And You Thought Hubble Was Impressive...

Over the years, we have seen some amazing, incredible, astounding, superlative-laden images coming from our valuable space friend, the Hubble Telescope. Hubble's had a few struggles, and has needed the occasional repair job, but it's also shown us things in space that have made us "ooh" and "aah" with childlike delight. One of the last missions of the soon-to-be-retired space shuttle will be to go out and give Hubble another much-needed tune-up. Thank you NASA, and keep the pictures coming. NASA, however, isn't resting on Hubble's laurels, and has bigger and better things in mind. The James Webb Space Telescope will someday be sending us pretty pictures from farther out in space than Hubble can peer, because NASA has figured out how to send up a mirror in folding segments, segments that will unfold once they get to their new home and outshine Hubble in the process. This, however, is just the beginning.

NASA has some even bigger plans, due to the development of a new rocket, the Ares V, which will be able to take payloads of 284,000 pounds off this pretty blue ball we call home. With the Ares V, NASA could send mirrors (the main part that makes all that telescoping possible) of over 8 meters into space--no folding required. The mere mention of 8-meter-mirrors may not convey much information to us non-scientist types, but all those jaw-dropping pictures from Hubble come courtesy of a mirror that's only 2.4 meters wide. According to NASA, we're looking at the possibility of telescopes with three times the resolution of Hubble, and the ability to see things that are eleven times fainter than what Hubble can detect right now, because the mirror's surface area will be eleven times greater. I'm not sure how that works mathematically, or scientifically, or any other kind of "ically," but since that won't stop me from enjoying the pictures and the knowledge we gain from the new super space-viewing toy, I'm prepared to forgo any concern I might have at being so dependant upon Smart People for all the really cool space stuff, and simply to be grateful that Smart People exist.

Follow the link to the NASA article to read all about their plans. If you want to expand your brain a bit, click on this "Lagrange point" link for an explanation of 18th-century mathematician Josef Lagrange's discovery of "parking" spots in space, spots where the pull of the Sun and the pull of the Earth conspire together to keep satellites firmly in place. NASA intends to use these spots to the fullest, and fill up the parking lot with various and sundry telescopes, all searching the heavens for new and vital spacey information, and more jaw-dropping pictures. The information is cool and all, and I'm glad that the Smart People have ways to collect and use it, but if you ask me, the best part is the pictures.

Oooh, Pretty!!

I just had to post this gorgeous photo from NASA's Image Of The Day Gallery, of The Snowflake Cluster and the Cone Nebula:


Here's NASA's caption:

Strange shapes and textures can be found in the neighborhood of the Cone Nebula. These patterns result from the tumultuous unrest that accompanies the formation of the open cluster of stars known as NGC 2264, the Snowflake Cluster. To better understand this process, a detailed image of this region was taken in two colors of infrared light by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope.

Bright stars from the Snowflake Cluster dot the field. These stars soon heat up and destroy the gas and dust mountains in which they formed. One such dust mountain is the famous Cone Nebula, visible in the above image on the left, pointing toward a bright star near the center of the field. The entire NGC 2264 region is located about 2,500 light years away toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

I wasn't content to just tell you about the pretty picture this time, and send you off with a link and a nod to go there if you were in the mood. I just had to show you. (Although, I have to say, the image at the NASA site is better resolution, and if you click on the link to the full resolution 3.03 Mb picture, you find that this one has been cropped. The bigger photo is even more spectacular, if you ask me.) Forgive me if posting the picture made the page a little slower than usual, but wasn't it worth it? Since right now none of us get to head off into space to see such sights for ourselves, all we can do is take the opportunities afforded us to enjoy the beautiful things in the universe vicariously, through such blessings of technology as the Spitzer Space Telescope. Fortunately, since NASA is taxpayer funded, its images are ours to enjoy. What a happy thing to think about when we're all paying our share to Uncle Sam.

Hat tip: Futurismic

Hey, I Was Right!!

It's not often that I feel the need to quote myself, but I predicted something scientific and space-related that might actually turn out to be true, and now I have to revel in my brief moment of rightness. Back in July of 2006, I read a report from NASA that the Cassini spacecraft had found evidence for lakes of liquid methane on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. I took a mental leap--not a huge one for the real sciency types, but a respectable leap for me:

Scientists will continue to observe the areas, looking for evidence like changes in size, or surface roughness stirred by winds, to indicate whether they've guessed correctly. If they're right, Titan is "the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to possess lakes." Not exactly the place you'd want to go for a summer vacation. One usually heads to a lake for fresh air and exercise, but Titan's not really a fresh air environment, is it? All that methane and ethane might make it a little hard to head out for a hike, or row a canoe, wouldn't you say? What a shame; it would be such an adventure to head to a lakeside cabin off-world. Oh well, there's got to be a bright side, right? Hmmm, liquid methane...liquid methane...sounds like a possible built-in fuel depot to me. That's it!! Titan can be the gas station on the way to some other cool vacation spot that we'll discover any day now. It's not quite as fun as finding Shangri-La on some other planet, but it will have to do.

My big prediction, somewhat flippantly expressed, was that someday Titan's lakes could fuel our journeys to other exciting destinations. Guess what? NASA thinks I'm right!! Well, okay, NASA doesn't know anything about me and my little bloggy predictions, but I can at least say that NASA agrees with me. NASA is testing a methane rocket engine, hoping to take advantage of the abundance of methane just waiting to be harvested from our neighboring planets. Patrick Barry, writing at NASA's Science website, says that methane engines "could eventually be key to deep space exploration."

Some of the advantages to the methane engine include the fact that liquid methane can be stored at a higher temperature than liquid hydrogen (the current fuel of choice for the soon-to-be-retired space shuttle.) This would mean less insulation, and thus less weight to haul off of planet Earth. Liquid methane, according to Barry, is also denser than liquid hydrogen, which would make the fuel tanks smaller, lighter and, ultimately, cheaper. Barry quotes project manager Terri Tramel of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center as adding safety to the list of methane's perks:

Methane also gets high marks for human safety. While some rocket fuels are potentially toxic, "methane is what we call a green propellant," Tramel says. "You don't have to put on a HAZMAT suit to handle it like fuels used on many space vehicles."

Here's the gravy, though, as far as the NASA-proving-me-right part of this little self-congratulatory post goes. In our solar system, methane is basically ubiquitous, so rockets wouldn't have to carry fuel for the whole journey along with them. They could pick some up along the way:

But the key attraction for methane is that it exists or can be made on many worlds that NASA might want to visit someday, including Mars.

Although Mars is not rich in methane, methane can be manufactured there via the Sabatier process: Mix some carbon dioxide (CO2) with hydrogen (H), then heat the mixture to produce CH4 and H20--methane and water. The Martian atmosphere is an abundant source of carbon dioxide, and the relatively small amount of hydrogen required for the process may be brought along from Earth or gathered in situ from Martian ice.

Traveling further out in the solar system, methane becomes even easier to come by. On Saturn's moon Titan, it is literally raining liquid methane. Titan is dotted with lakes and rivers of methane and other hydrocarbons that could one day serve as fuel depots. Imagine, a methane-powered rocket could allow a robotic probe to land on the surface of Titan, gather geological samples, refill its tanks, and blast off to return those samples to Earth. Such a sample-return mission from the outer solar system has never been attempted.

The atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all contain methane, and Pluto has frozen methane ice on its surface. New kinds of missions to these worlds may become possible with methane rockets.

So, Titan may well turn out to be an interplanetary gas station, as well as a geological destination-of-interest in its own right. Speaking of destinations-of-interest, head over to the NASA article if you want to watch the video of the new rocket in action in the Mojave desert. It's way cool, and downright pretty, with this really impressive blue flame. They're still working on the project, with tweaks to be done before a methane-fueled rocket can blast off the launchpad, heading for fabulous holiday destinations like the Lakes of Titan, but the pretty blue test was a promising start.

The best part of all this scientific and spacey advancement, from my perspective? I got to be right! (Hey, cut me some slack. It doesn't happen that often.)

Pics In Space--The Bonus Edition

Okay, okay, I admit it, I wanted space photos today of space. The pics of Earth from space that MSNBC provided were way cool and all, and I really enjoyed them, but I really love to see pictures from "out there." I wasn't pouting or anything, just a little wistful. I missed the planets and stars, and knew I didn't want to wait another month for my space photo fix. Well, it turns out I didn't have to--NASA to the rescue!! I just got an email with a link to images just released from the swing the New Horizons spacecraft made past Jupiter a while back. Remember the slingshot maneuver that New Horizons performed around Jupiter to add some speed and cut 3-5 years off the trek out to poor demoted Pluto? Remember how LORRI--the eight-inch telescope hitching a ride on NASA's spacecraft--took that really cool picture of little volcanic moon Io erupting for all she was worth? If you don't, go here and read all about it. Then come back and we'll finish talking about New Horizon's photo gallery.

So anyway, NASA's got a few more photos to show off from that little detour, including a "close-up color scan of the Little Red Spot," which is a storm that's been brewing on Jupiter since late 2005. They call it "little" because there's an even bigger system, equally uncreatively called the Great Red Spot, that's dominated Jupitorial weather for the last century, but the little guy is 70% the size of Earth. That's a storm that's the size of a planet. Thing is, it's amazingly pretty. It looks like art, all swirling purples and golds. Most of the rest of the pictures are in black and white, but still well worth seeing, from Jupiter's rings to the multiple moons. There's even a color image of Io's Tvashtar volcano erupting, red lava glowing and blue dust aloft. Here's the link to the article explaining the mission and what scientists are learning, and here's the direct link to the photo gallery. Be sure to click on "More Details" for the pics that interest you. You'll go to a larger image with a full detailed description of what you're seeing.

There aren't any photos of nebulas and galaxies to sparkle at us, and no close-up shots of the alien terrain on Mars from the rovers, but these views of other worlds from New Horizons went a long way toward satisfying my urge for new scenes from space. My bit of self-indulgence for the day is to share them with you. Enjoy.

Saving Tokyo From Space Fungi!!

Advances in technology just keep making things smaller and smaller, don't they? We've all witnessed the "Tinier Is Better" revolution that has been sweeping the globe for decades now. Computers that could perform such impressive feats as calculating Pi to the 50th decimal place, storing and spewing pertinent facts about the solar system, or listing all the American presidents in order of birth used to take up entire rooms. Now your laptop can practically run the world. Video cameras used to require weight lifters with big suitcases to carry them around, and scaffolding to support them when in use. Now Tinkerbell can fit one in her pocket. Cellphones? Not only have they shrunk dramatically in size, now they will do everything from snapping photographs, to holding your date book, to doing your taxes. (Okay, the taxes part is a stretch, but not by much.) The further technology advances, the less space it takes. It's simply the way things work. This applies to everything but TV screen size, SUVs and jumbo jets. For some reason these three items are the exception to the smallification rule. (That is, unless you count iPods with video functions, but why get bogged down in exceptions to the exceptions?)

This Lilliputian trend is quite beneficial, actually. I love being able to take my entire music collection on the hiking trail with me, and I could never have blogged all those Disney World photos that kept you so enthralled in January if it weren't so easy to bring along a digital camera and computer on vacation. Little stuff is just easier to haul around, and that's especially useful when space is extremely limited, like on long journeys in cramped spaces. Where else could the journey be so long, or the spaces so cramped as in a ship flying off to distant planets? Don't think other galaxies distant. Think the Moon or Mars distant. Those are plenty far away at our current level of technology. Maybe one day our advancing tech will "shrink" the distances of space, but for now the other planets right here at Sol central are still a loooong way off, and we'll have to pack loads of stuff into little spaceships, so little stuff is good.

Little still has to be functional, though. There's a lot of important science to be done in space. For example, it'll be important during those long flights to have compact ways to accurately monitor the too-tiny-to-see stuff that will inevitably be hitching rides on our space vehicles, like what kinds of microorganisms are growing--in the astronauts as well as the ships. We've all seen those sci fi movies where some miniscule piece of space dust gets sucked through the ventilation system and later grows into something that lands the ship and eats Tokyo. As NASA plans for future journeys to the Moon and Mars, it's important that they have things covered on the detecting microorganisms front. Okay, really it's more about making sure their spacecrafts' electronic components and structural elements don't get corroded by little growing things, and the astronauts stay healthy, but space bacteria eating Tokyo is a time-honored tradition that is worthy of at least a friendly nod from the Meow.

Detecting fungi and bacteria is, of course, something that can already be done, even in space. Taking cultures and growing them in petri dishes has served humanity well over the years, but the process requires both space and time. So, naturally, in this age of shrink-to-fit technology, NASA has come up with a better way to do it. Trudy Bell, at NASA's science website, writes that a miniature biological laboratory went up to the International Space Station last December aboard the space shuttle Discovery, and Astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams took the mini lab for a test drive on April 1st. The lab is called LOCAD-PTS, short for Lab-On-a-Chip Application Development–Portable Test System, which makes the lab itself much smaller than its name. This thing is dinky, but as we have seen with the iPod, good things come in small packages. The standard methods of growing cultures can take days, but the mini-lab gives accurate microorganism-detection readings in a matter of minutes, and the whole lab fits into the palm of your hand!! Nifty, huh? NASA is developing all sorts of different "cartridges" for the hand-held lab, which will be made to detect specific kinds of potential hazards, and the readings will be compared to the tried and true method of grow-it-in-a-dish:

Over the next few months, LOCAD-PTS and standard culture methods will be used to investigate different parts of ISS. "A second-generation of LOCAD-PTS cartridges for the specific detection of fungi are scheduled to launch to ISS on Space Shuttle STS-123," says Anthony T. Lyons, LOCAD-PTS project manager at Marshall, the NASA center that has overseen the project since its inception and supervised getting the equipment spaceflight-ready. "With each generation of cartridges, we are getting more and more specific in what we detect. Our ultimate aim is to provide the crew with a selection of cartridges for the detection of a wide variety of target compounds, biological and chemical both inside and outside the spacecraft—something that would be especially important for long-duration missions to the Moon or to Mars."

