About
Transapient Musings of an S6 Archailect

Metacognitive trivialities over smooth topologies and Julian knots of subgeometric spaces; a.k.a mastermind Singularitarian, node of the Larger Submind and Clone of the Ineffable Original.

Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/
email: kanzure@gmail.com
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phone: #1-512-203-0507


Archives

• 2008 (720)
  • April (370)
  • May (257)
  • June (93)

Wed, 11 Jun 2008

A Galactic Internet?
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What applications and knowledge could such a powerful internet that spreads across the galaxy, or even the universe, bring us? Moonbrains, jbrains, mbrains, sjbrains, etc. See Orion's Arm and the megascale engineering mailing list.

posted at: 12:01 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

Carnival of Space Week 57
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The Carnival of Space 57 is up at Out of the Cradle

This site contributed an article about some problems with lorentz propulsion tests but success with the SpaceX Falcon 9

International Space Development day 1

International Space Development day 2

International Space Development day 3

Babe in the Universe also had International space development coverage


There is covereage of the Mars Phoenix lander

Check out the carnival for more.

GLXP Teams
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Slip on Level Ground - Astrobotic on GLXP Teams site (as usual click the picture for the Picasa album with more detailed images)

Wheel Slip - Astrobotic

Taking some of the "mystery" out of the Mystery Team... - Can you guess? I have no idea.

VertiPod 2 First Flights - LunaTrex (Pete) - includes a video of VertiPod 2 - looks like a cool ride.

Thestor Cargo - a Google Lunar X-Prize startup - Another unofficial team

posted at: 11:22 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

Armadillo Business
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Mesquite firm blasts off - Dallas Business Journal - This article shows Armadillo Aerospace as it transitions to a profitable business:

"Armadillo Aerospace is now operating at a marginal profit. It's no longer all coming out of my pocket," said Carmack, who also co-owns the successful video game development company id Software Inc. "We have eight employees and everyone is getting paid a token wage. I'm going to be thrilled to turn a small profit this year."

The future looks good:

The Rocket Racing League isn't Armadillo's only paying gig. In late 2007, NASA named Armadillo one of a handful of its Innovative Partnerships Program Seed Fund partners. Through the program, Armadillo is working through $500,000 awarded for research and development of its methane-fueled propulsion system, which should supply information and operational data that would potentially further NASA's lunar lander exploration goals, Carmack said.

Armadillo's development team all have full-time day jobs, Carmack said, but two are also employed by Armadillo full time. He has plans to hire two more employees this year.

posted at: 11:22 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

ISDC 2008 - Procurement Panel
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This panel was on NASA procurement: Government Acquisition: How Better to Help, or At Lest Not to Harm

The panelists included a NASA "big iron" procurement representative (working on things like Constellation), a SpaceX representative, and Thomas Olson. Only Olson mentioned prizes, although he pushed in general for non-traditional procurement approaches throughout his talk. Here are my brief notes:

Olson advocates something like prize-based methods or something new rather than traditional procurements. He would eliminate the cost-plus culture in favor of a prize or performance based model for smaller projects. His last slide states "Let 1000 prizes bloom".

posted at: 11:05 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

ISDC 2008 - Google Lunar X PRIZE Teams
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RLV News has already posted notes from this ISDC panel (and numerous other panels and talks, I might add). Here's my version.

MC David Brandt introduces Will Pomerantz, and emphasizes his SEDS chapter experience.

Will: He was at the Washington DC ISDC 3 years ago, and was offered his current job there. He assumes we're all familiar with the Ansari X PRIZE. He gives a history of the GLXP. The GLXP was announced at the same day as the Japanese SELENE mission. These events show the Moon is open. He showed a brief video of the GLXP with Buzz Aldrin, Sergei Brin, Larry Page, James Cameron, Elon Musk, and Peter Diamandis for the Wired NextFest announcement. He gave a background on the teams, and briefly introduced the 5 panelists, each representing 1 of the teams present at the conference.

Bob Richards - Odyssey Moon - Bob saw both of the Ansari X PRIZE winning flights. He was inspired, and heard the GLXP "shot heard around the world". His was the first fully registered team, and they also had a business plan with the registration. Nine other teams were announced at a later event, and then there was the recent GLXP Team Summit. Their goal is to catalyze lunar commerce. They have the advantage that they aren't subject to the U.S. ITAR regime. The GLXP prize is just 1 of their goals. They have an experienced team. MDA is their prime contractor. They helped with the Phoenix Mars mission that just landed. There has been lots of media coverage. They want to prospect for resources. They have a July 2011 goal.

