Fresh eyes on the universe as Canberra gets new dishes

NICKY PHILLIPS

February 24, 2010

It takes more than 9½ years for a spacecraft to travel the 5.7 billion kilometres to Pluto. But when the New Horizons mission finally passes the dwarf planet in 2015, Australia will play a pivotal role. An official from the US space agency NASA has confirmed plans to build two new dish antennae at Tidbinbilla, just outside Canberra, as part of the support network that tracks all of NASA's deep space missions.

When man landed on the moon 41 years ago, it was Australian antennae that broadcast the astronaut's first few steps to the world. And while no men will walk on Pluto just yet, Australian dishes will be the first to capture the most detailed images of the icy blue mass so far.

Badri Younes, the head of Space Communications and Navigation, said NASA hoped the two new antennas, both 34 metres in diameter, would be operational in time for the Pluto flyby in 2015. Mr Younes said there was also a plan to build an extra two antennas of the same size by 2025. ''From down under you can have a better view of the world above,'' he said. ''Australia has been our eyes and ears into our universe.''

The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science & Research, Senator Kim Carr, said NASA's commitment to expanding its presence at Tidbinbilla was an endorsement of Australia's capabilities. ''Our long-standing science and technology relationship with the United States is of enormous value to Australia,'' he said.

Australia already has four antennas at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla. The new, more efficient dishes will replace two of the old ones. The dishes are part of NASA's deep space network, the only site in the southern hemisphere. Two other sites are in Madrid, Spain and Goldstone in the US. Each site is 120 degrees of longitude apart from the others, providing continuous coverage of NASA's activities in space.

A group of NASA officials arrived in Australia this week for the announcement of the new antennas, which will cost the space agency an estimated $US45 million ($50 million) each to build. The Herald understands a ground-breaking ceremony for the first new antenna will be held at Tidbinbilla on Thursday.  The NASA party, which includes William Gerstenmaier, the head of space operations at NASA and Charles Elachi, the head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is in Australia to also celebrate the 50th anniversary of Australian and US space relations.

Earlier this month it was announced that the agreement between the two nations over the use of Australian space monitoring sites at Tidbinbilla, Alice Springs and Dongara in Western Australia, would be extended for another two years. Mr Younes said the relationship between the two countries was very reliable. It was something to preserve and grow. ''We could have ground sites elsewhere, but what's so special about the Canberra site is the relationship we have with the government of Australia,'' he said.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Space Junk Mess Getting Messier in Orbit

By Leonard David
SPACE.com’s Space Insider Columnist posted: 23 February 2010
09:20 am ET

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — The already untidy mass of orbital debris that litters low Earth orbit nearly got nastier last month. A head-on collision was averted between a spent upper stage from a Chinese rocket and the European Space Agency's (ESA) huge Envisat Earth remote-sensing spacecraft. Space junk tracking information supplied by the U.S. military, as well as confirming German radar data, showed that the two space objects would speed by each other at a nail-biting distance of roughly 160 feet (50 meters).


ESA's Envisat tips the scales at 8 tons, with China's discarded rocket body weighing some 3.8 tons. A couple of tweaks of maneuvering propellant were used to nudge the large ESA spacecraft to a more comfortable miss distance. But what if the two objects had tangled? 

Such a space collision would have caused mayhem in the heavens, adding clutter to an orbit altitude where there are big problems already, said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency's Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany. It turns out, Klinkrad told SPACE.com, that 50 percent of all the close conjunctions that Envisat faces are due to the lethal leftovers from China's January 2007 anti-satellite test, as well as chunks of junk resulting from last year's smashup between an active U.S. Iridium satellite and a defunct Russian Cosmos spacecraft.

Klinkrad joined several orbital debris experts that took part in the 33rd Annual Guidance and Control Conference organized by the Rocky Mountain Section of the American Astronautical Society. The five-day meeting began Feb. 5.

Avoidance maneuvers
Significant progress has been made by the U.S. and the international aerospace communities in recognizing the hazards of orbital debris, reported Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Johnson added that steps are being taken to reduce or eliminate the potential for the creation of new debris. However, "the future environment is expected to worsen without additional corrective measures," he noted.

During 2009, Johnson reported, five different NASA robotic spacecraft carried out collision avoidance maneuvers: a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-3), Cloudsat, Earth Observing Mission 1, Aqua, and Landsat 7. Also, the space shuttle and the International Space Station took collision avoidance actions, he said.

The worst thing that could happen, according to ESA's Klinkrad, is the International Space Station (ISS) receiving a fatal hit. The space station is currently home to five astronauts representing the U.S., Russia and Japan.
"A penetrating object hitting the ISS, and possibly causing a casualty onboard . . . I think that would be the most dramatic case we could have," Klinkrad suggested. Such an incident might turn public opinion against human spaceflight, he said.

Collaboration on the increase
One bit of good news in all this orbital riff-raff. Due to last year's satellite crash between the Iridium and Cosmos spacecraft, Johnson explained that the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) of the U.S. Strategic Command now conducts conjunction assessments for all operational spacecraft in Earth orbit, regardless of ownership nationality. "To be honest, a year ago, we couldn't even have hoped to have done this," Johnson told SPACE.com.
"It's really a consequence of the collision last year. People have been talking about this for years. But now we've made the commitment . . . that this is something that needs to be done and can be done relatively easily," Johnson said. Klinkrad concurred. "The collaboration is getting even closer now," he said.

Duck or pluck?
Playing dodge ball with high-speed space debris is one tactic. But there is also a growing interest in removing the most troublesome objects — perhaps an annual quota of some sort. Targeted would be specific inclination bands and altitude regimes, Klinkrad said. But prior to implementing debris remediation measures on a global scale, technical, operational, legal and economic problems must be overcome. 

Klinkrad and NASA's Johnson provided a wearisome appraisal of the future. Even with an immediate halt of launch activities, spacefaring nations will be dealing with an unstable low-Earth orbit environment in some altitude and inclination bands. This would be a consequence of about 20 catastrophic collisions within the next 200 years, the two orbital debris experts explained. Some orbit altitudes already have critical mass concentrations that will trigger "collisional cascading" within a few decades, unless debris environment remediation measures are introduced.

The Kessler Syndrome
The idea of debris creating debris was put in motion by Donald Kessler, along with fellow NASA researcher, Burton Cour-Palais, back in 1978. Their research suggested that, as the number of artificial satellites in Earth orbit increases, the probability of collisions between satellites also increases. Satellite collisions would produce orbiting fragments, each of which would increase the probability of further collisions, leading to the growth of a belt of debris around the Earth. Now, decades later, that prophecy has been dubbed the Kessler Syndrome.

Kessler told SPACE.com that the disorder fits into much more complex natural laws that include the evolution of the solar system, as well as meteoroids, meteorites, and climate-changing asteroids. Kessler is now an orbital debris and meteoroid consultant in Asheville, North Carolina. "There is nothing complex about what is called the 'Kessler Syndrome' . . . it is just the way nature may have converted a disorderly group of orbiting rocks into an orderly solar system . . . although nature reminds us with a large asteroid or comet collision every few million years that it isn't quite finished yet. 

"In the case of orbital debris, this collision process is just starting," Kessler explained.  Consequently, nobody should be surprised that as orbital debris models became more complex — and as more data is obtained — the same conclusion holds, Kessler said. "The future debris environment will be dominated by fragments resulting from random collisions between objects in orbit, and that environment will continue to increase, even if we do not launch any new objects into orbit," Kessler concluded.

• Some of the Worst Space Debris Moments in History
• India Developing Anti-Satellite Spacecraft
• Video — The Expanding Danger of Space Junk

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

Space archaeologists search for hidden heritage

12/02/2010

A group of space archaeologists are investigating the material culture (remains) of space exploration at the Orroral Valley NASA Tracking Station in the Namadgi National Park thanks to an ACT Government Heritage grant.  Dr Alice Gorman, archaeologist from Flinders University, and her research team will map the site from Saturday 13 February to Monday 15 February 2010, using electromagnetic induction techniques and differential GPS to find out exactly what remains below the ground.

"Australia has had a long involvement in international space exploration, and while not widely recognised, Orroral Valley was involved in many major NASA projects and played a critical role in Australia's early ventures into space," Dr Gorman said. "Our project aims to not only map and document material culture of space exploration from the site, but to raise awareness of the site's heritage significance.  We will be using electromagnetic induction to identify the location of cables, tanks, and construction trenches and rubbish dumps at the site. The remains of the tracking station cover approximately 40 hectares.

"Electromagnetic induction measures the electrical properties of objects below the surface. These instruments are not invasive and do not require direct contact with the ground. They are also easily integrated with a GPS unit allowing us to survey large areas. During the survey, former employees of the tracking station are invited to visit the site to contribute to an accurate interpretation of the data.
Following mapping of the site there may also be opportunity to excavate materials which would further assist in the interpretation of how people lived and worked at the tracking station."

Chief Minister and Minister for the Arts and Heritage, Jon Stanhope, said the Orroral Valley Tracking Station is currently nominated on the ACT Heritage Register. "I am pleased the ACT Government has been able to contribute to the understanding of this site's heritage through a $9000 grant to support the investigation," he said.


The research team consists of Dr Alice Gorman (lecturer in archaeology, Flinders University), Ian Moffat (geophysicist), Rob Koch (surveyor), and graduate student Julia Garnaut from Flinders University.

http://www.chiefminister.act.gov.au/media.php?v=9229

California names Apollo 11 landing site historic resource

BY JOHN ANTCZAK • Associated Press Writer • January 29, 2010 

The vote Friday by the California State Historical Resources Commission is part of a five-state effort to have Tranquility Base become a national historic landmark and then a world heritage site.

The designation applies to everything left there by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, not the lunar surface.

State Historic Preservation Officer Milford Wayne Donaldson says similar moves will be made in Texas, New Mexico, Georgia and Florida — the other states highly involved in the Apollo program.

Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon after the lunar module Eagle landed on the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969.

Source:  http://science.gaeatimes.com/2010/01/29/california-names-apollo-11s-lunar-tranquility-base-as-a-state-historical-resource-4753/

California May Register Tranquility Base As Historical Resource.

The Los Angeles Times (1/29, Anton) reports, "California is poised to become the first state to register the items at Tranquility Base as an official State Historical Resource. If the State Historical Resources Commission approves the idea at a meeting in Sacramento today, it would be a victory for scientists who want to build support for having Tranquility Base designated a United Nations World Heritage Site." Many of the items were left by the Apollo 11 crew in order to make room for lunar samples. Preserving the site, according to the article, is a "priority for the space heritage movement." Meanwhile, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin "says any move to preserve Tranquility Base should be done in concert with a badly needed rethinking of international space law to create 'a unified space vision' on issues of future exploration."

Full story at

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-moon-junk29-2010jan29,0,5698181.story?page=1