Category: Science And Technology

Not another closer call from our asteroid friends, but that’s what it looks like.

This time we have news about asteroid 2015 TB145 which is a sizable asteroid that is hurtling through space at speeds of over 78,293 mph , and it’s heading this way. Discovered only 10 days ago, the asteroid has caught the attention of scientists at NASA because on October 31 (Halloween night – you can’t make this stuff up), it is expected to draw closer to Earth than anything this size has since July 2006.

Don’t panic friends and tech blog readers. When NASA says “close”, they are talking “relatively close”, which in this case means 1.3 lunar distances, or about 310,000 miles from our comfy little planet.

“This is the closest approach by a known object this large until 1999 AN10 approaches within 1 lunar distance in August 2027,” a NASA report states. “The last approach closer than this … was by 2004 XP14 in July 2006 at 1.1 lunar distances.”

Detected on October 10 by the Pan-STARRS I survey in Hawaii, which employs several astronomical cameras and telescopes from around the world to identify potentially threatening near-Earth objects, asteroid 2015 TB145 is estimated to be between 918 to 2,034 feet in diameter.

NASA reports that we have had closer encounters recently, but not by something on this scale. In 2013, Russian motorists filmed a very large meteorite as it burn up in Earth’s atmosphere back in 1908, and crashed into a Russian forest.

According to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, as of October 16 2015, 13,251 near-Earth objects have been discovered, 877 of which are asteroids with a diameter of approximately 1 kilometre or larger. Some 1,635 of these have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).

If all of this makes you a little nervous, don’t worry. NASA suggests that none of the asteroids or comets that they have identified will come close enough to impact Earth anytime in the foreseeable future. “All known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids have less than a 0.01 percent chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years,” they reported back in August.

For me, the scarier part is that NASA did not spot 2015 TB145 until less than two weeks ago!

NASA stated earlier this week that it is launching an interdisciplinary effort aimed at searching for extraterrestrial life.

Known as the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), the project will bring together a wide range of scientists, researchers, and academics to try to “better understand the various components of an exoplanet [a planet around a star], as well as how the planet stars and neighbor planets interact to support life.”

NASA said that since the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1995, it has found more than 1,000 of them, with thousands more likely to be similarly designated in the future. At the same time, NASA said, scientists are trying to figure out which of these many worlds are, at least in theory, habitable, and which may have signs of life.

“The key to this effort is understanding how biology interacts with the atmosphere, geology, oceans, and interior of a planet,” NASA wrote, “and how these interactions are affected by the host star. This ‘system science’ approach will help scientists better understand how to look for life on exoplanets.”

NASA’s new project, run by its Science Mission Directorate, will bring together earth scientists, planetary scientists, heliophysicists, and astrophysicists “in an unprecedented collaboration to share their perspectives, research results, and approaches in the pursuit of one of humanity’s deepest questions: Are we alone?”

NExSS will be run by Natalie Batalha of the NASA Ames Research Center, Dawn Gelino of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies’ Anthony del Genio. It will also have members from 10 universities and two research institutes. The team members were chosen based on proposals submitted to the directorate.

I for one wish NASA well on there mission to finally answer the question, “Are We Alone”.

After a hiatus of six long years, US astronauts will finally return to space in a revolutionary new pair of private crew capsules under development by Boeing and SpaceX, starting in 2017. Just as importantly this will finally end our embarrassing our current reliance on the Russians for launching our astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

So what he have is that in two years from now, crews will start travelling to space aboard the first US commercial spaceships ever built, launching atop US rockets from US soil. These new “human rated spaceships” which are also known as “space taxis” are being designed and manufactured as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP).

A two person mixed crew of NASA astronauts and company test pilots will fly on the first test flights going to the space station in 2017.

Severe budget cuts by Congress forced NASA into a two year delay in the first commercial crew flights from the original target of 2015 to 2017  and also forced NASA to pay hundreds of millions of more dollars to the Russians for crews seats instead of employing American aerospace workers.

The first unmanned test flights of the SpaceX Dragon V2 and Boeing CST-100 are scheduled to occur by late 2016 or early 2017. Manned flights to the ISS could follow by the spring and summer of 2017.

One of my New Year resolutions for 2015 is to cover more science stories for you, my dedicated readers. There is so much going on in the world of science and space technology that it will be fun to talk about some of it here.

So here we go.

Did you know NASA is planning on heading to Mars?

