Curiosity Finds Water On Mars

Water, Water everywhere and not a drop to drink.  NASA announced today that the Curiosity rover discovered water on Mars.

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on the surface of Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, charged with answering the question: "Could Mars have once harbored life?" To do that, Curiosity is the first rover on Mars to carry equipment for gathering and processing samples of rock and soil. One of those instruments was employed in the current research: the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite, which includes a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and a tunable laser spectrometer. These tools enable SAM to identify a wide range of chemical compounds and determine the ratios of different isotopes of key elements.

"One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil," said Laurie Leshin, lead author of one paper and dean of the School Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically."

This find is significant in that future explorers to Mars will not have to carry large amounts of water with them. Astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints of water out of every cubic foot of Martian dirt they dig up. The average person needs to consume 2 liters of water per day to survive or 730 liters per year.  Given that 1 liter of water weighs about 2.2 pounds (On earth at least).  So that works out to about 1,606 lbs of water per person for a one year stay on the red planet.  Given the often cited cost of $10,000 per lb for launch costs, it will take about $16 million per astronaut just to launch one year's worth of drinking water.  And you thought that bottle of perrier was expensive.  If we then extrapolate that cost to a crew of 4 and add in additional water for bathing, cleaning and crops, the cost of water shipment probably approaches $0.5 Billion.

Finding relatively accessible water on Mars is a game changer.  Astronauts can now ship a water separator to Mars and mine all of the water that they need.  Cheers!

SpaceX Static Fire at Vandenberg Air Force Base

SpaceX founder just posted on Twitter a link to the above YouTube video and the tweet:

Completed rocket static fire with all systems green this time. Launch window opens in 10 days.

Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX, the 11-year-old firm started by PayPal co-founder and CEO Elon Musk who has since added Tesla electric car company to his portfolio and more recently Hyperloop high-speed transportation system.

That would put the first launch of the upgraded Falcon 9 on September 29. Not from Cape Canaveral, but from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The upcoming launch from Vandenberg will for the first time feature a reusability demonstration. SpaceX plans to re-ignite the Falcon 9's first-stage engine in an attempt to make a soft water landing of the booster in the Pacific Ocean.  The team at SpaceX tried to dampen expectations about this soft landing by stating that there would likely be several failures before the bugs are worked out of this new feature.  Eventually though, reusability could drastically reduce the cost of space flight.

Vandenberg Air Force Base is a United States Air Force Base, located approximately 9.2 miles (14.8 km) northwest of Lompoc, California. It is used to place satellites into polar orbit from the West Coast.

Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC-4) was a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, used by Atlas and Titan rockets between 1963 and 2005. Space Launch Complex 4E is currently being redeveloped and used by SpaceX as a launch site for the Falcon 9 rocket.

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A New Delivery Truck for the International Space Station

Congratulations to the NASA and the team at Orbital for the successful launch of a brand new cargo delivery system.  Orbital developed the Cygnus advanced maneuvering spacecraft to demonstrate cargo delivery services under a NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Space Act Agreement. In addition to the COTS development and demonstration program, Orbital will utilize Cygnus to perform ISS resupply flights under the Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) contract.

Orbital will conduct eight missions to deliver approximately 20,000 kilograms of cargo to the ISS.
The Cygnus system is a low-risk design incorporating elements drawn from Orbital and its partners’
existing, flight-proven spacecraft technologies. Cygnus consists of a common service module and a
pressurized cargo module. Cygnus will carry crew supplies, spares and scientific experiments to the ISS.
The service module incorporates avionics systems from Orbital’s flight-proven LEOStar™ and
GEOStar™ satellite product lines plus propulsion and power systems from our GEOStar
communications satellites.

The pressurized cargo module is based on the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM), developed by
Thales Alenia Space for NASA.

Armadillo Aerospace's New Engine

In response to their disappointing performance during the 2007 X-Prize Lunar Lander Challenge, Armadillo Aerospace has developed a new engine design. According to a news release on the Armadillo Aerospace Website, the big lesson from the X-Prize Cup last year was that their engine start sequence wasn’t reliable enough.

The news release goes on to state, "One of the issues we were fighting with was that our cooling jacket held quite a bit of volume, so starting the engines at idle required a 1.6 second igniter operation time, and we ran into issues melting the igniter. We detuned the igniter to the point that it didn’t melt, but then we had some problems with reliable ignition. We believe there were also separate problems with pushing hot gox back into the filling cooling jacket, and also possibly an assembly problem on one of the engines.

We had plans of attack to resolve these issues with the regen cooled graphite chamber engine designs, involving reducing the jacket volume and adding purges during startup, but we decided to try another approach that might resolve it more definitively.

Making a chamber out of stainless steel and just adding extra film cooling has some significant benefits, although it is going to suffer some penalty in Isp. We had some data points from the radiatively cooled carbon reinforced graphite chambers that we were using in 2006. We had one engine that glowed orange hot before failing, but the engines that we flew at the 2006 XPC weren’t even glowing red hot on the outside after 90 second flights.

Once we have flown the four module system and convinced ourselves that it either works or doesn’t work, we will break the modules apart and start flying them higher and faster in Oklahoma. While we don’t have the permit in hand yet, it looks like AST has agreed in principle to let us fly our vehicles to 4000’ with our current safety systems. By light loading the vehicles and accelerating harder, we should be able to hit the same max-Q that our proposed suborbital vehicles will see, since we intentionally fly rather slow due to the wide, draggy nature of our modular vehicles. I expect we will wreck one or more of the modules in flight testing, but we have four of them, so it won’t be that big of a deal.

Once Spaceport America gets their final permit, we will take any remaining modules out there and see how high we can go. With the legs on, the modules don’t have a chance of getting to 100km, but if we learn all we need with normal flights, we might make a potentially-sacrificial flight of a module lifting off from a stand without legs. The landing wouldn’t be very pretty, but it might not be any worse than the return leg of our XPC flight last year.

Assuming the differential throttling works out on the four module system, our commercial vehicle plan is a six module triangular configuration with engines on the side between the tanks, using the base of the bottom spheres as landing pads. This configuration gives us full module-out redundancy, easy vehicle CG determination before launch, no landing gear weight, and it travels in flight orientation without a wide-load permit (just barely). For a cabin, we are going to use a 5’ diameter transparent sphere. "

Virgin Galactic Releases New Design

Virgin Galactic herald's 'The Year of the Spaceship with the unveiling of the designs of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. Virgin Galactic today unveiled the design of its new, environmentally benign, space launch system based on the X Prize winning technology of SpaceShipOne, which successfully flew into space for the third time in October 2004 and won the $10m Ansari X Prize. The construction of the White Knight Two (WK2) mothership, or carrier aircraft, is now very close to completion at Scaled Composites in Mojave, CA and is expected to begin flight testing in the summer of 2008. It is the world’s largest, all carbon composite aircraft; it has a unique high altitude lift capacity, capable of launching SpaceShipTwo and its eight astronauts into sub-orbital space flight. The WK2 mothership is powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines which are amongst the most powerful, economic and efficient engines available. The WK2 mothership has also been designed to be capable of lifting other payload and launching it into space. Whilst the two vehicles comprising the space launch system have been under construction, Virgin Galactic’s cadre of future astronauts has continued to grow strongly to well in excess of 200 individuals with around 85,000 registrations of interest to fly. Astronaut orientation for spaceflight is progressing well and already 80 of SpaceShipTwo’s first passengers have been through medical assessment and centrifuge training at the NASTAR facility in Philadelphia. Commenting on the unveiling, Burt Rutan, CEO of Scaled Composites, said: “Virgin Galactic produced a demanding output specification for the world’s first private human and payload space launch system. This required us to produce a safe but flexible design capable of multiple applications in new market sectors. I am confident that these vehicles, now in an advanced stage of construction, will achieve just that. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the whole team at Scaled Composites. “Looking up �" way up!” is an expression we have shared since the X Prize began and now we are all excited that this year the dream will start to become a very tangible reality for everyone involved.” Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Galactic, added: “The designs of both the mothership and the new spaceship are absolutely beautiful and surpass any expectations for the future of commercial spaceflight that we had when first registering the name Virgin Galactic in 1999. Burt and his team have done a fantastic job and I am also delighted with the wonderful vision that Foster and Partners, working with URS, have shown in the final designs for Spaceport America in New Mexico. Finally, we are all very excited about the prospect of being able to develop a bio-fuel solution for the space launch system and we are looking forward to working with Pratt and Whitney and Virgin Fuels to trial an appropriate bio mix for the PW308A engines that will be powering our new carrier aircraft.” Virgin Galactic will make further announcements regarding the progress of the launch system, development of its markets, the test flying program and start of commercial operations at Spaceport America in due course.

Masten Space Systems Crash

Masten Space Systems suffered a crash of their XA-0.1 experimental spacecraft during flight testing.

A spokesperson for Masten stated that, "The vehicle lifted off and appeared to be under control - not very good control mind you - but the control system was trying to do the right things at the right time for a bit. It climbed to about 20′ AGL when I concluded that the control wasn’t right and shut down the engines. The vehicle then fell, either hitting the tether limit or the vehicle landing gear clipping the edge of the pad. The structure broke off between the electronics bay and the rest of the vehicle. The tanks and propulsion section hit the ground, broke an engine mounting structure and broke one of the landing gear. The electronics bay was still swinging from the tether. Here is what the scene looked like as the dust cloud moved out of the way. "

There were no injuries as a result of the accident and Masten is considering various options for moving forward. The two options that are being considered include either finishing XA-0.2 or building another low performance vehicle from the surviving parts. XA-0.2 is already designed and being built, but I think it is a higher risk for being damaged in flight test.

Welcome to Chasing Space

Welcome to Chasing Space. The website devoted to the human quest to get off the big blue rock. The purpose of this blog is to document space development, technologies and launches. This blog along with the companion site http://chasingspace.googlepages.com/ will be updated periodically to track and index all things space.