All trussed up, with nowhere to go? NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift launcher compared with the Saturn V used to send Apollo to the Moon, forty years ago.

Anthony Young
The Space Review

For the first time in nearly half a century, the United States will, in a matter of a few years, have the launch capability to send crewed spacecraft to the Moon. The launch vehicle that could make that possible is the Space Launch System (SLS). However, while the Moon was once a goal of exploration under the Vision for Space Exploration and Project Constellation, much further destinations are currently under consideration by NASA.

 There have been several incisive articles in The Space Review against the SLS, primarily against the cost of its development and projected operation. Even the former deputy administrator of NASA, Lori Garver, has now publicly come out against the SLS, stating the launch vehicle design embraces decades-old propulsion technology (which it does) and that America can do better.

For better or worse, the heavy lift launch vehicle in America’s future will be the SLS. There is, as yet, no funded mandate—that is, program—to send crews to a near Earth asteroid, and the cost of mounting a crewed mission to Mars would give the Congressional Budget Office fits. Funding for such programs are for future congressional hearings to debate.

Under NASA’s website heading “Human Spaceflight Missions” is the subheading “Future Exploration Plans” with the following items: Asteroid Redirect Initiative, Commercial Space, Orion Crew Vehicle, and Space Launch System. Only the first item is a mission: the remaining three are not. You will not find a definitive mission goal for the SLS, only nebulous statements about taking astronauts deeper into space than ever before.

NASA also has an impressive science website. The tabs to go to specific pages regarding the space agency’s primary scientific thrust. They are (bypassing the Big Questions tab) Earth, Heliophysics, Planets, Astrophysics, Missions, Technology, and Science News. Conspicuously absent is a tab for the Moon. It is only under the Heliophysics tab one finds information related to lunar scientific exploration, in the form of a 2007 report titled “Heliophysics Science and the Moon: Potential Solar and Space Physics Science for Lunar Exploration.”

However, prior to this heliophysics-centric publication, the National Research Council (NRC) published “The Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon”. The interim report was published in 2006 and the final report was released in 2007. It laid out the scientific rationale for the resumption of exploration of the Moon. There have, in fact, been many such strategy documents published over the decades since the end of Apollo by NASA, the NRC, and other organizations supportive of America’s return to the Moon.

It is clear, judging from the above-mentioned websites and documents, the current emphasis for scientific exploration is focused on the Sun, the Earth, and the planets, with seemingly cursory attention to the Moon. However, with the development of the SLS, the Moon may yet come back into favor.

Chang'e-3, now in lunar orbit, is scheduled to land on the Moon later this week [CCTV].

(Note Source is ChinaTimes, Taipei, Monday, December 9) A source from the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) said China has made major adjustments to its lunar exploration program (CLEP), postponing its plan to carry Chinese astronauts to the surface of the moon.

The current exploration plan is that Chang'e 3 will arrive on the moon, as scheduled, and since investment has been made in Chang'e 4, that mission will take place in 2015 as scheduled.

Research and development for Chang'e 5 mission, however, has been halted, leading to the postponement of China's manned lunar missions. According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA) plan, the Lunar Exploration Program consists of three phases — orbital, soft landing and automated sample return — which China hopes can be carried out successfully by 2020.

In 2010, after Chang'e 2 was launched, China's top expert for moon exploration and researcher at the Chinese Academy of Science, Ouyang Ziyuan, said the southern point of the moon is expected to be an ideal landing spot for a lander carrying astronauts. He noted that China's manned mission to the moon is unlikely to be realized by 2020.

In fact, he previously stated in 2006 that the country would be capable of taking humans to the moon between 2021 and 2025. However, on Jan. 9, 2013, Ouyang changed his mind, saying unmanned lunar missions will accumulate the necessary experience and skill for China's construction of a moon base and future manned missions, but the country has no timetable for a manned lunar landing.

In 2007, Luan Enjie, chief commander of China's Lunar Orbiter Project and former head of China National Space Administration, said China would not take humans to the moon in the next 20 years. Chinese astronauts are not projected to land on the moon until after 2030.

The MSL cruise phase as unmanned proxy for Orion, testing the deep space radiation environment [NASA].

Employing present, proven technology manned space travel to Mars exceeds NASA’s own limits on astronaut radiation exposure. That limit is calculated in terms of risk of “Radiation Exposure Induced Death,” or “REID,” over an individual astronaut’s life expectancy.

