ISRO launching Mars Orbiter Mission on November 5

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) would be launched at 2.36 pm on November 5 aboard PSLV-C25 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said Tuesday. The decision was taken following a meeting of ISRO officials earlier in the day.

The MOM was to originally launch on October 28 but the ISRO deferred it on October 19 after Nalanda, one of the two Shipping Corporation of India ships that will track the PSLV, failed to reach its specified location near the Fiji Islands due to poor weather in the South Pacific Ocean.

The ships-Yamuna and Nalanda-are now positioned in the South Pacific Ocean. The ISRO has set an October 28 to November 19 window for the launch. These are the days when Mars would be closest to earth, an occurrence that will repeat only after 780 days.

NASA is incidentally set to launch its latest Mars orbiter Maven on November 18.

ISRO officials said PSLV-C25 and the spacecraft carrying the 15-kg Mars Orbiter were in good health. "The integration of the spacecraft with the launcher PSLV-C25 is completed and the heat shield closure activity is also completed," ISRO director of publicity D P Karnik said.

The preparations now move towards fuelling of the launch vehicle and final checks.

Work done at ISRO centres around the country on the 1,343-kg spacecraft, the workhorse PSLV and five science instruments on the mission converged at Sriharikota on October 3 to bring the Rs 450-crore Mangalyaan Mission into its final stages.

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover, expected to land on the Red planet in three weeks, is NASA's most advanced robotic mission yet.

The Curiosity rover, also called the Mars Science Laboratory, was launched in November 2011. The rover is expected to land on Mars on the night of Aug. 5 PDT. The $2.5 billion rover will touch down at Gale Crater, and is designed to search for clues that Mars could be now, or in the ancient past, a habitable planet for microbial life.

Space Junk-The Waste in space

Don Kessler, the creator of the said-to-be-famous “Kessler Syndrome” theory? In the late 70s, Kessler, a now retired NASA scientist, penned a seminal paper called: “Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites: The Creation of a Debris Belt”. In it he wrote: “As the number of artificial satellites in earth orbit increases, the probability of collisions between satellites also increases. Satellite collisions would produce orbiting fragments, each of which would increase the probability of further collisions, leading to the growth of a belt of debris around the earth. This process parallels certain theories concerning the growth of the asteroid belt. The debris flux in such an earth-orbiting belt could exceed the natural meteoroid flux, affecting future spacecraft designs.”

Kessler used a mathematical model to project the rate at which the asteroid belt he described in his paper would form, and came to the conclusion that, given the right conditions, the debris-filled belt could form as early as this century.

Now, in earth terms you’d hardly call something that passed by you with kilometres to spare a miss, but in space a couple of kilometres is what one calls a close shave. Then there’s the fact that a NASA satellite fell to earth last year, and a Russian probe dropped out of the sky this year.

Photo: The Father of Space Junk, Donald Kessler. (Photo courtesy of Space Junk 3D, LLC.) 

But the problem isn’t so much space debris falling to earth because about 70% of the planet is water and smaller pieces of space junk invariably burn up on entry into earth’s atmosphere. The bigger pieces that do land from time to time are a bit of an issue. The real nightmare that’s keeping NASA awake at night, however, is the growing amount of space debris, and the potential for it colliding with the space station or an intergalactic private craft taking tourists into outer space.

A US non-profit science policy outfit, the National Research Council called on NASA to develop a formal strategy for tracking space junk, and to look at removing debris.

Read more here

NASA satellite is falling down

A 5.4-tonne dead satellite of NASA will soon fall to Earth but NASA saying there is very little chance that it will hit anyone.

The space agency does not know when or where its 20-year-old satellite will drop. It will probably hit the earth in late September but could fall in October. And it could land anywhere south of Juneau, Alaska, and north of the tip of South America. Nasa says there is only a one in 3,200 chance of satellite parts hitting someone.

Experts say not to worry. In the more than 50 years of the space age, no one has ever been hurt by falling space debris. The 5.4-tonne satellite was used to monitor the atmosphere. Most of it will burn up during re-entry. Only about 550kg of metal should survive.

MoonEx plans to mine the moon

Moon Express Inc or MoonEx plans to mine the moon and is in the process of building robotic rovers that will search the lunar surface for precious metals and rare metallic elements. Moon Express Inc or MoonEx, co-founded by Naveen Jain, is building the robotic rovers alongside scientists at NASA's AMES Research Centre near San Jose. MoonEx is financially strong and its co-founders include Barney Pell, the head architect behind Microsoft's Bing Internet search engine and Robert Richards, a commercial space entrepreneur.

While there is no guarantee that the moon is "flush" with these materials, MoonEx thinks it "may be a gold mine of so-called rare earth elements. From an entrepreneur's perspective, the moon has never truly been explored," the report quoted Naveen Jain, chairman and company co-founder, as saying.

"We think it could hold resources that benefit Earth and all humanity."

MoonEx's machines are designed to look for materials that are scarce on Earth but found in everything from a Toyota Prius car battery to guidance systems on cruise missiles.  MoonEx should be ready to land on the lunar surface by 2013," Jain said.

"It's our goal to be the first company there and stay there." MoonEx comprises 25 employees, including former NASA engineers, and has received a NASA contract worth up to USD 10 million.

The company is among several others that hope to win the Google Lunar X Prize 30 million dollar competition that requires a privately-funded team to successfully land a robot on the moon's surface.