My only question here is, if they have all these cartridges designed to check for specific things, how will they test for the things they don't know about, like (drawing on my vast knowledge gleaned from old Star Trek episodes) silicone-based lifeforms, or crystalline structures that will grow to eat Tokyo when brought back into our oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere? Or tribbles. Will they have a tribble-detection cartridge? Ahh, you're right. They won't need a tribble-detection cartridge, since the astronauts could actually see said tribbles eating their quadrotriticale. What NASA's worried about is fungi or chemicals that will eat their wires, or their astronauts. Sounds like they're on the right path with this little pocket-lab. I would still feel more comfortable, though, if I knew they had a plan for saving Tokyo, and I'd really like it if their Tokyo-saving device could fit easily into my purse. The small one.

More Odds And Ends On A Sunny Day

It's a fine sunny day in Meowville, so it's out to the back yard to dig a trench and put up gutters. I sincerely hope so, anyway. It would be really wonderful if we could get both those things done in the short time allotted before the rain kicks back in--supposedly tomorrow. So, since I'm playing gopher again today, I'll just toss a few quick links your way to keep you entertained and address a few of life's more nagging questions. Such as:

Do dogs know they are dogs, and that you're not? New Scientist has the scoop.

What happens to food and medicine exposed to six-plus months of space travel? NASA's investigating as we prep to head for Mars.

What's happening on the ground in Iraq? Michael Yon is there, and as usual, is reporting what he sees. No sugar coating, no axe to grind.

Do geometric patterns occur in nature outside of snowflakes? They do on Saturn. There's a weather hexagon on Saturn's north pole. New Scientist has a link to a video.

That should keep you busy for awhile. I am now thoroughly caffeinated and ready to go wield my trusty shovel. As I dig, I must keep reminding myself, "People pay money for this kind of workout. This is good for me. It could be worse. It could be raining." Hopefully this will keep my attitude in check as I comply with the City of Portland's drainage codes. I'll try to spare you the anti-City rant today. It really could be worse. It really could be raining.

The Sun In Action

It's turning into Space Day at the Meow. You gotta go watch the video NASA has posted of the eruption of a giant solar flare. When I say giant, I mean giant. According to Dr. Tony Phillips, a production editor for NASA's Science website, this particular flare that Japan's Hinode spacecraft captured on video is almost as big as Earth! Dr. Phillips has some interesting things to say about what Hinode is teaching scientists about the Sun, and why it's important. Have a look. It's good learning. Besides that, the video is just plain cool.

Private Spaceflight--Blasting Off

Hey, if you're interested in privately-funded spaceflight, here's a tidbit from Spaceflight Now you might want to peruse. It's a partial transcript of a post-launch press briefing by Elon Musk. Musk is the founder of SpaceX, a private company contracted by NASA to develop the Falcon 9 rocket for delivering cargo to the International Space Station. According to SpaceX's website, if all goes well with the rocket's development, "At the option of NASA, the Agreement can be extended to include demonstrating transport of crew to and from the International Space Station (ISS). If successful, NASA will have the ability to use the demonstrated capability to resupply the ISS after the 2010 retirement of the Space Shuttle." The goal for SpaceX is to create a line of launch vehicles that will reach anywhere from low Earth orbit to other planets. The company just tested its Falcon 1 rocket as part of developing the Falcon 9, but that is only the beginning of their plans for private spaceflight. Also from their website:

As part of this Agreement, SpaceX will execute three flights of its Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spaceship. These will be the first flights of the Dragon spaceship and the fourth, fifth and sixth flights of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

The missions are scheduled to occur in the late 2008 to 2009 time period and will culminate in demonstrating delivery of cargo to the ISS and safe return of cargo to Earth. The Dragon spaceship is designed from the beginning to have an identical structure for both cargo and crew transport, allowing for a rapid transition from unmanned to manned flight as soon as reliability is proven.

"By stimulating the development of commercial orbital spaceflight, the NASA COTS program will have the same positive effect on space travel as the Air Mail Act of 1925 had on the development of safe and affordable air transportation," said Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO. "Moreover, the requirement for significant private investment and the fact that NASA only pays for objective, demonstrated milestones ensures that the American taxpayer will receive exceptional value for money."

The freshly tested Falcon 1 rocket met with mixed success, making it to space, but failing to establish orbit. However, Musk was quite pleased with the progress nonetheless, and has high hopes for the future. Apparently the most dangerous part is making it off the planet, and the rest will be a fairly straightforward fix, as Musk discussed in his press briefing:

"I feel very confident 10 years from now that we can be putting both satellites and people into orbit, and maybe beyond (Earth) orbit. I feel very confident in the future of commercial spaceflight, private spaceflight and I think this bodes very, very well actually for achieving some of the goals that I mentioned. It is really an excellent indicator that a small company can achieve great things....We had what I would call a relatively minor issue with the roll-control very late in the flight. But all the really big risk items, the ones we were most concerned, have been addressed. If you look at the early history of rocketry, I think they had something like 12 Atlas failures before the 13th one was successful. To get this far on our second launch being an all-new rocket -- new main engine, new first stage, new second stage engine, new second stage, new fairing, new launch pad system, with so many new things -- to have gotten this far is great."

Sounds encouraging. I'm totally on board with the notion that privately funded and developed spaceships can and should be part of humanity's space future. I really like seeing NASA contract with private companies to meet its goals, especially since America's space shuttle is soon to be grounded. Private industry can take financial risks that government agencies shouldn't necessarily be taking, and a commercial spaceflight industry can reap great rewards in the process, both from government contracts and private tourism/commercial transportation. With companies like SpaceX putting private expertise to work, in hopes of making a profit, everyone involved, NASA included, can ultimately benefit, and as Musk pointed out, NASA, and thus the taxpayer, "only pays for objective, demonstrated milestones." Free market meets space. Two of my favorite things taking flight together. Go for launch.

Hat tip: Instapundit, for the press briefing link.

Having A Look At Io And Pluto

I know I've written about some serious Earth-based stuff lately, and it might be a bit jarring to jump back out into space, but this is just so cool and interesting. I had to let you see it too. Dr. Tony Phillips, has the latest from NASA's ventures in space exploration, complete with pictures. For those of you who don't know, NASA has a spacecraft headed out to Pluto. The craft is named New Horizons, and it's carrying an eight-inch telescope called LORRI, short for Long Range Reconnaissance Imager. They're looking to snap some high resolution pics of the recently-demoted dwarf planet and its moons, sometime around 2015. To get her there on schedule, NASA decided that New Horizons needed a speed boost on the way out to the fringes of our solar system, so they swung her by Jupiter, to slingshot around the giant planet and pick up 9,000 mph of extra giddy-up. This will cut five years off the trip--well worth the detour, wouldn't you say?

Now, since New Horizons was doing a flyby of the big guy anyway, of course NASA seized the opportunity to take a few photos of Jupiter and the multiple moons hanging out in the vicinity. In fact, LORRI didn't waste any time, snapping a whole gallery of images of Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. They're all interesting in their own ways, but it's Io that captured the attention of NASA's old hands. LORRI caught Io's Tvashtar volcano in fine form; the erupting plume image is the best "longtime Jupiter experts -- have ever seen." No kidding--the plume rises 180 miles above the surface of the moon! (I almost said "into the air," but that doesn't quite work on Io, now does it?) If you follow the link to the article, the photo is there for your viewing pleasure, along with a link to other pics that LORRI shot in the neighborhood.

