My Inner Space Child

Not very deep inside me is a still-space-obsessed Inner Child who thinks space flight is the coolest thing ever. As a kid in the sixties, I was super-excited to follow the Mercury and Gemini and Apollo missions as they happened, and I covered the walls of my bedroom with the space posters NASA would send me by the ton whenever I wrote to ask. Space was real then. Apollo 8 orbited the moon in 1968, and in that same White Album year, 2001: A Space Odyssey convinced me that space ships full of people would be tooling around the solar system before I was even 50 years old. I wanted to go!

Of course it didn’t quite pan out that way. The moon landings ended in 1972 and I never got to be a test pilot and an astronaut which was my plan since I was ten. We did have a cool space shuttle for a while, and astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) still circle the globe every 90 minutes. We’ve also sent a bunch of amazing robots to tool around the solar system on our behalf. This isn’t as exciting as the 2001 movie, but I like all of that stuff too.

Even though my obsession is usually turned down to a low simmer, every once in a while something will trigger my Inner Space Child and I will get super-excited again. Sometimes it’s a book, often by Kim Stanley Robinson. Sometimes it’s a movie like The Martian in 2015. But most often it’s something Elon Musk says or does. NASA is still doing lots of important work but it seems that SpaceX gets all the glory. That’s probably because of Elon Musk’s hyperactive Inner Child, and because Elon (yes, I call him Elon) has huge ambition, a huge fortune, and a huge ego, so he can say, “wouldn’t be cool if we could build a rocket that’s bigger than a football field that could fly dozens of people to Mars” and the SpaceX engineers will all say “I’m on it.” And they are. That’s the already-in-work “BFR” which stands for “Big Falcon Rocket” (sure it does). I’ve also seen it called BFS for Big Falcon Ship, and if it really happens as planned, it will certainly be the first true space SHIP, huge and fully re-usable. Elon says that “short test flights” will begin in 2019. That probably means 2020 or 2021, but still. They are seriously building a space ship to colonize Mars (it will do lots of other stuff too).

This week I got excited when I learned about a new SpaceX add-on for the Orbiter 2016 space flight simulator. Orbiter is a free space-flight simulator that runs on a PC. It has accurate physics and beautiful graphics and it is a Space Nerd Inner Child’s dream come true. I spent about a year obsessed with it when I first discovered it in 2005. I even wrote a book about it, Go Play In Space, which teaches you how to do just that.  I still fire up Orbiter on my PC every now and then, usually when I hear about some new features or some cool new add-on developed by someone in the Orbiter community.

The new add-on is a model of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that is set to start carrying astronauts for NASA in 2019 (an “add-on” is a user-developed set of 3D models and computer code that work within Orbiter to simulate a specific spacecraft). This one was the latest work of “BrianJ,” a talented add-on creator who has also made an add-on of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket needed to carry the Crew Dragon or other payloads into virtual orbit. In late 2017 another prolific add-on maker (“francisdrake”) created a model of the SpaceX BFR.

To capture the picture above, I created a scenario in Orbiter 2016 with the Crew Dragon docked to the “top” of the BFR in low Mars orbit (BFR's "wings" are actually solar panel arrays that deploy like Japanese fans). For scale, the SpaceX Crew Dragon with its “trunk” is about 27 feet or 8 meters long, taller than a two-story house. So you can see that the BFR is indeed a Big something Rocket. Search for "BFR size comparison" and you will find many illustrations of its incredible size. Also check out this speculative but suggestive cutaway diagram of the interior of the BFR's second stage (the part that will go to Mars). 

But Orbiter add-ons are more than just pictures or even 3D models. They are working models of the spacecraft, so they can be launched, flown to orbit (or to Mars), maneuvered, entered in the atmosphere, and landed. The Falcon 9 first stage and the BFR are “tail sitters” so they land with rockets blazing. I haven’t tried this yet with the BFR, but I have flown BrianJ’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy a few times (the built-in autopilot makes this rather easy). If you’d like to see it without bothering to install Orbiter, you can watch a video like this one. It's really amazing to see the first stage boosters turn around and fly themselves back to their landing pads. 

