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Posts Tagged ‘space shuttle’

If only we had invented a reliable American-made reusable transport system

The reason for the delay is pretty simple: when a spacecraft crashes into the ground due to some kind of unforeseen engine trouble, it's just good sense to perform as many tests as needed to ensure whatever caused the crash can't cause another. According to unnamed space official sources, that'll entail two test launches of the unmanned Soyuz rocket.

As it stands, three of the remaining crew--Alexander Samokutyayev, Ron Garan (who likes to take pretty pictures of Earth), and mission commander Andrey Borisenko--are due to come home on September 16th, pushed back from September 8th. Three additional crew were supposed to blast off on September 22nd, but with this delay, that's been pushed to late October or early November. If there are any further delays, Roskosmos will have to decide whether to bring the remaining three astronauts back home, leaving the ISS unmanned.

It's no simple thing to leave the ISS unmanned; it can be controlled remotely from Earth, but not nearly as easily or effectively. In the wake of the delay, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is said to be calling for extra security checks and analyzing the state of the beleaguered space agency. Times like this we wish we still had a working Space Shuttle, right?

[Reuters]

Five decades of spacecraft launches have taken a toll on the sandy soils beneath the Kennedy Space Center, according to a report by Florida Today. Plumes of chemicals will cost $96 million to clean up in the next 30 years, including $6 million this year.

The most common contaminant is trichloroethylene, or TCE, which was used to clean rocket engines (although not the space shuttle main engines). TCE cleans out the hydrocarbon deposits left over from burning rocket fuel, which could explode if ignited. NASA used to dump TCE straight into the ground, a practice that stopped by the mid-1970s.

As Florida Today points out, astronauts walked on the moon for the first time a year before President Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. So the rocket launches of the 1950s and '60s pre-dated laws governing the toxic substances they produced.

TCE is a known carcinogen, and it persists in soil, particularly in the alkaline sands surrounding the Space Coast. NASA spends an average $8 million to $10 million a year cleaning up TCE and other hazards.

In all, there are apparently 267 known contaminated sites at KSC, 141 of which have been cleaned up. The rest are in various stages of assessment or remediation, Florida Today reports. Solvents and a host of flame retardants, arsenic and nickel penetrate the soils surrounding Launch Pad 39B, the main shuttle pad, the site reports. NASA is developing new methods to clean it up.

And this is just ground contamination — air pollution is a whole different story. Last year, a study examining private spaceflight found the tourism industry could dump large amounts of black carbon into the atmosphere, where it would change atmospheric conditions and potentially worsen global warming.

Apparently, humans leaving the Earth is not very good for its health.

[Florida Today]

Originally, SpaceX's launch to the International Space Station (which would be completed using a Dragon capsule aboard a Falcon 9 rocket) required two test demonstrations: One would include a "rendezvous" in which SpaceX flies near the ISS, and a second would include an actual docking with the ISS. If that sounds like a real mission and not a "test demonstration," you're right: SpaceX would indeed be delivering some sort of "limited cargo," according to Spaceflight Now. But it seems as though SpaceX is both ambitious and ahead of schedule, as they asked NASA, which is the public partner of the in-part publicly funded SpaceX, to approve the combining of these two missions into a single one--or, more accurately, to just ditch the first rendezvous-only flight.

There's no real rush here; the last space shuttle mission replenished the ISS's supplies to the extent that the astronauts aboard will be perfectly well-equipped through 2012. But SpaceX is evidently eager to start making regular deliveries to the ISS, which, of course, is the reason for its $1.6 billion contract with NASA. NASA, for its part, "technically have agreed" to the combination of the test flights--formal approval has yet to be given, though that seems inevitable. It's a good sign for proponents of the new private world of space travel--SpaceX seems more capable than ever. Of course, if you're more in the mood for some very-recent-events nostalgia, you can check out our complete coverage of the last space shuttle launch here.

