Hubble Glitch Delays Shuttle Trip

 

 

A shuttle mission to service the Hubble telescope will be delayed because of a malfunction on the observatory.

The glitch means Hubble cannot format or store data from its instruments, nor transmit the information to Earth.

The US space agency, Nasa, had planned to send the Atlantis orbiter to repair and upgrade the telescope next month.

Now, it says the shuttle is unlikely to fly until next year, to allow time for a replacement electronics box to be prepared for inclusion in the mission.

“Mid-February is looking to be a reasonable timeframe to do that,” said Preston Burch, the Hubble manager at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center where telescope operations are overseen.

Nasa says the problem is in a box known as the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SIC&DH) Unit, and affects the functions carried out by its Science Data Formatter – Side A.

The glitch arose on Saturday and all attempts to correct have proved fruitless. The assessment is that the formatter has totally failed and will not be recoverable.

The anomaly prevents Hubble from formatting the data gathered by its instruments ready for sending to scientists on the ground. The malfunction also stops that data being stored locally on the telescope’s solid state recorders for later transmission.

The back-up should allow Hubble to return to full operations

Hubble has a back-up – Side B – and if systems can be switched over, the observatory should return to normal operations. Engineers say it is a complex procedure but they hope to have Hubble functioning at its previous level of performance within a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, a spare SIC&DH Unit on the ground will be prepared for flight, to be included as an additional servicing task on the forthcoming Atlantis mission.

Ed Weiler, Nasa’s associate administrator for science, said it was important Hubble had redundancy for Side B going into the future

“If we just go to Side B, we would be left with a system that had several single point failures, and that would be a risk to the [Hubble] mission for the long duration,” he explained.

“By going ahead and accepting a delay of perhaps several months, we can get our full-up spare tested and ready to go – and if we could put that in [Hubble] sometime in the winter, we would have an observatory that was again doubly redundant; that is, it would have back-up systems.”

Rescue readiness

The 62kg (136lb) box requires no new tools be developed for astronauts to fit it inside Hubble. However, time will have to be found in an already tight spacewalk schedule to get the job done.

Setting a new date for the mission is complicated by Nasa’s strict flight rules introduced after the Columbia disaster.

Because Atlantis cannot get to the safety of the space station from Hubble’s orbit if something goes wrong, a second shuttle must be put on the launch pad ready to fly a rescue mission if required.

For the planned 14 October launch opportunity, the back-up was supposed to be the Endeavour orbiter. But this ship is also needed for a space station mission on 16 November.

The Atlantis delay means Endeavour’s mission may now be brought forward by a couple of days, and Atlantis slotted into the shuttle manifest in February or April next year when another orbiter would take up the rescue-readiness role.

 

Flight rules require two shuttles are prepared for a Hubble mission

 

The upcoming mission to Hubble is the fifth and final flight designed to keep the great observatory serviceable.

Hubble’s batteries and gyroscopes, which are used to point the telescope, are degrading and they now need to be replaced.

The shuttle crew is also tasked with installing two new instruments: the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The new instruments will improve significantly Hubble’s ability to probe distant, faint objects in the early Universe.

The Atlantis astronauts must also repair two instruments that have failed in recent years – the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS).

If the work is carried out successfully, it should allow Hubble to keep operating into the next decade.

Ed Weiler said everyone should think it was lucky that the Data Formatter broke just before Atlantis set off on its servicing mission rather than just after it.

“Hubble has a habit of coming back from adversity; and the Hubble team works miracles,” he added.

“I’m not too concerned about this. We’ll find a way to get this fixed. This particular failure was anticipated and we have spare hardware ready to go.”

SERVICING THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE Shuttle Atlantis will grab Hubble with a robotic arm and pull it on to a work platform to allow astronauts easy access to its interior Hubble has six gyroscopes that are critical to its control and pointing systems. These have started to fail and all will have to be replaced Six new batteries will rejuvenate the electrical system; astronauts will attach new thermal blankets to insulate sensitive components The telescope has two instrument bays; the COS and WFC3 will be slid into racks made vacant by the removal of older instruments An attempt will also be made to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) which stopped working in 2004

“Jules Verne’s” Controlled Burn-Up over the Pacific

Europe’s “Jules Verne” space freighter has destroyed itself in a controlled burn-up over the southern Pacific.

The 13.5-tonne cargo ship had completed a six-month mission to the space station and was packed with the orbiting platform’s rubbish.

Two engine firings were required to slow the freighter sufficiently to pull it into the atmosphere.

The European and US space agencies had chase planes in the air to try to capture the fireball on video.

Astronauts on the space station reported seeing the light from the falling freighter.

It’s been a fantastic ride  John Ellwood, ATV project manager

“Everything went correctly, nominally, smoothly. This was the last section of the chain,” said Simonetta di Pippo, head of human spaceflight at the European Space Agency (Esa).

Most of the vehicle was expected to burn up in the descent; only fragments should have made it down to the ocean water. Computer modelling of the re-entry had put the impact time at 1346 GMT.

Events were overseen from Esa’s freighter control centre in Toulouse, France.

John Ellwood, the agency’s vehicle project manager, said all the data would need to be assessed before it was known conclusively how the re-entry went; but the early indications were that everything had proceeded as expected.

And summing up the past six months, he told BBC News: “It’s been a fantastic ride; everything has worked nominally. Although there are mixed emotions at the end, there is a lot of satisfaction after having had such a fantastic mission.”

 

Jules Verne – also known by the generic name Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) – cost about 1.3bn euros to develop.

Although Esa has produced many complex scientific satellites, none match the scale of the freighter.

JULES VERNE – THE FIRSTS The ATV is the first completely automated rendezvous and docking ship to go to the ISS The ATV is the largest and most powerful space tug going to the ISS over its mission life It provides the largest refuelling and waste elimination capability for the space station It is the only vehicle on the current timeline able to de-orbit the ISS when it is retired Berlin unveils ‘crewed spaceship’ Manned spaceship design unveiled Key moment for Europe

After launch, the space truck can work out where it needs to go in space, and then makes a fully automatic docking once it arrives at its destination.

It was developed as part of Esa’s ISS membership agreement, to haul cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the space station; and also to provide propulsion capacity at the station.

But such has been the performance of Jules Verne that Esa officials and industry chiefs are already talking about upgrading the ship’s design – potentially to carry astronauts.

The first step, however, would be to develop technologies that enable the safe return of cargo to Earth.

European space ministers will discuss the issue at their meeting in The Hague in November.

 

Cost: Total bill was 1.3bn euros (at least 4 more ATVs will be built) Total cargo capacity: 7.6 tonnes, but first mission flew lighter Mass at launch: About 20 tonnes depending on cargo manifest Dimensions: 10.3m long and 4.5m wide – the size of a large bus Solar panels: Once unfolded, the solar wings span 22.3m Engine power: 4x 490-Newton thrusters; and 28x 220N thrusters Mission timeline: Launch - 9 March; Docking - 3 April; Undocking - 5 September; De-orbit - 29 September Mission Guide: Jules Verne

Under the agreement Esa has with its international partners, at least four more ATVs will be flown to the space station in the coming years. The next is due to launch in 2010.

And, ultimately, it is likely that an ATV will be tasked with destroying the space station when the partners have decided the platform is beyond servicing, perhaps towards the end of the next decade.

A freighter will be commanded to drive the whole structure into a similar region of the south Pacific.

Source:

“Freighter destroyed over pacific”, BBC News Online, Science & Environment, Jonathan Amos, 29th Sept 2008

Lift-Off for China’s Space Mission: Shenzhou VII blasts off

China has launched its third manned space mission – which is to feature the country’s first spacewalk.

The Shenzhou VII capsule soared into orbit atop a Long-March II-F rocket from the Jiuquan spaceport in Gansu province in the northwest of China.

The 70-hour flight will include a spacewalk undertaken by 42-year-old fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang.

Mr Zhai is joined on the mission by two other “yuhangyuan” (astronauts) – Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng.

 

The astronauts have been training in a water tank

The rocket lit up the darkness as it blasted off from Jiuquan at 2110 Beijing Time (1310 GMT).China’s president Hu Jintao met the three astronauts before the lift-off, wishing them success on the nation’s riskiest space mission yet.

“You will definitely accomplish this glorious and sacred mission. The motherland and the people are looking forward to your triumphant return,” President Hu told the yuhangyuan, who were dressed in flight suits and behind glass to avoid being exposed to germs.

The rocket will put the Shenzhou capsule in a near-circular orbit more than 300km above the Earth.

Mr Zhai will conduct his extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on either Friday or Saturday.

When he steps out into space, Mr Zhai is expected to wear a Chinese-made space suit and will be tethered to the capsule for safety. Liu Boming will monitor the activity, presumably to reel the spacewalker back inside if there is an emergency.

1958: Base for spaceflights built at Jiuquan, in Gobi desert April 1970: China launches its first satellite into space 1990-2002: Shenzhou I-IV are launched to develop systems Oct 2003: The first manned space mission launches on Shenzhou V Oct 2005: The Shenzhou VI mission takes two men into space Oct 2007: Chang’e-1 orbiter sent on unmanned mission to the Moon

Mr Zhai will retrieve an externally mounted experiment and oversee the release of a satellite.

At the end of the mission, the Shenzhou re-entry capsule will target a landing in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Dr Roger Launius, senior curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, told BBC News: “It is a demonstration of technological virtuosity. It’s a method of showing the world they are second to none – which is a very important objective for [China].”

China became only the third nation after the United States and Russia to independently put a man in space when Yang Liwei, another fighter pilot, went into orbit on the Shenzhou V mission in October 2003.

Two years later, Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng completed a five-day flight on Shenzhou VI.

According to the Associated Press, China’s official news agency posted an article on its website prior to the lift-off that was written as if Shenzhou VII had already been launched into space.

The article reportedly carried a date of 27 September and came complete with a dialogue between the astronauts.

Chinese media report that this latest mission is the “most critical step” in the country’s “three-step” space programme.

These stages are: sending a human into orbit, docking spacecraft together to form a small laboratory and, ultimately, building a large space station.

 

The Shenzhou VIII and IX missions are expected to help set up a space laboratory complex in 2010.

China launched an unmanned Moon probe last year about one month after rival Japan blasted its own lunar orbiter into space.

 

 

Crowds turned out to see the Long-March II-F rocket move to the launch pad

Source:

“Lift-off for china’s space mission”, BBC News Online, Science & Environment, 25th Sept 2008

Large Hadron Collider forced to halt

Plans to begin smashing particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may be delayed after a magnet failure forced engineers to halt work.

The failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC’s super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.

The LHC beam will remain turned off over the weekend while engineers investigate the severity of the fault.

A spokesman for Cern told the BBC it was not yet clear how soon progress could resume at the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator.

While the failure was “not good news”, he said glitches of this kind were not unexpected during testing.

Delays

The first beams were fired successfully around the accelerator’s 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring over a week ago.

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. However, the fault appears to have ruled out any chance of these experiments taking place for the next week at least.

Source:

“Hadron Collider forced to halt”, BBC News Online, Science/nature, 19th Sept 2008

The quench occurred during final testing of the last of the LHC’s electrical circuits to be commissioned.

At 1127 (0927 GMT) on Friday, the LHC’s online logbook recorded a quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between the Alice and CMS detectors.

The entry stated that helium had been lost to the tunnel and that vacuum conditions had also been lost.

It added that the Cern fire brigade had been called to the scene.

The superconducting magnets in the LHC must be supercooled to 1.9 kelvin above absolute zero, to allow them to steer particle beams around the circuit.

As a result of the quench, the temperature of about 100 of the magnets in the machine’s final sector rose by around 100C.

A spokesman for Cern confirmed that it would now be difficult, if not impossible, to stage the first trial collisions next week.

Further delays could follow once the damage has been fully assessed over the weekend.

The setback comes just a day after the LHC’s beam was restored after engineers replaced a faulty transformer that had hindered progress for much of the past week.

X-Ray Pulses seen in the Biggest Black Holes

 

Gas falling on to the hole is heated, emitting X-rays in pulses Scientists have found what they describe as a missing link between the behaviour of the smallest and the biggest black holes. Star-sized black holes often pulse X-rays as they pull gas into themselves and tear it apart. Durham University researchers say they have now witnessed this same pulsing signature in the gargantuan black holes that reside at the cores of galaxies. The team reports its observations in the journal Nature. The researchers believe the phenomenon could be used to measure the mass of far-distant super-massive black holes. Their observations were made with Europe’s Newton-XMM space telescope. Question of gravity Black holes are incredibly dense points of matter, where an intense gravitational field prevents even light from escaping. The scientists saw the strong X-ray pulse emanating from the giant black hole at the centre of the REJ1034+396 galaxy, which lies some 500 million light-years from Earth. X-ray pulses are common among smaller black holes – the type that result when a big star collapses in on itself in a supernova explosion. The pulses are seen, in particular, in so-called binary systems where a black hole pulls gas off a companion star into a disc of matter that then sweeps around and into the hole. In a binary system, a black hole feeds off a companion star “We’ve known about the X-rays coming from black holes for a long time and we’ve known that this emission varies – that it goes up and down in strength over time,” explained Professor Martin Ward from Durham University. “But this is a periodic type of variability, like a tuning fork; that’s the interesting thing.” These quasi-periodic oscillations occur on timescales of just fractions of seconds for the smallest black holes but on the order of an hour for the huge hole at the centre of REJ1034+396. The scientists believe that as gas swirls around the hole, instabilities build up in the disc. These become apparent in variable X-ray emissions as the clumps of gas get super-heated. Time signal The Durham research is said to be the first definitive observation of quasi-periodic oscillations at a super-massive black hole. Most galaxies are believed to contain such objects at their centres. Our own Milky Way has just such a hole at its core, sited in the southern sky in the Sagittarius constellation some 26,000 light-years from Earth. It has the mass of nearly four million suns. Scientists have been able to work out the hole’s size by studying the orbits of the stars that sweep around its gravity field, some of them pulled along at several thousand kilometres per second. But for far-distant super-massive black holes that are feeding on discs of gas, studying their X-ray behaviour may also provide information about their mass. “These periodic oscillations tell us a little bit about how the disc works, how the material is going in,” said Professor Ward. “In the binary stars, they happen in fractions of a second, whereas the one we’ve found takes an hour. And that’s one of the ways we hope we can measure the mass, by scaling up from the ones we know.” Source: “X-ray pulse seen in biggest holes”, BBC News Online, Science/Nature, 18th Sept 2008

LHC at CERN Switches On

The LHC has been in construction for some 13 years

Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang.

They have now fired two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash protons together with cataclysmic force.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

The first – clockwise – beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. The second – anti-clockwise – beam successfully circled the ring after 1400 BST.

 

We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a second after the Big Bang  Dr Tara Shears, University of Liverpool What is the Large Hadron Collider?

So far, all the beams have been stopped, or “dumped”, after just a few circuits.On Thursday, engineers hoped to inject clockwise and anti-clockwise protons again, but this time they plan to “close the orbit”, letting the beams run continuously for a few seconds each.

The BBC understands that low-energy collisions could happen in the next few days. This will allow engineers to calibrate instruments, but will not produce data of scientific interest.

“There it is,” project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap. There were cheers in the control room when engineers heard of the successful test.

He added later: “We had a very smooth start-up.”The LHC is arguably the most complicated and ambitious experiment ever built; the project has been hit by cost overruns, equipment trouble and construction problems. The switch-on itself is two years late.

The collider is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research – better known by its French acronym Cern.

The vast circular tunnel – or “ring” – which runs under the French-Swiss border contains more than 1,000 cylindrical magnets arranged end-to-end.

The magnets are there to steer the beam around this vast circuit.

Eventually, two proton beams will be steered in opposite directions around the LHC at close to the speed of light, completing about 11,000 laps each second.

At allotted points around the tunnel, the beams will cross paths, smashing together near four massive “detectors” that monitor the collisions for interesting events.

Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge, revealing fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos.

Major effort

“We will be able to see deeper into matter than ever before,” said Dr Tara Shears, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool.

“We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a second after the Big Bang. That is amazing, that really is fantastic.”

The LHC should answer one very simple question: What is mass?

LHC DETECTORS ATLAS - one of two so-called general purpose detectors. Atlas will be used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass and extra dimensions CMS - the second general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter ALICE - will study a “liquid” form of matter called quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang LHCb - Equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the “missing” anti-matter

“We know the answer will be found at the LHC,” said Jim Virdee, a particle physicist at Imperial College London.

The favoured model involves a particle called the Higgs boson – dubbed the “God Particle”. According to the theory, particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field carried by the Higgs.

The latest astronomical observations suggest ordinary matter – such as the galaxies, gas, stars and planets – makes up just 4% of the Universe.

The rest is dark matter (23%) and dark energy (73%). Physicists think the LHC could provide clues about the nature of this mysterious “stuff”.

But Professor Virdee told BBC News: “Nature can surprise us… we have to be ready to detect anything it throws at us.”

Full beam ahead

Engineers injected the first low-intensity proton beams into the LHC in August. But they did not go all the way around the ring.

Technicians had to be on the lookout for potential problems.

Steve Myers, head of the accelerator and beam department, said: “There are on the order of 2,000 magnetic circuits in the machine. This means there are 2,000 power supplies which generate the current which flows in the coils of the magnets.”

If there was a fault with any of these, he said, it would have stopped the beams. They were also wary of obstacles in the beam pipe which could prevent the protons from completing their first circuit.

 

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

Mr Myers has experience of the latter problem. While working on the LHC’s predecessor, a machine called the Large-Electron Positron Collider, engineers found two beer bottles wedged into the beam pipe – a deliberate, one-off act of sabotage.

The culprits – who were drinking a particular brand that advertising once claimed would “refresh the parts other beers cannot reach” – were never found.

In order to get both beams to circulate continuously, engineers will “close the orbit”. The beams themselves are made up of several “packets” – each about a metre long – containing billions of protons.

The protons would disperse if left to their own devices, so engineers use electrical forces to “grab” them, keeping the particles tightly huddled in packets.

Once the beams are captured, the same system of electrical forces is used to give the particles an energetic kick, accelerating them to greater and greater speeds.

Long haul

The idea of the Large Hadron Collider emerged in the early 1980s. The project was eventually approved in 1996 at a cost of 2.6bn Swiss Francs, which amounts to about £1.3bn at present exchange rates.

However, CERN underestimated equipment and engineering costs when it set out its original budget, plunging the lab into a cash crisis.

CERN had to borrow hundreds of millions of euros in bank loans to get the LHC completed. The current price is nearly four times that originally envisaged.

During winter, the LHC will be shut down, allowing equipment to be fine-tuned for collisions at full energy.

“What’s so exciting is that we haven’t had a large new facility starting up for years,” explained Dr Shears.

“Our experiments are so huge, so complex and so expensive that they don’t come along very often. When they do, we get all the physics out of them that we can.”

Engineers celebrated the success with champagne, but a certain brand of beer was not on the menu.

Source:

“‘Big Bang’ experiments starts well”, BBC News Online, Science/Nature, Paul Rincon, 10th Sept 2008

US Space Woes Felt by Europe – NASA’s Space Shuttle Reaching End

 

Europe may have to find its own solutions for transporting astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station due to short-sighted US policies that now threaten Nasa’s ability to maintain a presence on the orbital outpost.

Nasa chief Michael Griffin recently gave top managers a blunt assessment of the situation in an e-mail reprinted by the Orlando Sentinel, in which he said: “My own view is about as pessimistic as it is possible to be.”

Fuelling Dr Griffin’s frustration is a US policy to retire the space shuttle fleet in 2010, for safety and cost reasons, but five years before replacement ships are ready to take over the work of ferrying crews to the ISS.

The station also is solely dependent on Russia’s Soyuz capsules to serve as lifeboats to bring astronauts back to Earth in case of an emergency.

The European Space Agency (Esa) had joined Nasa in designing a station crew-return vehicle based on the X-38 experimental craft, but it was never completed.

“That was cancelled by a US government decision when almost all the European components were ready or already delivered,” Marco Caporicci, the head of the Esa’s Future Space Transport and Infrastructure Division, wrote in an e-mail to BBC News.

We are evaluating developments for cargo transportation and return systems, based on our Ariane 5 and ATV  Marco Caporicci, Esa

That decision to depend on the Russians is squarely at odds with US policymakers who slapped a trade embargo on Russia after concerns of weapons proliferation to Iran and North Korea.

Nasa won an exemption to the ban to buy Soyuz rides and related technical support through to 2011. To keep the Soyuz manufacturing line flowing, a second exemption is needed by the beginning of the year.

With the recent Russian incursion into neighbouring Georgia, Dr Griffin said the exemption request was “DoA” (dead on arrival.)

“The Russians are not going to back out of Georgia anytime soon, certainly not prior to the (US presidential) election,” he wrote.

“We might get some relief somewhere well down the road, if and when tensions ease, but my guess is that there is going to be a lengthy period with no US crew on the ISS after 2011.”

