Discovery Space: Next Generation

Kentucky Students Send Payload to (not quite) Space

Does your state have a space program? Does your college?

Don't answer too quickly -- if you think the answer is no, you might be surprised.

Kentucky might not be among the first places that comes to mind when you think about space activities, but in fact the state has a very active and enthusiastic program, focused on getting college students actively involved in hands-on space-related research, but also providing opportunities for high-school and even grade-school students as well.

Kentucky Space is working toward the first launch of a student-built satellite next year, but in the meantime they're not just sitting around waiting. They're doing real tests, sending payloads up to just a bit below the edge of space, using high-altitude helium balloons. Their first such test, and a big success, was completed just last week, on July 14.

The balloon soared to a height of more than 91,000 feet, or almost 20 miles, before it burst and the payload parachuted back to Earth. The payload contained a navigation navigation unit, a magnetometer, two cameras, and communications equipment, almost entirely built by Kentucky college students.

In addition to testing systems for use in satellites to be launched starting next year, the system also tested possible emergency monitoring and communications systems that might be used in the case of a natural disaster or other emergency.

The student engineers were from Western Kentucky University,the University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, Murray State, Morehead University, and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. All of these are part of a NASA-funded program called the Kentucky Space Grant Consortium.

This is just the beginning for Kentucky college students. According to a report in the Louisville Courier-Journal, "We hope to have four to six balloon launches a year, testing systems that will ultimately go into orbital satellites," said Kris Kimel of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. "We're also looking at deep-space missions four or five years into the future."

Besides the serious payloads built by the college students, the balloon also carried a bunch of tiny capsules made by local grade-school students. The capsules were made by cutting open ping-pong balls, putting objects inside and then gluing them back together, to give the younger kids a chance to participate in the mission and encourage them to think about participating in future student missions as they get older.

Kentucky Space even has a blog to keep students abreast of what's going on in the program, as well as information about related space activities.

(Photos: Top and bottom: The view from Balloon 1; middle: Preparing for launch. Photos courtesy of Kentucky Space)

 

A Texas Semester on Mars

The coolest place to be this summer is the polar plains of Mars, where the Phoenix spacecraft is scraping away at a layer of ice and looking for signs of organic chemistry. This is the most exciting thing to happen in planetary science since the amazing Mars rovers-that-will-not-die that landed more than four years ago.

And I practically feel like I've had a chance to be there and be part of it thanks to some wonderfully detailed firsthand accounts (another one here) by some college students who have been lucky enough to get into positions working on the mission.

As I've mentioned, this is the first time a mission to another planet has had its mission control center on a university campus. The University of Arizona, home of Phoenix chief scientist Peter Smith, is the place where the mission is run, and several students from around the country are having the experience of a lifetime working on various science and engineering teams there.

This week, we get to hear from a student from Texas A&M University. She's Keri Bean, a junior meteorology major from Schertz, Texas. Here's what she had to say about her lucky job:

"I've been interested in the space program for only a few years now. My first passion was with the weather. A severe storm passed over my preschool, and I came home that day and said "Mommy, I want to be a meteorologist when I grow up!" My mother patted my head and said "Sure thing, dear" thinking the next day it'd be a nurse, or a firefighter, etc. I never once flinched from this goal.

Space-wise, I've always had the typical Wal-mart telescope, but around 2002 I got a Meade ETX-70. I still was more focused on weather, but I was starting to pay attention more to astronomy. In 2005 I just happened to be in Florida during the week of the return to flight space shuttle launch, STS-114. I was about 7 miles away from the launch, and pulled over there on that side of the highway, I knew that I wanted to be doing that one day.

A year before I started at Texas A&M, I attended an event called Aggieland Saturday. The meteorology professor there noticed my interest in space exploration and told me to talk to a professor in the department, Dr. Mark Lemmon, the co-investigator of the Surface Stereo Imager (SSI). I sent him an e-mail the summer before I started, and I met with him every week since school started in the fall. He had me listen to Spirit & Opportunity planning teleconferences, and I did a small research project with some data from Spirit right before winter break. When I got back, he asked me if I wanted to work on Phoenix over the summer, I quickly agreed. He sent me to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) over spring break (it proves I'm a nerd that I would give up my spring break to attend a science conference), and while I was overwhelmed at first, it was a great learning experience for me. After that, I helped Dr. Lemmon prepare programs for use on Phoenix, and I arrived at the Science Operations Center (SOC) in Tucson, AZ a week before landing.

My title on Phoenix is SSI IDA, or Surface Stereo Imager instrument downlink analyst. I do a bunch of different jobs. While at the SOC, I operated a huge computer screen in the downlink room, and as the images were coming down, I would put the important ones up on the screen. Things like deliveries to TEGA or WCL, images of the trenches, the first set of microsope images, etc. would be put up on the screen. I also keep track of the time of day the mission success panorama images were taken, and which ones were partial. On landing day, my job was to take the images and put them up on the projector screens so everyone in the downlink room could see them. I was on a flexible time schedule, so my shifts would be anywhere from 5 to 10 hours long, depending on the number of images, how many projects I was doing, and the meetings taking place. Now that I'm back at Texas A&M taking classes, I don't do as much, but I still keep up with the mission and keep track of the panorama.

One of the other interesting tasks I do is maintain the Phoenix Facebook profile. I made one for Spirit & Opportunity many months ago as a joke, and now it seems nearly every NASA satellite, telescope, etc. has a Facebook profile.

Most of the other students are either documentarians, work for the atmospheric science theme group, or work on the SSI as engineers. I think most of the SSI team is comparatively young to the other science or instrument groups, which means we're getting the opportunity of a lifetime to work with these images and on some days, be the first to see these images from Mars. I can't think of a more awesome job.

One of the greatest aspects of this job, in my opinion, is simply meeting the scientists and engineers. I was so used to seeing these guys on documentaries or reading their papers that it was a bit of shock to not just meet them, but get to be on a first name basis or have them depend on your work that day.

I honestly still can't really believe I'm doing this job. If someone would have told me at this time last year what I'd be doing this summer, I would've laughed and told you to stop teasing me. It's a dream come true to be involved in such a historic mission. Back in the day, I always wanted to be Dr. Greg Forbes on the Weather Channel because he was the expert on everything, but now I can't imagine doing anything else. When I met NASA administrator Mike Griffin at the LPSC, I told him I was working on the rovers and soon Phoenix, but my eventual goal was to study the Martian atmosphere from the surface of Mars myself. He smiled and said he'd have to see what he could do about that. So here's to hoping!

I watched the landing at the SOC with the atmospheric science team. When they announced touchdown, I leaped out of my chair and one of my friends hugged me hard enough to lift me up off the ground. I ran around the room hugging all the friends I'd made in just my first week there. I met my professor's family and ate quickly at the banquet. The celebration was over quickly because my shift started about an hour after landing.

My family back in Texas and many friends watched the landing and first downlink footage. I was really visible during downlink, because when the camera turned on in the SOC, I was right below it, working on getting the images up on the projector screens. My mom said that her head and her heart knew that was me on NASA TV, but she still simply couldn't believe it. My friends think it's pretty cool that I'm so young and have been given this great opportunity. While I was in Tucson, a friend of mine met astronaut Sunita Williams (I'm a big fan of hers) and when my friend told Sunita that I'd be there if it weren't for me working on Phoenix, Sunita thought it was quite awesome that someone so young was working the mission. It's cool to know I have a fan in the astronaut corps!"

(Photos. Top, Clayton Chu and and Keri Bean in the PIT with the test model of Phoenix. middle right: Keri Bean working. Middle left:  Bean operating the computer screen at the SOC with scientists around. Professor Mark Lemmon is behind her, second from right. Bottom: Engineer Rob Manning and Bean in the PIT. Photos courtsey of Keri Bean)

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Are Students Taking NASA's Place?

Well, not really. But in terms of performing some functions that used to be the exclusive domain of NASA and some major aerospace contractors, they may indeed be filling a significant void. That's the gist of a story a few days ago on Space Review, called "Student satellites: encouraging trend or a sign of panic?"

The story says that there is a growing crisis in the aerospace business: The business is booming, but not enough new people are entering the field to fill the needed jobs. Back in 2002, a national commission called the Walker Commission was formed to look into the problem. They wrote:

"In the 21st century, the U.S. must continue to have a highly skilled, stable, secure, and growing aerospace workforce, and a citizenry that is well prepared in mathematics and science.” But, according to surveys, they found that “Engineering students ... gave the aerospace industry low ratings for its physical work facilities, exciting and meaningful tasks, opportunities for professional development and growth, and supporting and encouraging management.”

So, increasingly schools are taking matters into their own hands, in the US and in other countries as well, the article says.

One major program that has been offering college students -- and even some high-school students -- a chance to go ahead and design, build and operate real space hardware on their own is one that I mentioned here in a previous post: the National Space Grant Student Satellite Program. Under this program, students build satellites that fit into a standardized shape and size but can have a wide variety of purposes. They are called Cubesats, and have so far been successfully designed and built by students at Cornell, California Polytechnic, the Universities of Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, and Hawaii, and Montana State, among others.

The satellites are small enough to be launched as "secondary payloads," sharing a ride to orbit as a piggyback add-on to major commercial satellite launches -- a very cheap way to get a ride to orbit.

"If these projects become widespread this may have a substantial impact on the 'enthusiasm gap'," the article says. Not to mention providing real, hands-on experience of the whole process of designing and building a satellite to survive the rigors of launch and the space environment, waiting for the launch and seeing what happens (some of these satellites were lost when a Russian rocket that was providing their piggyback ride crashed -- another lesson in the realities of the space business), and then actually controlling and operating the satellites if and when the do reach orbit.

In other countries, some students have had a chance to work on even more ambitious satellite projects, One of these was the Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative Express satellite (SSETI), which was built by students across Europe working together through internet links. It was launched in 2005.

NASA is now going a step further, as I mentioned here in another post: NASA's Ames Research Center, under the direction of its head Pete Worden (a former Air Force officer who has been at the cutting edge in thinking about innovative approaches to space travel and research for a long time), has started a project to get students working on research satellites to go into orbit around the moon. The new project is called American Student Moon Orbiter (ASMO).

Apart from NASA, others have been initiating programs on their own. Numerous universities have initiated satellite projects on their own, and private agencies like the X-Prize Foundation have been offering additional opportunities (for example, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Arizona are collaborating with a student team working on an entry in the Google Lunar X-Prize, a prize of up to $30-million for the first independent (that is, not government funded) craft to reach the moon, travel at least 500 meters, and send back lots of pictures and data. The CMU and UAz students have vowed to achieve this by the time of the 40th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon. In other words, one year from today! (Happy Apollo 11 anniversary everyone! Read Ray Villard's blog entry today for some thoughts about the ever-popular ridiculous claims that the whole thing was faked).

NASA should probably be doing more to encourage, train, and offer interesting positions for the next generation of space engineers. But in the meatime, it's nice to know that there really are some chances for students to roll up their sleeves and do significant work that will actually get to fly.

(Photos: Top 2 pictures from University of Toronto, showing cubesats attached to rocket payload ready for launch, and a collection of cubesats going through final checkout. Lower photo: SSETI satellite, courtesy of ESA)

 

Another Semester on Mars

The most exciting thing going on this summer in the planetary sciences is the ongoing mission of the Phoenix Mars lander. It's been scraping and baking the sheets of ice just under the soil there for a month and a half, and is about to begin baking another batch. This might be the one that reveals whether there are organic molecules in the Mars soil, which would be a very exciting new result.

As I've mentioned before, Phoenix is bringing not only a bonanza of data for our understanding of the Martian environment, but in chances for college students to be involved right on the front lines of the greatest space mission going. Because Phoenix is the first planetary mission to be controlled from a college campus, the opportunities for hands-on involvement by undergraduate and graduate students has never been greater.

I've highlighted some of those student experiences before. Here is another look from the inside at what it's like to be virtually sitting on the surface of Mars this year, digging and scraping into its hidden secrets. There are also some good lessons in these accounts about how students have managed to work their way into positions that space scientists used to only dream of. Many thanks to those of you who have written in about your experiences. And if you're reading this and you've been working on Phoenix or any other space or astronomy first-hand project this summer, please write to me about it. Or you can post comments below.

Before, we heard from students at Washington University of St. Louis, thanks to the very central involvement of Ray Arvidsen, a savvy veteran of many planetary missions. This time, it's an aerospace engineering student right at University of Arizona, Clayton Chu, who is spending this summer working as a Surface Stereo Imager Downlink Engineer.

Here's what Clayton had to say about the job:

"This is (hopefully not) a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me! It has always been my dream to work for NASA since I was a child, so to be actually doing it is just astounding to me. I pretty much love space and engineering, so any combination of two will get me excited.

"I am originally from Gilbert, Arizona. I have always been interested in the space program since I could remember, and one of the main reasons I went to the UA in the first place was because of the Phoenix mission. It was basically pure luck that I became a part of the mission.

"Last summer, I was sent an application from the UA/NASA Space Grant Consortium, a program where undergraduates are granted research internships with various science and engineering labs or companies. I applied and got in, but I did not choose where I could be placed. It was only luck that I was chosen to work for the Mars Lander. I began my internship with the mission last September; in April, I was hired full-time for surface operations. If we get funding for an extended mission, I will be a part of it until about November or December.

"I am an Instrument Downlink Engineer (IDE) for the Stereo Surface Imager (SSI), the primary camera operating on Mars. I am just as important a role as any other IDE for other instruments. I help maintain the health and safety of the instrument; analyze and interpret the data and images that the lander has sent back to Earth; and help investigate anomalies or do other tasks related to the SSI. Some things we look for include if our instrument actually took all the images we told it to take, the  temperatures of the different motors, and what images we received yet were partial.

"When I am off-shift, I am usually writing data analysis programs to assist in interpreting the downlink. The information about our instrument is contained in giant documents sent by the lander that contain info about all instruments, so it gets very difficult to review and determine in a timely manner our health and if all the images were wanted were actually executed. The analysis process used to take a few hours; now it takes 15 minutes on a nominal day. If everything ran smoothly, we can focus on analyzing our images and not worry about our instrument; if there were anomalies or other problems, the tools give us organized-enough information that we can quickly find issues. My tools have been used several times in both operations simulations and surface operations to detect anomalous results in the data.

"I am a full-time employee, so I am officially working  40 (but more like 50-60) hours a week. The IDE shift is 8.5 hours long, and it's pretty intense.

"There are two other undergraduates working with me on the SSI; one goes to Texas A&M, the other is a senior here at the UA. She has been my partner throughout both the Space Grant internship and now. The SSI team also has two graduate students and two just-graduated engineers. So the SSI is for the most part student-run, in a sense. "Other undergraduates work in education/public outreach or systems engineering and support."

Clayton even got to take part during the anxiety-filled landing on Mars, close enough to be part of the collective excitement. I was lucky enough to be at JPL for the last three successful Mars landings, so I was very sad to miss this one. Here's what Clayton had to say about being there:

"I was on-shift for landing day, so of course I watched the landing live! It was quite the experience as well; very emotional and exciting. I was shaking uncontrollably from the shock and awe of it all. A lot of us just got together and yelled for a good few minutes. Others were shaking hands, and some were crying. Our lead engineer for the day didn't do any of that, and just booked it straight to the SSI office to prepare for the incoming images.

"This job has definitely opened doors and allowed me to make connections to JPL and NASA. I thought it just a dream previously to be a mission manager or someone of importance working on a NASA mission; now I can see that with some work, it's entirely possible. One of the mission managers for Phoenix was actually a UA graduate, and even participated in the NASA Space Grant internship (after being rejected twice!), so it's very encouraging.

"My family are friends are extremely impressed and proud of me, of course. My parents can't stop talking about how cool it is that their son works for NASA; my friends believe I'm their ticket into flying into space. It's a great feeling."

Thanks Clayton, for sharing the experience with us. I will have another firsthand account from the Phoenix frontlines next week. Keep tuned to this space. And let's hear from some more of you!

(photos: top, NASA/JPL/UAZ; bottom, NASA)

Student Opportunities this Summer and Fall

There are a variety of conferences coming up over the next few months that should be of great interest to any of you who are students in astronomy or space sciences and engineering. There are also some remarkable opportunities to apply for positions to take part in field research that reproduces some of the conditions and circumstances you might face someday as astronauts or planetary pioneers. Like me, I'm sure many of you would like to become space travelers someday, but chances are we're all going to have to wait for quite a while. In the meantime, some of these chances could provide the next best thing. Hands-on research experience, and a taste of what may be to come.

Conferences

NewSpace 2008 Conference, Crystal City, Virginia, July 17-19

This annual gathering brings together the leaders of the "new space" movement, dedicated to creating a new generation of inexpensive, reliable space vehicles to open up the space frontier to a new boom era. This year's gathering in Crystal City (part of Alexandria, across the river from Washington, DC) includes a field trip to the NASA launch facility at Wallops Island. Regular registration is $445, but students (under 25, with college ID) get in for $145.

NLSI Lunar Science Conference, Moffett Field, Calif., July 20-24

This conference, held at NASA's Ames research center, covers all aspects of lunar science -- everything from the history of past lunar exploration, to research on the effects of the lunar environment on humans and machinery, to the kinds of scientific research that may be carried out on the moon starting late next decade. Registration closes on July 14.

The Mars Society Conference, Boulder, Colorado, Aug. 14-17

This is the 11th annual conference of the largest society devoted to promoting the human exploration of Mars. The meetings always present a great selection of top-level speakers as well as a host of original research papers, posters, and workshops. This year, among the speakers is Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, one of the leading "new space" companies aiming to develop a whole new generation of low-cost space vehicles; Pete Worden, the head of NASA's Ames Research Center; and Chris McKay, one of the world's leading researchers of regions on Earth that are possible analogs of Mars conditions. Regular convention ticket for non-members is $270, but students get a rate of $105 (or $70 for student members, and membership only costs $25).

Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) International Conference
Glasgow, Scotland, Sept. 27-28

SEDS is a collection of local chapters at colleges and universities around the world, and they have local, national and international meetings every year. This year's big international gathering will be in Scotland this September. Check out their main website to see if there's a local chapter on your campus. If there is, join up, and if there isn't, think about starting one!

Research Opportunities

Microgravity University

As I described in an earlier post, this is just a fabulous opportunity to experience weightlessness aboard a NASA training and research plane, while carrying out useful research that can be part of a class project, independent study, or just an extracurricular project on your own. Either way, it will be an unforgettable experience, and an impressive addition to your resume. Teams can consist of up to four full-time undergraduate student members who will actually get to fly on the "vomit comet," and any number of additional ground-crew members. Selection can be very competitive, so even though the deadline for final applications isn't until October (and for initial letters of intent is in September), you'll improve your chances by reading through past research topics now and starting to form a team and think about possible projects.

Mars Desert Research Station, Utah

Volunteers spend two-week rotations at this simulated Mars base in the Utah desert. You'll live in a simulated Mars habitat, conduct field research in geology or biology, or engineering research on proposed Mars equipment, vehicles, spacesuits and so on. The field research season at MDRS runs from December through May. Next season's formal application process has not yet opened, but it's not too soon to start thinking about your proposals for research there, and a good way to start is to read the field reports from the crews over this past season and from previous seasons.

I will provide updates as some of these deadlines draw closer, and I'll also periodically post information here about other conferences and research openings that may be of interest to students who have their eyes on the stars. And please, let me know, by posting comments below, if you know of any other meetings, symposia, conferences or research openings that might be of interest to your fellow students. I'd like to make this site the definitive go-to resource for anyone who may be looking for such chances to participate in cutting-edge research. Please help me out!
(Photos courtesy of NASA/JSC, and The Mars Society)

 

Cooling it in Zero-G

A team of students from the University of Wisconsin in Madison has just reported on the results of a series of experiments they carried out this past April  -- while floating through the air. During two flights of NASA's Weightless Wonder C-9 zero-gravity research and training airplane, the UW team tested technology that could be important for future high-powered computers aboard spacecraft.
The more powerful a computer chip, the more dependent it is on efficient cooling, because high-speed operations will quickly cause the processor chips to heat up -- as you know firsthand if you've ever tried intensive computing tasks (such as playing videogames) on a laptop computer that's sitting on your lap. Ouch! Some people have literally burned their thighs that way.
With more powerful computers needed for critical tasks, the cooling problem gets even more severe.
Ordinary computers rely on fans blowing air over the chips to cool them, but for the really high-powered chips, spray-cooling with water or other liquids is much more efficient. Trouble is, that method depends on gravity to let the liquid run down to a collecting tray at the bottom so it can be pumped back up and cool again. What would happen if you wanted to use spray-cooling on a computer on a spacecraft in zero gravity? Well, it turns out nobody knew the answer to that question.
Until now, that is. The students from UW seem to have found the answer.
How? By taking advantage of an absolutely wonderful opportunity that NASA offers students every year, to propose zero-G experiments to be carried out aboard one of only a handful of facilities in the world that can reproduce the weightlessness (or technically, the microgravity) of space travel.
It's a chance to do real, cutting-edge research that can produce important results for the future of space research and exploration. And it's also an absolutely unbelievable experience, better than any amusement-park ride you've ever tried.
I can testify to that. I've gotten to go along for the ride twice, a few years ago, once with a team of students from MIT, and another time with a team from Wellesley College. There's really nothing quite like it. I've always wanted to fly into space someday, and this is definitely the closest I've come -- the next best thing to being there. (You can check out my stories on the Wellesley and MIT rides, in the Boston Globe, but unfortunately they charge to see them. Sorry)
And oh yes, they do call the NASA Weightless Wonder the "vomit comet," and for good reason. About half the people who fly on it do get sick. And yes, I did, both times. But that's ok, it was well worth it.
Anyway, back to the experiment.
UW professorTimothy Shedd has come up with a novel design for a spray cooling system, a linear array of nozzles that sprays a dielectric liquid directly onto the chip. He thought it might work in zero-G, but needed a way to test it. So that's where engineering students Lisa McGill,  Jessica Rybicki, Ben Conrad, and John Springmann and physics student Adam Beardsley, along with six other teammates, came in. They proposed the experiment, were accepted by NASA, and spent much of the winter building a 12-cubic-foot test system to try it out on the plane.
In mid-April, they flew to Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Weightless Wonder's home base, and got to try it out (the five I mentioned got to fly, and the other five were ground crew. I've corrected this post with the information from the comment below). The  plane flies a series of parabolic curves out over the Gulf of Mexico, and at the top of each curve, everyone and everything on board gets to float around for about 30 seconds inside the wide-open and well-padded interior of the plane. And oh yes, carry out their experiments. On each flight, the plane makes about 30 of these parabolas, providing about 15 minutes of cumulative weightless time.
Students are free to propose any kind of experiment at all, as long as it has some potential to produce new, novel, interesting results. Past flights have included every imaginable kind of test of tools and methods that might be useful for future astronauts -- everything from welding to using power tools, to studying the way flames spread in weightlessness (and how to put them out). They have also tested ideas that might be useful for recreation for astronauts on long space journeys -- weightless sports, painting, and dancing, for instance. (I actually saw the painting experiment. It made quite a mess)
Anyway, the UW team tried several different variations of the spray cooling, using different liquids and different angles of spray. And they did find one that seems to work very well. They hope to publish their results, and it may have applications eventually not just in space, but also in airplanes and even in ordinary laptops -- which aren't weightless, but they do get jiggled and turned a lot, which creates the same kind of problems.
Interested in proposing a weightless experiment of your own? It's actually one of the most exciting and interesting research opportunities available to undergraduates. Watch this space -- tomorrow, I'll have a listing of programs like this that students can apply for, along with the dates and rules for how to apply.
Well, that's it for now -- I've gotta go. It's a hot day, and this darn laptop is scorching my legs.
(Photos: top, Lisa, Jessica and Adam floating around, courtesy of UW. Bottom, the Weightless Wonder, courtesy of NASA)

