Spirit and Opportunity are on the surface and doing their thing. Despite some problems, the fact that we can successfully land and communicate with two robot vehicles on another planet over 40,000,000 miles away says a lot.

Knowing that more that a couple of rovers are in the works, I went digging over at Rocket Man's blog, looking for a certain something we'd talked about...

A couple of weeks ago, Ted from Rocket Jones also sent me an email about a Mars Airplane currently being developed under the Mars Scout Mission program –

Manassas, VA. Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. announced today an order from the NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., for a full-scale prototype of a proposed Mars airplane. The aircraft is being built as part of the Mars Scout Aerial Regional-Scale Environmental Survey (ARES) project of which Dr. Joel S. Levine is the Principal Investigator.

In 2002 Aurora and NASA Langley successfully demonstrated a half-scale version of the airplane in a series of low altitude and high altitude drop tests. The new airplane is to be a full-scale version, designed to demonstrate flight-weight components and actual aerodynamics. The prototype plane is scheduled to make its first flight later this year with a deployment test in the upper reaches of the EarthÂ’s atmosphere.

Ted was lucky enough to actually see some of the projects Aurora Flight Sciences Corp is working on as he told me in the email -

The reason I know about these people is that the owner of the company and his kids are in our rocket club. Good people, as they say. I've been in Aurora's building and all of the hardware and projects are probably like Disneyland to an engineer. To me, it was just cool.

That's right, they're well into developement of a semi-remote controlled robotic glider aircraft that will soar the skies of Mars, mapping and using radar to gather yet more data about the red planet.

There are some intriguing video clips of the testing at the Aurora site. One in particular clearly showed the tail surfaces unfolding after being released from the high altitude balloon which carried it aloft.

The reason for the extreme altitude testing is because the atmosphere of Mars is very thin compared to earth. The ARES glider will actually fly much closer to the surface once it deploys on Mars.

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Over at Jen's History and Stuff, Pete posted a nice review of US Mars exploration missions to date (he also included the UK's Beagle2).

As an addendum, here's a quick list of Soviet Mars missions.

October 1960: Two unnamed Soviet spacecraft achieve Earth orbit only, fail to fly past Mars.

October 1962: An unnamed Soviet spacecraft achieves Earth orbit only, fails to fly past Mars.

November 1962: Soviet Mars 1 spacecraft radio fails en route to flyby of Mars. A second, unnamed Soviet spacecraft achieves Earth orbit only, fails to fly past Mars.

November 1964: Soviet Zond 2 spacecraft flies past Mars, but radio fails and no data are returned.

May 1971: Soviet Kosmos 419 lander achieves Earth orbit only. The Soviet Mars 2 orbiter-lander arrive at Mars in November 1971; no useful data received after lander burns up. Soviet Mars 3 orbiter-lander arrives December 1971; lander operates on surface for 20 seconds before failing.

July 1973: Soviet Mars 4 spacecraft flies past Mars in February 1974, but fails to enter orbit. That same month, the Soviet Mars 5 spacecraft arrives in orbit, but operates for only a few days.

August 1973: Soviet Mars 6 and 7 combination flyby module-lander spacecraft arrive at Mars in March 1974. Mars 6 lander smashes into Mars; Mars 7 lander misses planet.

July 1988: Soviet Phobos 1 orbiter and lander fail one month after launch. Phobos 2, launched five days after Phobos 1, is lost March 1989 near the Mars moon for which it was named.

November 1996: Russian Mars 96 orbiter and landers fail on launch.

And in July, 1998, the Japanese took a shot at Mars with their Nozomi spacecraft. It failed to enter Mars orbit in December 2003.

Posted by: Ted at 06:17 AM | category: Space Program
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Opportunity has landed successfully and is sending back astounding pictures. That makes five scientific probes examining Mars right now. Spirit and Opportunity rovers on the surface, two more US satellites in orbit, and the European satellite.

In related news, the BBC has admitted that it was only joking when it claimed that evidence of an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator had been detected.

Oh drat.

Posted by: Ted at 09:13 AM | category: Space Program
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Buckethead has finished his five part series on going to space over at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. Great stuff. Bravo!!!

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Maestro Headquarters - where you can download the public version of the software that they're using to control the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on the Martian surface. Right now, the software contains the data used when scientists tested the rovers, but soon they'll be uploading the actual terrain data from Mars!

The site also has an online users manual, discussion forums, and online help.

Posted by: Ted at 07:14 AM | category: Space Program
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According to media sources, President Bush's vision for space hasn't fired the imagination of the people. I'm not so sure about that. Look around the blogosphere and you'll see plenty of mention about it, and everywhere you look in mainstream media there's a related story. I think for now it's a quiet buzz, as if people are toying with the idea in their mind, and discussing it around the water cooler.

Have you noticed how little we're hearing about how there are no real benefits to going? If NASA has done one thing right, it's been getting the word out (again, quietly but pervasively) that we've gotten a lot of everyday technology back from our space program. People today do realize that there is a return to the money spent on space, and I'm not talking just about Space Food Sticks.

Mala of Wrong Side of Happiness has an impressive list of them, plus this link to even more (.pdf document). A good point is made in her comments that being associated with the space program doesn't neccessarily mean that it was directly invented by or for. A lot of basic technology is discovered but has no immediate practical application, and the space program has excelled in taking these little bits of existing science and finding real-life uses for them, which then make their way into everyday life.

Major thanks to fellow Munuvian Victor for passing along the link to Mala's blog.

Over at The Ministry of Minor Perfidy, the inaptly named Buckethead is doing a great series of posts on space exploration. I particularly like this idea:

To prepare for the Mars mission, we should have some experience with long duration flights. We can do a dress rehearsal of the Mars mission by mounting an expedition to one of the Near Earth Asteroids. These asteroids are small bodies of rock or metal that have orbits that cross EarthÂ’s. Some of these asteroids are very close to Earth, at least in terms of how much fuel we need to burn to get to them. Rather than a three-year mission to Mars, we can plan a one-year mission to an asteroid.

And you can bet that someone will figure out a way to make a buck with said asteroid, which means someone with vision in private industry will want to go back. And that's how the process gets kick-started again, this time with less government.

Finally, Chirs Hall pointed out these two fine space related sites:

A space blog, The Eternal Golden Braid.

Also, Sylvia Engdahl's Space Subsite.

Many thanks Amigo!

Posted by: Ted at 09:19 AM | category: Space Program
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President Bush made a pretty speech the other day, long on rhetoric and short on details. For those disappointed - and I was one at first - remember that one constant throughout our national relationship with GW Bush is that people tend to badly underestimate him.

RocketForge has an interesting post with some budget projections that don't seem at all unreasonable. This, of course, assumes that you're already somewhat pro-space.

Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings posts some amusing email from a rabid anti-space citizen. The main thing I got out of the exchange (and comments) is that whatever side of the debate you're on, if your mind isn't open then you're an idiot and just wasting everybody's time. The link is to his main blog page, there's much worth looking at, so scroll down and enjoy.

Rocketman has a nice roundup of opinions and articles about the speech, and Laughing Wolf has an interesting take on what it says and what it doesn't say.

My attitude about space exploration is unchanged since before the speech. Like a little kid, "Aren't we there yet?"

Posted by: Ted at 09:32 AM | category: Space Program
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1 I agree - much like his dad, but with an even longer time frame. My eight month old son will be four years out of college before the earliest date we might be on Mars.

I'm posting a series on how I'd do a Mars mission over at Perfidy.org, if you're interested.

Posted by: buckethead at January 16, 2004 02:45 PM (ztNrs)

2 My take on it is that I would prefer Bush the politician to give broad direction and little specifics to the Rocket Scientists who think this shit up. I would not want to lock such a program into a politically determined technological direction. The best thing Bush could do is say " Here's a few billion dollars - take it and land a man on mars" then get the hell out of the way and let the people who know this stuff figure out how to do it.

Posted by: StMack at January 16, 2004 05:06 PM (CSxVi)

3 Buckethead, I've been reading it, good stuff so far. I'm sorry I forgot to link to it, but there's so much out there right now on the subject.

StMack, I'm hoping some of the x-prize guys become all kinds of successful. The government can do it's part, but private industry are going to be the real drivers from here on out. Gee, I sound like an American, don't I?

Posted by: Ted at January 16, 2004 09:20 PM (2sKfR)

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Robert Zubrin wrote an interesting book called The Case for Mars that talks about what it would take to get there and back. The Mars Direct Manned Mission Homepage has autographed copies available, plus lots of other information including downloadable versions of several papers written by Robert Zubrin.

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On the newsgroup Rec.Models.Rockets, A. Mericas said:

I think the space program should go the way of College Bowl games: corporate sponsorship. I can see it now: "The Nike Command Module has just separated from the Pepsi Lunar Module. In the next 15 minutes they will enter the Dodge Powered Decent phase. If all goes as planned, the OfficeMax landing will occur at 15:00 Hours, Miller Time, near the Sea of Tranquility, Ford Country."

Houston, we have a Microsoft Moment.

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Too cool.

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In December an Altas rocket was launched from the west coast (Vandenburg?) at 2am. This series of pictures were taken by D. Bishop from his home 100 miles away in the high California desert. He was kind enough to post them on the Rec.Models.Rockets binaries newsgroup.

The fuzzy sky that the rocket trail eventually disappears into is the light pollution of the Los Angeles light dome.

Details, in his words:

I was using my Topcon Super D 35mm SLR film camera on a tripod holding the shutter button down with it set on "B", I was only using asa 100 film, and that would not have captured enough to realy show. The whole flight, from first liftoff light to where it was getting lost in the L.A. light dome (I hate that) took up the first 8 mins (about) as it was heading southwest away from me towards orbit. By the time I got inside my trailer out of the cold, it was already over India.

For each shot I was doing a mental count releasing the button at or about the count of 20.

As usual, the pictures are in the extended entry. There are seven photos, but each is rather small, so this isn't a huge bandwidth killer. more...

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In the extended entry. more...

Posted by: Ted at 06:25 AM | category: Space Program
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(besides shooting morons into the sun)

Everybody's talking about the Moon and Mars and going there and what we should do there and why we should go and on and on and on and on.

I used to have a great link to a site that clearly set out what kind of benefits mankind has gained from the monies spent on space programs. Not just the intangibles ("we learned things"), but the solid using-it-now-on-Earth technologies as well. I lost that link somewhere along the line, and I want to point some friends to it. I've done some Googling, but the list is long and so far not what I'm looking for.

So I'm asking for help here. Do you know of a site that has that kind of information? A place where Joe Taxpayer can go and read and say "Gee, I didn't realize...".

Posted by: Ted at 10:02 AM | category: Space Program
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1 Ted,

Check out this Spinoffs site. Many links from there, but this graphic is pretty cool.

Chris

Posted by: chris hall at January 11, 2004 04:50 PM (zH1Gw)

2 There's more to it than Tang and Velcro?!?!

Posted by: nic at January 11, 2004 09:19 PM (16A49)

3 Hehe -- I was watching the news the other night when it was declared that Dubya wants to "permanently" put astronauts on the moon. Among the many comments that I made to my cats was that he can certainly feel free to go on to be their leader there.

Posted by: Dawn at January 11, 2004 09:53 PM (LD0tK)

4 www.ssi.org would be the most appropriate site to visit.

Posted by: kert at January 12, 2004 03:55 AM (qsT7j)

5 Nic, I don't think velcro was invented for the space program, just very useful and used a lot (it contributed to the Apollo 1 tragedy).

Wouldn't you say that by itself Tang is worth all that money spent?

Posted by: Ted at January 12, 2004 08:07 AM (blNMI)

6 I was kidding, but what is the velcro-Apollo 1 connection? That might be a future blog subject, when you get over the month of insane work!

Tang is absolutely worth it. When I was a kid I loved the grape, and I had a purple moon rover with a rubber-band engine that came it a specially-marked Tang package.

Posted by: Nic at January 12, 2004 08:16 PM (16A49)

7 When Apollo was being designed, the astronauts kept requesting extra velcro stuck all over the place. When the fire broke out inside the capsule during the test of Apollo 1, the velcro burned, releasing poisonous fumes into the air inside. The astronauts asphyxiated before they burned to death.

Posted by: Ted at January 12, 2004 08:43 PM (2sKfR)

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NASA's Stardust spacecraft is headed home after it's flyby mission to collect samples from a comet.

An estimated 10 million particles of dust traveling at six times the speed of a rifle bullet blasted the spacecraft as it flew past the comet Wild 2, members of the mission said. Stardust shot 72 black-and-white pictures of the dark nucleus of Wild 2 during Friday's swoop past the frozen ball of ice and rock.

To get its unprecedented close-ups, Stardust flew through the comet's coma, the fuzzy shroud of gas and dust that envelops it. The images show features on the comet's pocked surface as small as 66 feet across, seen from about 150 miles away, said Ray Newburn, a member of the Stardust imaging team.

