Discovery News: Space Diary

Next Stop Mars (Maybe)

A friend of mine once shared his secret to success: Promise less, deliver more. Apparently the folks in charge of NASA’s upcoming Mars mission hired the same business coach.

At a press conference this week to discuss the upcoming landing of the Phoenix probe, the head of the agency’s space science program delivered the grim news: 55 percent of the landers sent to Mars never made it. The unspoken message: Don’t hold your breath.

“This is not a trip to grandma's house," quipped NASA’s Ed Weiler. "Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and risky."

NASA’s success rate actually boosts the odds significantly, with four out of the five spacecraft slated to land on Mars actually arriving to do their jobs. Perhaps it’s a reflection of our culture that we prefer as a whole to linger on the foul-up. We seem to spend a hugely disproportionate share of resources preparing for the last disaster.

Even on Mars. Every available spacecraft in orbit has been jockeying into position to be within earshot of Phoenix as it descends to the planet’s north polar region on May 25. If the spacecraft should fail, NASA does not want to be left wondering what happened, like it was after the botched Mars Polar Lander mission in 1999.

To the best anyone has been able to determine, a software glitch shut down Polar Lander's braking rockets early. So after a journey of more than 170 million miles, instead of softly dropping to the surface, it apparently traveled the last few dozen feet at roughly 50 mph and slammed into the ground.

I’m not sure NASA is going to get too many kudos, however, if things mess up this time around and engineers can generate pictures to prove it.

Worlds of Chocolate

If the standard box of chocolates won't do it for your space mom, a Japanese company has something for those with a bit more worldly perspective. (Thanks Astroblogger!)

Late Night with Garrett Reisman

Space station flight engineer Garrett Reisman kibitzes with Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert during a video linkup on Thursday.

New Life for Old Pad

There are gentler ways to do the job, but nothing gets it done as quickly -- and with less risk to personnel -- than using explosives. So says the United States Air Force , which is overseeing cleanup of 13 million pounds of rubble, previously known as Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 40.

Built in the 1990s for the heavy-lift Titan 4 rockets, the pad’s mobile service structure, which included a clean room for preparing satellites for launch, was reduced to scrap metal a week ago to clear the way for a new breed of spaceship. Internet billionaire-turned-rocketeer Elon Musk's new firm, Space Exploration Technologies, has a contract with the Air Force to take over Complex 40 for the still-under-development Falcon 9 boosters.

SpaceX, which recently won NASA’s nod for a plum launch services contract, intends to redefine the landscape of space by offering rides into orbit at a fraction of today’s rates, which run as high as $10,000 per pound.

The California-based firm, funded by Musk, the creator of PayPal financial services, has a separate NASA contract to demonstrate cargo delivery services to the International Space Station.

SpaceX has flown two of its smaller Falcon 1 rockets from Omelek Island in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Complex 40 is expected to be the firm’s East Coast base for its heavy-lift Falcon 9. The first rocket is expected to arrive later this year.

“Out with the old, in with the new,” said 45th Space Wing commander Brig. Gen. Susan Helms, who conducted a ceremonial countdown to the April 27 implosion.

A former astronaut, Helms is more accustomed to countdowns for space launches, not implosions of their ground towers. Complex 40 has served Titan rocket programs dating back to 1965. The final flight from the pad took place in April 2005. The missions included launch of the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft, the failed Mars Observer spacecraft and dozens of military reconnaissance and communications spacecraft.

A new mobile tower, once considered the largest moving structure in the world, was added in 1992. It featured a huge clean room for preparing sensitive satellites for launch.

If nothing else, bringing down the tower is a lot less expensive than launching payloads into space: AMEC Earth and Environmental is managing the demolition and cleanup in exchange for selling rights to the 6,500 tons of scrap steel.

The New Jersey Crew

Four of the seven crewmembers slated to fly aboard shuttle Discovery later this month grew up in New Jersey/New York.

Meet Mark Kelly, the commander of the next shuttle crew. He was born in Orange, N.J., but considers West Orange, N.J. his hometown. I guess you have to live there to really appreciate the difference.

Meet Kelly’s No. 1, pilot Ken Ham. He’s from Plainfield, N.J. and graduated high school in Clark, N.J.

Then there’s the flight engineer Ron Garan, a pilot as well, who hails from Yonkers, N.Y.

Even Akihiko Hoshide, the Tokyo-born astronaut, who will oversee the installation of Japan’s Kibo laboratory complex into the International Space Station, spent part of his childhood in New Jersey.

What’s going on?

“We’ve got a large New York/New Jersey contingent on this crew,” said Kelly during the crew’s prelaunch press conference in Houston on Thursday.

Later, in an informal chat, Kelly says he didn’t plan it this way, but he sure doesn’t mind it.

As for the rest of the crew, well if they’re not used to the tough-talking, sharp-witted New Yorkers by now, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Returning home with them on the shuttle will be space station flight engineer Garrett Reisman, from …Morristown and Parsippany, N.J.

Homecoming photos

I stumbled upon several unpublished photos taken after the rough Soyuz landing last weekend by a NASA photographer. This first one is of Steve Lindsey, the head of the astronaut office and space station program manager Mike Suffredini consulting a map after the capsule veered nearly 300 miles off course:

Here's what the rescue scene looked like:

A closeup of the capsule, now the focus of an official inquiry:

The most experienced astronaut in U.S. history looking not-so-shabby despite a landing that left her feeling 10 times the force of Earth's gravity for a few minutes during descent:

But still in need of a shoulder or two to lean on:

And finally (and I'm not sure where this fits into the sequence) a great juxtaposition of Earth and space:

Solar magic

Apparently, the sun doesn’t need spots to unleash a solar flare. On Saturday, with not a single spot in sight, the sun released a strong solar flare that registered B3.8 on the Richter scale of solar flares. A jet of highly energized particles, called a coronal mass ejection, was spotted billowing away from the sun a short time later.

Usually, such flares stem from sunspots, which are highly magnetized areas on the surface of the sun. This time, the magnetism was not intense enough to form a spot. The CME may pass close enough by Earth on Monday or Tuesday to color northern skies with aurora.

Here's a short film clip of a rather impressive solar flare -- not Saturday's outburst, but you'll get the idea:

Rough landing

An investigation is under way into why the Russian Soyuz capsule carrying NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and guest researcher Yi So-yeon landed more than 250 miles short and nearly three times harder than planned. It took the Russian recovery team a half-hour to find the capsule, which was burnt from overheating during its steep plunge through the atmosphere. It was the third so-called ballistic return of the capsule with a space station crew. Whitson and her crewmates were able to climb out of the Soyuz unassisted while they awaited rescue. The spacecraft is believed to have set off a grass fire at touchdown. Photo by Reuters.

It’s not as if Peggy Whitson, the NASA astronaut returning from a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station was lacking excitement and adventure in her life. During her stint as commander, the 48-year-old biochemist oversaw five different flight engineers, two guest researchers, three shuttle crews, each of which added new rooms to the station, and then the arrival of Europe’s first unmanned cargo ship. She also conducted five spacewalks and somehow managed to make the whole mission look easy and fun.

Whitson surely could have done without the crash landing of the Soyuz capsule which because of a technical glitch dove through the atmosphere much steeper than planned, subjecting the crew to 10 times the force of Earth’s gravity -- nearly triple the usual force. But what was really unnecessary were the off-color comments of yet another Russian official regarding women in space. Whitson, you may remember, was given a going-away gift by her Russian hosts of a whip.

Noting that Whitson was accompanied by another woman aboard the capsule -- with females outnumbering men for the first time ever aboard a spaceship -- Anatoly Perminov, head of the the Russian space agency Roskosmos, cracked that perhaps the landing was rough and off-target because of a superstitious belief that woman on vessels are bad luck.

Course that doesn’t explain the botched landing of the previous, all-male, crew, but as a colleague once joked: “Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.”

Welcome home, Peggy. Times, unfortunately, have not changed much.

A Passover in Space

As Jews around the world prepare for Passover, the festival of freedom, one adventurous soul is experiencing emancipation in a most literal fashion.

In his new abode aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, a 40-year-old mechanical engineer from Parsippany, New Jersey, has slipped the bonds of gravity and does not intend to return to Earth’s shackles until sometime in June. He is the first Jewish astronaut to live on the orbital outpost, a multi-national complex that has been under construction for the past 10 years.

Living in weightlessness requires adaptation. There will be no matzos in orbit, for example, because the flyaway crumbs would be uncontainable. Shortly before Reisman launched aboard the shuttle Endeavour on March 11, I asked him about the prospect of a Passover in space.

“I haven’t really thought that much about that,” he replied. What Reisman did spend some time planning was how to honor Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who died in the 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster.

After the accident, Reisman was given a choice to help with the investigation or provide emotional support to Ramon’s family. He chose the latter. “It was so incredibly tragic,” Reisman told The Jerusalem Post during a visit to Israel. “Ilan had a great sense of humor and worked very hard to represent not only Israel but every Jew in the world.”

Later, when he was tapped for a space mission of his own, Reisman asked Ramon’s widow Rona if there was anything he could fly for her.

“I’m taking a couple of things,” Reisman told me in a preflight interview. “Ilan flew a copy of the Israeli declaration of independence. It was scroll and he kind of played with it in orbit and they have video of that. She gave me another copy so I can kind of have the same experience with it up on orbit and then I intend to return it to her when I get back.”

Reisman also is flying a cloth with the symbol of the state of Israel that has been signed by Pres. Shimon Peres, a necklace blessed by a Buddhist priest and a set of rosary beads. “I pretty much have all my major religions covered,” he joked.

Reisman’s Passover in space will be spent getting to know two new crewmates, Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko. The cosmonauts replace the current space station commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko, who depart the station on April 19, the first night of Passover.

Fortunately for Reisman, his Russian is stronger than his Hebrew -- he made it through cosmonaut training without a translator and took his exams in Russian as well. But his Jewish heritage comes through as well. When one of his U.S. colleagues asked about his camera view during a spacewalk last month, Reisman quipped, “I think you’re doing great with that camera. We’re going to hire you to do my cousin's bar mitzvah.”

Soon, the space station will have a more permanent mark of Jewish contributions to space exploration: Reisman’s replacement, Jewish astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, is bringing two mezuzahs.

A visit to a matzo factory

Construction boom

The housing meltdown may have stymied construction in many parts of the United States but work has been thriving aboard the International Space Station. Since the arrival of the Expedition 16 crew, headed by NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, NASA has added three new modules to the outpost.

"It's so large I can actually lose crew members at times," Whitson quipped during an inflight press conference on Tuesday.

Whitson returns to Earth on Saturday as the United States’ most experienced astronauts, having accumulated 377 days in orbit during two long-duration spaceflights. She surpasses the 374 days in orbit wracked up by Michael Foale during six missions, most recently as commander of the space station’s Expedition 8 crew.

The Russians remain the world’s most experienced space travelers. Whitson’s crewmate Yuri Malenchenko returns home as well on Saturday after spending a career-total 515 days in orbit over four missions -- making him ninth on the list. Topping the space endurance record list is six-time flier Sergei Krikalev, who has spent 803 days in orbit.