Russia and Europe to Send Man to Mars?

Analysis by Ian O'Neill

From http://news.discovery.com/

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Doug Ellison

It's usually the assumption that the first man or woman to first set foot on Martian dirt will be American. After all, the only men to walk on the lunar surface were employed by NASA.

This assumption could be turned on its head if a recent announcement by the head of the European Space Agency (ESA) follows through.

Speaking to reporters at an air show near Moscow on Wednesday, Jean-Jacques Dordain said ESA and Roskosmos (the Russian space agency) would "carry out the first flight to Mars together," according to RIA Novosti.

WATCH VIDEO: New concepts for Mars-probing rovers would use Martian wind to move around the planet.

Naturally, there's no promise of a target date, but Dordain's announcement underscores an important fact: to get humanity to Mars, international collaboration will be desirable. Perhaps even essential.

Interestingly, one of the key deciding factors for the joint ESA/Roscosmos proposition appears to be the Russian Mars500 project. Mars500 is a 520-day simulated "mission" to the Red Planet being run by Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems. ESA is also involved in the project.

SEE ALSO: 'Mars Mission' Crew to Spend 520 Days in Isolation

In November, the crew of Mars500 are set to be released from confinement when they "return to Earth." The crew of six men (controversially, no women were selected to participate) are currently enduring the confines of a 550-cubic-meter (19,400-cubic-foot) mock spaceship, studying the physiological and psychological impact of an 18 month return trip to Mars.

As I discussed in a recent Discovery News article (read "To Make Mankind Great Again, Push to Mars"), a huge amount of energy is being directed into planning for mankind's "next great step," but politics and money all-too-often gets in the way of any real progress being made.

Perhaps ESA and Roscosmos can sidestep the worst financial issues by combining resources and setting their international sights on Mars. After all, landing a human on an alien world should be an international effort, but whether or not this happens remains to be seen.

Shuttle Flights Down to Final Five

The space shuttle program, which has been the heart of human space flight since 1981, is due to end in 2010, but the fleet has a lot left to do.

By Irene Klotz

From: http://news.discovery.com/space/final-space-shuttle-flights.html

A computer-generated scene gives the perspective of a crewmember looking through a viewing dome, called the Cupola, on the International Space Station. Several of the Great Lakes help to form the backdrop for the scene. The cupola will be installed this year.
NASA

After 29 years of space shuttle flights, NASA plans to wrap up the program with five missions to complete construction of the International Space Station and retire the fleet before the end of 2010.

"It's a big growth year ... the last major growth spurt for the International Space Station," said Kirk Shireman, NASA's deputy manager for the station program.

The first shuttle mission of the year, scheduled for launch in February, will be devoted to delivering the last U.S.-owned module to the outpost. The connecting node, named Tranquility, will serve as crew quarters for four of the station astronauts, with two more crew sleeping berths located in the Russian service module.

Shuttle Endeavour also is scheduled to deliver a unique viewing dome called the cupola. The Italian-built pod has seven windows to give station residents a 360-degree view outside so they can oversee spacewalks and robotics operations, look at Earth and star-gaze.

"We'll be able to look in all directions at one time," said station commander Jeff Williams.

WATCH VIDEO: Kasey-Dee Gardner finds out what it is like to be launch director at NASA.

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In March, NASA plans to launch shuttle Discovery with tons of spare parts that will keep the station operational through at least 2015 and most likely to 2020 and beyond.

None of the other spacecraft that travel to the station can carry as much as the shuttle, which can hold about 50,000 pounds of cargo, so NASA is trying to stockpile as much as possible.

"We're going to finish strong with the shuttle and make sure we leave station in the best possible posture," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations.

In May, shuttle Atlantis will make its final flight, carrying a Russian-made docking port and research module. Endeavour's swan song in July will be devoted to delivering a pallet of spare parts and a particle physics experiment known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS.

The device, which is to be mounted to the outside of the station, is designed to look for evidence of dark matter, antimatter and other exotic phenomena.

The last flight on the shuttle's manifest is targeted for launch in September. Shuttle Discovery will deliver a final load of supplies and spare parts. NASA is planning to leave behind a storage compartment that will remain attached to the station. An extra sixth flight is under consideration, though it has not been approved or funded.

"The shuttle has a tough year to go ... lots to do," said Gerstenmaier. "There's no vehicle that could have built and assembled the station. Now that the station's assembled, it's time to retire the shuttle, to use smaller vehicles ... to transport crew back and forth."

NASA already has turned over station crew transportation to Russia, which launches three people at a time aboard Soyuz capsules. The agency is developing a spacecraft called Orion to replace the shuttle, but is it not expected to be ready to fly before 2015 at the earliest.

