Constellation canceled in NASA's 2011 budget

With the announcement of President Obama's 2011 budget for NASA, the United States is apparently getting out of the Manned Lunar Exploration business that it has been tentatively involved in for the past 6 years. I am somewhat ambivalent about the details of this budget. First, I am terribly saddened that we are no longer going to be executing the Constellation program and my hopes to see humans walking on the Moon by 2020 have been all but ended. On the other hand, I am excited by the plans to fund new private space enterprise such as SpaceX and its Falcon rockets and Dragon spacecraft. Have I already seen the last humans to walk on the Moon in my lifetime - when I was 12 in December 1972?

The demise of the Constellation program really began when it started. The last time President Bush spoke about the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) was when he announced it in 2004. Since work on Constellation began it has been starved for cash so it is no wonder that it was behind schedule and also expected to cost so much more than originally estimated. It has been distressing to watch the progress of the Constellation program. We've seen a great deal of progress, particularly in the last year or so with the test flight of the Ares I-X, the completion of a launch platform for the Ares I, and the test firing of the first 5 segment solid rocket motor amongst other events. But with proper funding, those events should have occurred much sooner. The public squabbles of various factions of spaceflight and funding sources have been aired all too often in the past few years. Every interest group has weighed-in on Constellation pressing their own agenda. Pro-Mars exploration wants NASA to skip straight to Mars without a stop at the Moon. Commercial heavy lift rocket companies press for the cancellation of Ares I in favor of using the Atlas V or Delta IV Heavy. NASA insiders who want to build the Ares launch vehicles make claims about how hard it would be to man-rate the Atlas and Delta. NASA wants to maintain their monopoly on launching humans into space so they make arguments against companies like SpaceX building their Dragon spacecraft. Everyone is battling everyone else over their own domain and no one really wins.

At the rate NASA was being funded for its work on Constellation, could it ever have succeeded in taking us back to the Moon? The Augustine Commission estimated that it was short by about $3 billion a year in being able to carry out its mission on time. It is almost amazing that NASA has made as much progress as it had towards the goal of landing humans on the Moon.

It isn't all bad. The most prominent part of the new budget is the addition of $6 billion over 5 years to fund private space projects. This is long overdue. The best known private space company these days is probably SpaceX run by Paypal entrepreneur Elon Musk . They are building new rockets called Falcon which use their Merlin engines to power the rocket into orbit. The Falcon 1 has flown successfully with 1 of the Merlin engines powering its first stage and the Falcon 9 is expected to launch on its first test flight this spring with a cluster of 9 Merlin engines in its first stage. The Falcon 9 is designed to lift heavier payloads such as the Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX is already building the cargo version of the Dragon and will send a mockup of it on its first Falcon 9 launch with later cargo flights to the International Space Station. The Dragon was designed from the start to carry humans into orbit and Musk tells us that it will take about 3 years from the day he gets funding to launch humans into space on the Dragon. The launch escape system used to pull the Dragon safely away from an errant Falcon 9 rocket is the pacing item on the combo launching humans into space. Recent estimates for Orion making its first trip to ISS was as late as 2017! If the manned Dragon gets funding in the next year or so, it could be ferrying astronauts to ISS by 2014. But Dragon will also be able to take other passengers into space and to other destinations besides ISS. And their estimated price tag is just $20 million a seat. Other companies are also designing and building manned spacecraft. For example, Bigelow Aereospace is designing and building the first private space station based on inflatable habitats which could be an alternate destination for the Dragon. This could be the start of a new round of competative space travel and could open up the solar system eventually with trips not just to orbit, but to the Moon and beyond.

NASAs new budget also includes funding for increased scientific exploration as well as for advanced propulsion techniques. Imagine a new engine that would make travel to Mars take only weeks instead of months. And a heavy lift launch vehicle along the lines of the canceled Ares V is also apparently in the plan. There are also hints that a manned mission to an Asteroid and ultimately Mars is on the drawing board. But these are only rumors.

Besides the disappointment of the canceled Lunar program, I am also concerned that this new budget lacks a clear goal for NASA to pursue. There is no space station or moon base or space solar power project to drive the near term work in space. NASA needs a clear goal to justify building a large rocket. Keeping the ISS in operation until 2020 is probably a good thing despite the lack of a focused goal for ISS. Much of the research done there could be done much more cheaply with temporary platforms that could be visited or with long duration flights aboard smaller spacecraft. ISS is in the wrong orbit to serve as a waystation or launching platform for flights beyond low Earth orbit.

I am concerned for the future of manned spaceflight in this country. I am optimistic about the future progress of commercial spaceflight. I am pleased at the apparent support basic research and robotic missions into the solar system is getting. But I wonder if I will see humans reach beyond low Earth orbit again in my lifetime. I remember back to December 1972 as this 12 year old budding astronomer watched Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt working on the Moon during the last Apollo moonlanding thinking that I was going to be too young to be the first human to set foot on Mars - it was supposed to happen by some plans as early as the mid 1980s! Now, I wonder if I will even be around to see such an event.

Phoenix Lander on Mars

This image of the Phoenix Lander on the surface of Mars was taken with the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter about 22 hours after Phoenix landed on the surface. The insets are closeups that are labeled and show not only the lander, but also the affects the landers rockets had on the surface surrounding the lander and also the heatshield and the backshell and parachute nearby on the Martian surface! You can even see some details in the parachute! Click on the image to see the full resolution version or visit the HiRISE website for this image for more details..

I'm not sure which direction the lander came in from, but it was probably the bottom right, though I also suspect that it might be the bottom left since the heatshield appears to have bounced towards the upper right. It looks like the wind may be blowing towards the bottom or bottom right since the parachute appears to have pulled the backshell towards the bottom and the chute itself is laying in that direction. Also, there appears to be a little wispy dark trail to the bottom right from the heatshield impact site. And my friend Joe who works on HiRISE says they should get some better images soon taken from closer range.

Phoenix lander on chutes with crater backdrop

It gets even better! Yesterday, I posted about the HiRISE image of Phoenix on its parachute descending to the surface. Well, today, we get to see the bigger picture which shows the lander against a backdrop of the crater Heimdall which is about 20 km away with the spacecraft about 8-10 km above the surface. It looks as if the lander is heading straight for the crater, but that is due to the way the MRO spacecraft and HiRISE are looking obliquely across Mars to see the lander. Click on the image above to show the full resolution version. The inset at the lower left corner of the image shows a high resolution closeup of the lander which shows details in the parachute as well as the shroud lines and backshell enclosed lander.

Great work by the folks on MRO & HiRISE to plan for and actually succeed in taking this spectacular image! Coming soon: More pictures of the Phoenix Lander, this time on the surface of Mars!

Phoenix on its chutes

Now how cool is this! The Phoenix Lander made a successful landing on Mars yesterday and while it was descending on its parachutes, the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this image of Phoenix. This is the first time that an orbiter has gotten an image of a lander in flight around another planet. Like I said, now isn't this COOL! You can see the parachutes, and the lander that is still in its backshell as well as the lines connecting the parachute to the backshell, all against the backdrop of the Martian surface below. I'm sure the HiRise camera will also be returning images of the lander on the Martian surface and I think the first attempt at that should already have been made and is just awaiting analysis.

APOLLO - Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation

Now this is cool. As you may know, 3 of the Apollo missions and one of the Soviet Lunokhod rovers left laser retroreflector experiments with arrays of corner reflectors that would bounce a laser beam straight back from where it came, allowing Earthbased telescopes to measure the distance to the retroreflectors. Up until now, only the McDonald Observatory in Texas and a couple other experiments in other countries have been used to make such measurements and with a precision of something like a few centimeters.

This relatively new program that went into operation in 2005 uses the 3.5 meter telescope at Apache Point in New Mexico is called, somewhat appropriately, APOLLO. Incredibly, they've made big improvements over previous experiments such that they are achieving accuracies of about a millimeter in their distance measurements to the Moon! They are measuring times of photon returns to a few picoseconds! Their equipment receives photon returns substantially more efficiently than previous experiments.

With this kind of capability they will be able to test Einsteins theory of General Relativity as well as the precision of the inverse square law of gravity itself. It can measure the constancy of the Gravitational constant G, not to mention measuring the exact motion of the Moon as well as of their own observatory over time which includes the affects of continental drift, all to higher precision than has ever been done before.

Jim Oberg's article on the recent Soyuz re-entry anomalies

Spaceflight is dangerous. It won't be anything routine and safe like air travel for a long time to come. The forces involved in launch and landing of a spacecraft are enormous and the vehicles us feeble humans have ingeniously designed and built are just barely in control of those forces.

The recent Soyuz re-entry that brought the Expedition 16 crew back to Earth is a prime example and reminder of that. One failure can spell doom for a ship and her crew as we are from time to time reminded so horribly by accidents like that of Columbia most recently and of Challenger, Soyuz 1 and Apollo 1. Happily, in this case, the failure appears to have been overcome by a design improvement after a similar re-entry glitch in early 1969 that nearly claimed the life of a Soviet Cosmonaut. It appears likely that the service module that supports the Soyuz spacecraft in orbit with rocket engines, supply tanks, and solar panels failed to separate from the re-entry module. And like a paper airplane, the combined vehicle began re-entry nose forward with the heat shield still nuzzled between the entry module and the service module. The front of the entry module is not designed to withstand the temperatures the heatshield is there for and not only contains a fragile hatch, but the parachutes that are needed to safely land the crew on the ground at the end of the flight. The new design which Oberg believes had been untested to this point allows the service module to break free during re-entry as the temperatures and atmospheric stresses build up on the vehicle even if the separation bolts fail to fire.

For more details, read Oberg's article here.

Flying Moondust

Here is an interesting article about the possible dangers of flying moondust when we go back to the Moon, particularly to stay at moonbases. The film and video of lunar landings and liftoffs showed the dust flying off at high speeds. During landing, the Lunar Modules (LMs) descent engine scoured the surface as the lander approached, kicking dust out at speeds of probably around a kilometer per second. Without an atmosphere on the Moon, the dust will fly off on ballistic trajectories rather than billowing like it does on Earth during rocket launches that we see commonly on TV. The article above shows the affects of concrete blasted out of the flame trenches of the shuttle launch pads that drill holes in fences and damage other equipment. The smaller rockets used in landing on the Moon will not have enough force to blow big rocks out, but instead, it is the smaller dust that will be dangerous to equipment on the Moon at a moonbase.

Earthrise/Set

You've got to check out the two HD videos posted on the Kaguya website. One shows Earthrise over the north pole of the Moon and the other shows Earthset over the lunar south pole. These are views I wish I could go look at with my own two Mk I eyeballs! The lunar south pole movie shows the crater Shackleton at the south pole which is thought to have perhaps the only place on the moon where the sun literally never shines and might be a location where we might find some ancient lunar ice. Thanks to Chuck Wood at the Lunar Picture of the Day for posting the link as well as posting a high resolution image from the movie (which I've taken the liberty to make my background on my laptop). When I first saw this image, I thought for sure it was some artwork! In fact, it reminded me some of a painting I did a few years ago that you can see at this link. Looking back on that painting, I don't think I made the shadows long enough....