US Launch Vehicles and Spacecraft: Discussion & News

I was going to merge this thread with the other thread on NASA spacecraft, but on reading the posts it seems to be more about the different attitudes of US strong between the current US failure and their reactions and attitudes to previous Russian failures, so I will leave things as they are.

Please, however, keep it sensible.... Russian achievements don't need defending, but are in no way improved by berating the achievements or failures of others.

Space is hard.

NASA Wants to Send Microbes to Mars Prep Red Planet for Human Habitation

As NASA considers the possibility of a manned mission to Mars, it may first send another lifeform: microscopic bacteria which could biologically engineer the planet’s ecosystem, making it more habitable.

Terraforming has long been a staple of science fiction. Literally meaning "Earth-shaping," the theoretical process involves artificially altering a planet’s atmosphere and climate to be more accommodating for human life.

The question has always been: How? Do you bombard the stratosphere with particles which would help trap or release greenhouse gases? A similar proposal was made to solve global warming on Earth. Or do you somehow dump an ocean’s worth of water onto the surface and hope it sticks?

For NASA, the answer could be cyanobacteria.

The agency has begun funding research to send "ecosystem-building, pioneer organisms" to Mars. If all goes according to plan, the microorganisms could be used to make living a bit easier on any future astronauts landing on the Red Planet.

Stored inside small canisters, the bacteria could be planted in the Martian soil by a robot like the Curiosity rover. Interactions between the bacteria and the arid clay would then produce oxygen. Slowly, but surely, a habitable atmosphere would begin to develop.

"This is a possible way to support a human mission to Mars, producing oxygen without having to send heavy gas canisters," project head Eugene Boland said in a statement. "Let’s send microbes and let them do the heavy lifting for us."

To terraform the entire planet in this way would take centuries, at best. But to speed up the process, the project would also incorporate large biodomes on the surface. With the bacteria producing oxygen in the land beneath, the biodome would trap in the gases, establishing an isolated, contained ecosystem in a fraction of the time.

The NASA team hopes to also use the concept to provide water. If pockets of water ice can be found beneath the surface, organisms could be utilized to unlock the water’s potential.

"I’m a biologist and an engineer. So I want to put those two things together to make a useful tool," Boland said.

At this time, the project remains in the early test phase, with scientists experimenting with various microbes inside a small container known as the "Mars room," which mimics the planet’s conditions. Depending on how successful the team’s work proves, microscopic travelers could be the first Earthlings to see a Martian sunrise.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/science/20150702/1024106769.html#ixzz3ejM3YWgA

Except those bacteria that process the CO2 in the Martian atmosphere and convert it to O2 will dramatically reduce the air temperature and kill themselves when they in effect reverse the effects of the greenhouse effect...

I suspect it would be more productive to closely examine the atmosphere of Venus and look at how the sulphuric acid could be neutralised and water vapour in the atmosphere be turned back into liquid to lower the air pressure and reduce the temperatures to a more acceptable range...

NASA Scared of Traffic Jams Around Mars

With a growing number of spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet, NASA is beginning to worry about celestial collisions. To avoid satellite fender benders, the agency is looking to boost its Deep Space Network traffic monitoring system.

If 2013’s "Gravity" taught us anything, it’s that there’s little room for error in space. One defunct satellite bumps into your space shuttle, and suddenly you’ve got a chain reaction which pretty much brings down every space station every launched into orbit.

We almost lost Sandra Bullock.

While it may be over 100 million miles away from Earth – and presumably immune to the traffic problems that plague Interstate 405 in Los Angeles – the space around Mars is also becoming surprisingly crowded. India launched its Mangalyaan probe last year, immediately followed by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft. They’re now rocketing around Mars, often narrowly avoiding the Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and Mars Express probes also in orbit.

Not to mention Phobos and Deimos, the planet’s two moons. While their orbits are typically further out than that of the spacecraft, there are points of overlap.

"Previously, collision avoidance was coordinated between the Odyssey and MRO navigation teams," Robert Shotwell, Mars Program chief engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.

But the new spacecraft are complicating things.

"There was less of a possibility of an issue. MAVEN’s highly elliptical orbit, crossing the altitudes of other orbits, changes the probability that someone will need to do a collision-avoidance maneuver," Shotwell said. "There’s still a low probability of needing a maneuver, but it’s something we need to manage."