The Obama administration is considering turning over crew transport to commercial carriers.

Once the shuttles are grounded, keeping the station stocked with food, fuel and supplies will fall to Russian Progress spacecraft, Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicles, Japan's HTV ships and commercial capsules being developed by Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp.

Volunteers wanted for simulated 520-day Mars mission

Enlarge

The simulations will take place here on Earth inside a special facility in Moscow. A precursor 105-day study is scheduled to early 2009, possibly followed by another 105-day study, before the full 520-day study begins late 2009. Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

(PhysOrg.com) -- Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.

Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.

The ‘mission’ is part of the Mars500 programme being conducted by ESA and Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research. ESA’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight is undertaking Mars500 as part of its European Programme for Life and Physical Sciences (ELIPS) to prepare for future human missions to the Moon and Mars.

Enlarge

The Mars500 study takes place in a special isolation facility at the Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow. The purpose of the Mars500 study is to gather data, knowledge and experience to help prepare for a real mission to Mars one day. The participants are subjects in scientific investigations to assess the effect that isolation has on various psychological and physiological aspects, such as stress, hormone regulation and immunity, sleep quality, mood and the effectiveness of dietary supplements. Credits: ESA

Following on from the successful 105-day precursor study completed in July, ESA is now looking for two candidates and two backups for the full 520-day study, which is due to get underway before mid-2010 after four months of training.

The crew will follow a programme designed to simulate a 250-day journey to Mars, a 30-day surface exploration phase and 240 days travelling back to Earth. For the ‘surface exploration’, half of the crew will move to the facility’s martian simulation module and the hatch to the rest of the facility will be closed.

Candidates should be aged 20-50, motivated, in good health and no taller than 185 cm. They should speak one of the working languages: English and Russian. Candidates must have a background and work experience in medicine, biology, life support systems engineering, computer engineering, electronic engineering or mechanical engineering.

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Cyrille Fournier helps Oliver Knickel prepare for a nighttime EEG. Credits: ESA

Selection will be based on education, professional experience, medical fitness and social habits. Following an initial assessment, potential candidates will have to submit results from medical tests and will then be invited for interview, to be screened in a process similar to that used in astronaut selection.

The candidates’ nationality and residence is restricted to ESA Member States participating in ELIPS (Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden and Canada).

More information: The Call for Candidates and related documents are available on: http://www.esa.int/callmars500

Provided by European Space Agency (news : web)

Europe's new space truck takes shape

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

The propulsion unit of Johannes Kepler is taking shape

"It's clear from space history that often it was not the prototype that experienced the problems; it was the mission that came later. That's why specific attention has to be paid to what we do now."

Nico Dettmann is in charge of producing the European Space Agency's (Esa) next space freighter.

THE ATV - THE FIRSTS

The ATV is the first completely automated rendezvous and docking ship to go to the ISS

The ATV is the largest and most powerful space tug going to the ISS over its mission life

It provides the largest refuelling and waste elimination capability for the space station

It is the only vehicle on the current timeline able to de-orbit the ISS when it is retired

He knows the near-flawless maiden voyage of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) last year does not mean the second flight is guaranteed to turn out the same way. Attention to detail is everything.

The follow-up ship - dubbed Johannes Kepler - is in the process of being assembled.

Its propulsion and avionics units are being prepared in Bremen, Germany. Its pressurised module which will hold the cargo - air, water, scientific equipment, food, and clothing - to be taken to the space station is being built in Turin, Italy.

The various segments should come together in September, into a single line of assembly that will lead to a launch in November 2010.

Thereafter, ATVs will fly every year for three years. The vehicle is no longer an experimental spacecraft; it is a production spacecraft. And to emphasise the point, if you walk through the cleanroom at EADS Astrium in Bremen, you can already see ATV-3 components.

"The whole integration process, from the first day until launch, is 28 months. So if you want to launch every 12 months, obviously you have to produce in parallel," explained Esa's Mr Dettmann.

The brains of ATV - its parallel computers - are inside the avionics bay

The space freighter has huge significance for Europe.

On one level, it is the "subscription" Europe must pay to be part of the International Space Station "club". If Europe can deliver about six tonnes of supplies a year to the platform, it is guaranteed six-month residencies at the ISS for its astronauts.

But ATV has also been a test of European competency. It is the biggest, most sophisticated vehicle the bloc has ever flown in space. Its automatic rendezvous and docking technology allows it to find its own way to the station and attach itself without any human intervention.

The European Space Agency believes the vehicle's capabilities will feed into many other exploration activities, at the Moon, Mars and other Solar System destinations. Esa is even looking into the possibility of upgrading the robotic truck so that it can carry people - an independent European crew transportation system.

