Discussing Chandraayan-1’s bistatic experiment with LRO

Universe Today has an interesting interview with Paul Spudis, who ran the Mini-SAR radar instrument on the ill fated Chandraayan-1 lunar probe. The Indian space agency ISRO declared the probe lost at the end of last month, marking the end of the mission and the beginning of the write-up of the masses of data it collected.

The interview concerns a revolutionary experiment attempted with the help of NASA. The probe Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was sent into formation with Chandraayan-1. The ISRO probe was then to beam its radar down and read the backscatter whilst LRO detected the radar bounced back at other angles, a sure fire way of discriminating between ice and rock which would’ve settled the water on the Moon question in one reading. Sadly it seems that the equipment gremlins that did for the probe (due to insufficient radiation shielding on the spacecraft) were working on it even then. The two orbiters attained the correct orbital formation, but Mini-SARs was ignoring commands asking it to point down.

The radar was fired into space.

Another last day in space…

The observant of you will note that the space shuttle Discovery hasn’t landed following mission STS-128. This was due to the weather at the intended landing site at the Kennedy Space Center being bad. This means the shuttle will stay in the skies an extra day and come down tomorrow at 10:54pm BST (5:54pm EDT) if the weather clears. There are options for a landing in California at Edwards or even White Sands if the delay drags on as it has in the past.

Still, this could mean a third day of shuttle watching for me. I saw it preceding the ISS a short distance from each other yesterday. Tonight I had my father with me and we both saw the shuttle making its way across the skies over the house. The space station arrived shortly after that. Unfortunately, the arrival of my brother in law meant headlamps shining into camera, so no photo. But he did join us to watch the space station, which turned up in the sky directly as the shuttle faded from view. The distance between them now widening. They will return to UK skies twice tomorrow (Friday September 11th) with a pass around 7:49pm and one around 9:23pm, with the shuttle a couple of minutes before the station. That assumes no sudden deorbital burns for landing (especially for the latter one). It would be nice to see the shuttle on its final orbit before landing, given we’re in a good site to see the first orbit immediately after launch.

But enough of the ground. In space, between fluid loading (drinking so their bodies can accommodate g-forces associated with landing after spending time in space) closing the cargo bay doors and donning orange suits for landing (in case of leaks), the astronauts have been running over their landing procedures. Tomorrow will be the same. NASA have stuck a few videos on their Youtube Channel including a boundary layer (moving from international space station orbit to pre landing orbit) transition briefing, a mission status briefing, flight day 13 highlights and a landing postponement briefing. They have also stuck up a report on science performed by the ISS, highlighting the benefits so far derived from the station:

STS-128 can be followed by occasional bulletins here, its mission pages, through live events on NASA TV (later posted to NASA’s Youtube Channel) or through twitter via @Astro_Jose, @Astro_Tim, @CFuglesang, @Astro_Nicole and @NASA. Check here to see if the ISS or other satellites are going to pass over your area.

Ares post test news conference

From NASA’s Youtube Channel on today’s test of an Ares-1 rocket (or a DM-1 rocket representing an Ares-1):

The Ares rocket is designed to lift the new Orion capsule as part of the Constellation program to replace the shuttle.

Surfing between Lagrangian points

via the Times.

During the recent deliberations over what NASA should be doing with its astronauts, one suggestion was missions towards one of the Lagrange points, where several space telescopes orbit or are stowed. Objects with large amounts of mass, like planets, stars or moons, create dents in space-time in which they sit. If you have a system of one object orbiting near another, Lagrange points, peaks and troughs in space-time, will appear. There are five of them. In the Earth-Sun system there’s one in front and one behind of the Earth, one either side at the points of Earth’s orbits sixty degrees down from the tangent to where Earth presently is and finally one on the point of Earth’s orbit at the opposite side of the Sun.

As these are peaks and troughs, moving from one to another is simply the same as dropping down or moving up a slope. This is a little different from the normal way of moving a spacecraft which is to imagine a series of orbits about the Earth initially, then the Sun if the probe needs to travel interplanetary, then around the destination. Spacecraft need to boost themselves from one orbit to the next.

Now a team of scientists has worked out the positions of the various Lagrange points (Sun-planet and planet-moon) in order to open up the sloping way of moving about to spacecraft. Leader, Professor Shane Ross of Virginia Tech university, in the United States, believes that the method will not lead to any significant developments in interplanetary space, but it could well improve say missions designed to observe moons in other planetary systems – such as Cassini’s observations of Titan and Enceladus at Saturn.

Yet more of things to come…

Two interesting things. One an article by Max Vozoff, the Director of Civil Business Development at Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). In it he discusses how commercial spaceflight is likely to work. The second is the youtube video below of NASA’s TriAthlete heavy lifting thing in action.

Pretty Astronomy pictures

The Greenwich Observatory’s astrophotographer of the year competition has ended with the shortlist of ten now turned to four – photo of the year (won by a snap of the Horsehead Nebula), Winner for the Earth and Space Category (star trails over some trees), Winner for the Solar System Category (Daytime Moon…). The Horsehead Nebula was of course the winner in Deep Space as well as overall. The winners and a few others can be seen here, though I’m very disappointed that the auroral image is given a description suggesting the aurorae are due to the solar wind getting funnelled down. They’re not (except for cusp aurorae and aurorae due to flares) and the National Maritime Museum should know better. If you’re scared of writing about magnetospheres, get someone who knows what they’re doing on the case.

On the other hand, if you’ve been wowed by images from the early release following the Hubble Servicing Mission Four and are interested to know what the colours mean – do they represent colours we might see, are they there to enhance contrast, what does it mean when wavelengths such as ultraviolet or infrared, which are not visible to the naked eye and so don’t have a real colour, are included? – then look here for a clear and concise explanation.

How well is science reported?

We are presently in the midst of a furor over the evolutionary beginnings of religious thought thanks to misreporting of a scientist’s views in last week’s Sunday papers. It is also a well known bugbear of scientists that journalists look for the easy bits and the soundbites to take from a presentation, ignoring the scientific method and all those boring bits like weighing up of different theories to see which one fits best the new data, or whether the model agrees with observation or whatever. Interesting then that Lord Drayson (a particular bugbear of mine as he is a former businessman who has often treated UK science as nothing more than the R&D department of UK plc) chose this moment to step in and call science reporting accurate, fair and balanced.

Ben Goldacre, who makes much of efforts to expose bad science reporting hit back and now the two are scheduled to hold a debate on the subject. 390 of the 400 tickets have already been snapped up, but the final ten are available through a twitter competition. Tweet your comments on this story to @timeshighered and you may be in with a chance to win.

The debate will be at the Royal Institution at 7pm on the 16th of September. It will be broadcast live here and the video will be put online soon after.

Two space hardware tests today

The Japanese space agency JAXA and the American space agency NASA both tested important pieces of hardware today. In JAXA’s case, the test was of an unmanned capsule known as the H-II Transport Vehicle, which aims to deliver goods to the International Space Station. The ISS is presently serviced by Progress vehicles (adapted Soyuz spacecraft from Roskosmos) and the Advanced Transport Vehicle, or ATV, from ESA. The launch is below:

Also being tested today was DM-1, the dummy Ares-1 rocket. The rocket is made up of different stages, for today’s test, all but the lowest stage were dummy capsules. The lowest stage itself is made up of five segments and for the test, only three of them were real. The intention was to see how the structure vibrates and rolls due to the firing (the rocket was tethered to the ground in what is known as a static test – ie it goes nowhere). Footage from the test is now on NASA’s Youtube Channel:

Discovery lands tomorrow

The space shuttle Discovery will be landing tomorrow (hopefully) at 12:05am Friday (BST) or 7:05pm Thursday (EDT – local time for the Kennedy Space Center). Since leaving the International Space Station, following the construction mission STS-128, the shuttle has appeared as a fainter moving blob in the sky, preceeding the brighter ISS. Today, the orbit became just right for me to take a photograph or two of the spacecraft above where I live:

What you see in the image above are two trails – the fainter shuttle one to the left and the brighter ISS coming into frame on the right. The trails represent the distance travelled by the two in the second for which the exposure ran. Another photograph captured the two either side of the brightest object in the southern end of the sky tonight – Jupiter.

Again there is the fainter shuttle to the left and brighter ISS to the right, but between them is the very bright planet Jupiter. One final shot is the best focused of the three, the ISS approaching Jupiter. All photos can be seen in this astrophotography set.

If you want to see satellites in your skies, check Heavens Above on a clear night. But back to the mission these mysterious blobs are on.

Following yesterday’s post, another mission status briefing, Flight Day Twelve Highlights and a media event have been added to NASA’s Youtube Channel (and there’s a briefing going on right now, which will no doubt make it there soon). Here’s the ones already done:

STS-128 can be followed by occasional bulletins here, its mission pages, through live events on NASA TV (later posted to NASA’s Youtube Channel) or through twitter via @Astro_Jose, @Astro_Tim, @CFuglesang, @Astro_Nicole and @NASA. Check here to see if the ISS or other satellites are going to pass over your area.

The Hubble Picture release

Yes, it is the post you’ve all been waiting for – the september 2009 release of new Hubble Pictures, the first data release since refurbishment – judging by the search terms being used to find this site today… I delayed it in order to get actual footage of the news conference off NASA’s Youtube Channel. It is there, so now this can come here.

For those who can’t wait any longer, the ten pics released today to show the effectiveness of Hubble after the refurbishment of Hubble Servicing Mission Four (STS-125), they are available here. There are ten images released (more taken, including some of Neptune), including two nebulae, a starfield within a globular cluster, some galaxies, gravitational lensing and some science from a supernova remnant’s composition, the changing outflow rates of an active galaxy, a pulsar’s spectrum as well as that of Eta Carina.

How has this been playing in the news? Well, I just watched the BBC news report and Newsnight ended with a show of the pictures under the rolling credits. First images were revealed through ABC’s report here (even before the main events). NASA sent out a press release shortly afterward, hailing the results. Then blogs such as Universe Today and Astronomy Now put in their reviews of the images. The Times has this report tomorrow. Discovery have also put up a slideshow.

Of course looking is never good enough, so some comparisons have been made between old Hubble and new Hubble, out of which new Hubble comes very well.

Finally, NASA have stuck up a few things on their Youtube Channel, these include the original press conference, the STS-125 crew of the space shuttle Atlantis, who did the work, giving a press conference and Hubble Time. These are reproduced below: