Fw: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine
- Original Message - From: Astrobiology Magazine To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 5:33 AM Subject: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine Plunge to Methane Lake?http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1385.htmlAnthony Del Genio of the Cassini Imaging team takes a tour of the strange and perplexing world, Titan, where hurricane winds and supercold smog promise some of the most startling imagery in our solar system. The mission to descend towards Titan's surface will draw global attention in a few days, when a tiny space probe will test the limits of parachutes, cameras and communications.Landing on Liquid?http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1384.htmlAfter flying 2 billion miles, a probe to Saturn's moon will attempt what has never been tried before. The Huygens' probe will plunge into Titan and its mysterious atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. Whether it will crash or splash has become of extreme scientific interest to those watching the controlled collision.Hubble Spies New Worldhttp://www.astrobio.net/news/article1383.htmlIn the southern constellation Hydra, about 225 light-years away orbits what may be a planet and its parent brown dwarf star. Because an extrasolar planet has never been directly imaged before, this remarkable observation required Hubble's unique abilities to do follow-up observations to test and validate if it is indeed a planet. More than Monkey See, Monkey Do?http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1382.htmlLanguage has long been considered one of the defining characteristics for humans, but recent work with Tamarin monkeys and rats suggest that picking up speech cues has a rhythmic quality throughout the mammalian world.Wednesday, January 12 For more astrobiology news, visit http://www.astrobio.netTo unsubscribe, send subject UNSUBSCRIBE to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fw: Deep Impact Launched and Flying Toward Date With a Comet
- Original Message - From: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 8:06 PM Subject: Deep Impact Launched and Flying Toward Date With a Comet DC Agle (818) 393-9011 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Dolores Beasley (202) 358-1753 NASA Headquarters, Washington George H. Diller (321) 867-2468Kennedy Space Center, Fla. News Release: 2005-015 January 12, 2005 Deep Impact Launched and Flying Toward Date With a CometNASA's Deep Impact spacecraft began its 431 million kilometer (268 million mile) journey to comet Tempel 1 today at 1:47:08 p.m. EST.Data received from the spacecraft indicate it has deployed and locked its solar panels, is receiving power and achieved proper orientation in space. Data also indicate the spacecraft has placed itself in a safe mode and is awaiting further commands from Earth.Deep Impact mission managers are examining data returns from the mission. Further updates on the mission will be postedtohttp://www.nasa.gov/deepimpactandhttp://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/ . Deep Impact is comprised of two parts, a "fly-by" spacecraft and a smaller "impactor." The impactor will be released into the comet's path for a planned collision on July 4. The crater produced by the impactor is expected to be up to the size of a football stadium and two to 14 stories deep. Ice and dust debris will be ejected from the crater, revealing the material beneath. The fly-by spacecraft will observe the effects of the collision. NASA's Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, and other telescopes on Earth, will also observe the collision. Comets are time capsules that hold clues about the formation and evolution of the Solar System. They are composed of ice, gas and dust, primitive debris from the Solar System's distant and coldest regions that formed 4.5 billion years ago.The management of the Deep Impact launch was the responsibility of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Deep Impact was launched from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Delta II launch service was provided by Boeing Expendable Launch Systems, Huntington Beach, Calif. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colo. Deep Impact project management is by JPL.For more information about the mission on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact or http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/ . For information about NASA and other agency programs, visithttp://www.nasa.gov . -end-
JIMO in trouble
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 17:56:03 -0500 (GMT-05:00)From: DwayneDay [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [FPSPACE] Following the [NASA] Money/JIMO in troubleTo: fpspace [EMAIL PROTECTED]Message-ID:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-asciiI know that following budgets is about as exciting as watching cows sleep, but there's a Space News article now online that raises some interesting questions about the NASA 2005 budget (the one currently in place):http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_050110.htmlKeep in mind that NASA will soon--by early February--submit its 2006 budget, that could conceivably make all of this stuff moot.(Space News is a great source for current space information, but it is subscription-only. This article was put on the Space.com website and so I will reprint the article below.)There are a few odd things in the article that I don't understand. But first, I'll point up one of the more interesting things in it. The article indicates that the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission has been renamed Prometheus 1. More interestingly, the article implies that the mission may be canceled and is currently undergoing review to see if it can be scaled back. As far as I know, this is the first media mention that JIMO might be canceled due to cost.Now this is not that surprising once you start to think about JIMO and its implications. First of all, it is a VERY expensive mission. I did some back of the envelope calculations once (and lost the envelope) and I think that when you factor in everything, including tech development and the cost of a heavy lift vehicle, JIM starts to push close to double-digit gigabucks, i.e. up to ten BILLION dollars or even more. Second, although I have forgotten all the details, I believe that the actual cost of the mission (as opposed to the Prometheus technology development program) was never in NASA's out-year budget plan. Put a different way, NASA was planning the mission, but had not added its costs to its existing budget.The thing that puzzles me in the article is NASA's decision to add $52 million to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) project. Now what is happening here is not that complex, but requires some explanation. First, NASA can only spend money that Congress appropriates and it has to spend that money on what Congress appropriates it for. There are limits to how much a federal agency can shift around money between accounts before it has to go and get permission from Congress (the reasons are to prevent the President from doing things in the budget that Congress said he cannot do. Congress passed the Anti-Deficiency Act to keep control of this stuff).In this case, Congress specifically CUT the LRO budget to only $10 million. In normal circumstances, that means that NASA can only spend $10 million on LRO in the Fiscal 2005 budget (they can come back in future years and ask for more money). However, this time Congress also gave NASA a waiver to allow the agency to shift money around to different accounts. It was my understanding that they did this because they understood that NASA would have to move money to the space shuttle return to flight effort. I seriously doubt that they intended for NASA to put money into programs that they cut. Why even have a budget in the first place if the limits do not mean anything?But NASA wants to keep the LRO program on track for a 2008 launch and so it is putting money back into a project that Congress cut. The Space News article seems to indicate that NASA will have to obtain congressional approval for this, meaning that Congress ultimately gets the final say. But it makes me wonder what is going on. NASA officials must suspect that they can get the money for LRO reinstated. Otherwise, if they are simply thumbing their nose at Congress, then Congress will impose tighter controls on the new Fiscal 2006 budget that is going up in February.Now that I've put you all to sleep, I'll add a little more space context... Apparently there were a number of people in Congress who were unhappy with NASA's approach to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, viewing it as too expensive and too conventional at a time when the agency needed new approaches. I don't know if this is the reason why LRO got its budget chopped, but it seems reasonable. So maybe NASA has been doing a lot of salesmanship on LRO lately.***NASA Uses Budgetary Authority To Shift Funds Toward Exploration VisionBy Brian BergerSpace News Staff WriterNASA intends to forge ahead with its space exploration agenda despite direction from Congress to throttle back on a key part of it to make refurbishing the Hubble Space Telescope a top priority.While Congress gave NASA nearly its entire $16.2 billion budget request for 2005, it cut most of the money the U.S. space agency had sought for the 2008 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission - a major early milestone in NASA's future
The Sounds of Titan
Imagine listening to a violent storm - the whoosh of the wind, the crack of thunder. Now imagine listening to one a billion miles away in the dense atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan! The Earth's public may soon have the chance to hear the winds of an alien world when The Planetary Society teams up with the European Space Agency and the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument team to release the sounds recorded by the Huygens probe during its descent through Titan's atmosphere on January 14, 2005. http://planetary.org/news/2005/sounds_of_titan_0111.html
Re: JIMO in trouble