Astrium Bremen is in sole charge of manufacturing Johannes Kepler. The company's Les Mureaux plant in France had a bigger role on the previous vehicle (known as Jules Verne) but with the switch to routine production, it was felt the lines of responsibility should be simplified.

"In the past, we had one organisation dedicated to development and one to production. At the end of Jules Verne, it was decided to have just one organisation in order to have maximum consistency going forward," said Astrium's ATV project manager, Olivier de la Bourdonnaye.

"All of what we did on the Jules Verne adventure belonged to the development of ATV; and it finished a couple of months ago with the post flight analysis."

Germany carries about 50% of the production effort; and all the sub-contractors - including Europe's other major space concern, Thales Alenia Space - are reporting direct to the German centre.

Very little is having to be changed on ATV-2, such was the success of Jules Verne.

There were only two significant hardware issues.

One, early in the flight, saw the vehicle's propulsion system switch to a back-up chain when anomalous pressures were detected in the complex network of pipes and valves that feed the engines. The other saw a segment of thermal blanket on the exterior of the craft lift away from its Velcro fittings.

Neither event affected the mission and should be easily remedied on Johannes Kepler.

The pressurised cargo module is being prepared by Thales in Turin

Perhaps more significant was the slight mismatch that occurred in the advanced GPS systems used on ATV and the Russian Zvezda module on the ISS to align the vehicles prior to docking. Had the discrepancy been more serious, Jules Verne could have been triggered into aborting its approach to the platform.

It wasn't - and a software correction on the Russian side should fix this issue before Johannes Kepler arrives in 2010.

The ship will be heavier this time - by some 600kg. This will take it over 20 tonnes, making its launch the heaviest payload in the history of Esa missions.

The supplies ATV-2 carries will be gratefully received: with six permanent residents now living on the platform, Europe's logistics effort is paramount (the US shuttle should be close to retirement by November 2010).

Its role in boosting the ISS will be significant, also. With no shuttle visiting the station, the ATV's power will be needed to lift the platform higher into the sky to avoid the drag from residual air molecules at the top of the atmosphere.

"We're supposed to lift the station significantly because after the shuttle retirement the ISS will raise its average altitude from 330-350km to almost 400km to produce less drag," said Mr Dettmann.

"Today the ISS altitude is linked - let's say - to low shuttle performance. After shuttle is gone, ISS can fly higher but ATV will have to deliver a major part of that altitude increase."

Total cargo capacity: 7.6 tonnes, but first mission flew lighter

Mass at launch: About 20 tonnes depending on cargo manifest

Dimensions: 10.3m long and 4.5m wide - the size of a large bus

Solar panels: Once unfolded, the solar wings span 22.3m

Engine power: 4x 490-Newton thrusters; and 28x 220N thrusters

Development cost: 1.3bn euros; Subsequent missions: 400m euros

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8141256.stm

World's largest telescope will search heavens for habitable planets like Earth

A giant telescope powerful enough to identify habitable planets like Earth in distant solar systems is to be built by scientists.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

The European Extremely Large Telescope will be the first optical telescope capable of picking out the weak pinpricks of light that are reflected from planets as they orbit stars.

Astronomers claim the huge instrument, which will house a mirror the width of five double decker buses placed end to end, will be able to spot rocky Earth-like planets up to 100 million million miles away.

The telltale signatures in the light coming from such planets could also reveal whether there is water on their surfaces, which gases are in their atmospheres, and even if they may harbour life itself.

It will be the first time planets outside our own solar system have been seen using light from their surface. Current telescopes are not powerful enough to detect even giant planets in this way as the light they reflect is overwhelmed by far brighter stars.

The 1 billion euro (£700 million) E-ELT will have more mirror glass than all the other telescopes in the world put together.

It is expected to be so powerful that if astronomers were to use it to peer at the Moon, they would be able to see the car sized lunar rover that was left on the moon by astronauts during the Apollo missions.

With such high resolution, scientists believe they will be able to see Earth-like planets that orbit stars within a region known as the habitable zone, an area far enough away from the star around which it orbits to not be too hot to support life, but also not to far away and too cold.

As astronomers this year celebrate 400 years since Galileo first used a telescope with a lens just an inch wide to study the heavens, British scientists on Thursday presented the detailed scientific case for building the new giant telescope which will be four times larger than any other telescope yet built.

Isobel Hook, joint chair of the E-ELT science working group and an astronomer at Oxford University, said: "The astronomy community has been moving towards building progressively bigger telescopes to get sharper images.

"The resolution of the ELT is going to allow us to see objects and structures in the universe that we have been blind to until know."

