Remote sensing and space age archaeology

"Space age archaeology" is a term you often see applied to the technique of using satellite imagery to detect landscape patterns, and built environments, that are not apparent from aerial images or on the ground.  All fine stuff.

But it's not what I do.  Space people, and indeed many other people, leap to the assumption that space archaeology means the use of remote sensing in terrestrial archaeology, or the study of re-entered material (ie bits of spacecraft that survive reentry to fall to the surface of the earth). The idea that the material culture of space, both in space and on Earth, is worthy of research, often takes some time to make sense to those who have not come across it before.

And that's OK.  It's just that I am totally over remote sensing.

A manifesto for space archaeology and its Dada precedents

I have been planning to write a manifesto for a while, but manifestos require more sustained thought that can be mustered in the overworked brain of a university lecturer.  Perhaps on my sabbatical next year.

In the meantime, I have been contemplating the appropriate pithy quote with which to open such a work. (These things are important).  I feel it ought to come from another manifesto.  Manifestos are often not a ripping read, by their very nature, but there are exceptions.  My all-time favourite would have to be Tristan Tzara's Dada manifestos.  As far as I'm concerned, Dada was over far too soon.

So, reading through Tzara's Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries, I came across many that might do.  I offer a few here to see what you think.

To launch a manifesto you have to want:  A.B. & C., and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3, work yourself up and sharpen your wings to conquer and circulate lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout, swear, organise prose into a form that is absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its ne plus ultra .......

(I like that about manifestos too, that they have to be launched - just like a rocket, ha! - and then you wait for action and reaction, because manifestos are meant to upset people  ..... )

I always speak about myself because I don't want to convince, and I have no right to drag others in my wake, I'm not compelling anyone to follow me, because everyone makes his art in his own way, if he knows anything about the joy that rises like an arrow up to the astral strata, or that which descends into the mines strewn with the flowers of corpses and fertile spasms.

or this:

Every object,  all objects, feelings and obscurities, every apparition  and the precise shock of parallel lines, are means for the battle of:  DADA; the abolition of memory:  DADA; the abolition of archaeology:  DADA; the abolition of prophets:  DADA; the abolition of the future:  DADA.....

Admittedly, these do not lend themselves obviously to my purpose, but sometimes trying to see the relevance in something you like leads to new connections.  This is certainly what I found when writing a talk (which I really must write into a paper) about archaeology, space and Edwin Abbott's Flatland.  In the last quote, I like the sequence of memory, archaeology, prophecy, future.

References

Tzara, Tristan  1984 [1963] Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries.  London:  John Calder and New York:  Riverrun Press.  Translated by Barbara Wright.

New measures for active orbital debris mitigation

ATK Proposes Satellite That Could Break Up Space Debris.

Space News (8/9, Werner, subscription required) reported, "Alliant Techsystems (ATK) is proposing plans for a small satellite designed to address one of the most vexing problems facing spacecraft operators in low Earth orbit: debris too small to be tracked by ground-based telescopes but large enough to penetrate satellite shielding." The plans are expected to be "discussed publicly" at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics small satellite conference on Wednesday. "The spacecraft would operate in low Earth orbit as a sweeper or shield, breaking up debris particles and reducing their velocity, according to Jose Guerrero, chief technologist for ATK Spacecraft Division's Systems and Advanced Technology Group." The concept has been discussed with NASA, DARPA, and the US Air Force, "Guerrero said. Further development of the concept, including testing, will require government funding, he added."

 

Quoted from AIAA Daily Launch

The top ten orbital debris-producing missions of all time

This is recent data released by NASA's Orbital Debris Office.  As a result of over 4 700 launches since 1957, there are currently around 19 000 pieces of trackable debris.  Most of this derives from missions launched by the USA, the former USSR and China.  

The missions which produced the greatest quantity of debris are: 

Name                                Year        Debris          Cause of Breakup 

Fengyun-1C                    2007          2,841          Intentional Collision 

Cosmos 2251                  2009          1,267          Accidental Collision

STEP 2 Rocket Body       1996           713             Accidental Explosion

Iridium 33                     2009           521             Accidental Collision

Cosmos 2421                2008           509             Unknown

SPOT 1 Rocket Body     1986           492             Accidental Explosion 

OV2-1/LCS 2 Rocket     1965           473             Accidental Explosion 

Nimbus 4 Rocket Body  1970           374             Accidental Explosion

TES Rocket Body           2001           370             Accidental Explosion 

CBERS 1 Rocket Body   2000            343            Accidental Explosion

What's interesting to note about this is that the most frequent source of debris in the top ten is rocket bodies, and I presume this is largely due to residual fuel (there is a large amount of literature on the problem of passivation at the end of mission life).  And six are also within the last ten years, suggesting that, despite guidelines for limiting the creation of orbital debris being around for a decade or more, they may not be very effective ...... Note also that there are only two accidental collisions in this list, which supports my argument that the risks posed by large objects that may have heritage value, if they are left in orbit,  are not as great as we might think.

