Space exploration

Some people ask "why spend money on space when we have all these problems on the ground?" At the maximum spending level for the Apollo moon race in the 1960s, NASA was 2% of the US federal budget. NASA's current funding was reported in 2007 to be 0.6% of the budget.

Constellation program: Orion crew vehicle http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/orion/

The new Apollo-style spacecraft NASA and Lockheed are working on for the return to the Moon, among other things; 16-foot diameter, 2½ times the interior volume of an Apollo capsule, four seats, or six for station crew missions.

Mars Exploration Rover mission http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/

Solar-powered science rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004, and are still going, like the Energizer bunny, 44 months later (as of September 2007). They were only designed to work for 90 sols; one sol is the Martian "day" of 24 hours 40 minutes. Opportunity has traveled 4.7 miles. This mission has established that Mars had surface water early in its history.

International Space Station http://www.nasa.gov/station

There's a link here to an interactive guide to ISS sighting opportunities by city worldwide. You select your nearest listed city and see a generated list of your next chances to see the station, including exactly where to look. It's visible when it's still in sunlight in your post-sunset or pre-dawn sky. On 1 November 2006, after several years looking for a sighting opportunity with compatibile local weather, I finally saw the station. It was at 5:45 pm local, in the center of a city of 200,000 people, on a night with a thin high cirrus cloud deck, and the station still looked pretty bright. From a location with dark sky and good seeing it ought to be breathtaking.

Deep Impact http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/

This probe hit comet Tempel I with an impactor at 6 miles per second on 4 July 2005, while watching at appropriate close range with multiple sensors. We should learn a lot about comets, which are leftovers from the birth of the solar system.

Cassini/Huygens Saturn mission http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

Produced the famous pictures of the surface of Titan

exoplanets.org http://exoplanets.org/

Home page of the California and Carnegie Extrasolar Planet Search. As of May 2007 over 200 exoplanets have been found. There are so many now that "extrasolar planet" has gotten shortened to "exoplanet."

NASA/Boeing X-43A http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html

This unmanned scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) reached Mach 9.8 over the Pacific on 16 November 2004, three times as fast as a previous long-standing SR-71 record. With the new emphasis at NASA on the Moon and Mars there's no money right now for further work in this area, but at least X-43 proved once and for all that hypersonic scramjets for advanced shuttle designs are possible. See also the Wikipedia X-43 article.

New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper-Belt mission http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

Launched in early 2006, Pluto/Charon encounter 2015, Kuiper Belt 2020

Inductrack http://www.llnl.gov/str/Post.html

An improved, much cheaper system for maglev ("magnetically levitated") high-speed trains; also being investigated for use in electric catapults for the initial acceleration of launch vehicles, up the side of a mountain. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator http://space.com/businesstechnology/technology/051019_ipd.html
IPD http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2005/05-062.html
IPD http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/14oct_betterrocket.htm?list804693

Keep an eye out for news of this improved hydrogen-oxygen booster engine design, an Air Force program at NASA Marshall whose testing at NASA Stennis was interrupted by Hurricane Katrina. SSMEs burn a fraction of the fuel and LOX in turbopumps that feed the main nozzle. IPD is a full flow design that apparently can produce more thrust and run cooler for longer service life.

Astronomy Picture of the Day http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

If you like astronomy wallpaper on your PC, this site is for you.

NASA homepage http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1&flash=0

NASA Watch http://www.nasawatch.com/

"WARNING! This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something." See the links for info by program down the left side under Spaceref News Topics.

Space.com http://space.com/

News, articles, and lots of links, mostly about real space missions; some sci-fi links.

Space.com TV ad: "Houston, we have a Web site." Wonder how that made all the NASA Webmasters feel? On the other hand, a lot of them tend to deserve it. (Read Designing Web Usability and Alertbox, you guys.)

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VASIMR (VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Sep01/MSC23041.html

The higher a rocket's exhaust velocity, the more push it gets out of each pound of propellant, and the more efficient it is. The exhaust velocity of chemical rockets is limited by the energy available from the reaction that powers them, typically 4.5 km/sec. Various other systems to produce higher exhaust velocities have been studied, including nuclear thermal or NERVA, ion, and Hall-effect. VASIMR uses magnetic fields and radio waves, most likely powered by a nuclear reactor, to ionize and constrain hydrogen plasma and heat it to extremely high temperatures—ten million kelvins—producing exhaust velocities up to 300 km/sec. This means you can get from Earth to Mars in four months instead of a year, or six weeks with a high-power system. VASIMR has its critics, who should all be scrutinized to see if they are opponents of all human spaceflight, opponents of all nuclear technology, or just stakeholders in other programs. Even if it turns out VASIMR doesn't work, something like it is the tool needed to conquer the solar system.

Delta Clipper/DC-X http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/x-33/dc-xa.htm

DC-X was an unmanned demonstration vehicle that several times took off, hovered, maneuvered, and landed vertically, balancing on its rocket thrust, Flash Gordon style. Not selected for further development, but fascinating anyway. The flight-control computer was a stock F-16 component with tweaked software. ("It thinks it's an F-16 with a really strange mission profile.") See also the Wikipedia DC-X article.

Mars Pathfinder Mission http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mesur.html

Pathfinder lander and Sojourner rover landed in Chryse Planitia on 4 July 1997. Pictures taken by the lander were available to everyone on the Web before the end of that day. Pathfinder proved the airbag landing system used in the later MER Spirit/Opportunity mission.

Lunar Prospector http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunarprosp.html

The Lunar Prospector spacecraft seems to have confirmed the presence of fairly large deposits of water ice at both lunar poles. Lunar Prospector was launched January 6, 1998 and entered lunar orbit January 11th. Polar ball-of-string mapping orbit of 100 km altitude initially, reduced late in the mission for higher resolution. The spacecraft was deliberately crashed near the lunar south pole on July 31, 1999.

Clementine Project http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/clementine.html

In late 1996, a radar experiment on the DoD/NASA Clementine spacecraft found evidence implying the presence of water ice inside a crater near the south pole of the Moon.

Project Galileo (JPL) http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/

Jupiter mission: atmospheric entry parachute probe, and long-term orbiter

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/

Current images from a joint ESA/NASA solar observatory spacecraft, keeping station at the Earth-Sun Langrangian point

Planetary Sciences at the NSSDC http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/

The National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) is the deep archive for NASA planetary and lunar data in digital, document, and photographic formats.

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