This Year in Space January 1, 2007
Posted by Brian Pfeifer in Armadillo Aerospace, Bigelow Aerospace, ESA, India, JAXA, NASA, Orbital SCiences, Rocketplane Kistler, Russia, Space Startups, SpaceX, UP Aerospace.add a comment
2006 was a pretty good year in space. The international launch community averaged over one orbital launch per week. U.S. and Russian providers carried out the bulk of the operations but the E.U., Japan, Israel and China also had successes under their belts. With four failed launch attempts, the failure rate was a mere 6%, which is considerably better than the historical average of 10%.
Manned spaceflight had a banner year. The International Space Station returned to a three-person crew and played host to astronauts and cosmonauts from the U.S., Russia, Germany, Sweden, and Japan. Although U.S. citizens, Astronauts born in Australia and England also visited the ISS and truly put the “International” in the International Space Station. Anousheh Ansari, perhaps the most famous space tourist to date, traveled to the station on one of two Soyuz flights this year. Her blog carried many dreamers with her on the ten-day journey.
NASA also managed to conduct two ISS construction flights. Space walkers and the robotic arm installed the P4 solar arrays, the P5 spacer truss, and rewired the electrical system to its permanent configuration. For the first time several years, the ISS actually looks different from the outside. Not only that, the increased power supplied by the new photovoltaic cells sets the stage for the installation of Japanese and European modules over the course of the next two years.
The emerging aerospace companies had more of a mixed year. SpaceX attempted to launch a partly reusable Falcon 1 at the start of the year, but suffered a major engine failure. Even with the loss of the vehicle, NASA still awarded them $278 million to develop cargo delivery and possibly human taxi services to the ISS. Rocketplane-Kistler won the other COTS development contract for $207 million to develop the same services.
UP Aerospace and Armadillo Aerospace both struggled with suborbital flights. UP Aerospace lost their launcher the New Mexico’s innaugerral spaceport flight, when it veered off course and disappeared into the White Sands Missile Range. It took them over a week to recover the broken hardware so they could analyze the failure.
Armadillo conducted several spectacular flights at the X Prize Cup in October. In an attempt to secure the Lunar Lander Challenge, a golf cart sized LH/LOX rocket vehicle named Pixel had to traverse 100 feet, land, and then return to its launch pad. The team made three tries at the event, and accomplished the first half of the challenge, but suffered equipment malfunctions and other difficulties at the landing site. If their vehicle had been a bit more robust, they certainly would have succeeded.
Bigelow Aerospace impressed most space watchers with the launch of their first test of an inflatable orbital habitat. The subscale vehicle was launched on a Russian Dnepr rocket and surpassed expectations. The inflation was flawless, and the mini-space station established contact with Beigelow’s ground station. The on-board thrusters stabilized the initial tumbling, and the solar cells fed power to the systems. Video cameras mounted inside and outside let the world witness this privately funded success.
In the next installment we’ll take a look at the accomplishments of our unmanned explorers over 2006.
Keeping Down the Dust January 1, 2007
Posted by Brian Pfeifer in Future Development, NASA.add a comment
NASA and others have been doing a lot of research on dust mitigation techniques. This will be critical for astronauts living on the surface of the Moon or Mars for long duration expeditions. The ubiquitous dust poses health hazards to the astronauts and engineering hazards to equipment. What follows are a few of the techniques that you may employ to combat dust problem when you visit our lunar and Martian outposts.
You can design rear-entry space suits that dock with your landing vehicle. Since no one has to go through an airlock, you’ve pretty much eliminated health risks associated with bringing dust inside.
You can also wear jumpsuits over EVA suit. This is akin to the disposable suits worn by HAZMAT or nuclear workers. Again, the jumpsuits are removed before reentering your spacecraft. In addition to health risks, this will also reduce the damage done to bearings/joints on the EVA suits.
NASA is working on electrostatic tools for removing dust. These range from wands to airlock barriers. Since the dust is electrostatic, a magnetic field will attract dust. Think of it as a magnetic vacuum cleaner.
It appears that lunar dust is microwavable. If you popped a scoop of it in you microwave, you could melt it so that it reforms into a single glassy sheet. If you built a lawnmower shaped device with a microwave emitter on the bottom, you could push it around the Moon and turn dust into sidewalks.
My own suggestion has to do with scratched face shields and equipment lenses. NASCAR racecars start a race with several layers of clear mylar film covering the glass of their windshields. As the windshield gets dirty during the course of the race, they peel off one layer of mylar at a time. This would also work to protect optical equipment on the Moon from the abrasive nature of lunar dust. I don’t know how mylar would perform in the thermal and radiation environment of the Moon, but I’m certain a similar system would be trivial to develop.
I’m not as worried about protecting the rover, or other mechanical equipment from dust. While it could clog moving joints or axels, we have quite a bit of experience working in dusty environments on Earth. I suspect that a flexible sleeve will cover some joints, some will just need to be engineered for robustness, and some will simply require periodic maintenance and replacement. The combination of these three methods should help your lunar rover keep rove for many miles.