One of the rather amazing things about this eruption on Io is what the photo shows happens when the plume gets that high in that environment. Dr. Phillips quotes Andy Cheng, a scientist from Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab:

"The patchy and filamentous structure seen in the Tvashtar plume suggests to me that condensation from gas to solid particulates is occurring," he says. In other words, the gas could be crystallizing in the cold space above Io to form a kind of sulfurous snow.

Volcanoes spewing snow? It is an alien world.

Alien, indeed. In case I haven't mentioned it before (of course I have)--I want to go there!! Things are happening out there, and I'm missing them--or, at least I would be, if it weren't for New Horizons. Fortunately, LORRI was there at the right place at the right time; although, the chances were pretty good that LORRI would catch something interesting no matter when she showed up. Apparently, this kind of action isn't rare on this particular Jupitorial satellite. Io, is a rather volcanically active little guy. According to Dr. Phillips:

Gravitational forces exerted on Io by Jupiter and the other large moons raise tidal bulges in Io's solid crust 30 meters high. This flexing action, like the flexing of a paperclip, makes Io's interior molten hot and, as a result, the moon has hundreds of active volcanoes.

There's a nifty little animated graphic with Dr. Phillips' article which demonstrates all that tidal bulging. It looks a lot like a tennis ball flexing, when a video camera catches it in slow motion after it's been hit with a good strong forehand.

As New Horizons heads out to the farther reaches of our little corner of the galaxy, there are ever more discoveries to be made. Pluto awaits, and NASA plans to closely examine our little dwarf friend, and his immediate family:

"Future LORRI images of Pluto and Charon will have even more detail and higher resolution, because New Horizons will bring us at least a thousand times closer than we came to Io," notes Cheng. Of course, no one has any idea what LORRI will see, because Pluto has never been visited by a space probe. "That's why we're going."

One more interesting thing about Pluto and Charon: Wikipedia says that Pluto may get reclassified again, and Charon may come in for a bigger piece of the spotlight:

Pluto and its largest satellite, Charon, could be considered a binary system because they are closer in size than any of the other known celestial pair combinations in the solar system, and because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body. However, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has yet to formalize a definition for binary dwarf planets, so Charon is currently regarded as a moon of Pluto.

It might be hard for Pluto to face yet another change in status, but then again, maybe not. Pluto and Charon are close, you know, and Pluto may be happy to see his buddy get a little more attention. Besides, being a binary system would make Pluto kind of unique, in our neck of the woods anyway, and it might compensate for getting kicked out of the big boys' club. I'm not saying that Pluto has an ego. He may be perfectly humble, but if I was recently told I couldn't hang with the cool kids anymore, it would probably make me feel better if someone made a fuss over me for awhile, especially if I got to start a new club with my best friend.

How To Protect Yourself From Cosmic Rays If You Ever Happen To Make It Into Space

This one is fun. Remember back in September when the poor commander got lost on Mars and couldn't understand Base's instructions? No? Okay, go here first and refresh your memory. I'll wait... Finished? Then we're ready to move on. Since you've now done your homework, you know that the reason the Mars mission was in jeopardy was that the crew's brains were being scrambled by radiation. Radiation is a big problem that scientists are going to have to figure out before humans start heading out past the protection of the Earth's magnetic field, beyond the orbit where the International Space Station flies above the Earth in relative safety. The Moon and Mars, as we all know, are on the short list for mission possibilities, and spending such long periods of time in space could do more than scramble a few brain cells; if current theories are correct, astronauts could be risking premature aging by heading out into the cosmic ray zone. (That last link leads to an interesting article about space radiation, telomeres, Einstein and pills to repair DNA damage--I followed a link from there to one about what the heck telomeres are, and how they affect aging, with possible implications for human life extension. Pretty interesting if you want to follow some rabbit trails.)

All of that aside, however, what I really want to tell you about is the idea some scientists have for blocking all that radiation, so that no astronautical DNA is damaged in the first place. Patrick L. Barry wrote an article for NASA about how they are looking to make space ships out of a revolutionary new material--you're not going to guess this one in a million years. (Well, okay, I wouldn't have guessed it in a million years.) The material? Plastic. Polyethylene, to be precise. This is what they use to make the plastic trash bags of which we all have an abundance under our kitchen sink.

Most household trash bags are made of a polymer called polyethylene. Variants of that molecule turn out to be excellent at shielding the most dangerous forms of space radiation. Scientists have long known this. The trouble has been trying to build a spaceship out of the flimsy stuff.

But now NASA scientists have invented a groundbreaking, polyethylene-based material called RXF1 that's even stronger and lighter than aluminum. "This new material is a first in the sense that it combines superior structural properties with superior shielding properties," says Nasser Barghouty, Project Scientist for NASA's Space Radiation Shielding Project at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

To Mars in a plastic spaceship? As daft as it may sound, it could be the safest way to go.

According to Barry, one of plastic's big selling points is that when radiation smashes into it, it doesn't produce nearly as much "secondary radiation" as materials like aluminum or lead. That secondary radiation can be just as much of a problem for astronauts as the cosmic rays themselves:

The advantage of plastic-like materials is that they produce far less "secondary radiation" than heavier materials like aluminum or lead. Secondary radiation comes from the shielding material itself. When particles of space radiation smash into atoms within the shield, they trigger tiny nuclear reactions. Those reactions produce a shower of nuclear byproducts -- neutrons and other particles -- that enter the spacecraft. It's a bit like trying to protect yourself from a flying bowling ball by erecting a wall of pins. You avoid the ball but get pelted by pins. "Secondaries" can be worse for astronauts' health than the original space radiation!

Barry says the lighter elements of hydrogen and carbon, the building blocks for those plastic bags, won't completely stop the space radiation, but can fragment that radiation so that it is much less harmful. He uses the example of a chain link fence blocking a snowball. Some snow still gets through, but it doesn't hurt as much. This author has a knack for making scientific-speak understandable, doesn't he? I'll let him tell you more:

Despite their shielding power, ordinary trash bags obviously won't do for building a spaceship. So Barghouty and his colleagues have been trying to beef-up polyethylene for aerospace work.

That's how Shielding Project researcher Raj Kaul, working together with Barghouty, came to invent RXF1. RXF1 is remarkably strong and light: it has 3 times the tensile strength of aluminum, yet is 2.6 times lighter -- impressive even by aerospace standards.

"Since it is a ballistic shield, it also deflects micrometeorites," says Kaul, who had previously worked with similar materials in developing helicopter armor. "Since it's a fabric, it can be draped around molds and shaped into specific spacecraft components." And because it's derived from polyethylene, it's an excellent radiation shield as well.

They're working on ways to address some of the drawbacks that come with polyethylene--like the irritating tendency it has to burn and melt and whatnot. Now, this article is over a year old, and my search on the NASA site didn't lead me to any more updated information, so I can't tell you right now how this research is progressing. Back in August of 2005, no one was sure yet whether plastic really could serve as a shield to make space travel safer, but "hypothetically" polyethylene might be "not just for trash bags anymore."

It's so interesting how many useful discoveries for right here on Earth come out of space research. Man may never fly to the Moon in a plastic rocket. We may never see plastic habitats on Mars, but--and this is important--we can be pretty sure that our garbage will never get cancer from radiation!! That's an encouraging breakthrough, right? Even more valuable, now that we've all read the reports from NASA and know how useful plastic bags can be, we can make the important fashion decision about whether we want to wear plastic bags over our clothes when we go outside, to protect ourselves from cosmic rays. Hey, come on, it's not such a bad idea. If enough of us do it, it could even become trendy. Maybe if we get some Hollywood type to do it first we can all pretend it's actually cool. Then we would just look like lemmings, and not freaks. Hmmm. Let me think about this. Somebody sci fi maybe, but with crossover appeal.... I've got it! Will Smith!! Men In Black, I Robot, Independence Day... yeah, he'd do nicely. Somebody out there want to volunteer to suggest it to him?

Note: Yes, I know I'm being goofy today. I can't seem to help myself. I start out with a perfectly reasonable piece about the science of using plastic as a radiation shield and end up looking to make Will Smith the poster boy for the tinfoil hat brigade (plastic bag, tinfoil hat--same difference.) I'll try to control myself now, but I make no promises. I have a very good excuse. The day started out with snow, and that always gets me a little giddy. Wait a minute... Snow comes from the sky. Cosmic rays come from the sky, too. Maybe I'm so goofy because the cosmic rays are making it past the Earth's magnetic field and sneaking down into my neighborhood disguised as snow!!! This could be a real problem. I better go put on some plastic bags just in case.

A Giant Sunbrella

Do you ever stop and ask yourself, "What if all the climate prophets-of-doom are right?" What if all the worst fears about global warming come to pass and the world is threatened with killer temperatures, droughts, floods, and all the other scenarios that would make this time of partisan politics and the global War on Terror look like the good old days? One possibility, of course, is that a whole lot of humans would die off, and if people and their greenhouse gas-producing ways really are the root cause, then the Earth would balance itself out again with less pesky humans to mess things up. It could be, though, that humans aren't the culprits. It entirely possible that cosmic rays affect our climate, and phytoplankton could play their role, as well. Theories, theories, everywhere. Whether humans are the cause, or natural phenomenon over which we have no control, if the climate does warm up significantly (and I do believe that the words if and significantly are pretty important here), we might want to come up with some options to keep ourselves from becoming barbecue.

This is where the "smart people" enter the picture. NASA's Earth Observatory reports that University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel has come up with a plan, a sort of emergency cooling system for the planet, which won him and his colleagues a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant. The grant will be used to further study the possibility of sending trillions of small spacecraft up into orbit, to form a giant cloud that would act as a sunshade, diverting a portion of the Sun's rays away from the Earth:

The spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer. About 10 percent of the sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun, would be diverted away from our planet. The effect would be to uniformly reduce sunlight by about 2 percent over the entire planet, enough to balance the heating of a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.

One cannot fault the scientific community for lacking ambition, wouldn't you agree? Angel has the specs all worked out for composition, steering and delivery, and if the plan flies "as is," with all the current concepts intact, it will only cost about $100 billion a year to turn on the global air conditioning, "about two-tenths of one percent of the global domestic product." It sounds as if, were the Earth in such dire straits that implementation of emergency plans became necessary, the world's economy could afford to pony up that much, especially if the alternative was going to be factor 2,000 sunscreen, and/or a return to a pre-Industrial Revolution way of life.

In "science time" it wouldn't even take too long to pull the shades, once we were sufficiently motivated. According to NASA, it would only take about ten years to deploy all the flyers necessary for the job, if they can get the twenty electromagnetic launchers up and running that they would need to send the little life-savers into position. Twenty-five years could see the whole project developed and installed, and with a useful life of approximately fifty years, we'd only have to replace it once or twice a century for the duration of the heat wave. How's that for value, huh? Your average patio umbrella certainly doesn't last that long. Of course, your average patio umbrella doesn't cost $100 billion a year, either.

It's kinda comforting to know that whether or not all our technology is the cause of the potential climate crisis that's got the world in a dither, all our technology may also be the thing that saves the day. Wouldn't it be amazingly sci fi if we did end up with the equivalent of a giant parasol keeping the Earth's head cool? Mind you, since the global warming and cooling fears trade off every few decades, in a few years time we're going to be hearing about scientists who are figuring out ways to catch a few extra rays from the Sun, amplify them, and turn on the equivalent of a global heat lamp. Either way, it will be scientists who come up with the schemes to save mankind. Smart people are so useful.

A Rescue And A Contest

Hey, astronomy buffs!! (I know there must be one, or even two, of you out there.) I've got a couple of space-related items for you this morning. Both involve taking pictures of space, but with very different equipment. The first item will comfort the hearts of everybody who has been staying awake nights worried that the Hubble telescope is on its last legs, and NASA has been undecided about its fate, debating the feasibility of getting a shuttle crew out to make repairs. You can sleep well tonight, though, because a shuttle flight to Hubble has been added to the list of things NASA plans to do before the shuttles themselves are retired in 2010. Kelly Young, of NewScientistSpace, writes that the mission could occur as early as 2008.

One of the concerns that has delayed plans to send the crew to one of the most valuable sources of data that NASA has ever had is the unique danger of the journey. Young says, "If anything went wrong at or on the way to Hubble, the astronauts could not take refuge aboard the International Space Station." Obviously, this would make rescue both more difficult, and more urgent, since the supplies available on board the shuttle wouldn't last nearly as long as those on the space station, where an expanded crew would have provisions enough to last 70 or 80 days, compared to about 25 on shuttle resources alone. Nevertheless, the decision has been made, and Hubble will get an upgrade, enabling it to keep sending fantastic images to Earth for years longer:

The servicing mission, if successful, could keep Hubble operational until at least 2013. Without a shuttle flight, Hubble's instruments would have eventually started to shut down. The gyroscopes that point Hubble and keep it steady could last until 2008 and the batteries until 2010.

The servicing mission will add six new batteries, six gyroscopes, a flight guidance sensor, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Wide Field Camera 3. They will be by far the best instruments ever sent to Hubble.

Astronauts might also try to fix the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph by replacing an electronics board. Astronauts will attach handles on the back end of Hubble to make it easier to grab later, in preparation for its de-orbit, probably after 2020.

Now that we're all breathing easier about our beloved telescope in the great beyond, let's talk about something closer to home, shall we? If you've got a telescope of your own and an H-alpha filter, you've got the chance to view Mercury as it crosses the face of the Sun on November 8th. All you have to do is fly to Brazil, stay up until 2:37 a.m., align your telescope perfectly to the nanometer, and you'll have the chance to get a really good ten-second view. Get ready!! Don't blink, or you'll miss it!! Actually, that was a bare-faced lie, as I'm sure you could tell by my telling you to point your telescopes at the Sun at 2:37 a.m. Mercury's transit will take about five hours, and, according to Spaceweather.com, will be clearly visible from "the Americas, Hawaii and around the Pacific Rim."

The folks at Spaceweather are so excited about it they're having a Transit of Mercury Art and Photo Contest. All you need is the aforementioned telescope and filter, as well as a digital camera. Alternatively, you can draw it, sketch it, paint it--whatever suits your fancy. There are prizes and everything. Even if you aren't interested in entering the contest, head over and have a look at the winners from three years ago--the last time Mercury did the Sun dance. They're pretty darn cool.

