New Horizons Probe Update

It’s been almost a year since I last wrote an update on the New Horizons Probe. Most likely most of you don’t know what it even is, let alone why I would be writing an update on it. So here’s a little background: On January 19, 2006 NASA launched the New Horizons Probe towards Pluto. This probe is, to date, the fastest vehicle mankind has ever launched, crossing the moon’s orbit in just 8 hour and 35 minutes. By contrast, in the late 60’s to early 70’s we were sending men to the moon. Their mission had them coasting through cislunar space (the open space between the earth and the moon) for nearly 3 days. New Horizon’s mission is the first ever to the ex-planet (now dwarf planet, but you would be hard pressed to find a scientist who really cares what its classification is) of Pluto.

 

I love to use the numbers in this mission to explain just how big space really is. Here we have mankind’s fastest vehicle (moving, at times, upwards of 51,000 mph. Yea, 51 thousand miles an hour….that’s around mach 68) yet it’s going to take 15 years to reach Pluto. My friends, that’s a long time.

 

Anyway, since the launch (which I was lucky to see live on NASA TV) I’ve tracked this little machine while it coasts and sleeps.

 

• NH is currently cruising along at 39,572 mph, that’s nearly 11 miles every second! Think about your drive to work every day. For me, I live almost exactly 14 miles from my office and it takes me, on average, 30 minutes to get there. If I could hitch a ride on NH, I could leave my house at 8:59:58 and not be late for work.
• NH is currently 11.92 AU (that’s Astronomical Units. This is the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun, or 93 million miles) from Earth. 11.92 AU is 1.1 billion miles. At that distance, it takes a signal from Earth, traveling at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) over 1.6 hours just to reach the probe. Then it takes another 1.6 hours for NH to respond. That means that every time one of the mission controllers needs to ask the probe a question, she better plan ahead, because it’s going to be over 3 hours before she gets a response (and hey, in that 3 hour window, NH has traveled an additional 118,716 miles away!)
• If NH had traveled the same distance as noted above, but in Earth Orbit (a circumference of roughly 26,000 miles) it would have circled us 42,616 times. Since each orbit takes about 90 minutes at a speed of 17,500 mph (much faster and you’re not going to be in Earth’s orbit. You’ll zip off into space instead, much like NH itself!), it would have been orbiting the Earth for 3,835,400 minutes (that breaks down into 63,924 hours, or 2,663 days, or 7.2 years). Instead it’s gone the same distance in under 3 years!
• NH is currently 20.21AU (1,878,640,000 miles) from Pluto. Even if it could accelerate to the speed of light, it would still take nearly 3 hours to get to the planet.

 

NH is set to do a flyby of Pluto in July of 2015. It’s not, however, going to stop…not even for a little while. Its mission is to continue out into the Kuiper Belt and beyond, pretty much forever. NH will still be coasting through space millions, if not billions of years from now (as long as it doesn’t get creamed by some wandering neutron star, ha!), how’s that for a legacy? J

Phoenix Landing

Ok this is one of the coolest images you’ll ever see, even if you don’t fully realize it.

What you are looking at is this device:

hanging from a parachute like so:

while it is entering Mars’ atmosphere.

Now I know, you might be saying “Yea? So?” but let me put this into perspective for you. The top image is a “live action” picture of a probe entering the atmosphere after a 10 month flight, during a landing procedure that lasted less than 7 minutes, with the lander moving at thousands of miles per hour,  landing onto the surface of a planet that is 170 million miles away, and taken by a satellite that has been in Martian orbit for 2 years, and was 640 miles away from the lander at the time. This image is absolutely mind boggling!

And for a little more perspective, here’s the full size image, showing the size of what this satellite was trying to capture:

Interesting Astronomy Facts

The 200-inch mirror for the telescope on Palomar Mountain weights over 14 tons and is 27-inches thick. The telescope gathers 640,000 times as much light as the human eye.

If there were a bathtub big enough, Saturn would float in the water.

If a marshmallow were dropped from a foot above the surface of a neutron star it would have the energy of a modern atomic bomb

The star Betelgeuse is so large that if it were placed where our sun is, the surface would be just over half way to Jupiter .

The reason Venus is so bright is because the clouds are so dense that light bounces off them, making Venus appear bright to us on Earth

Suburu is Japanese for “Pleiades” (the official name of the constellation nicknamed The Seven Sisters).  Next time you see a Suburu, take a little closer look at the emblem, you’ll see it has 7 stars.

There are over a billion asteroids in our solar system of a diameter of 100 meters or more.

The largest known crater, the Chixulub crater in Mexico is 112 miles (180 km) across and is believed to have been caused by the asteroid that caused the dinosaur extinction 65 millions years ago.

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was over 6 miles long, taller than Mount Everest. For scale, 6 miles is 31,686 feet. Airplanes typically fly at 30,000 feet.

Humans can only see roughly 4,000 stars with the unaided eye

Every star you can see in the sky with your unaided eye is part of the Milky Way Galaxy.

The North Star, Polaris, is NOT the brightest star in the sky, that title belongs to Sirius.

Polaris will not always be the North Star. The Earth wobbles on its axis, just like a spinning top, every 23,000 years. This wobble is called precession and at the end of our current precession the Earth’s northern axis will be pointed at the star Vega.

For anyone that thinks NASA is too expensive

NASA’s budget: $17 billion annualy

The War in Iraq: $12 billion per month

That is all.

The Plutonic Problem

Pluto Gets the Boot

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar
system from nine planets to eight.

Ok so yea, there is a little public outcry, but if you actually get down to the nuts and bolts of it this is a good decision. And I’ll (briefly) explain why.

Pluto was found in 1930. It took so long to find because it is really small compared to all the other classical planets in our solar system, in fact is is even smaller then our own moon! For comparison on what this means in Earth terms, our moon has approximately the same Land Area as Africa in terms of square miles. That means Pluto is, essentially, smaller then one of Earth’s continents.
Pluto’s orbit is also at a weird angle compared to that of the inner planets. To visualize, think of a dinner plate. Now put 8 peas, or cherries, or grapes on that plate in a line stretching from the center of the plate to the outer edge. If you were to spin that plate on its center point you would have a very basic model of how the classical planet’s orbits look. They revolve around the sun in the same “plane” Now take a Hula Hoop and put it around the dinner plate, but don’t lay it flat. Instead, you will need to prop one end of the hula hoop up about 2 feet. This is Pluto’s orbit. In scientific terms, Pluto’s orbital plane is tilted 17 degrees off of the System’s ecliptic plane.

One other thing to make note of, Pluto is not alone way out on the edge of our solar system. 2 years ago astronomers found another object that is even bigger then Pluto, and further away. This would be fine, except the region this object was found, and the region of space which is also occupied by Pluto, is known as the Kuiper belt (pronounced Kie-per). The Kuiper Belt is an area filled with small and medium sized chunks of ice that were leftovers from the formation of our system. The problem with calling Pluto a planet, is that the Kuiper already has over 1000 known objects that are regularly tracked by telescopes, and it is probably that it has up to a million objects that just haven’t been discovered yet.

If we call Pluto a planet, what do we call all the objects out there in the same orbital plane and the same general region of space? Do we increase the number of “known planets” in the Solar System to over 1000, or a million? Pluto has been a labeled as a planet since it was found, but in reality this is less then 100 years. In my view we are simply refining our definition based on new evidence. When Pluto was found, nobody knew about the Kuiper Belt. A better understanding of how things work often requires a re-classification of how things are labeled. Remember, in Galileo’s day the Earth was the center of the universe and everything in space was the exact same distance away attatched to a giant sphere known as the firmament, beyond which lay heaven and the gods. Where would we be if the scientific community refused to update their definition?

Speaking of which, the “definition of a planet” as decided by the IAU will very likely be revised as there are terms that don’t make sense. But the exclusion of Pluto as a classical planet will probably remain, and I think rightly so.
Ok I know I said “briefly” but come on, you guys know me. This is brief

 

In space vs. In orbit

Somebody asked me a bit ago why getting into space was easier then getting into orbit. The answer is a little complex and requires us to first define what each one actually is.

The actual point at which space begins is different depending on your point of view.
(From http://www.space.edu/projects/book/chapter3.html)
-At 18,000 feet, a pilot in an airplane without supplemental oxygen will begins to suffer hypoxia and be rendered unconscious within 30 minutes.
-At 9 miles altitude (47,520 feet) supplemental oxygen is no longer enough and the cabin of the aircraft (or the pilots flight suit) must be pressurized.
-At 15 miles (79,200 feet) the cabin pressurization is no longer efficient. This is because most aircraft compress outside air and pump it into the cabin or suit. At this altitude, there is not enough oxygen and nitrogen in the outside air to compress and still sustain human life. Therefore any aircraft at this altitude must have its own pressure and oxygen independent from the outside air. As far as a doctor is concerned, this is the beginning of space.
-At 20 miles (105,600 feet) turbojet engines begin to fail. There is not enough air to mix with the fuel for sustained combustion. At this point an aircraft must bring along its own oxidizer to mix with the fuel, and we call these rockets. For somebody working in propulsion, this is the beginning of space
-At 62 miles (327,360 feet) aircraft control surfaces no longer function to control the vehicle as there is not enough air pressure to create lift or drag. From an aerodynamic point of view, this is the beginning of space.

Last year Burt Rutan finally won the Space X-Prize. Some of the requirements for this contest was that the vehicle had to achieve an altitude of 62 miles, land back on earth, and then return to that altitude within 2 weeks, therefore producing a privately funded, reusable earth-to-space vehicle and opening the door to commercial space tourism.

And then last week Space Exploration Technologies made their first attempt at launching a spacecraft into orbit. If (more like, when) they achieve this, it will be another worlds first. It also a much more difficult feat. So how how is this different than what Burt Rutan already accomplished? This is where the definition of “orbit’ comes into play.

Being in orbit is basically falling towards the earth, and missing it each time. Isaac Newton once drew a nice diagram that shows this principal pretty well:

imagine a very large mountain poking up from the earth. On top of this mountain is a huge and infinitely powerful cannon. The person firing the cannon increases the amount of powder with each shot, adding velocity to each successive cannonball. Each time, the ball goes further until finally, at a certain velocity, the ball is moving so fast and going so far that it completely misses hitting the ground, and instead makes a complete circle around the earth.

In order to achieve orbit around Earth, a spacecraft needs to obtain a speed of 17,500 miles per hour or roughly 5 miles per second! At that speed a spacecraft will make one complete orbit of the Earth every 90 minutes, and in any 24 hour period it will orbit 16 times. This is what makes getting a space vehicle into orbit so difficult. The amount of energy required to lift even a small payload into orbit is tremendous. For example, the Saturn V used to launch to Apollo missions to the moon produced 7.6 million pounds of thrust (the Shuttle does not produce nearly as much thrust. The 3 main engines on the shuttle produce 1 million pounds of thrust combined, and each of the solid rocket boosters produce 1.5 million pounds for a combined total 4 million pounds) which is massive compared to, for example, the engines on a Boeing 747 which produce about 56,000 pounds each, or 224,000 pounds total.

In fact, the difficulty in achieving the minimum speed need in order to reach orbit with any significant payload is so great that those launching the rockets take every advantage they can. This is why NASA launches from Florida. Cape Canaveral is the closest point in the USA to the equator. The closer you get to the equator, the faster you are already moving because the Earth is spinning. Think of a bike wheel. If you hold onto the axle and give the wheel a spin, you can tell that the rubber part of the wheel is moving a lot fast than the spokes near your hand. The same principle holds true for the Earth. At the equator, the surface of the earth is moving along at over 1000 mph, in Florida it’s closer to 800 mph. The launch designers use this “free” momentum by launching the rocket in the same direction the Earth is spinning, thereby adding the 800 miles an hour to the craft right away.