Ironically, as astronauts age their risk of eventually dying from causes unrelated to radiation exposure steadily increase. It’s the kind of risk coldly calculated by insurance providers. Though dying of undiagnosed heart disease is fed into the calculus, such other threats to the older astronaut's long-term survival overshadow their cumulative risk of REID.

None of this is news. This fly in the ointment in need of being overcome before humans can safely experience long-duration spaceflight beyond Earth’s magnetic field was starkly spelled out in the influential “ (2007),” a report put together by the National Academy of Science before the Constellation program was cancelled. The hard numbers have been gathered from the opening of the Space Age, from Explorer 1 through Apollo, from the Voyagers through the International Space Station.

Now these projections have been verified again by an instrument that traveled to Mars with Curiosity.

The lead investigators for these sensors announced their results during a NASA audio press conference Thursday. Dr. Cary Zeitlin, a principal scientist in the Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Space Science and Engineering Division discussed detailed measurements of energetic and highly-ionizing particle radiation gathered during the 253 day, 560 million km journey to deliver the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) “Curiosity” rover to the floor of Gail crater on Mars.

The Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) made detailed measurements of the energetic particle radiation environment inside the spacecraft, providing important insights for future human missions to Mars.

NASA/JPL/SwRI

"In terms of accumulated dose, it's like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days," said Dr. Cary Zeitlin, a principal scientist in SwRI's Space Science and Engineering Division and lead author of Measurements of Energetic Particle Radiation in Transit to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled for publication in the journal Science on May 31.

"Understanding the radiation environment inside a spacecraft carrying humans to Mars or other deep space destinations is critical for planning future crewed missions," Zeitlin said. "Based on RAD measurements, unless propulsion systems advance rapidly, a large share of mission radiation exposure will be during outbound and return travel, when the spacecraft and its inhabitants will be exposed to the radiation environment in interplanetary space, shielded only by the spacecraft itself."

Titanium alloy in the hull of a manned spacecraft is a good shield against most solar particle events, but counter-productive against the heaviest cosmic rays. These heavy nucleons split and shower damage into human tissue.

Two forms of radiation pose potential health risks to astronauts in deep space: a chronic low dose of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) and the possibility of short-term exposures to the solar energetic particles (SEPs) associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Radiation dose is measured in units of Sievert (Sv) or milliSievert (1/1000 Sv). Long-term population studies have shown that exposure to radiation increases a person's lifetime cancer risk; exposure to a dose of 1 Sv is associated with a 5 percent increase in fatal cancer risk.

GCRs tend to be highly energetic, highly penetrating particles that are not stopped by the modest shielding provided by a typical spacecraft. These high-energy particles include a small percentage of so-called heavy ions, which are atomic nuclei without their usual complement of electrons. Heavy ions are known to cause more biological damage than other types of particles.

The solar particles of concern for astronaut safety are typically protons with kinetic energies up to a few hundred MeV (one MeV is a million electron volts). Solar events typically produce very large fluxes of these particles, as well as helium and heavier ions, but rarely produce higher-energy fluxes similar to GCRs. The comparatively low energy of typical SEPs means that spacecraft shielding is much more effective against SEPs than GCRs.

"A vehicle carrying humans into deep space would likely have a 'storm shelter' to protect against solar particles. But the GCRs are harder to stop and, even an aluminum hull a foot thick wouldn't change the dose very much," said Zeitlin.

"The RAD data show an average GCR dose equivalent rate of 1.8 milliSieverts per day in cruise. The total during just the transit phases of a Mars mission would be approximately .66 Sv for a round trip with current propulsion systems," said Zeitlin. Time spent on the surface of Mars might add considerably to the total dose equivalent, depending on shielding conditions and the duration of the stay. Exposure values that ensure crews will not exceed the various space agencies standards are less than 1 Sv.

"Scientists need to validate theories and models with actual measurements, which RAD is now providing. These measurements will be used to better understand how radiation travels through deep space and how it is affected and changed by the spacecraft structure itself," says Donald M. Hassler, a program director at Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the RAD investigation. "The spacecraft protects somewhat against lower energy particles, but others can propagate through the structure unchanged or break down into secondary particles."

Only about 5 percent of the radiation dose was associated with solar particles, both because it was a relatively quiet period in the solar cycle and due to shielding provided by the spacecraft. Crew exposures during a human mission back and forth to Mars would depend on the habitat shielding and the unpredictable nature of large SEP events. Even so, the results are representative of a trip to Mars under conditions of low to moderate solar activity.

"This issue will have to be addressed, one way or another, before humans can go into deep space for months or years at a time," said Zeitlin.

SwRI, together with Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, built RAD with funding from the NASA Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate and Germany's national aerospace research center, DLR.

The radiation environment and its effects on human
spaceflight: A Lunar Mission (January 5, 2013)
Cosmic ray flux effects lunar ice (March 19, 2012)
"a perfect storm of cosmic rays" (September 29, 2009)
Cosmic rays and manned space travel (September 16, 2009)
Cosmic ray flux highest ever recorded (September 3, 2009)
Returning to the Moon (August 9, 2009)
LUNAR-TEX radiation blanket: Skeptical (May 11, 2009)
NASA cataract detection down to Earth (January 18, 2009)
NASA and Congress sacrifice radiation shielding flexibility
by removing dry landing hardware (May 17, 2008)

Managing Space Radiation Risk in the New Era of Space Exploration (2008)
Committee on the Evaluation of Radiation Shielding for Space Exploration
National Research Council

Scientific Context for the Exploration of the Moon (2007)
Space Studies Board
National Research Council

EDITORIAL : The Space Community experienced a minor brush fire late last week, set accidentally perhaps, by NASA administrator Charles Bolden and his reaction to the National Research Council's congressional-commissioned review of NASA’s "strategic vision."

It’s a sad fact of American politics that the release of the NRC report might have passed largely unnoticed had Bolden been as cryptic about the Moon’s place in NASA’s future as the rest of the administration has been from is beginning.

Instead he confirmed for us one line of reasoning into the administration’s actual rationale for erasing the Moon from National Space Policy, three years ago.

“I don’t know how to say it any more plainly,” Bolden said. “NASA does not have a human lunar mission in its portfolio, and we are not planning for one.”

He warned the next administration not to change course “again” back to the Moon. That would mean, he said, the U.S. would “never again see Americans on the Moon, on Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere. We cannot continue to change the course of human exploration.”

“NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission,” Bolden said. “NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” because “we can only do so many things, and NASA’s focus will remain on human missions to asteroids and Mars.”

“All that was 'a given,' three years ago,” Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan said afterward on Tuesday, perhaps forgetting along with General Bolden, that "going to the Moon as a primary project" has not been a goal of the American government since 1969, and this was never "a primary project" of the Vision for Space Exploration in 2004 or of those who recognize the Moon's strategic and scientific value and who still support restoring the Moon back into scientific context today.

On the surface there did seem little that was new in Bolden’s protests. All the superficial reasons for dropping the Moon as an intermediate objective on the way to Mars spread abroad by the administration and its supporters still make little sense. No one who seriously supported a return to the Moon as an essential objective on the way to Mars ever hoped simply to recreate Apollo. 

And if it’s asteroids you want, the Moon has been an asteroid magnet for about 4.575 billion years.

Aside from the glaring hole left by having had the Moon erased from National Space Policy, three years after the cancellation of Constellation, America's deep space efforts are really little different from what they were at the end of the Bush administration, with little actual progress having been made not already set in motion before President Obama's Inauguration.. 

Aside from the missing Altair lander, and the R&D required to build it, together with a simple recognition of the Moon’s clear strategic value in overcoming tremendous technological challenges facing any manned mission to Mars, very little has actually changed.

The end goal of landing astronauts on Mars, someday, some way, in budgetary “out years,” is still the same, as was retiring the Space Shuttle and planned development and use of commercial transportation to ISS. These were integral to the Vision for Space Exploration introduced in 2004. Though some seem determined to credit the administration with having dreamed up subsidized commercial space, and certainly for popularizing the idea, that too was integral to the VSE and as far as presidents go the initiative dates back to Ronald Reagan.

From a political perspective, with unwitting help from General Bolden, we no longer have to simply make educated guessed as to why the Moon was edited out of NASA’s strategy. As it turns out, it was not the “been there, done that” argument offered by the President, after all..

Bolden has finally confirmed for us one line of investigation into the mysterious missing Moon by simply telling us that the Obama administration just does not want the American government “to take the lead” on any manned return to the Moon.

Thus, it was a political decision, dressed up and oversold with some of the tired arguments originally heard forty years ago.

That's not a crime, of course. Thankfully Bolden has also communicated that the administration is not opposed to "leading from behind" on a manned mission to the Moon, perhaps lead by a different nation, nor does he rule out robotic exploration, though the nation has so far committed only to finishing or fulfilling the precursor robotic lunar missions that were either already underway or already long in the pipeline.

We are genuinely grateful the administration appears unwilling to stand in the way of any commercial manned or unmanned landings in the Moon.