Well, that about wraps up our space report for now. Very soon I'll have new space photos for you, though, so we have that to look forward to with eager anticipation. Hey, if any of you enter that photo and art contest, let us know, okay?

So Cool

NASA images (provided by your tax dollars) are free to the public, and sometimes so cool you just can't believe they're brought to you by the government!! Here's a link to an amazing image of "The Blue Marble" that is our lovely home planet. Be sure to click on one of the links to a bigger image (to the right of the smaller picture), and also read the description of how they got the picture pulled together over a period of months. I may have to make this shot the wallpaper on my laptop for a while. Right now it's another galaxy, which is also cool, but the blue marble picture is just so pretty, I'm not sure I can resist.

Update: I didn't even try to resist--"The Blue Marble" is now what will greet me when I turn on my computer. I'm not sure how long it will last, but it's awfully beautiful, so it'll take something really spectacular to knock it out of its new place.

The X Prize

NASA didn't hand out any of the $2 million it was offering for winners in the Wirefly X Prize Cup over the weekend in New Mexico, but that didn't stop a lot of contestants and spectators from enjoying the games. The games are designed to motivate innovation in the private sector for space-related engineering, and are doing a bang-up job if the competition that just transpired is any indication. Yes, bang-up is a deliberate word choice. Some of the challengers soared, and some crashed and burned, but it's clear from what the teams accomplished that the prizes are meeting their aim of sparking advances in privately developed space-tech. No one managed to fully meet the engineering challenges, in any of the three categories, but according to Megan Miller, writing for Popsci.com, the games didn't lack promising moments. The Lunar Lander and Space Elevator competitions proved dramatic at times, and one elevator team came within two seconds of nabbing the $150,000 prize. Miller says that it's looking good for next year:

On the bright side, the weekend’s competitions proved that advances in aerospace engineering are bringing us closer and closer to the lunar-lander and space-elevator goals. A clear winner is expected to emerge in each category next year, and the prize money that went unclaimed this weekend will be added to the pot. That none of the teams came out victorious is a testament to how difficult to achieve these engineering feats really are. It is rocket science, after all.

It's pretty cool that this year's unclaimed prize money goes into next year's pot. That ought to add a little incentive for all the teams that didn't make the grade this year to keep trying. Not that they aren't already motivated, but sweetening the pot can't hurt.

Dr. Bradley Edwards, a space elevator expert, who I've linked to before (here's a must-read for elevator enthusiasts), says that things are coming along nicely, and the science and engineering are progressing apace, with the incentive NASA's prize offers to innovate spurring some of those advances. Edwards writes at spaceelevator.com that last weekend's event was evidence of that progress:

The challenges and events are doing what they were intended – pushing the engineering and available materials for the space elevator needs. The challenges have not achieved their goals yet, however, if this event is any indication during the next three to five years I have little doubt these events will produce a very high caliber climber and extreme strength materials.

Sounds to me like they're reaching new heights (sorry, I know that pun was too obvious), and this competition is one to watch in the future. I think it would have been a total kick to be there for the whole weekend, what with lunar landers flying overhead (yes, one of them did fly; it just crashed on the second attempt), robots climbing fifty meter ribbons, self-powered (solar, microwave, you name it), and the tether competition that you can read about in Dr. Edwards' post. Just the chance to talk to some of the engineers and ask them questions would have been a hoot, as Edwards says that crowds of children did throughout the games. I'm not a kid, but that doesn't mean I don't have questions. I have lots of questions. Most of them probably aren't up to the technical standards of the average ten-year-old, but why should I be penalized just because I was raised on Star Trek, and not the new Battlestar Galactica? Middle aged people need answers too!! Maybe it's worth a trip down to New Mexico next year to join in the fun.

Hat tip: Futurismic--for the spaceelevator.com link.

Mission To Mars

"Say again, Base Command? I don't understand. What do you want me to do? What am I looking for? Mars is too big. I can't find base-camp. Oh, we should never have come." The commander panicked as he realised he was lost, and he couldn't understand Base's instructions. It had only been a half an hour since he had taken off in search of the caves, and he had headed his rover in a straight path toward the designated coordinates, but something was wrong. He should have reached the caves by now. He should have seen the double peak just to the right of Sydney crater, which marked the opening to the series of caverns that Earth Command had sent him to explore, and now, when he knew he should be right on target, he was completely turned around. He couldn't even trace back along the route he had followed to relocate camp.

How could he have gotten so disoriented? He had only been driving for half an hour. Or was it half an hour? He looked intently at his watch and tried to remember exactly what the time had been when he left the confines of the Mars Base habitat. Memory failed him, despite the intense pressure he put on himself to think. Think. Why was that getting so much harder lately? Every day further into space had been more of a struggle on the long journey from Earth. He couldn't think clearly. Base-camp wasn't any help; none of them were doing any better than he was. Why was he feeling such anxiety? Why couldn't he remember even what time he had set out? Why hadn't he seen the landmarks he knew were right there? Somewhere.

The poor commander was really only a few hundred meters from his desired destination, but couldn't figure out where he was, or remember how to get home. Why? Radiation. Radiation can potentially cause problems with memory, spacial learning, and stress, according to an article by David Shiga, at New Scientist Space. Radiation. Space is full of it. We have a built-in defense from radiation here on Earth. A haven from the bombardment from space, our atmosphere protects us from much of its harmful effects. Even orbiting astronauts, tucked away up in the International Space Station, or jaunting about in a shuttle, or rocket, are kept safe from the dangers of most of the stray energy particles from space by the extended shielding of the Earth's magnetic field. What happens. though, if we leave the protection of our big blue marble?

NASA is looking to find out. According to Shiga, "...NASA recently awarded funding for 12 projects that will investigate how long-term radiation exposure in interplanetary space could potentially cause health problems in astronauts." Some of these projects are serving up some interesting results. One study, by Bernard Rabin of the University of Maryland in Baltimore, involves studying irradiated rats:

Rats whose brains have been exposed to heavy particle radiation perform more poorly in navigating mazes and have a harder time learning to press a button to get a food pellet. They also are more easily distracted and experience more anxiety in stressful situations.

One of the more intriguing findings in this study is that rats given strawberry and blueberry extracts before receiving the radiation were less likely to have their mental function impaired. The speculation in Shiga's article is that the anti-oxidants in the berries are the protectant factor:

This could be because the extracts contain antioxidants. Researchers still do not know exactly how heavy particle radiation creates cognitive problems, but it is known to create highly reactive oxygen-containing molecules in the body.

So-called reactive oxygen species are suspected as a contributor to the ageing process. As it turns out, the problems the rats encounter from radiation exposure are very similar to those that ageing rats experience, Rabin says.

Maybe if they just feed astronauts on an anti-oxidant rich diet, they won't suffer any ill effects from space radiation, and they won't get any older. Heck of a deal. (Unless that not getting any older involves not getting any older, if you know what I mean, or is that too obscure?) Anyway, the point of the NASA funding for these types of projects is partly to find out just how much radiation is tolerable, so they can design spaceships and missions which will keep the radiation exposure within acceptable limits. I'm sure they have other studies going on to determine exactly how to do that, what materials to use, what time parameters to establish, what Lunar and Martian materials may be adapted to astronaut use, as well as a whole host of studies designed just to help them think up more questions and possible scenarios, that will need further studies to come up with the answers.

While they are doing all this, I hope they stay away from sources of radiation themselves. We've seen what can happen to people who aren't properly shielded. If it weren't for the help of a friendly alien who happened to be passing by, our commander might still be wandering around Mars. Fortunately, the alien, from the lovely planet Gardenium, found him and led him back to base-camp. The other-worldly savior also brought them a token of good will--an eighteen month supply of strawberries and blueberries. Wasn't that a nice thing to do?

To Breathe, Or Not To Breathe

How would you like to live in an enclosed environment, dependant on elaborate mechanical systems to produce oxygen for you to breathe? I'm not talking about air filters, or pumps to bring in air from the outside, but something like the Elektron oxygen generator in use on the Russian side of the International Space Station, which actually splits water molecules to produce oxygen for the nauts to breathe (astronauts, cosmonauts, whatever they are up there, let's just call them nauts.) As much as I would love to be a naut myself some day, learn what it's like to be weightless, and see the Earth from somewhere out in space, or at the very least, orbit, it is a rather sobering concept, being enclosed in a vehicle with a totally artificial atmosphere. It's kind of like being a guppy in a fishbowl, except there's a little machine in there that has to keep making water, or the guppy will run out.

Most of us have been in planes, where there is bottled oxygen available in case of an emergency, but almost none of us have ever known what it's like to live in space, where the chosen few are completely dependant on that Elektron oxygen generator, or its equivalent, doing its job so that they can keep breathing freely. Of course, there are filter systems for the space station; if someone burns toast, or spills bleach, it's not like they can run outside for a breath of fresh air, but what if it were a major problem they were facing? What if the system broke down, and toxic chemicals were released into their very limited air supply? Well, naturally, they'd clean it up. According to Kelly Young, at New Scientist Space, three nauts spent Monday morning cleaning up a small toxic spill of potassium hydroxide, a chemical which can, when breathed, cause various nasty symptoms like "a burning sensation, cough, sore throat and shortness of breath."

It looks like the chemical came from the very system designed to provide the nauts with air to breathe, the Elektron oxygen generator. (It's like the poor guppy's water maker started producing ketchup.) So, the nauts turned off the ventilation system throughout the station, put on masks and gloves, turned up the air filters, and got to work fixing the problem. There is back-up oxygen, stored in tanks and canisters, on the space station, of course, and it looks like the problem has been repaired, although from the sound of it, the system is not completely reliable. According to Young, it has had repeated problems, and required previous repair, and they'll probably have to fix it again the next time their air supply is threatened. It's a good thing that NASA and its foreign counterparts have extensive repair manuals.

It makes me realize how much I take it for granted that God provided us with a system down here on Earth that naturally replenishes its own supply of oxygen, without help from the Maytag repairman. Can you imagine what would happen if the plants we rely on to change carbon dioxide back into oxygen suddenly started putting out potassium hydroxide instead? I don't have a spare oxygen tank lying around in case of system malfunction, do you? It's a good thing they do on the ISS, though. The station has a visitor coming on Wednesday--the first woman tourist to buy herself the experience. I'm glad for her sake that this little incident didn't happen while she was on board. It might put a damper on her vacation.

Helping The Weather Man

I love snow. I always have. I can sit for hours and watch it fall. Even when it's dark, I'll sit at the window, and sigh happily to see it float down in the gleaming circle of illumination coming from the streetlamp across the road. I have a very romantic view of snow. Snow is magical, and makes everything beautiful. On the practical end of things, snow is just frozen water coming from ice crystals in the clouds high above. A little warmer, and that snow becomes rain (something which happens often in Portland.) A bit of interference from warm air sneaking its way between upper and lower masses of cold air, and we get freezing rain, which is close to an annual event here in the Rose City, much to my annoyance. It's just not nearly as fun to watch rain freeze as it is to watch snow fall. The other almost annual event here is getting teased by forecasts, telling me there is a seventy percent chance that I'll get to bask in the warm and fuzzy glow that only snow brings, only to have the prediction be wrong. Again. Rain instead. I never believe them anymore. If they tell me it's going to snow, I assume there's a sixty-five percent chance they're wrong. Sixty-five, seventy.

In any case, whether I complain or not, whether it lands as rain or snow, or some other form of precipitation, moisture that comes down here, starts up there, as ice crystals high above us. Did you know, though, that lightning also comes from that ice in the sky? Well it does. A NASA report that I got today, written by Dr. Tony Phillips, confirms that an electrical charge is built up when different sized ice crystals in clouds rub together. Enough of that electrical charge makes lighting. By NASA's account, lighting heats the air in its path to three times the surface temperature of the sun. So much heat coming from ice is a bit of a mental leap, but according to Dr. Phillips, the science works. It just takes an awful lot of ice to produce the effect.

The awful lot of ice part is where this information gets useful. Counting lightning flashes, as it turns out, is an accurate predictor of how much ice is in clouds. After a three year study, by the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama, using radar equipment that measures the amount of ice in clouds, and an optical detector to count lighting flashes, scientist Walter Petersen and his colleagues have determined a definite correlation between the amount of ice a cloud contains, and the amount of lightning it produces. The correlation held firm over land, sea, and coast. This information is going to help weather reports become more accurate--maybe even in Portland:

Now that the correlation between ice and lightning is so well established, it can be put to good use. Petersen explains:

"Computer programs we write to predict weather and climate need to know how much ice is in clouds. The problem is, ice is hard to track. We can't station a radar over every thundercloud to measure its ice content. To improve our computer forecasts, we need to know where the ice is."

Lightning can help. "Because there's such a strong correlation between lightning and ice, we can get a good idea of how much ice is 'up there' by counting lightning flashes."

According to Petersen, the optical detectors, called LIS (lightning imaging sensor), are inexpensive, and can be located on Earth, or in orbit, so, now that the correlation is clearly understood, the models on which they base weather forecasts could start giving a more accurate view of whatever weather is headed toward your area. If they place lots of LIS devices all around the globe, they can start counting all those lightning flashes. More lighting flashes mean more ice. More ice means more potential precipitation. It's not a stretch to connect that how much ice is in the clouds affects how much precipitation we get down here. Little ice means little chance of rain, snow, sleet, etc. Lots of ice could mean lots of rain, snow, sleet. I'm saying could mean, because even if the ice is there, it's not a guarantee that it's coming down in any given location. They'll have to figure out some other method to predict exactly where the clouds will release their burden. I actually think they ought to skip that step in weather science, and just go straight to a weather control device. That way maybe Portland could get some snow for a change, instead of freezing rain.

This new information and technology could be changing the accuracy of weather predictions in the not too distant future. I predict it will. I forecast a seventy percent chance of increased accuracy. Sixty-five, seventy. Somewhere in there. Unless the wind shifts, or the ocean currents change path, or a butterfly starts beating its wings somewhere over China. Yeah, I think the new info will help. Fifty-five, sixty percent chance. Maybe.

Crashing Into The Future

Welcome to the Moon. We hope your stay here is a pleasant one. Allow us to point out a few items of visual interest upon Lunar approach, for your touristing enjoyment. As we enter orbit, and then gradually slow to landing velocity so that we don't cut short your vacation by crashing into the Lunar surface, you may notice a few craters. Okay, you may notice a lot of craters. The reason being that lots of things that have come to land on the Moon have not slowed down upon approach, but have blasted their way into the surface of the Moon, leaving a permanent reminder of their brief but brilliant moment in Lunar history.