Is it weird to be so obsessed, still space-crazy after all these years? Maybe. But I prefer to think that I’m nurturing a sense of wonder that never quite left me. Or something like that. 

This picture shows BrianJ's SpaceX Crew Dragon orbiting the moon in Orbiter 2016.

Bulk Rate Planets in the COSMOS

From the March page of my 2014 Year in Space Calendar:

Kepler's light sensor is so sensitive it can detect a drop of 0.01% of a star's brightness - equal to a fruit fly passing in front of a car's headlight.

Go optics! Go detector engineering! Go zillions of software systems that allowed Kepler to steadily stare at its tiny patch of sky for months on end, looking for those tiny drops in brightness that might indicate a planet passing in front of its star. It worked great, and last week NASA announced that thanks to some advances in the algorithms used to process all that sensor data, more than 700 planet candidates had been determined with high confidence to be actual exoplanets, orbiting stars in solar systems that are light years from our Solar System. 715 new worlds, orbiting 305 different stars. Pretty amazing stuff. NASA also released a brief video explaining how these new planets were confirmed. According to the cool Exoplanet app on my iPad, there are now 1,767 confirmed exoplanets.

Speaking of amazing science stuff, I'm really psyched to watch the new TV series COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey, a 13-part series debuting on March 9 on FOX, National Geographic, and many TV networks around the world. It is hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who as I have occasionally mentioned, is one of my personal heroes for his work in science education. He's a worthy successor to another favorite scientist and author, the great Carl Sagan. Sagan's original COSMOS TV series and book are still great, but 1980 was a long time ago in terms of space exploration and astronomy, so I am really looking forward to this "major rewrite" of that show. Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, herself a tireless promoter of science education, is one of the people behind the new series. 

Carnival of Space #319

Check out the space and astronomy bloggers sharing some of their recent writing at the 319th Carnival of Space, hosted this week by Dear Astronomer.

As a reminder, if you are interested in the JPL Solar System Ambassador program, September is the month to apply.

Be a Solar System Ambassador!

If you live in the US and have an interest in space, planetary exploration, astronomy, and/or science-related educational outreach, please check out the NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassadors volunteer program VERY SOON. September is the only month of the year that new ambassador applications are accepted for ambassadors to start in January 2014.

Although I have been an Ambassador since 2007, for various reasons, I have not been very active in the Ambassador program myself in the last few years. I hope to get more active again starting in 2014. Regardless of my own situation, I strongly believe in this program, and because of reductions of federal government funds related to sequestration, the need for volunteers is stronger than ever. That's because NASA's own employee-based educational outreach programs have been cut. Since the Solar System Ambassadors are volunteers, JPL plans to increase the number of new ambassador appointments for 2014 so there can be more volunteers available who can be involved with programs for schools, museums, libraries, astronomy clubs, and other educational events.

It's easy to apply, and you don't have to be an expert in space or astronomy to participate. Having an interest in educational outreach and a willingness to spend some time on it are more important than space flight expertise. JPL provides various materials and phone conferences that can help you prepare for presentations. These are fun and educational in themselves.

The 100*Pi Carnival of Space!

Well, 314 is approximately 100*(pi), right? Anyway, the 314th weekly blog carnival of space is live at the Dear Astronomer blog. Like the summer, it's short but sweet (and hey Curiosity, congrats on your first Earth year on Mars!).

Kerbal Space Program?!?

I read something about KSP (Kerbal Space Program) a couple of years ago but I didn't do anything about it. Then the other day I saw this comic on xkcd, referencing KSP. If you hover your mouse over the comic, the comment says "Ahem. We are STRICTLY an Orbiter shop." Me too! But I was curious about what had happened to KSP since it was last (vaguely) on my radar.

Quite a bit, it turns out. It's still in an extended alpha development phase, but it's already got some interesting capabilities for people who like to "play in space" (something I once wrote a book about). After looking at a few web sites and videos, I decided to download and try KSP for myself (current version is 0.21.1, and it costs $23, including future updates). So what is KSP? From the web site:

KSP is a game where the players create and manage their own space program. Build spacecraft, fly them, and try to help the Kerbals to fulfill their ultimate mission of conquering space.

Essentially it's a space flight simulator with reasonably accurate physics, wrapped in a game-like interface with pretty decent graphics and some quirky alien-like astronaut characters (KSP's developers also seem to have a quirky sense of humor). It is just now starting to emerge from its "sandbox" phase (with the ability to build and fly your own spacecraft, but without any specific game-like goals). At this point, it's something like 3D simulated model rocketry, but with the ability to launch the rockets you design into space (orbital mechanics is involved, but the math is hidden behind clever controls and displays). You can dock with space stations, travel to and land on other planets, and try to navigate your spacecraft back to Kerbin for a safe landing.

Yes, Kerbin, not Earth. This fictional solar system has real physics (orbital mechanics and atmospheric flight) but it doesn't use the names and specific physical properties of our own solar system. Kerbin is an Earth-like "exoplanet" with two moons (Mun and Minmus - you can fly to and land on them).

So far I've only scratched the surface of KSP, and I don't know how much time I will spend with it. It depends in part on whether I start to do some space-related educational outreach again. I haven't done any for quite a while. When I have done school presentations, I have generally used Orbiter to dynamically demonstrate certain aspects of space flight and the solar system. That's cool for demos, and it beats simply using PowerPoint, but Orbiter's learning curve is quite steep, and it's hard for me to recommend to any students younger than maybe 11 or 12. KSP is definitely more kid-friendly. The rocket building section (see picture at top of this post) is simple yet powerful (though there is no guarantee that what you build will fly well or at all - the physics is pretty realistic, so you have to worry about mass, thrust, stability, etc.). As the Minecraft craze shows, kids (and adults) love to build stuff inside virtual worlds (and real ones). While building your own spacecraft for Orbiter is certainly possible, it's a separate "add on" development process, not integrated with the simulation itself.

KSP also integrates the instruments and controls needed to change orbits directly within the 3D views (spacecraft and map), making it easier and less abstract to see the effects of firing your rockets at certain times, locations, and directions. The screenshot above is from the integrated Orbiting 101 tutorial, and it shows the "maneuver node system" being used to predict the effect of a pro-grade burn at the low point of the orbit (periapsis). Dragging the pro-grade symbol changes the delta-V (speed change) value, and the dotted orbital path shows the predicted effect in real time (your path doesn't actually change unless you make that proposed burn at the proper time and with the correct ship orientation). Orbiter has similar capabilities (and much more) with its various "MFD" instruments, but these work like display screens in the cockpit, not directly in the 3D view. More realistic but also harder to visualize and understand.

KSP allows you to build and fly some pretty cool and complex space vehicles such as multi-stage rockets with strap-on boosters, and even Apollo LM-like landers such as the one shown above (docked with an Apollo-like command module housing three Kerbals who are about to land on the Mun - this is a supplied sample scenario). Although it's easy to build monster rockets with many engines, you do need to pay attention to structural integrity, symmetry, and stability or your giant booster may tumble out of control, crash, and burn. Unlike in Orbiter, things can and do blow up in KSP, though at the moment the hardy Kerbal astronauts are immune to G-forces, allowing you to perform high-G atmospheric entries and the like with impunity (this will undoubtedly change in future versions).

Future versions will also include a flight sim-like "career mode" with awards for completing certain missions or milestones like docking or landing on the Mun). I suppose that training options will also expand, although there is already some basic training in the game, and a variety of user-created tutorial videos and PDF's available on the web. Note that since changes between versions can be pretty extreme, there is no guarantee of backwards compatibility for previously built things when you upgrade.

I think KSP is already a great educational tool, because it is sufficiently "toy like" to be fun and non-threatening (think building robots with Lego MindStorms, but much cheaper), but powerful enough to allow really interesting and challenging activities. I really like the emphasis on what is essentially engineering - designing, building, testing, and thinking about why things work or don't work so the next iteration can be better. And remember, to engineer is human (and sometimes fun too).

The First Moon Families

Today would have been Neil Armstrong's 83rd birthday, and I happened to see this LIFE Magazine web feature somewhere. It includes photos of Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins before their Moon mission in 1969, "away from the office," with their wives and kids. I especially like the photo I've posted here.

Europa Report - Good Movie

I just bought Apple TV and connected it to our HDTV. Coolest thing ever. With my heavy stake in Apple i-devices, iTunes music, and even a few movies and TV series bought over the years, it's the perfect thing. I can stream music from iCloud through my living room stereo, share content from the iPad or iPhone on the big screen, view rented movies at full (1080p) HD, and much more. Great little $99 device with no additional subscription required. Much nicer web interface than the Panasonic BluRay player we have used up to now (and still may use for Amazon movies since Apple TV doesn't support those).

But I digress. The very first movie I rented through Apple TV was Europa Report, and I really liked it. It's an unusual situation that this first-run film is available on iTunes ahead of its theatrical release on August 2, but that works for me, especially with Apple TV.

Europa Report is mostly "hard SF," my preferred SF genre. The science and the technical treatment of human space flight on a long interplanetary mission are mostly realistic and quite well done, on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a planned 3-year mission to explore the surface and sub-surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The space-station like spacecraft is fairly large and has a rotating component to provide artificial G in the crew quarters. The six person crew (4 men, 2 women) works well together, though they experience tension, boredom, isolation, and other mundane effects of a long mission in a cramped environment (the movie is only 90 minutes, but the production manages to convey the length of the mission pretty well). They also experience a number of crises, which also mostly seem realistic, triggered by events such as a solar storm, equipment failures, and accidents.

I won't give away any key plot details, but as the picture above suggests, they do reach Europa, their crewed lander reaches the surface, and they are able to drill through some 2.7 km of ice with a probe that sends back video and data from a sub-ice ocean. I will let you see the movie to find out what they learn and what happens. It's pretty dramatic and exciting.

I do have a few minor complaints. Why does a lander intended only for non-atmospheric use have deployable landing gear? Why would they not follow better safety and backup procedures on EVA's? I won't say more lest I reveal plot details, but some of the dramatic events seemed preventable to me if certain common sense procedures had been followed. Of course it's a movie, so dramatic events are needed. And these are minor complaints - on the whole, this movie required much less suspension of disbelief than 90% of the space movies I have seen. There is serious consideration given to zero-G, radiation, crew psychology, communication delays, spacecraft operations, and much more, all in the context of a good story with real-seeming characters. Multi-year spaceflight seems much more of a tough job than an adventure in this movie, though the adventure part is definitely there (sort of like the old saying about war - long periods of sheer boredom interspersed with moments of stark terror).

I would give the movie 4.5 out of 5 stars if I were one to give stars to movies (and BTW, there are no "stars" in this movie - the actors are all unknowns to me, but they do a fine job).

iPad Astronomy

I love my iPad Mini. It follows me everywhere and is the most wonderful little tool for reading books and magazines, creating music, studying Japanese, and exploring the Universe, to name only a few frequent uses I have for it. I have around 13 astronomy and space related apps on my iPad right now, including my favorite "game," F-Sim Space Shuttle (I probably have bought a dozen more astronomy/space apps not currently installed - 32 gigabytes is not as big as it sounds). Back in April, I wrote about one of my favorite apps, Exoplanet. Recently I've found a few other astronomy apps that are really awesome. Here's some info on two of them.

Luminos is currently my favorite general astronomy or "planetarium" app. It is beautiful and packed with features, more than I have really managed to learn so far, although I can't say the interface is poor - it's just that there's a lot of stuff to see and do. It is comparable to Stellarium, the (free) planetarium program I have used the most on Windows, but of course more portable and with a touch-based UI. I like that in addition to the usual planets, stars, and deep-space objects, it also includes small bodies (comets and asteroids) and satellites. Everything is easily configurable for how much information to collect, update, and display.

Cosmographia is one of two really beautiful astronomy apps from Fifth Star Labs LLC (the other one is Sky Guide, which is based on real astrophotography and has the interesting feature of assigning musical tones to different types of sky objects when you touch them). Cosmographia is focused on the solar system, and it reminds me in some ways of my favorite (free) space flight simulator for Windows, Orbiter, though it doesn't include the user-controlled space flight aspects of Orbiter. It is wonderful for tooling around the solar system, exploring the planets and their moons, as well as various minor objects and spacecraft including including Cassini (Saturn), ISS (Earth), Galileo (Jupiter), the two Voyagers (now leaving the solar system), and several others. Each of these typically includes one or more "highlights" which are scripts you can select to run a simulation of an event such as a close fly-by of Enceladus by Cassini (select the spacecraft, then the circled i for info, then scroll down to the mission highlight links at the bottom).

This is the part that most reminds me of a replay in Orbiter (though in Orbiter you have the ability to define or change spacecraft encounters by flying the spacecraft yourself, assuming you have learned the operations and orbital mechanics needed to do this, as explained in my free e-book Go Play In Space). The planetary and spacecraft graphics are beautiful, and there is also extensive information on each of the objects. You have full control over time, so you can also use this app to see the positions of the planets at any given time and date, as well as control time acceleration to speed things up and observe the motions. The app is very configurable. You can see and control orbit trails, stars, asteroids, labels, etc. You can even watch Curiosity (MSL) approach Mars and enter its atmosphere - in theory anyway. If you choose one of these highlights, it works for a while, but when it gets close to Mars - poof! MSL just disappears, showing up as a labeled dot on the surface that you can't zoom into.  Aside from that small defect, this app looks and works great, and I highly recommend it to fans of the solar system and space exploration.

Chris Hadfield's "Space Oddity"

Col. Chris Hadfield has returned to Earth from his five months on the International Space Station. His photos, videos, and tweets were amazing. He shared the space experience with the public better than any astronaut had ever done. But he had one more surprise in store before coming home - this music video, a lyrically revised version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," with vocals and guitar recorded in space! So cool. Great job, Chris! I hope they decide to give you another gig in space real soon (though I heard somewhere that Canada isn't eligible to send another astronaut to the ISS for three years).

Floating in a most peculiar way indeed! Though they should have had him "upside down" for at least part of this shot.

JPL's Basics of Space Flight

Serendipity works in mysterious ways. While updating the Kindle app on my iPad, the installation got hung up somehow. I tried various things and finally deleted the app and all its data, i.e., all my local e-books. No worries for the purchased Kindle books as Amazon keeps backups for you on its cloud server. But I also had a bunch of PDF files. I wasn't sure exactly which ones, so I searched my laptop's external drive for larger PDF files. I found several PDF books I had lost or forgotten about, including a wonderful book called The Ascent of Science, and a JPL work called "The Basics of Space Flight."

I wrote about JPL's "Basics" back in 2007. It's a really great educational web site developed by JPL spaceflight engineer Dave Doody. The web site has a number of interactive features (including quizzes) and is maintained and updated by JPL. There have been PDF versions available too, but they have carried a disclaimer that they are not maintained, and past versions were not very nicely formatted (essentially PDF captures of the web pages). When I found a PDF dated 2001, I decided to check JPL for a newer version. Sure enough, I found a 2011 version that Doody had reformatted specifically for e-book and print purposes. It's really great.

The home page for the JPL Basics of Space Flight website is here, and this is definitely the most complete and up-to-date version if you wish to explore interactively. If you want a nicely formatted, albeit slightly older and non-interactive PDF version, click here (it's about 17 megabytes). There is also a paperback version available from Amazon.

In reading the introduction to the PDF, I learned about a more technical book that Dave Doody published in 2009, Deep Space Craft: An Overview of Interplanetary Flight. I read a few pages through Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, and it's definitely a piece of space-geek heaven. But it's a $92 textbook and I wasn't going to buy it (no Kindle version, and I very rarely buy paper books these days). But just now I saw a "like new" copy from a third party seller for $32 so I decided to go for it. What can I say about an addiction?

Exoplanets Rising

Several new Earth-like exoplanets were recently announced, based on continuing observations from NASA's Kepler satellite (the above graphic is from NASA's Kepler page). This brings the number of confirmed exoplanets to 882, according to one of my favorite iPad apps, the aptly named Exoplanet (also for iPhone). Kepler-62 is a five-planet system with planets of 1.4 and 1.6 Earth radii orbiting in the habitable zone, according to the discovery paper (abstract). Could these planets actually have liquid water? And life? Too soon to tell, but we will sure have plenty of candidates to look at once we have some tools with sharp enough vision and sensors, like the upcoming JWST (James Webb Space Telescope). Of course at 1200 light-years from Earth, no one is going to be visiting the Kepler-62 system anytime soon (barring great advances in wormhole transportation systems).

Of course you can find such information directly from Google, NASA, and other sources, but the Exoplanet app is pretty much one-stop shopping for keeping up with newly discovered planets and how they compare with one another, through a variety of cool graphics and comparison tools. For example, the page for Kepler-62e above includes the relative sizes (with Earth just to the left of Kepler-62b) and the location within the star's habitable zone (shown in green), along with other information (you can touch each band for a full-screen version). You can also view lovely, zoomable graphics of the Milky Way Galaxy, showing its structure along with the location of any selected exoplanet, plus our own Solar System, for reference (example below).

The screen below shows the latest discoveries at the top of a detailed database table. There is also some great background information that explains what exoplanets are, how they are discovered, and how they vary. The basic app is free, but there are various low-cost in-app purchases to add more features and to remove ads. Updates for newly discovered planets are small and frequent free downloads within the app (when you have an internet connection). A cool tool.

F-Sim Space Shuttle - Video!

F-Sim Space Shuttle (iTunes, also available for Android devices) is the only gaming app that stays on my iPad and iPhone for very long. I don't play it all the time, but every once in a while it's nice to shoot a few space shuttle approaches just for the fun of it. The latest update (v2.8) just came out, and developer Sascha Ledinsky has added a really cool feature: the ability to export videos of your flights!

He added external views and in-app replay features long ago, but with video export, you can share your accomplishments with the world - in HD! So of course I had to try it. This YouTube video features a "safe" landing (not bad except for landing left of the runway center line), with a musical soundtrack added in iMovie (2 minutes of the song "Down & Out" from my recent album "Look at You," available on iTunes, not to mention Amazon.com).

UPDATE: A small tip has helped my landings immensely - pinch-zooming to enlarge the HUD display so the FPM (flight path marker) and "guidance diamond" are easier to view and position. I finally made a "perfect" final approach landing for 900,832 points, recorded in this video. Next stop: a perfect full-HAC approach and landing, and a million point landing. Then I will retire just like the real shuttle pilots. Unless I decide to pursue shuttle aerobatics, like this amazing barrel roll on short final, followed by a good landing (flown by Sascha, the developer of F-Sim Space Shuttle). Slick!

"The Martian" - Great SF Book

This was a great find and practically a steal at 99 cents for a full-length SF Kindle e-book. Andy Weir's The Martian was recommended to me, probably because I had recently bought another Kindle SF title, Wool by Hugh Howie (also a great read from an "indie writer"). 

I tend to prefer so-called "hard" science fiction, stories that have at least some plausible claim to feasibility based on physics and technology, even if it's some pretty far-out physics and technology (I mostly don't like stories based on magic and fantasy, with occasional exceptions).  The Martian is definitely hard SF, but it's also a riveting story line. I read it in a couple of days. 

The story takes place on a NASA manned Mars mission (you immediately see the fiction here!), perhaps 30-40 years in the future. An ion-engine-powered (VASIMR actually) Mars transfer vehicle (the Hermes) has been built and used on two previous manned missions. These are short-term missions (about a month on the surface), using fairly extensive infrastructure delivered to the surface by multiple unmanned supply ships. Although not defined in detail, the mission architecture seems to borrow from Mars Direct and various NASA Mars Reference Missions, with in situ rocket fuel production, a fairly large "hab" to house the astronauts, large pressurized Mars rovers, and a separate MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) used to return the astronauts to the Mars-orbiting Hermes. These facilities all feature importantly in the story.