It is true but one of the big problems surrounding their proposed manned mission to Mars is the massive amount of fuel required for the journey — but scientists may have recently discovered a way to cut that down. And I mean by a lot.

Up to this point, NASA has used something called the Hohmann transfer approach to send satellites and rovers to Mars, which requires a whole lot of planning and timing to ensure the craft and Mars are on the same trajectory to be as close as possible when it gets there. That’s important, because the distance between Earth and Mars changes drastically depending on the orbit, and we only have a launch window of once every 26 months to get it right.

Well, that could be changing if mathematicians Francesco Topputo and Edward Belbruno are correct about using a strategy called ballistic capture to get a space craft to Mars. Instead of having to hit the “bullseye” and blow a ton of fuel to slow down once the craft reaches the Red Planet, this strategy uses Mars’ motion as an asset to have a future craft basically just cruise a bit slower than the planet while allowing Mars’s own gravity to rope it into a stable orbit.

Structure of the ballistic capture transfers to Mars. Credit: arXiv:1410.8856

Why is this so important? You must remember that a proposed manned mission would use approximately 25 % of its fuel to slow down once it reached the planet, but on the other hand this strategy would let gravity do most of that workwhich would mean lower fuel needs. This would allow for a smaller rocket, or perhaps more important allow more room for additional people and equipment. When you’re traveling 140+ million miles providing extra space and a bigger crew is really going to be important. 

Maybe it’s good thing we do not have an active manned spaceflight mission at the moment. However with a planned mission to mars in the decade if this space weather does not calm down “Houston We Could Have a Problem”.

This week the online journal Space Weather reported that due to a highly abnormal and extended lack of solar activity, the solar wind is exhibiting extremely low densities and magnetic field strengths, which causes dangerous levels of hazardous radiation to pervade the space environment.

“The behavior of the sun has recently changed and is now in a state not observed for almost 100 years,” says Schwadron, lead author of the paper and principal investigator for the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). He notes that throughout most of the space age, the sun’s activity has shown a clockwork 11-year cycle, with approximately six- to eight-year lulls in activity (solar minimum) followed by two- to three-year periods when the sun is more active. “However, starting in about 2006, we observed the longest solar minimum and weakest solar activity observed in the space age.”

These conditions brought about the highest intensities of galactic cosmic rays seen since the beginning of the space age, which have created worsening radiation hazards that potentially threaten future deep-space astronaut missions.

“While these conditions are not necessarily a showstopper for long-duration missions to the moon, an asteroid, or even Mars, galactic cosmic ray radiation in particular remains a significant and worsening factor that limits mission durations,” says Schwadron.

The study is the capstone article in the Space Weather CRaTER Special Issue, which provides comprehensive findings on space-based radiation as measured by the UNH-led detector. The data provides critical information on the radiation hazards that will be faced by astronauts on extended missions to deep space such as those to Mars.

The high radiation levels seen during the sun’s last minimum cycle limits the allowable days for typical astronauts behind spacecraft shielding. Given the trend of reducing solar output, the allowable days in space for astronauts is dropping and estimated to be 20 percent lower in the coming solar minimum cycle as compared to the last minimum cycle.

After a 10-month journey, confirmation of successful orbit insertion was received on September 21, 2014 from MAVEN and as a result our exploration of Mars continues.

Artist’s concept of Maven in orbit around the planet Mars. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC.

MAVEN will now begin a six-week commissioning phase that includes maneuvering into its final science orbit and testing the instruments and science-mapping commands. MAVEN then will begin its one Earth-year primary mission, taking measurements of the composition, structure and escape of gases in Mars’ upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and solar wind.

Space missions take a lot of time and patience. For example this mission has taken 11 years from the original concept for MAVEN to now having a spacecraft in orbit at Mars.

The primary mission includes five “deep-dip” campaigns, in which MAVEN’s lowest orbit altitude will be lowered from 93 miles  to about 77 miles. These measurements will provide information down to where the upper and lower atmospheres meet, giving scientists a full profile of the upper tier.

The spacecraft’s principal investigator is based at CU/LASP. The university provided two science instruments and leads science operations, as well as education and public outreach, for the mission.

NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft recently completed assembly and has started environmental testing. In the Multipurpose Test Facility clean room at Lockheed Martin.

MAVEN like all space programs today is a joint venture. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center manages the project and also provided two science instruments for the mission. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. The Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley provided four science instruments for MAVEN. JPL provides navigation and Deep Space Network support, and Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Program for NASA.