Zeitgeist Zephyr

As the world commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, the United States is preparing to send humans back by 2020 through Project Constellation.  Moon walker Buzz Aldrin is now calling for a Mars shot by 2031, a proposal that I support and find reasonable.

The first reason that I support a 2031 Mars shot is that, unlike NASA’s current policy with regards to Project Constellation, this sets a time frame by which to aim for the Red Planet.  “Moon, Mars, and Beyond” is a nice catch phrase and slogan, but that’s currently NASA’s only official “timetable” for going to Mars, and that it will be sometime in the future after returning to the Moon.  Assigning a date over 10 years after we should have made a return to the Moon is a reasonable leap in technology, provided the flow of funding remains steady or is even increased for NASA.

I fully believe that Earth’s future is directly tied to the Moon and how we choose to exploit its resources for terrestrial use, but Mars is integral to humanity’s future, and as society is faced with ever greater dangers having a “Plan B” will be crucial.  Not to mention that the more we explore Mars the more it has been found to have had a wetter history, perhaps not unlike the Earth’s early history, providing key clues to the evolution of planets and potentially life in the universe.

Not interested in making a direct jump from the Moon to Mars?  There are intermediary steps, and NASA shouldn’t get caught up in the order of their timetable slogan.  It may in fact be more practical, not to mention more logical, to send astronauts to a near earth asteroid beyond the orbit of the Moon to test deep space technologies and techniques.  While NASA is planning on keeping astronauts on the Moon for up to 6 months at a time, it pales in comparison to the 24 month mission to Mars.  An 8 or 10 month mission to a near Earth asteroid would not only test out key technology but would train astronauts and ground control in the psychology of deep space flight, which is not likely to be anywhere near as cheery as Star Trek.

2031 doesn’t have to be the set date, but NASA needs one.  It would also be prudent to investigate a mission to a near Earth asteroid, there are plenty of targets to choose from!

Today marks a milestone in NASA’s efforts to return humans to the Moon by 2020.  Two unmanned spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), entered into their respective orbits around the Moon over the last few hours.  Their missions are both aimed at learning more about our closest celestial neighbor so that we can be as prepared as possible before sending humans back to explore and settle its surface.

The LRO is very similar to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) currently orbiting the Red Planet in terms of mission objectives and design.  It will provide some of the most detailed maps of the Moon in history while mapping out its mineral distribution on the surface and scanning for the ever elusive water ice.

LCROSS will pursue the latter exclusively, scheduled to impact the Moon sometime in October into a permanently shadowed crater near the southern polar region of the Moon to look for water ice.  It is actually two craft, one is the Earth-departure stage for the LRO and LCROSS missions and the other is an observation satellite which will be making its own kamikaze descent behind the EDS.  It will view the impact and send back information about the content of the ejecta cloud before impacting the Moon moments later.  The goal is to determine once and for all if water ice exists on the Moon and if so in what quantities. 

LRO will start beaming back images within the next week and I will be sure to post a couple here as they become available.

As the Space Shuttle Atlantis prepares to launch this afternoon at 1 PM, a curious sight has unfolded at the Cape that will be the last such sight during the shuttle program - there are two shuttles on their respective pads at the same time.  It’s a sight that has occurred before, but never under these circumstances.

The second shuttle, Endeavor, is on the pad not just for its upcoming trip to the ISS, but it is also serving as a potential rescue ship for Atlantis should the ship be irreparably damaged while on orbit.  The risks are slightly hightened for the STS-125 mission as it visits the Hubble Space Telescope for the last time as it is in a higher orbit with more debris.  As the Columbia tragedy taught us, it doesn’t take much for the shuttle to be damaged in the wrong place for the whole mission to be compromised.

Other shuttle missions since the accident have all visited the station which can act as a save haven if something were to happen to a shuttle.  There, the astronauts have enough resources to survive for months while a rescue mission could be mounted.  At Hubble, the time is measured in weeks, far too short for a rescue shuttle to not be on the launch pad.

If the rescue mission needs to be mounted, it will be called STS-400 and will involve a skeleton crew being launched on Endeavor to rondezvous with Atlantis in orbit in a matter of a few days following the discovery of any damage.  Once near each other, their robotic arms would interlock and a tether strung between the two airlocks.  A series of three spacewalks would then transfer the 7 astronauts on Atlantis to Endeavor to join the 4 astronauts on board there.  The crews would return to earth on Endeavor and Atlantis would be ditched over the Pacific Ocean where the debris could fall away from population centers.  If STS-400 does happen, it would be one of the riskiest missions in NASA history, rivaling the Apollo 13 mission.  Space shuttles have never flown simultaneously and a rondezvous would be unprecedented.  

My thoughts and prayers are with STS-125 and that STS-400 never has to happen.

God Speed Atlantis!