Of course this is only the top ten, and a more thorough investigation of the figures may be illuminating.

Source:  http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/64242

Space Age Archaeology archived by the National Library

Terrified that some technical glitch will cause all of Space Age Archaeology to disappear as if it had never been? (I know I am).  Wondering how future generations will learn about space archaeology when blogs are as antiquated as cuneiform?  Well worry no more!

Space Age Archaeology has been placed on the PANDORA archive at the National Library of Australia.  This is what PANDORA is about:

PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, is a growing collection of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations.   The name, PANDORA, is an acronym that encapsulates our mission: Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia.

This is, I like to feel, something of an accolade.

Random thoughts: Matrioshka brains and analogies for outer space

Well, I've spent the last week in an intense frenzy of activity - finishing my paper for the Australian Space Development Conference, attending the conference and socialising perhaps just a little too much for the good health of my liver, and then falling back to Earth to prepare an Australian Archaeological Association submission about proposed mining in the Burra State Heritage Precinct ....  but let's not go there or I shall just get angry at the utter ineffectualness of those in South Australia who are supposed to be looking after our heritage.

So today, I'm catching up on four lost days of work and, and looking over the copious notes I wrote during the conference, about all sorts of things.

While researching for my paper, I was reflecting on the analogies we use to understand space (also inspired by Peterson 1997, see below), such as sea and sky, and how these might translate into heritage principles.  A talk by Mark Dankberg, CEO of ViaSat, on the first day of the conference, led me to ponder this further.  In my notes I have written "return to the idea of noosphere + the Matrioshka brain = new ways of conceiving space".

The noosphere was proposed by the intriguing and enigmatic Teilhard de Chardin, archaeologist and theologian, and as I recall it from a meagre high school study, it was about evolutionary development from the lithosphere to the biosphere to the noosphere, as the conscious thought characterising humanity grew with the population.  The noosphere extends into space, where our thought also now extends with cultural and technological developments.

The Matrioshka brain is a set of nested Dyson spheres, which form a nano-engineered computer around a star, only attainable by a level of technological development far beyond ours.  So I see it as kind of similar in some ways - it is a sort of hardware equivalent of the noosphere.  (I suspect how I visualise this owes something to the writings of Charles Stross).  Of course this is simplifying the idea radically, but I think the conjunction of the two in my own brain is worth further contemplation in terms of how I want to re-conceptualise space.

References:

Peterson, M.J.  1997  The use of analogies in developing outer space law.  International Organization 51(2):245-274

Orbital cemeteries, state jurisdictions and debris

I'm hard at work on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning, trying to complete my paper for the 11th Australian Space Development Conference in Adelaide, which starts on Monday.  Oh the luxury of reading!  (And the pressures of time - aaarrrgh).

I came across this story (unfortunately unreferenced), which has little to do with my current topic but which I like a lot:

There is the anecdote of the proposal to launch an orbiting cemetery with ten thousand vials containing the ashes of deceased people with a guaranteed lifetime of a million years.  As the story goes, it met with refusal because Florida law requires that every cemetery has an access road and there are, evidently, no access roads to orbits. (Perek 1994:196)

This is in the context of not creating space missions which could equally be accomplished on Earth, thus diminishing the potential contribution to the orbital debris problem.

Perek, Lubos  1994  Management  of Outer Space.  Space Policy 10(3):189-198

Walking in microgravity: a fairytale version

I have been addicted to fairytales since a child, and still read them .... but normally don't expect to find anything relevant to space in them.  Hence I was very struck by this account of movement without gravity in George MacDonald's story The Light Princess, first published in 1864.  In the usual fashion, a magnificent christening is held for infant princess.  The king, however, neglects to invite his spiteful and magical sister, who deprives the little princess of her gravity.  This deprivation operates not only in the physical realm, for she can take nothing seriously and laughs at everything - although she never smiles.

Here is how MacDonald describes her "moonwalk":

I may here remark that it was very amusing to see her running, if her mode of progression could properly be called running. For first she would make a bound; then, having alighted, she would run a few steps, and make another bound.  Sometimes she would fancy she had reached the ground before she actually had, and her feet would go backwards and forwards, running upon nothing at all, like those of a chicken on its back.

I'm struck by this, I guess, because it is an attempt to describe the lack of gravity using only the imagination.  Not bad for 1864.

In fact the princess only feels her weight when immersed in water, and the lake where she loves to swim is instrumental in allowing a prince to release her from her affliction.

In Alison Lurie (ed) 1994  The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales.  Oxford University Press, Oxford

A stellar event: celebrating the AIAA registration of the ACT tracking stations

Last week I attended the ceremony at Tidbinbilla to celebrate the inscription of the three ACT tracking stations, Tidbinbilla, Orroral Valley and Honeysuckle Creek, on the AIAA Historic Aerospace Sites register.  Caught up with the darling Gordon Pike (SingTel Optus), with whom I discussed the relative advantages of spin stabilisation and three-axis stabilisation.  He also told me about Optus' tracking station at Frenchs Forest in Sydney (aha!).  I had some fascinating chats with former tracking station staff - of that more soon.  Orbital debris guru Duncan Steel (QinetiQ) was there, as well as Ian Tuohy of BAE Systems, taking a brief respite from gearing up for Hayabusa's return.  Michael West, chair of the AIAA Sydney Section, gave me a lift there and back (Tidbinbilla is about half an hour out of Canberra).  A truly wonderful occasion.

Zombiesat joins the ranks of space junk

Zombiesat! What's Next for the Out-of-Control Galaxy 15 Satellite

By Clara Moskowitz
SPACE.com Senior Writer
posted: 04 May 2010

The Galaxy 15 commercial satellite that recently lost contact with the ground has joined the ranks of a boatload of other debris adrift in space. It's now termed a "zombiesat" by engineers who have a better sense of humor than you might have imagined. So what's next for this 4,171-pound (1,892-kg) zombiesat?

This defunct satellite will probably drift to one of two "gravity wells" that catch most out-of-control spacecraft, experts say. Galaxy 15 could threaten nearby satellites because its communications package is stuck on and it may start interfering with its neighbors by siphoning off their signals. It's the first time such an event has ever occurred, and it sent Orbital Sciences, the satellite's builder, on a dash to figure out how to stop the satellite-run-amok.

Galaxy 15, like many communications satellites, was circling Earth about 22,369 miles (36,000 km) high in what's called geosynchronous orbit, meaning that it orbited at the same speed the Earth rotates, so that it sat perched above the same part of Earth all the time. "There are two points in geosynchronous orbit called geopotential wells," explained Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for Orbital Debris at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "These are perturbations in Earth's gravity field. Typically when satellites lose control they will drift toward the nearest geopotential well and just oscillate around it." The two spots, also called libration points, are located at longitudes of 105 degrees west and 75 degrees east. There are already between 150 and 200 objects oscillating around these points, Johnson said.

Still a large place

In that sense, the new zombiesat doesn't significantly increase the space debris problem or pose a serious risk of colliding with an operational satellite.

"Space is still a very large place," Johnson told SPACE.com. "There are a lot of objects that are drifting back and forth. Galaxy 15 really just kind of joins a relatively large number of objects – it's not a significant new hazard from a global standpoint. But if your satellite happens to be near where Galaxy 15 is drifting then it's of more concern."  Eventually, everything in low-Earth orbit will eventually fall back down toward Earth because of atmospheric drag. The small amount of atmospheric particles in space create friction with spacecraft, causing their orbits to decay. The time it takes for an object's orbit to decay depends on its altitude.

For example, the International Space Station orbits at about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, while the Hubble Space Telescope circles much higher, at 353 miles (569 km).  "When things fall off the International Space Station, they typically fall back within a couple months, but where Hubble is, it typically takes several years to fall back to Earth," Johnson said. "At 800 km you're talking many decades or even hundreds of years."

To prevent the buildup of dead spacecraft in heavily trafficked areas of geosynchronous orbit, guidelines recommend that when a satellite reaches the end of its life it is boosted to a higher orbit out of the way. This "graveyard orbit" is about 186 miles (300 km) above where most satellites orbit. "The whole idea is to get to an altitude so they don't drift back into the operational region for a very, very long time – over 100 years," Johnson said.

It's actually easier to boost a spacecraft up just this much higher than to maneuver a craft down to where it would immediately fall back to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere, he said.

Getting rid of space junk

To actually go and collect defunct spacecraft to remove the collision risk altogether is currently beyond our ability.  "Unfortunately we haven't found a concept which appears to be both technically feasible and affordable," Johnson said. The best way to remove spent rocket stages and other large objects from orbit is to simply send up another spacecraft to rendezvous and dock with it and drag it back down to earth. This method would be extremely expensive and time-consuming, and isn't viable for the vast number of objects already in space. Some more exotic measures involving tethers and other props have been proposed, Johnson said, but aren't yet feasible.

For getting rid of very small pieces of space junk, there are two favorite ideas, he said. One involves shooting lasers at the objects to push them into lower-altitude orbits so they fall back down to Earth more quickly. "That has technical, economic, as well as policy issues," Johnson said. Another concept is to fly up a structure with a large area but low mass so that when particles strike the surface they will penetrate and lose some of their orbital energy, causing them to fall back to Earth more quickly. This option would also need many technical issues ironed out. "If it was easy we'd already be doing it," Johnson said of tackling the debris problem. "But it's prudent to be working the issue now before it becomes a serious impediment to space operations."

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/zombiesat-out-of-control-satellite-100504.html

Orroral Valley designated a global AIAA Historic Aerospace Site

The Sydney Section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is proud to announce that the Tidbinbilla, Honeysuckle Creek and Orroral Valley Space Tracking Stations have been designated as global AIAA Historic Aerospace Sites. This is a prestigious award which recognises the significant role these three Australian tracking stations have played throughout the space-faring era, particularly in support of NASA's manned space missions. It is a fitting tribute that these sites should be recognised in this way in 2010, the 50th anniversary of treaty-level cooperation between the Australian Government and NASA.

The AIAA established the Historic Aerospace Sites Program in 2000 to promote the preservation of, and the dissemination of information about, significant accomplishments made in the aerospace profession. Other sites recognised by the AIAA History Technical Committee include NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA; the Boeing Red Barn, Seattle, Wash.; Kitty Hawk, N.C.; the site of the first balloon launch in Annonay, France; the Royal Aircraft Research Establishment at Farnborough, England; and Tranquility Base on the moon. Currently Woomera is the only other AIAA Historic Aerospace Site in Australia.

Laser 'tractor beams' to tidy up space junk

New Scientist
29 April 2010 by Paul Marks

WITH Earth's orbit cluttered with dead satellites, discarded rocket boosters and other space junk, ways to prevent the accumulation of such debris are desperately needed.

How about using a tractor beam to simply steer future junk aside, says space-flight engineer John Sinko of Nagoya University, Japan. Sinko's idea is based on an experimental type of spacecraft engine called a laser thruster. Inside these motors, laser pulses fired into a mass of solid propellant cause a jet of material to be released, pushing the craft in the opposite direction. Sinko realised that the laser did not necessarily have to be on the same craft. "These on-board motors could also be targeted remotely by lasers for tractor beaming," he says. A spacecraft could fire a low-power laser beam at another craft to steer it from a distance

He has designed a series of laser thrusters that can be activated in this way. A spacecraft fitted with a laser would fire a low-power beam at a thruster fitted on another craft to attract, repel or steer it in another direction. Pushing a spacecraft away is a relatively simple matter, but more complex designs using mirrors are needed to use a beam to tug one towards the laser (see diagram).

Combining those designs could allow full control in any direction, says Sinko. He imagines spacecraft being fitted with remotely operated thrusters before launch, so that once they reach the end of their lives it is simple to alter their orbit or even shove them into the atmosphere to burn up - even if they have lost all power (Journal of Propulsion and Power, DOI: 10.2514/1.46037).

Tractor beams could be fired from up to 100 kilometres away, says Sinko, either from a spacecraft in orbit or a mirror in space redirecting a beam from Earth. "It's an interesting idea that could work in principle," says Richard Holdaway, director of space science technology at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, UK. Keeping a laser beam accurately trained on a distant motor would be a challenge, he adds, "but perhaps not an insurmountable one".

Sinko hopes to test one of his tractor beams on a 10-kilogram satellite within a few years. He is not alone in trying to develop such technology: a team at the Research Institute for Complex Testing of Optoelectronic Devices and Systems in Sosnovy Bor, Russia, is working on similar ideas.

"Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage" nominated for award

The Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage, edited by Ann Garrison Darrin and Beth Laura O'Leary, has been nominated for an Emme award.

The annual Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, named for NASA’s first Historian, recognizes an outstanding book that advances public understanding of astronautics.  It rewards originality, scholarship and readability.

Congratulations to our wonderful editors!

Orroral Valley Tracking Station and its significance

Last night I gave a talk for the Canberra Archaeological Society about the Orroral Valley Tracking Station in the ACT.  I reported, with the assistance of my elegant geophysical friend Ian Moffat, on the results of the magnetometer survey we did in February.  There were several subsurface anomalies that were not correlated with any visible surface features.  An old Orroral staff member present at the talk was able to tell me that one of them was where the remains of the Baker-Nunn camera infrastructure were buried. 

I talked a lot about horn antennas, which I am finding increasingly fascinating.  Up until now, I have created a few boundaries to define my research interests - a necessity, so that one doesn't get distracted from the main game.  Pretty much, I have decided that I start at 1936 (Peenemunde) and only do space - so not sites associated with pure astronomy.  Of course it's not as simple as that, I'm well aware that there is much overlap between space sciences and astronomy, but it's worked pretty well until now.

But with tracking stations, I'm now looking at things which are antenna, telescopes, and aerials all at the same time.  Many paraboloid antennas were recycled/reused in radio astronomy (so really it's a nature/culture divide, isn't it - it's an antenna when listening to human signals, a telescope when listening to non-human signals).  The design is starting to interest me more, and the co-development of radio astronomy and spacecraft tracking.

So I may have to rethink my research parameters.

CubeSail - active orbital debris removal moves closer to reality

UK researchers have developed a device to drag space junk out of orbit.
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News  
26th March 2010
 

They plan to launch a demonstration of their "CubeSail" next year. It is a small satellite cube that deploys a thin, 25-sq-m plastic sheet.  Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft's low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull the object out of the sky much faster than is normal. 

The Surrey Space Centre team says the concept could be fitted to larger satellites and even rocket stages.  The group also envisages that a mature system would even be sent to rendezvous and dock with redundant spacecraft to clean them from orbit. "Our system is simple and very low cost; but we need to demonstrate that it can be done," said Dr Vaios Lappas, lead researcher on the project and senior lecturer in space vehicle control. "It would help make space a sustainable business. We want to be able to keep on launching satellites to provide new services; but unless we do something, the amount of junk up there is going to grow exponentially." 

Simplicity of approach

It is thought more than 5,500 tonnes of junk now clutters the region of space just a few hundred km above our heads. Last year, two satellites even collided, showering their orbit with tiny fragments that now pose additional risk to operational spacecraft.

International agencies have agreed that retired hardware - old satellites or spent rocket stages - should be removed from space within 25 years of the end of service. Using large deployable surfaces to increase the drag on these objects so they fall to Earth rapidly is one possible solution to the space litter problem. CubeSail, unveiled on Friday, is a 3kg (6.6lb), 10cm x 10cm x 30cm (4in x 4in x 12in) nanosatellite. It incorporates within its tiny frame a polymer sheet that is folded for launch to be unfurled once in space. The simple deployment mechanism features four metal strips that are wound under tension and will snap into a straight line when let go, pulling the sheet flat in the process. 

The team hopes to launch its demonstrator at the end of next year, riding piggy-back on another mission or as part of a cluster of small research satellites that are sometimes lofted en mass atop a single rocket. 

Force of sunlight

The nanosat will then circle the Earth, going from pole to pole at an altitude of about 700km (435 miles), testing its systems and assessing the drag principle. If successful, CubeSail could become a regular add-on system to satellites and rocket stages, opening up a new space business akin to the daily refuse services here on Earth. 

"We would be looking to put it on our own satellites and to put it on other people's spacecraft as well," said Sir Martin Sweeting, the chairman of SSTL, the world-leading small-satellite manufacturer, which is supporting the research.  "We want this to be a standard, essential bolt-on item for a spacecraft; and that's why it's very important to make it small, because if it's too big it will interfere with the rest of the spacecraft," he told BBC News.

The researchers hope to develop the project as a propulsion system as well. The pressure of sunlight falling on such a large structure would also move it. The force is tiny but continuous. This "solar sailing" technique has long been touted as a means of moving spacecraft around the Solar System, or even just helping conventional satellites to maintain their orbits more efficiently. Indeed, some of the large geostationary satellites, for example, already use solar-sail flaps to maintain their attitude without firing their thrusters. This saves valuable chemical propellant and extends mission lifetime. 

Delicate control

CubeSail will endeavour to demonstrate this "propellantless propulsion" by trying to shift the path it takes across the surface of the Earth by just a few degrees over the course of a year. To do this though, the nanosatellite will have to carefully control the angle of the sail with respect to the Sun, just as an ocean vessel has to play with its sails to catch the wind.