[via Space News and Spaceflight Now]

Atlantis slipped away at 2:28 a.m. EDT Tuesday, flying a half-loop over the station so the crews could take pictures of their respective spacecraft. The ISS rotated 90 degrees so the shuttle astronauts could snap a picture of its long axis, a view the shuttle can't normally see. The pictures will document the product of the space shuttle fleet's three decades of service, NASA said.

“Farewell, ISS, make us proud,” said commander Chris Ferguson.

Shortly after the loop maneuvers, the crew fired Atlantis' engines to move the spacecraft farther apart.

The station will now be served by Russian Soyuz spacecraft and by private companies. Incidentally, on Monday one such company, SpaceX, broke ground on a launch complex for its Falcon Heavy rocket, which will be the most powerful lift vehicle since the Saturn V.

Throughout the station’s life, shuttles have made 37 visits, in which 10 modules, four sets of solar arrays, 354 feet of truss and countless science experiments were put together, NASA said. On this final trip, Atlantis brought enough supplies to last at least another year. (Click here to read our full coverage of STS-135.)

Among the items Atlantis left behind is an American flag that flew on STS-1, the first shuttle mission, back in 1981. It will remain on the space station, NASA said, until an American astronaut riding on an American spacecraft comes to bring it home.

To commemorate last week's historic Shuttle launch, we've compiled a sentimental collection of manned spaceflight stories from the PopSci archive

Ironically enough, the past can look a whole lot like a distant tomorrow when you study it through our 138-year archives. So until NASA can afford to send humans back into space, let's reminisce on the agency's golden age by flicking through our most dazzling space features.

Click to launch the photo gallery.

In 1919, we'd hardly begun the golden age of aviation, let alone the age of space travel, but we couldn't look to the skies without wondering what it would be like to break through the atmosphere and soar among the stars. Illustrations from that period depict crew members floating in zero gravity while sporting the typical aviation garb: pilot caps, bomber jackets, and leather boots.

Forty years down the road, astronauts started looking more like they do today. Space technology progressed so quickly between those decades that if we continued at that rate, we'd likely have visited Mars by now. Consider how NASA sent a man to the moon just eleven years after it was founded. After the first manned moon landing, Dr. Wernher von Braun predicted that civilians would travel to space by the late 1970s. President Nixon's formal endorsement of the Space Shuttle program further convinced him that humans would never by able to stay put on land.

"The old argument over manned vs. unmanned space flight would thus simply disappear," von Braun wrote in 1972. "With manned, reusable shuttles providing cheaper transportation into orbit than any other system, the shuttle will corner the space-transportation market."

Those sentences might be a little sad in retrospect, but as Rebecca wrote last week, there's no reason to conclude that that the end of manned spaceflights marks the end of NASA. With endeavors like Juno's mission to Jupiter and MSL's rocket to Mars, it's clear that progress endures and people prevail, albeit with their feet on the ground.

Click through our gallery to read about Apollo 11, the Space Shuttle's debut, and the various musings of Dr. Wernher von Braun.

One of the most spectacular ways to watch a Shuttle launch (if you're not there in person) is from the video cameras mounted on the booster rockets as it goes up, and then as they fall off and splash down. NASA has just released the footage from the final Shuttle launch ever. Watch it below.

See our full coverage of the last launch here.

Or, perhaps more accurately: Dear Congress: please fund NASA sufficiently. After witnessing first-hand the extraordinary act of putting humans into space this Friday, I've realized that the importance of our manned exploration of space transcends budgets and politics

It's been tough to articulate those feelings--where they came from, and why. But I think I've managed to trace them back to a single source: the four astronauts inside Atlantis.

As of today, the United States no longer has the capacity to put humans into space. Three decades of doing it several times a year are over. So what now?

Part of that answer is an ambitious program of unmanned missions beginning this year. But having witnessed space flight from an entirely different perspective this weekend, I'm hooked on humans in space. NASA needs to regain the capacity to fly astronauts into orbit and beyond as soon as possible.

I surprised myself by becoming so emotional as Atlantis faded out of sight beyond the cloud ceiling. And I wasn't alone, judging by the eye-drying and spontaneous hugs I saw around me at the KSC press site--everyone was similarly buzzed. It doesn't get much more dramatic than a rocket launch, as far as what we humans are capable of here on Earth. The tension of the countdown, the loud and fiery release--it's indescribable.

But then your brain chokes on an amazing fact: there are four people inside that shuttle experiencing all this excitement and tension on a completely different level, one of unfathomable magnitude relative to where you stand on terra firma. Your heart pours out to them, imagining them three miles away, strapped in, prepared to do something extraordinary. If I'm this worked up as a spectator, I thought, imagine the feelings inside the heads of the astronauts.

And these are government employees. They're not millionaires. Not to disparage space tourists; if I had the money, I would be spending it on putting myself into orbit, no question. But does the public cry or hug en masse when Charles Simonyi blasts off from Baikonur in a Soyuz rocket? Do crowds gather? This question is in no way indicative of any fault in Mr. Simonyi's character or motivation. I stood behind him while we were waiting to get our launch credentials; he seemed like a perfectly nice gentleman. But the reason an estimated one million people packed up their cars and RVs to drive to the Space Coast for a space shuttle launch is because it is put on by the people. Everyone who made that launch possible--in the truest definition of a government employee, they're our representatives in this incredible project. We don't just associate ourselves with them, we live through them. That means something. They've devoted their life to this very civil, very scientific cause--the exploration of outer space.

More than anything else it's the humans who made me tear up. Humans are what made us all feel that spontaneous joy next to the big clock in that field. Humans are what elicited a loud cheer in NASA's Tweetup tent accompanying main-engine cutoff--the point in the mission where a safe orbit is assured. Humans are what made me well up again when my phone buzzed with messages in my pocket, knowing my own friends and loved ones were on the other end, wanting to share in what I had just experienced.

This is not to say, though, that canceling the shuttle program was a bad decision. After three decades of service, all in low-earth orbit, NASA has wisely elected to utilize cheaper launch systems, both foreign and private, for the laborious duty of ferrying supplies and eventually astronauts to and from the ISS, which has become the shuttle's primary mission.

What's troubling is the uncertain future for the type of American manned spaceflight that pushes the boundaries of exploration forward. It could be argued that the shuttle itself failed on that goal. But despite its compromised scope, the world's first reusable space plane became an iconic figure in the American space program, perhaps for no other reason than it carried more humans into space than any other launch system in history.

The two leading candidates to replace the shuttle currently demonstrate how interesting a time this is for space exploration. SpaceX, a private company, will almost certainly have the capability to put a human into low-earth orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule before NASA itself does. SpaceX is also racing to develop a much bigger rocket, Falcon Heavy, with the ability to haul more cargo and/or reach deep space.

NASA's own plans, recently in flux after the cancellation of the moon-bound Constellation program, have solidified around the Space Launch System (SLS), a heavy-lift rocket based on the shuttle's main engines and solid rocket boosters, and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), a two- to four-person crew capsule developed by Lockheed Martin based on its Orion concept. Both are essentially the same systems outlined in the Constellation plan, but with reconfigured mission goals of reaching an asteroid and eventually venturing to Mars, rather than again landing on the moon.

Speaking to CNN over the weekend, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden reaffirmed the Obama administration's timeline for the two missions: reaching an asteroid by 2025, and achieving Martian orbit "with the intent of landing" sometime in the 2030s. But in a time of severe deficit crisis, ambitious NASA programs like these are of course subject to appropriations. The recent cancellation threat of the behind-schedule but critically important James Webb telescope should be indicative of the budgetary struggles NASA is up against.

I believe, though, that It is absolutely critical, even in these fiscally constrained times, to push relentlessly forward with manned space exploration. Now that the shuttle program is gone, I think we'll begin to realize something even more profoundly in its absence: That the most important thing we can put into space is ourselves.