There are currently 344 known planets outside our own solar system which have been detected indirectly by looking for changes in light coming from stars as the planets pass in front of them. Almost all are gas giants similar to Jupiter.

The E-ELT, which will gather more than 15 times more light than telescopes currently in operation, will be able to directly see small rocky planets as they orbit their stars.

By analysing the spectrum of the light reflected from these planets, it should also be possible to determine whether they have water or even vegetation on the surface.

Professor Andrew Cameron, an astronomer at University of St Andrews, said: "If they live up to the design goal, we will be able to detect Earth-like planets tens of light years away.

"There are lots of stars within that range, so there is real potential for finding a terrestrial planet that could sustain life."

Construction of the E-ELT, which is being funded by the European Southern Observatory, an international research organisation made up of 14 European countries including Britain, is expected to start in 2010 and the telescope is due to be operational by 2018.

A decision on where the telescope will be located is to be taken at the end of this year. Candidates include La Palma in the Canary Islands and Chile.

The E-ELT will use 906 hexagonal segments – each four and a half feet across – that will be pieced together to work together as a single mirror housed inside a giant rotatable dome. Each segment will have to be continually adjusted by computers to produce a single image.

In the past, optical telescopes on Earth have also been hindered by turbulence in the atmosphere which can leave images of stars and galaxies slightly fuzzy.

This problem led to astronomers building expensive space telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope which can operate outside of the Earth's atmosphere.

Astronomers behind the E-ELT, however, plan to use new technology that could make future space telescopes unnecessary.

They propose to use powerful lasers positioned at several points around the giant mirror that will be fired more than 55 miles up through the atmosphere to create a faint "artificial star".

This artificial star can then be used to measure the level of blurring that the atmosphere is causing and a special deformable mirror can be adjusted to compensate.

Scientists claim this will allow them to achieve some of the clearest images of our universe ever achieved from the surface of the planet.

Colin Cunningham, director of the E-ELT programme in the UK, said: "There will be more glass in this telescope than there is in all the other telescopes currently in use around the world put together.

"The detail it will allow us to see is four times greater than we can currently get. It is very exciting."

European Space Agency hopes to clean up space junk

Enlarge By AFP/Getty Images A computer-generated artists impression released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts the approximately 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth.

By Melissa Eddy, Associated Press

DARMSTADT, Germany — Wary of the multitude of satellites in earth's orbit, the European Space Agency has begun a program to monitor space debris and set up uniform standards to prevent future collisions far above the planet, an official said Monday.

The $64 million program — dubbed Space Situational Awareness — aims to increase information for scientists on the ground about the estimated 13,000 satellites and other man-made bodies orbiting the planet, ESA space debris expert Jean-Francois Kaufeler told reporters.

The program was launched in January. On Feb. 10, the collision of two satellites generated space junk that could circle Earth and threaten other satellites for the next 10,000 years.

"What the last accident showed us is that we need to do much more. We need to be receiving much more precise data in order to prevent further collisions," Kaufeler said of the collision.

The smashup happened 500 miles (800 kilometers) over Siberia and involved a derelict Russian spacecraft designed for military communications and a working satellite owned by U.S.-based Iridium, which served commercial customers as well as the U.S. Defense Department.

A key element of the program is to increase the amount of information shared worldwide between the various space agencies, including NASA and Russia's Roscosmos, Kaufeler said.

Kaufeler also said that another aspect that must be examined is establishing international standards on how debris is described, tracked and, if needed, moved so as to prevent any collisions.

U.S. and Russian officials traded shots over who should be blamed for the collision that spewed speeding clouds of debris into space, threatening other unmanned spacecraft in nearby orbits.

No one has any idea yet how many pieces of space junk were generated by the collision or how big they might be. But the crash scattered space junk in orbits 300 to 800 miles (500 to 1,300 kilometers) above Earth, according to Maj. Gen. Alexander Yakushin, chief of staff for the Russian military's Space Forces.

Experts in space debris will meet later this week in Vienna at a U.N. seminar to come up with better ways to prevent future crashes, and the 5th European Conference on Space Debris in March at ESA.

"We need more precision in space," said Kaufeler. "The current measurements (of space debris) are not precise enough."

He noted that neither ESA nor NASA were able to predict last week's collision, although his scientists have been warning for two decades that such an accident could happen.

"The problem of space debris is unique," said Kaufeler. "We need to work together, we need to unify our forces if we are going to solve it."

Also this year, the Europeans plan to launch two new telescopes into space to study the far reaches of space. The Planck telescope will map background radiation that fills space, while the Herschel space telescope will give astronomers a view of far-infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.