Weekly Notes
Only Human
Richard Ingham
Thu, 01 Mar 2007
What's the biggest hurdle to setting up a colony on the Moon or getting mankind to Mars and beyond? Aliens? Asteroids? Money? Try humans. Experts poring over plans to return to the Moon by 2018 and later stride to Mars believe the greatest-ever gamble in the history of space may ultimately depend on keeping the mind and body sound.
Anxiety, loneliness and tensions with crewmates, a daily battle to maintain fitness and avoid accidents, DNA-shredding radiation from solar flares or cosmic rays all these make mental and physical health the key to whether a long-term mission will succeed or fail catastrophically.
Benny Elmann-Larsen, coordinator of physiology in human space flight at the European Space Agency (ESA), says psychological stress could be the biggest problem of all.
"The human factor is the most uncertain factor," Elmann-Larsen said in an interview with AFP.
A trip to the Moon, as with the Apollo missions, would last only a few days, which is sufficiently short to be bearable.
But life in a lunar colony presumably several interconnected container-sized structures would present months of confinement, boredom and monotony.
Experience helps
Fortunately, a wealth of research conducted aboard nuclear submarines, in outposts in Antarctica and on long-duration missions on the Soviet space station Mir and the International Space Station (ISS) has thrown up a number of solutions, says Elmann-Larsen.
One of them is to use psychologists in mission control, helping to ease conflicts between crews on the ground and those in space, and helping to devise countermeasures to cope with onboard stress, says Nick Kanas, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco.
For example, crewmembers are encouraged to have frequent contacts with family and friends on Earth, using audiovisual links or email, and resupply missions bring up treats and gifts.
Mars: A different kind of challenge
But going to Mars is a quite different proposition, says Kanas.
Unless there is a breakthrough in our primitive technology of chemical rockets, it would take about six months to get there, assuming that the Red Planet and Earth happen to be relatively close in their differing tracks around the Sun.
Factor in, say, a year or more for doing some exploration and research which after all, is the whole point and then a longer ride home because the planets' positions will have changed, and you're talking about two and a half, maybe three years.
As Earth recedes, gradually becoming a tiny bluish speck in the inky cosmos, the sense of isolation and cabin fever could become oppressive.
Morale-boosting efforts and support measures that were possible in low-Earth orbit or the Moon would be almost impossible.
There would be few supply flights, or quite possibly none at all, and the distances are such that it would take a crewmember 45 minutes to ask a question from the folks back home and 45 minutes to get the reply.
That throws the onus on the crew, likely to range between four and seven, depending on how much money can be mustered.
More people means more volume and mass for life support systems and accommodation, which means lifting more material from Earth, and the cost rises hugely.
The human factor
But how half-a-dozen people can get along 24-7 in a large tin can without becoming neurotic, or worse, is a big unknown, says Kevin Fong, co-director of the Centre for Aviation Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE Medicine) at University College London.
"In space, no-one can hear you scream," the British weekly New Scientist aptly headlined an article on space stress last year.
A 110-day experiment in isolation that was carried out in a mock space station in Moscow in 1999 showed how things can badly go wrong. One module housed four Russian men; the other, three international test subjects, from Austria, Canada and Japan.
Reports within the space community say that during a New Year's celebration two of the Russian men engaged in a 10-minute fist-fight that left blood on the walls before they were restrained by the other men.
The mission commander hauled the only female, Judith Lapierre, a Canadian, out of sight of the experiment's cameras and twice gave her a kiss that she fought in vain to resist.
The Japanese participant was so traumatised by this episode that he quit the experiment altogether. The Canadian and Austrian, a male scientist, continued with the mission but insisted on having locks fitted to their module door.
Fong says many potential problems can be avoided in advance by weeding out crew candidates with a family history of mental illness and with the right profile for collective living, and by a smart but rigorous training process.
But, as the case has shown of love-struck astronaut Lisa Nowak, accused of attempted murder, screening and training may not compensate for the unpredictability of human nature, good or bad.
Fong says there is little consensus on many things when it comes to long-term missions.
There isn't even agreement on what makes good psychological dynamics for a crew size: a small crew encourages unity but lack of variety raises the boredom risk; a large crew gives diversity but creates the risk of cliques and scape-goating.
"The whole thing is quite a big shrug [unknown] at the moment," says Fong.
Article from CoolTech
AFP
'Beautiful new
images of Mars'
Emmanuel Angleys
Mon, 26 Feb 2007
The European comet-chasing spacecraft Rosetta sent back "beautiful new images" of Mars after swooping over the surface of Red Planet overnight, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Sunday.
During a dramatic 15 minutes, the probe disappeared from mission control screens as it passed the far side of Mars in relation to earth.
The spacecraft was forced to switch from solar to battery power for even longer as it traversed a Martian solar eclipse, ESA said.
"We lost the radio signal when Rosetta moved behind Mars, and it reappeared as expected 15 minutes later," said ESA spokesperson Elso Montagnon.
Rosetta came within just 250 kilometres of the red planet and used Martian gravity to swing its course onward, as it pursues its looping mission around the solar system in what ESA has called a game of "cosmic billiards."
"The big suspense of this evening was the eclipse," said Montagnon. For a full 25 minutes Mars completely shut the probe off from the light of the Sun.
Deprived of the energy it otherwise captures from two huge solar panels, it continued to speed along at 39 191 kilometres per hour functioning on battery power.
"It was the first time since its launch that Rosetta crossed an eclipse. We could not be 100 percent sure that the batteries would be up to the job. It was a fairly critical moment," said Montagnon.
Because the spacecraft was on the far side of Mars, mission control were completely in the dark during the switchover from solar power.
The probe was not designed to run on battery power, whose primary function was to add stability after takeoff.
The billion-euro ($1.3-billion) Rosetta, launched in 2004 on a 10-year voyage of some seven billion kilometres, took a series of pictures as it passed Mars between 2am and 2.40am GMT, the agency (ESA) said in a statement.
Heading past Jupiter
"Clouds are visible at the north polar cap of Mars and at the morning 'limb' (the outermost edge of a celestial body). A high altitude cloud is also visible," ESA said.
Passing Mars, the craft "changed direction and then sped away from the red planet on a brand new path, continuing on a journey that will ultimately take it beyond Jupiter's orbit," the agency said.
ESA's head of missions Manfred Warhaut said the fly-past of Mars was the most delicate stage of the mission since its launch.
Rosetta now heads for Earth, where it is due to arrive in November for another dramatic fly-past.
"Its journey will require two more swing-bys around the Earth, in November this year and November 2009," the ESA said.
Normally, planetary swing-bys are used to build up speed but Sunday's operation was actually designed as a brake.
Rosetta is scheduled to hook up with Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 after a voyage of 7.1 billion kilometres.
"Today we have reached another milestone"
It will send a refrigerator-sized lab, called Philae, to the comet's surface to investigate the rock's chemistry and, scientists expect, return precious data on the early history of the solar system, believed to be some 4.5 billion years old.
Rosetta's first Earth fly-by was in 2005. Its encounter with Earth later this year will be to help it gain speed.
"There is still a long way to go, but so far everything seems to be going exactly according to plan," ESA said.
"Today we have reached another milestone on the way to finding an answer to questions such as whether life on Earth began with the help of comets," the agency's director of science, David Southwood, was quoted as saying in an ESA statement.
"This is only the beginning," he added. "The true excitement of targeting and releasing the lander on the comet's nucleus is yet to come."
Article from CoolTech
AFP
China set to
launch lunar probe
Wed, 07 Mar 2007
China will launch its first lunar probe this year and the nation's fledgling space program will have the ability to land a man on the moon within 15 years, state press reported on Tuesday.
The "Chang'e I" lunar probe will be launched later this year aboard a Long March 3-A carrier rocket, Huang Chunping, the former head of rocket science at China's manned space program, told Xinhua news agency.
The probe will provide 3D images of the moon's surface, survey the lunar landscape, study lunar micro-waves and estimate the thickness of the moon's soil, the report said.
No date was given for the launch of the flight.
Huang said that China's next-generation carrier rocket, likely to be named the Long March 5, would be ready for launch in "seven or eight years," and the vehicles' engines had already been successfully tested.
The long-awaited new rocket would be using non-toxic fuels and increase the payload capacity of the Long March series from nine tons to 25 tons, he said.
"The goal to land... men on the moon can surely be achieved in 15 years, though some unexpected difficulties could appear," Huang told Xinhua, speaking on the sidelines of China's ongoing parliamentary session.
The timing of a mission would depend on funding and the further development of the new rocket.
Huang earlier said China would launch its third manned spaceflight, the Shenzhou VII, next year, with three astronauts on board. During the flight, China will attempt its first-ever spacewalk, he added.
China became the third nation to place a man in space, after the former Soviet Union and the United States, when Yang Liwei piloted the Shenzhou V on a short mission in October 2003.
Two years later, the Shenzhou VI carried two astronauts into space on a five-day mission.
Article from CoolTech
AFP
Distant
planet's secrets pierced
Marlowe Hood
Thu, 22 Feb 2007
A team of American astronomers have for the first time analysed the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system by measuring its infrared emissions, according to a study published on Wednesday.
Using data gathered by instruments on the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, the scientists found traces of silicate dust, probably in high-altitude clouds, above the surface of HD 208458 b, a super-hot planet orbiting close to a Sun-like star some 150 light-years from Earth.
"By observing the atmosphere of extrasolar planets, we can characterise their physical properties," explained the study's lead author, Jeremy Richardson, in an interview.
"We can then deduce information about their evolutionary history, which in turn provides insights into how these distant solar systems formed," he said.
There are just over 200 known extrasolar planets, and only 14 of these including HD 208458 b, also known as Osiris are so-called "transiting planets" that pass between their own sun and Earth when they orbit.
By measuring the changes in the emission of infrared, or heat, waves as the planet passes in front of and then behind its sun, astronomers can identify specific elements on its surface and in its atmosphere.
The same measurements would not have been possible from an Earth-based observatory, Richardson explained, because of the distorting effect of our atmosphere.
Intriguing results
The finding that Osiris is shrouded in clouds is consistent with earlier unverified observations. But astronomers are intrigued and perplexed by another discovery described in the paper, published in the journal Nature.
"The exciting thing here is that we do not see any evidence of water in the form of vapor," said Richardson. "The theorists say there should be water, but we don't see it it's a mystery."
One of the driving forces behind the study of exoplanets, and the growing field of Astrobiology, is the search for life, said Richardson.
Osiris, which is ten times closer to its sun than is Mercury to ours, is far too hot with estimated surface temperatures of more than 700บCelsius to accommodate any life form we might recognise.
But future telescopes, he said, might have the ability to perform this kind of experiment on what are called "super-earths," planets in other solar systems that are far bigger than ours but possibly closer in composition and atmosphere.
Another intriguing attribute of Osiris is the fact that its day and its year are the same length.
This means that the planet requires the same amount of time to rotate on its axis as it does to rotate around its sun, about 3.5 Earth days. As a result, one side is always facing the sun.
"There is no consensus on how this affects the atmosphere. Logically there must be some mechanism for transporting energy from the day side to the night side probably very strong winds or the planet would be in disequilibrium," Richardson said.
Even so, he added, there could be a temperature difference of several hundred degrees Celsius.
Article from CoolTech
AFP
'Use
spacecraft to deflect asteroids'
Mon, 19 Feb 2007
An unmanned "tractor spacecraft" could eventually be used to drag an asteroid off course before it slams into Earth with catastrophic consequences, experts said on Friday.
NASA astronaut Edward Lu said Hollywood-style solutions such as detonating a nuclear bomb in outer space to destroy an oncoming asteroid could increase the chances of a hit on Earth.
Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting, Lu said the most viable tactic would be to use the gravitational pull of a spacecraft to alter the asteroid's trajectory.
"Some of the simpler methods that people have talked about have turned out to be, upon closer inspection, not as simple as you might think," Lu said.
"There is a random element to them. Things like hitting them with a bomb or flying a spacecraft into them you just don't know what the results of that are going to be. It could make things worse."
Lu said a small "tractor spacecraft" similar in size to those used in the Apollo missions would need to be deployed to deflect rogue asteroids.
"It would be positioned hovering in front or behind, with the intention to drag the asteroid off its trajectory with gravity," Lu said. "You can move an aircraft carrier with a tiny tug if you pull long enough."
Heading our way
US scientists are closely monitoring the progress of Apophis, which is scheduled to pass within about 32 000 kilometres of Earth in 2029.
Experts have said previously it is possible that Apophis, which could obliterate a country the size of England if it struck, may change its orbit when it swings by Earth in 2029, putting it on a collision course with the planet when it is due to pass by again in 2036.
How the international community should react to the threat of an asteroid will be the subject of a series of four workshops beginning later this year which will aim to draft a treaty to be tabled at the United Nations in 2009.
Russell Schweickart, the chairman of the Association of Space Explorers, whose members are astronauts, said there was a need for a set of internationally recognised procedures for dealing with asteroids.
"We know how to identify an asteroid, we know how to deflect it, the question is who will take on the responsibility for dealing with it. Who are the decision makers?" Schweickart said.
The problem lies in the fact that it is not possible to pinpoint early on which part of the globe an asteroid might strike when it is first identified as threatening the planet.
"When you look at the potential of where something like Apophis is going to hit, you end up drawing a line right across the planet. Eventually that line will shrink to a point," Schweickart said.
"But you will have to have made the decision to deflect the asteroid when it is still a line. If you wait until it's a point, it's too late. Just grab your martini, and go and watch it hit."
Schweickart said a working group of pre-eminent scientists, diplomats and experts in international law would seek to draft a treaty for consideration by the UN in two years' time.
Article from CoolTech
AFP
Saturn's
splendid rings filmed
Mon, 05 Mar 2007
NASA on Friday released never-before-seen images of Saturn captured from above and below the planet's stunning rings by its Cassini spacecraft.
"Finally, here are the views that we've waited years for," said Dr Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
The breath-taking images published on the US space agency's website show Saturn wreathed in its rings, and bathed in sunlight as the spacecraft perches high above the planet.
The black-and-white and colour images were taken over the past two months by the spacecraft as it climbed higher and higher above the planet.
"Sailing high above Saturn and seeing the rings spread out beneath us like a giant, copper medallion is like exploring an alien world we've never seen before," Porco said.
"It just doesn't look like the same place. It's so utterly breathtaking, it almost gives you vertigo."
The images include a dramatic video sequence taken by Cassini as it sped south to north across the planet's rings.
Launched in 1997, the Cassini-Huygens is the first space mission devoted to the exploration of Saturn, and is a joint mission by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Huygens separated from Cassini in December 2004 to land on Titan, while Cassini went into orbit around Saturn after a seven-year voyage across some 3.5-billion kilometres of space.
Over the coming weeks Cassini's high orbits will be progressively lowered so that in late June it will once more be orbiting the ring plane.
The images can be viewed at NASA's website on http://www.nasa.gov/cassini/, as well as http;//saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/ and http://ciclops.org/
Article from CoolTech
AFP
Quest for
life on Mars imminent?
Fri, 16 Feb 2007
Growing evidence of water on Mars adds weight to the theory that life once existed and could still exist beneath its surface, said a group of scientists meeting in San Francisco.
"We have abundant evidence that early Mars was water rich," Houston, Texas, Lunar and Planetary Institute astronomer Stephen Clifford told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Although water is essential for life, its presence on Mars now or in the past does not necessarily point to life on the Red Planet, but it gives scientists who support the theory some ground for their arguments.
Besides new geological evidence on the presence of water published on Thursday in Science magazine, Clifford also mentioned features on Mars such as valleys, shorelines and sediments where lakes, seas or even oceans may have once flowed.
Recent NASA images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's (MRO) high-definition camera show layers of light- and dark-coloured rocks around fractures inside a canyon, signs that water may have seeped to the surface hundreds of millions of years ago or longer.
"On Earth, bleaching of rock surrounding a fracture is a clear indication of chemical interactions between fluids circulating within the fracture and the host rock," said University of Arizona astronomer and geologist Chris Okubo, co-author of the Science study.
In a press conference with other Mars specialists, Okubo said the phenomenon could also indicate cyclical deposits from rain, wind or volcanic activity.
The fractures between rocky layers themselves also provide good proof of underground water, which MRO and Europe's Mars Express radars should be able to detect, said Clifford.
Recent observations have already provided signs that water might be present in the Martian subsoil.
In December, the US Mars Global Surveyor beamed down photographs of two small gullies formed only a few years ago in a Martian crater that could point to water still percolating on the Martian surface.
The surface of Mars is too cold for liquid water to exist, but scientists believe underground water filtered to the surface carrying debris down slope long enough to form the gullies before it froze.
Since 2000, astronomers poring over Mars photographs have observed thousands of rivulets along crater walls that were possibly formed by either water or mud flows.
Another indication that life might lurk under the Martian surface is the recent discovery of atmospheric methane, a gas chiefly produced by bacteria.
Mars exploration strategy is currently focused on finding water or its tell-tale traces, but is should also look for the essential building blocks of life, said NASA Ames Research Center scientist Tori Hoeshsler.
"We have evidence on Earth now there are organisms supported by the interaction of water and rock... rocks releasing hydrogen, and understanding the interaction of water and rocks on Mars to provide energy is critical for search for life on Mars," he said.
Only a multi-disciplined approach to Mars exploration, said the scientists, can provide definite proof of life past or present on Mars, which US President George W. Bush has set as the post-Moon target for a manned space mission.
Article from CoolTech
AFP
Russia
planning new launch pad
Thu, 01 Mar 2007
Russia is planning to build a new space centre on its territory with a launch pad to send astronauts into space, media reported on Wednesday, quoting the head of the country's Roskosmos space agency.
"This will be a new field in Russia where manned missions can be launched from," Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov told the Ria Novosti news agency from French Guiana, where work on another new Russian launch pad began on Monday.
Ever since Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space in 1961, Russia has launched its manned space missions from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Built in the 1950s, Baikonur is today one of only three launch pads for manned missions worldwide, along with the Kennedy Space Centre in the US state of Florida and the Chinese Jiuquan base.
Russia agreed in 1994 to rent the Baikonur base from Kazakhstan, which became an independent state after the collapse of the Soviet Union, for an annual fee of $115-million.
According to the terms of an agreement signed three years ago, the lease of the base will not expire until 2050. Moscow has however repeatedly indicated that it wants to transfer a number of its launches, especially the military ones, to a space centre on Russian soil.
Russia already has a launch pad on its territory, at Plesetsk in the northeastern Arkhangelsk region, but it is only used for satelite launches.
Article from CoolTech
AFP