Esa’s provision of the Columbus lab guarantees flights to the ISS

Nasa had asked for an additional $1bn a year to speed up development of the shuttle’s replacement but was turned down.

The new capsules, which are being designed to travel to the Moon as well as the space station, are expected to debut in 2015.

The problem is not just Nasa’s, though. The US promised transportation services to its European, Japanese and Canadian partners, which provided laboratories and other equipment for the space station.

Europe has a cargo hauler, the ATV, which made its debut flight this year. Caporicci said a proposal is being prepared for the ESA Ministerial Council for a cargo transportation capability that may be evolved to carry astronauts.

Esa is now thinking of upgrading the Ariane 5 rocket to carry a crew ship

“To achieve this second step, it will be necessary to analyse in detail the implications of adapting the Ariane 5 launcher and its ground segment to human spaceflight,” Caporicci said.

“Any such decision would be coordinated with further improvements of the Ariane 5 launcher driven by the commercial missions.

“This successive step will be the subject of a dedicated decision by the Esa Member States at the occasion of the next Ministerial Council, once the programmatic framework will have been fully identified,” he added in his e-mail.

Dr Griffin says he sees no political alternative, but for whomever is the next US president to decide to keep the shuttle flying. The question will be whether it is done at the expense of funding Orion, the shuttle replacement programme.

“This [White House] Administration will not yield with regard to continuing Shuttle operations past 2010, but the next Administration will have no investment in that decision. They will tell us to extend Shuttle.

Europe is also thinking of joining forces with Russia on a future crew ship Manned spaceship design unveiled Berlin unveils ‘crewed spaceship’

“There is no other politically tenable course. It will appear irrational – heck, it will be irrational – to say that we’ve built a space station we cannot use, that we’re throwing away a $100bn investment, when the cost of saving it is merely to continue flying Shuttle,” Dr Griffin’s e-mail said.

Mr Caporicci said he was confident Nasa and the US government would work out an option to keep the station operational. But just in case, Esa was working on “Plan B”.

“We are evaluating developments for cargo transportation and return systems, based on our Ariane 5 and ATV,” he said.

Any new system, however, still wouldn’t be ready to fly until 2015 at the earliest, leaving a gap of four years.

Esa also was thinking about partnering with Russia for future crew transportation systems, Mr Caporicci said. “But that is essentially beyond the ISS, since they would not make their first flight before 2018.” 

Source:

“US Space Woes Felt by Europe”, BBC News Online, Science/Nature, Irene Klotz, 12th Sept 2008

‘Jules Verne’ Craft Begins Final Voyage; Re-entry to Earth

 

Europe’s space freighter has undocked from the International Space Station after completing its mission to the orbiting platform.

The ship – dubbed Jules Verne – moved away from the rear of the ISS at 2129GMT, taking itself to a position some 5km below the station.

The freighter will enter the atmosphere in three weeks’ time, on 29 September.

The manoeuvre, over the Pacific, will destroy the vehicle and the station waste loaded on to it by astronauts.

Undocking was overseen by ISS mission controllers in Moscow, and by Jules Verne’s dedicated management facility in Toulouse, France.

Jules Verne is the first in a series of unmanned freighters that will go to the station over the course of the next few years.

“It has satisfied all its requirements; it’s met all our dreams and more,” said John Ellwood, from the European Space Agency (Esa).

JULES VERNE – THE FIRSTS The ATV is the first completely automated rendezvous and docking ship to go to the ISS The ATV is the largest and most powerful space tug going to the ISS over its mission life It provides the largest refuelling and waste elimination capability for the space station It is the only vehicle on the current timeline able to de-orbit the ISS when it is retired Mission Guide: Jules Verne

“The performance has in some cases been even better than we expected. It’s been very satisfying after so much hard work by so many people,” he told BBC News.

The ship – also known by the generic name Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) – is an immensely complex spacecraft.

Although many of Esa’s scientific satellites are extremely sophisticated, nothing matches the scale of the freighter.

After launch, the robotic craft can work out where it needs to go in space, and then makes a fully automatic docking once it arrives at its destination.

It was developed for Esa as part of its ISS membership agreement, to haul cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the space station; and also to provide propulsion capacity at the station.

On five occasions, Jules Verne has been called upon to fire its thrusters to lift the ISS higher into the sky, something that needs to be done every so often as the platform has a tendency to drift back to Earth as it skirts through the top of the atmosphere.