The largest of the particles to strike Stardust's twin bulletproof bumpers was probably the size of a .22-caliber round, scientists said. The spacecraft fired its thrusters about 1,200 times to compensate for the battering it received during the flyby, said Benton Clark, of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, the probe's builder.

Stardust is expected back in 2006. There's lots of good information and more links about the mission and spacecraft at Chris Hall's blog.

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Everyone recognizes the countdown. Even if you don't speak the language being used, you know from the deliberate and measured cadence that something important is going to happen shortly. But did you know that the countdown wasn't invented by a rocketeer?

In the 1929 German movie Die Frau im Mond (The Woman in the Moon), film director Fritz Lang* needed a way to increase the drama of a scene leading up to the takeoff of the rocket ship. He came up with the idea of having one of the main characters counting down the last minute before the launch as the tension built.

It was prescient, as the countdown became a valuable tool when real rocketry became a complex and precisely timed exercise.

When asked in an interview if he got the idea from the rocket club VfR**, Lang answered that the they did nothing special when launching a rocket; someone walked up, lit the fuse and then ran like hell.

*Lang also directed the silent classic Metropolis in 1926.

** The VfR - Verein fur Raumschiffarhrt (Society for Space Travel) was a popular German rocketry club whose members included a young Wernher Von Braun, physicist Hermann Oberth, and science author Willy Ley. The group attracted the interest of the German military and with their support and encouragement developed much of the basic technology that eventually culminated in the V2.

Source: Spaceship Handbook, by Jack Hagerty.

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Mark Oakley, who writes the excellent Rocket Man blog, has updates on the so-far successful Spirit rover, which landed on Mars yesterday and is already sending back pictures. If you get the NASA channel on your TV (213 on the Dish satellite network), you can see them live. Too cool.

It's not all techno-speak at his place either, as he uses a little Heinlein to make fun of a few moonbats.

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(Source: Universe Today, 12/31/03)

Columbia Disaster
Space exploration is an extremely dangerous business. This lesson was hammered home in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia broke up above Texas as it was on approach to land in Florida. The lives of seven astronauts were lost in a few firey moments on February 1, 2003. Months of investigation revealed that a chunk of foam fell off the external fuel tank and smashed a hole in the shuttle's carbon-fibre wing panels. When Columbia was returning to Earth at the end of its mission, the open hole in the wing allowed hot gasses to penetrate the shuttle's heat protection. The Columbia Accident Investigation board placed the blame on the foam, but said that NASA's lack of safety allowed the accident to happen in the first place. While NASA is implementing the safety recommendations to get the shuttles flying again, the US administration is said to be planning a bold new program in space.

Chinese Space Launch
Previously unknown, astronaut Yang Liwei became an instant celebrity on October 15, when he became the first human the Chinese space program sent into space. Liwei was launched from the Jiuquan desert launch site and orbited the Earth only 14 times in 21 hours. Only the United States and Russia have ever been capable of sending humans into space before this year. Riding high on their accomplishments, the normally tight-lipped Chinese revealed more details of their space program this year: additional human launches, a space station, probes to the Moon, and eventually humans on the Moon. NASA was one of the first to congratulate the Chinese on their accomplishment, but some space industry experts believe that this will spur the agency on to a new spirit of competition.

SpaceShipOne Goes Supersonic
The space community was expecting US President George Bush to make some announcement about the future of US space exploration on December 17, the 100th anniversary of the first Wright Brothers flight. He didn't, but on that day Scaled Composites - an aircraft manufacturer in California - made news with the first rocket test flight of SpaceShipOne; their suborbital rocket plane. The unique-looking aircraft was carried to an altitude of 14,600 metres by the White Knight carrier plane and then released. It fired its hybrid rocket engine and blasted up to an altitude of 20,700 metres; breaking the sound barrier as it went. SpaceShipOne is considered the top contender to win the $10 million X-Prize which will be awarded to the first privately-built suborbital spacecraft which can fly to 100 km.

Disappearance of Beagle 2
In a perfect world, this would be a tribute to the successful landing of Beagle 2; Britain's $50 million, 70-kg Mars lander which traveled to the Red Planet on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. Unfortunately, it looks like Mars has swallowed yet another spacecraft, and at the time of this writing the lander has failed to communicate home; either through Mars Odyssey orbiting above, or Earth-based radio observatories.
Beagle 2 was supposed to land in the relatively safe Isidis Planitia region of Mars and then search for evidence of microbial life for 180-days with a suite of sensitive instruments. The best opportunity to communicate with Beagle 2 comes in 2004, though, when Mars Express reaches its final orbit and will attempt to make contact. Maybe the recovery of Beagle 2 will make one of the top stories in 2004.

Mars' Closest Approach to the Earth
Mars took centre stage this summer when it made its closest approach to the Earth in over 60,000 years. Because of their orbits, the Earth and Mars get close every two years, but on August 27 they were only 55,758,000 kilometres apart. The mainstream media picked up the story, and for a while it was Mars mania. Astronomy clubs and planetariums that held special Mars observing nights for the public were totally overwhelmed by the number of people who showed up to have a peek through a telescope. And they weren't disappointed. Even with a relatively small 6" telescope and good observing conditions, it was possible to see details on Mars like its polar caps, dust storms, and darker patches. If you missed it this year, don't worry, Mars will be even closer in 2287.

Biggest Solar Flare Ever Observed
Our Sun showed a nasty side this year, with a series of powerful flares and coronal mass ejections. On November 4, 2003, the Sun surprised even the most experienced solar astronomers with the most powerful flare anyone had ever seen. It was so powerful that it momentarily blinded cameras designed to measure flares, so it actually took a few days for astronomers to calculate just how bright it was. In the end, it was categorized as an X28 flare. But this was just one of a series of powerful flares, many of which were aimed directly at our Earth, sending wave after wave of material our direction.
Incredibly, there were very few problems on the Earth - contact was lost with a Japanese satellite, and some communications were disrupted - but we got through it largely unharmed. The auroras, however, were awesome.
SOHO website

Farewell Galileo
On September 20, 2003, NASA's Galileo spacecraft finally ended its 14-year journey to the Jovian system with its triumphant crash into the giant gas planet. Galileo was plagued with problems right from the start, including a series of launch delays, and a failure of its main antenna. But NASA engineers were able to overcome these obstacles, and use the spacecraft to make some incredible discoveries about the Jupiter and its moons. Photos taken by the Galileo gave scientists proof that three of the moons might have liquid water under their icy surfaces. Passing through Jupiter's massive radiation took its toll on the spacecraft, and various instruments started to fail, including its main camera, which went offline in 2002. With the spacecraft failing, controllers decided it would be best to crash Galileo into Jupiter, to protect potential life on the Jovian moons from contamination.

Age of the Universe
This is the year we learned how old we are - well... how old the Universe is. Thanks to a comprehensive survey of the sky performed by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), astronomers were able to calculate that the Universe is 13.7 billion
years old, give or take 200 million years. WMAP, launched in June 2001, measured the sky's cosmic background radiation, which was unleashed 380,000 years after the Big Bang - when the expanding Universe had cooled down enough for the first atoms to form. This wasn't the first survey of the cosmic background radiation, but the WMAP is so sensitive, it was able to detect extremely slight temperature changes in the radiation.

Spitzer Space Telescope
The last of great observatories, the Spitzer Space Telescope (previously named SIRTF) was finally launched into space on August 25, 2003. Almost every object in the Universe radiates heat in the infrared spectrum, which Spitzer is designed to detect. So objects which might be hidden to visible light telescopes, like Hubble, can be seen in tremendous detail with Spitzer. The observatory completed its 60-day on-orbit checkout period and calibration, and just before the end of the year the operators released four incredible photographs that demonstrated the potential of this instrument. Spitzer will help astronomers look at the dusty hearts of galaxies, young planetary discs, and cool objects like comets, and brown dwarfs. Spitzer may even help astronomers understand the nature of dark matter.

Mars Express Arrives
The search for the missing Beagle 2 lander overshadowed the success of the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, which went into a perfect orbit on December 25, and then performed additional maneuvers flawlessly. This is the Europe's first mission to the Red Planet, and it's got an important job to do. In addition to helping out the search for Beagle 2, Mars Express will begin mapping the surface of Mars with a powerful radar system which should reveal underground deposits of water and ice.

(end Universe Today article)

I would also add the tragic accident that cost the lives of many Brazilian technicians and scientists when their rocket blew up on the pad in August. I wrote about it here and here.

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