"We're going to control our sail with a very novel geometric technique; we're not going to use any thrusters," explained Dr Lappas. "We have developed a tilting mechanism that uses very tiny motors. It's able to move in two directions. This enables you to change the centre of mass of the sail. We're also going to be using small magnets to control the sail because they will interact with the Earth's magnetic field."  Once its mission is complete, CubeSail will be instructed to take itself out of orbit.

The project is a private venture within the Surrey Space Centre, which is based at the University of Surrey, Guildford.  CubeSail has been funded by Europe's largest space company, EADS Astrium, which is one of the world's biggest manufacturers of satellites. It also produces Europe's heavy-lift rocket, the Ariane 5, which launches about half of the world's commercial satellite platforms. The entire cost of the project is expected to be no more than £1m ($1.5m). 

Other groups around the world are expected to launch solar sail demonstrators soon. The US space agency has been working on a project with The Planetary Society, a long-time proponent of the technology. The Japanese, too, have work in progress. And even Astrium is sponsoring other space junk mitigation strategies within its own division. 

Orroral Valley Tracking Station, and Australia's new space initiatives.

Watch this empty space  

Cheryl Jones, The Australian Higher Education Supplement, March 31 2010

NASA's Honeysuckle Creek tracking station near Canberra received the world's first images of the Apollo 11 moonwalk in 1969, but staff at nearby Orroral Valley tracking station enjoyed a private viewing of the event. They swung their 26m dish antenna on to the moon and got their own pictures, according to a former staff member.

"We weren't actually tracking anything, so we had a look at it," Philip Clark tells the HES. He was an electronics and radio communications technician at Orroral, 50km south of Canberra in Namadgi national park, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps outside the lunar module.
"It was for our interest only," says Clark, who was later promoted to senior operations supervisor of the facility, established by NASA in 1965 to track near-Earth-orbit scientific satellites. Clark was one of a small group of Australians in the space race at the height of the Cold War. Australia was a space power in the 1960s, at the forefront of satellite and rocket technology, and the site of ground stations to track and communicate with spacecraft exploring our solar system.  But Australia's foray into the final frontier is now so long ago that it is the stuff of archeology. A research team led by Flinders University archeologist Alice Gorman will soon start digging the Orroral site.

Australia remains a world leader in astronomy. But that discipline is not normally classified within the fields of space science and engineering, which encompass satellite technology and space exploration. Experts warn that Australia's decline in these areas is costing us dearly and putting our national security at risk.  Now the space industry is being relaunched by the federal government. The big question is whether it will stay in orbit.

When Australia launched WRESAT-1 from the Woomera rocket range in South Australia in 1967, it was only the fourth nation to launch a satellite and the third to launch one from its own soil. But a British satellite launched just four years later aboard a Black Arrow R3 rocket was the last satellite to blast off from the desert site.

Australia owns no satellites. Optus has several communications satellites but they are owned by Singapore Telecommunications. The global market for commercial satellite-based products and services is estimated at more than $100 billion a year, according to the report of a Senate inquiry into Australian space science and industry. Released in 2008, the report, titled Lost in Space, says the use of satellites for Earth observation is "the most important commercial aspect of space for Australia". Australia is a heavy user of satellites but has "very limited national capabilities" in the technology, Australian National University earth and planetary scientist Marc Norman tells the HES. "We use data from European, Japanese, American and Chinese satellites to do everything from predicting the weather through navigation, to carbon accounting, minerals exploration, stopping terrorists and preventing the spread of quarantine pests," Norman says.

He is a member of the steering committee of the Australian Academy of Sciences Decadal Plan for Australian Space Science. "We depend on our international partners to provide the data which, in some cases, is essential to our national security. That's not a very strong position in an uncertain world." Meanwhile, although Woomera is still used for rocket testing, it has fizzled out since the days when it was central to British and US programs.

Australia still plays a key role in the support of space exploration, however. NASA recently announced plans to install two new dish antennas at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla. The facility is part of NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates with space probes. But Australia once hosted several NASA satellite tracking stations, including Orroral, Clark says. Now only two facilities remain, in Alice Springs and Dongara, Western Australia.

Much of Australia's early involvement in space was driven by its geography, with foreign powers needing to site facilities here. Australia's sparse population also made it an attractive site for ground segment operations, Gorman tells the HES. Strategic factors also played a part, she adds, with Australia expecting access to defence technology through joint operations with Britain and, later, the US, she adds. 