To accomplish that, the agency relies on Deep Space Network. With communications facilities in the US, Spain, and Australia, the system utilizes a global antenna network designed to assist interplanetary spaceflight.

Using ultra-sensitive receivers, DSN can keep track of any vessel travelling over 10,000 miles from Earth. If any of those spacecraft appear to be getting too close to one another, an alert is sent to the remote pilot, who can then alter the flightpath.

The system is already proving its worth. In January, an automated signal warned of a potential collision between MRO and MAVEN, which would pass within two miles of each other. Thankfully, avoidance maneuvers turned out to be unnecessary.

Monitoring, of course, can only do so much. The Mars Global Surveyor, an old mapping satellite which went dark in 2006, is also being tracked by Deep Space Network. If it were to enter the flight path of one of the active probes, those could be steered away. But because NASA has lost communication with Surveyor, it could do little if that satellite was on a collision course with either of the two moons or a rogue asteroid.

Over 19,000 large pieces of space junk are being tracked in orbit around Earth. If a similar buildup were to occur around Mars, it could add strain on the tracking system, and make future missions to the Red Planet exponentially more complicated.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/science/20150731/1025234219.html#ixzz3hQT1Nm9s

Forget Flybys: Now NASA Wants to Land on Jupiter Moon to Look for Aliens

In our search for life-harboring bodies in the solar system, the Jovian satellite of Europa may be our safest bet. While NASA previously announced a flyby mission to observe the moon from afar, the space agency now has plans to send a probe down to the surface, where life may exist in vast oceans beneath the ice.

"All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there." reads a cryptic message from an alien race in Arthur C. Clarke’s sequel to "2001: A Space Odyssey."

As you can probably guess, that warning was pretty much ignored. A team of astronauts land on the moon’s frozen surface, only to be immediately attacked by a giant squid creature from beneath the ice.

Clarke, one of science fiction’s most fastidiously scientific writers, may not be entirely off base. While the mysterious alien message and aggressively evolved octopus may be imagined narrative devices, there’s still a reason he chose to set the tale on Europe: as far as our solar system goes, it may be the most likely candidate to host life beyond Earth.

And according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the space agency may soon be attempting a landing of its own.

"We are actively pursuing the possibility of a lander," Robert Pappalardo, Europa project scientist with JPL, said during a conference last week, according to Space.com.

"NASA has asked us to investigate: What would it take? How much would it cost? Could we put a small surface package on Europa with this mission?"

A mission to Europa was previously announced by the space agency. Slated for launch sometime in the mid-2020s, NASA originally planned to survey the moon through a series of 45 flybys. Using a number of instruments, including ice-penetrating radar and high-resolution cameras, the observations would provide untold details about Europa’s surface composition and characteristics.

But a lander could take even more accurate measurements. NASA has also asked the European Space Agency if it would like its own lander to be included on the flyby mission.

What we already know about Europa has many researchers excited about the moon’s possibilities. Slightly smaller than our own moon, Europa is wrapped in a 50 mile-thick sheet of ice. But beneath that layer, scientists believe the planet to be covered in a massive ocean, which could contain twice as much salt water as the planet Earth.

Researchers also believe that ocean to be as old as the solar system itself. An ancient, 4.5 billion-year-old ocean could theoretically provide ample time for life to evolve.

"When it comes to habitability, we’d like to have the knowledge that the potentially habitable environment has been there for a significant duration," Kevin Hand, deputy chief scientist at JPL’s Solar System Exploration Directorate, said during the same panel.
What we’ve imagined as a sister planet lush with salt oceans may have, in fact, been a very dry and frozen place.

Still, much about the moon’s landscape remains a mystery, and that could present extreme challenges for the possibility of a lander. While we know the icy surface contains a number of cracks, most likely caused by the waters beneath, the effect of those cracks on the topography remains unknown.

"We don’t actually know what the surface of Europa looks like at the scale of this table, at the scale of a lander – if it’s smooth, if it’s incredibly rough, if it’s full of spikes," Curt Niebur, a Europa program scientist with NASA, said during a conference in June.

"Without knowing what the surface even looks like, it’s difficult to design a lander that could survive."

Whatever NASA decides, Pappalardo expects a decision to be made by the end of the year. It’s impossible to say what we’ll find, but if there’s a giant black monolith sticking out of the ice, can we all just agree to pack up and move on?

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/science/20150909/1026757046/Europa-Lander.html#ixzz3lBrNOhLZ