Discovery Space: Next Generation

From the Earth to the Moon... With a Few Stops Along the Way

Space exploration has always been the largest driving force in my life, and it's something I'm spending both my academic and professional time to pursue. I've been fortunate to be in the right places at the right times, but I also like to think that I'm actively seeking out opportunities as I reach for the stars.

The next event in my "spacey" life, for example, is the International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow, Scotland. That is where I am presenting my Ph.D. research paper on the abrasive properties of the lunar environment. Why moon dust, you ask?

During the Apollo moon missions, lunar dust abrasion created several issues for astronauts. To name a few things: faceplate scratching, which obscured moonwalker vision, and spacesuit pressure leaks, which could have put the astronauts in serious danger. As we gear up to return to the moon, finding out which materials best stand up to the its harsh environment is more important than ever.

In addition to my paper, I'm a co-author on four others at the IAC this year, and they're all related to Mars mission simulations that I've been a part of at the Mars Desert Research Station (in Utah) and at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, or FMARS (in Nunavut, Canada).

In 2007 I was a member of a seven-person team that carried out a four-month Mars simulation at FMARS. During the simulation, we conducted more than 22 science projects in geology, biology, human factors, operations, and engineering. We also did eight outreach presentations to students, but since we were using a simulated 20-minute Mars-Earth delay, we created and sent a full audio-visual presentation.

One of the highlights during my time was when the crew went on Mars Time for 37 sols, or Martian days (which are 39 minutes and 35 seconds longer than Earth days). This was possible because of round-the-clock sunlight during the Arctic summer.

All of this work might sound out of this world, but it allowed me to gain experience in an extreme environment analogous to the surface of another planet -- in terms of isolation and research, that is. Beyond my own interests, it was a one-of-a-kind opportunity that I think will help us prepare for long-duration missions to the surface of the Moon and Mars.

Some day I hope to experience a real space mission first-hand! I've already replied to both the Canadian Space Agency's (CSA) and NASA's call for astronauts, so I'm crossing my fingers and working hard towards my career I've always wanted.

Space!
-Ryan

Ryan Kobrick is a Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is a NASA Student Program member, and is researching lunar dust abrasion funded by a NASA Graduate Students Researchers Program grant. You can follow him on Twitter as RyInSpace.

Photo: Ryan Kobrick

Changes 'Round These Parts

Hey there, you!

This is Dave Mosher, aka the guy who pulls the levers behind Discovery Space, and a nerd. Who can also lift entire planet Earths (see exhibit A, right).

Anywho, I'm here to let you know that one Mr. David Chandler who started this blog up for us is taking leave for awhile, so you'll see some changes here.

What changes, thou asketh?

It took a few weeks, but I've assembled a crew of super-elite ninjas to track student scientists in the field, forcibly pin them down, and pull their arms until they cry "uncle!" and agree to blog for us.

So far, the ninjas have captured a few students who are working on getting us back to the moon, researching ways to reach Mars, developing space elevators, looking to the stars to solve cosmic mysteries, and other far-out projects.

Alas! We're still in need of lively student voices.

If you're a college-level student working on something you just can't wait to tell the whole world about, send a line to DiscoverySpace@discovery.com and tell me about yourself, or leave a comment right here.

<3 Dave@Discovery

NASA Offers Grants for New-Space Research Concepts

Students interested in space research have a great new opportunity to apply for grants from NASA.

The space agency has taken note of the fact that a whole new generation of privately-funded spacecraft are poised to begin commercial operations over the next couple of years, and that (as I've mentioned before) these have great potential to enable a wide variety of research projects by students and academic researchers, as well as commercial projects.

Most of what has been written about this new generation of rockets has focused on their application for tourist flights, and that is the application that most of the companies themselves have stressed in their publicity -- especially the leader of the pack, Virgin Galactic, a partnership between the X-Prize winning Burt Rutan and the founder of Virgin Atlantic airline and a host of other Virgin brand companies, Sir Richard Branson. Among the other contenders are Blue Origin, run by  Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Armadillo Aerospace, Xcor Aerospace, and SpaceX, founded by PayPal founder Elon Musk.

But all of these vehicles also offer enormous potential for research, on everything from astronomy to atmospheric science to Earth-monitoring to engineering. Even for payloads that need the long-duration of orbital flight for their actual operations, the new mostly-suborbital craft, even with just a few minutes above the atmosphere and in microgravity conditions still offer the best testbed yet for testing equipment, rather than having to gamble on having a device work just right on the very first try in space.

NASA is accepting proposals for conceptual studies on how some of these new craft could be used for research, and the proposals are due by Oct. 8.

In its request for proposals, NASA writes that "Suborbital rocket, balloon flights, and high altitude aircraft have provided important platforms for terrestrial and space research for over 60 years. They offer the opportunity to make astronomical, solar, planetary, and Earth observations at wavelengths and special observing geometries not accessible from the ground. Past accomplishments include in-situ sampling of atmospheric and magnetospheric regions that neither orbital spacecraft nor standard aircraft can reach, examining physical phenomena in microgravity conditions that are unattainable on the ground or only briefly available in drop towers and zero-g aircraft, using instruments too massive for spacecraft to detect cosmic rays that cannot be detected from the ground, and testing scientific instruments before committing to orbital or interplanetary flight."

The new craft offer similar opportunities, potentially at significantly lower cost. But they also offer a whole new wrinkle: The possibility of having the researcher fly alongside the experiment, and be able to control it in real-time. That could open up whole new kinds of research that would never have been practical before.

As NASA describes it, "The imminent emergence of human suborbital flight for commercial purposes offers an opportunity for a new mode of research for the scientific community: human-tended suborbital investigations for cases where having a human in-the-loop would increase the scientific return of flight experiments."

NASA will award about $400,000 for these research proposals, and expects to award about 8 such grants. They will last up to one year. All of the details on the program and how to apply are here.

If NASA gets enough really good ideas proposed, the plan is that in a few years they would provide much more substantial grants to pay for the actual research missions. And that will be a really amazing opportunity for students to actually fly into space along with their research projects --maybe as soon as 2011!

Photos: Top, Lynx suborbital rocket by Xcor Aerospace, artwork courtesy of Xcor Aerospace; Bottom, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, carried aloft by White Knight Two, artwork courtesy of Virgin Galactic