The six astronauts of Ares 3 run into trouble a few days after landing - an extra-powerful dust storm with winds that could damage the MAV, necessitating as hasty abort. As the crew of six makes its way to the MAV for emergency departure, Mark Watney is injured by flying debris. Telemetry indicates that he has died due to a large breach in his spacesuit. With the MAV about to topple in the wind, the rest of the crew barely escapes, leaving Mark's body behind.

Of course, Mark doesn't actually die (his suit was breached and he was injured, but some lucky circumstances allowed the suit to seal off the breach). The hab is still intact and stocked with food for six for a month-long mission, but all antennas have been lost, so Mark is unable to communicate with his crew mates or with Earth. Due to orbital mechanics and complex logistics, a rescue is unlikely even if he can reach someone, and even with rationing, the food supply will only give him a few months. But Mark figures he might as well try to survive, and as a clever and stubborn guy, as well as a botanist and mechanical engineer (every crew member is chosen for multiple skills), he manages to solve a steady stream of problems that Mars and his situation throw at him (none of them are aliens or demons as in some other Mars mission books and movies). 

I won't tell you more than that, except to say that with logbook entries as the format, I was skeptical that this could really hold my interest. But Mark (or should I say Andy) is quite funny, and his descriptions of his problem solving are extremely interesting (and detailed). This book made me think that humans on Mars will have a tough time, but that we will ultimately prevail in spite of the hostile environment. It also gave me a "real" use for the Mars Globe app that I have had on my iPod Touch and iPad for quite some time. I won't explain that any further - read it yourself! 

 

Beautiful Earth Views from ISS!

Some space advocates decry the fact that humans are currently "stuck in low Earth orbit." While I too would love to see humans branch out to the Moon, Mars, the asteroids, and perhaps further, I have to say that low Earth orbit is still a pretty cool place to be. Case in point: I recently learned that the current ISS commander, Canadian astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield, frequently posts pictures from the ISS on Twitter and Facebook. So I "liked" Col. Hadfield on Facebook, and I now receive daily reports and photos from the ISS. Pretty amazing stuff (you can also see his pictures on Tumblr).

I also found a wonderful video compiled from ISS photography, including time-lapse views of auroras and other beautiful images of Earth. Christoph Malin's "Making the invisible visible" is a 15 minute video that is described as "a tribute to the International Space Station Program as well as Dr. Don Pettit, NASA Astronaut and ISS Astrophotographer." The screen shot below is from the video, looking north over New England (notice the hook of Cape Cod in the lower center). Also note the green aurora along the limb of the Earth. You should watch this video, preferably in HD.  

Orbital Tour of the Earth at Night

This NASA video is amazing and beautiful. A narrated tour of various areas of Earth at night as seen from the orbiting International Space Station. The frame above shows the southeast United States, with Atlanta showing as the brightest area near the center. This narrated daytime tour is also quite spectacular, with a much slower pace since so many more surface details are visible in daylight. View these in HD!

Where It All Began

I meant to post this when it was actually 50 years to the day, but now it's after midnight. Oh well, it's still cool. Fifty years ago yesterday, September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University in Texas in which he stated the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of decade. The famous part of the speech is this:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Guess what? Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, fulfilling JFK's pledge. There's a lot more to the story of course. But it's still a pretty good story. 1962 was right around when I started to get crazy about space and all the associated technology. It's pretty amazing that when he made this speech, only four Mercury astronauts had flown in space, two very quick suborbital flights (Shepard and Grissom) and two brief orbital flights (Glenn and Carpenter), three orbits each. Wally Schirra would fly six orbits a few weeks after this speech. It's a long way from three orbits to the moon.

There's a video here. The text of the speech and other links can be found here.

Mars "Beach" Photos

Lest I get too Earth-centric in this blog, I want to mention the progress of MSL (Curiosity to her friends) on Mars. While the JPL team is still taking things slow to make sure everything is carefully checked out, there has been some cool progress, including at least one laser shot and a very short drive away from the landing site. The pictures are amazing, and I think one of the pluses here is that Curiosity's mast cameras are roughly at human eye level, so the perspective is like you would see if you were standing on Mars.

While the color photos are great, I'm really digging the sharp B&W shots we've been seeing recently. Our own robotic Ansel Adams on Mars. They somehow remind me of beach photos from when I was a kid and my parents took me to Cape Cod. I know, I know. No mountains in Cape Cod. No ocean on Mars. But the look of the B&W just does that for me. Takes me back to 5 years old, playing in the sand with my geological drill and laser spectrometer.

There are great official images here. My favorite spot for MSL news is Emily Lakdawalla's blog at the Planetary Society. She really digs up the latest Mars dirt (so to speak). Today she showed a wonderful full color panorama including the mountain. MSL's first tire tracks at the Ray Bradbury Memorial Landing Site on Mars are seen in this August 22 panorama:

6 More Wheels on Mars!

I decided to go to bed rather than wait for Curiosity's planned 1:30 a.m. landing, but without setting any alarm, my wife and I both woke up at about 1:20, and we used the iPad to watch a video feed from the Planetary Society's  Planetfest in Pasadena. We tuned in just after cruise stage separation, and both the Planetfest crowd and the JPL control room teams were already going wild. It was very exciting and emotional, and it all went perfectly, including the almost immediate display of a couple of low-res "hazcam" photos showing that Curiosity was indeed safe and sound. Awesome. I was glad I had watched the Eyes on the Solar System EDL simulation earlier in the evening so I could really picture each event as it was called out. We watched for about 20 minutes then went back to sleep.

This morning I checked the Planetary Society Blog where Emily Lakdawalla reported that there appeared to be a "puff" of something on the horizon in the very first hazcam image that was not there in a later shot after the transparent lens cover was opened. Her thought was that this might have been a dust cloud from the impact of the descent stage, which was programmed to fly off, run out its fuel, and crash far from the landing site. If so, that would be really cool. Imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will probably confirm that and also show us exactly where Curiosity landed.

Eyes on Curiosity

I've been a very bad Solar System Ambassador the last couple of years. Other parts of life (job, family, music) have intervened, and I just haven't been keeping up with space developments and doing outreach events. My bad. I haven't even fired up Orbiter in probably 9 months. But I'm still really interested in this whole business of exploring the solar system (see my recent review of Kim Stanley Robinson's new book 2312 - he really makes the solar system come alive, 300 years in the future).

But of course the solar system is alive now. Mostly here on earth of course, but our latest robotic emissary to a neighboring planet is going to land there in less than four hours from now. That is of course NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), otherwise known as Curiosity. Today I have been reviewing the mission and the all important EDL (entry, descent, landing) phase, the famous "7 minutes of terror" that will start in just about three and half hours for us (Curiosity will experience it about 14 minutes before we hear about it, the time that light-speed radio signals from Mars will take to get here).

I have been watching the progress using JPL's very cool "Eyes on the Solar System" 3D visualization web application which includes a detailed simulation of the EDL phase. You can watch this as a preview (including controls to speed up, slow down, reverse, and pause the events) or you can watch it live. Right now the live view shows the cruise stage slowly spinning with its solar cells pointed to the sun:

But if you run the preview mode (or wait for the landing), you can watch all the more terror-laden steps like aero-shield heating, descent stage separation, and the grand finale, the special-forces-like "sky crane" landing (there is also a very cool JPL video about the EDL phase here):

I wish the landing weren't happening at 1:30 am in my time zone, but I plan to try to stay up even though it's a "school night." I was lucky enough to see Curiosity when it was still a bunch of parts in the JPL clean room back in May 2009, and I feel a special attachment the the not-so-little six-wheeled fella (gal?) - here's a picture I took of the descent stage at JPL that day: