Voyager 1

Sails closer to true interstellar space...

But now, after 33 years, that has changed: at 17 billion kilometers (10.6 billion miles) from the Sun, the spacecraft has reached the point where the solar wind has slowed to a stop. Literally, the wind is no longer at Voyager’s back.

There is gas between the stars, which astronomers call the interstellar medium. The solar wind blows out into it, slowing. There is a region, over a billion kilometers thick, where the solar wind plows to a halt, creating a roughly spherical shell around the solar system. That’s called the heliosheath, and it looks like Voyager 1 is now solidly inside it. In fact, it’s been there for four months or so; the scientists measuring the solar wind speed noticed it dropped to 0 back in June, but it took a while to make sure this wasn’t just some local eddy in the flow. It’s not. Voyager 1 now has calm seas ahead.

But the probe is still moving outward at 60,000 kph (38,000 mph). In a few more years it’ll leave the heliosheath behind, and when that happens it will truly be in interstellar space, the vast and nearly empty region between the stars. At that moment it will be the first human device ever to truly leave the solar system and enter the great stretches of the galaxy beyond.

To infinity and beyond!

Keep the car gassed up and buy a hard hat...

Duct tape and plastic wrap won't save you now:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and propulsion and could hit the Earth in late February or March, government officials said Saturday.

The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret.

"Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

"Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause."

Ahem. Just WHY is this classified as secret? On a need to know basis? Like ... your house may be flattened by a burning radioactive object hurtling through earth's atmosphere .. but go shopping.

Appropriate government agencies? Have they been Busherized? Do they still have scientists and mathematicians who can calculate orbital fall? Or are they just going to go down in the White House bunkers and other undisclosed locations and sit this one out?

Appropriate government agencies, my ass.

A Japanese satellite circles the moon

Tokyo, Japan (AHN) - The Japanese satellite launched last month finally reached orbit around the moon on Friday. The probe is eventually set to move into orbit closer to the moon's surface before starting an observational mission that should last a year.

The $279 million Selenological and Engineering Explorer or SELENE involves launching the main satellite in a circular orbit at an altitude of about 60 miles, as well as the two smaller satellites in elliptical orbits. The data collected will be used the study the moon's origin and evolution.

Could it be also to get up there before China does?:

The SELENE satellite mission -- four years behind JAXA's original schedule -- comes as China is planning to launch its own lunar probe. That country's minister of defense and technology told China Central Television in July all was ready for a launch "by the end of the year," AP reported.

China's Chang'e 1 orbiter will use stereo cameras and X-ray spectrometers to map three-dimensional images of the lunar surface and study its dust, AP reported.

The satellite is failing! The satellite is failing!

Chicken Little he ain't, but he's being told to shut up anyway:

MIAMI — The director of the National Hurricane Center, who has been outspoken in warning about an aging satellite used for hurricane forecasting, was chastised today by a superior for his comments.

Bill Proenza has been talking about the QuikScat satellite since taking office in January. The satellite was launched in 1999 and designed to last two to three years but is now showing signs of its age. Certain hurricane forecasts could be up to 16 percent less accurate if it fails, Proenza has said. That could lead to wider areas placed under hurricane watches and warnings. A satellite with technology meant to replace QuikScat would not fly until 2016, seven years later than planned, The Associated Press reported this week.

On Friday, Proenza was given a 3-page letter from the acting head of the Weather Service, Mary Glackin. Proenza’s recent statements “may have caused some unnecessary confusion about NOAA’s ability to accurately predict tropical storms,” Glackin wrote.

Update 6/18: Excellent overview of the history of QuikScat and an attempt to head off political biases clouding up the issue by the Combat Philosopher:

QuikScat was launched in 1999, as an emergency replacement for the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) instrument on Japan’s Midori satellite (previously known as the Advanced Earth Observation Satellite (ADEOS)). This satellite failed, about nine months after launch. QuikScat was supposed to be a 'quick and dirty' stop gap measure, with a limited intended life span, of at most two or three years.

In the words of an insider,

"It [QuikScat] was built in 13 months (hence the Quik) from spares from the one already in process, modified to fit on a commercially available satellite bus (Ball BCP2000) and launched on a surplus obsolete TitanII the AirForce had sitting around....

The instrument was designed as part of an effort to collect 10 years or more of continuous data as part of an overall "understand the interactions of air and sea" program. So JPL developed a ground data system oriented towards that need (hosted at PODAAC). As it happens, we also had a real time feed of the data to NOAA (think of a "tee" early in the data pipeline), which, it turns out, has been very useful in the forecast business (back in 1999 and earlier, when this was all being done, people weren't sure it would be useful.. certainly not to the point of kicking in large sums of money to that end..). It took several years for the forecast community to start heavily using QS data (they were justifiably nervous about depending on an experimental satellite that was never intended to run this long...)"

