New Mars Forums

In close coordination with the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD), the Lunar Surface Systems Project Office at the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC), plans to issue a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for ESMD Lunar Surface Systems (LSS) Concept Studies. NASA has spent time over the past 2 years studying the various functional needs and technical challenges inherent in exploration of the Lunar Surface. NASA is seeking innovative concepts related to particular areas of study that will be detailed in the BAA release. Areas of study may include challenges associated with regolith moving, energy storage, minimum functionality habitats, consumables packaging, avionics and software.

Here is Obama in his own words. You make up your own minds:

Q: I was wondering what your plans are for the space center?

A: Our space program, I think, has always symbolized what's best about America. That spirit of adventure. Limitless frontiers. Being able to achieve whatever it is we can imagine and dream.

So I want to not just maintain our space program, but strengthen our space program. Part of the problem, I'll be honest with you, I think that over the last decade, maybe two decades, we haven't defined our core mission of the space program as well as it needs to be.

I can imagine during the Apollo program everybody was very clear. First were going to  send astronauts around the planet. Then we're going to send them to the moon. Then were going to land them on the moon. It captured people's imagination.

Now even though a lot of good work has been done through the shuttle program, I don't think people have as deep a commitment to the program. So what I want to do is to work with NASA to define the program.

Now I know we're transitioning from the shuttle to the Orion program and I am fully committed to making sure that is funded. But I want to review with NASA what are we doing in terms of manned flights to the moon or to Mars vs. are we better off using things like Hubble that yields us more information and better bang for the buck.

The bottom line is I am absolute committed to making sure we have a space program that is second to none in the world. That's my absolute commitment. But I want to sit down with NASA and figure out what's our focus and make sure that that focus is clear and yielding the kind of benefits over time. I want us to understand what it is we're trying to accomplish.

It is very important, though, because other countries -- the Europeans, China -- they are all in a position where they could potentially leapfrog us.

By Craig Covault/Aviation Week & Space Technology

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA Phoenix Mars lander flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are intensively assessing two final major variables that could affect the success of the Phoenix landing on the planet at 7:53 p.m. EST May 25.

One factor is the weather, specifically atmospheric density, at the north polar landing site. Data from Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) are being examined to determine if any updates will be needed to the timing of Phoenix parachute deployment.

Peter Smith, the mission principal investigator from the University of Arizona, said that so far neither atmospheric density nor weather overall appear to be problems at the landing site, although the team will remain vigilant until just before landing.

Slightly less atmospheric density at the Spirit rover's landing site caused by a dust storm a few days before its Jan. 4, 2004, landing caused its parachute to be slightly less effective than desired, nearly resulting in a crash.

If atmospheric density is a concern for Phoenix, controllers can program the spacecraft to deploy its parachute a few seconds earlier than the original timing. Such an update can be sent to Phoenix as late as three hours before touchdown. A few weeks ago MRO imagery showed two large dust devils roaming around the center of the landing site. There should be less of a chance for dust devils now due to somewhat increased temperatures at the site, but nobody wants Phoenix to be greeted by even a weak Martian dust devil on landing day.

"Much like conditions on Earth, the weather on Mars fluctuates and has an impact on the parameters we provide to the spacecraft during entry, descent and landing," says Brent Shockley, Phoenix configuration and information management engineer. "Therefore, engineers at JPL monitor the weather at the landing site up until landing and feed those conditions into the simulations run on the supercomputers at JPL to see how it might affect our landing and how we need to adjust the parameters we send to the spacecraft."

In addition to weather at the landing site, Phoenix controllers also are analyzing tracking data from a 2-second rocket engine firing May 17 to nudge the spacecraft slightly more toward the center of the 20-kilometer wide, 60-kilometer long landing ellipse. A final trajectory correction maneuver 21 hours before landing is being considered that would move the touchdown point about 8 miles toward the northwest, with the goal of hitting the center of the certified landing zone, where rock hazards are minimal. A final decision will be made on that maneuver about midday May 24, with the actual rocket engine firing at about 9 p.m. PST that night.

"Phoenix is getting closer, but there is obviously still plenty of work to be done," Shockley says.

