NASA Space Launch System Core Stage Moves From Concept to Design

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June 23, 2012

The nation's space exploration program is taking a critical step forward with a successful major technical review of the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that will take astronauts farther into space than ever before.

The core stage is the heart of the heavy-lift launch vehicle. It will stand more than 200 feet (61 meters) tall with a diameter of 27.5 feet (8.4 meters).

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., hosted a comprehensive review. Engineers from NASA and The Boeing Co. of Huntsville presented a full set of system requirements, design concepts and production approaches to technical reviewers and the independent review board.

"This meeting validates our design requirements for the core stage of the nation's heavy-lift rocket and is the first major checkpoint for our team," said Tony Lavoie, manager of the SLS Stages Element at Marshall. "Getting to this point took a lot of hard work, and I'm proud of the collaboration between NASA and our partners at Boeing. Now that we have completed this review, we go from requirements to real blueprints. We are right on track to deliver the core stage for the SLS program."

Image above: An expanded view of an artist rendering of the 70 metric ton configuration of NASA's Space Launch System. (NASA).

The core stage will store liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to feed the rocket's four RS-25 engines, all of which will be former space shuttle main engines for the first few flights. The SLS Program has an inventory of 16 RS-25 flight engines that successfully operated for the life of the Space Shuttle Program. Like the space shuttle, SLS also will be powered initially by two solid rocket boosters on the sides of the launch vehicle.

The SLS will launch NASA's Orion spacecraft and other payloads, and provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Designed to be safe, affordable and flexible for crew and cargo missions, the SLS will continue America's journey of discovery and exploration to destinations including nearby asteroids, Lagrange points, the moon and ultimately, Mars.

"This is a very exciting time for the country and NASA as important achievements are made on the most advanced hardware ever designed for human space flight," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The SLS will power a new generation of exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit and the moon, pushing the frontiers of discovery forward. The innovations being made now, and the hardware being delivered and tested, are all testaments to the ability of the U.S. aerospace workforce to make the dream of deeper solar system exploration by humans a reality in our lifetimes."

The first test flight of NASA's Space Launch System, which will feature a configuration for a 77-ton (70-metric-ton) lift capacity, is scheduled for 2017. As SLS evolves, a two-stage launch vehicle configuration will provide a lift capability of 143 tons (130 metric tons) to enable missions beyond low Earth orbit and support deep space exploration.

Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS core stage, including its avionics. The core stage will be built at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans using state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment. Marshall manages the SLS Program for the agency.

Across the SLS Program, swift progress is being made on several elements. The J-2X upper-stage rocket engine, developed by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne for the future two-stage SLS, is being tested at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The prime contractor for the five-segment solid rocket boosters, ATK of Brigham City, Utah, has begun processing its first SLS hardware components in preparation for an initial qualification test in 2013.

For more information about the Space Launch System, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/sls

Image, Text, Credit: NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Solar Impulse landed safely in Ouarzazate

SolarImpulse Destination Morocco patch.

June 22. 2012

Solar Impulse landed smoothly Friday at 1:25 (Swiss time) in Ouarzazate, a city in southern Morocco, after traveling 683 km.

Landing in Ouarzazate, the aircraft was piloted by André Borschberg

The solar unit has traveled 683 kilometers after leaving Rabat at 8:05. He had to turn around a week ago due to high winds.

The plane was piloted by Andre Borschberg who suffered the first hot then cold during this flight. For this second test, the aircraft followed a slightly different route, flying over the coast at low altitude - 600 meters - from 10:00 to off Casablanca.

SolarImpulse landing in Ouarzazate

The aircraft climbed to 9000 meters to cross the Atlas. His average speed was 64.8 km / h. The pilot, who has extracted 30 minutes later the cabin, was enthusiastically welcomed by the entire team of Solar Impulse, a Moroccan official delegation and folk groups.

Symbolic

"This is a fantastic event to be here in Ouarzazate, the result of many months of preparation," said Andre Borschberg on arrival. This flight lasting over 17 hours is symbolic in more ways than one, since it happened the first day of summer, coinciding with the Rio conference on sustainable development, he said.

"Unfortunately, the fact that many heads of state are not gone there shows that the environmental issue is still not taken seriously," he noted. Bertrand Piccard has meanwhile welcomed the implementation of technical concerns until now leave room for "the human adventure."

André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard enthusiastically welcomed by the entire team of SolarImpulse

Last Wednesday, the prototype had to turn around mid-afternoon due to strong winds at high altitudes which were treading water. Solar Impulse is left at the end of May in Payerne (Switzerland) for its first intercontinental flight, before a world tour planned for 2014. The aircraft designed to fly day and night without fuel or polluting emissions stopped in Madrid, then won Rabat on June 6

Back in stages

Return to Switzerland will also be staged in Rabat and Madrid, as in the first leg. Bertrand Piccard, who was flying the route Madrid-Rabat, should again fly the aircraft for flight-Ouarzazate Rabat Rabat or step-Madrid.

