This Week In Space

I've been slack lately because I've actually been busy in the real world outside of cyberspace. Anyway, here's this week's space news dumpdown.

SMART-1 Probe Hits Target


The SMART-1 probe from the ESA crash landed on the moon as scheduled, yielding the nice montage above. Here's the write up in the SMH.

Darmstadt, Germany: Europe's first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission on Sunday by crashing into the lunar surface in a volcanic plane called the Lake of Excellence, to a round of applause in the mission control room.

Hitting at two kilometres per second, or 7200 kmh, the impact of the SMART-1 spacecraft was expected to leave a three- by-10-metre crater and send dust kilometres above the surface.

Observatories watched the event from Earth and scientists hoped the cloud of dust and debris would provide clues to the geologic composition of the site.

"That's it - we are in the Lake of Excellence," said spacecraft operations chief Octavio Camino as applause broke out in mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. "We have landed."

Minutes later, officials showed off a picture captured by an observatory in Hawaii displaying a bright flash from the impact.

"It was a great mission and a great success and now it's over," said mission manager Gerhard Schwehm.

The spacecraft ended a three-year mission that scanned the lunar surface from orbit and tested a new, efficient, ion-propulsion system that officials hope to use on future interplanetary missions.

Launched into Earth's orbit by an Ariane-5 booster rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, in September 2003, SMART-1 used its ion engine to slowly raise its orbit over 14 months until the moon's gravity grabbed it.

The engine, which uses electricity from the craft's solar panels to produce a stream of charged particles called ions, generates only small amounts of thrust but only needed 80 kilograms of xenon fuel.

The craft's X-ray and infrared spectrometres have gathered information about the moon's geology that scientists hope will advance their knowledge about how the moon's surface evolved and test theories about how the moon came into being.

On Saturday, mission controllers had to raise the craft's orbit by 600 metres to avoid hitting a crater rim on final approach. Had the orbit not been raised the craft would have crashed one orbit too soon, making the impact difficult or impossible to observe.

SMART-1, a cube measuring roughly a metre on each side, took the long way to the moon - more than 100 million kilometres instead of the direct route of 350,000 to 400,000 kilometres.

But the European Space Agency did it for a relatively cheap 110 million euros ($185 million).

The spacecraft also been taking high-resolution pictures of the surface with a miniaturised camera, taking its last images just minutes before the impact.

I like the price tag. It's not something Australia couldn't affford to do... if it had the vision. Except it has been underfunding space research for a very long time, there's no invested know-how left. One sort of wonder what Australia is going to do when it has to re-join space exploration.

Shuttle Countdown Recommences


After the delay that was hurricane Ernesto, Space Shuttle Atlantis is back on deck, readying for countdown.

Launch time is set for 12:29 p.m. ET Wednesday. If the shuttle does not lift off then, NASA has launch opportunities on the following two days.

Engineers and technicians at the Kennedy Space Center planned to spend the coming days checking out flight software, testing navigational systems and fueling the cells that will power Atlantis' systems.

This is the second time a countdown was started for this mission of Atlantis, which originally was to blast off Aug. 27. The launch was delayed after lightning struck the launch pad, requiring engineers to check for damage to Atlantis' systems.

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Atlantis will deliver a 17.5-ton, $372 million addition to the half-built international space station during the 11-day mission. Four astronauts will take three spacewalks to resume construction on the orbiting space lab, which stopped being built almost four years ago after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated while returning to Earth.

Godspeed and all that to the crew.

Lockheed Martin To Build Next Moon Space Vehicle


Here's the article from the SMH.

WASHINGTON: Lockheed Martin has won a multibillion-dollar contract to build a space vehicle to replace NASA's shuttles, put a human on the moon for the first time since 1972, and be the precursor to a manned ship to Mars.

The award marks NASA's most concrete step to fulfil President George Bush's $US230 billion ($300 billion) promise that the space agency would return astronauts to the moon and restore excitement about space exploration. NASA has planned to replace the shuttles since the mid-1980s, and has spent almost $US5 billion to do so - with little success so far.

"It's just thrilling, for all of us," said Skip Hatfield, NASA's project manager, after the announcement on Thursday. The vehicle, Orion, is the embodiment of the "very future of human space flight".

Orion will look somewhat like the three-man Apollo command module but will carry up to six astronauts. Like the shuttle, it will be able to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station.

Orion is expected to make its first manned flight by 2014, four years after NASA's three operating shuttles are retired. NASA hopes for a moon landing by 2020.

Unlike the shuttle, which lands on a runway, Orion will descend with the aid of a parachute to land in the ocean or on land. NASA plans to build two of the vehicles, one for manned flight and the other for unmanned. It will decide how many more to buy after judging how often they can be reused.

The Herald being the Herald, just posted up this story from Reuters.
It sort of tells you why there isn't much interest in Space Exploration in Australia.

Anti-Pluto Revisionism
Last month, in a rigged vote, Pluto lost its status as a planet. Now the backlash is on.

More than 300 scientists have signed a petition protesting against the definition of "planet" decided by the International Astronomical Union last week. That definition demoted Pluto, leaving the solar system with eight planets.

The petition states: "We, as planetary scientists and astronomers, do not agree with the IAU's definition of a planet, nor will we use it. A better definition is needed."

The signers of the petition included NASA scientists, astronomers at major observatories, university professors and graduate students. The astronomical union allowed only scientists attending a conference last week in Prague, Czech Republic, to vote.

The group's definition for a planet specifies three conditions: the object orbits the sun; it is large enough for its gravity to pull it into a round shape; and it "has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit".

The last condition excludes Pluto, because it is located among many other icy bodies in a ring of debris known as the Kuiper Belt.

It all depends on where you draw the lines. Some people want to draw it where pluto is excluded. Others want to draw it where Pluto plus other bodies become certified planets. You'd think they'd settle in inclusion rather than exculsion, but science probably has its fair share of anal-retentive definitionalist types. It's kind off funny to watch from afar. The funny thing is, in my mind, Pluto will always be a planet to me.