If a person were riding on Phoenix now four days before landing, Mars would appear to be about the size of the full moon out in front of the spacecraft, but growing larger and larger day by day.

By midday May 25 it will be an enormous red planet dominating the blackness of space ahead of the lander just as it separates from its cruise stage. Phoenix will be approaching from the northern night side heading toward a touchdown just above the Martin arctic circle at midday local time at the landing site.

In what's beginning to look like a case of planetary measles, a third red spot has appeared alongside its cousins — the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr. — in the turbulent Jovian atmosphere.

This third red spot, which is a fraction of the size of the two other features, lies to the west of the Great Red Spot in the same latitude band of clouds.

The new red spot was previously a white oval-shaped storm. The change to a red color indicates its swirling storm clouds are rising to heights like the clouds of the Great Red Spot. One possible explanation is that the red storm is so powerful it dredges material from deep beneath Jupiter's cloud tops and lifts it to higher altitudes where solar ultraviolet radiation — via some unknown chemical reaction — produces the familiar brick color.

Detailed analysis of the visible-light images taken by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on May 9 and 10, and near-infrared adaptive optics images taken by the W.M. Keck telescope on May 11, is revealing the relative altitudes of the cloud tops of the three red ovals. Because all three oval storms are bright in near-infrared light, they must be towering above the methane in Jupiter's atmosphere, which absorbs the Sun's infrared light and so looks dark in infrared images.

By Rob Coppinger

In a departure from previous spherical Russian capsule designs, a conical manned capsule with a service module has been selected for the European Space Agency and Russia's Federal Space Agency (FSA) joint programme Crew Space Transportation System (CSTS).

With a maiden test flight expected in 2015 and the first manned mission scheduled for 2018, both from Russia's planned Vostochny spaceport, the CSTS would carry six astronauts to low-Earth orbit or four to the Moon like NASA's Orion crew exploration vehicle, the design is a conical capsule and service module.

Under the agreement reached on 15 April by ESA and FSA, both organisations will engage in joint systems engineering tasks while ESA's industrial consortium will develop the service module and Russia's Rocket and Space Corporation Energia will be the capsule's prime contractor and oversee service module-capsule integration. The service module will be derived from ESA's International Space Station cargo spacecraft, the Automated Transfer Vehicle.

The FSA describes the CSTS launcher as having a baseline payload capability of 18,000kg (39,600lb). However, the capsule and service module combined mass may not be that much, says Manuel Valls, ESA's CSTS programme manager and head of policy for the agency's human spaceflight, microgravity and exploration directorate. He told Flight International: "The Russian rocket is not part of the co-operation agreement."

Valls says the CSTS will be designed to be compatible with Russia's and ESA's spaceports and he does not rule out, in the long term, the vehicle being launched on a man-rated EADS Astrium Ariane 5. Despite rumours of a cargo variant CSTS, Valls says there is only a crew version for the time being.

An intermediate system concept for the crewed CSTS will be discussed by ESA and the FSA in June and a technical and programmatic report will be finalised in October. The agency's leadership will present to its ministerial November conference the report's proposal for the member states to fund the development of the ATV-derived service module and related activities for its integration with the capsule and launcher.

"The odds of a direct hit are negligible. If, however, we start building big lunar outposts with lots of surface area, we'll have to carefully consider these statistics and bear in mind the odds of a structure getting hit.

Secondary impacts are the greater concern. When meteoroids strike the Moon, debris goes flying in all directions. A single meteoroid produces a spray consisting of thousands of "secondary" particles all traveling at bullet-like velocities. This could be a problem because, while the odds of a direct hit are low, the odds of a secondary hit may be significantly greater. "Secondary particles smaller than a millimeter could pierce a spacesuit," notes Cooke."

HOUSTON -- NASA Thursday adjusted the target launch dates for two space shuttle missions in 2008. Shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope is now targeted for Oct. 8, and Endeavour's STS-126 supply mission to the International Space Station has moved from Oct. 16 to Nov. 10.

The final servicing mission to Hubble was moved from Aug. 28 due to a delay in deliveries of components, including the external fuel tanks, and the need to prepare Endeavour for a possible rescue mission approximately two weeks after STS-125 launches.