Sept. 20, 2006 — Ever since humans have flexed the bonds of gravity to travel in space, they have been accompanied by a plethora of unidentified flying objects of a most mysterious, but decidedly terrestrial, origin.

— Ever since humans have flexed the bonds of gravity to travel in space, they have been accompanied by a plethora of unidentified flying objects of a most mysterious, but decidedly terrestrial, origin.John Glenn, the first American in orbit, was fascinated by small twinkling objects he likened to fireflies. They turned out to be a cloud of ice particles from his spacecraft’s cooling system.

Still, the five objects captured in video and photographs from cameras aboard space shuttle Atlantis this week raised new alarms for NASA, still smarting from the 2003 loss of shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew.

The agency learned the hard way that debris, no matter how lightweight and seemingly benign, can have deadly consequences in the high-energy, supersonic realms of spaceflight.

“It’s not uncommon to see little bits and pieces of things floating out,” said Atlantis’ lead flight director Paul Dye. “It’s amazing how something in bright sunlight can look much bigger than it really is.”

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Japan’s space agency has set a goal of constructing a crewed lunar base by 2030, an official said on Wednesday.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) revealed its ambition to an international conference in Tokyo this week but has not yet been allotted the budget for the ambitious project.

JAXA hopes to launch a satellite into lunar orbit in 2007, followed by uncrewed spacecraft that will land on the Moon and collect lunar rock samples.

Under the plan, astronauts will be sent to the Moon around 2020 to start construction of the base that will be completed by 2030, the agency said. Japan had earlier given 2025 as the target date for a lunar base.

“The feasibility of the plan is unclear at this point as we need to gain understanding by the government and the Japanese people on our plan, but technologically it would be possible in a few decades,” said Satoki Kurokawa, spokesman for JAXA.

“Exploring a frontier is always a mission of science. In addition, space programmes have the potential to create cutting-edge technologies, particularly in the field of robotics,” he said.

Japan has launched a series of satellites successfully since its space programme suffered several embarrassing setbacks in 2003 with the loss of a Mars probe, an Earth observation satellite and the forced destruction of a rocket carrying a pair of spy satellites just 10 minutes after lift-off.

India Daily Technology Team
Apr. 12, 2006  

‘A former employee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reveals how NASA covers up and erases UFOs from satelite photos. But first a little bit about this former employee: Donna Tietze Hare. Formerly of NASA, female slide technician, the recipient of numerous space awards including 1969 Apollo Achievement award from the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, 1973 Skylab award, a medallion for success on the Skylab-Suez Test project, numerous other awards for her skill as a technical Artist, honors, awards and a 1994 reccomdation by Texas Governor Ann Richards to the Advisory Committee of Psychology Associates.

‘Donna Tietze has spent most of her professional life involved in the Space Program as a technical illustrator. She drew lunar maps, landing slides, she worked in the photo lab, Precision Slide Lab, reducing art work to one inch by one inch drawings. She drew launch sites, landing sites and was employed as a sub-contractor to NASA for over 15 years. She worked on flight manuals for astronauts & has the wonderful ability to put words into images but uniquely, learn to do everything backwards, including mathematical computations, the writing of words, to put it simply, this woman has seen just about all the different kinds of images one could see that are used in Space Programs.’ (Project Azure Door article).

by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (SPX) Mar 22, 2006
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured three moons at once as they hurtle around Saturn. In the background, Saturn’s night side covers the more distant portion of the rings, betraying the presence of the unseen gas-giant planet.At left and right respectively, are the two smaller moons Epimetheus at 116 kilometers (72 miles) across, and Pandora at 84 kilometers (52 miles) across. Larger Mimas at 397 kilometers (247 miles) in diameter lies below.

Cassini took the image in visible light with its narrow-angle camera on Feb. 16, at a distance of approximately 3.3 million kilometers (2.1 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel.

03.24.06 — The first test images of Mars from NASA’s newest spacecraft provide a tantalizing preview of what the orbiter will reveal when its main science mission begins next fall.NASA Image
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The Mars Climate Sounder, an instrument on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter designed to monitor daily changes in the global atmosphere of Mars, made its first observations of Mars on March 24, 2006.These tests were conducted to demonstrate that the instrument could, if needed, support the mission’s aerobraking maneuvers (dips into the atmosphere to change the shape of the orbit) by providing hemisphere-scale coverage of atmospheric activity. The instrument scanned nine arrays of detectors four times across the entire disc of the planet, including the north pole, from an altitude of about 45,000 kilometers (28,000 miles). This is about 150 times farther away than the spacecraft will be during its main science phase. At this great range, the planet appears only 40 pixels wide, as suggested by the pixilation of the images. However, this is sufficient to identify regional dust storms in the lower atmosphere. Regional dust storms could perturb atmospheric densities at the higher altitudes (about 100 kilometers or 60 miles) where the orbiter will conduct more than 500 aerobraking passes during the next six months. Such storms are rare in the current season on Mars, early northern spring, and no large storms are present as the orbiter prepares for the start of aerobraking.

Each of the Mars Climate Sounder’s arrays looks in a different wavelength band, and three of the resulting images are shown here. The view on the left is from data collected in a broad spectral band (wavelengths of 0.3 microns to 3 microns) for reflected sunlight. The view in the center is from data collected in the 12-micron thermal-infrared band. This band was chosen to sense infrared radiation from the surface when the atmosphere is clear and from dust clouds when it is not. The view on the right is from data collected at 15 microns, a longer-wavelength band still in the thermal-infrared part of the spectrum. At this wavelength, carbon dioxide, the main ingredient in Mars’ atmosphere, hides the surface emission, and the thermal-infrared radiation comes only from the atmosphere.

The visible-and-near-infrared image (left) is bright where surface ice and atmospheric hazes reflect sunlight back to space. The view is of the northern half of Mars, with the north polar cap visible as the bright semicircle at upper left. The night half of the planet (lower left) is dark. The “terminator” boundary between the day side and night side of the planet cuts from lower left to upper right, through the polar area. During the science phase of the mission, after the spacecraft has shrunk its orbit to a nearly circular loop approximately 300 kilometers (186 miles) above the surface, these visible-and-near-infrared readings by the Mars Climate Sounder will track how the amount of solar energy reflected from Mars varies from place-to-place and season-to-season, particularly in the polar regions where absorbed sunlight vaporizes the seasonal carbon-dioxide ice.

The 12-micron image (center) indicates that heat is being emitted from both the day side and the night side of the planet. The polar cap is dark in this image because it is cold (minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit) and emits less heat than surrounding areas. During the science phase of the mission, the thermal-infrared readings at this wavelength by Mars Climate Sounder will be used to track dust and clouds in the atmosphere. In the current season on Mars, the atmosphere is relatively clear except for an equatorial belt of thin water-ice clouds present in the visible-and-near-infrared image, and so the 12-micron image is dominated by the infrared radiation from the surface on the relatively hot dayside (upper right).

The 15-micron image (right) indicates the temperatures of the atmosphere at an altitude of about 25 kilometers (15 miles), where there is not much temperature difference even between the night side and the day side of the planet. The polar atmosphere is colder, so it appears darker.

Once deployed in a low-altitude, nearly circular orbit next fall, the Mars Climate Sounder will systematically alternate views of the surface with views of the atmosphere above the limb (horizon) of the planet from the surface to an altitude of 80 kilometers (50 miles), with a vertical resolution of 5 kilometers (3 miles). In this way it will monitor atmospheric and surface changes through a full annual cycle to characterize the present climate of Mars.

The Mars Climate Sounder was provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., which also manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech