Space Exploration: Beyond Mars
Most of you probably know all about the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers that are currently working on their missions on Mars. Spirit landed just over two weeks ago, and its twin, Opportunity will be landing tonight, 10:05pm CST, on the opposite side of Mars. These rovers have been given lots of attention, and are very cool projects. But one hope I have is that once people see how cool these rover missions are, they might be interested to learn more about some of the other missions currently going on. So here are a few suggested links to missions you might find interesting.
- Stardust – Stardust is a robotic spacecraft launched on Feb. 7th, 1999 with the mission of collecting material from a comet, by actually flying directly through its tail, and then return to Earth for collection, allowing us to see first hand what comets are made of. On Jan. 2nd 2004, it made a huge milestone by actually flying past Comet Wild 2, approaching to less than 150 miles from the comet. The craft was heavily battered from the dense cloud of gas, dust and ice surrounding the comet, but it made it through without damage. This short flyby video is not to be missed! In a little over 700 days, Stardust will make its way back to Earth, to return the comet and interplanetary dust samples that it has collected.
- Cassini-Huygens – The Cassini-Huygens project is one of the most ambitious interplanetary missions ever launched. Its mission is to explore Saturn and its largest moon, Titan. Of all the places in the solar system that may harbor life, or conditions appropriate for it, Titan is among the most likely. In fact, many scientists hold higher hopes for Titan containing life than Mars. It contains large amounts of frozen water, and its atmosphere is thick and rich with organic compounds. The Cassini robotic satellite will study Saturn, its rings and its 30 known moons, while the Huygens probe will be sent to the surface of Titan to study its composition, and search for signs of life. This mission encompasses some of the most advanced instrumentation available, and the Huygens probe, once deployed, will be the most distant man-made object to land on a celestial body. In about 6 months, Cassini-Huygens will reach Saturn, and about this time next year, the Huygens probe will begin its decent to the surface of Titan.
- SOHO – The SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) project is a joint mission between the European Space Agency and NASA to survey and study the most awesome source of energy we rely upon every day, the sun. The SOHO spacecraft was launched in 1995, and has seen nearly 3000 days of operation. The mission timeline has been extended several times, and is now set to stay active until at least 2007. SOHO has been a spectacular success, and its wide array of instrumenation is all fully functional after many years of service. If you are curious about the current solar weather, from the SOHO Homepage you can see current images of the sun, videos of recent solar activity, and an update on the solar wind speeds. At the moment solar winds are moving at a brisk 447 kilometers per second. Make sure to check out the Hotshots section of the gallery for some amazing and colorful videos of solar flares in action, including the recent solar activity from late October/early November 2003. SOHO is proof that cooperation between space agencies works!
This is just a tiny sampling of what is going on in the world of space exploration. For more, check out the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Missions page and the main NASA Missions page. As a final editorial, I’d like to note that George W. Bush’s vision for renewed space exploration is admirable, but may not be the best method for moving forward. He proposes a series of rapid movements to finish the International Space Station and prepare a base on the moon to use for a departure point for extended manned space missions, including manned missions to Mars. While this is all well and good, he proposes a total of 12 billion dollars be moved toward this goal, but only 1 billion of this will be new money. The other 11 billion will be pulled from other parts of NASA’s budget. Manned space exploration is important, but many feel that we might set ourselves too far back if we sacrifice some of our less glamorous yet highly valuable projects in favor of a manned mission. Perhaps, with time, people will begin to see more of what our space programs around the world are doing, and will be able to justify increased budgets to support both popular manned missions, as well as the valuable scientific research performed by inexpensive and durable robotic spacecraft.
P.S. If anyone else has a favorite mission they want me to put up here, leave a comment with some info about the mission!
Saturday 24 Jan 2004 | Sam | Lovely Links
I would like to see a project to clean the defunct nuclear reactors and cores from orbit around earth.
“On Jan 24 1978
The nuclear-powered Soviet Cosmos 954 satellite plunges through Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrates, scattering radioactive debris over parts of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Much of the satellite lands in the Great Slave Lake; only about 1% of the radioactive material is recovered.” via daily rotten. bummer for canadians.
According to Yale prof. Ed Tufte there are 34 nuclear reactors in orbit. That kinda freaks me out.
I sort of have an ideological opposition to the space program. I like science but I think we should consider other priorities. Comets are really cool but 1 billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day. I think it’s a bad idea to start spreading pollution off planet BUUUUUTTTTTT galaxy droids are neato. I can see both sides.
I understand your issue with the space program. Its the same issue a lot of people have. However, the way I see it, a society needs balance in how it distributes its collective energy. It needs historians to keep the past, social programs to maintain the present, and advanced math and ‘hard science’ to prepare the future.
I like to think about the differences between the Romans and the Greeks. The greeks had a lot of science, but little engineering. They were astronomers, but they didn’t built aqueducts. The romans were the other way around, they did lots of building and practical engineering, but they didn’t go any farther into science than they had to to make the project at hand work.
Neither of these ideals works very well.. I agree that we need to focus more on the fact that a goodly portion of the world doesn’t get the food and housing they need. However, we can’t give up the future. Technology that is helping people today may have begun as a seemingly fruitless scientific exercise hundreds of years in the past.
Remember how much money the defense department gets? somewhere around 400 billion? I bet a few things could be streamlined, a few bureaucrats canned, and a few more missiles retired, and we could free up a large amount of money that would be better spent on both the space program, as well as domestic concerns.
Resist the temptation to believe that space droids are just for fun. Sure, they are presented as such to draw attention, but the science is serious. Lots of technology trickles out of the JPL, including odd things, like the Ecosphere that Billy gave me, it is a little glass ball filled with air, water, algae, bacteria and shrimp. It is a closed ecosystem that needs only to be kept between 60 and 80 degrees, and be given a few hours of light per day. The shrimp go about their lives, reproduce, feed on the algae, etc. The algae feeds on the sunlight and nutrients put into the water by the bacteria that eat the shrimp waste. Just like a mini-earth. They live for years, some as long as 18 years (and still going) with no input or output besides the light of the sun.
Anyway, the technology trickled out of the JPL as part of an ongoing study on how to create facilities that recycle everything, and can maintain life for its inhabitants on an input of sunlight alone. One obvious goal is life in space, but the techniques they use for saving energy, growing food, recycling wastes and minimizing pollution will eventually benefit everyone.
Anyway, I can’t remember where I read it, but there are already plans for recovering waste that has been tossed into space. The next few years will see a big change in how we get stuff into space. In the past it was just ‘huck it up there, damn the pollution or jettisoned ballistics or dead reactors, just get it up.’ But now all sorts of new launch vehicles are being developed that don’t drop their booster rockets like the shuttle or ballistic stages like the Deltas. Then we can really get to the task of cleaning up the trash.
Also, we are a lot better at tracking satellites now than we were in 1978, we’d probably have a lot more warning now, and we’d probably even be able to take care of it before it crashed, like we did with Mir.