The carbon fiber aircraft is powered by four electric motors, a power of ten horsepower each, powered by 12,000 photocells covering its huge wing. Energy is stored during the day in batteries, allowing the aircraft to fly at night. The wingspan of an Airbus A340, it weighs only 1.6 tons, or the weight of an average car.

Seven years of work were needed to build the device. The project was launched in 2003.

For more information on SolarImpulse: http://solarimpulse.com/en/home/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: SolarImpulse / AFP / ATS /  Newsnet.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Mars Rocks

NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) patch.

June 22, 2012

This enhanced-color image from March 2012 of a region of Mars near Nili Fossae shows part of the ejecta from an impact crater and contains some of the best exposures of ancient bedrock on Mars.

The impact broke up already diverse rocks types and mixed them together to create this wild jumble of colors, each representing a different type of rock.

This image was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

For more information about Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/

Images, Text, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.

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NuSTAR Observatory Unfurls its Unique Mast

NASA - NuSTAR Mission patch.

June 21, 2012

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has successfully deployed its lengthy mast, giving it the ability to see the highest energy X-rays in our universe. The mission is one step closer to beginning its hunt for black holes hiding in our Milky Way and other galaxies.

"It's a real pleasure to know that the mast, an accomplished feat of engineering, is now in its final position," said Yunjin Kim, the NuSTAR project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Kim was also the project manager for the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which flew a similar mast on the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 2000 and made topographic maps of Earth.

NuSTAR's mast is one of several innovations allowing the telescope to take crisp images of high-energy X-rays for the first time. It separates the telescope mirrors from the detectors, providing the distance needed to focus the X-rays. Built by ATK Aerospace Systems in Goleta, Calif., this is the first deployable mast ever used on a space telescope.

On June 21 at 10:43 a.m. PDT (1:43 p.m. EDT), nine days after launch, engineers at NuSTAR's mission control at UC Berkeley in California sent a signal to the spacecraft to start extending the 33-foot (10-meter) mast, a stable, rigid structure consisting of 56 cube-shaped units. Driven by a motor, the mast steadily inched out of a canister as each cube was assembled one by one. The process took about 26 minutes. Engineers and astronomers cheered seconds after they received word from the spacecraft that the mast was fully deployed and secure.

Image above: Artist's concept of NuSTAR on orbit. NuSTAR has a 10-m (30') mast that deploys after launch to separate the optics modules (right) from the detectors in the focal plane (left). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The NuSTAR team will now begin to verify the pointing and motion capabilities of the satellite, and fine-tune the alignment of the mast. In about five days, the team will instruct NuSTAR to take its "first light" pictures, which are used to calibrate the telescope.

Why did NuSTAR need such a long, arm-like structure? The answer has to do with the fact that X-rays behave differently than the visible light we see with our eyes. Sunlight easily reflects off surfaces, giving us the ability to see the world around us in color. X-rays, on the other hand, are not readily reflected: they either travel right through surfaces, as is the case with skin during medical X-rays, or they tend to be absorbed, by substances like your bone, for example. To focus X-rays onto the detectors at the back of a telescope, the light must hit mirrors at nearly parallel angles; if they were to hit head-on, they would be absorbed instead of reflected.

On NuSTAR, this is accomplished with two barrels of nested mirrors, each containing 133 shells, which reflect the X-rays to the back of the telescope. Because the reflecting angle is so shallow, the distance between the mirrors and the detectors is long. This is called the focal length, and it is maintained by NuSTAR's mast.

The fully extended mast is too large to launch in the lower-cost rockets required for relatively inexpensive Small Explorer class missions like NuSTAR. Instead NuSTAR launched on its Orbital Science Corporation's Pegasus rocket tucked inside a small canister. This rocket isn't as expensive as its bigger cousins because it launches from the air, with the help of a carrier plane, the L-1011 "Stargazer," also from Orbital.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/

Image, Text, Credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Whitney Clavin.

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Researchers Estimate Ice Content of Crater at Moon's South Pole

NASA - Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) patch.

June 20, 2012

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole.

The team of NASA and university scientists using laser light from LRO's laser altimeter examined the floor of Shackleton crater. They found the crater's floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice. This information will help researchers understand crater formation and study other uncharted areas of the moon. The findings are published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

Image above: Elevation (left) and shaded relief (right) image of Shackleton, a 21-km-diameter (12.5-mile-diameter) permanently shadowed crater adjacent to the lunar south pole. The structure of the crater's interior was revealed by a digital elevation model constructed from over 5 million elevation measurements from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. Credit: NASA/Zuber, M.T. et al., Nature, 2012.

"The brightness measurements have been puzzling us since two summers ago," said Gregory Neumann of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a co-author on the paper. "While the distribution of brightness was not exactly what we had expected, practically every measurement related to ice and other volatile compounds on the moon is surprising, given the cosmically cold temperatures inside its polar craters."

The spacecraft mapped Shackleton crater with unprecedented detail, using a laser to illuminate the crater's interior and measure its albedo or natural reflectance. The laser light measures to a depth comparable to its wavelength, or about a micron. That represents a millionth of a meter, or less than one ten-thousandth of an inch. The team also used the instrument to map the relief of the crater's terrain based on the time it took for laser light to bounce back from the moon's surface. The longer it took, the lower the terrain's elevation.

This visualization, created using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter laser altimeter data, offers a view of Shackleton Crater located in the south pole of the moon. Thanks to these measurements, we now have our best-yet maps of the crater's permanently-shadowed interior! Note: This video contains no audio. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Ernie Wright.

In addition to the possible evidence of ice, the group's map of Shackleton revealed a remarkably preserved crater that has remained relatively unscathed since its formation more than three billion years ago. The crater's floor is itself pocked with several small craters, which may have formed as part of the collision that created Shackleton.

The crater, named after the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, is two miles deep and more than 12 miles wide. Like several craters at the moon's south pole, the small tilt of the lunar spin axis means Shackleton crater's interior is permanently dark and therefore extremely cold.

"The crater's interior is extremely rugged," said Maria Zuber, the team's lead investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge in Mass. "It would not be easy to crawl around in there."

Image above: This is an elevation map of Shackleton crater made using LRO Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter data. The false colors indicate height, with blue lowest and red/white highest. Credit: NASA/Zuber, M.T. et al., Nature, 2012.

While the crater's floor was relatively bright, Zuber and her colleagues observed that its walls were even brighter. The finding was at first puzzling. Scientists had thought that if ice were anywhere in a crater, it would be on the floor, where no direct sunlight penetrates. The upper walls of Shackleton crater are occasionally illuminated, which could evaporate any ice that accumulates. A theory offered by the team to explain the puzzle is that "moonquakes"-- seismic shaking brought on by meteorite impacts or gravitational tides from Earth -- may have caused Shackleton's walls to slough off older, darker soil, revealing newer, brighter soil underneath. Zuber's team's ultra-high-resolution map provides strong evidence for ice on both the crater's floor and walls.

"There may be multiple explanations for the observed brightness throughout the crater," said Zuber. "For example, newer material may be exposed along its walls, while ice may be mixed in with its floor."

The initial primary objective of LRO was to conduct investigations that prepare for future lunar exploration. Launched in June 2009, LRO completed its primary exploration mission and is now in its primary science mission. LRO was built and is managed by Goddard. This research was supported by NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate and Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

Video made using LRO data showing the illumination of Shackleton crater, a 21-km-diameter (12.5 mile-diameter) structure situated adjacent to the Moon's south pole. The resolution is 30 meters (approximately 100 feet) per pixel. Frames are every hour from 01-Jun-2012 to 30-Jun-2012. Note: this video contains no audio. Credit: NASA/Zuber, M.T. et al., Nature, 2012.

For more information on LRO and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, visit:
http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov

Images (mentioned), Videos (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Bill Steigerwald.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

'Like Salt Sprinkled on Black Velvet'

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

June 20, 2012

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this view of the dwarf galaxy UGC 5497, which looks a bit like salt sprinkled on black velvet in this image.

The object is a compact blue dwarf galaxy that is infused with newly formed clusters of stars. The bright, blue stars that arise in these clusters help to give the galaxy an overall bluish appearance that lasts for several million years until these fast-burning stars explode as supernovae.

UGC 5497 is considered part of the M 81 group of galaxies, which is located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (The Great Bear). UGC 5497 turned up in a ground-based telescope survey back in 2008 looking for new dwarf galaxy candidates associated with Messier 81.

For images and more information about Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://hubblesite.org/ and  http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Image, Text, Credits:  Credit: ESA / NASA.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

LHC delivers more collisions than in the whole of 2011

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

June 20, 2012

 The ATLAS detector (Image: CERN)

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has already delivered more collisions to the ATLAS and CMS experiments this year than it did in the whole of 2011.

Last year, ATLAS and CMS each recorded a total of around 5.6 inverse femtobarns of data. This measure of accelerator performance is equivalent to about 560 trillion proton-proton collisions. The accelerator today passed last year's totals and is well on its way its goal of delivering 1500 trillion proton-proton collisions in 2012.

The LHC is now operating at 1380 proton bunches per beam, the maximum value set for this year, with around 1.5 × 10¹¹ protons in each bunch. The accelerator has also far exceeded the best instantaneous collision rate achieved last year: the maximum peak luminosity in 2011 was 3.6 × 10³³ collisions per square centimeter per second; the LHC has now reached 6.8 × 10³³ cm-2 s-1.

The higher collision energy of 4 TeV per beam this year (compared to 3.5 TeV per beam in 2011) and the resulting higher number of collisions are expected to enhance the machine's discovery potential considerably, opening up new possibilities in the searches for new and heavier particles.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

Find out more:

    ATLAS: http://atlas.ch/

    CMS: http://cms.web.cern.ch/

    Large Hadron Collider (LHC): http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/HowLHC-en.html

Images, Text, Credit: CERN.

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