When those countries wound back some activities, successive governments did not fill the gap with a strong, independent space program. The Rudd government has introduced programs to build national space capability. Last month it announced about $12 million in grants in the first of four funding rounds of its four-year, $40m Australian Space Research Program. Among projects funded was research led by the University of Queensland that could deliver an air-breathing, hypersonic combustion scramjet engine for use in a satellite launching system.

The Australian Academy of Science estimates it would take an investment in research of $100m for 10 years to rebuild capacity in the civil space sector. The government is on track to meet that target as long as it maintains its present level of funding. Innovation,Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr tells the HES the government will consider future funding levels after evaluating the latest initiatives. He points out the government has also invested $8.6m across four years in a new space policy unit within his department to co-ordinate space activities. "It [space] is not an abstract sideline for people interested in weird and wonderful things," he says. "It's about making sure that this country stays at the cutting edge of technological development."

After drifting without a space program under the Howard government, the scientific community has welcomed the initiatives. But Norman says the investment is low by international standards and the government will have to keep up the momentum. Much rides on private-sector participation, he says.
Australia tried to get back into space in 2002 with the launch of FedSat, a 50kg research satellite designed by the Co-operative Research Centre for Satellite Systems. The $25m project delivered good scientific results and briefly built capacity in space technology. But the CRC closed in 2005. It failed to meet expectations, perhaps unrealistic, that it would propel Australia into satellite design.

FedSat's signal failed in 2007. The microsatellite was carrying a CD with a recording of the Paul Kelly song From Little Things Big Things Grow, the battle cry of the champions of lost causes.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/watch-this-empty-space/story-e6frgcjx-1225847659700

Heritage listing Australia's historic satellites

With the State of California recently listing the objects at Tranquility Base as a historic site (for a recent story on this see here), I have been thinking again about the intersection of national and world heritage, and the legal issues around interpreting the extension of national jurisdictions into space as equivalent to making territorial claims.

Australia has the potential for an interesting twist here.  Only heritage places on national territory of some kind can be registered on the Commonwealth Heritage List, but there is the capacity to recognise sites of significance to Australia in foreign territories on the List of Overseas Places of Historic Significance to Australia.

The List of Overseas Places of Historic Significance to Australia recognises symbolically sites of outstanding historic significance to Australia located outside of the Australian jurisdiction.
It was established by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) on 1 January 2007. With this new list, Australia can recognise and celebrate those overseas places of greatest importance to the development of our nation in a way that is respectful of the rights and sovereignty of other nations. The list helps tell the story of the most significant parts of Australia's history that occurred outside our borders. 

OK, so the overseas bit isn't perhaps helpful here, but you could certainly argue that space was "over the sea" in terms of being above the sea, if one wanted to get all semantic.  The respectful of the rights and sovereignty of other nations bit is more helpful in terms of the Outer Space Treaty.

Currently there are three places on the Overseas List:  Anzac Cove (Turkey), the Kokoda Trail (Papua New Guinea), and Howard Florey's Laboratory (UK).

What if we wanted to list Australia's historic satellites in orbit?  There's really only two, Australis Oscar V and FedSat (still in orbit as far as I know).  The Overseas List is symbolic, so it does not imply a territorial claim.  You could argue that California's listing of Tranquility Base is just as symbolic, given that enforcing it may prove more than slightly tricky.  But there is a legal difference here that may be worth exploring.

Lunakhod 2 located on the moon - a new heritage site.

Canadian finds long-lost moon rover in new NASA images
By Margaret Munro, Canwest News ServiceMarch 16, 2010

The tracks were clearly visible on the moon's surface, leading lunar sleuth Phil Stooke straight to the long-lost Russian rover — and effectively solving a 37-year old mystery over the craft's location. "There is a black dot where the track stops and that's the rover itself," he said.

When NASA released on Monday images and data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), revealing the moon's surface in unprecedented detail, Stooke wasted no time finding the Lunokhod 2, one of the first remote-controlled rovers to beam back pictures of craters and moon rocks. "The tracks were visible at once," said Stooke, who set up a searchable database to sort through the new NASA images. "We can see where (the rover) measured the magnetic field, driving back and forth over the same route to improve the data.  "And we can also see where it drove into a small crater, and accidentally covered its heat radiator with soil as it struggled to get out again," he added. "That ultimately caused it to overheat and stop working. And the rover itself shows up as a dark spot right where it stopped."

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is on a one-year exploration mission from a perch about 50 kilometres above the moon. The plan is to produce a comprehensive map, search for resources and potential safe landing sites.  Stooke — a professor at the University of Western Ontario who has written extensively about lunar exploration — hopes it will also enable him to find other lunar relics.

Having bagged the Lunokhod 2, he's already moved on to searching the images for the Surveyor 5, which made a lunar landing in 1967, before NASA astronauts walked on the moon.  But locating the Russian Lunokhod 2 is quite a find, Stooke said, as the craft still holds the record for distance travelled on another celestial body. (It conked out after a 35-kilometre trek.)

The travels of Lunokhod 2 and its companion rover also marked "the first time anyone ever drove something by remote control on another world," said Stooke, author of The International Atlas of Lunar Exploration.  He plans to update the book, published in 2007, with the new images of the rovers that he speculates may one day need protection as "historic sites."  If space travel ever becomes routine, he chuckled that someone might need to draw a line around the early rovers and say: "You can't come any closer than this."

http://www.canada.com/technology/Canadian+finds+long+lost+moon+rover+NASA+images/2690499/story.html

Deep space antenna in California that relayed moon landing declaration to undergo major repair

ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer 12:02 p.m. CST, March 8, 2010

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The deep space antenna that relayed Neil Armstrong's famous "one giant leap for mankind" declaration from the moon to a rapt American audience will be offline for eight months for repair. Work begins this week to replace a steel donut-shaped bearing on the aging 230-foot-wide dish at the NASA Deep Space Network site at Goldstone Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

The labor-intensive process, which will involve jacking up 9 million pounds, will keep the antenna out of service until at least November.  "It's not trivial," said Pete Hames of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is in charge of maintaining the antennas at the Goldstone complex.

Besides California, tracking stations in Australia and Spain make up the Deep Space Network. Together, they point nonstop to the sky, sending commands to robotic spacecraft millions of miles away and listening for their often faint replies — communication streams filled with images, scientific findings and operational data.

During the repair, interplanetary communications will not be disrupted, said deputy project manager Wayne Sible. Missions that normally depend on Goldstone, such as the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Saturn explorer Cassini, various Mars spacecraft and even the Voyager 1 probe — which sailed to the edge of the solar system — will instead communicate through other giant, bowl-shaped antennas near Madrid, Spain, and Canberra, Australia.

Engineers chose to do the repair this year — at an estimated cost of $1.25 million — so that the Goldstone antenna would be ready next year to support the launchings of the Juno spacecraft to Jupiter and the long-delayed Mars Science Laboratory to the red planet. It's the first major work done on the antenna since the 1980s when it was enlarged to its current size. Engineers said the bearing, which helps it turn sideways, has worn out after more than four decades.

The Goldstone antenna is steeped in history. During the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, it captured Armstrong's words and sent them on to American televisions while the image came through another antenna. Its other accomplishments include receiving the first close-up views of the outer planets and their moons.

NASA last month broke ground in Australia on a new generation of smaller but advanced antennas that would eventually replace the workhorse fleet of 230-foot-diameter dishes around the world.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-us-sci-deep-space-antenna,0,1618143.story

The need to "sweep space clean"

Need to eliminate space debris highlighted

First Published : 10 Mar 2010 07:04:33 AM IST

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Space debris can threaten long-term sustainability of space programmes, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) director Dr B.N. Suresh said on Tuesday, stressing the need to sweep space clean. 

Inaugurating the 28th conference of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Co-ordination Committee (IADC) at the Technopark here, Dr Suresh said that there has been a 13 per cent increase in debris in 2009. ``Satellites have become an integral part of human society. But unfortunately orbital debris pose a serious threat,’’ he said. Space agencies of Italy, UK, US, Japan, Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany and the European Space Agency have sent representatives to the four-day conference which will deliberate on future courses of action. Around 100 delegates are participating. 

Dr V.Adimurthy, IADC acting chairman and ISRO representative, said that ISRO was committed to reducing the threat of space debris. ``It’s a continuous process. We had recently released a manual on protecting man-made assets in space.,’’ he said. ISRO was also looking at developing radar and optical systems for tracking space debris, he said. 

Figures furnished by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday show that traceable man-made objects in space numbered 36,131 in 2009, but they could go up to 1,27,884 by 2040, projections showed. The IADC is a platform for space agencies to share information and devise strategies to mitigate the threat posed by space debris. Today, all major space agencies are actively involved in its activities. VSSC director P.S.Veeraraghavan was also present. A 12-member Chinese delegation was to have attended the conference, but they were not present on the inaugural day.

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Need+to+eliminate+space+debris+highlighted&artid=P89KH|8LMIo=&SectionID=lMx/b5mt1kU=&MainSectionID=lMx/b5mt1kU=&SEO=&SectionName=tm2kh5uDhixGlQvAG42A/07OVZOOEmts