But why this passionate and now very specfic opposition to America leading while exploring and using the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars and as a Rosetta Stone for the rest of the Solar System?

In light of all the other alterations made to the President's 'asteroid initiative' over the past three years, was the administration's unyielding position the original and still primary reason the whole Constellation program was cancelled?

The Moon, and those of us still urging policy makers to take another look at its advantages over manned asteroids exploration, are apparently occasionally being heard in the White House. In the past three years the administration has occasionally floated tantalizing trial balloons, future efforts involving the Moon, but specifically without any  human landing.

One thing is different in the past three years. The small flotilla of remote sensing spacecraft, from Japan, China and India, as well as the U.S. sent to the Moon, and inspired by the lead America had taken with in 2004, after a long national drought five American spacecraft in lunar orbit simultaneously for most of this past year, and planetary scientists have learned more about the Moon since 2004 than in the two decades previous.

This new look at the Moon has by now strongly confirmed the Moon's strategic importance and its usefulness to science, and as a logical support for future manned missions to Mars.

"Just after it has been relegated to a “been there, done that” status, the Moon again shows us we have a lot to learn about its history, physical state and the potential value of its resources. We must take the initiative to learn more as the Moon is crucial in developing and advancing a sustainable space faring infrastructure." -   Paul D. Spudis

Why then, like Arthur C. Clarke’s Europa, are American astronauts to “attempt no landing there?” If we are taking the lead going to Mars, our role in a return to the Moon along that path would seem to be irrelevant.

This much is clear. Leaving the Moon out as an intermediate goal, as a place where America already has a momentary and essential lead, is a stubbornly held position dear to the administration.From Bolden’s statements late last week one might think someone had suggested NASA’s strategy for building a path to Mars should be renamed back to “Constellation.”

Though only occasionally experienced, if America’s history and the nation's storied history of manned space exploration has succeeded in teaching us anything it has taught history has a very tight turning radius.

Ben Evans
AmericaSpace

Officially revealed to the world barely a month ago, the Golden Spike Company last week announced a contract with aerospace giant Northrop Grumman to begin design work on a lunar landing vehicle which could see astronauts back on the surface of the Moon by 2020. Although Golden Spike—founded by Alan Stern, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in 2007–2008 and Principal Investigator for the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and including former Apollo Flight Director Gerry Griffin as Chair of the Board—remains in what it calls “Phase A” of its forward path, the contract with the only company to have a proven track record of building human-rated lunar landers is a significant advance and brings the goal of bootprints on the Moon closer.

Read the full article HERE.

It was a peak experience, absorbed with ponderous wonder, viewed from the roof of a house 300 kilometers away.  It was the first launch of a Saturn V that I did not watch on live TV, between ages ten and fifteen, often because of a father's appreciation for a son's passionate interest. Sitting on that roof, I was worried about missing the that last manned flight to the Moon, the last time anyone would fly on rocket that size.

These were moments bristling with history, and some bitterness in knowing Apollo 17 would be last. And if I'd known at fifteen I would be describing Apollo 17 as the last manned flight to the Moon forty years later, or saddled with even less certainty as to when human exploration of the Moon will resume, I would have made different choices.

We don't get a replay, of course, so I risked missing a televised Apollo launch, and the last, by establishing myself on the roof, together with a good radio. My mother, meanwhile, paced the lawn down below with her attention split between seeing whatever there might be see in the the north shortly after 12:33 am and worrying that I would fall and break my neck.

We did not know precisely what to expect, though everyone within 800 miles of Kennedy Space Center, half way up the coast from South Miami where we were, had been told the launch would be "visible."

Though I had a better than average since of where the Cape was, beyond and under the north horizon, my concern over being disappointed grew as we listened through the countdown and launch and after a long thirty seconds and more passed without anything unusual appearing in the sky.

My eyes went from one floating point of light to another casting over the north horizon, anticipating something as bright, perhaps, as the helicopters and airliners always busy in that direction. 

Then my jaw dropped.

Rising over the hazy glow of a hundred thousand street lights very suddenly appeared an upside down fountain of white fire. Dad came out of the house right about then and asked if we had seen anything. Mom and I both silently pointed north, toward the impossible comet. He became uncharacteristically silent.

The apparition rose ten, then twenty, degrees over the horizon, and I was glad so many houses in South Florida are single-story structures and that the terrain was so flat. We were helped also by December weather, a sky unusually clear.

