other erected support structures, including – per the video – an inflatable habitat linked by an airlock and hooked up to one of the landers.

The other lander is staged at a distance from the base structures, which is where the astronauts will translate to during their final moments on the planet.

This lander hosts their means of leaving the Martian surface, as they launch via what is again a notional vehicle known as the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV).

Per the video, this vehicle uses three large engines to launch the crew off the surface and back into Mars orbit where they rendezvous and dock with the MTV.

Shortly after docking, the MAV – along with any contingency consumables – are jettisoned whilst still in Mars orbit.

The MTV again fires its three engines and the crew begin their trip back to Earth.

Upon arrival back in the vicinity of Earth, the crew leave the MTV’s DSH for a final time and ingress into the Orion, which undocks and re-enters Earth’s atmosphere for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean under parachutes.

Again, the above mission is likely to occur after a mission to one of the Martian moons, with the Flexible Path citing a shorter duration stay for a Phobos mission that also includes a unique return element in the flight profile, specifically a fly-by of Venus.

“On arrival at Mars the crew propulsively captures into orbit and eventually maneuvers to Phobos rendezvous. After a 40 day stay in the vicinity of Mars, the crew departs for Earth return. The return leg is targeted for a Venus flyby to reduce the propulsive requirement,” added the Flexible Path approach.

“Since this leg likely passes inside the orbit of Venus, such a mission would include the closest approach to the Sun by a human crew. Small asteroid flyby opportunities may also exist on such trajectories. The crew can participate in science investigation of flyby objects from a unique perspective.

“The Orion used to launch and board the crew is also used to return them to Earth via direct entry. The Crew Transfer Vehicle (or MTV) is targeted to flyby Earth and is expended in deep space.”

Making the case for Phobos first, the Flexible Path again stresses the challenges with a Mars surface mission, and the need to learn how to safely carry out such an ambitious deep space missions before taking on the ultimate challenge of the Red Planet itself.

“Our choice to include a short-stay human visit to Phobos as a step toward humans-on-Mars is outside the framework of missions extensively analysed by recent agency Mars mission planning, which have focused on Mars surface missions themselves.

“Such a mission is suggested by the Augustine Committee as a possible element of a Flexible Path strategy, so it bears examination.

“Assessment of the value of such a mission compared to the risk of sending crew on a multi-year, deep-space mission is a function not only of the potential science return, inter-operation with parallel robotic Mars surface missions, and direct feed-forward to human Mars surface missions, but also of the unique technical challenges and risks it would impose, and also how “fast” the program intends to get to the surface of Mars.”

As such, it appears that the 2011-2012 effort to create an Exploration Roadmap via the use of SLS has initially sided with recommendations made at the Augustine Committee review, placing a Martin mission to one of its moons ahead of a Mars surface mission.

“A human Mars Orbit/Phobos Mission represents an intermediate step between human exploration missions in near Earth space and human missions to explore the surface of Mars. Key features could include demonstration of in-space hardware elements designed for Mars missions while accomplishing scientific and exploration objectives both at Mars and on Phobos.

“At the completion of this mission, design solutions for and demonstrations of in-space hardware elements designed for human Mars surface mission will have been accomplished, as will significant scientific and exploration objectives at Mars and Phobos. Significant such objectives include gathering and preliminary analysis of samples from both Mars and Phobos, including samples from candidate landing site for future human crews.

“This mission could build on prior deep space missions by human crews in Earth-Moon space and to NEOs. It would leave a legacy of better understanding of both Mars and Phobos, along with a foundation for human missions to the surface of Mars. Achieving that legacy through such a mission would require meeting some unique challenges not needed for subsequent Mars surface missions.”

However, given the sad fact NASA’s continued funding uncertainty provides its own challenge for missions which may be two decades away, any outline of a human mission to Mars remains tightly locked up in fancy powerpoints and videos.

It is also possible that by the time a crewed mission to Mars is ramped up, new propulsion concepts may be available to improve the approach.

Either way, a crewed mission to Mars requires political support via solid funding over several Presidencies, many of whom would no longer be in office by the time the mission was carried out. That may prove to be the biggest challenge of all.

Images: Via L2 content, NASA and John Frasanito & Associates inc.)

(To join L2, support NSF and access 4,500+ gbs of content – click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)

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NIAC:

The original NIAC ran from 1998-2007, “inspiring and nurturing revolutionary concepts that could transform future aerospace endeavors.” Returning in 2011, NIAC’s goal was to fund “early studies of visionary, long term concepts – aerospace architectures, systems, or missions (not focused technologies).”

This second call for proposals follows inaugural selection of Phase I concepts, which are now under study.

The 2011 effort resulted in funding for 30 distinct project advanced technology proposals which will better help the agency explore space. Each approach – which ranged from changing the course of orbital debris, a self stabilizing spacesuit using flywheels, the exciting technology of 3-D printing and numerous propulsion and power concepts for future missions – each received $100,000 for one year of studies.

Now, just days into 2012, NIAC are seeking proposals for revolutionary concepts with the potential to transform future aerospace missions. The proposed concepts should enable new capabilities or significantly alter current approaches to launching, building and operating space systems.

In announcing the new effort, NIAC noted that projects are chosen for their innovative and visionary characteristics, technical substance, and early development stage – ten years or more from use on a mission. NIAC’s current portfolio of diverse and innovative ideas represents multiple technology areas, including power, propulsion, structures and avionics.

“NIAC is a forward-looking program that captures what’s great about America’s space program,” said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA’s Space Technology Program. “NASA is looking for futuristic concepts that may enable leaps forward in how we work in and explore the space frontier.

“Equally important, we’re asking for ideas from all sources: American citizen-inventors or educators working out of their garage to the visionary small business owners fueling our nation’s economy.”

Based on the large number of submissions received from 2011′s NIAC call for proposals, 2012′s Phase I solicitation will incorporate a two-step process – of which NASA expects to award funding for approximately 15 proposals.

“NIAC will accept short proposals, limited to two pages in length, until February 9. After review, NASA will invite those whose concepts are of interest to the agency to submit a full proposal of no more than ten pages. Full proposals will be due April 16,” the NASA release noted.

Those selected will receive up to $100,000 for one year to advance the innovative space technology concept and help NASA meet current operational and future mission requirements. Selection announcements are expected this summer.

The number of Phase I awards also will be balanced with NASA’s selection of Phase II awards. Phase II awards will be selected from Phase I concepts submitted last year that the agency decides to advance.

“NASA’s early investment and partnership with creative scientists, engineers and citizen inventors will pay huge technological dividends and help maintain America’s leadership in the global technology economy,” added the NASA release.

The solicitation is open to all United States citizens and researchers working in the United States, including NASA civil servants.

Out-Of-The-Box Advances:

While NIAC cover a large range of technologies, the need to move past the current chemical propulsion methods has been a long-standing wish for advancing the capability and execution of Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) exploration.

NASA administrator Charlie Bolden hinted at this wish via his announcement of the FY2011 budget proposal, in which he called for a study into a five year “game changing” propulsion study, as part of the changes proposed to the Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLV) program, in tandem with the cancellation of the Constellation Program (CxP).

That proposal was changed via the 2010 Authorization Act, which called for the HLV to utilize hardware from the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) and Constellation Program (CxP), as opposed to effectively mothballing what is now the Space Launch System (SLS) for at least five years.

NIAC appear to be looking towards the future from an “anyone got a better idea?” standpoint, calling for innovative propulsion and power concepts needed for future space mission operations. Such “out-of-the-box” thinking can be seen via the 2011 proposal presentations, which provide insight into the potential applications of future space exploration. (Link to presentations).

Led by “The Potential for Ambient Plasma Wave Propulsion”, the 2011 resources provide introductions to some of the revolutionary ideas which could provide breakthroughs into advancing the exploration of deep space.

“Truly robust and affordable space exploration will require that we use all the available resources we can find in space,” noted James Gilland of the Ohio Aerospace Institute.

“Many planets, and the Sun, possess an ambient environment of magnetic fields and plasmas. Plasmas with magnetic fields can support a variety of waves, which transmit energy and or pressure, like light or sound waves. Many of these waves are at radio frequencies (kHz to MHz), and can be generated using the appropriate antenna.

“This concept simply uses an on‐board power supply and antenna on a vehicle that operates in the existing plasma. The spacecraft’s beams plasma waves in one direction with the antenna, to generate momentum that could propel the vehicle in the other direction, without using any propellant on the space ship. Such a system could maneuver in the plasma environment for as long as its power supply lasts, without refueling.

“One particular wave to consider is the Alfven wave, which propagates in magnetized plasmas and has been observed occurring naturally in space.”

Also listed in the Group 1 category is the “Atmospheric Breathing Electric Thruster for Planetary Exploration,” as outlined by Kurt Hohman of Busek Co. Inc.

“This study will investigate the development of an atmosphere‐breathing electric propulsion solar-powered vehicle to explore planets such as Mars. The vehicle would use atmospheric gas for propellant, eliminating the need to launch and carry the propellant from earth. The propulsion thruster would be electric where the gas is ionized in a plasma and accelerated by electromagnetic fields.

“The combination of high efficiency and high specific impulse of the electric propulsion thruster and free propellant in‐situ will result in an exciting and enabling technology. This could enable NASA to perform missions of extended lifetime and capabilities beyond those available by typical chemical rockets. Phase I will formulate feasibility of the concept through modeling, calculations and preliminary laboratory experiments and push validity into Phase II research.”

Steven Howe, from the Universities Space Research Association, looks back to the heritage of the Apollo missions and deep space exploration probes for his “Economical Radioisotope Power” proposal, based around the concept of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) to provide electrical power.

“Almost all robotic space exploration missions, and all Apollo missions to the moon, have used RTGs for electrical power. These RTGs rely on the conversion of the heat produced by the radioactive decay of Pu‐238 to electricity. Unfortunately, the supply of Pu‐238 is about to run out,” Mr Howe wrote.

“This study will investigate an economical production method for Pu‐238 that could allow NASA or a private venture to produce several kilograms per year without the need for large government investment.”

This team is evaluating the production rate in a commercial nuclear reactor, an investigate the optimization of the transit time of the target material in the reactor, for the purpose of experimentally validating this production process and assess its efficiency, and estimate costs for production facilities and handling the waste stream form the process.

Other interesting ideas proposed in Group 1 of the 2011 NIAC effort include “Metallic Hydrogen: A Game Changing Rocket Propellant” – a concept which “would revolutionize rocketry”, as introduced by Isaac Silvera of Harvard University.

“Atomic metallic hydrogen, if metastable at ambient pressure and temperature could be used as the most powerful chemical rocket fuel, as the atoms recombine to form molecular hydrogen. This light‐weight high‐energy density material would revolutionize rocketry, allowing single‐stage rockets to enter orbit and chemically fueled rockets to explore our solar system.

“To transform solid molecular hydrogen to metallic hydrogen requires extreme high pressures, but has not yet been accomplished in the laboratory. The proposed new approach injects electrons into solid hydrogen to lower the critical pressure for transformation. If successful the metastability properties of hydrogen will be studied. This approach may scale down the pressures needed to produce this potentially revolutionary rocket propellant.”

Often mentioned as a serious contender for future crewed deep space exploration missions, nuclear-related proposals are nothing new. However, per John Slough of MSNW LLC, his “Nuclear Propulsion Through Direct Conversion of Fusion Energy” concept is part of the Group 1 proposals.

“The future of manned space exploration and development of space depends critically on the creation of a vastly more efficient propulsion architecture for in‐space transportation. Nuclear-powered rockets can provide the large energy density gain required,” Mr Slough wrote.

“A small scale, low cost path to fusion‐based propulsion is to be investigated. It is accomplished by employing the propellant to compress and heat a magnetized plasma to fusion conditions, and thereby channel the fusion energy released into heating only the propellant.

“Passage of the hot propellant through a magnetic nozzle rapidly converts this thermal energy into both directed (propulsive) energy and electrical energy.”

Alfonso Tarditi of the University of Houston at Clear Lake also lists a fusion based concept via his “Aneutronic Fusion Spacecraft Architecture”, which he claims could drastically change the potential for human and robotic space exploration.

“The proposed design is based on neutron‐free nuclear fusion as the primary energy source. An innovative beam conditioning/ nozzle concept enables useful propulsive thrust directly from the fusion products, while some fraction of the energy is extracted via direct conversion into electricity for use in the reactor and spacecraft’s systems.

“This study focuses on providing the framework required to make fusion propulsion an appealing proposition for long‐range space travel (by integrating the power generation and propulsion systems) rather than on the development of a specific fusion reactor concept.

“However, the scope of this study is not constrained by the immediate availability of fusion energy since it also analyzes “hybrid” schemes with a solar or fission primary energy source along with a sub‐critical fusion reactor used as a plasma space propulsion system.”

On the nuclear fission side of the NIAC supported concepts, Robert Werka – of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) – proposes “a Concept Assessment of a Fission Fragment Rocket Engine (FFRE) Propelled Spacecraft, which has a safety bonus of enabling the reactor to be charged after arrival in LEO.

“A new technology, the Fission Fragment Rocket Engine (FFRE), requires small amounts of readily available, energy dense, long lasting fuel, significant thrust at specific impulse of a million seconds, and increases safety by charging the reactor after arrival in LEO. If this study shows the FFRE potential, the return could be immense through savings in travel time, payload fraction, launch vehicle support and safety for deep space exploration.

“Nuclear fission emits charged fission fragments that travel at more than 4 percent of light speed. These normally quickly collide with other atoms in the core. But an FFRE with a magnetically contained dusty plasma core could employ electrical collimation of the charged fragments into an exhaust beam.”

Solar Sails are also a well-publicized concept, though not usually in the realm of interplanetary exploration. Grover Swartzlander of the Rochester Institute of Technology has proposed a concept which utilizes “optical lift” to enhance space missions employing solar sails.

“Although light is massless, it carries momentum. That momentum can be imparted to refracting, reflecting, and absorbing objects in the form of “radiation pressure”. Over time, the small but constant supply of radiation pressure may outweigh the large but brief force afforded by conventional propellants,” wrote Mr Swartzlander.

“The study team found that transparent refractive objects may settle into a position where they feel a force that is perpendicular to the incoming light direction, akin to the lift experienced by an airplane wing. This study will explore the potential for “optical lift” to enhance space missions employing solar sails.

“Space‐related applications of a fully maneuverable solar craft are numerous. In the distant future, one can imagine interplanetary missions and visits to exoplanets benefiting from the advantages of the optical lift force.”

Next up for NIAC is the 2012 Spring Symposium, which is being planned for March 27-29, 2012, at the Westin Hotel in Pasadena, California. Current NIAC Fellows – as listed above – will attend and give presentations about their Phase I research. The conference will feature exciting keynote speakers and information about NIAC’s program status and plans.

This will be followed by the first NIAC Phase II NASA Research Announcement, which will be released in early April, 2012.

(Images via NASA, NIAC and L2).

No related posts.

OV-103/Discovery – The final voyage of the veteran workhorse:

For the final year of the Space Shuttle Program, operations in 2011 began where all Shuttle missions have: in the Vehicle Assembly Building.

After enduring a rollback from LC-39A in late-December 2010, because of cracks on the stringers of her External Tank’s (ET) intertank structure, Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery, OV-103, spent the first month of 2011 in the VAB undergoing ET intertank repairs and strengthening activities while the various NASA centers conducted numerous simulations to nail down the cause of the ET stringer cracks. (L2 Link).

Discovery, the third operational Shuttle orbiter and fourth overall Shuttle orbiter constructed by NASA, was preparing for her 39th and final mission in November 2010 when the stringer crack issue presented itself during the mission’s first launch attempt on November 5, 2010.

Following the discovery of this issue, NASA mission managers refused to set a launch date for the flight in a concerted effort to allow the engineering analysis teams to have the time they needed to properly and safely address the issue without feeling a push toward launch fever. 

STS-133 Specific - Including ET Stringer Issue - Articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/sts-133/

On January 4, NASA identified the potential root cause for the stringer issue – a mottling on the stringers themselves.

As noted by an investigation report, “Some material used for the stringers was found to be ‘mottled,’ with a different surface appearance than the standard material. Testing revealed this mottled material had lower fracture toughness than the nominal material and exhibited unstable crack growth.

“All of the cracks found during tanking as well as cracks fixed during manufacturing were located on stringers made with this mottled material.”

Furthermore, engineers were finally able to recreate the stringer crack failure seen on Discovery’s ET using the stringers from the partially-built ET-139 at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF).

By January 6, the all-powerful Program Requirements Control Board (PRCB) had directed teams to proceed forward with the radius block modification on well over 100 of Discovery’s tank stringers – a decision that further emphasized the drive for safety and understanding over launch date pressure.

With that, Discovery’s launch date was penciled in for February 24 or 25 as negotiations began with other ISS partners – specifically ESA (the European Space Agency) which was planning to dock their ATV-2 vehicle to the ISS at the same time that Discovery would now be ready for launch.

After negotiations concluded, it was decided that ATV-2′s docking on the morning of February 24 would permit the launch of Discovery later that day – something that had previously been ruled out due to communication and on-orbit requirements of the two vehicles and the ISS crew.

But as repairs to Discovery’s stringers kicked into high gear and things looked to be settling out for the veteran space vehicle, STS-133/Discovery crewmember Tim Kopra was injured and had to be removed from the mission as a result.

Within three days, Steve Bowen was assigned to the mission as Tim Kopra’s replacement, and NASA, in making the crewmember switch announcement, made it clear that Bowen’s experience on the previous Shuttle mission, STS-132/Atlantis, meant that he would need only moderate refresher training to perform the EVA activities originally assigned to Kopra.

As a result, Discovery would keep her February 24 NET launch date, and Nicole Stott and Al Drew would split the Flight Engineering responsibilities for launch and entry that Kopra was originally assigned.

By the end of January, Discovery’s stringers were modified and reviews had cleared the vehicle to return to the launch pad.

On the night of January 31/February 1 – the 8th anniversary of the loss of sister Columbia – Discovery was returned to the launch pad for what would be the 20th post-Columbia mission.

By all would not be as smooth sailing as hoped. The GUCP once again showed its temperamental side by failing an ambient leak check at the pad. (L2 Link).

The GUCP was disassembled, inspected, its two-part flight seals replaced, and reassembled. Subsequent ambient leak checks revealed a healthy GUCP, and all pad activities continued on schedule.

On February 15, the Ariane 5 launch vehicle successfully delivered the ATV-2 ESA resupply vehicle for the ISS into orbit – paving the way for a 24 February docking of ATV-2 to ISS and subsequent launch of Discovery later that same day.

With all approvals in place, the three-day countdown began on Monday, February 21.

The countdown proceeded flawlessly, and fueling of Discovery’s External Tank yielded absolutely no issues with the modified stringers or the GUCP.

Following the successful docking of ATV-2 to the ISS on the morning of 24 February, final preparations continued, the crew boarded Discovery, and the Countdown reached T-9mins and holding.

And then… it happened: the Eastern Range suffered a computer anomaly that prevented them from seeing the necessary safety information readouts from Discovery.

As the Range team worked the issue, the minutes continued to tick toward the end of the day’s short launch window.

At T-9mins and holding, Launch Director Mike Leinbach and his team decided to pick up the count and then hold at T-5mins if the Range issue had not yet been resolved.

With concurrence from all involved, Discovery’s Commander, Steve Lindsey, told the millions watching to “get ready to witness the majesty and the power of the Shuttle Discovery as she lifts off one more time.”

The launch countdown picked up and was indeed held at T-5mins for just over 3mins as the Range continued to work the issue.

In a heart-pounded final seconds, the launch team moved, with esteem calm and professionalism, to resume the countdown in time once the Range issue was cleared.

In the end, the team successfully resumed the countdown with only 1 second of LOX drain back hold time – the limiting launch window factor that day – remaining before a scrub would have had to have been called for the day.

But that one second was all that was needed.

To thunderous applause, numerous tears, an on-hand spectator number reaching close to a quarter of million people, and under crystal clear skies, the Space Shuttle Discovery began the display she and her sisters were best known for when she gracefully lifted off from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 1653.24 EST and made one final reach for the stars.

A true tribute to America’s space workforce, Discovery executed a flawless ascent and safely, successfully, and with pride delivered her six-member crew and mission payload to LEO.

Discovery docked to the ISS for the final time on 26 February 2011.