So, when this satellite was put up, it was at best a short term hack. Furthermore, at the time, the usefulness of the data was not fully appreciated. When these facts are combined with the length of time usually required for a satellite deployment (normally around 8 years, or so), in conjunction with cost, it is really not too surprising that there is no replacement for QuikScat, as yet.

What global warming?

I don't see no global warming!:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.

A confidential report to the White House, obtained by The Associated Press, warns that U.S. scientists will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space using a costly and problem-plagued satellite initiative begun more than a decade ago.

This is easy! I can do this too!

What drought? I don't see any drought! Anyway, just think of the tan you'll get!



What flood? Now you won't have to wash your cars!



What dust storm that is blowing off all the top soil and ruining farming? It's fertilizing other areas!



What refugees that used to live on the coastline that is now under water? These are just happy tourists!



Think I'm getting the hang of this....

Update: NASA has learned the Bush language well too:

Last week, NPR asked NASA administrator Michael Griffin said that while he was “aware that global warming exists,” he wasn’t sure whether it “is a longterm concern or not.” Griffin said he is “not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

Griffin subsequently clarified his remarks, stating that protecting the earth against global warming is not in the agency’s mission statement:

The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet’s evolving systems. It is NASA’s responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA’s mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies.”

But from 2002-2006, it was. Part of NASA’s mission was to “protect our home planet“:

To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers … as only NASA can.

In Feb. 2006, the mission statement was “quietly altered” to remove the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet.”

What does it feel like, Mr. Griffin, to gain a pal in the White House but help lose a planet?

Are we sure these are what the White House says they are?

Robots to actually fix satellites?

The branch of the U.S. military that created the internet has launched into orbit a pair of prototype robots designed to repair and service satellites in space.

The Orbital Express system was launched on an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:10 p.m. ET Thursday.

The Orbital Express is being developed by the research arm of the U.S. military, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), along with the country's space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to extend the capabilities and lives of spy satellites.

NASA hopes to one day use the technology to maintain weather and commercial satellites, and eventually use it for routine supply, mining and exploration missions to the moon and beyond.

Currently, only satellites designed to be repaired by astronauts, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, can be fixed if they malfunction. Most satellites are sealed packages that are rendered useless once they develop a problem.

If you have the ability to fix stuff...you have the ability to take things apart.

Update:

Aside from the satellites, which have become key to the Pentagon's battle plans, most of the other technology is in the research and development stage or awaiting deployment decisions from the White House that are complicated by political complexities.

The George W Bush administration - especially the Defense Department and particularly the US Air Force (USAF) - is anxious to launch a full-scale militarization of space, regardless of its enormous expense and the fact that it will inspire worldwide condemnation, generate a dangerous arms race in outer space, and undoubtedly enhance prospects for major wars in this century.

The rightists and neo-conservatives are not unaware of these potential consequences but they are confident the US will prevail because of its overwhelming power. In effect, "It's worth the price."
But that mindset is not shared so far by most Americans outside the hard right, particularly in the absence of any other country that could come near to threatening the United States for global primacy. In addition, virtually every other nation in the world, including Washington's close allies in Canada and the European Union, opposes the weaponization of space, as is evident from repeated votes at the United Nations.

Look! A real president!

From India. Remember back a few years when we had a real president, too?

The buzz around the stately but run-down auditorium of Sapru House was that President APJ Abdul Kalam, a rocket scientist, would speak about the Indo-US nuclear deal. Instead, on Wednesday, the President talked of the need to keep the peace in outer space where India has a lot of satellites.

"Above all we have to keep peace in space," Kalam told former Indian diplomats, as he laid out his vision of how to make diplomacy relevant to the requirements of the country.

"Diplomacy is a dynamic process. In future we may also move towards getting material from Moon and creation of habitat in Mars. Our diplomacy should see that war is not extended to space."

China recently launched an anti-satellite missile, which has worried the global and Indian security establishment, prompting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to recently say, "we are not in favour of weaponisation of outer space."

(Update: fixed grammar.)

In space, nobody can hear you exclaim,"Oh SHIT!"

"China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday.

Only two nations — the Soviet Union and the United States — have previously destroyed spacecraft in antisatellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid-1980s.

Arms control experts called the test, in which the weapon destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could foreshadow an antisatellite arms race. Alternatively, however, some experts speculated that it could precede a diplomatic effort by China to prod the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.

“This is the first real escalation in the weaponization of space that we’ve seen in 20 years,” said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks rocket launchings and space activity. “It ends a long period of restraint.”"

[snip]

"Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a group that studies national security, called the Chinese test very un-Chinese.

“There’s nothing subtle about this,” he said. “They’ve created a huge debris cloud that will last a quarter century or more. It’s at a higher elevation than the test we did in 1985, and for that one the last trackable debris took 17 years to clear out.”

Mr. Krepon added that the administration had long argued that the world needed no space-weapons treaty because no such arms existed and because the last tests were two decades ago. “It seems,” he said, “that argument is no longer operative.”"

Gee. This is why Bush wanted to go to Mars; he wants to declare war on outer space!