The rising plume of fire was enormous, a full five degrees long or more, and it was dancing and licking its way into the the sky, bright though it was far away.  It looked like it had must have been launched from Fort Lauderdale, not the Cape, and when staging took place, it ruined every fireworks display I witnessed thereafter.

Then, for a brief time, there were two trailing fires, slowly separating as the light show arced eastward and lower in the sky again. I marked a full five minutes before an indefinite moment when the light could no longer be seen.

In a way I'm like some devotee of a cargo cult, still sitting on that roof, forty years later, waiting for what happens next. Though I don't hold the opinion any longer, I noted then a nagging suspicion what we had experienced in America during those years was kind of high water mark of Western Civilization. 

 

It was an overwrought idea in the mind of a fifteen year old, perhaps a bit overwhelmed, but I simply could not have imagined the way things went. If you don't think forty years could pass before the next walk on the Moon, consider that fact that we didn't think it would either. 

History and progress are not powers, in and of themselves. Both success and the lack thereof are engineered.

Wang Xiaodong
China Daily

A lunar probe scheduled to be sent to the moon in 2017 by China will bring back enough samples from the surface of the moon for research by various institutes, according to Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist for China’s lunar exploration project.

“The sample acquired by Chang’e-5 will be distributed to qualified institutes of many different sectors in China for research,” Ouyang, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said after an event organized by the Chinese Society of Astronautics to celebrate World Space Week.

A UN Generally Assembly resolution adopted in 1999 declared Oct 4-10 each year as World Space Week, to celebrate the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition.

“We will gather the strength of the whole nation for achievement of the highest level. And we will do what others haven’t done yet,” Ouyang said, referring to the research into samples to be brought back by Chang’e-5.

China’s lunar probe project consists of unmanned moon exploration, a manned moon landing and building of a moon base. Currently, China is in the first stage.

China launched its Chang’e-1 orbiter in 2007 and Chang’e-2 in 2010, and got a great deal of scientific data and a full high-resolution map of the moon.

China is scheduled to send its third probe, Chang’e –3, to the moon next year. After the sampling of the moon’s surface is done around 2020, China will start a manned lunar mission. But there is no clear timetable for that, Ouyang said.

Related Posts:

ILOA to study deep space from Chang'e-3 (September 11, 2012)
China as emerging space power (July 29, 2012)
China and the Moon (June 19, 2012)
Will China deploy the first lunar rover since 1976? (April 29, 2012)
Rocket research boosts China's lunar mission (March 8, 2012)
China's long march to the Moon (January 24, 2012)
China issues new space Five Year Plan (December 29, 2011)
Cernan says China will be first back to the Moon (November 8, 2011)
China space program targets Moon (July 12, 2011)

Chang'e-2 completes lunar mission and departs (June 11, 2011)

China plans lunar research base (May 11, 2011)

Jeff Foust

The Space Review

Two years ago, the Obama Administration changed the direction of the nation’s human spaceflight programs in a number of ways, including the destinations of those efforts. Gone was the goal of the previous administration of a human return to the Moon by 2020, a date that was looking increasingly unrealistic in the eyes of many, including the Augustine Committee that reviewed NASA’s plans in 2009. In its place was something resembling the “flexible path” approach in that committee’s final report, with the Moon replaced as an initial beyond-Earth destination by a near Earth asteroid. President Obama established a 2025 goal for a human mission to an asteroid in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center in April 2010, also setting a goal of a human mission to Mars in the mid-2030s.

From a technical standpoint, a human mission to a near Earth asteroid could be done solely by the United States given both existing capabilities and those under development, like the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket. Yet, from a financial standpoint, particular in an era of constrained and even declining budgets, it’s likely the US will seek international partners for an asteroid mission, and almost certainly for later missions to Mars. But do the potential partners of the US also want to participate in human asteroid missions?

The recent Global Space Exploration Conference, or GLEX, held in Washington, DC last month by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), offered some mixed messages about international interest in human asteroid missions. Some space agency executives instead spoke openly about going back to the Moon, comments that have some support among former NASA officials who believe that human lunar exploration will have greater support internationally.

Perhaps the boldest endorsement of the Moon, and not near Earth asteroids, as the next destination for human exploration came from Vladimir Popovkin, general director of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Speaking at a plenary session at GLEX on May 22 that featured the leaders or other top officials of six space agencies, Popovkin suggested the Moon, and not the asteroids, was the preferred destination of the Russian space program.

“We arrived at the conclusion that the Moon is supposed to be the next target” for human exploration, Popovkin said through an interpreter. “We’re not trying to convince you that we shouldn’t be doing anything in the area of Mars exploration, asteroid exploration, just that, in our professional opinion, today we have much better chances to come up with very productive and tangible results when concentrating on the Moon.”

Read the in-depth article, HERE.

David S. F. Portree
WIRED

July 1979 was the busiest month for American spaceflight I could remember, and it was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Skylab fell from orbit, pelting Australia with debris. Where the heck was the Shuttle, which was supposed to have saved it? That was bad. On the other hand, Voyager 2 zipped through the Jupiter system, returning more breathtaking (and freaking weird) views of the planet’s intricate zones and bands and crazy moons. (Voyager 1 had flown by Jupiter earlier in the year, making new data from Voyager 2 eagerly anticipated.) That was terrific.

July 1979 also marked four years since Americans had flown in space, three years since Viking 1 had landed on Mars and found no recognizable life, and 10 years since the first men had walked on the moon. The Shuttle was late, I couldn’t get a date, and the first Star Trek movie wouldn’t be out until Christmas.

Much has been made of the current “gap in U.S. spaceflight.” Some even bemoan “the end of U.S. spaceflight.” Poppycock. You call this a gap? I’ll tell you about a gap. I was in 6th grade when the last crew left Skylab (February 1974). A year and a half later Apollo-Soyuz flew. Then, nothing – no Americans in space at all – until April 1981, when I was a sophomore in college. On the plus side, somewhere in there I got a date.

There was no Internet then and no cable TV. Unless a mission was happening, space news was tough to come by. Heck, even if a mission was happening, it was hard to find out what was going on. NASA published infrequent mission updates on paper, and wasn’t always good about sending them via snailmail to space-cadet teenagers. I remember specific issues of magazines that contained a lot of space news because that made them unusual. They were like freak rain squalls in the space cadet desert.

Being able to remember the Apollo landings made the 1970s gap worse. Even though I had been about to start 2nd grade when Neil and Buzz cavorted on the Sea of Tranquillity, I had sensed that we were at the beginning of something magnificent. I lacked the words to express how terribly wrong it seemed when, just three and a half years later, Apollo 17 returned to Earth and the moon missions ended.

During The Great 1970s Gap, humans continued to fly in space. Soviet cosmonauts worked on board Salyut space stations, but their program was deeply mysterious. They claimed that they had never intended to send men to the moon. We had, they said, spent a lot of money and risked astronaut lives to race ourselves. Many spaceflight opponents repeated that propaganda on the 10th anniversary of Apollo 11.

Skylab’s untimely demise happened 11 days before the 10th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, spoiling the party. Not that anyone threw a party to celebrate Apollo 11′s 10th anniversary; there was nothing like Yuri’s Night in 1979. It seemed that no one mentioned Apollo 11 without also mentioning Skylab, as if the latter had diminished the epic significance of the former. They didn’t mention Voyager 2 much on the Apollo 11 anniversary, as I recall, even though it was inside the Jupiter moon system when Skylab fell. After all, the Voyagers were just machines operated on behalf of goofy scientists (this was before Cosmos and planetary scientist Carl Sagan’s rise to pop culture icon).

Fast forward to April 2012.

Lift-off of Apollo 16, April 16, 1972

Jared Keller
Atlantic

The conventional wisdom of space exploration suggests that robotic probes are both more scientifically efficient and cost effective. Not so, argues a professor of planetary science.

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis rolled to a stop in July 2011, NASA bid farewell to the nation's symbol of manned spaceflight. The Obama administration has scrapped NASA's plan to return humans to the Moon by 2020, which was behind schedule because of technical and budgetary problems. As financial constraints threaten the possibility of future ventures into outer space, many in the astronomical community are advocating for the increased use of unmanned robotic space, arguing that they will serve as more efficient explorers of planetary surfaces than astronauts. The next giant leap, then, will be taken with robotic feet.

Dr. Ian A. Crawford thinks it should be otherwise. A professor of planetary sciences at Birkbeck College, London, Crawford makes the case for human space exploration in a new paper entitled Dispelling the myth of robotic efficiency: why human space exploration will tell us more about the Solar System than will robotic exploration alone, published recently in the journal Astronomy and Geophysics. If the goal of space travel is to expand our knowledge of the universe, argues Dr. Crawford, exploration will be most effective when carried out by astronauts rather than robots on the surface of a planet.

Read the feature article HERE.

