With budget and schedule over-runs, the project is being threatened with cancellation, despite full support from NASA itself.   The JWST is the next-generation space observatory beyond the Hubble Space Telescope, and hopes to continue the huge legacy of scientific exploration and understanding of the Universe that was initiated by the HST.  The HST’s contribution to this understanding really cannot be underestimated.   As the shuttle programme finally comes to and end within the next few days, you could ask ‘what was the shuttle’s greatest scientific contribution?’  And without doubt it would the launch, and in-orbit servicing of the HST. The ISS doesn’t really count in this argument – the ISS has been (and continues to be) a great engineering enterprise, necessary if we are to learn how to live and work as humans in space, but it’s scientific value cannot be compared to that of the HST programme.  
 
There is a great deal at stake here.  The measure of our civilisation is bound up in our culture, which includes facets such as art, music, literature, and our innate curiosity which drives scientific and physical exploration.  I hope that sense prevails, and we see a next-generation space observatory such as the JWST to continue the spectacular research that the HST has performed over the years.  Maybe the JWST will allow us to see all the way back to the creation event we call the Big Bang, and what revelations would that reveal?

The Dawn spacecraft should inject into orbit around the 530 km
wide asteroid Vesta today (Saturday 16 July 2011).  Confirmation should be received tomorrow (Sunday UTC) when the spacecraft begins transmission of status data.    The initial orbit around Vesta should be around 16, 000 km from the asteroid, but decreasing ultimately to about 200 km over time – so the future images will be spectacular.  The probe will study Vesta for about a year, before moving on the orbit the asteroid Ceres.  This is made possible by the use of Dawn’s solar power ion engine.  (see picture gallery)

A bitter-sweet day, and one that will go down in the history of the US human
spaceflight programme. ‘Bitter’ because it saw the last ever launch of the US Space Shuttle, a“true American Icon” as Atlantis’s crew called it prior to the launch. 
And ‘Sweet’ because the final launch was textbook (see picture gallery).

We’ve been anticipating this for some time, and now the historic moment is finally
here.  I watched the launch live online via NASA HD TV, and despite no doubt 10s of thousands of people logged on the coverage was perfect.  I can’t help but wonder what a TV spectacle the Apollo moon landing would have been if this Internet and IT technology had been available then!

What now for the US human spaceflight programme? (see blog entry for 8 January 2011 ‘US human spaceflight programme in disarray’ ).   More later
…

On 23 May 2011, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft undocked from the ISS to return astronauts to Earth. As a consequence, a historic opportunity presented itself – that of acquiring (for the first time) pictures of a free flying Shuttle and ISS docked to each other in orbit.   The pictures (see picture gallery) were taken by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli from the vantage point of the co-orbiting Soyuz craft. 
I have also included an image of the final touchdown of shuttle Endeavour
– notice the beautiful wing tip vortices emphasised by the backlighting during
the nightime landing. Endeavour is
now retiring to a science museum in California.

If you’re reading this stuff, please let me know – leave a comment, and let me know if you find it interesting or otherwise!

Today, Tuesday 12 April 2011, sees the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight in 1961, and the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the space shuttle in 1981.

I do remember Gagarin’s single orbit of the Earth all those years ago, but at the time I didn’t realise the magnitude of the event in terms of human history.  To use the old cliché, humankind had finally left its planetary cradle, even though it was only for a matter of less than 2 hours.  Similarly from a political viewpoint, it was huge. The United States was still wounded, after being beaten in the race to orbit an unmanned satellite by Sputnik 1, and now Gagarin’s flight just served to twist the knife.   It was this momentous event that spurred John Kennedy to make his inspirational speech, to throw down the challenge to the Soviet Union of a race ‘to land a man on the moon before this decade is out’!  The rest is now history, and for me a distant memory.  Getting back to Gagarin’s flight, and from the perspective of 50 years of experience of human spaceflight, I think we tend to forget just how courageous he was in offering himself for this first flight into the unknown.  We honour his memory and bravery today.

The Shuttle’s first launch three decades ago, in 1981, was for me one of those landmark events that somehow spurs the memory to recall exactly where I was and what I was doing at the time.  For me, the 12th of April 1981 was a glorious spring day, during which my wife and I enjoyed the climb of a peak in the remote north-west Highlands of Scotland.   However, unlike Gagarin’s flight, I did sense the historic character of the day’s events, and resolved to find out how the first historic flight of Shuttle Columbia had gone at the end of that glorious day.  The flight heralded the opening on the Shuttle programme, and I recall a great wave of optimism in the media, with stories of 50 Shuttle flights per year by the end of the decade!  The subsequent history of the programme is well documented, however.  Despite the high cost of operations, the programme has overall been hugely successful, but also overshadowed by the human cost of desperate tragedies.  Today we remember these highs and lows, especially the personal human sacrifice of 14 shuttle programme astronauts.  Coming full circle, this year sees the retirement of this remarkable machine, again an event with a personal dimension – the commencement and retirement of the Shuttle’s space career have coincided closely with my own career in the space industry and academia!  Consequently, like an old friend, it’s always been there.   Note from the picture of Shuttle Columbia, awaiting first launch, that in those days the whole Shuttle stack was gleaming white.  At that time the external tank was painted, until it was realised that sacrificing the mass of paintwork would give a slightly improved payload performance.

The NASA spacecraft Messenger has finally arrived in orbit around Mercury – a first for the US space agency.  A 14 minute burn of it’s 600 Newton thrust engine at 00:45 GMT today (Friday 18 march 2011) placed the probe into a highly elliptical 12 hour orbit, with a low point at around 200 km altitude.  The spacecraft will have to operate in an extreme thermal environment, given that Mercury is so close to the Sun.  The thermal power from the Sun is around 9 kW per square metre, and the surface temperature of Mercury (around 600 oC at the equator) means that the infrared emission from the planet is also significant in heating up Messenger.  Its principal means of surviving this extreme environment is to remain sheltered from direct solar input by a large thin ceramic Sun shield – see accompanying picture.  It will take a while to commission the payload instruments, but Messenger should be up and running in early April. The surface imagery should be spectacular!

The south of England was bless with a really clear night sky yesterday evening (Saturday 26 February 2011), which was just perfect for the International Space Station pass over Southampton at about 18.35 GMT.   The other fortuitous feature was that Discovery was due to dock with ISS at 19.16 GMT, so there was the prospect of a unique, and never to be seen again, event of seeing the two vehicles as separate objects during the pass.   As is happens, the two objects were indistinguishable with the ‘naked eye’, but just discernable with binoculars!   I don’t know how close they would have been from each other 40 minutes prior to docking but from the observed evidence, they would have been less than 100 m apart.

And talking of unique views, how about this for being in right place at the right time?  The link shows the view of Discovery’s launch on Thursday from a passing passenger jet.   I suspect the trim of the aircraft might have been disturbed for a few minutes while everyone rushed over to one side to watch this very unusual spectacle!

http://news.discovery.com/space/extraordinary-discovery-launch-from-a-passenger-jet-110226.html

I had the opportunity to see the ISS  over Southampton yesterday evening (Thursday 24 February 2011) – brilliant (literally)!  This evening (Friday) there is a similarly good pass over Southern England, but unfortunately the forecast is cloud and rain. This is especially galling as it’s likely that the shuttle Discovery and the Station will be in formation prior to their docking manoeuvre tomorrow (Saturday).  The live online HD coverage of Discovery’s final launch yesterday evening was excellent, courtesy of NASA TV.  At the peak time there were about 42,000 viewers sharing the transmission, which makes the quality of the coverage even more amazing.   The tension as the launch window approached was very well conveyed, particularly as there was a ‘launch hold’ situation with the range safety computer systems about 20 minutes before the normal launch time of 21.50 GMT.   The problem was solved only moments before launch, with Discovery having only 2 minutes of launch window left when it finally left the launch complex.   Couldn’t have scripted it better!  However, I can imagine the pressure on those engineers responsible for solving the problem during those frantic few pre-launch minutes!