David Gump - Astrobotic - This is a Carnegie Mellon University/University of Arizona/Raytheon team. They are going to the Apollo 11 site. The University of Arizona is on Mars with their Phoenix spacecraft. They have lots of space heritage and optics experience. Raytheon specializes in high precision propulsion, such as the recent disabled satellite shootdown. Carnegie Mellon University has lots of robotics experience in scenarios like volcanoes, the DARPA Urban Challenge they won, desert, Antarctic meteorite searching, and NASA's SCARAB lunar robot prototype to search for ice. David showed graphics of a third generation robot and a view of a first generation robot test held in Pittsburgh (CMU's location). They are doing heavy field testing and testing of parts needed to be able to handle hard packed lunar terrain and soft patches. This is demonstrated in videos.

First mission: GLXP, proof of concept, precision landing, high-bandwidth communication, initial commercial markets, scene matching, imaging.

Phase 2: commercialize scout prospecting, miners, builders, comm infrastructure, education and entertainment.

Phase 3: Support human outposts on the Moon by 2020, expanding demand, lunar propellants, reaching asteroids and Mars.

Three classes (unfortunately when I took my notes I didn't write which of the following fall in which category - Ray): scout robots, worker robots, orbiters, landers, return vehicles. The prize is just 1 piece of their effort in the scout robot category.

Quantum3 - Paul Carlinger - local DC team - former government officials - Paul got familiar with NASA and NOAA during high-level government work. The contest is akin to Lindbergh's flight. It has the potential to change the paradigm of space like the Lindbergh Spirit of St. Louis flight did for aviation. They also want to give kids an interest in science as happened during Apollo. They have a major school outreach effort at all educational levels. They have a late 2009 launch goal. If it works, it can work in other places like asteroids and Mars. They will launch from the U.S. and want to lower space costs.

STELLAR - Jeff Krukin - a North Carolina team. They missed the recent International Space University GLXP Team Summit event. It's almost as tough to go from Raleigh North Carolina to Strasbourg France as it is to go to the Moon. Their registration fee came from the astronautical and mechanical engineering department foundation. They are a project of the Advanced Aerospace Resource Center. Part of the team is the Advanced Vehicle Research Center, which deals with vehicles and has fuel cell and autonomous vehicle expertise. Insight Racing is also part of the team. They were a team in the DARPA Challenge. There are other NC State groups participating in the team. One piece has expertise in sensors, and another has expertise in smallsats.

They don't intend to stay a North Carolina only operation. They are reaching out regionally. University focus is important to them. NC State and the University of North Carolina emphasize students developing commercially viable technologies. They have been meeting for months. Fundraising is in progress. They have an initial design.

Team JURBAN - Dr. Jayfus Doswell - Their team is a 501c3 research organization to improve STEM (science, technology, and math) human performance, especially for underserved populations. He explained their acronym. They started with the DARPA Urban Challenge. They entered to inspire underserved populations and to show STEM skills. This shows the importance of education. He presented a slide of the JOLHT craft. The robot's goal is to survive the conditions of the lunar surface. Their engineers gave a very exact projection of their schedule, down to "12:00 noon" on a certain day in 2012. They are looking at landing site possibilities. He showed the Juxtopia goggles in a slide.

Q&A session (Will Pomerantz asking the questions):

WP: For the newer teams, how did they decide it was for them?

JD: They had experience with advanced software, etc. They saw a decreased interest of youth in the field. Inspiration is more important to them than the prize money.

JK: This was an outgrowth of things already going on. They are interested in economic development in North Carolina. They want NC to be part of the new space industry. They believe we're in an Earth/Moon economic system, and that developing this system is more important than going to Mars.

WP: Two teams have involvement with the Phoenix mission. Were there any lessons learned from Mars Phoenix?

BR: "Space is hard". Hundreds of people were needed for 1 Phoenix instrument. However, small teams can bring economies.

DG: There was an earlier failure - that's why it's called Phoenix. They need to make it all work right before launch.

WP: Some had plans before, some for after the prize. How important it the prize money to them? How big will the market be?

BR: It would be cool to win but they aren't depending on it. They need multiple lunar participants.

JK: Same comments - educational value is equal to the prize alue. Visibility isn the competition is also important. They need many particpants. International participation is needed.

WP: How are they getting a ride to the Moon?

DG: commercial launch - they intend to announce it soon

BR: commercial; they need a good price

The other 3 also said commercial.

WP: Do they have specific plans in outreach, for example, for elementary students?

JD: They have raised significant funds for outreach in the past. For example, the DARPA Urban Challenge involved a lot of this. Often their students have full time jobs and need the funds to be
able to participate. They use a mentoring process.

DG: The University of Arizona gets professors to mentor students, and the students in turn mentor high school students.

BR: The Planetary Society is their educational partner.

JK: NC already has strong education/workforce development efforts.

PC: They have after school programs.

WP: There will be an "Adopt a Team" effort where students can match with teams.

WP: Top 2 management issues?

BR: Experienced, energetic people

DG: Yes

JD: Management techniques include always assessing risks spiral process from CMU, Six Sigma, improve processes, early testing, proven methods

JK: Core management, subteams responsible for components, each subteam owned/operated by a sponsor

WP: Prizes allow parallel methods to be tackled, so they can see by experience what works.

posted at: 11:03 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

ISDC 2008 - NSS Space Elevator Team Status
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As with all such conference notes that I make, take to heart my usual warning that the following is just a rough approximation based on scribbled notes (I don't like using a laptop in a conference), partially correct hearing, etc. If you want a fully accurate account, check the sources.

You can see more about this talk at the Space Elevator Blog - ISDC2008 Day 3.

NSS Space Elevator Team Status - Bert Murray

Ben Shelef had a presentation before, or at the beginning of, this one on Power Beaming. He explained the Space Elevator and Power Beaming Challenge concepts. They want to leave the power source on the ground, and move up and down a cable. The teams must move a certain payload mass.

He then gave a history of the past Games. In 2005 at NASA Ames, it was the first time, so everyone needed to get experience in the competition. In 2006, they were at the X PRIZE Cup. This time Spaceward didn't give the teams the lights. This event had the first working models, more teams, 2 teams with microwave architectures, and 1 team with a laser architecture. The event was so close that they decided to make it harder so they wouldn't just be giving the money away the following year ... but in compensation, there was more money to be won. In 2007 there were even more teams, and they went faster and higher. Ben showed a night laser movie from 2007. Several teams got to the top. There has been lots of improvement from year to year.

That year, the laser industry saw the videos, and got interested. They decided to make the challenge harder again, but with more prize money to be won again. In 2008 the challenge will be to climb 1km at the same speed. They are talking about holding it at Meteor Crater, but they may or may not end up there.

Note that they had a detailed 3D display at the conference of what they competition would look like if held at Meteor Crater, with a model of the crater, the huge tether to climb, and a balloon holding the tether. The Space Elevator Blog has a video of the display.

Next the NSS Space Elevator Team was up with Bert Murray. This is their first year at the competition. Their motiviation is to demonstrate power beaming technology for the Space Solar Power and Space Elevator concepts, and to win the money.

The design uses a lightweight climber and a TRUMPF laser. They will have a 5-20kg climber with a 5 m/sec speed. They will use strict safety and standards. Bert went over what TRUMPF provides. The team needs to make their optics match TRUMPF's. They are looking at 2 optics solutions to deal with tracking their thermal PV array from 50m to 1000m range. Optics and tracking is the big challenge to them, not the climber. Tracking involves a small target at 3 times the height of the Empire State Building (1km).

The climber challenge is to get the most power per pound. The tradeoffs involve weight, dumping heat, and PV efficiency. The climber frame needs to hold the structure together in winds. For communication and control, they are using an on-board system to monitor things like temperature, and a PC ground system.

They have an article in Ad Astra (the NSS magazine), they blog, and they have a BBC appearance. They are looking for funding. They have a quilt raffle going on now.

posted at: 11:01 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

Briefs: Team Cringely on its own; Team Stellar
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I saw this article yesterday but forgot about it until a reader reminded me today. Robert Cringely is not happy with the way the Google Lunar X PRIZE is being administered so he has decided to pursue an independent lunar project. His team will reorganize as a scientific mission and they hope it "will be conducted jointly with Goddard, though with little or no NASA money involved" : Nolo Contendere: Team Cringely makes a course correction on its way to the Moon - I,Cringely/PBS - May.30.08
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GLXP Team Stellar is profiled in this article: Triangle team racing to moon: X Prize's $30 million pot fuels private-sector effort - News Observer (via spacetoday.net).


posted at: 10:47 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 20 May 2008

Phoenix descent video
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NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander will drop onto the Red Planet’s surface on May 25. JPL has put together a very cool video with animations and interviews with engineers about what this portable lab will go through on its way down. This is very well done (even if one guy talks about friction with the atmosphere, when really it’s compression of the air on Mars that slows the probe down), and gives you a real sense of why landing on Mars is hard. They even high a High Def version (but it’s 187Mb!).

I think it’s fantastic that folks at NASA (or at least JPL) understand that it’s stuff like this that gets people excited, and kudos for them on putting it online. But now if they would just allow embedding it! I couldn’t figure out how to do it. If someone else can, let me know, and I’ll plop it in here. But I can embed the one on YouTube!

Thanks commenters!

Cleaning House
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Looks like NASA is finally disposing of the tooling used to build the orbiters, which had been moved to storage at Michoud a few years ago: No more new orbiters (if anyone really wanted to build any)....

posted at: 23:29 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

Send your thoughts to the summit of Mt. Everest
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Editor's note: The current thinking is that Scott Parazynski's summit window is centered on 22 May. Weather and human traffic are the main factors affecting Scott's progress to the summit.

Our original plan did not work out in terms of comms and updates we planned to do from from Base Camp. So ... here is the back up plan: post your comments below. If you simply want to wish Scott "good luck, best wishes, etc." post that and I will do a head count. If, however, you have something a bit more expansive to say - please post it. Please try and make it simple so that I can condense it down to something I can efficiently convey to Scott and that he can keep in his oxygen-starved brain. Longer comments will be left online for Scott to read when he gets back home.

Scott will be the first human to both fly in space and summit the highest peak on our planet. What does this mean in terms of personal determination and endurance? In terms of exploration and pushing frontiers? As a preview of things to come - and of risks to be taken - on other worlds?

We won't see a similar combination and alignment of first accomplishments again until someone summits the highest lunar peak - or Olympus Mons on Mars.

Send your thoughts to the summit of Mt. Everest. Give Scott something to think about. Be a part of this unique climb.

Further updates and fresh images from Mt. Everest at Everest On Orbit

How ESA plans to search for other Earth’s
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We’re getting close to the day when we’ll spot an Earth-like planet orbiting another star. Astronomers have already seen a number of superEarth candidates–rocky planets in the habitable zone that are many times larger than Earth. They’ve even begun to analyse the atmosphere of these places and got some idea of what it might be like on their surfaces. Earth-sized planets won’t be far away now.

But if we are to spot the signs of life on these bodies, what should we look for? The European Space Agency has been giving this some serious thought for a mission called Darwin currently pencilled in for launch in 2015. It’s goal is to look for signs of life on Earth-like planets.

Today, the team behind the mission explain some of the reasoning behind their design for the spacecraft. To look for life, they’ve had to make some important assumptions about the form it might take. For example, they’re plumping for carbon-based life forms that rely on water as a solvent. Fair enough but their assumptions go a lot further:

“We assume that extraterrestrial life is similar to life on Earth in its use of the same input and output gases, that it exists out of thermodynamic equilibrium, and that it has analogs to microorganisms on Earth.”

That’s getting pretty specific but they say their hand is forced by the fact that they’ve never seen any other type of life and so can’t possibly know what else to look for.

So Darwin will look for carbon dioxide, ozone and of course water in the atmospheres of these planets as well as methane and ammonia.

Finding those in the right abundances will be good evidence that something interesting is happening on these planets although finding any other gases that are out of geochemical equilibrium will also be an eye-opener.

The trouble is that finding these signatures will by no means be a slam dunk in favour of life.

In one of the classic scientific papers of the 20the century, Carl Sagan and colleagues published their analysis of the data from the Galileo spacecraft’s 1990 flyby of Earth. The spacecraft saw all those gases and more. Their conclusion? “Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that widespread biological activity exists…on Earth”.

Not quite conclusive and that’s from a distance of a thousand kilometres. So it’s hard to imagine that data from Darwin could provide conclusive evidence of life at a distance measured in dozens or hundreds of lightyears. But I guess that’s nothing a good PR team couldn’t solve.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0805.1873: Darwin – A Mission to Detect, and Search for Life on, Extrasolar Planets

Supernova Remnant the Youngest Yet
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A tricky aspect of modern astronomy is keeping all the wavelengths straight. Take the case of G1.9+0.3, a supernova remnant (SNR) near the center of the Milky Way. If you look at an X-ray image of this object made with the Chandra satellite in 2007, you’ll see clear signs of growth compared to what the Very Large Array saw in 1985. But the VLA was working at radio wavelengths, making the image comparison problematic. Scientists studying G1.9+0.3 therefore went back to the VLA to observe the object for a second time in order to verify their initial impression.

The later study confirmed that this supernova remnant — consisting of the materials ejected by the vast explosion — really is growing at what seems to be an unprecedented pace. Fifteen percent growth in 23 years is no small matter in astronomical terms, and the growth also makes it possible to work backwards in time to arrive at the time the supernova went off, now pegged at 150 years ago. That makes G1.9+0.3 the youngest of the 250 known supernova remnants in the Milky Way.

Image: The growth of supernova remnant G1.9+0.3 is clearly visible in this comparison shot. The colour scheme (dark blue -> light blue -> green -> yellow -> red) is increasing radio intensity. The width of each of the above images is about 3 arcmin, i.e. 1/20th of a degree. Credit: VLA/Dave Green.

Intriguingly, this SNR holds one other distinction: Its brightness at radio wavelengths has been increasing over the last few decades, a process unique among galactic supernova remnants. We’ll learn much from future observations. Says Dave Green (University of Cambridge):

“The discovery that G1.9+0.3 is so young is very exciting. It fits into a large gap in the known ages of supernova remnants, and since it is expanding so quickly, we will be able to follow its evolution over the coming years.”

Those observations will continue to be made at X-ray and radio wavelengths for now, the object being obscured by gas and dust so that it is not otherwise visible. Nor would the supernova that created it have been detectable to Victorian astronomers, buried behind dust lanes whose nature and location they did not yet suspect. The paper, accepted by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is Green, Reynolds et al., “The radio expansion and brightening of the very young supernova remnant G1.9+0.3″ (abstract).

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Try Out the Worldwide Telescope
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There is a new piece of software out there for astronomy fans. It is free and can be downloaded from: worldwidetelescope.org. Dial up users this is a 21 MB download but it’s worth it.

No telescope? No problem. This is a planetarium program that reminds me of Stellarium; you can click on images of stars to get their names and all the information you’d expect from a decent planetarium program, zoom in and out etc. You can set your location and it will show you what is currently in the sky where you live. Did I mention the images come from most of the major space telescopes, and several surveys such as the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, Sloan Digital Sky Survey and others.

Telescope? This program leverages ASCOM and that means you can control your scope and from what I’ve seen it appears it is full featured, can’t wait to try it out. This morning I am off to try out the Guided Tours function, I will see if I can get one in before work.

Download the program and give it a try. Dialup users – it’s worth the wait.

Image: worldwidetelescope.org

tipa -- 4/23/2008
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Gravitational Instability in Radiation Pressure Dominated Backgrounds

• Authors: Todd A. Thompson

Overdensity of i'-Dropout Galaxies in the Subaru Deep Field: A Candidate Protocluster at z ~ 6

• Authors: Kazuaki Ota, Nobunari Kashikawa, Matthew A. Malkan, Masanori Iye, Tadashi Nakajima, Tohru Nagao, Kazuhiro Shimasaku, Poshak Gandhi

The Hard VHE Gamma-ray Emission in High-Redshift TeV Blazars: Comptonization of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation in an Extended Jet?

• Authors: Markus Boettcher, Charles D. Dermer, Justin D. Finke

Combined CDF and D0 Upper Limits on Standard Model Higgs-Boson Production with up to 2.4 fb-1 of data

• Authors: The TEVNPH Working Group, for the CDF Collaboration, D0 Collaboration

Latest version of Space Elevator competition rulebooks now online
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The latest set of rulebooks for the Climber / Power-Beaming and Tether events at the Spaceward Games are now available online.
The general outline for this year’s Climber / Power-Beaming event has been known for some time; the climb has been increased to a full kilometer and the average speed needed to be in the running for [...]

posted at: 22:42 | path: /astrotech | permanent link to this entry

Windblown Craters on Mars
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I like these wind blown craters. It appears that not only are some of the craters have eroded slopes but some are all but filled in. The MRO images are so good, I can’t wait for the LRO mission to get going.

Larger versions of this and many others are available on the MRO page.

The press release:
This image covers the southern slope of an old impact crater inside a larger and still older crater, in the Martian highlands.

Valley networks are often found on the most ancient Martian terrains, suggesting that Mars was a very different world more than 3 billion years ago. There are two prominent valleys near the center of the image that merge into a single northeast-trending valley (i.e., going to the upper right; be sure to look at the map-projected images that have north up.) There are bright ripples on the floors of the valleys. Although water may have carved these valleys long ago, the ripples are much more recent features created by the wind, which is channelized by the topography.

The terrain is heavily covered by dust or other wind-blown materials, muting the underlying surface features. Bright lines behind some boulders and other topography are called “wind tails” and are deposited in the lee of obstacles, thereby indicating wind direction (most wind tails here seem to extend to the north-northwest from obstacles, indicating winds from the south-southeast). Small, sharp impact craters are best vsible over the smooth mantled regions; these craters probably formed in just the past few million years, which is very recent in geologic time.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

GLAST: Expect to Be Surprised
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With the GLAST mission near launch, keep in mind the possibilities of this unique observatory in terms of findings that could revolutionize our view of distant events. GLAST (Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope) will be looking at things we’ve only recently learned about, such as the enigmatic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) now flagged by the Swift satellite and quickly pinpointed for the use of Earth-based observatories. We know we’re pushing into uncharted waters given that GLAST represents a major step forward over all previous satellites designed to study gamma ray events. And major new instruments usually deliver new classes of objects.

Because of the increase in GLAST’s sensitivity over earlier tools like the EGRET instrument on NASA’s Compton Gamma-ray Observatory (CGRO), the satellite may find thousands of new point sources. And we have plenty of questions already on the table. Gamma-ray bursts, for example, may be the result of black hole mergers, or the merger of a black hole and a neutron star. But it’s also thought that some are markers for the collapse of a massive star into a black hole. What types of stars, then, become GRB’s, and why? What is the mechanism for producing the initial gamma rays in the burst? Because GRBs seem to come in numerous varieties, their study offers fertile ground for years of research.

Or consider dark matter, the leading candidate for which is the hypothetical weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP). Gamma rays may also derive from WIMPS, which according to supersymmetry theory act as their own antimatter particles, annihilating when they interact with each other, and in the process releasing gamma rays and secondary particles. The signature of such annihilations is potentially observable with GLAST’s Large Area Telescope (LAT), assuming that dark matter is indeed composed of WIMPs. Its continuous stream of gamma rays should differ markedly from the milliseconds-to-minutes time frame of GRBs.

Image: According to supersymmetry, dark-matter particles known as neutralinos (which are often called WIMPs) annihilate each other, creating a cascade of particles and radiation that includes medium-energy gamma rays. If neutralinos exist, the LAT might see the gamma rays associated with their demise. Credit: Sky & Telescope / Gregg Dinderman.

One other fascinating possibility in range of this observatory is the question of the speed of light in a vacuum. The special theory of relativity pins the speed of electromagnetic radiation to 299,792,458 meters (186,282.4 miles) per second, and it would be assumed that gamma-ray photons should move at the same speed. Some models of quantum gravity, however, predict that the speed of very-high-energy gamma rays may vary slightly from other forms of light, the result of the turbulence of spacetime at quantum scales. GLAST can thus test a prediction that could nudge us, if only slightly, toward a merger of general relativity and quantum mechanics.

GLAST is now at Cape Canaveral with a planned launch in early June, having been moved to the Hazardous Processing Facility near Kennedy Space Center for fueling. I suppose it’s human nature that manned missions are what snare media attention, but this observatory may turn out to be one of the most significant we’ve launched in terms of probing out to the edges of physics and cosmology. Dark matter may not make CNN, nor will many gamma-ray bursts, but if GLAST can offer up some answers, we may get a far better read on how the universe functions, and if we’re really lucky, some clues to future propulsion possibilities.

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Florida and Virginia Await Launch Pad Decision for Taurus II/COTS
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Minotaur-1 on Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport launch pad.

The Orbial Sciences Corporation Taurus II/COTS program launch base site location is eagerly being awaited by space advocates along the East Coast after an announcement delay. The Florida legislature enacted three initiatives to seek to boost the prospects for the commercial space industry - matching the Virginia offer.

Both Virginia and Florida now have enacted protections from lawsuits for the nascent space tourism businesses, tax incentives, and millions of dollars for investment in launch pad infrastructure improvements.

Virginia's most important advantages are: slightly easier boost inclination to the space station, less demand for range and launch delay conflicts, and Orbital being based in Virginia and not far from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.

Fri, 16 May 2008

Opportunity to send your name and message into space with Kepler
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NASA is soliciting names and messages to fly into space aboard its Kepler Mission, the first probe which may be able to discover Earth-like planets...