Apollo 15 from unusually low altitude - Apollo 15 landing site imaged from an altitude of 25 km (M175252641L,R) allowing an even higher resolution view! The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) is parked to the far right, and the Lunar Module descent stage is in the center, LRV tracks indicated with arrows [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

The Apollo 15 Lunar Module (LM) Falcon set down on the Hadley plains (26.132°N, 3.634°E) a mere 2 kilometers from Hadley Rille. The goals: sample the basalts that compose the mare deposit, explore a lunar rille for the first time, and search for ancient crustal rocks. Additionally, Dave Scott and Jim Irwin deployed the third Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) and unveiled the first Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). The ALSEP consisted of several experiments that were powered by a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) and sent back valuable scientific data to the Earth for over six years after the astronauts left. This new LROC NAC image taken from low altitude shows the hardware and tracks in even more detail.

The LRV, a lunar "dune buggy", allowed the astronauts to traverse far from the LM and explore much more local geology than the astronauts on previous missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14). Not only did the LRV allow the astronauts to move from place-to-place at a lively rate of eight to sixteen kilometers per hour (five to ten miles per hour), but the LRV also allowed brief periods of rest that in turn helped to conserve oxygen.

The LRV wheels were 82 centimeters (32 inches) in diameter, and 23 centimeters (9 inches) wide. Typically LROC NAC pixels are about 50 centimeters square, so it is not always easy to pick out the LRV tracks. In previous LROC images, the LRV tracks are usually only visible near the LM where the descent engine exhaust plume disturbed the surface. The LRV wheels broke through the changed surface and thus the tracks have more contrast near the LM.

For two one-month periods last year (2011), the LRO orbit was lowered such that overflights of the Apollo sites were only 25 to 30 kilometers, rather than the usual 50 kilometers. These low passes resulted in NAC pixel scales near 25 centimeters! LRO has a ground speed of a bit over 1600 meters (5249 feet) per second, and the shortest NAC exposure time is 0.34 millseconds, so images taken from this low altitude are smeared down track a bit. However, the smear is hardly noticeable and features at the Apollo sites definitely come into sharper focus. In this new low-altitude NAC image of the LRV, tracks are visible about half of the time, usually when the tracks are at an angle to the Sun direction, rather than parallel.

It was during Apollo 15 that the rover was driven on the steepest slopes while exploring the base of a mountain named Hadley Delta (it was named Delta because of its shape, not because it was a river delta). In fact at Station 6a, as Dave Scott stepped off the rover, it started to slide downhill. He was able to grab the rover and stabilize it with no problem.

How steep is steep? At the time, the astronauts estimated the slope at Station 6a between 15 and 20 degrees. With NAC stereo observations the LROC team is able to make detailed topographic maps (see below). Instead of estimating the steepness of the slope, we can now measure the slope.

The debut of the Space Launch System (SLS) will send the Orion (MPCV) on a 7-10 day mission to the Moon, with an aim to qualify the Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLV) and Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) Orion to carry humans into deep space. Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) involves sending Orion around the far side of the Moon, prior to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

SLS-1 – EM-1: With a launch date of December 17, 2017, the historic mission will aim to hand NASA a Christmas present of becoming a successful pathfinder for crewed flights on the new spacecraft, in turn providing a baseline for a return to exploration in deep space for the first time since the 1970s.

Launch date slips are a natural part of the space launch business, although the development roadmap for the SLS shows a large amount of schedule mitigation through the key review milestones leading up to the opening mission.

Ironically, the main threat to the schedule target may be due to problems unrelated to Orion or the SLS. This is due to the law of the 2010 Authorization Act, which requires SLS and Orion to provide a back-up role for the International Space Station (ISS), in the event of major disruption in the Commercial Crew arena.

This would be an undesirable situation for all concerned, not least because the 70mt SLS and BEO Orion would be vastly overpowered – and economically overpriced – for the role of lofting astronauts to the orbital outpost in Low Earth Orbit. At the same time, it would mean the Commercial Crew partners would have failed to achieve their designated role several years after the initial target of 2015.

Read the full article HERE.

Remember gazing up at the moon and wondering what it’s made of? Some pretty smart people are doing the same thing today. And it’s not childlike curiosity that’s motivating them: It’s money.

Interest in materials known as rare earth elements surged when China temporarily blocked exports in 2010. Manufacturers started looking everywhere for new supplies of gadolinium and terbium and other elements used in televisions, hybrid car batteries and many other products.

The search took them to such places as California, the Pacific ocean floor and the moon. The moon’s stock is up even among politicians, as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney recently sparred over whether it makes sense to invest in lunar mining.

