At the turn of the year, the US have been busy confirming their renowned position in the history of spaceflight, while China have been busy attempting to affirm their position as the preeminent leader of future human space exploration.

In an attempt to undermine the long-term cynicism that has provoked the various hoax theories about the Apollo moon landings, NASA has recently released high resolution images of a number of Apollo landing sites.  These images were acquired by the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) spacecraft, which has recently been manoeuvred into a 25 km altitude lunar orbit.  An example, the Apollo 17 landing site, is shown in the picture gallery which clearly shows the lander descent stage, the lunar rover, the experiment packages and various tracks made by the astronauts and the rover. Unfortunately, the die-hard believers in the conspiracy theories will  insist that the LRO pictures are also hoaxed. However, it is great to see these images which confirm the events of 40 or so years ago.  When all the conspiracy nonsense has been laid to rest, these landing sites will still be there, testimony to a major chapter in global history.

At around the same time, China has recently published a 5-year plan for its space program, including human spaceflight.  As part of this, they declare a clear intention to land people on the moon, perhaps by the end of the decade.  The
thumbnail image on this post gives an artist’s rendering of a potential configuration of a Chinese lunar lander spacecraft.  
This comes at a bad time for the US, with the retirement of the space shuttle, the cancellation of the Constellation (human exploration) program and the dependence of US astronauts on the good will of the Russians for access to orbit.  A number of the veteran Apollo moon walking astronauts have expressed disappointment with the short-sightedness of the Obama administration, which is in severe danger of handing over leadership in human space endeavour to political competitors. Can it really be that the next footfall on the lunar surface will be Chinese?  What will be the American political reaction to that – something reminiscent to that of the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957?  
 
Wake up USA
before the situation is irretrievable!

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Prospero.  'And what's that?' I hear you ask.  Prospero is a 66 kg satellite, which is the only British-made spacecraft to be launched on a British-made launch vehicle.   Forty years ago at 04.09 UTC on 28 October 1971, Prospero was lobbed into orbit by a Black Arrow launcher from the Woomera Test Range in South Australia (see gallery).  And it still orbits today.
The occasion was a bitter-sweet event, as thereafter the UK launcher programme was cancelled and those working on the launcher project found themselves out of a job.  The story is something of a local one for me as well, as I reside in Southampton, and the first and second stages of the Black Arrow launcher were manufactured by Westland in East Cowes
on the Isle of Wight just a few miles south across the narrow strip of water called the Solent.  The launcher's rocket engines were also tested on top of the sea-facing cliffs just East of the Needles (striking chalk pinnacles rising from the Solent at the Western most tip of the Island).  A couple of photos I took of the rocket test site can also be seen in the gallery, showing the location of the rocket test stands as they are today.

ROSAT finally returned to Earth in the early hours of Sunday morning (23 October 2011), surprisingly without the usual media furore that accompany these events. Current information suggests it came down around 02.00 UTC, and the 'impact footprint' was mostly confined to the Indian Ocean region.  Well done to Hugh Lewis of University of Southampton, UK, for getting it 'right'!

Usually the re-entry of an orbiting spacecraft of significant mass is heralded by a flurry of reports in the media, sometimes prompting us hysterically to don hard hats and take cover!

After the hubbub caused by the recent re-entry of the UARS satellite over the Pacific Ocean, another spacecraft called ROSAT seems to have escaped much of the media’s attention so far.  ROSAT is a X-Ray telescope with a mass of around 2.4 tonnes, which is due to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner in late October 2011. 
The telescope payload is around 1.6 tonnes, but it is unlikely to remain in one lump during the destructive process of descent through the atmosphere. However, items with masses in the region of 100’s of kg may reach the ground (or more likely the ocean).   A re-entry prediction done by a colleague at Southampton University UK, Dr Hugh Lewis, suggests that the re-entry may occur around the morning of 23 October 2011.  However, the exact time is difficult to predict at this distance away from the event.  I’m sure more refined estimates will be forth-coming when the media wake up to this
event.

The US space probe Juno launched at 16.25 UTC on Friday 5 August 2011, as the first step of its 5 year journey to Jupiter. If all goes well the spacecraft will enter Jupiter orbit in 2016.

Juno is the first US deep space probe not to use Radioisotope Thermal Generators (RTGs) for power generation (RTGs convert the heat generated
by the radioactive decay of plutonium to electrical power). Instead Juno will use solar arrays, despite the fact that solar power flux at Jupiter is 25 times less than that at Earth orbit.  Looking at the pictures of the spacecraft the array area is of the order of 55 square meters (which is large), which will provide about 400 W of electrical power at Jupiter to operate the spacecraft.  Because of the low solar intensity, the arrays will get cold at Jupiter orbit, which will help boost their generating efficiency.  Some media agencies claim that this is the first spacecraft to use solar arrays at this distance from the Sun – but of course the Europeans have beaten them to it with the Rosetta spacecraft, which will operate with arrays at distances slightly greater from the Sun than Juno.

The mission will follow-on from the Galileo Jupiter orbiter (launched in September 1995), but it seems the focus of the mission will be more to do with studying Jupiter itself, and its magnetic and trapped radiation
fields.  It is hoped to discover the internal structure of the planet.  By contrast, much of Galileo’s objectives focussed on the characteristics of Jupiter’s many moons.

Since the Dawn spacecraft injected into orbit around the asteroid recently (see blog entry for 16 July 2011) the imaging system has been busy returning pictures to Earth. NASA has a website with full details http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/, but a sample of the preliminary data can be seen on the picture gallery page.

Since Messenger arrived in orbit around Mercury in March (see blog entry for 18 March 2011), there has been very little in the media about the images being received from the spacecraft.  NASA has a Messenger website with full details of the data received from Mercury http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/index.html, but please see picture gallery for a taster of the stunning quality of the images received.

Shuttle Atlantis touched down at 09.56 UTC on Thursday 21 July
2011, bringing to an end 30 years of the shuttle flights (see picture gallery
for an extraordinary picture of Atlantis’s reentry track taken from the
International Space Station (ISS)).  The programme is assured to be a major chapter in the history of human spaceflight – with its many highs, and tragic lows.  With the loss of 14 brave souls it is finally time to appreciate that the shuttle is not only a brilliant engineering achievement, but also has to be recognised as too dangerous a machine to carry people into orbit. Two catastrophic failures in 135 flights makes for poor odds.

But now, for the first time in 50 years, the NASA finds itself in the extraordinary position of not being capable of launching astronauts into
orbit!  With the ISS lifetime being extended until 2020, US astronauts will only have access via the good will of the Russians, until other means are provided by private venture launch solutions.   It has to be said that the blame for this nonsensical situation must be laid firmly at the door of the Obama administration.  What now for the US human spaceflight programme, now that the reins of leadership have been handed over to other potential international competitors?

I suspect that, when one of these potential competitors grasp that role, the US will come to its senses, but how long will that be?  US leadership in human spaceflight – R.I.P. ?

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)