The Refined Geek

Bar our own planet Mars is by far the most studied planet in the solar system. Despite the fact that almost half the missions sent to Mars have ended in disaster we’ve still managed to do a whole lot of science  there and our most recent mission, the Curiosity rover, has managed to capture the attention of millions worldwide. The next logical step would then be to send ourselves over there as whilst robotic explorers are great at specific tasks there’s a whole host of other things we could do if we had a few pairs of boots over there. Such a mission has been on everyone’s minds ever since we first set foot on the Moon over 4 decades ago but progress towards achieving it has been slow, verging on non-existent.

This is not to say that there isn’t interest in doing this. NASA currently has a mandate set by the Obama government to reach Mars by 2030 a goal which they’re actively working towards with the Space Launch System. SpaceX has also expressed a keen interest in doing something similar, albeit without help from NASA, in a much more aggressive time frame. Russia has also alluded to a revamp in their space program, primarily aimed at modernizing their current fleet, which could see them establishing a moon base and possibly flying a mission to Mars. However none of these have created the stir that the fully private Mars One mission and that’s probably for good reason.

For the uninitiated Mars One is a non-profit organisation that has the extremely ambitious goal of landing 4 people on the surface of Mars by 2023. They believe they can do this at a total cost of about $6 billion for the first 4 ($4 billion for the second lot) and plan to raise a chunk of that change through making a reality TV show based around the recruitment process. This is where it gets interesting/controversial as the application process is open to anyone and has already garnered 78,000 applications from around the world. In case you’re wondering no, I’m not one of them because I’m quite sceptical that they, or anyone really, could pull off this feat with the budget they’re claiming. I’d do a detailed breakdown of why this is so but I came across this article this morning that does a far better job of explaining it than I’d do.

At the same time Buzz Aldrin has just released his new book Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration which is the culmination of his many decades of experience and ideas for getting us humans to our red sister. Whilst I haven’t had a chance to read it I do know of many of the things he’ll be discussing in it (like the Aldrin Cycler) and they’re solid, realistic goals that could be achieved by NASA in the time frames he sets out. If you’re doubting his credentials Buzz has a Phd in astronautics and has done a lot of work for NASA that’s still in use today. Whether or not NASA, or any other space faring nation for that matter, takes his advice under wing will remain to be seen but I’m sure the book will make great reading regardless.

All that being said I do get the feeling that we’re starting to see the beginnings of a mini-space race, one that’s taking place between the private space industry and the super power governments of the world. It’s anyone’s guess who will emerge the victor from this but I’m just thankful that there are multiple entities all driving towards the same goal as the more players we have in the field the more likely it is to happen. I’m sceptical that we’ll see humans on Mars within the next decade but we’re likely to push the boundaries of human exploration further than has ever been done before, fixing us firmly on a path to our celestial sister.

It’s hard for me to hide my fan boy nature when it comes to private space flight. Whilst all credit must go to Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic for getting me inspired about all things space they have unfortunately taken a second seat to my current space crush. Not-so-long time readers will know that I’m talking about SpaceX, a company that has shown time and time again that they’re capable of not only developing technology that no private entity had previously but also delivering on their patently crazy promises. However I’m not in favour of monopolies/single points of failure (stemming from my capitalistic/engineering nature respectively) and the more options we have available to us for putting things in space the better.

Today it appears we have another contender: the Orbital Science’s Antares rocket.

Now I’ve only mentioned Orbital Sciences briefly in the past, noting that they won a contract to provide launch capabilities to NASA alongside SpaceX as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, but their legacy stretches back quite a long way. Founded in 1982 they’ve developed several different launch platforms in tandem with NASA and have also been involved in numerous high profile scientific missions. Most recently they developed the Dawn craft which is currently in the asteroid belt transiting from the asteroid Vesta to the dwarf planet Ceres. Needless to say if anyone has the chops to develop their own launch system it’s orbital sciences and the Antares rocket is their first such system.

On paper it looks to be somewhere between the Falcon 1 and 9 with a total payload to LEO of around 5000kg. The two first stage engines are curious little beasts, originally designed to form the basis of the Russian N-1 rocket that was bound for the moon. Considering that launch system was a dismal failure you’d then have to wonder about them using the engines from it but N-1′s issues were mostly process/design based rather than stemming from issues from one particular component. It also has a slightly wider payload fairing than the Falcon 9 at 3.9m in diameter which could come in handy for certain mission profiles.

The first launch of the Antares (dubbed A-ONE) was scheduled to happen in the middle of last week however some minor technical issues delayed the launch. The rocket itself was fine however one of the umbilical cables disconnected 12 minutes prior to launch, far too early when it usually happens right before lift off. Thankfully this didn’t require the rocket to be stood down and they were able to reschedule it for a couple days later. Unfortunately high winds on the second launch day caused them to issue a no-go due to weather and it was rescheduled for today. Thankfully conditions improved and they were able to launch, making the Antares rocket the second fully private rocket to make it to orbit.

Apart from that it’s still notable for many reasons. If the picture above looks a little unfamiliar to you it’s because the Antares wasn’t launched from the iconic Cape Canaveral. Instead it was launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility located in Virginia, a place that doesn’t usually see rockets of this size. Indeed the Antares rocket is the largest rocket to ever be launched from this facility and will likely become the defacto launch site for the rocket in the future thanks to its much less crowded launch schedule. If all goes to plan this site could see another 2 launches of the Antares rocket this year which would be on par with SpaceX’s rapid turnaround times.

Today marks a great achievement for Orbital Sciences and the greater space industry as it shows that not only is the private space industry viable, it can likely support several competing players. This will only help spur innovation forward as companies look to outpace each other on every aspect. Whilst SpaceX might be the current starlet Orbital Sciences has decades of experience behind them and I can’t imagine them being in the backseat for very long. As always this means that the cost to launch will trend downwards and from there it’s only a matter of time before it reaches the commodity level.

And that, my friends, is really exciting.

When I first wrote about Planetary Resources early last year I was erring on the side of cautious optimism because back then there wasn’t a whole lot of information available regarding how they were actually going to achieve their goal. Indeed even their first goal of building and launching multiple space telescopes sounded like it was beyond the capabilities of even veteran players in this industry. Still the investors backing them weren’t the type to be taken for a ride so I figured they were worth keeping an eye on to see how they progressed towards their goal.

And boy have they ever:

The above video shows off one of their prototypes of the Arkyd-100 space based telescope. Now back when Planetary Resources first started talking about what they were going to do I wasn’t expecting something of this size. Indeed I don’t believe anyone has attempted to make a space based telescope that small before as you’re usually trying to amp up your light gathering potential with a large mirror. Still despite the relatively small mirror size they should be quite capable of doing the required imagery that will lead them to potential mineable asteroids.

Their communications set up is also highly intriguing as traditional space communications require large dishes and costly receiving equipment back here on earth. Planetary Resources are instead looking to use lasers for their deep space communications an idea that I didn’t think would be possible. A quick bit of research turns up this document from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab which goes into some detail about their feasibility and shockingly it appears to only be an engineering challenge at this point. How long it will take to turn it into something usable remains to be seen but considering Planetary Resources are looking to launch within the next couple years I’d hazard a guess that they’re already pretty close to getting it working.

Looking at all this you’d think I’d be ashamed of my initial scepticism but I’m not, I love it when people prove me wrong like this. Indeed the work that Planetary Resources are doing closely resembles that of the early days of SpaceX, a company which has gone on to achieve things that no other private company has done before. Given enough time it’s looking like Planetary Resources will be able to do the same and that gets me all kinds of excited.

If you wander over to the Space section of this blog you won’t have to look far to figure out which company I have a huge man crush on. Whilst SpaceX might be the toast of the private space flight industry thanks to their incredibly impressive achievements and lofty goals they’re far from the only player in the game and they’re really only currently focused on getting cargo and people into orbit, keeping them there is still someone else’s job. This isn’t to say that no one is working on solving that particular problem however and Bigelow Aerospace, a company I’ve mentioned in passing a couple times, is one such company.

Bigelow Aerospace is the brain child of Robert Bigelow funded primarily from the fortune he made from his ownership stake in the Budget Suites of America hotel chain. Unlike most private space companies which are primarily focusing on the launch side of the equation Bigelow is instead focusing solely on the staying up there part, developing technology for a new kind of space station that promises to deliver much larger usable volumes at a fraction of the cost of traditional space station modules. They’re in fact so far along the development path that they already have 2 of their modules Genesis I and Genesis II in orbit right now and they’ve been there for the better part of 6 and 5 years respectively.

Their modules are based off of a pretty novel idea that NASA was developing back in the early 1990s. Dubbed TransHab the idea was to be able to build modules that were of a certain size when launched but could then be inflated once in orbit to provide much more room. Additionally the inflatable design means that it’s much more resistant to micrometeorite impacts as the outer surface will flex, reducing risks to the crew and lowering ongoing maintenance costs. Unfortunately due to the budget overruns of the International Space Station project the TransHab was ultimately cancelled but Bigelow licensed the technology from NASA and set about creating his own versions of them.

The goal for Bigelow was to start up his own private space stations in orbit, essentially extending his hotel chain to outer space. Whilst they’ve had functional verification of their systems for a long time now their biggest issue was a lack of transportation methods in order to get people up there. Seats on Soyuz craft are now going for upwards of $50 million dollars and Bigelow’s plans just aren’t feasible at that price point. Indeed the current lack of usable alternatives prompted Bigelow to slash its staffing by over half at the end of 2011 although they have begun rehiring now in preparation for the availability of such services coming online in 2016.

What is pretty incredible though was the recent news that Bigelow has won a contract with NASA to provide an inflatable module for the International Space Station. Whilst there’s scant details about what the module will actually be (that’s apparently scheduled for a press conference today) it’s a safe bet that it’d be something like their planned BA-330 although it’s entirely possible that they might go for gold and debut their giant BA-2100 (pictured above) which would almost triple the current liveable volume of the ISS. It may seem counter-intuitive for NASA to buy their own technology back off a private manufacturer but Bigelow has invested some $180 million into getting the project this far, a sum that I’m sure no one at NASA wanted to spend when they already have so much invested in rigid modules.

The amount of innovation we’re seeing in the private space industry is simply staggering as we’re fast approaching the point where the only thing that stands between you and your own private space station is the capital required. Sure that’s still no small barrier but the fact that we’re commoditizing space travel means that it’ll soon be something that will be within reach for all of us, much like the commercialization of air flight last century. NASA’s contract with Bigelow is proof that the nascent space company is at the point where it’s technology is ready for prime time and I can’t wait to see one of their modules up in space.

Propulsion in space is an extremely tricky affair, one that’s centred heavily on trade-offs. The engines we use to get into space are woefully inefficient due to the large amount of propellent that has to be taken along with them. The faster/further you want to go the more propellent you need which makes the rockets increasingly bigger, putting a soft upper limit on what makes for a feasible craft. On the flip side once you’re in space we have engines with efficiencies that are so good that they can achieve incredible speeds with fractions of a percent of the fuel that it takes to get them into orbit. It’s no wonder that these engines were chosen for the Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres.

There’s also engines that straddle the boundaries of these two like the VASIMR which aren’t capable of getting payloads off the surface of the earth but are quite capable of performing the same tasks as chemical rockets in space with a fraction of the required reaction mass (fuel). The trade off here is that it requires a rather large power source for it to be effective, on the order of hundreds of kilowatts, which means that in order for it to fly you need an ultra dense power source, usually in the form of a nuclear reactor. They’ve also never been flown on an operational mission yet (they have been thoroughly tested and verified however) but we will likely see one aboard the International Space Station within the next 3 years or so.

Barring some technological breakthrough I was pretty sure these engines were going to be the ones powering most of our craft for the next couple decades or so as we’ve got most of the bases covered. However it turns out that there might be a way to improve on the high efficiency/low thrust idea by doing away with the reaction mass completely. Sounds impossible right? I mean what engine can run without any fuel to drive it? As it turns out there’s quite a lot of energy to be derived from the vacuum of space and NASA are investigating how to tap into it:

 The lab will first implement a low-thrust torsion pendulum (<1 uN), and commission the facility with an existing Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster. To date, the QVPT line of research has produced data suggesting very high specific impulse coupled with high specific force. If the physics and engineering models can be explored and understood in the lab to allow scaling to power levels pertinent for human spaceflight, 400kW SEP human missions to Mars may become a possibility, and at power levels of 2MW, 1-year transit to Neptune may also be possible

Essentially the way a QVPT works is by harnessing the random fluctuating magnetic fields that are present throughout the vacuum of space and using them to propel the craft. This works by polarizing a block magnetoelectric material leading to a force in one direction on the block whilst the field, or more accurately the bosons they’re made up of, are pushed in the other. Technically QVPTs are drives that uses photons as its reaction mass but it doesn’t have to bring them along which is a pretty big distinction between them and ion thrusters.

