Scaled Composites has released the telemetry data from the historic first flight into space by SpaceShipOne, and despite the success of the flight, it wasnÂ’t flawless. At one point near the end of the 76 second burn of the composite rocket motor, the automated pitch control quit functioning, forcing the pilot to switch over to the backup system. The slight loss of control cost SpaceShipOne some 6 miles from the expected altitude and caused the craft to reenter the atmosphere farther south than anticipated.

The data also shows that pilot Mike Melvill experienced weightlessness for over three minutes, and experienced 5gÂ’s during portions of the reentry.

This flight alone was not enough to win the X-Prize. The goal is to make two flights into space with the same manned craft (capable of carrying three people) within a two-week period. At a recent press conference, Burt Rutan would not rule out additional test flights before going for the prize.

Posted by: Ted at 09:42 AM | category: Space Program
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That's a quote from the director of Space Science for the European Space Agency, regarding the successful arrival of the Cassini mission to Saturn.

Cassini is a group effort of 17 nations, funded by the Italian Space Agency, the ESA and NASA, and continues the string of successes NASA has enjoyed this year - two Mars rovers, the "comet catcher" that's returning to Earth, and now Cassini.

The pictures are already spectacular. More please.

Posted by: Ted at 12:20 PM | category: Space Program
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Our relative insignificance commonly escapes us. If we reduce the universe to a scale on which we can conceive it, that on which the Earth should be represented by a good-sized pea, with a grain of mustard seed, the Moon, circling about it at a distance of seven inches, the Sun would be a globe two feet in diameter, two hundred and fifteen feet away. Mars, a much smaller pea, would circle around the two-foot globe three hundred and fifty feet from its surface; Jupiter, an orange, at a distance of a quarter of a mile; Saturn, a small orange, at two fifths of a mile; and Uranus and Neptune, good-sized plums, three quarters of a mile and a mile and a quarter away, respectively. The nearest star would lie two hundred and thirty thousand miles off, or at about the actual distance of our own Moon, and the other stars at corresponding distances beyond that; that is, on a scale upon which the Moon should be but seven inches off, the nearest star would still be as far from us as the Moon is now.

Percival Lowell - Mars (1895)

Update: I'd forgotten that that on the mall in Washington DC, the Smithsonian has a physical display of this very thing. The scale is smaller:

Picture the sun as the size of a grapefruit. That would make tiny Pluto smaller than a poppy seed in the Smithsonian Institution's new scale model of the solar system.

By the same scale, the nearest star would be the size of a cherry - located across the country in California.

Stretching more than six football fields across, the Smithsonian's new model doesn't fit in any museum. So, "Voyage: A Journey Through the Solar System," will be displayed outdoors, stretching 650 yards along the museums lining the National Mall.

The exhibit - built at one ten-billionth of the solar system's full size - takes the learning experience beyond the walls of the museum, said Carolynne Harris Knox, the Smithsonian's coordinator for the project.

The sun is located beyond the east end of the National Air and Space Museum. Earth will be affixed nearby, just off the building's east corner, but starting from the castle and walking down the mall towards the Air & Space Museum, you can get a physical idea of the incredible distances involved.

Past the full length of that massive museum, past the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, past the Arts and Industries building, near the corner of the Smithsonian Castle, is Pluto.

Posted by: Ted at 02:07 PM | category: Space Program
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We come together today to mourn the loss of seven brave Americans, to share the grief we all feel and, perhaps in that sharing, to find the strength to bear our sorrow and the courage to look for the seeds of hope.

Our nation's loss is first a profound personal loss to the family and the friends and loved ones of our shuttle astronauts. To those they have left behind - the mothers, the fathers, the husbands and wives, brothers, sisters, and yes, especially the children - all of America stands beside you in your time of sorrow.

What we say today is only an inadequate expression of what we carry in our hearts. Words pale in the shadow of grief; they seem insufficient even to measure the brave sacrifice of those you loved and we so admired. Their truest testimony will not be in the words we speak, but in the way they led their lives and in the way they lost those lives - with dedication, honor and an unquenchable desire to explore this mysterious and beautiful universe.

The best we can do is remember our seven astronauts - our Challenger Seven - remember them as they lived, bringing life and love and joy to those who knew them and pride to a nation.

They came from all parts of this great country - from South Carolina to Washington State; Ohio to Mohawk, New York; Hawaii to North Carolina to Concord, New Hampshire. They were so different, yet in their mission, their quest, they held so much in common.

We remember Dick Scobee, the commander who spoke the last words we heard from the space shuttle Challenger. He served as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, earning many medals for bravery, and later as a test pilot of advanced aircraft before joining the space program. Danger was a familiar companion to Commander Scobee.

We remember Michael Smith, who earned enough medals as a combat pilot to cover his chest, including the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross, three Air Medals - and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star, in gratitude from a nation that he fought to keep free.

We remember Judith Resnik, known as J.R. to her friends, always smiling, always eager to make a contribution, finding beauty in the music she played on her piano in her off-hours.

We remember Ellison Onizuka, who, as a child running barefoot through the coffee fields and macadamia groves of Hawaii, dreamed of someday traveling to the Moon. Being an Eagle Scout, he said, had helped him soar to the impressive achievement of his career.

We remember Ronald McNair, who said that he learned perseverance in the cotton fields of South Carolina. His dream was to live aboard the space station, performing experiments and playing his saxophone in the weightlessness of space; Ron, we will miss your saxophone and we will build your space station.

We remember Gregory Jarvis. On that ill-fated flight he was carrying with him a flag of his university in Buffalo, New York - a small token he said, to the people who unlocked his future.

We remember Christa McAuliffe, who captured the imagination of the entire nation, inspiring us with her pluck, her restless spirit of discovery; a teacher, not just to her students, but to an entire people, instilling us all with the excitement of this journey we ride into the future.

We will always remember them, these skilled professionals, scientists and adventurers, these artists and teachers and family men and women, and we will cherish each of their stories - stories of triumph and bravery, stories of true American heroes.

On the day of the disaster, our nation held a vigil by our television sets. In one cruel moment, our exhilaration turned to horror; we waited and watched and tried to make sense of what we had seen. That night, I listened to a call-in program on the radio: people of every age spoke of their sadness and the pride they felt in `our astronauts.' Across America, we are reaching out, holding hands, finding comfort in one another.

The sacrifice of your loved ones has stirred the soul of our nation and, through the pain, our hearts have been opened to a profound truth - the future is not free, the story of all human progress is one of a struggle against all odds. We learned again that this America, which Abraham Lincoln called the last best hope of man on Earth, was built on heroism and noble sacrifice. It was built by men and women like our seven star voyagers, who answered a call beyond duty, who gave more than was expected or required, and who gave it with little thought to worldly reward.

We think back to the pioneers of an earlier century, and the sturdy souls who took their families and the belongings and set out into the frontier of the American West. Often, they met with terrible hardship. Along the Oregon Trail you can still see the grave markers of those who fell on the way. But grief only steeled them to the journey ahead.

Today, the frontier is space and the boundaries of human knowledge. Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain. Our nation is indeed fortunate that we can still draw on immense reservoirs of courage, character and fortitude - that we are still blessed with heroes like those of the space shuttle Challenger.

Dick Scobee knew that every launching of a space shuttle is a technological miracle. And he said, if something ever does go wrong, I hope that doesn't mean the end to the space shuttle program. Every family member I talked to asked specifically that we continue the program, that that is what their departed loved one would want above all else. We will not disappoint them.

Today, we promise Dick Scobee and his crew that their dream lives on; that the future they worked so hard to build will become reality. The dedicated men and women of NASA have lost seven members of their family. Still, they too, must forge ahead, with a space program that is effective, safe and efficient, but bold and committed.

Man will continue his conquest of space. To reach out for new goals and ever greater achievements - that is the way we shall commemorate our seven Challenger heroes.

Dick, Mike, Judy, El, Ron, Greg and Christa - your families and your country mourn your passing. We bid you goodbye. We will never forget you. For those who knew you well and loved you, the pain will be deep and enduring. A nation, too, will long feel the loss of her seven sons and daughters, her seven good friends. We can find consolation only in faith, for we know in our hearts that you who flew so high and so proud now make your home beyond the stars, safe in God's promise of eternal life.

May God bless you all and give you comfort in this difficult time.

Further links and information can be found here.

Posted by: Ted at 06:57 AM | category: Space Program
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Because this is Rocket Jones after all (in the extended entry).
more...

Posted by: Ted at 05:44 AM | category: Space Program
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Sometime between now and July 3rd, NASA's newest Earth Orbiting Satellite (EOS), AURA, will be placed into orbit.

The Aura spacecraft won't be alone in space during its planned six-year mission.

Once aloft, Aura will trail the Aqua spacecraft in a formation flight pattern to make comprehensive climate observations of the Earth. In 2005, the cloud-watching satellites - CloudSat and the CALYSPO - are expected to fill in the gap between the two EOS spacecraft, with the French-developed PARASOL satellite to join them in 2006.

Mission scientists have dubbed the five-spacecraft formation the "A-train," in which each spacecraft passes over a region 15 minutes after its predecessor and takes data that can ultimately be combined into a complete climate picture.

Posted by: Ted at 01:59 PM | category: Space Program
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Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes...and all of this...all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars. -- Commander Sinclair, Babylon 5

Posted by: Ted at 08:21 AM | category: Space Program
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Because even though it's the science that ultimately matters, you still have to sell the dream. Check out NASA's new Office of Exploration Systems.

Thanks to Transterrestrial Musings for the pointer.

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Posted by: Ted at 08:48 AM | category: Space Program
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Moon, no. Space station, yes.

Thanks to Buckethead over at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 04:44 AM | category: Space Program
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On Wednesday, Col. Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut is expected to arrive in New York to begin a multi-day tour of the United States that will bring him to the United Nations and to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, among other locations.

Posted by: Ted at 06:24 AM | category: Space Program
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In 1997, NASA was sued by three Yemeni men who claimed that they owned the planet Mars, and had the documents to prove it.

"We inherited the planet from our ancestors 3,000 years ago," they told the weekly Arabic-language newspaper Al-Thawri, which published the report Thursday.

Posted by: Ted at 05:35 AM | category: Space Program
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NASA History Series Publications On-Line. A whole heap o' historical documents available, including some very interesting online books about various NASA facilities (Ames, Marshall and Johnson research centers), projects (Skylab, Mariner, etc) and other aspects such as space medicine and planetary research. This is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in space and the space program.

Be sure to check out A Meeting With The Universe: Science Discoveries from the Space Program. This book has beautiful illustrations and photographs and is designed for the non-technical reader.

Also, there's an amazing history of America's "moon" rocket - the Saturn booster, which includes not just what actually came to be, but also the earliest concepts and plans as well as what might have been had we continued development of that family of rockets.

Of course there are little gems for rocket nuts like yours truly too, like this publication entitled: NASA SOUNDING ROCKETS, 1958-1968 - A Historical Summary. Bliss!

Posted by: Ted at 08:05 AM | category: Space Program
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Burt Rutan and his team are right on the edge of claiming the X-Prize. Read about their latest successful test flight.

Posted by: Ted at 02:04 PM | category: Space Program
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Not quite yet it seems.

Posted by: Ted at 11:36 AM | category: Space Program
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Michael Mealing of RocketForge blogged from the Space Access '04 conference, held in Phoenix, Arizona (Helen, tell 'em I said to remove their head comma ass). Among the many interesting things announced - like a second commercial launch license granted to a private company - was this little bit that really caught my imagination.

John Powell of JP Aerospace is giving an update on what JP Aerospace has been up to and is finally talking about their total vision for balloon based aerospace. It's basically three 'vehicles'. A 'launcher' that gets you to 100K feet, a 'station' that is huge that permanently sits at 100K feet, and an orbital (yes, orbital!) balloon that is almost 6000 feet long and can attain orbit using lift from the upper atmosphere. Its an amazing amount of work that is generating short term ROI now.

He's also got pictures from the JP Aerospace handout to see just what these guys are doing. The link leads to a page of photos from the conference, scroll down about halfway to see them (look for the blue book with "ATO - Airship to Orbit" on the cover).

I assume the return on investment (ROI) is the licensing fees for some cutting-edge balloon technology they've developed. This is so cool! Balloons to orbit!!!

Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites aren't the only ones getting close to making space a commercially viable business, they're just the best known to the average person.

Posted by: Ted at 06:35 AM | category: Space Program
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1 Wow, that rocks!

Posted by: Spacemonkey at April 26, 2004 12:34 PM (DN55C)

2 Thanks, Ted. I'll tell them a man with a rocket has my back

Posted by: Helen at April 26, 2004 05:04 PM (EoCN5)

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Geekdom lately has been filled with news of Burt Rutan and others chasing the X-Prize. Sending people into space is well and good, but in the same way that like U-Haul rents big trucks and little trucks, access to space will require various payload capabilities, many of them unmanned.

The Middlesex Advanced Rocketry Society has been working for over five years to create a commercially viable rocket that can lift smaller payloads into orbit. I've followed their progress for much of that time and their work continues to impress.

Regarding their most recent successful test flight:

It is believed that the 25,400ft altitude achieved by Deimos Odyssey now stands as the highest altitude achieved by any rocket powered by a British developed amateur rocket motor and may be the highest altitude ever achieved by any European built hybrid rocket.

