It's about time.

Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites make the big step first. I've talked about them before (search on "x-prize" - on the right), because their Space Ship One is typical Rutan: innovative, original and functional.

I expect there will be several more companies hitting this milestone this year.

Posted by: Ted at 10:16 PM | category: Space Program
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Entire article and pretty pictures here.

On January 5, 2003, Titan - Saturn's largest moon and the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere - crossed in front of the Crab Nebula, a bright, extended X-ray source. Titan's transit enabled Chandra to image the one-arcsecond-diameter X-ray shadow cast by the moon (inset). This tiny shadow corresponds to the size of a dime as viewed from about two and a half miles.

This may have been the first transit of the Crab Nebula by Titan since the nebula was formed by a supernova that was observed to occur in the year 1054. The next similar conjunction will take place in the year 2267, so this was truly a once in a millennium event.

Posted by: Ted at 07:13 AM | category: Space Program
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CNN has this nice article on the X-Prize.

When the competition was announced just eight years ago, many were skeptical that any privately financed team could meet the requirements to collect the prize: Build a spacecraft capable of taking three passengers 62.5 miles (101 kilometers) above the planet, then make a second successful suborbital trip within two weeks.

"It's going to happen in 2004. Someone will win it," said Gregg Maryniak, director of the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation, a group created to spark development of reusable spacecraft that can take average citizens into space.

Rocketman Blog has followed progress closely, and has conducted a series of fascinating interviews with X-prize candidates. In fact, he's gotten a job with one of the companies as a result of his blog!

So if you're interested in the commercialization of space (and you should be, it's the next boom to happen), then head on over to RocketmanBlog and read up on some of the pioneers taking those first baby-steps.

Posted by: Ted at 04:25 PM | category: Space Program
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When NASA's Spirit rover was crippled computer-wise in January, there were a lot of potential reasons for the problem. NASA has finally figured it out, and think they may have also discovered what befell the Beagle 2 probe too.

Posted by: Ted at 04:35 PM | category: Space Program
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Scientists have issued a weather forecast for the oily oceans of Titan, Saturn's major moon and a target for a space probe landing next year.

Read all about it here.

Here's a link for more on the Cassini mission and the Huygens probe.

Thanks to Across the Atlantic for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 10:54 AM | category: Space Program
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Not just good, it's excellent. Over at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. Blast off and go read.

Posted by: Ted at 01:15 PM | category: Space Program
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Once again, NASA presents a sweet way to teach a little science.

Drive one of the Mars Rovers.

Note that this isn't the same link I posted before (Maestro), this is all new coolness.

Posted by: Ted at 08:05 PM | category: Space Program
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Dr Pickering was a Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and an early pioneer with the US Space Program. He became known as "Mr JPL".

Silent Running has an excellent post about him, well worth the read.

Posted by: Ted at 12:00 PM | category: Space Program
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(press release - link no longer works)

Indian Space Research Organisation
Bangalore, India

February 23, 2004

Accident at Sriharikota

An accident occurred at the Solid Propellant Rocket Booster (SPROB) Plant in Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC-SHAR), Sriharikota, at about 1600 hours[1030 UTC] today. This happened while a test propellant segment was being prepared for transportation after curing. The propellant in the segment caught fire and caused severe damage to the building, in which the operations were going on.

Three persons have escaped from the building with burns and they have been admitted to the hospital in Chennai. Operations are on to rescue the others.

Emergency action have been put on to approach the building and clear the debris and reach the people inside. A high-level Committee has been constituted to look into the matter. Chairman, ISRO, Shri G. Madhavan Nair, has rushed to Sriharikota to personally supervise the operations.

The current spirit in India concerning their space program is reminiscent of the US in the 60's. Tragedies must be avoided, but risks will be taken and despite setbacks the program will move forward.

Infrastructure can be rebuilt. Let's hope that they've learned some lessons in safety from this, so that those lives lost aren't just wasted.

Personal note: Hey BATFE, notice that this rocket propellant caught fire and burned? According to you, there should have been a massive ka-boom. Don't you hate it when real-life physics doesn't conform to your fantasy universe? Idiots.

Posted by: Ted at 06:01 AM | category: Space Program
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An explosion and fire at the Solid Propellant Fuel Plant. Undetermined numbers of fatalities and injuries reported.

Posted by: Ted at 10:14 AM | category: Space Program
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Everyone is focused on Mars right now, but Fred at The Eternal Golden Braid points up some links about our other planetary neighbor - Venus. I highly recommend this interesting collection of images, exploration history and timelines.

Posted by: Ted at 08:51 AM | category: Space Program
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Nifty pictures, and not one joke about "Black Hole Rips Unlucky Star Apart". Too easy.

Posted by: Ted at 08:49 PM | category: Space Program
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This link thanks to Doug Pratt of Pratt Hobbies. If you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see a picture of a young Dr. Rice, preparing to launch a model rocket. The photo caption reads:

Jim Rice at age nine, launching his lifelong dream of a career in rocket science.

And that's why I help introduce kids to the hobby.

Posted by: Ted at 07:47 PM | category: Space Program
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Check out this article over at Rocket Man's blog. The guest poster, Kelly Starks, worked on several NASA projects and puts together a virtual orbital system that's inexpensive and uses off-the-shelf parts.

Posted by: Ted at 09:48 AM | category: Space Program
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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.

Posted by: Ted at 06:45 AM | category: Space Program
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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!!!

Posted by: Ted at 06:52 AM | category: Space Program
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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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