Much like VASIMR and ion thrusters QVPTs main limitation is the size of the power source that they can bring with them. However unlike their predecessors QVPTs have a far greater upper limit on how long they can run (referred to as specific impulse). These means for long distance missions like those to Mars and beyond there’s great potential to cut much of the transit time off by utilizing a QVPT. To put it into perspective the fastest craft ever launched, New Horizons, will take approximately 9 years to reach Pluto at its current speed. A QVPT powered craft is theoretically capable of getting there in just on a year, almost an order of magnitude faster. Of course this will rely on the effect being experimentally verified but since NASA has dedicated an entire team, dubbed EagleWorks, to verifying the idea I’d say that there’s at least some credence to it.

It’s quite exciting as new ideas like this don’t come along very often and it’s not common for NASA to simply dedicate significant resources to them in order to see if they pan out. This is what they’re good at though and it makes me incredibly happy to see NASA engaging in some good old fashioned envelope pushing. It might be a while before this bears fruit but the potential for unlocking our solar system is just too good to pass up.

There’s been something of a goal shift within the space industry recently. For quite a long time the focus was on returning to the moon and establishing a presence there which was born out of George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. However since then the goals of NASA, and indeed the goals of the most promising private space company, have shifted from going back to where we once visited to charting a course to virgin territory. Whilst its entirely possible that both NASA and SpaceX are just looking to capitalize on the attention that’s been focused on the Mars Curiosity Rover by announcing plans to send humans to our red sister there’s no denying that both of them are seriously considering the idea and it seems NASA might be looking at some rather radical ideas.

There’s been quite a lot of talk about what the best way to get to Mars would be and most of them involve a way station of some sort, something close to Earth that we can use as a staging ground whilst we prepare for the actual mission. The ideas have ranged from simply using the International Space Station to establishing a base on the moon. NASA has recently started investigating the idea of putting a base out at L-2 (Lagrange Point 2), beyond the orbit of the moon. Such a base would provide quite a few advantages and not just to potential manned missions to Mars.

You see the Lagrange points are special places where the gravitational effects of all the nearby bodies balances out so that you don’t really need to do a heck of a lot to remain there indefinitely. That’s quite desirable because it means you have to take up less station keeping equipment and fuel with you, making room for bigger and better payloads. It’s for this (and numerous other reasons) that the Hubble successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be placed at L-2. There’s also one other advantage to L-2 as well and that’s the fact that you don’t need very much energy to get anywhere in our solar system once you’re there, especially if you time it right and get some lovely gravitational boosts along the way.

Putting a station there and maintaining it would be no small feat however. At L-2 you’re well outside the  protective magnetic field of Earth which means that any potential space station has to be heavily shielded against the solar winds and cosmic radiation that will bombard it relentlessly. This either means a much smaller single launch station (ala Salyut and Skylab) or multiple successive launches. It’s not an insurmountable task but it’s definitely a step up from the ISS in terms of complexity and investment required. The L-2 location also makes getting to and from the station much more complicated than getting to the ISS or even the moon and that raises questions about how to handle things like emergency situations and resupply flights. Again there’s no technical limitation to this but you’re well into envelope pushing territory when you’re working out a L-2.

At the same time though I do believe that if you’re considering a base at L-2 you’d also better consider doing something similar on the moon, especially if landing on other planets is your end goal. You see we do have quite a bit of experience in building space stations and a base at L-2 would be an organic progression of that. However what we don’t have is any experience in building habitats on the surface of other planets and the moon, with its lack of atmosphere and harsh environment, would be an amazing test bed for potential habitats on other planets. This is not to say that a moon base is better than something at L-2, they both have their pros and cons, just that if L-2 is a consideration then the place 1.5 million kms before it might not be a bad idea either.

I think the most exciting thing to come out of all of this is the fact that NASA is investigating some things which really are pushing the limits of our capabilities in space. I’ve long said that this is where they need to be focused as the private space industry has shown that they’re quite capable of doing the day to day stuff which should leave NASA’s budget free to do some really incredible stuff. With that finally happening I could not be happier as it means that we’re not that far off from becoming an interplanetary species.