Imaginary tour over, back to reality. I saw a video a while back of some piece of flotsam striking the Moon with a rather satisfactory explosion. It was pretty, for a fraction of a second. Lots of comets and asteroids and such, wandering through space, have had an explosive and lasting impact on the Lunar surface. Did you know, however, that some of the things that have crashed into the Moon over the last few decades have been man made--and sent to collide there on purpose? According to NASA, dozens of spaceships have been intentionally crash-landed on the Moon:

NASA's first kamikazes were the Rangers, built and launched in the early 1960s. Five times, these car-sized spaceships plunged into the Moon, cameras clicking all the way down. They captured the first detailed images of lunar craters, then rocks and soil, then oblivion. Data beamed back to Earth about the Moon's surface were crucial to the success of later Apollo missions.

Even after NASA mastered soft landings, however, the crashing continued. In the late 1960s and early 70s, mission controllers routinely guided massive Saturn rocket boosters into the Moon to make the ground shake for Apollo seismometers. Crashing was much easier than orbiting, they discovered. The Moon's uneven gravity field tugs on satellites in strange ways, and without frequent course corrections, orbiters tend to veer into the ground. Thus the Moon became a convenient graveyard for old spaceships: All five of NASA's Lunar Orbiters (1966-1972), four Soviet Luna probes (1959-1965), two Apollo sub-satellites (1970-1971), Japan's Hiten spacecraft (1993) and NASA's Lunar Prospector (1999) ended up in craters of their own making.

This crashing thing has proven very useful, both as a way to ditch old spaceships and as a way to conduct experiments. So with such a time honored method of testing hypotheses at their disposal, the "crash it and see what happens" method, what's next? What do scientists want to try now? There are future trips to the Moon in the works; 2018 looms, when NASA wants to send humans back for another up close and personal look at the ball of green cheese that hangs in the night sky. So naturally, in the meantime, they're planning more of that always enjoyable pass-time, "Crashing for Fun and Profit", this time for the sake of important survival-in-space research. What they want to find out is whether there is water hiding in some of the frozen recesses in "the Moon's permanently-shadowed craters."

Water is pretty crucial to future success in establishing a permanent outpost anywhere in space, the Moon included:

The experiment couldn't be more important. NASA is returning to the Moon, and when explorers get there, they'll need water. Water can be split into hydrogen for rocket fuel and oxygen for breathing. It can be mixed with moondust to make concrete, a building material. Water makes an excellent radiation shield, and when you get thirsty you can drink it. One option is to ship water directly from Earth, but that's expensive. A better idea would be to mine water directly from the lunar soil.

The question is--is there water available to be mined? That's what they're hoping to find out with a project called LCROSS, Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, scheduled for late 2008. The plan is to take two spacecraft and crash them into the Moon one after the other. The first ship will create an explosion and an accompanying debris cloud, the second will fly through the cloud, testing it for signs of water before it in turn meets its demise--all the while sending data back to Earth. They're even hoping that the debris plume from the double impact will be large enough to see from Earth, allowing observation to continue even after the second ship has fulfilled, and thus ended, its mission.

The task now is to try and pinpoint the best spot to crash and gather the resultant information. Scientists are debating the best possibilities: craters, canyons, lava tubes. They hope to find water deposited long ago by comets, and left frozen on the Moon. Since I'm not a proponent of the old Earth theory, I'm less sanguine about the concept that water will have been left by wandering water-bearers from long ago, but who knows what God has put there for us, knowing we would one day try venturing to the stars? However it got there, if it's there at all, it would be good if we can find it. After all, who wants to pack in water if they can find it locally? Camping 101. Camping on the Moon is going to have enough challenges; a local water source would be awfully helpful. I hope this crash test is a smashing success.

Lake Titan

I'm still not getting much of a chance to blog right now. My husband is taking the week off from his day job so that we can work on getting things put to rights in the construction zone that is our back yard. We didn't get to insulate or Sheetrock the garage/shop yet, because the inspector didn't show up till yesterday, but we've been making progress all the same. We put a retaining wall in all the way to the back of the shop over the weekend, got it back-filled and the path that runs along it constructed yesterday, and are starting the wallboard inside this morning. We, of course, chose a heat wave to push into full manual labor mode, making the whole process a lot stickier, but progress is progress, and we're grateful to be moving ahead. We're especially glad my Darling's back is holding up after his recent infirmity. So far, so good.

I'm not getting much reading in, but I did get a fun little alert from NASA this morning. "The Cassini spacecraft, using its radar system, has discovered very strong evidence for hydrocarbon lakes on Titan [Titan being one of Saturn's moons]. Dark patches, which resemble terrestrial lakes, seem to be sprinkled all over the high latitudes surrounding Titan's north pole. " They're still guessing what these lakes are made of, probably liquid methane or ethane, and they're still not sure that the dark patches are actually liquid lakes, but the evidence is pointing in that direction.

Scientists will continue to observe the areas, looking for evidence like changes in size, or surface roughness stirred by winds, to indicate whether they've guessed correctly. If they're right, Titan is "the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to possess lakes." Not exactly the place you'd want to go for a summer vacation. One usually heads to a lake for fresh air and exercise, but Titan's not really a fresh air environment, is it? All that methane and ethane might make it a little hard to head out for a hike, or row a canoe, wouldn't you say? What a shame; it would be such an adventure to head to a lakeside cabin off-world. Oh well, there's got to be a bright side, right? Hmmm, liquid methane...liquid methane...sounds like a possible built-in fuel depot to me. That's it!! Titan can be the gas station on the way to some other cool vacation spot that we'll discover any day now. It's not quite as fun as finding Shangri-La on some other planet, but it will have to do.

Private Hopes

Have a look at Rand Simberg's latest at TCS Daily, as he examines space travel, both past and future, from the first time man stepped on the Moon, to the colonization of Mars. He talks of the hopes of the past and "...the vision offered to so many of us in the sixties, of a progression of space stations, to lunar bases, to sending humans themselves to the Red Planet, and not just their electromechanical emissaries." He points out the obvious--thus far we have fallen short of that goal, although the goal remains. Simberg also talks of the hopes for the future, and the need for a new approach to our quest for the stars. He fears that NASA is relying too much on old thinking and old technology, and expresses concern that NASA's current aims in space travel will not be served by its return to the massively expensive Apollo approach that was originally abandoned because its costs were too high. He seems more sanguine about the future of privately funded space exploration, such as the recent progress toward a space hotel. Simberg's bio states that he's "a recovering aerospace engineer and a consultant in space commercialization, space tourism and Internet security," so I suppose he's got a vested interest in private sector space travel. However. I don't get the impression that he's got an anti-government axe to grind, merely that he wants to get out there, and is tired of waiting for Uncle Sam to get his act together. He is hoping that getting more people in on the action will get us all a little closer to "the final frontier."

Update: I don't have quite the same reservations as Simberg about NASA's approach to future ventures past Earth's orbit, despite the obvious shortcomings of the last few decades, but then I also don't have his knowledge. So, read his piece for yourself and let me know whether you think he's on the money.