Avia Blog

The shuttle was moved to Launch Complex 39A in preparation for a mission to the International Space Station.

NASA is celebrating the ten year anniversary of the Terra spacecraft’s launch this week.  Terra was first major part of an entire group of survey vehicles to be launched as part of the Earth Observatory System.  Their mission is to study climate change and trends and how human activity may be affecting them.  Launched on December 18, 1999, Terra began collecting data about two months later and should continue doing so until 2015.  The satellite has captured phenomenal changes over the past ten years, documenting lake beds drying up and green rain forests turning to brown terrain. 

Image courtesy the NASA Earth Observatory, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer.

Terra has five instruments onboard.  The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) will collect data to create detailed stereoscopic terrain maps with information on elevation, surface temperature, and more by imaging in 14 wavelengths and a varying angles.  The two Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments will image  in cross-track and biaxial scan mode to measure Earth’s radiation and cloud’s role in affecting it.  The Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) measures changes in sunlight scattering.  The Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) can detect, among many things, large-scale changes in greenhouses gases.  Finally, the Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT, which wins for best acronym) uses gas correlation spectroscopy to, well, you can probably guess that one.

The next major segment of the Earth Observatory System was Aqua, launched into sun-synchronous orbit in 2002.  Aqua’s primary mission, as you might imagine, is to study our planet’s complicated water cycles.  It’s also first in the “A-train,” or Afternoon Constellation, a group of Earth observing satellites that will travel in formation together.  Aura and PARASOL were launched in 2004, while CloudSat and CALIPSO followed in 2006.  Two final satellites, OCO and Glory, which do not yet have a launch date, will make up the grouping.  Together these satellites will study just about everything that affects or is produced as a result of climate changes: ozone, air quality, carbon dioxide, aerosols, cloud formations and much more. 

The Earth Observatory satellites also produce some breathtaking images of storms, fires, floods, and even volcanic eruptions, not to mention the incredible natural and manmade formations around the world.  Terra has documented everything from deforestation in the Amazon to the incredible urbanization of Dubai.  Earth Observatory’s Image of the Day is a great site to bookmark; we were particularly impressed with yesterday’s image from Aqua, seen above, of the major East Coast snowstorm that socked us in here at Aviation Week headquarters in Washington, D.C. last weekend. You should also stop by the NASA Earth Observation’s site, at which you can search their collection of images and download them into GoogleEarth.

Looking like a carefully choreographed fireworks display, this video actually shows the full-scale ground test of Alliant Techsystems’ (ATK) attitude control motor for the launch abort system on NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle. I get a feeling the engineers had fun designing this test sequence.

Video: ATK

ATK is supplying both the abort motor and attitude control motor (ACM) for the launch abort system (LAS), which Orbital Sciences is developing under subcontract to Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin. Attached to the crew module, the LAS will be able to pull the crew clear in the event of an Ares I launcher failure on the pad or during the ascent to obit.

Credit: NASA

While the 400,000lb-thrust soild-rocket abort motor would pull the crew module clear of the Ares I, the ACM would stabilize and steer the vehicle to safety and reorient the capsule for its release from the abort system, after which it would deploy its parachutes and land normally.

Mounted near to tip of the LAS, the ACM consists of a solid-propellent gas generator with eight valves spaced equally around the circumference of the 3ft-diameter motor. Together, these valves can generate up to 7,000lb of steering force in any direction, as the video vividly illustrates. This test, of development motor DM-1, was the sixth in a series of ground tests of the ACM.

Photo: ATK

Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book the Right Stuff pulled back the curtain on the hidden world of fighter jocks and the first generation of astronauts. Each chosen candidate and supporting teams in the space community aspired to have what it took to be part of the small fraternity of men who risked it all to blast into space. That was called the right stuff.

Fast forward to the Washington of 2009–now the talk is of commercial space–and it seems this natural evolution of any government market is causing raw emotions on both sides. 

I received three emails this week that got me thinking more about the coming era of commercial space. The first was from a veteran of the aerospace community, who wrote sarcastically, in passing, how “we will focus on the commercial, (all the rage these days.”)

The second was from a good friend who has a senior position in the industry. He blasted my last blog, which spoke of the excitement of all in New Zealand for their first successful rocket launch. “Didn’t go high enough,” he thundered in the email, “not a true space mission,” etc etc.

And then there was this, from the other side of the battle. My book Selling Peace is due out this week or next, and the best selling author Homer Hickam of Rocket Boys fame was kind enough to write a really positive blurb for the book, which ended by saying “(this) is the story of the type of men and women who will eventually conquer space and turn such stodgy government agencies as NASA into historical derelicts.”

Strong language all around. It is an emotional time. Change does that.

Richard Branson may well have summed up our situation best, when in unveiling SpaceShipTwo the international entrepreneur told the Financial Times his hope that Nasa would eventually work more closely with the private sector on commercial space travel. “Nasa has a very sexy brand name but has spent billions and billions of dollars on projects that don’t need to cost billions and billions.” Added this very shrewd creator of companies and wealth, “(NASA) should enable private companies to take on more of the things that they do…(but) still keep the infrastructure of Nasa to oversee these projects. I have a feeling that the Obama government may be thinking that way.”

We’ll get our first clue of the change that is coming around December 15th–let’s see what’s announced in the next week from the administration. On my part, I believe 2010 will mark the start of a new right stuff to be part of this industry: acceptance that the basic laws of the private sector work even in the vacuum of outer space.

That’s the right stuff that we need today.

Virgin Galactic has released images and video of its completed SpaceShipTwo prototype vehicle attached to its WhiteKnight Two carrier aricraft hours before…

In this week’s edition of Check 6, Amy Butler, Graham Warwick and Robert Wall discuss: The Fiscal 2010 unfunded priority list from the U.S. military services; NASA, lost in space; and Electronic Warfare, are capabilities slipping?

Though well executed and effective, Iridium’s $5 billion satcom network failed. But bought for $25 million, it’s now a success with users including the Pentagon, oil rigs, and aircraft.

In this week’s edition of Check 6, Amy Butler, Graham Warwick and Robert Wall discuss: Concerns about the U.S. space industrial base, progress on biofuels, and effort to start a T-38 replacement program.

Space Race