BigSoccer IN SPACE!!! (The BigSoccer Space Exploration Thread)

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater."

NASA revealed its findings regarding its first soil sample analyses from the Curiosity rover, and as promised, it's not Earth-shattering. They found compounds containing water, sulfur and chlorine, but nothing organic yet.

This is hilarious. We have more evidence of organic compounds on Mercury, Europa (moon of Jupiter) and Enceladus (moon of Saturn) than we do on Mars.

The Voyager teleconference is at 2pm EST.

 

I think in terms of organics, they're looking specifically for compounds containing nitrogen or phosphorous, which would be a flag for heavy-duty biological processes. N is required for proteins, and P is required for nucleic acids.

They're not just looking for organic compounds. They are looking for traces of biological life.

 

Of course, Jupiter and Saturn also have much heavier-duty magnetic fields than Earth, and Mars I think has a negligible (if existent) magnetic field. I think that's also why Mars has a very tenuous atmosphere. It takes geological activity and a magnetic field to keep lighter compounds in an atmosphere. And Mars is, by all measures, geologically dead.

There's also the question of the radiation belts around Jupiter. They're strong enough to wreak havoc with space probes. Pioneer 11's vidicon tube-based camera was so damaged during the Jupiter fly-by, that it was nearly useless when it visited Saturn. The science teams for Galileo had to recalibrate their CCD-based cameras on every orbit, and the repeated exposure ultimately led to Galileo's demise. The mission was terminated when radiation finally took out the probe's camera.

BTW: The big Voyager 1 news is that they believe it is now in the heliopause. It is in a region where compression from the interstellar wind has redirected the solar magnetic field. It won't be long before the probe begins detecting the interstellar wind at full force. Although about to enter the interstellar medium, it will probably not leave the gravitational influence of the Sun for some time yet.

 

SpaceX is preparing to hit the big time. They just received a launch contract with the U.S. Air Force that, if successful, would result in the Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket being certified in the EELV program.

The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program is a standardized rocket system program. Currently there are two vehicles in the program: Delta IV, and Atlas V.

The Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket's first stage will be 17m longer than the original and has uprated engines, allowing for a 54% increase in thrust. Payload capacity to low-earth orbit will be increased to 13,150 kg (up nearly 50%), and payload to geosynchronous orbit will be increased to 4,850 kg (up over 40%). This would be a higher capacity than either the Delta or Atlas rockets without solid rocket motors.

The first scheduled launch of the Falcon 9 v1.1 will also be SpaceX's first launch from Vandenberg AFB, launching the Canadian CASSIOPE probe into polar orbit. That probe will investigate solar storm interaction with Earth's magnetic field. The Dragon CRS-2 mission to the ISS, currently targeted for March 2013, will be the final v1.0 launch.

In other SpaceX news, they have abandoned the Stratolaunch project, and have been replaced by air-to-orbit experts Orbital Sciences. Stratolaunch is building a massive airplane to drop a huge rocket for orbital launch. A modification of the Falcon 9 would've been used, but SpaceX determined it would require too much re-engineering (in order to convert it to enable horizontal ignition) to make it worthwhile.

Orbital Sciences is famous for its Pegasus small-payload launchers, which were dropped from an L-1011 aircraft and carried 443kg into orbit. Of course, Stratolaunch is far larger in scale, targeting a capacity of 6,000 kg to LEO.

 

55 years ago today, America's first attempt at an orbital probe launch ended in failure. Vanguard TV3 (its code number; it would've been Vanguard 1 if it succeeded) didn't even clear the tower before falling back and exploding.

The fairing opened in the fallback, and the satellite was thrown clear. It was damaged, but actually survived the crash, though it could not be re-used.

One year later on this day, Pioneer 3 was launched. It was intended to be launched directly into escape velocity past the Moon and into solar orbit. Although it failed to reach the moon (it got to 102,000 km, just over 1/4 the way there), it did discover the Van Allen radiation belts.

 

This picture, serial number AS17-148-22727, was taken 40 years ago today, at 5:39am EST, December 7, 1972, by the crew of Apollo 17 at a range of around 45,000 km (28,000 miles). It was snapped just five hours after the mission was launched.

It is unknown which of the crew--Commander Gene Cernan, CM Pilot Ron Evans, or LM Pilot Dr. Harrison Schmitt--took the photo. NASA officially credits the entire crew.

NASA has the raw, unprocessed image here. It's 2400px square, and the source image was actually taken upside-down. The image before it is almost identical, as well.

 

While we're on the subject of distant images of Earth...



20 years ago today, the Galileo probe made its final fly-by of Earth before its final cruise to Jupiter.

It would ultimately fly by at a height of 303.1 km from the surface.



Also, the first Earth flyby happened on December 8, 1990. So two fly-bys, exactly two years apart.

It's interesting exploring our own world as if it were the distant one.

As Bill Nye would say, "Isn't it wild?"

No.

The second film I was referring to is actually Deep Impact.

 

The Boeing X-37, the Air Force's much-speculated-about mini-spaceplane, is planned to be launched on its third flight tomorrow (12/11/12) afternoon NET 1:03pm EDT atop an Atlas V rocket. What it will be doing for the next few months is classified. But anyone in Florida will be able to see its launch.

 

I'm kinda bent, because work got busy and I wasn't able to sneak out to get a look at the launch. Then again, with the clouds, I probably would've seen nothing from here.

 

47 years ago today, Gemini 6A aborted on the launchpad. The engines of the Titan II rocket shut down shortly after ignition on the pad.

If this had happened during liftoff, Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford would've had to eject. The problem was narrowed to a plastic cover left in one of the engines, but they also discovered a loose plug issue that they would have to fix in future Titan II rockets.

They had to egress their spacecraft previously in October when their target, an Agena docking simulator, failed to orbit. Now, they were to rendezvous with Gemini 7, which was already in orbit with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell on a 14-day long-duration mission.

Fast forward to 2:10 for the action.

 

50 years ago today, Mariner 2 passed within 41,000 km of Venus, becoming the first artificial space probe from Earth to fly by one of the Solar System's other planets. It took various instrumental measurements, but did not carry a camera.

Mariner 1 was intended to go to Venus as well, but suffered a launch failure about 5 minutes after liftoff. The Soviets launched Venera 1 toward Venus in 1961, but it failed before it made it to the planet. Two attempts to reach Mars in 1960 also failed. They wouldn't succeed to reach another planet until Venera 3 in 1966.

 

China has succeeded with interplanetary space probes. This past Thursday (12/13, about 0800 UTC), their Chang'e 2 probe flew by the small asteroid 4179 Toutatis.

Chang'e 2 started as a lunar probe in 2010. It then spent about 8 months at the L2 Earth-Moon Lagrangian point, a point of gravitational balance behind the Moon relative to Earth.

This past April, it was released to solar orbit to eventually encounter Toutatis, an asteroid with a wild orbit around the Sun. It can go as far out as Jupiter, and as close as inside Earth's orbit.

This year at its closest to the Sun, Toutatis came within 6.9 million km of Earth. On its way out, Chang'e 2 passed very close to the asteroid, snapping pictures while passing at a relative speed of 24,000 km/h.

This is why China needs to be more open with their peaceful space pursuits. There's nothing wrong with sharing the scientific fruits of your labor, and nothing shameful in failures in pursuit thereof either.

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The Juno probe is still nearly four years away from Jupiter, and already NASA is planning the next mission: an in-depth exploration of Europa.

It will be a two-part mission: a "clipper" which would make repeated fly-bys of the moon while in orbit around Jupiter (like Galileo, but with much closer fly-bys planned), and an orbiter. The radiation around Jupiter's inner moons means they predict a well-shielded orbiter staying around Europa would only last 100 days.

The mission is targeted for launch in the early 2020s.

 

40 years ago today, Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, bringing manned exploration of the Moon to an end (for now). They brought back over 230 pounds of lunar material.t.

 

14 years ago today, Japan's first probe to attempt a visit to another planet, Nozomi, flew by Earth on its way to Mars. However, JAXA (Japan's space agency) screwed up a course correction, resulting in the probe not having enough propellant to reach Mars.

They tried a backup maneuver to use Earth flybys in 2002 and 2003 to bring the probe to Mars, but a solar flare in 2002 damaged the probe. Another burn mishap in the 2003 fly-by rendered the mission a total failure, and it was routed to miss Mars altogether with its remaining propellant to avoid potential impact.

The original intent of the probe was to orbit Mars in a retrograde orbit, and specifically observe interaction between the Martian atmosphere and the solar wind. Japan isn't planning another Mars mission until the 2020s.

(EDIT: I don't know how I mixed it up, but I originally posted this as the day Mariner 4 flew by Mars in 1967. Actually, that fly-by took place in 1965. This day in 1967 was actually the day its mission ended.)

 

Nothing special today. I was on a cruise all last week, which explains my absence. Though 39 years ago today, the crew of the Skylab 4 mission--Gerald Carr, William Pogue and Dr. Edward Gibson--became the first astronauts to carry over a mission into a new Gergorian calendar year.

The CM used for Skylab 4 is at the National Air and Space Museum in a section dedicated to the space station and Apollo-Soyuz, next to a backup launch-ready Skylab module.

More about that in May; the 40th anniversary of the station launch is coming up. That's gonna be fun.

 

54 years ago today, Luna 1 became the first artificial satellite to fly by the Moon and escape Earth's gravity.

It reached the Moon, flying by at a distance just short of 6,000 km, in 34 hours. (To compare, cruise time for Apollo lunar missions was about 73 hours.) Proof of just how much an overkill the R-7 (or, as we call it today, the Soyuz rocket) was as a ballistic missile.

On the way there, Luna 1 released a sodium-based gas, becoming the first artificial comet, for astronomers to observe the behavior of gas in a vacuum. It was visible from the ground for several minutes with the equivalent luminosity of a +6-magnitude star. The probe is also credited with discovering the solar wind.