One of those re-boosts was required to move the ISS clear of debris from a disintegrated Russian satellite.

But Jules Verne has shown itself to be more than just a clever store cupboard and now, at the end of its life, a high-flying rubbish incinerator.

Astronauts, it seems, have appreciated the large space inside the ship. Its docking position on the rear of the platform has been a quiet place to sleep for some crewmembers.

The space has also been used as a bathroom, and the South Korean astronaut and nanotechnology engineer Yi So-yeon who visited the station in April used the vessel as a place to do her microgravity experiments.

From an engineering standpoint, the mission has raised no major technical issues that need to be taken into the next freighter which is already in preparation for an expected June 2010 launch.

Shortly after docking on 3 April it was noticed that a thermal jacket that protects the vehicle from the extreme conditions in space had lifted up slightly.

“But this was not really a problem,” said Michael Menking from EADS-Astrium, which leads production of the vehicle. “If you measured the temperature inside there was no issue.”

And with Jules Verne still operating on all its primary systems, the maiden voyage has in many ways been remarkably uneventful. “You’ll understand if I say I like a really boring mission,” joked Mr Menking.

Cost: Total bill was 1.3bn euros (at least 4 more ATVs will be built) Total cargo capacity: 7.6 tonnes, but first mission flew lighter Mass at launch: About 20 tonnes depending on cargo manifest Dimensions: 10.3m long and 4.5m wide – the size of a large bus Solar panels: Once unfolded, the solar wings span 22.3m Engine power: 4x 490-Newton thrusters; and 28x 220N thrusters Mission timeline: Launch - 9 March; Docking - 3 April; Undocking - 5 September; De-orbit - 29 September Mission Guide: Jules Verne

 

After Friday’s undocking, ATV-Jules Verne will sit under the space station until its final de-orbit manoeuvre can be timed with a night re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Darkness will allow spotter planes to follow the fiery descent over an uninhabited part of the Pacific.

“It will be much easier to observe at night,” said John Ellwood. “We’re going to do the re-entry directly underneath the space station so the astronauts can take photographs of it.

“We want to make sure that everything we’ve done is correct, and this will be the final confirmation.”

How the crewed ship would look Enlarge Image

The question then remains as to what Esa wants to do with the technology. It is already committed to flying another four cargo missions to the ISS, but there is a strong desire among agency management and in industry to turn the ATV into a crewed vessel.

This would see the propulsion and avionics section of the ATV being fitted with a capsule that could survive re-entry and bring astronauts safely back to Earth.

EADS-Astrium believes a step-by-step programme with a budget of a couple of billion euros could evolve the current unmanned design into a fully independent European crew space transportation system.

Esa member states are likely to be asked to discuss the issue when space ministers meet in The Hague in November.

“We are optimistic, we’ve done our own studies from the technical point of view; but the Esa Council at the ministerial level is the right forum to decide if the ‘ATV Evolution’ is realised or not. It’s a political decision,” said Mr Menking.

“It would be cargo re-entry as a first step and then, as a second step, you could think of a crew system.”

Here’s a video of an artist impression of the re-entry: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7600789.stm

Source:

“‘Jules Verne’ Begins Final Voyage”, BBC News Online, Science/Nature, Jonathan Amos, 5th Sept 2008

Rosetta probe makes asteroid pass

Rosetta took pictures of the asteroid as it flew past

The Rosetta space probe has made a close pass of asteroid Steins.

The European Space Agency mission flew past the 4.6km-wide rock at a distance of about 800km, taking pictures and recording other scientific data.

The information will be sent back to Earth for processing and will be released to the public on Saturday.

The asteroid pass is a bonus for Rosetta. Its prime goal is to catch and orbit Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko out near Jupiter in 2014.

Friday’s pass occurred about 360 million km from Earth, in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in the asteroid belt.

Closest approach to (2867) Steins – to give the rock its full designation – was timed for 1858 GMT. Rosetta was turned to give its instruments the best possible view of the target.

Mission planners said the spacecraft would have flown past the rocky body at a relative speed of 8.6km/s.

Both the probe and the asteroid would have been illuminated by the Sun, providing an excellent opportunity for science observations.

A radio signal was received from Rosetta at 2014 GMT, confirming a smooth fly-by. The probe was not expected to beam back its data haul until late on Friday.

The mission will make another asteroid rendezvous as it works its way out to Jupiter.

The probe will visit the (21) Lutetia space rock on 10 June 2010, but from the larger distance of 3,000 km.

Only a few asteroids have so far been observed up close. They have been shown to be very different in shape and size – ranging from a few km to over 100km across – and in their composition.

The rocks are often referred to as “space rubble” because they represent the leftovers that were never incorporated into planets when the Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago.

As with comets, they may contain very primitive materials that have not undergone the constant recycling experienced by, for example, Earth rocks.

Rosetta data should therefore help researchers understand better how our local space environment has evolved over time.

The £600m Rosetta mission was blasted into space on 2 March, 2004.

Once in orbit around the 4km-wide Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the craft will despatch a small lander called Philae to the surface to study the object’s chemistry.

The mission will then follow the comet as it moves in towards the Sun, monitoring the changes that take place on the icy body.

Source:

“Rosetta probe makes asteroid pass”, BBC News Online, Science/Nature, 5th Sept 2008

NASA ‘reviews shuttle shelf-life’

Could this sight continue for several years to come?

Nasa will study whether the space shuttle can operate beyond its planned retirement in 2010, reports say.

The agency will look at what might be required to delay the retirement of its fleet until the shuttle’s replacement – Ares-Orion – begins flying in 2015.

The exercise is aimed at answering questions it expects on the matter from Congress and the incoming president.

News of the study comes from a leaked internal email obtained by a Florida-based newspaper.

Nasa chief Michael Griffin, who is reported to have ordered the study, had previously opposed extending the shuttle programme.

The agency’s administrator argued that the money and effort required to do so would stymie progress on the Ares rockets and the Apollo-style Orion capsules that will succeed the shuttle.

These are being developed by Nasa as part of its “Constellation” programme. The system is expected to carry astronauts to the Moon under the Vision for Space Exploration plans announced by President George W Bush in 2004.

Russian flights

In April, Dr Griffin told a Senate sub-committee: “The shuttle is an inherently risky design. We currently assess the per-mission risk as about one in 75 of having a fatal accident.

“If one were to do, as some have suggested, fly the shuttle for an additional five years – say two missions a year – the risk would be about one in 12 that we would lose another crew.”

But an e-mail obtained by the Orlando Sentinel suggests Nasa will now research this option.

In it, John Coggeshall, manifest and schedules manager at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, writes: “The [shuttle] programme in conjunction with [Constellation] and [space station] have been asked by the administrator to put together some manifest options to assess extending shuttle flights to 2015.

He added: “We want to focus on helping bridge the gap of US vehicles travelling to the [space station] as efficiently as possible.”

But Nasa spokesman John Yembrick described the e-mail as “premature”.

“The parameters of the study have not yet been defined,” he said.

The agency remains committed to retiring the shuttle in 2010.

Five-year gap

In the five-year gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the first flights of the Orion capsule, Nasa will be reliant on Russia’s Soyuz system for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

But some are now concerned about the wisdom of this plan to purchase seats aboard the Soyuz, given the diplomatic tension between the US and Russia over the conflict in Georgia.

 

Nasa’s Orion ship will not be ready until 2015

Last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and other senators, sent a letter urging President Bush to “direct Nasa to take no action for at least one year from now that would preclude the extended use of the space shuttle beyond 2010″.This letter said Russia’s conduct during the Georgia conflict “raised concerns about the reliability of Russia as a partner for the International Space Station”.

It added: “Our concern is that we do not have a guarantee that such co-operative and mutually beneficial activity will continue to be available, and the successful utilisation of the ISS may thus be jeopardized.”

The Democrats’ presidential candidate Barack Obama has also talked about the possibility of additional shuttle flights to close the five-year gap.

Nasa currently has an agreement with Russia to fly astronauts to the ISS aboard the Soyuz spacecraft until 2011. After that, the agency would have to seek approval from Congress for an extension.

Nasa has previously said it would cost between $2.5bn and $4bn per year to keep the shuttles flying past 2010.

The agency has also given seed money to a commercial venture to develop a spacecraft for transporting crew and cargo to the space station.

Source:

“NASA ‘reviews shuttle shelf life’”, BBC News Online, Science/Nature, Paul Rincon, 31st Aug 2008