About Mobility

Very neat… Europe’s ATV first automated docking.

3 April 2008 ESA PR 20-2008. ATV Jules Verne, the European Space Agency’s first resupply and reboost vehicle, has successfully performed a fully automated docking with the International Space Station (ISS). This docking marks the beginning of Jules Verne’s main servicing mission to deliver cargo, propellant, water, oxygen and propulsion capacity to the Station, as well as ESA’s entry into the restricted club of the partners able to access the orbital facility by their own means.

This is the very first time in Europe that an automated docking is performed in due respect of the very tight safety constraints imposed by manned spaceflight operations. All the approach and docking phase was piloted by the ATV’s onboard computers under close monitoring by the teams of ESA, CNES (the French Space agency) and Astrium (the prime contractor) at the ATV Control Centre at CNES Toulouse, France, as well as the ISS crew inside the Zvezda module. In case of anomaly, both ends could trigger pre-programmed manoeuvres to hold position, retreat to the previous reference point or escape to a safe distance.

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[Image source: ESA]

I found two very cool videos (YouTube) of STS-123 night launch. Night launches are the coolest, with literally night becoming day.

The two videos are from different point of views and distances of/from the launch pad. The cracking sound from the solid rocket boosters (and main engines) is one of the cool things to experience; but just imagine that loud sound (and vibrations) but x10 as loud passing through your body — that is how I felt when I saw the STS-60 launch from less than 3 miles away. The first video is great, as you can listen the reaction of the people watching the launch. The second video is just 2.5 miles away from the launch pad (must have been taken by a NASA employee to be that close).

(Added on Mar 31 2008) This video shows the power of the space shuttle at liftoff. It was taken with a remote camera at close range (people are not allowed that close to the launch pad during liftoff).

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By coincidence today I saw the Space Shuttle and Station flying just over, at 12 o’clock. I immediately recognized then as potentially the Shuttle and Station; because of the inclination, they were as bright as I can remember seeing them, for a long time. Back to back flying over, close together. What an awesome sight. After they were gone, I went inside the house and hit the NASA page for sighting opportunities. Yes, I was right.

There is another sighting opportunity tomorrow. Check it out. Below is the sighting opportunities for Austin:

THE FOLLOWING ISS SIGHTINGS ARE POSSIBLE FROM TUE MAR 25 TO SUN APR 06

I found this article about an iPod that was spotted on the Space Shuttle…

I wonder if the iPod is experiencing single-bit soft errors. In space, unless the electronic equipment such as computers (or iPods!) is “radiation hardened”, using techniques such as single bit correction Error Correcting Codes (ECC), single-bit soft errors can and will occur by radiation from space. Computers are highly susceptible to bit-flips when the spacecraft carrying them is flying over the magnetic poles, and obviously if there is a solar flare.

I remember many years ago I spent long hours (of pure pressure during a Shuttle mission) trying to explain a fail-to-sync (FTS) that occurred in orbit; a FTS is when one of the computers in a redundant-set diverge, taking a different execution path from the other ones; a very bad thing in redundant systems, especially during launch or landing, but not as bad in orbit, unless during rendezvous. Based on downlink data, I attributed the FTS to a single bit-flip. Was my assessment 100% correct? We will never know. But it was the best educated guess I could come up with (after lots of data analysis)… Note that FTS are very rare, and the Shuttle software is extremely stable and next to error free.

This I found interesting:

Getting an iPod into space isn’t easy. The lithium batteries have to be replaced with specially certified alkaline batteries. Once docked, crew members can’t bring them on board the Space Station, however, since they haven’t been certified as safe in that environment.

Related to this see On Self-Modifying Code and the Space Shuttle OS.

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An interesting week on space-related activities…

STS-123

The Space Shuttle STS-123 mission launched into its 16 day mission; and busy is the crew delivering pieces for the International Space Station (ISS). This is the the 25th shuttle mission to the ISS. It is pretty cool to see back to back missions. STS-123 launched at night, which is an spectacular sight (night becomes day for a minute or so):

The next two videos are from different point of views and distances of/from the launch. The cracking sound from the solid rocket boosters (and main engines) is one of the cool things to experience; but just imagine that loud sound but x10 passing through your body. The first video is just 2.5 miles away from the launch pad (must have been taken by a NASA employee to be that close). The second video is great, as you can listen the reaction of the people watching the launch.

Cassini in Saturn

The spacecraft continues its voyage of discovery in the outer planets. Cassini survives Enceladus very close flyby through icy water geyser-like jets.

Google Sky goes Browser

Google Sky is now available browser-based. Very cool. Read the announcement at the Google Lat Long blog.

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Just noticed that Hoot Gibson, the former astronaut who gave me my Silver Snoopy Award many years ago is now Chief Pilot at Benson Space Company, one of the new private space companies in the space race (space tourism).

The photo below is of Hoot Gibson handing and congratulating me on the Silver Snoopy Award:

This is a photo of the Silver Snoopy Pin (mine flew to space in STS-58):

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I found this neat short video titled A Brief History of Manned Space Flight (at Yuri’s Night).

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Three days ago marked 436 years since the birth of Johannes Kepler. Born in Germany on December 27, 1571, Kepler was the first human being who was able to put together all the observations from others and himself, and truly see and understand, and define laws of planetary motion. For this he had to make the leap from religious faith into the pure essence of mathematics, astronomy, and science, something that on those days could get you killed. Kepler law’s were the ones that led Newton to his own discoveries and laws on motion and gravitation.

Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion:

• Kepler’s First Law: The Law of Ellipses: The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of the foci. An ellipse is characterized by its two focal points; see illustration. Thus, Kepler rejected the ancient Aristotelean and Ptolemaic and Copernican belief in circular motion.
• Kepler’s Second Law: The Equal-Areas Law: A line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time as the planet travels along its orbit. This means that the planet travels faster while close to the sun and slows down when it is farther from the sun. With his law, Kepler destroyed the Aristotelean astronomical theory that planets have uniform velocity.
• Kepler’s Third Law: The Harmonic Law: The squares of the orbital periods of planets are directly proportional to the cubes of the semi-major axes (the “half-length” of the ellipse) of their orbits. This means not only that larger orbits have longer periods, but also that the speed of a planet in a larger orbit is lower than in a smaller orbit.

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[References and sources: NASA and Wikipedia]

Mark your calendar… the Geminid meteor shower, the best meteor shower of 2007 peaks on Friday, December 14th. For more information see the Science@NASA article Asteroid Shower.

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NASA’s new redesigned website breaks off the traditional, old fashion (government looking) look and feel, with support for new AJAX’ish flashy behavior, a new MySpace tab, and cool graphics. Check it out.

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Wow, so gorgeous, check it out…

Japan’s space agency (JAXA) has released two high definition videos of Earth-rise and Earth-set, as witnessed by its lunar explorer SELENE, which is now orbiting our largest natural satellite.

See the videos (note, downloading is slow):

• “Earth-rise” Images taken by the HD camera of the KAGUYA (no audio)
• “Earth-set” Images taken by the HD camera of the KAGUYA (no audio)

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[Via The Register]

I’m not sure that many folks know about the New Horizons probe, which is in route to the Pluto-Kuiper Belt, in the outer solar system (this is beyond the orbit of planet Neptune).

The New Horizons spacecraft was launched in January of 2006, got a gravity assist with a fly-by of Jupiter early this year (2007), and it is on its way to the outer regions/edge of the solar system, arriving, if all goes well, in the year 2016.

During the fly-by of Jupiter earlier this year, the probe took some gorgeous photos of Jupiter and its moon Io — see Pluto-Bound New Horizons Sees Changes in Jupiter System.

At the time of this writing the mission elapsed time is 639 days, with 2,729 days to go. Note that by then the Constellation program should be in full swing towards the Moon (I can’t wait to see again humans returning to the Moon).

See the gorgeous photo of Jupiter and its moon Io erupting taken by the New Horizons probe:

Click to enlarge.

About the Image: This is a montage of New Horizons images of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, taken during the spacecraft’s Jupiter flyby in early 2007. The Jupiter image is an infrared color composite taken by the spacecraft’s near-infrared imaging spectrometer, the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) at 1:40 UT on Feb. 28, 2007. The infrared wavelengths used (red: 1.59 µm, green: 1.94 µm, blue: 1.85 µm) highlight variations in the altitude of the Jovian cloud tops, with blue denoting high-altitude clouds and hazes, and red indicating deeper clouds. The prominent bluish-white oval is the Great Red Spot. The observation was made at a solar phase angle of 75 degrees but has been projected onto a crescent to remove distortion caused by Jupiter’s rotation during the scan. The Io image, taken at 00:25 UT on March 1st 2007, is an approximately true-color composite taken by the panchromatic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), with color information provided by the 0.5 µm (“blue”) and 0.9 µm (“methane”) channels of the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The image shows a major eruption in progress on Io’s night side, at the northern volcano Tvashtar. Incandescent lava glows red beneath a 330-kilometer high volcanic plume, whose uppermost portions are illuminated by sunlight. The plume appears blue due to scattering of light by small particles in the plume. This montage appears on the cover of the Oct. 12, 2007 issue of Science magazine. Credit: NASA/JHU/APL.

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Google is funding the Lunar X Prize with $30 million, to encourage private teams to go to the moon, with $20 million to the first private enterprise to put a robot on the moon. Very nice Google!

I love the space program, and this kind of announcements makes me want to go back to it… The time for Moon 2.0 is now.

Interestingly, it seems that this X Prize lunar challenge will occur in parallel to NASA’s return to the Moon missions; see NASA manned space exploration plans for the next 20 years.

Video 1: Google Lunar X PRIZE Vision

Video 2: Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) Launch Highlights

Video Credit: The Lunar X Prize Foundation.

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The moon was redish this morning… I saw it! Did you?

Space.com has an article on this morning’s full lunar eclipse – it has been a while since I see one, and it was the first one for my daughter…

See NASA’s page for today’s total lunar eclipse.

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I missed the launch of STS-118 yesterday due to business travel… But it is great to see the successful and historical launch of the STS-118 Space Shuttle Endeavour.

We have liftoff! of the Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-118…

The Vehicle

Orbiter: OV-105 Endeavour at Launch Pad 39A.

The Crew

From the left are mission specialists Richard A. (Rick) Mastracchio, Barbara R. Morgan, Pilot Charles O. Hobaugh, Commander Scott J. Kelly and mission specialists Tracy E. Caldwell (she is gorgeous!), Canadian Space Agency’s Dafydd R. (Dave) Williams, and Alvin Drew Jr. Credit: NASA

The Mission

Mission Number: STS-118 (119th space shuttle flight). The 22nd shuttle flight to the International Space Station.

It will continue space station construction by delivering a third starboard truss segment.

This mission is of great symbolic significance. In this mission is Astronaut Barbara R. Morgan, Mission Specialist, who originally was the backup astronaut for the NASA Teacher in Space Program to Christa McAuliffe, who was part of the Challenger crew who died during the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. Following the Challenger accident, Morgan assumed the responsibilities of Teacher in Space, but had to wait more than 20 years to fulfill the Teacher in Space mission.

The Patch

From the STS-118 Press Kit:

“The STS-118 patch represents Space Shuttle Endeavour on its mission to help complete the assembly of the International Space Station (ISS), and symbolizes the pursuit of knowledge through space exploration. The flight will accomplish its ISS 13A.1 assembly tasks through a series of spacewalks, robotic operations, logistics transfers, and the exchange of one of the three long-duration expedition crew members.

On the patch, the top of the gold astronaut symbol overlays the starboard S-5 truss segment, highlighting its installation during the mission. The flame of knowledge represents the importance of education, and honors teachers and students everywhere. The seven white stars and the red maple leaf signify the American and Canadian crew members, respectively, flying aboard Endeavour.”

Download the STS-118 Press Kit (PDF 10.3 Mb), which contains great information about the mission and the crew.

See the mission in real-time over the Web at NASA TV.

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