Compared to all this, just “getting into space” is relatively easy. In fact pilots have been shooting their rocket powered aircraft (in the form of the X-15) into space for many years before we ever achieved a single actual orbit. They just dropped their planes from the bottom of a B-52, lit the rocket engines, and pulled the stick back. This is essentially what they did with Burt Rutans SpaceShip 1 vehicle as well. The only difference between it and the X-15 flights is that SpaceShip 1 was privately funded.

And who knows, maybe someday we’ll all get to travel into orbit aboard a commercial rocket, how cool would that be?

SpaceX

A few days ago a company named Space Exploration Technologies attempted to launch a brand new lifting vehicle into orbit. Named the SpaceX, this rocket was unique in that it was the first privately funded spacecraft of it kind. Unfortunately, things did not go well for them. Within the first minute of powered flight a fire caused by a fuel leak cut into the helium pneumatic system, which caused the fuel valves to close, shutting down the main engine. The vehicle proceeded to climb for a short period of time due to the momentum it had, but eventually crashed back to earth a mere 250 down range from the launch site. You can see the fire in this image:

It’s too bad the rocket was lost, along with it’s payload. But the company is detiremined to find the cause of the fuel leak, fix it, and get into space. And that’s too cool.

Good luck SpaceX!

NASA’s future

So I’ve been reading on the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today message boards (www.bautforum.com) and have some thoughts on what I hope is the future of NASA. A couple years ago President Bush (in a rare stroke of genius…VERY rare) ordered NASA to send man back to the moon, and beyond to Mars. At the same time, the US government has REDUCED NASA’s budget! (ok this sounds more like the Bush administration, order you to do something and not give you the means to accomplish it), So what does this mean? This means the science mission NASA has been planning are on the cutting block. The money to go to the moon has to come from somewhere, and Griffin is doing what he can.

What I don’t understand is why we are still absolutely throwing money at the STS (Shuttle Transportation System) and the ISS (international Space Station) when they are, really, nothing more than money pits. Here’s why I think that:

The Shuttle fleet is currently not cleared to fly due to issues with the foam insulation on the main tank. NASA is spending millions of dollars fixing the foam when there are not many flights left in the STS program anyway. What will happen if we discontinue the STS program? Well that would be the end of the Hubble Space Telescope for one. The HST depends on shuttle flights to maintain the systems and update the hardware/software. It would also mean there would never again be a full crew on the ISS as the STS is the only system able to put more than a couple astronaut/cosmonauts into LEO (Low Earth Orbit).

This brings us to the ISS. For the last 4 years or so there has only been a maintenance sized crew onboard the ISS. Basically only about 2 people at a time. With that size crew it takes most of their time just maintaining the systems, and the only reason they’re maintaining the systems is to support themselves. Quite a circle. And again we’re dumping millions of dollars into this program. What would be the result of canceling the ISS? Well, we wouldn’t have a permanent human presence in space. And with the STS program cancelled, there wouldn’t be an Americans in space at all. But keep in mind, the Russians are still flying in space (in fact if it weren’t for the Russian space program the ISS would not have been manned at all since the Columbia disaster) and so are the Chinese. Also, it appears Brazil is about to put their first citizen into space, although he will be going up aboard a Russian launched vehicle.

What I wish would happen? I wish NASA would go ahead and cancel the STS and ISS programs. I know that there is a lot of sentimental reasons for keeping these programs going, but the truth is there’s not really any reason for it anymore. These programs have now completed their missions. What NASA needs to do is continue funding the science programs that have taken a back burner. They also need to develop a new Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLLV) in order to make getting back to the moon, and ultimately Mars, more efficient.

We need the science to drive discovery and exploration and to fuel our dreams about intelligent life outside our Solar System. And we need to get to the moon, eventually to Mars in order to make the next Giant Leap for Mankind. I just hope NASA sees this before it’s too late.

Astro images

This one is of Mars, you can even make out some surface detail.
This is the “Breadbasket”, which is the new star nursury in the Orion Nebula
Saturn, obviously