"JIMO in trouble" - that's news? JIMO has always been in trouble. JIMO hinges on technology that may never be fully developed and deployed for any mission - Prometheus. It offers no immediate "public scenic resources", unlike Hubble and Mars, since the Galilean Moons have a far lower profile with the public, and getting a fresh batch of images will be decades away. It's staggeringly ambitious compared to any interplanetary probe mission in the past. I think major missions with a focus on figuring out Europa may require a 99%-certain verdict about life on Mars, whether in the positive or in the negative. "No life on Mars" means turning the focus elsewhere - and there's Europa, next in line. Mars biology confirmed will also probably be Mars biology that excites the public for only so long - microbial forms, and no fossils except for fossil microbes. Again, the focus will turn to more likely prospects. Europa again. Either conclusion could be a pretty long way off, though. I think the kind of mission to aim for in the interim, in hopes of either breaking or bypassing this perceptual logjam with the public, is some kind of orbiter that gets VERY close to the surface of Europa. And I think that's possible because Europa's atmosphere is so vestigial. I once ran across a paper that estimated that most of that atmosphere is oxygen disassociated from H20 by Jupiter radiation and cosmic rays, and that the oxygen atoms/molecules average three collisions with other atoms/molecules before escaping Europa permanently. That's so thin as to call into question the definition of "atmosphere". A probe might be able to orbit Europaat an average altitude ofonly tens of miles from the surface, for years,and might be equipped to perform multiple "ice-chip" experiments. That kind of probe is more likely to be within the realm of existing technology - and getting a proposal within that realm greatly improves its chances of being funded. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: LARRY KLAES To: europa Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 10:22 AM Subject: JIMO in trouble Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 17:56:03 -0500 (GMT-05:00)From: DwayneDay [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [FPSPACE] Following the [NASA] Money/JIMO in troubleTo: fpspace [EMAIL PROTECTED]Message-ID:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-asciiI know that following budgets is about as exciting as watching cows sleep, but there's a Space News article now online that raises some interesting questions about the NASA 2005 budget (the one currently in place):http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_050110.htmlKeep in mind that NASA will soon--by early February--submit its 2006 budget, that could conceivably make all of this stuff moot.(Space News is a great source for current space information, but it is subscription-only. This article was put on the Space.com website and so I will reprint the article below.)There are a few odd things in the article that I don't understand. But first, I'll point up one of the more interesting things in it. The article indicates that the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission has been renamed Prometheus 1. More interestingly, the article implies that the mission may be canceled and is currently undergoing review to see if it can be scaled back. As far as I know, this is the first media mention that JIMO might be canceled due to cost.Now this is not that surprising once you start to think about JIMO and its implications. First of all, it is a VERY expensive mission. I did some back of the envelope calculations once (and lost the envelope) and I think that when you factor in everything, including tech development and the cost of a heavy lift vehicle, JIM starts to push close to double-digit gigabucks, i.e. up to ten BILLION dollars or even more. Second, although I have forgotten all the details, I believe that the actual cost of the mission (as opposed to the Prometheus technology development program) was never in NASA's out-year budget plan. Put a different way, NASA was planning the mission, but had not added its costs to its existing budget.The thing that puzzles me in the article is NASA's decision to add $52 million to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) project. Now what is happening here is not that complex, but requires some explanation. First, NASA can only spend money that Congress appropriates and it has to spend that money on what Congress appropriates it for. There are limits to how much a federal agency can shift around money between accounts before it has to go and get permission from Congress (the reasons are to prevent the President from doing things in the budget that Congress said he cannot do. Congress passed the Anti-Deficiency Act to keep control of this stuff).In this case, Congress specifically CUT the LRO budget to
Re: JIMO in trouble
Title: Re: JIMO in trouble And, I would add, without a lander or penetrator probe, the science is just more Galileo, maybe with some higher resolution imaging. I don' think that's worth the wait. Gary JIMO in trouble - that's news? JIMO has always been in trouble. JIMO hinges on technology that may never be fully developed and deployed for any mission - Prometheus. It offers no immediate public scenic resources, unlike Hubble and Mars, since the Galilean Moons have a far lower profile with the public, and getting a fresh batch of images will be decades away. It's staggeringly ambitious compared to any interplanetary probe mission in the past. I think major missions with a focus on figuring out Europa may require a 99%-certain verdict about life on Mars, whether in the positive or in the negative. No life on Mars means turning the focus elsewhere - and there's Europa, next in line. Mars biology confirmed will also probably be Mars biology that excites the public for only so long - microbial forms, and no fossils except for fossil microbes. Again, the focus will turn to more likely prospects. Europa again. Either conclusion could be a pretty long way off, though. I think the kind of mission to aim for in the interim, in hopes of either breaking or bypassing this perceptual logjam with the public, is some kind of orbiter that gets VERY close to the surface of Europa. And I think that's possible because Europa's atmosphere is so vestigial. I once ran across a paper that estimated that most of that atmosphere is oxygen disassociated from H20 by Jupiter radiation and cosmic rays, and that the oxygen atoms/molecules average three collisions with other atoms/molecules before escaping Europa permanently. That's so thin as to call into question the definition of atmosphere. A probe might be able to orbit Europaat an average altitude ofonly tens of miles from the surface, for years,and might be equipped to perform multiple ice-chip experiments. That kind of probe is more likely to be within the realm of existing technology - and getting a proposal within that realm greatly improves its chances of being funded. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: LARRY KLAES To: europa Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 10:22 AM Subject: JIMO in trouble Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 17:56:03 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: DwayneDay [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [FPSPACE] Following the [NASA] Money/JIMO in trouble To: fpspace [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I know that following budgets is about as exciting as watching cows sleep, but there's a Space News article now online that raises some interesting questions about the NASA 2005 budget (the one currently in place): http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_050110.html Keep in mind that NASA will soon--by early February--submit its 2006 budget, that could conceivably make all of this stuff moot. (Space News is a great source for current space information, but it is subscription-only. This article was put on the Space.com website and so I will reprint the article below.) There are a few odd things in the article that I don't understand. But first, I'll point up one of the more interesting things in it. The article indicates that the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission has been renamed Prometheus 1. More interestingly, the article implies that the mission may be canceled and is currently undergoing review to see if it can be scaled back. As far as I know, this is the first media mention that JIMO might be canceled due to cost. Now this is not that surprising once you start to think about JIMO and its implications. First of all, it is a VERY expensive mission. I did some back of the envelope calculations once (and lost the envelope) and I think that when you factor in everything, including tech development and the cost of a heavy lift vehicle, JIM starts to push close to double-digit gigabucks, i.e. up to ten BILLION dollars or even more. Second, although I have forgotten all the details, I believe that the actual cost of the mission (as opposed to the Prometheus technology development program) was never in NASA's out-year budget plan. Put a different way, NASA was planning the mission, but had not added its costs to its existing budget. The thing that puzzles me in the article is NASA's decision to add $52 million to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) project. Now what is happening here is not that complex, but requires some explanation. First, NASA can only spend money that Congress appropriates and it has to spend that money on what Congress appropriates it for. There are limits to how much a federal agency can shift around money between accounts before it has to go and get permission from Congress (the reasons are to prevent the President from doing things in the budget that Congress said he cannot do. Congress passed the Anti-Deficiency Act to keep control of this stuff). In
Re: JIMO in trouble
Title: Re: JIMO in trouble I agree with Gary, and it's one reason I suggested some "ice-chip repeater" gizmo, the better to take advantage of a close orbit. More, better and DIFFERENT images may help, but getting more direct Europan surface science out of it should be the more serious goal. Jeff Bell wrote recently that the significance of Prometheus for deep space planetary missions is less on the propulsion side and more in having a large power supply at the destination - very important when you're as far out as the orbit of Jupiter, suffering diminishing returns to scale for photovoltaics. Landing some fission-powered probe can't be done with ion engines, but there was once a pretty active program for an engine that simply used fission for heating up hydrogen as a propellant - NERVA - with an apparently successful ground test - Kiwi. On a low-gravity moon like Europa, something like that might actually work pretty well, and give you an enduring source of power once you're down on the surface. And once again, it's technology maturation - picking up where Kiwi left off - more than pure invention, which I believe JIMO would require quite a lot of. The bugs could be worked out with a moon that's right in the neighborhood, within the current Moon-Mars program. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Gary McMurtry To: europa@klx.com Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 1:49 PM Subject: Re: JIMO in trouble And, I would add, without a lander or penetrator probe, the science is just more Galileo, maybe with some higher resolution imaging. I don' think that's worth the wait. Gary