With her docking, a historic milestone was reached for the ISS – a complete family moment with the ISS supporting all of its support vehicles: Shuttle, Soyuz, Progress, HTV, and ATV.

During the mission, Discovery delivered thousands of pounds of external spares via the Express Logistics Carrier ELC-4 and thousands of pounds of internal supplies for the Space Station via the newly minted Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) Leonardo – a former Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM).

The addition of PMM Leonardo marked the final, permanent, pressurized module to be delivered to the ISS by the Space Shuttle fleet and NASA.

After nearly nine days of joint-docked operations, the ISS bid a final farewell to Orbiter Discovery after 13 missions to the orbital outpost.

On March 9, just before 12-noon, Discovery announced her triumphant return to the Kennedy Space Center before flying effortlessly over her Florida home and easing down onto Runway 15 at 11:58:14 EST.

By the time Discovery rolled to a stop on the Florida spaceport runway, she had achieved the distinction of having spent a cumulative total of 365 days (a full year) in space.

She was also the oldest-surviving Shuttle orbiter in the fleet upon completion of her final mission as well as the first Space Shuttle orbiter to successfully complete every single one of her missions – including all three Return to Flight missions following the losses of her big sisters Challenger and Columbia.

Discovery’s service to the human race began on 30 August 1984 with the launch of the STS-41D mission and ended on 9 March 2011 having lasted 26 years 6 months 6 days and 39 missions.

OV-105/Endeavour - An emotional high for the baby of the fleet:

For Endeavour, the 2011 calendar year began with direct knock-on effects from the on-going stringer crack issue of her sister Discovery’s ET.

The Space Shuttle Endeavour, the fifth and final space-worthy orbiter and sixth and final overall Space Shuttle orbiter constructed by NASA, began 2011 in her OPF-2 home as NASA hammered out a fix to the stringer issue on the External Tank.

Following the identification of root cause of the issue and implementation of the radius block modification, NASA made the decision to modify ET-122 – the External Tank Endeavour was to use on her final mission – despite the fact that ET-122 was an earlier-constructed tank than Discovery’s and was not constructed from the same material batch as Discovery’s mottled stringers were.

Nonetheless, the decision was made to ensure the highest safety factor for Endeavour and her returned-to-service ET.

In many ways, Endeavour’s final journey to space was a story of perseverance and rising above the odds.

Endeavour herself had always been a symbol of triumph from the throes of tragedy as her existence is owed entirely to the loss of Challenger, the sister she never knew.

Called upon for multiple important missions during her storied career, Endeavour was the Space Shuttle Orbiter that saved the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993 and the Orbiter that began construction of the International Space Station in December 1998 when she launched on the STS-88 mission to join the US’s “Unity” module with Russia’s Zarya module.

For Endeavour’s final mission, her Commander was none other than veteran Shuttle flier Mark E. Kelly – who, like his vehicle, was an amazing source of strength, hope, and inspiration throughout the early months of 2011 and throughout the STS-134 mission.

But the perseverance on STS-134 did not end with Endeavour or her crew.  Despite the fact that the STS-134 mission was the first of the final two missions to be added to the end of the Shuttle manifest (and the first of the final Shuttle missions whose flight was specifically mandated by Congress), her External Tank was a major source of pride for the NASA workforce.

Built in 2002, ET-122 was damaged during the landfall of Hurricane Katrina near the New Orleans MAF construction facility for the tanks. In fact, ET-122 was so damaged by the hurricane that it was completely removed from flight status.

Originally, Endeavour’s mission was supposed to use ET-138 – the final completed External Tank in the numerical sequence.

However, the addition of the STS-335 Launch On Need rescue mission for Endeavour mandated the need for another tank. Rather than complete fabrication and assembly of a new tank, ET-139, the MAF workforce was directed in November 2008 to restore ET-122 to flight status.

In addition to all the hurricane repair work that needed to be made, MAF workers also had to implement most of the RTF (Return To Flight) modifications mandated by NASA in the wake of the Columbia accident.

By early 2011, NASA decided to move ET-122 to STS-134/Endeavour’s mission so that Atlantis, if the STS-335 rescue mission was needed, could fly with a perfectly clean tank instead of the patched-up, but extremely safe, ET-122.

With Endeavour fitted with ET-122 and her SRB set, the entire stack arrived and LC-39A on March 10 with a target April 19 launch to the International Space Station.

With a rather traumatic opening week to her last visit to Pad-A, Endeavour’s flight managers were forced to review TPS damage zones on the baby of the Orbiter fleet after a tool was accidentally dropped from the RSS (Rotating Service Structure) and impacted Endeavour before landing on the zero-level deck of the MLP (Mobile Launch Platform).

The damage was very minor and no repairs were carried out on Endeavour.

At this time, as well, Endeavour was also cleared to proceed toward her April 19 launch date when Russian space officials confirmed that their Soyuz launch would only be slipping to April 4 and not deeper in April like originally thought.

But by the end of March, Russia and NASA were once again into negotiations on Endeavour’s launch date as a conflict between Russia’s Progress M-10M spacecraft and Endeavour’s missions arose.

Endeavour eventually lost the fight and was forced to move to an April 29 launch date – which she continued processing toward despite multiple rounds of adverse weather at the launch pad that triggered evaluations of the stack for storm damage.

Also at this time, NASA managers decided to cancel plans for a Soyuz fly-about of the docked Endeavour/ISS stack because of crew impact concerns should the Soyuz fail to re-dock to the ISS. (L2 Link).

By April 13, NASA formally extended Endeavour’s swan song mission by one day. With a newly extended mission, Endeavour entered what was thought to be her final launch countdown on April 26.

On launch day, as Endeavour’s crew prepared for their journey to the launch pad, an APU-1 heater issue presented itself. Initial attempts to troubleshoot the issue did not prove successful, and Launch Director Mike Leinbach scrubbed the April 29 launch attempt.

In the following week, the APU-1 heater issue was quickly traced to the Aft Load Control Assembly (ALCA-2) box. The ALCA-2 was Removed and Replaced, where a blown driver was subsequently focused on as the cause of the heater issue. (L2 Link).

STS-134 Specific Articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/sts-134/

With a new ALCA in place, Endeavour’s launch was retargeted for May 16.

For the final time, the countdown for the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour began on Friday, May 13.

Thanks to the delay in the launch date, and agreements with Russia to undock the Soyuz TMA-20 for a nominal end of Soyuz mission landing during Endeavour’s docked mission, the formal plan to use the departing Soyuz to capture imagery of the docked Endeavour/ISS stack returned to mission planning.

On May 16, even though the weather looked borderline at best, all launch commit criteria aligned, leading to a final, unanimous “GO” for launch decision.

From the cockpit of Endeavour, Commander Mark Kelly said, “We endeavor to build a better life than the generation before and we endeavor to be a united nation. It is in our DNA to reach for the stars and explore. We must not stop.”

And mere minutes later, under overcast, grey, dreary skies, the Space Shuttle Endeavour roared to life for the 27th and final time as she thundered from the launch pad to begin her 25th and final voyage.

To many on the ground, including the launch team, Endeavour seemed to take just a little longer than normal to rise from the launch pad, turn, and begin her historic final mission to space – giving the 500,000 to 750,000 people in personal attendance the feeling of being able to see her for just a bit longer in all her glory.

Her launch was a moment of historical coincidence as well. Endeavour lifted off for the final time exactly 19 years to the day (May 16) after she landed to conclude her maiden voyage, the STS-49 mission in May 1992.

As she had 24 times before, Endeavour dutifully delivered her crew safely to orbit and performed a flawless docking to the ISS two days later.

Her mission marked the delivery of the premiere and exciting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS – an experiment designed to search for evidence of the existence of dark matter, anti-matter, and dark energy in our universe.

The mission also saw the delivery of ELC-3 – the final large delivery of external spares for the ISS – to the Station.

And, as we all remember and cherish, the mission also provided the stunning photography and video of Endeavour docked to the International Space Station from the vantage point of the departing Soyuz spacecraft. (L2 Link to 271 hi res flyaround photos)

But the greatest milestone of all came toward the end of Endeavour’s docked mission: US Assembly Complete of the International Space Station - achieved when Endeavour’s crew transferred and berthed Endeavour’s OBSS (Orbiter Boom Sensor System) to the orbiting outpost.

Thus, Endeavour was the orbiter that began and completed US assembly of the International Space Station.

(Animated image resized from hires/full screen version and sequence photo dumps on L2′s STS-134 Flight Day image section - several hundred megabytes strong – L2 Link.) 

After 11 days 17 hours 41 minutes of docked operations with the ISS, Endeavour bid a fond farewell to her orbital child.

Two days later, under the cover of darkness, Endeavour gallantly swooped down over her Florida home to end her career on 1 June 2011 at 0235 EDT.

To the very end, Endeavour was and always will be an iconic symbol of hope, a ship that inspires pride, awe, the quest for knowledge, and the determination to pick ourselves up and continue forward when adversity would rather us surrender.

After 19 years 24 days 6 hours and 55 minutes of service (May 7, 1992 at 1940 EDT to June 1, 2011 at 0235 EDT), Endeavour officially ended her tenure with the Space Shuttle Program. But she still remains our hope for a new tomorrow, an era when humans will regularly explore the space beyond the confines of our home world and push our boundaries of scientific knowledge and our quest of exploration.

OV-104/Atlantis - The Grand Finale of an American icon:

STS-135: The flight that wasn’t even manifested at the start of 2011.

Included in the NASA Authorization Act of 2011, which was signed into law on 11 October 2010, funding for the STS-135 mission remained in limbo while Congress remained incapable of reaching an agreement on the exact nature of the Fiscal Year 2011 calendar budget.

To this end, NASA continued procurement of mission hardware and software for the STS-335 contingency LON rescue mission which would have been used in the event that Endeavour became disabled during STS-134.

On 20 January 2011, NASA officially changed the mission designation number for STS-335 to STS-135 on internal documentation only (L2 Link), allowing teams to proceed with mission training and planning operations so that the continuing appropriations battle in Washington D.C. would not impact flight operations.

Finally, on 13 February 2011, NASA announced and confirmed that STS-135 would fly to the International Space Station regardless of whether or not appropriations from Congress materialized.