In principle, at least.

It was only 2 weeks ago today that the world was captivated by our latest endeavour in space exploration: the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. No doubt it was a great achievement and the science data that the rover will bring back to us will undoubtedly further our understanding of our red celestial sister in ways that we can’t possibly fathom yet. Still Curiosity achievement was only possible due to the great amount of work that came before it in the form of dozens of other space problems, numerous landers and of course other roving space craft. There is one craft in particular that has had so much to do with space exploration (and that just crossed a major milestone) that I feel it bears mentioning.

That craft is Voyager 1.

On August 20, 1977 NASA launched the first of two craft in the Voyager program. At the time the alignment of all the planets in our solar system was quite favourable, allowing a probe to be able to visit all of the outer gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) without having to use much propellant or having to spend a lot of time travelling between them thanks to the gravity assists it could get from each of the giants. Indeed the recently launched New Horizons craft that will be visiting Pluto sometime in 2015 will have a speed of roughly 15KM/s which is about 2KM/s slower than Voyager’s current speed showing you just how much those gravity assists helped.

Voyager 1′s primary mission was to study the planets of the outer solar system and it made quite a few interesting discoveries. On its approach to Jupiter Voyager 1 noticed that it actually had rings like Saturn’s although they were much to faint to see with any earth bound telescopes at the time. Voyager 1 also discovered that Io was volcanically active, something that the previous Pioneer probes and earth based observatories had failed to see. It’s encounter with Saturn provided some incredible insights into Titan however this precluded it from being able to visit any of the other planets in the grand tour due to it missing out on the potential gravitational boost and trajectory alignment that Saturn could have provided. Still this set it up for it’s ultimate mission: to study interstellar space.

Whilst Voyager’s list of scientific achievements is long and extremely admirable there are actually 2 non-scientific things that keep it stuck in my mind. The first is something that Voyager 1 (and its sister craft) carries on board with it: the Voyager Golden Record. Contained on the record that’s made from materials designed to withstand the harsh environment of space are recordings of various classical music, pictures of earth as well as pictograms that depict how the record should be used by anyone who finds it. Since Voyager 1 will be the first interstellar craft it is quite possible that one day another form of intelligent life will come across it and the record will serve as an introduction to the human species. It’s an absolutely beautiful idea and symbolizes the human desire to reach further and further beyond our limits, something that I believe is a driving force behind all of our space exploration.

The second was a picture and whilst I could go on about its significance I think there’s someone much better qualified than me to do so:

It’s sometimes hard to believe that we’ve managed to create something that’s lasted for 35 years in the harshest environment that we know of. The fact is though that we did, we designed it, built it and launched it into the great unknown and because of that we’ve been able to reap the rewards of undertaking such a challenging endeavour. I find projects like these incredibly inspiring; they show that through determination, hard work and good old fashioned science we can achieve things that we never thought possible. I am truly grateful to be alive in such times and I know that the future will only bring more like this.

Happy birthday Voyager 1.

Whilst scientists and engineers aren’t the most superstitious of people emergent, inexplicable patterns can still make them uneasy in much the same way. The Mars Curse is one such pattern that has seen half of the missions that were destined for our red sister fail in some way, either in transport or shortly after arriving at their destination. You can then imagine the tension that the Mars Science Laboratory (commonly known as the Curiosity rover) team experienced as they started to make their final approach to Mars, especially considering how complicated their landing had to be. Yesterday saw the rover touch down safely on the Martian surface, much to the joy of everyone involved and those of us who were watching on.

For the first couple of days Curiosity is going to be spending most of its time validating systems and ensuring that communications back to Earth are stable. For those of you who were watching the live feed those first few images we saw came via the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the very same orbiter that’s responsible for relaying all the data from them previous generation of Mars rovers. Curiosity has the capability to deliver a lot more data than those two little rovers combined and whilst Odyssey could relay that back it’s much more advantageous to use the higher bandwidth connection on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter even if it has to cache the data before sending it (hence why the MRO didn’t beam the first pictures back, it would’ve taken too long).

All of the pictures we’ve seen so far have been from underneath the rover and that’s primarily due to the system verification that’s taking place. The images come from the hazard cameras mounted on the underside of Curiosity and traditionally they’ll be used to identify potential obstacles so that the rover can navigate around them. This is why they’re not colour nor particularly high resolution but the good news is that Curiosity has probably the most impressive imaging hardware of any rover to date just waiting to be turned on. Probably the most exciting part about Curiosity’s main camera is the fact that it will be able to capture true colour images, something that past rovers have had to fudge with coloured filters and post processing (which get close, but aren’t true to life).

Curiosity’s mission is to investigate Mar’s past and see how conducive to life it might have been. It’s not directly looking for life on Mars, that kind of mission would require a whole other set of dedicated tools, but what it’s looking for are what we believe are the precursors for life as we know it. Additionally Curiosity will asses Mars’ current and past meteorological conditions, both for pure scientific reasons and also to provide information to possible future manned missions to Mars, something which SpaceX has expressed a keen interest in accomplishing within the next decade. Considering the size of the total payload, almost 900KG, I’m sure it will have no trouble accomplishing its primary mission and quite possibly much more thereafter.

Curiosity’s power source is a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator that’s quite capable of powering the rover for its planned 1 Martian year mission. Now whilst it might not have the solar panels of its predecessors its internal generator is good for 14 years at up to 80% of its peak power production meaning that Curiosity could well give Spirit and Opportunity a run for their money in terms of longevity. Considering just how many instruments are aboard this rover I can see an extended mission proving extremely valuable both in scientific terms as well as becoming the next symbol of NASA’s prowess when it comes to building amazing machines.

A friend of mine asked me this morning if I still had a smile on my face courtesy of NASA and in all honesty I did. I shed a tear when I heard the words “touch down” and shared in the revelry that went on in the Mission Support Area via the NASA TV live feed and just writing that sentence out was enough to bring back the feeling of excitement and joy I felt back then. Curiosity’s mission has only just begun but I can’t help but feel that its been a major success for all involved and I eagerly look forward to everything that this giant rover has to bring us.

It’s a great time for science, space and humanity.

Life on Earth evolved in a never ending battle to be the most well adapted species to its environment. Consequently it can be said that the life forms that evolved here on Earth are specialist biological machines with certain requirements that must be met in order for them to thrive. It then comes as no surprise that entire species can be wiped out by small changes to their environment as their specific adaptations no longer provide them the advantage that they require. However there’s one particular pressure that all life has evolved with that, at least for most life, will never change: gravity.

Many biological processes rely on gravity in order to function correctly and for the longest time it was thought that no life that evolved here on Earth could survive a zero/microgravity environment for long. Indeed medical doctors back on the Mercury program were very sure that the second their astronauts went into orbit their vision would blur, rendering them incapable of performing any tasks. The truth of the matter is whilst we’re designed to work well in our standard 1G environment our bodies can cope quite well with microgravity environments for extended periods of time, provided certain precautions are taken.

What’s truly fascinating to watch though is how other creatures function without the aide of a constant gravitic pull. Indeed quite a lot of science done aboard the International Space Station has been centred around studying these effects on varying levels of creatures and some have produced very interesting results. For example spiders sent up to the ISS don’t spin webs like their Earth bound relatives do, they instead weave what looks like a tangled mess all over their environment. It would seem that their sense of direction heavily relies on figuring out which was is down and absent that their webs lose their usual symmetry.

Other animal species seem to adapt rapidly to the loss of gravity’s unrelenting effects. Mummichogs, a type of small fish, appear to be quite hardy little creatures in microgravity environments. They suffer some initial confusion but after a short while they appear to be quite capable of swimming perfectly well in microgravity. Ants too seem to adapt rapidly to the loss of gravity with their nests taking on an almost surreal structure that is not like anything you’ll see on Earth. The habitat that NASA designed to take ants into space is also quite incredible being a clear blue gel that contains everything the ants need to survive both the trip up and life aboard the space station.

Incredibly some species appear to be  better suited to microgravity than the regular 1G environment on Earth.  C. Elegans, a type of unsegmented worm, not only adapted to life in space but showed a marked increase in life span over their earth bound cousins. The cause appears to be a down-regulation of certain genes associated with muscle ageing which in turn leads to a longer life. Whether the same genes could be down-regulated in humans is definitely an area for investigation but as everyone knows us humans are far more complicated beasts than the simple  C. Elegan.

Indeed whilst muscle atrophy is one of the biggest problems facing astronauts who spend a long time in space there are several more concerns that also need to be addressed. Unlike the C. Elegan we humans have an internal skeleton and absent the effects of gravity it tends to deteriorate in much the same way as it does in bed ridden patients and people with osteoporosis. Additionally whilst the ISS is still within the protective magnetic field of Earth it’s still subject to much higher levels of radiation than what we get here on Earth which poses significant health risks over the long term. There’s also a whole swath of things that don’t quite work as intended (burping in microgravity is fraught with danger) which we’re still working on solutions for but suffice to say if we’re ever going to colonize space reproducing the effects of gravity is going to be one of the most critically required technologies.

It’s not often that we get the opportunity to effectively remove a unyielding constant and then study how much it influenced the development of life here on Earth. This is one of the reasons why space based research is so important, it gives us clues and insights into how dependent our biological processes are on certain key variables. Otherwise we’d figure that gravity was simply a requirement for life when now we know that life can survive, and even thrive, in its absence.

The Hubble Space Telescope stands with the Shuttle as one of the most iconic space craft of the past 2 decades. It has been an amazing boon to science giving us images into the far reaches of space, revealing much about the universe that we would not have known without it. For all it has given us however it is starting to show its age after being in space for a continuous 22 years and the last decade has been dedicated to building a successor. Currently the craft lined up to replace it is the James Webb Space Telescope and whilst its a worthy replacement it’s nothing like the Hubble, for better and for worse.

You see Hubble really is a fully fledged observatory in space being able to capture several different wavelengths of light. This is why we’re able to get those gorgeous pictures out of it as the light it sees is pretty close to what our eyes can see. It’s not exact though as the various filters used to create the images are more aligned to detecting distinct spectral emissions so we end up with images made in what’s called the Hubble Palette. The JWST on the other hand is a pure infrared telescope which is great for studying distant and faint objects but is incapable of producing anything like the Hubble does. To really replace Hubble we’d need a telescope, or maybe even a couple specialized ones working in tandem, that covered a similar array of spectra.

Turns out the National Reconnaissance Office had a couple of these spare.

It might come as a bit of a surprise that the US Department of Defense (of which the NRO is a child agency) has a space program that rivals that of NASA in terms of scale and budget, but it has been that way for some time now. Of course their objectives are decidedly different with NASA being focused on science and exploration and the DoD more interested in the intelligence gathering prospects. It seems that as part of their spy satellite programs they have produced 2 telescopes with Hubble like capabilities that they no longer require (they have not been launched and returned as we have had no missions capable of performing such a task) and have gifted them to NASA. The question now is what to do with these 2 potential Hubble replacements, lest the gift be wasted.

Now these things aren’t exactly ready to fly satellites, they’re basically skeletons ready to be molded into whatever shape NASA wants them to be in. So the basics are there like the housing and the primary (and secondary, something Hubble didn’t have) mirror array but it’s missing crucial parts like the sensors, communication systems and I’m guessing stationkeeping equipment. So there’s a large parcel of work that’s already been done, and no doubt anyone who was looking to build a satellite would love to have this much done for them for free, but to actually get these things flight ready will take quite some time and, most importantly, some budget. If the required funds were found immediately NASA believes they’d be ready to launch no earlier than 2020, or a turnaround time of about 8 years.

Personally I believe that we’d be best served by configuring both telescopes to be identical and then launch them as a stereoscopic pair that could perform in space interferometry. This would allow us to surpass the capabilities of Hubble significantly and would open up imaging opportunities that just weren’t available otherwise. Of course we’d probably be better suited designing a whole new telescope with an even larger mirror array than the two combined but with NASA struggling to complete the JWST on time I can’t see that happening for anytime in the near future. Using these two proto-Hubbles would be an excellent solution for the interim however.

It’s not often that some like this happens so it will be very interesting to see what NASA does with these skeleton telescopes. I would love to see a visible spectrum telescope up there to replace the Hubble after it returns to Earth in a fiery blaze of glory but there are just as many other worthwhile goals for these little beauties. Whatever their fate I’m glad that they’re now in the hands of NASA as they’ll do a lot more good for mankind as science vessels than they ever would as spies.