Posted by: Ted at 05:47 AM | category: Space Program
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It's been rather eventful lately if you've an eye towards the heavens.

Using a technique predicted by Albert Einstein, astronomers have detected a planet orbiting a star 17,000 light years away. Think about that for a moment. Now I'm sure some Trekkie will stomp me like a Tribble onstage at Riverdance correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember rightly, in the Star Trek universe Warp 1 was the speed of light, Warp 2 was twice that, Warp 3 four times light speed and Warp 4 was eight times faster than light.

I also recall that early Federation starships were pretty much maxed out at Warp 4, and I think the Enterprise cruised right around Warp 4 too. Which means that I should never ever be allowed to do math in public when the Enterprise was brand spanking new, it's contemporaries would need 2,125 years to reach that planet at max speed.

Talk about perspective, eh?

Back to the real science:

The discovery marks the first time that the technique, known as gravitational microlensing, has been used to identify a planet moving around a star beyond Earth's solar system.

The technique takes advantage of a phenomenon that Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of relativity and confirmed using the Sun. The gravity of stars or planets can focus light, brightening stars or planets that lie farther away.

Einstein has been front page lately, at least in the Science & Technology section of the paper. Professor Hall presents a nice set of links to information about the Gravity Probe B. This project has been in the works since the 60's, and you'd think that after all that time, someone would've come up with a catchy name. Nothing boring about the mission though, this is cutting-edge cool science.

Gravity Probe B is the relativity gyroscope experiment being developed by NASA and Stanford University to test two extraordinary, unverified predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

The experiment will check, very precisely, tiny changes in the direction of spin of four gyroscopes contained in an Earth satellite orbiting at 400-mile altitude directly over the poles. So free are the gyroscopes from disturbance that they will provide an almost perfect space-time reference system. They will measure how space and time are warped by the presence of the Earth, and, more profoundly, how the Earth's rotation drags space-time around with it. These effects, though small for the Earth, have far-reaching implications for the nature of matter and the structure of the Universe.

Meanwhile, closer to home:

An Atlas 2 rocket carrying a Japanese communications satellite made a picture-perfect nighttime launch from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, lighting the Atlantic seaboard in central Florida like a shimmering torch.

Pure poetry.

The 8:45 p.m. EDT liftoff followed a perfect countdown and extended the string of successful launches by Lockheed Martin's Atlas to 71, dating back to 1993.

Which is all the more impressive when you recall the rocket accidents and failures suffered in the last few years by China, Japan, Russia, Brazil and the US.

And just 'cause 'tis the season, over at Rocketforge they report on the latest Aldridge Commision Meeting. Here's an interesting little snippet:

The highlight of today's meeting was one of the UAW guys saying that one of the requirements is that sustainability needs bi-partisan support. In the Q&A Bob Walker turns that around and asks the UAW guy if that means that since the UAW has endorsed Kerry, that the UAW will use that clout to get Kerry to stop dissing Bush's space plan? His answer: if he wants our votes he will.

I had a whole lot to say about this, but it's friday, it's beautiful outside and I'm stuck here at work, so the heck with it. Summed up: I don't buy it. Space is just another political chip to both candidates and the players on either side. For the forseeable future, progress in space will be made in spite of, not because of an American President.

There's a nifty new quote over on the right column too. Look for the Tagline label.

Update: Changed the original tribble joke to something I think is funnier.

Posted by: Ted at 06:29 AM | category: Space Program
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1 It's tribble-stompin' time!

Warp factor was a cube of the speed of light: WF1=C, WF2=8C, WF3=27C, WF4=6C, and so on.

Live long and prosper.

Posted by: Victor at April 16, 2004 06:35 PM (16A49)

2 Thanks Victor.

Posted by: Ted at April 16, 2004 08:21 PM (ZjSa7)

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At some point in time Earth will get smacked again by a chunk of rock wandering through the solar system. That's a given, and it actually happens several times a year. But probability says with near-certainty that a big'un will intersect with Mother Earth. There are some projects gearing up to look out there, but as early warning systems they are far from comprehensive.

And what if we actually do see something ahead of time? Just what would we do? Face it, Bruce Willis isn't getting any younger.

Fortunately, we've got some very intelligent people thinking ahead and more importantly, doing something about it.

Posted by: Ted at 09:39 AM | category: Space Program
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Beautiful pictures of yesterday's test of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. Thanks to RocketForge for the pointer.

Update: Transterrestrial Musings has more on the story too, with links.

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