The robot must be capable of exploring at least a third of a mile and must also transmit high definition video and images to Earth before 2016.

Naveen Jain said: “the idea of exploiting the moon's resources for private gain is unlikely to be a concern. I also think that the moon will be treated no differently than the international water in our oceans. In this case, no one really owns the water but any company or country can mine the resources ... from the international water as long as they follow certain safety/moral guidelines," he said in the report. MoonEx plans to publicly demonstrate its hardware in the coming months”.

SpaceX to Launch World's Most Powerful Rocket

Falcon Heavy will lift more than twice as much as any other launch vehicle

Elon Musk, CEO and chief rocket designer of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) unveiled the dramatic final specifications and launch date for the Falcon Heavy, the world's largest rocket.

“Falcon Heavy will carry more payload to orbit or escape velocity than any vehicle in history, apart from the Saturn V moon rocket, which was decommissioned after the Apollo program. This opens a new world of capability for both government and commercial space missions,” Musk told a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

“Falcon Heavy will arrive at our Vandenberg, California, launch complex by the end of next year, with liftoff to follow soon thereafter. First launch from our Cape Canaveral launch complex is planned for late 2013 or 2014.”

Musk added that with the ability to carry satellites or interplanetary spacecraft weighing over 53 metric tons or 117,000 pounds to orbit, Falcon Heavy will have more than twice the performance of the Delta IV Heavy, the next most powerful vehicle, which is operated by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.

53 metric tons is more than the maximum take-off weight of a fully-loaded Boeing 737-200 with 136 passengers. In other words, Falcon Heavy can deliver the equivalent of an entire commercial airplane full of passengers, crew, luggage and fuel all the way to orbit.

Falcon Heavy’s first stage will be made up of three nine-engine cores, which are used as the first stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. It will be powered by SpaceX’s upgraded Merlin engines currently being tested at the SpaceX rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. Falcon Heavy will generate 3.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. This is the equivalent to the thrust of fifteen Boeing 747s taking off at the same time.

Above all, Falcon Heavy has been designed for extreme reliability. Unique safety features of the Falcon 9 are preserved, such as the ability to complete its mission even if multiple engines fail. Like a commercial airliner, each engine is surrounded by a protective shell that contains a worst case situation like fire or a chamber rupture, preventing it from affecting other engines or the vehicle itself.

Anticipating potential astronaut transport needs, Falcon Heavy is also designed to meet NASA human rating standards, unlike other satellite launch vehicles. For example, this means designing to higher structural safety margins of 40% above flight loads, rather than the 25% level of other rockets, and triple redundant avionics.

Falcon Heavy will be the first rocket in history to do propellant cross-feed from the side boosters to the center core, thus leaving the center core with most of its propellant after the side boosters separate. The net effect is that Falcon Heavy achieves performance comparable to a three stage rocket, even though only the upper stage is airlit, further improving both payload performance and reliability. Crossfeed is not required for missions below 100,000 lbs, and can be turned off if desired.

Despite being designed to higher structural margins than other rockets, the side booster stages will have a mass ratio (full of propellant vs empty) above 30, better than any vehicle of any kind in history.

Falcon Heavy, with more than twice the payload, but less than one third the cost of a Delta IV Heavy, will provide much needed relief to government and commercial budgets. In fact, Falcon Heavy at approximately $1,000 per pound to orbit, sets a new world record in affordable spaceflight.

This year, even as the Department of Defense budget was cut, the EELV launch program, which includes the Delta IV, still saw a thirty percent increase.

The 2012 budget for four Air Force launches is $1.74B, which is an average of $435M per launch. Falcon 9 is offered on the commercial market for $50-60M and Falcon Heavy is offered for $80-$125M. Unlike our competitors, this price includes all non-recurring development costs and on-orbit delivery of an agreed upon mission. For government missions, NASA has added mission assurance and additional services to the Falcon 9 for less than $20M.

Vehicle Overview          

Mass to Orbit (200 km, 28.5 deg):             53 metric tons (117,000 lb)

Length:                                                       69.2 m (227 ft)

Max Stage Width:                                      5.2 m (17 ft)

Total Width:                                               11.6 meters (38 ft)

Weight at Liftoff:                                        1,400 metric tons or 3.1 million lbs

Thrust on Liftoff:                                        1,700 metric tons or 3.8 million lbs

NASA and General Motors built Humanoid robot

NASA and General Motors built a humanoid robot to be an astronaut assistant onboard the International Space Station will make a special guest appearance on the Fox Network's Super Bowl XLVpre-game show on Feb. 6. The robot named Robonaut 2 or R2 will appear on Fox's pre-game show with sports analyst Howie Long during the network's festivities before kickoff. 

The R2 robot was designed and constructed to help NASA on the International Space Station. Somewhat resembling a person, the R2 has a human-like build, but most importantly, the machine has hands designed similar to those of us with a pulse: its fingers and thumbs can full articulate and react similar to human hands.

With the potential capabilities of the R2, NASA is bringing its example on the next trip to the international space station to perform mundane tasks such as wiping down handrails. In doing so, astronauts have more time to spend on more important jobs than keeping house. The R2 can use the same tools as a non-robotic person and can adapt its grip accordingly.  NASA’s R2 is sitting aboard the Discovery awaiting a February 24th launch.

Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center which develops key transportation and propulsion technologies. The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center