First Proof of a Watery Moon

A team of scientists from Brown University in Rhode Island, including a graduate student there, have just published the first evidence that proves the existence of some water in the moon's composition. That could be very good news for the prospects for eventual permanent human bases there.
There has long been speculation that some deposits of water ice might exist on the moon, hidden in deep craters near its poles -- the only places that never get bathed in sunlight as the moon rotates, and therefore the only place where ice could survive on the surface without melting away (or, technically, subliming away -- that is, turning directly into vapor) over the eons. And there has been some tantalizing evidence, especially readings from the Clementine lunar mission some years ago, which indicated a source of hydrogen -- presumably in ice -- near the south pole. But it's hard to detect for the same reason that may have allowed ice to survive there -- the fact that it would be deeply hidden in craters near the poles, a region invisible from Earth or even from any spacecraft whose path stays within the ecliptic -- the plane of all the planets' orbits.
The new evidence doesn't tell us anything about what's near the poles, or even what is anywhere on the lunar surface. But it does tell us that the moon had water among its constituents when it was born about four billion years ago -- the result of a collision that tore off most of Earth's crust and flung it into space, where much of it clumped together to become the moon.
The new evidence comes from a decades-old source -- a treasure-trove of scientific information whose secrets have barely begun to be extracted: The rocks collected on the moon by the Apollo astronauts, and stored in carefully sealed and guarded vaults at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Alberto Saal, a professor at Brown, working with fellow professors Reid Cooper and Malcolm Rutherford as well as graduate student Mauro Lo Coscio, did the analysis of some of these rock samples, with help from scientists at Case Western Reserve and the Carnegie Institution.
What they found was that volcanic glasses, formed when lava erupted onto the moon's surface 3 billion years ago, contained traces of water. They used a sophisticated lab technique called secondary mass ion spectrometry, which can detect incredibly minute quantities of elements in the rock. They could have detected as little as five parts per million of water, but were very surprised to find much more -- up to 46 ppm. No previous analysis of any of the Apollo samples had been sensitive enough to detect the water. The new research was published this week in Nature.
By calculating how much of the water content must have been lost into space during the volcanic eruptions -- about 95 percent -- the researchers concluded that the moon originally contained about as much water as the Earth did. And that makes it much more likely that there is indeed some water left there, frozen in those polar craters.
That's good news indeed for would-be moon settlers. Ice could be mined as a local source of drinking water, as well as split into oxygen for breathing, and hydrogen as fuel for rockets and rovers. Every ton of material that has to be brought up from Earth adds hugely to the cost of doing anything useful on the moon, so if there are local sources of basic essential materials that opens up enormous new possibilities for long-term work there. It's not exactly living off the land, but it's a step in that direction.
But that still doesn't prove that there's ice on the surface in quantities that could be useful. The final answers to that question could come later this year, when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will start circling the moon to make a detailed study. Then, finally, we may have proof that the moon is indeed equipped with a potential highway service station -- a source for a refreshing drink, a breath of fresh air, and a fillup for your rocket's gas tank. Come on down!

Summer Semester on Mars

The Phoenix lander on the icy northern plans of Mars, as I mentioned before, is the first planetary mission ever to be controlled from a university campus instead of from a space-agency center. Mission control for Phoenix is located on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson, but it turns out that's not the only campus whose students are getting to play significant roles in the mission.
One of the others is Washington University in St. Louis, where Prof. Ray Arvidson, head of the Earth and Planetary Sciences department there and who heads some of the Phoenix science teams, has managed to get some of his undergraduate students to play important roles in the mission.
Arvidson and his students led the selection of the landing site for Phoenix, and are now working with the robotic arm to gather soil and water-ice samples, taking images with the robotic arm camera and interpreting and archiving the data.

One of those students, Kirsten Siebach, just finished her freshman year, and last year already had a chance to work with Arvidson on the Mars rover mission. This is what Kirsten had to say about her work on the Phoenix:

"This experience has been amazing for me. I watched the landing with the Science team at the University of Arizona Science Operations Center, and it was very suspenseful and so exciting when it landed safely. I didn't realize how personally interested I would be in this mission until the landing, but since that first day, I have been more interested and involved in every success and setback for Phoenix than I ever expected.

"Professor Arvidson invited me to join him working on Phoenix in the spring when I was deciding where I would work this summer, and I began working on the project during the last month of school, then came out to Tucson a few days before landing and trained for about two weeks before I started working as a documentarian.

"About half of the time I am at work, I have an official role as a Strategic Documentarian. As strategic doc, I keep spreadsheets that track the major activities we have done and will do each sol (Mars day), track completion of mission objectives, and track the names of surfaces in the workspace as they change because of our digging and sampling activities. I also take notes during the strategic meetings and help make sure our strategic plans make sense with our objectives and requirements. When I have time, I work with the Geology theme group on interpreting and analyzing the data we get back from Phoenix. I generally focus on analyzing the properties of the Martian soil like the cohesion and the angle of internal friction from pictures and calculations of forces required for the digging movements of the robotic arm, but I also help out with other analyses.

"I have not declared my major yet, but will most likely major in Earth and Planetary Science. My friends and family have been supportive, and although its hard to be away all summer and working on Mars time, I have been able to keep in touch with them on email and on the phone, and I got to take a short trip home this past week."

What a great way to spend the summer! Congratulations to Kirsten and her fellow students working on the mission. I'm green with envy about their work on the red planet!

(Photos: top, Phoenix lander with its digging scoop, courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona; middle, Kirsten Siebach; Bottom, three of the WUSTL students working on the mission, with Prof. Ray Arvidson at right. Photo courtesy of WUSTL.) 

NASA Asks Students to Reach for the Moon

Wow, this may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for college students everywhere.

In an unprecedented program, NASA has just announced that within the month it will be putting out a request for teams of students to propose plans for a research satellite to go into orbit around the moon.

Once the formal request is put out, students will have at least 90 days to submit their proposals for a satellite with scientific instruments that, although faculty and industry representatives can be involved, are to be entirely designed and developed by students. It will be called ASMO, for American Student Moon Orbiter.

In its announcement of the plan, NASA said that in this project, teams would learn directly from NASA mentors as part of a diverse, nationwide, higher education initiative that will enable students to "design, build, launch, operate and own a small spacecraft and its payload."

The students will get in-depth experience with satellite mission protocol and procedures, communications and project management. NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California and Glenn Research Center in Cleveland are leading the ASMO initiative.

"NASA is laying the foundation for a multi-generation exploration program that eventually will see humans settle our solar system," said Ames Center Director S. Pete Worden. "To sustain this vision, we need the next crop of scientists and engineers to engage their minds and get hands-on experience."

While NASA has never done a project quite like this before that combines exploration and education and allows students to carry a satellite project through from start to finish. It is loosely based on similar programs like the USAF University NanoSat Program and the CalPoly CubeSat Program, but this is the first time students will get a chance to send a satellite far beyond Earth's orbit, all the way to the moon.

More information on NASA's ASMO plan is available on the project's website. NASA says this is "a new form of a NASA-supported participatory education," and it seems like a brilliant idea and a great opportunity.

Texas State U. Students Trace Caesar's Conquest

There's been an ongoing debate among scholars as to exactly when and where Julius Caesar first crossed the English Channel and entered Britain -- one of the furthest outposts that he conquered.

Okay, that debate was news to me. But it turns out a team from Texas State University, including two undergraduate honors students, have now settled the controversy once and for all -- by analyzing how the moon affected the tides that Caesar and some of his troops described.

Solving the puzzle involved an ingenious mix of scholarly research -- both on the Roman texts and doing the calculations of the moon's position during the dates in question -- and hands-on research at the locations involved, which included sailing a small boat along the shoreline to figure out whether Caesar turned left or right along the coast from the point he first reached land (the text, apparently, just says he turned, but doesn't say which way).

And in an especially nice touch, it also involved throwing some apples into the water off a pier, to provide a highly visible (and presumably highly biodegradable) indicator of which way the currents were flowing -- at exactly the right time.

Kellie N. Beicker and Amanda F. Gregory, the two honors students, traveled to England last summer with professors Don Olson and Russell Doescher to recreate the scene of the invasion. August 25-26 of 2007, it turns out, just happened to be exactly the right time to replicate exactly the timing of the moon's cycle with the time of the year as it was in 55 BC, the year of the invasion. The last such perfect match was in 1901, so it was important to seize the occasion this time around -- the next match isn't until 2140.

Olsen has been doing this kind of thing -- a specialty he calls "forensic astronomy" -- for many years now. It's a key feature of his highly popular astronomy class, called "Astronomy in Art, History, and Literature."

Very often, as in this case, it leads to new findings that are described in articles for Sky & Telescope magazine (this one's in their August issue, just out). In the past, the classes have pinpointed the timing of a crossing of Boston Harbor before Paul Revere's famous ride, traveled around France to identify the exact dates and places that Van Gogh depicted in several of his paintings, and dated a famous photograph by Ansel Adams. They've also studied an amazing array of very sophisticated astronomical references in Shakespeare's Hamlet, and identified pivotal World War 2 landing conditions. Almost always, a few lucky undergrads get to go along, and often, as this time, they get to share the credit with the two profs when the results get written up for Sky & Telescope. And they also learn some very creative thinking.

You can read more about some of these projects here in stories I wrote for the Boston Globe science section, about trips investigating  Columbus'  use of astronomical knowledge, the timing of the Boston Massacre, and investigating Van Gogh's paintings. There are also interesting pieces here and here.

Roger Sinnott, an editor at Sky & Telescope who has been working with Olson on these articles for many years, got to go along on this trip with the Texas team, and he's blogged about the experience. He has nice photos of the White Cliffs of Dover where Caesar originally arrived. It's all very scenic I'm very envious.

And my fellow Discovery blogger Jennifer Ouelette has a very good entry about it on Twisted Physics, going into much more detail about what they actually determined, and how they did it.

Photos - top: courtesy of Don Olson; bottom: courtesy of Sky & Telescope