At this point, STS-135 became an officially manifested flight, making it one of the quickest missions to go from manifestation to liftoff in Shuttle Program history.

Undergoing a near one-year OPF-1 flow for STS-335/135, Space Shuttle orbiter Atlantis was mated to her ET/SRB stack.

Arriving at the launch pad at the same time as her sister Endeavour landed a few miles away to complete her last mission on June 1, Atlantis began a one month eight day pad flow.

On 15 June,  a tanking test was performed on the Atlantis/STS-135 stack to confirm a solid fix to Atlantis’s Tank’s stringers – which underwent the same modifications as Discovery’s and Endeavour’s tanks had.

The Tanking Test revealed a healthy tank and modified stringers while also revealing a hydrogen fuel valve issue in Main Engine #3 that, if it had occurred on launch day, would have resulted in a multi-day scrub.

Replacement of the valve was completed on 21 June, just one day after Atlantis’s payload was installed into her payload bay.

Despite a dismal weather forecast with only a 40 percent chance of acceptable weather, NASA launch managers decided to proceed with the launch attempt on 8 July.

Tanking operations began right on time at 0201 EDT and wrapped up three hours later with no issue.

In fact, Atlantis performed flawlessly during her countdown, with the only concern being the weather.

One hour before the scheduled liftoff, weather conditions improved and went GREEN, falling within Launch Commit Criteria rules. However, post-flight launch weather rules governing Return To Launch Site (RTLS) abort weather requirements could not be satisfied by the strict by-the-word standards.

However, the commitment clause for “Good Sense” allowed Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses to issue a formal waiver for the RTLS weather restrictions – giving all stations a GO status for launch – since the weather violation would have cleared by the time of an RTLS landing.

After Launch Director Mike Leinbach wished the crew “Good luck … on the final flight of this true American icon,” the countdown resumed and proceeded nominally from T-9mins to T-34seconds.

At T-34seconds, the Ground Launch Sequencer issued an automated hold at T-31seconds and inhibited Atlantis’s onboard computers from taking control of the countdown.

Prior to this, the final mission of the Space Shuttle to the ISS, the last time a Shuttle launch countdown was held at T-31secs was on the STS-88 mission – the very first Shuttle mission to ISS.

For Atlantis and STS-135, the hold was issued due to the failed indication of a complete retraction and latch of the Gaseous Oxygen vent arm.

The launch control team, one final time, demonstrated their extreme commitment to safety and professionalism as they calmly worked through the issue and used close circuit TV cameras at the launch pad to verify that the GOX vent arm was indeed fully retract and latched against the FSS (Fixed Service Structure) – thus confirming that the failed retraction and latching indication was a sensor error.

The glitch was ironic in many ways, as the GOX vent arm had never given the launch team an issue during the 150+ countdown retractions it was placed through during the life of the Program.

Furthermore, the GOX vent arm was a complete afterthought for the Shuttle Program and was only installed on the FSS after pad validation testing using test Shuttle Enterprise in 1979 revealed the need for the arm and vent system to prevent the build-up of dangerous ice at the top of the External Tank during the countdown.

STS-135 Specific Articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/sts-135/

With the issue resolved, the launch team released the hold, and Atlantis’s onboard computers took control of the vehicle and countdown. The time was 11:29:03.9 EDT on 8 July 2011.

In front of a world-wide audience and crowd of one million people at the Kennedy Space Center and surrounding cities and beaches, the Space Shuttle Atlantis came to life, majestically rose from her seaside launch pad, stretched her wings one final time, and went transonic as she punched through the cloud deck and disappeared from view – leaving only the sound of her engines as evidence of her flexing her muscles for the last time.

Atlantis, like her sisters, delivered her crew safely to orbit and docked to the ISS for the final time on 10 July 2011.

The mission saw the Atlantis crew deliver thousands of pounds of internal spares and supplies to the Station – stockpiling the outpost for several years to come.

The mission also delivered the Robotics Refueling Depot to the station, an external experiment deigned to help test robotic refueling technologies for future spacecraft and satellites.

On the final full day of docked operations, Atlantis Commander Chris Ferguson – at the farewell ceremony on the ISS – presented the ISS crew with a small American flag that was flown on the STS-1 mission by Shuttle Columbia on April 12-14, 1981.

The flag was fastened to the inner wall of the ISS and flanked by the STS-1 and STS-135 mission patches – a symbolic gesture signaling the end of the Shuttle program.

On July 19, Atlantis undocked from the ISS and performed a modified flyaround maneuver of the Space Station.

As she backed away from ISS for the last time, Atlantis silently slipped into the darkness of orbital night, the lights turning off on the historic program.

On July 21, Atlantis navigated her way through the fierce outer atmosphere of Earth, taking aim on the Kennedy Space Center for a pre-dawn landing on runway 15.

(Animation created from some of the 114 hi res photos (all available in L2) taken by Mike Fossum on the ISS)

Less than 10 minutes before landing, the ISS made a breath-taking visual pass directly over the Kennedy Space Center in a final salute to the Shuttle Program, heralding Atlantis’s arrival to her permanent home city.

At 05:57:54, Atlantis descended from the darkness and touched her wheels to the pavement at the Shuttle Landing Facility for an emotional finale to her legacy and the legacy of the Space Shuttle Program.

Upon “wheels stop,” the final Shuttle Commander thanked all the men and women who worked on the program and the vehicles over the preceding 30+ years. And in a touching moment, Commander Ferguson also thanked the five flight vehicles themselves for protecting their crews and enabling the expansion of our knowledge and quest for science.

Less than 30 minutes after landing, Atlantis fell silent for the final time.

It was over.
 
Final Reflections on a legend:

With that final Shuttle landing came a moment of joy, sadness, grief, prolonged contemplation, but above all PRIDE in an amazingly complex set of vehicles that inspired countless numbers around the world, flew more people to space than any other spacecraft thus far (and for many, many decades to come), and helped bridge the gap between nations and forge unprecedented alliances in space.

For 30 years, 3 months, 8 days, 22 hours and 57 minutes (April 12, 1981 at 0700EDT to July 21, 2011 at 0557 EDT), the five space-worthy Shuttle orbiters spent a combined total of 1,332 days 1 hour and 36 minutes in space, completing 21,152 orbits of Earth over 548.2 million miles.

All five Shuttle orbiters deployed a combined total of 66 satellites, completed 46 rendezvous with an orbital space station (9 to MIR and 37 to ISS), and carried a combined total of 827 crewmembers (some more than once) into space.

For the final breakdown:

Discovery (OV-103): 39 missions; 365days 12hrs 53mins in space; 5,830 orbits of Earth; 148.2 million miles travelled; 31 satellites deployed (including the Hubble Space Telescope); 14 space station dockings; 252 crewmembers.

Atlantis (OV-104): 33 missions; 305days 7hrs 47mins in space; 4,848 orbits of Earth; 125.9 million miles travelled; 14 satellites deployed; 19 space station dockings (a world-wide record she will keep for decades to come); 207 crewmembers.

Columbia (OV-102): 28 missions; 300days 17hours 41mins in space; 4,808 orbits of Earth; 125.5 million miles travelled; 8 satellites deployed; 160 crewmembers.

Endeavour (OV-105): 25 missions; 299days 3hrs 19mins in space; 4,671 orbits of Earth; 122.8 million miles travelled; 3 satellites deployed; 12 space station dockings and one space station rendezvous and grapple; 148 crewmembers.

Challenger (OV-099): 10 missions; 62days 7hrs 56mins in space; 995 orbits of Earth; 25.8 million miles travelled; 10 satellites deployed; 60 crewmembers.

And while the Shuttles’ missions are behind them, and their engines and APUs forever silent, we wish them and all who have flown aboard them, and all who have worked on them, and all who dedicated theirs lives to making them fly Godspeed in whatever the future may hold.

The Space Shuttle Program, the five orbiters, and their dedicated workforce leave behind an unprecedented legacy of achievement – and a legacy that must never be forgotten, a legacy where all were taught by example “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

But moreover, the five Shuttle orbiters made a thousands-strong workforce incredibly proud.

To all of the NASA engineers, all of the astronauts, the entire NASA workforce (including those contractually employed by Pratt & Whitney, Boeing, ATK, Lockheed, USA), and all those whose names we never heard but nonetheless worked silently and many times without recognition in support of a program that you whole-heartedly believed in, we give you our resounding thanks and gratitude.

Without you, this program would not have been what it was.

The Shuttle program has come to an end, but the legacy of the program and those who worked and flew aboard the Shuttle, as well as those who will continue the dream of human space exploration, will forever carry on.

And so, for the final time, to Enterprise (1977-1985), Columbia (1981-2003), Challenger (1983-1986), Discovery (1984-2011), Atlantis (1985-2011), and Endeavour (1992-2011), you will always have our eternal thanks and gratitude for all that you have enabled the human race to learn and discover about not only the universe and our home planet, but also about ourselves and our ability to work together to achieve common and mutually-supportive objectives.

It was an incredible journey. And those of us who were a part of this great program, no matter how small a part, will never forget a single part of it or the Orbiters and people who made it all possible.

Thank you.

Please note: Clickable links with (L2) references point directly to cited L2 content. Such content is only available to L2 members (please ensure you are logged in). All other clickable links point to NSF articles and open content.

To read about Atlantis and her sisters – from birth, processing, every single mission, through to retirement, click here for the links:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=25837.0

Click here for the amazing MaxQ Entertainment STS-135 Mission Review Music Video:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26178.0

(Images: Via Larry Sullivan and Brian Papke, MaxQ Entertainment/NASASpaceflight.com, L2 and L2 presentations and NASA. To join L2, click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)

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Station completed as Shuttle retired:

As planned since 2004, the Space Shuttle fleet retired in 2011 after completing construction of the ISS during the STS-134 mission, which saw the addition of the long-awaited flagship science instrument for the ISS – the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02 (AMS-02), the second AMS instrument to fly in space and the first designed for long-duration flight on the ISS.

AMS-02 is designed to detect antimatter (the opposite of matter) and dark matter (the matter we cannot see that could be causing the expansion of the universe).

When particles of matter, which make up everything on Earth around us, collide with antimatter particles, which stream toward Earth from outer space, they annihilate each other, making them extremely difficult to detect since any antimatter particles are annihilated by particles of matter in Earth’s upper atmosphere before instruments on Earth can detect them.

Thus, the only way to measure antimatter particles is to go above Earth’s upper atmosphere and into space.

AMS-02, which sits atop the ISS’ truss, uses a magnet to bend the path of charged cosmic particles that pass through it. AMS-02′s on-board instruments then analyze these particles to determine their origin and type (i.e. dark matter or antimatter). 

A magnet is necessary as it allows antimatter particles to pass through the detector without having to come into actual contact with (and thus annihilate) any particles of matter.

As of Christmas Day 2011, AMS-02 has detected ten billion cosmic particles; however, neither antimatter nor dark matter has yet been observed. Scientists are not certain of the existence of antimatter or dark matter, or how long it will take to detect them if they do exist, but it is possible that 2012 could see AMS-02 become the first instrument ever to detect the existence of antimatter and/or dark matter- a mammoth discovery that would literally shake the foundations of modern physics.

Following the completion of the US Segment of the ISS on STS-134 and a final resupply run to the ISS by STS-135, the Space Shuttle officially retired from service on 21 July 2011, marking the transition from the ISS construction phase to the new utilization phase.

In the utilization phase, a minimum of 35 hours of ISS crew time per week have been and will be devoted to scientific activities, as much as crews have been exceeding that requirement as of late.

Also, whereas in the construction era when assembly, checkout, and maintenance activities would take priority over scientific experiments, the opposite is now true, meaning more crew time is now available for science.

This long-awaited utilization era has been the dream of the ISS Program since its inception in the 1990s – a permanently crewed orbiting National Laboratory with scientific capabilities the likes of which have never been seen in space.

The transition into the utilization phase of the ISS, while beginning in 2011, will continue throughout 2012 as scientists begin to take advantage of the full range of capabilities the ISS now has to offer.

Click here for expansive ISS coverage: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/iss/

Increasing utilization on ISS:

As dictated in law by the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, in September 2011 NASA selected the Centre for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), located at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Space Life Sciences Laboratory in Florida, to manage non-NASA US research on the National Lab portion of the ISS.

CASIS is an independent, not-for-profit organization tasked with increasing non-NASA research aboard the ISS by promoting the ISS’s now fully assembled facilities to potential researchers, an managing the process of getting non-NASA payloads onto the station with increased speed and decreased cost than was typically seen under NASA management.

NASA research will still be managed from the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas.

While CASIS has thus far been slow to come online, 2012 should hopefully see CASIS begin to take over the role of management of the ISS National Laboratory with greater efficiency and reduced timescales.

Meanwhile, commercial companies such as NanoRacks continue making great strides toward increasing ISS utilization on a for-profit basis, with impressive speed, efficiency, and low costs mostly achieved through the use of small experiment packages, standardized hardware, and Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products approved for use on the station.

The fast pace and low cost of this operation has already opened up the ISS’s research facilities to groups, such as high school students, that were previously unable to afford the lengthy process of getting experiments onto station.

Experiment findings:

2011 also saw some interesting results of experiments from the station, all of which will be extremely valuable in planning future missions Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO).

In April, it was revealed that experiments conducted aboard the ISS around the 2006-2007 period, but which had only just completed the analysis stage, showed that drugs stored aboard the station for long periods of time lost some of their potency (effectiveness).

For the experiment, conducted by JSC in Houston, four boxes of drugs, each containing 35 different medications, were flown to the ISS, while four identical boxes were kept on the ground at JSC. The four boxes of drugs returned to Earth after varying amounts of time spent on the station, with the first returning after 13 days and the last returning after 28 months in space.

The results were both startling and unexpected: the longer the drugs had been in space, the more potency they had lost. All of this occurred before the expiration date of the drugs, meaning that the space environment somehow negatively affected the drugs and decreased their effectiveness.

Scientists theorize that this could be caused by a number of space-specific factors, including microgravity, radiation, vibrations, a carbon-dioxide rich atmosphere, and variations in temperature and humidity. As such, research into improved drug storage containers for spaceflight to mitigate this degradation of potency is now underway.

Such degradation of potency is a potentially serious issue for future long-duration BEO exploration since astronauts on those missions, without access to advanced medical facilities, would need to take medication for certain ailments. In this case, reduced potency in drugs caused by long-term storage in space could render the drugs useless or at best severely limited in their effectiveness in combating an illness.

Furthermore, in September, another potentially very serious condition was revealed that could have big impacts on future BEO exploration missions. Again conducted in the 2005-2006 period, this revelation was that long-term microgravity can (sometimes seriously) adversely affect astronauts’ visual acuity.

In a survey of roughly 300 astronauts, 30 percent of astronauts who had flown short-duration (about 2 week) missions on the Space Shuttle and 60 percent of astronauts who had flown long duration (about 6 month) missions on the ISS reported experiencing vision problems as a result of spaceflight.

While some astronauts noted an improvement in vision once they returned to Earth, for one astronaut the vision changes were permanent. According to the medical journal Ophthalmology, one astronaut stated that he could “only see the Earth clearly while looking through the lower portion of his progressive reading glasses.”

The disorder appears to be similar to an Earth-based condition called papilledema, which, if left unchecked, can lead to blindness.

Since the visual degradation appears to increase proportional to the amount of time an astronaut spends in space, this is obviously a concern since, while ISS missions last around 6 months, future missions to Mars could last 3 years or more.

Since no crews in this study have spent more than six months on the ISS, it is not known at this stage whether vision will continue to degrade with time spent in space or whether the degradation will eventually plateau.

Scientists theorize that the problem could be caused by increased pressure on the head and eyes by spinal fluid which is not pulled down in microgravity as it is on Earth.

The exact cause however in unknown at this time, and research is currently ongoing aboard the station, including regular inflight Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of astronauts’ eyes and trails of new glasses which can adjust for visual impairments.

While the above two discoveries present problems for future BEO missions, the station is also teaching us solutions to other issues. In December, a new discovery from an experiment conducted by the Japanese space agency, JAXA, was announced. The discovery showed that astronaut bone loss in microgravity, long thought of as a serious problem for BEO missions, could be severely reduced simply by having astronauts take standard osteoporosis drugs.

Astronauts in microgravity typically lose 5 to 7 percent of their bone density in 6 months even when exercising for two hours per day. The study of five astronauts found that taking bisphosphonates once a week in addition to exercising significantly reduced bone density loss, with only 1 percent of bone density being lost in the femur and bone density in the hip actually showing a 3 percent increase.

Despite critics’ claims that the ISS is a useless anchor to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for the next decade, and that there is nothing left to learn in LEO, the evidence is clear: the ISS, only 6 months into its utilization phase, is already teaching us extremely valuable information about long-duration spaceflight.

While not all ISS experiments may be particularly glamorous or exciting, the fact remains that the knowledge gleaned from these experiments is absolutely essential to our future progression in space and on Earth.

While microgravity certainly presents challenges for the future, so far ISS has not identified any showstoppers to BEO exploration, and the knowledge gained from station, both in terms of direct scientific data and engineering know-how, will pay dividends in future exploration missions.

As detailed, most of the experiments discussed in this article were performed in the 2005-2007 timeframe, when ISS was still in its construction phase and had nowhere near the scientific capabilities it has now.

Due to the amount of time it takes to conduct an experiment in space and then analyze and publish the results, the fruits of a fully assembled and operational ISS likely won’t be seen for a number of years, meaning that ISS has much more to give over the coming years than has been seen in the past.

Looking ahead to 2012:

Looking to next year, the ISS is set to enter its first full year as a fully assembled and operational space laboratory. In addition to the start of CASIS operations, a number of interesting experiments are due to be performed on ISS next year.

The first is called ISS as a Testbed for Analogue Research, or ISTAR.

ISTAR will involve using the ISS as an analogue to investigate some issues of BEO exploration, such as introducing time-delays into ISS communications similar to those experienced on BEO missions while at the same time giving the ISS crew full control of their timeline in order to decrease their dependency on ground control.

This experiment is designed to identify and iron out any problems associated with time delays and autonomous crew planning prior to undertaking BEO missions in the future.

Another noteworthy experiment is the Robotic Refueling Module (RRM), which was delivered to the ISS on STS-135 in July this year.

In 2012, RRM will be used for the first time to test satellite refueling procedures, using specially designed tools operated by the station’s Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM), “Dextre.”

While these are just two examples of high-profile experiments to be conducted on station in 2012, many hundreds more will be ongoing both inside and outside the station, some involving crew participation, some continuously proceeding in automated mode.

Collectively, the wealth of data from these experiments will leave a legacy that will outlast ISS.

(Images: L2 Content, NASA, JAXA)

(NSF and L2 are providing full transition level coverage, available no where else on the internet, from Orion and SLS to ISS and COTS/CRS/CCDEV, to European and Russian vehicles). 

(Click here: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/ - to view how you can access the best space flight content on the entire internet)

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Understanding our uniqueness - Kepler sheds light on extra-solar planets:

It was a difficult start to 2011 for the Kepler team. Beginning the year with an anomaly resolution stemming from the spacecraft putting itself into safe mode on December 22, 2010, the Kepler project team successfully returned the spacecraft to normal operations on January 6, 2011 after determining that the condition was caused by an “unexpected noise in the signal from Kepler’s sun sensors that erroneously indicated Kepler might be pointing too close to the sun.”

It wasn’t long after this that the Kepler team announced the confirmation of the first discovery of our rocky planet outside of our own solar system.

The planet, dubbed Kepler-10b, measures 1.4 times the size of Earth and was, at the time, the smallest planet ever discovered outside our own solar system.

While a primary goal of the Kepler mission is to discover rocky planets that lie within the habitable zone of their parent stars, Kepler-10b was quickly dismissed as a habitable candidate because the planet orbits its parent star every 0.84 days, making the planet more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun.

Nevertheless, the discovery of this planet was a proof of concept for the Kepler team, demonstrating that the telescope’s ultraprecise photometer could in fact measure the tiny decrease in a star’s brightness that occurs when a small, Earth-sized planet crosses in front of it.

In a statement following this announcement, NASA stated that “The discovery of Kepler-10b, a bona fide rocky world, is a significant milestone in the search for planets similar to our own.

“Although this planet is not in the habitable zone, the exciting find showcases the kinds of discoveries made possible by the mission and the promise of many more to come.”

But this discovery would prove to be just the first of many for Kepler in 2011.

One month later, scientists announced the discovery of a six-planet system made up of a mix of rocky and gas giant planets orbiting a single, sun-like star.

Located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, the Kepler-11 star system was the first such extra-solar planetary system discovered to have more than three confirmed planets.

All the planets discovered in the Kepler-11 system are larger than Earth, with the largest ones comparable to the size of Uranus and Neptune.

The system is extremely compact, with the outermost confirmed planet, Kepler-11g, orbiting its star at a distance twice as close as planet Earth orbits the sun.

The discovery of the system by the Kepler telescope was independently confirmed by ground based observatories as well as the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Moreover, the same day of the announcement of the Kepler – 11 system also saw the announcement of 54 new planet candidates where their orbits could lie within the habitable zone of their respective parent stars.

Since the start of the Kepler mission in March 2009, the number of Earth-sized planet candidates has grown from 0 to 68 while the number of planet candidates in the habitable zone of their parent stars has grown from 0 to 54.

The habitable zone, defined as the region in a planetary system where liquid water could exist on a planetary surface, is of particular interest for the Kepler team in the search for habitable planets like Earth.

But Kepler is not just searching for habitable planets outside our solar system. The telescope is also helping scientists learn more about the stars in our galactic neighborhood.

Following two safe mode events in February and March, NASA announced that the Kepler telescope had aided University of Sydney astrophysicists in their study of red giant stars.

The study, which revealed new information on the evolution of red giant stars, was aided by the Kepler telescope through the use of its high precision brightness measurements of the various stars in its field of view.

Specifically, Kepler provided scientists a view of hundreds of red giants at a level of precision and duration that ground-based telescopes are not capable of.

Less than two weeks later, further information was revealed about Kepler’s insight into the study of the internal structure of stars by observing miniscule pulsations in the stars’ brightness.

And still the discoveries kept coming.

By the end of May 2011, Kepler’s team had found an additional planet in the Kepler-10 system. This confirmed planet, with a radius of 2.2 times that of Earth, completes an orbit of its parent star every 45 days – making it an extremely hot world that lies too close to its parent star to be habitable.

But perhaps more excitingly by this point in its existence, the Kepler space telescope had identified more than 1,200 planetary candidates, 408 of them residing in planetary systems with two or more planets.

Furthermore, in August of this year, astronomers announced the discovery of the darkest-known exoplanet.

Described as a Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b, the planet was found to reflect less than 1 percent of the starlight reaching the upper layers of its atmosphere.

While the planet was first discovered using the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) method in 2006, new data from the Kepler telescope allowed scientists to determine the reflectivity of the planet. This led to the discovery that TrES-2b lacks reflective clouds due to its high temperature – a direct result of its 3-million-distance orbit of its parent star.

This close proximity to its parent star yields an average temperature of 1,800-degrees F, which is too hot for high-reflectivity clouds, like ammonia clouds, to form.

In place of those ammonia clouds, scientists have determined that the atmosphere of this planet contains light absorbing chemicals; however, none of these light absorbing chemicals can fully explain the extreme low-reflectivity of TrES-2b.

Click here for:
*Kepler Launch Article*
*Kepler 2010 Review Article*

Moreover, the planet is believed to be tidally locked with its parent star, meaning that one side of the planet always faces the star.

Further observations from the Kepler telescope also showed that the planet has changing phases as it orbits its star, causing the total brightness of the star and its planet to vary slightly during observational periods.

Furthermore, direct observations from Kepler of TrES-2b yielded the detection of the smallest-ever change in brightness from an exoplanet at just six parts per million – making Kepler the first telescope to detect such a minute change in brightness of an exoplanet.

Following this dark world discovery, the Kepler team soon announced the discovery of an invisible world orbiting a sun-like star in the Kepler-19 system, located some 650 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra.

The discovery of this invisible world was made possible by direct observations of the planet Kepler-19b which, based on its 8.4 million mile distance from its parent star, should complete an orbit every 9 days and 7 hours.

However, +/- 5 minute variations in the orbital times of Kepler-19b led astronomers to the discovery of the invisible world accompanying Kepler-19b.

As related by Kepler researchers, “If Kepler-19b were alone, each transit would follow the next like clockwork. Instead, the transits come up to five minutes early or five minutes late. Such transit timing variations show that another world’s gravity is pulling on Kepler-19b, alternately speeding it up or slowing it down.”

For context within our own solar system, the planet Neptune was similarly discovered when researchers noticed that Uranus orbit didn’t match predictions. It was soon understood and that the perturbations in Uranus’ orbit were being caused by an unseen planet at a greater distance from the sun than Uranus.

Ground based telescopes soon discovered Neptune near its predicted position based on the observed perturbations in Uranus’ orbit.

While nothing aside from the gravitationally-mandated existence of the invisible world, named Kepler-19c, is known, observations of the Kepler-19 system indicate that Kepler-19c’s orbit is tilted relative to Kepler-19b, meaning that the planet does not transit the Kepler-19 star and therefore cannot be directly observed by the Kepler telescope or from ground-based observatories on Earth.

But, like before, the discoveries and confirmations from Kepler just kept coming.

By mid-September, the Kepler team announced the discovery of a planet orbiting a binary star system.

Residing in a star system 200 light years from Earth, the planet, called Kepler-16b, marked the first confirmation of an unambiguous circumbinary planet -  a planet that orbits two stars in the same system.

Demonstrating the diversity of planets within our own galaxy, Kepler-16b is cold and lies outside of its parent stars’ habitable zone.

The planet was discovered using the transit method of detection, viewing the relative dimming and brightening of a star (or stars in this case) as a planet passes between the star and Kepler’s line of sight.

Observations of the stars’ interaction with Kepler-16b confirmed the planet to be roughly the size of Saturn with a rocky and gaseous composition.

The planet was confirmed to orbit the two stars every 229 days, placing it – if it were in our own solar system – in nearly the precise orbit of Venus, which takes 225 days to orbit the sun.

However, because the two stars in the Kepler-16 system are cooler than our sun, Kepler-16b in fact lies well beyond the habitable zone of the Kepler 16 system.

Furthermore, by early October, Kepler had aided in the discovery of an “unusual multi-planet system” in which a super Earth and two Neptune-size planets all orbit in resonance with each other.

The confirmed three-planet system, if superimposed over a map of our own solar system, would lie complete within the orbit of Mercury. But while all these previous discoveries and confirmations were exciting in their own right, nothing could compare to the final three Kepler announcements of 2011.

On December 2, the discovery of a super-Earth was confirmed around one of the brightest stars in Kepler’s field of view.

Dubbed Kepler-21b, the planet is roughly 1.6 times the size of Earth and 10 times Earth’s mass.

It orbits its parent star every 2.8 days at a distance of only 6 million kilometers – ten times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun.

The surface temperate on Kepler-21b is estimated to be roughly 2,960 degrees F. Thus, the planet does not lie within the habitable zone of its parent star, the habitable zone still only defined as the zone around a star in which liquid water could exits on the surface of a rocky planetary body.

The star itself, HD 179070 is 352 lights years from Earth.

But this still could not compare to the announcement that came on December 5: the first confirmed planet to lie within the habitable zone of its parent star – which is a sun-like star to boot.

The planet, called Kepler 22b, was, as of December 5, the smallest-yet confirmed planet found to orbit completely within the habitable zone of a star similar to the sun – a G-type star.

The planet lies 600 light years away from Earth and orbits its parent star every 290 days.

At approximately 2.4 times the radius of Earth, Kepler-22b has not yet been confirmed as a rocky planet.

As NASA stated, “This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin. Kepler’s results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA’s science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe.”

At this time, Kepler-22b is the first of 54 habitable zone planet candidates, as reported in February 2011, to be independently confirmed by follow-up observations after its initial discovery.

As of December 5, the number of planet candidates from Kepler totaled 2,326 – up 89 percent from February 2011. Of that number, roughly 207 are Earth-sized planets, 680 are super Earth-sized, 1,181 are Neptune-sized planets, 203 are Jupiter-sized planets, and 55 are larger than Jupiter.

 Moreover, the number of habitable zone planet candidates decrease from 54 in February to 48, representing a shift in the definition and placement of the habitable zone around stars to account for atmospheric heating which subsequently moves the habitable zone further out from a star.

But that was not the end for Kepler in 2011. The final announcement came two weeks ago with the confirmation of actual Earth-sized planets.

Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, lying in a star system approximately 1,000 light years from Earth, orbit a sun-like star.

Most exciting is the small size of these planets, with Kepler-20e being slightly smaller than Venus at 0.87 times the radius of Earth and Kepler-20f being 1.03 times the radius of Earth.

Together, these are the two smallest exoplanets yet discovered.

Kepler-20e orbits the host star every 6.1 days while Kepler-20f takes 19.6 days to orbit the star. This places the two worlds too close to their parent star to be habitable by current definitions. If superimposed over our own solar system, the entire five planet system would lie completely within the orbit of Mercury.

In fact, the most-distant confirmed planet in the Kepler-20 system only takes 77.6 days to orbit the star, compared with Mercury’s 88 day orbital period around the sun.

Furthermore, the Kepler-20 system is helping expand our understanding of the composition of other solar systems in our galactic neighborhood.

While our solar system is arranged with the smallest planets closest to the sun and the largest planets farther away, the Kepler-20 system is arranged in an alternating pattern of large, small, large, small, large – all and all, an amazing discovery to cap an amazing year for Kepler.

(All images via NASA).

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Background:

While much of the world’s attention was on NASA’s manned exploits in 2011, the US space agency was busy with its fleet of unmanned planetary explorers peppered throughout the inner and outer solar system.

In particular, NASA’s MESSENGER, Dawn, Cassini, and Voyager 1 spacecrafts increased our knowledge of Mercury, the asteroid belt, Saturn, and the outer-most boundary of our solar system, while the intrepid rover Opportunity revealed more secrets about our third closest celestial neighbor: Mars.

Calendar year 2011 for NASA also saw the launch of three new and exciting missions: the twin GRAIL probes to the moon, the Juno spacecraft to the Jupiter, and the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity to Mars.

Sadly, 2011 also brought about the end of official operations for the Mars rover Spirit which survived on the red planet for over six years.

The new missions: GRAIL, Juno, and MSL:

Continuing a string of successes in planetary missions, NASA began three new planetary flights in 2011, including one designed to build the presence of the space agency around the moon.

GRAIL and the new mission to the moon:

Dubbed the GRAIL mission, the twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory spacecraft will be the first of their kind to conduct an unprecedented and detailed study of Earth’s closest celestial neighbor from the crust of its surface to its inner-most core.

Launching aboard the veteran Delta II rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Saturday, September 10, the twin spacecraft enjoyed an issue-free 3.5 month low energy transfer cruise to the Moon and are scheduled to arrive in lunar orbit on December 31, 2011 and January 1, 2012.

Powered by a series of solar panels on their surface, NASA hopes that the GRAIL spacecraft will answer longstanding questions about the Moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

Flown under NASA’s Discovery program, the principle scientific objectives of the GRAIL mission are to produce a map of the moon’s lithosphere, allow scientists to understand the moon’s thermal evolution and the evolution of breccia with in the moon’s crust, and determine more details of the moon’s interior, particularly the size of the moon’s core and the structure beneath impact basins.

Once inserted into lunar orbit, the twin GRAIL spacecraft will work in harmony with one another during the primary 82 day scientific collection phase of the mission.

While nothing beyond the 82-day primary science mission has been confirmed, it is entirely possible – based on past mission extension operations from NASA – that the GRAIL mission could enjoy a longer life in orbit of the moon.

However, this mission’s launch also signaled the apparent end of NASA’s selection of the Delta II rocket as a preferred launch vehicle.  Following numerous successful flights with Delta II, NASA is now moving in the direction of selecting the Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles over the Delta II.

While NASA has publicly expressed optimism that a future mission could utilize the Delta II launch vehicle’s services, no such official commitment has been made and none of NASA’s currently planned missions are scheduled to use the Delta II rocket. 

Therefore, the launch of the GRAIL spacecrafts marked the penultimate flight of the Delta II, with its final flight occurring in late October, and final time NASA used the veteran rocket. (GRAIL L2 Coverage).

Returning to the giant:

Nonetheless, the GRAIL mission was not the first of the new planetary missions launched by NASA in 2011.  Almost exactly one month earlier in early August, NASA successfully launched the new Juno probe to the solar system’s giant: Jupiter.

Riding atop the second most powerful configuration for the Atlas V rocket, the Juno mission lifted off at 1225 EDT on 5 August 2011 - after a 51 minute delay for a technical issue and a boat in the launch restriction zone. 

Since launch, Juno has traveled approximately 221 million miles and has achieved a velocity of 55,800 miles per hour relative to the sun.

Named after the Roman goddess of marriage and the wife of the god Jupiter, the Juno mission is the second mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program – the first being the New Horizons probe currently on its way to an encounter with Pluto and its moons in July 2015.

The spacecraft made its first of three Mars orbit crossings on December 13 in anticipation for its August 2016 arrival at Jupiter after a five year trek through the inner and outer solar system. During this five year trek, the spacecraft will make a flyby of Earth in October 2013 for a gravitational assist to propel itself into the outer solar system.

Once it arrives at Jupiter, Juno will enter a zenocentric orbit of the gas giant for a primary scientific mission that is scheduled to last 14 months and allow the spacecraft to study Jupiter from a polar orbit.

To accomplish this, the Lockheed Martin-built spacecraft will carry nine instruments to Jupiter to study electric currents flowing along field lines in the planet’s magnetic field, ultraviolet and electromagnetic emissions of the energetic particles in Jupiter’s aurora, heat being emanated from the planet, the structure of  Jupiter’s atmosphere, the magnetosphere’s structure in the planet’s polar regions, and the energy and distribution of particles and the polar regions of Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

In all, Juno will be the ninth spacecraft to visit the planet Jupiter, the first being the pioneer 10 spacecraft which flew through the Jovian system in December 1973.

Juno will be the first spacecraft to be placed into orbit around Jupiter since the Galileo mission which lasted from December 8, 1995 to September 21, 2003.

The connection between Juno to its predecessor Galileo is somewhat ironic to space fans. The Juno mission was in fact the first NASA mission to be launched after the fly out of the Space Shuttle Program.  The final flight of the shuttle program flown by orbiter Atlantis landed just 15 days before Juno’s launch.  The previous Jovian orbiter mission of Galileo was launched by the very same Space Shuttle – Atlantis – in 1989.

Additionally, the successful launch of the Juno mission represented the 175th flight of an Atlas rocket with a Centaur upper stage.  The Atlas-Centaur duo first flew in May 1962 and has since undergone several iterations.

The most current iteration, the Atlas V rocket, is one of the most reliable U.S. domestic launch vehicles in service today.  At the time of the Juno launch, the Atlas V rocket was in fact the second most reliable U.S. domestic launch vehicle behind only the Delta II rocket – given that the Shuttle had been retired just 15 days prior.

By late November, when the third of NASA’s three new planetary missions was launched, the Atlas V was the most reliable U.S. domestic launch vehicle in service following the defacto retirement of the Delta II rocket in late October due to no further customer requests for its services. (Juno L2 Coverage).

Mars Science Laboratory - Unlocking the further secrets of Mars:

NASA’s third new planetary mission of the year was perhaps the most anticipated of NASA’s unmanned missions in 2011. 

Carrying the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity, the veteran Atlas V rocket flying on its 28th mission lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at the beginning of a 1 hour 43 minute window at 10:02 EST on 26 November 2011.

For the Atlas V rocket, the launch of Curiosity marked the 28th out of 28 successful missions for the rocket, giving the vehicle, from a payload customer standpoint, a perfect success record.

Successfully sending the MSL rover on its way to the red planet, the Atlas V rocket began what will be a nine month journey through the interplanetary medium for Curiosity.

Scheduled to arrive on 6 August 2012 at approximately 0100 EDT, the MSL will pioneer a new precision landing technology for NASA and a sky-crane touchdown to place Curiosity near the foot of a mountain inside Gale crater.

According to NASA, the new precision landing maneuvers have allowed scientists to shrink the target landing area to less than one-fourth the size of earlier Mars mission landing targets – a new innovation that without which would have made Gale crater an unacceptably hazardous area for Curiosity to land.

While the primary goal of the MSL mission is to determine whether Mars is or has ever had an environment capable of supporting life, the mission will not look for any specific type of life.

Instead, the rover will use a suite of 10 scientific instruments along with a robotic arm to analyze soil and rock samples with a complex set of laser and sensor systems.

In all, Curiosity is five times larger than its predecessors Spirit and Opportunity and has 15 times the mass of scientific experiments of Spirit and Opportunity.

Curiosity’s primary science mission phase is scheduled to last 687 Earth days or one Martian year and cover between 5-20 kilometers on Mars’s surface.

The mission was initially scheduled to launch in the 2009 Martian launch window but was delayed due to inadequate test time and technical and budgetary reasons. (MSL L2 Coverage).

NASA’s ongoing missions - from Mercury to the edge of the solar system:

While the new missions launched by NASA this year certainly offer up the potential to provide intriguing new insights into the solar system and planetary formation, the successes of ongoing NASA missions that are already collecting data on this very topic dominated much of the space community’s news in 2011.

In fact, 2011 proved to be the year in which two major historic events in the unmanned space probe arena would finally come to fruition: the successful insertion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the planet Mercury and a successful orbital insertion of the Dawn spacecraft around the asteroid Vesta.

MESSENGER at Mercury:

The first of these two major achievements occurred on 17 March 2011 when the MESSENGER spacecraft confirmed its successful orbital insertion of planet Mercury at 2110 EDT.

As related by NASA, “Achieving Mercury orbit was by far the biggest milestone since MESSENGER was launched more than six and a half years ago. This accomplishment is the fruit of a tremendous amount of labor on the part of the navigation, guidance-and-control, and mission operations teams, who shepherded the spacecraft through its 4.9-billion-mile journey.”

Within days, MESSENGER had sent back its first image of Mercury from orbit and began what was thought to be a year-long Mercury science mission which was due to end on 17 March 2012.

However, on 14 November 2011, NASA announced the extension of the MESSENGER mission for an additional year of orbital operations at Mercury, ensuring the spacecraft’s operation, from a funding and ground support stance, through 17 March 2013.

This extension comes in large part due to the tremendous success of the MESSENGER mission in its first six months of operation in orbit of Mercury.

So far, MESSENGER has revealed unexpectedly high concentrations of magnesium and calcium on the night time side of Mercury and the offset to the north of the planet’s center of the magnetic field.

During the first year of its operations, MESSENGERs primary science objectives include determining accurately the surface composition of Mercury, characterizing the geological history of the planet, determing the precise strength of the magnetic field and its variations with position and altitude, investigating the presence of a liquid outer core by measuring Mercury’s liberation (oscillating motion of orbiting bodies relative to each other), determining the nature of the radar reflective materials at Mercury’s polls, and investigating the important volatile species and their sources and sinks on and near Mercury.

Following from the primary year of scientific exploration, the one year extension will be designed to explore six scientific questions regarding Mercury.  Specifically these questions include: What are the sources of surface volatiles on Mercury? How late into Mercury’s history did volcanism persist? How did Mercury’s long-wavelength topography change with time? What is the origin of localized regions of enhanced exospheric density at Mercury? How does the solar cycle affect Mercury’s exosphere and volatile transport? And what is the origin of Mercury’s energetic electrons?

As related by NASA, “Advancements in science have at their core the evaluation of hypotheses in the light of new knowledge, sometimes resulting in slight changes in course, and other times resulting in paradigm shifts, opening up entirely new vistas of thought and perception.

“With the early orbital observations at Mercury we are already seeing the beginnings of such advancements. The extended mission guarantees that the best is indeed ‘yet to be’ on the MESSENGER mission, as this old-world Mercury, seen in a very new light, continues to give up its secrets.”

Farewell Spirit; New Science from Opportunity:

Few could argue the success and the legacy of the twin Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.  From their launch in June and July 2003, respectively, and their arrival on the red planet on 4 January 2004 and 25 January 2004, respectively, the twin rovers have beyond exceeded all expectations for their scientific mission which was only supposed to last 90 solar days.

For Opportunity, the journey on the red planet continues to this day with ongoing scientific evaluations into the past habitability of Mars and the planet’s current environmental conditions.

But for Opportunity’s twin rover Spirit, the rover which was launched first and arrived first on the red planet, the incredible journey came to a formal conclusion earlier this year when all attempts to communicate with the rover over the previous year proved unsuccessful.

After 2210 solar days on the surface of Mars, the final communication with the Spirit rover was received on 22 March 2010 at the beginning of what was expected to be a period of winter dormancy for the two rovers as they entered the Martian winter.

However, while Opportunity weathered the Martian winter, Spirit did not.  After 14 months of unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the rover, NASA officially ended Spirit’s tenure on Mars on 24 May 2011.

With an original mission duration of only 90 solar days, the Spirit rover functioned above and beyond what her engineers and scientists asked her to do. Functioning 24.5 times longer than anticipated, Spirit covered 4.8 miles during her 6 year 2 month 18 day tenure on Mars, nearly 12 times the original distance goals set for the mission.

According to NASA, “Our job was to wear these rovers out exploring, to leave no unutilized capability on the surface of Mars, and for Spirit we have done that.”

Spirit was given a formal farewell on NASA television in the final week of May 2011, after which the assets that once belonged to Spirit and its mission were turned over to MSL mission team in preparation for that flight’s launch in November.

But with the demise of Spirit came a renewed focus on her twin, Opportunity.  Now the longest surviving vehicle on the surface of Mars, a title the Opportunity rover has held since April 2010, Opportunity is currently exploring the rim of Endeavour crater on Mars – a crater, like the Shuttle orbiter Endeavour, named after the 18th century British sailing vessel commanded by James Cook during his first voyage of discovery to Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia.

Over the course of the Opportunity’s nearly eight year tenure on the Martian surface, the rover has driven an impressive 21 miles and has functioned more than 30 times longer than its originally planned 90 solar day mission.

To this day, Opportunity continues to perform extensive geological analysis of Martian rocks and planetary surface features, including the very recent discovery of a mineral vein deposited by water on the surface of Mars.

In October of this year, Opportunity and her twin, Spirit, were selected for lifetime achievement award honors as part of the Breakthrough Awards presented by Popular Mechanics magazine.

Dawn in the asteroid belt - Achieving orbit of Vesta:

Launched aboard a Delta II rocket on 27 September 2007, the Dawn spacecraft completed its near four year journey to the asteroid belt on 16 July 2011 when it entered orbit of the Vesta asteroid.

After being captured by Vesta’s gravity, the Dawn spacecraft maneuvered itself into a lower and closer orbit by firing its xenon ion rocket engines to enter a 4.3-hour low altitude mapping orbit.

For the Dawn mission, the goal of the overall flight is to characterize the conditions and processes of the solar system’s earliest eon by investigating the two largest protoplanets, Ceres and Vesta.

Vesta, the second most massive asteroid in the asteroid belt after the dwarf planet Ceres, is estimated to contain approximately 9% of the total mass of the asteroid belt.

Comparatively, though, little is known about Vesta except that it is one of the largest protoplanetary objects remaining intact since the formation of the solar system.  Currently, it is believed that both Ceres and Vesta formed in two different regions of the early solar system before migrating to their current location within the asteroid belt.

Since its arrival in July, the Dawn spacecraft has helped shed new light on Vesta, including the fact that it appears to be one of the most rugged – in terms of surface topography – bodies in the asteroid belt.

While information on how the surface features of Vesta were formed is still forthcoming, Dawn has revealed that some of the surface features of the asteroid in its southern hemisphere are only 1-2 billion years old, considerably younger than regions on the asteroid’s northern hemisphere.

Dawn has also helped reveal an interesting diversity in the composition of the craters on Vesta as well as the asteroid’s overall surface composition.

In all, Dawn has roughly seven more months of observations at Vesta before its ion engines will be fired again to take it out of orbit of Vesta and put the spacecraft on course for rendezvous with the dwarf planet Ceres in February 2015.

Cassini at Saturn - The storm on Saturn and the year of Saturnian moons:

Perhaps one of the most interesting scientific missions to take place in 2011 was the ongoing mission of Cassini at Saturn.

From discovering new heat sources on Saturn’s intriguing moon Enceladus, to finding that seasonal rains transform the surface of Titan, to observing a raging storm on Saturn itself, and finally to a flyby of Enceladus, the Cassini mission has given us invaluable insight into the Saturnian system.

Beginning the year with the incredible discovery that heat output from the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus was much greater than originally thought possible, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft showed that heat-generated power was approximately 15.8 gigawatts in Enceladus’ southern polar region.

While Enceladus’ geologically active southern polar region was discovered in 2005, a 2007 study, according to NASA, “predicted the internal heat of Enceladus, if principally generated by tidal forces arising from the orbital resonance between Enceladus and another moon, Dione, could be no greater than 1.1 gigawatts averaged over the long term” – a hypothesis proved incorrect about Cassini earlier this year.

A possible explanation for the high heat flow observed in Enceladus could have a great deal to do with the amount of liquid water present under Enceladus’ surface.

This potential explanation for the higher-than-expected power output on Enceladus comes from the direct measure of ice crystals released from underneath the surface of Enceladus by surface geysers.

These ice crystals, as sampled by Cassini during a flyby of Enceladus, contained salt-rich particles that could potentially be frozen droplets of a saltwater ocean in contact with Enceladus’ mineral-rich rocky core.

This potential discovery of a massive underground saltwater ocean on Enceladus, a liquid ocean made possible by tidal energy from Enceladus’ interaction with other moons of Saturn and Saturn itself, has garnered a new astrobiological interest in Saturn’s moon as yet another place in the solar system where life could potentially exist.

Following on the heels of this discovery, the Cassini spacecraft observed methane rain showers around Titan’s equatorial regions.  Following observations of large rain cloud systems in 2010, a predominantly dark surface near Titan’s equatorial region indicates that Titan’s surface is directly affected by seasonal changes within the Saturnian system as well as weather systems on Titan itself.

According to a NASA news release on 17 March 2011, an arrow-shaped storm appeared in the equatorial regions on Sept. 27, 2010 and a broad band of clouds appeared the next month. Over the next few months, Cassini monitored short-lived surface changes of Titan’s surface.

These observations suggest that recent weather on Titan is similar to that over Earth’s tropics.

Furthermore, around the same time as these previous observations, Cassini also monitored the birth of a violent storm in Saturn’s northern hemisphere that eventually grew to stretch around the entire planet.

Initially witnessing the formation of the storm in December 2010, Cassini witnessed the rapid expansion of the storm that eventually produced a 3,000-mile-wide dark vortex.

The storm became the first major storm on Saturn to be observed by an orbiting spacecraft and studied at thermal and infrared wave lengths.

Since the storm’s creation, Cassini monitored the changing composition of Saturn’s atmosphere, including the appearance of ammonia from deep in the atmosphere, from a mixing of air from different levels.

Finally, in early November 2011, Cassini made a close flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, acquiring the first detailed radar images of the moon on November 6.  The images were the first high resolution radar observations made of any icy moon other than Titan.

The flyby also provided scientists the opportunity to obtain detailed measurements of Enceladus’ icy jets in order to make new measurements of hot spots underneath Enceladus’ surface.

To the edge of the solar system - Voyager 1 and the great unknown:

For NASA’s unmanned interplanetary missions, 2011 ended with the exciting discovery that the Voyager 1 space probe is closer than thought to exiting the solar system and entering the interstellar medium.

Described by NASA has a cosmic purgatory, new information from the Voyager 1′s scientific instruments over the previous year indicate that the spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space.

In this new region, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun, particles which compose the magnetic field of our solar system, begin to “pile up” while higher energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into the interstellar medium.

According to NASA, “Voyager tells us now that we’re in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system. Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back. We shouldn’t have long to wait to find out what the space between stars is really like.”

But while Voyager 1 is close to passing into the interstellar medium, indications from the spacecraft show that the magnetic field lines from the sun have not changed direction.  This is a direct indication that Voyager 1 is still within the heliosphere, the area in which the charged particles from the sun are still the dominant force.

While this new information is exciting and gives us a better understanding of the outer-most reaches of our solar system, it does not change the previous statement from NASA that Voyager 1 could enter the interstellar medium at any time now.

While the exact date on which Voyager 1 will exit the solar system, becoming the first manmade object to do so in recorded history, cannot be precisely calculated, all indications are that Voyager 1 will enter the interstellar medium sometime in the next few years.

Click here for our two previous Voyager Feature Articles:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/08/voyagers-unprecedented-on-going-mission-exploration/
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/08/thirty-four-years-voyager-2-continues-explore/

Into 2012 – A year to capitalize on what’s come before:

While 2011 was a banner year for NASA in terms of interplanetary science, 2012 should be an even more exciting year. 

In the next year, the MESSENGER spacecraft will continue its observations of planet Mercury while observing the planet at close range during the solar maximum cycle of our sun. It is hoped the MESSENGER will be able to monitor the solar maximum’s effect on the inner-most planet in our solar system.

Meanwhile, much closer to home, he twin GRAIL spacecraft will begin to unlock further secrets of our closest celestial neighbor in terms of its composition and formation in the early years of the solar system.

Furthermore, NASA will have the privilege of being the only space agency in the world to attempt a landing of a rover on Mars.  This distinction comes after the failed Martian launch attempt from Russia of the Fobos-Grunt probe in November 2011.

And while Cassini will continue to observe the Saturnian system and Voyager 1 continues to get ever-closer to the interstellar boundary between our solar system and interstellar space, NASA will conduct of the launch of the NuSTAR, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array to allow astronomers to study the universe in high energy X-rays.

That mission is currently scheduled to launch on March 14, 2012 aboard the Pegasus XL rocket from the Reagan Test Site in Kwajalein Atoll.

This will be followed by the launch of the Radiation Belts Storm Probes atop an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

This mission, dubbed RBSP, will help our understanding of the sun’s influence on Earth and near-Earth space by studying the Earth’s radiation belts on various scales of space and time.

That mission is currently scheduled to launch on August 23, 2012.

Following the launch of that mission, NASA will align itself for the launch of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS.  This mission, which is progressing toward a target launch date of December 1, 2012 will be flown aboard the Pegasus XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The mission itself is designed to provide information on energy transport into the corona and solar wind and provide an archetype for all stellar atmospheres.

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