Read the full article HERE.

Robert Bigelow, speaking at the ISPCS conference in New Mexico this month, claimed that China is on a path towards taking control of the Moon within 15 years [ISPCS].

Jeff Foust

The Space Review

Robert Bigelow is best known in space circles as the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, the company he created over a decade ago to develop commercial space habitats using expandable (or inflatable) technology licensed from NASA. The Las Vegas-based company has successfully launched two prototype modules, Genesis 1 and 2, to demonstrate the technology and has plans for larger modules and commercial space stations for companies and so-called “sovereign clients”, nations without their own indigenous space programs.

Bigelow’s plans originally generated considerable skepticism in the broader space community. However, as the company won success with its Genesis missions and found interest in its plans from potential customers and even NASA—which sees the demand generated by Bigelow’s commercial habitats as a key part of the broader business case for the agency’s commercial crew plans—Bigelow has gained considerable credibility. Now, he’s using the platform he has as one of the nation’s leading space entrepreneurs to broadcast a warning about an unusual, even quixotic, threat to America’s space ambitions: that China will, in effect, seize the Moon.

Speaking at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, earlier this month, Bigelow spent very little time talking about his own company and its ambitions.

Instead, he spent most of his nearly 40-minute speech focusing on his belief that, within 15 years, China will notonly land people on the Moon, but will claim it as its own territory, locking out the United States and other nations.

Why would China do such a thing? Bigelow is convinced that China’s quest for prestige—to demonstrate that it is the most powerful country in the world—will inevitably drive the country to lay claim to the Moon. “China already has a grand national vision,” he said. “Their vision is that China wants to be indisputably number one in the world, measured any way you want to measure.”

That means, he said, not just simply repeating the past achievements of the US in space but moving beyond them. “Why not take the all-important syllogistic next step: ownership, ownership, ownership?” he suggested. Doing so, he said, would generate “global psychological impact” and considerable prestige for the Chinese people. “I think nothing else the Chinese could possibly do in the next 15 years would cause as great a benefit for China,” he said.

He argued that China, with its growing wealth and its historical “ability to maintain focus”, would be in a position to land humans on the Moon and start making claims between 2022 and 2026. “China has an ability to focus and galvanize its programs because of the centralization of the government” that can allow them to stay on that schedule, he told reporters after his ISPCS talk.

One obvious obstacle is the Outer Space Treaty, of which China is a party, which prohibits countries from making territorial claims to the Moon or other celestial bodies. Bigelow suggested, though, that China could work to amend the treaty through the support of countries in Africa and Latin America where China is making major investments. Alternatively, he said, China could simply decide to withdraw from the treaty. Public opinion, he said, won’t be factor. “There isn’t going to be World War Three over this,” he said. “There isn’t going to be a single shot fired.”

Read the full article at The Space Review, HERE.

"Small pressurized rovers on the moon will increase crew mobility and can be reused at different landing sites." A familiar notion, as envisioned by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group in their "The Global Exploration Strategy: The Framework for Coordination," developed by the 14 national space agencies. The study presents an International road map with a similarly familiar fork in the road ahead, two decidedly different directions beyond low Earth orbit, Asteroid Next and Moon Next [NASA/ISECG].

NASA is releasing the initial version of a Global Exploration Roadmap (GER) developed by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG). This roadmap is the culmination of work by 12 space agencies, including NASA, during the past year to advance coordinated space exploration.

The GER begins with the International Space Station and expands human presence throughout the solar system, leading ultimately to crewed missions to explore the surface of Mars.

The roadmap identifies two potential pathways: "Asteroid Next" and "Moon Next." Each pathway represents a mission scenario that covers a 25-year period with a logical sequence of robotic and human missions. Both pathways were deemed practical approaches to address common high-level exploration goals developed by the participating agencies, recognizing that individual preferences among them may vary.

0957 UT, 21 July 2011: Atlantis returns to Earth for the final time, bringing an end to the program after more than thirty years, after 200 orbits and 8.5 million km. It was the 25th night landing and 78th landing at KSC, only the 133rd landing since 1981. MET: 12 days, 18 hours, 28 minutes and 50 seconds. Since April 12, 1981, 355 individuals from 16 countries flew 852 times aboard the shuttle, deploying 180 payloads, including satellites, returned 52 payloads from space and retrieved, repaired or redeployed seven spacecraft. STS-135 was the 33rd and final flight for Atlantis after totaling 307 days in space, 4,848 orbits and 872.3 million kilometers (roughly 48.49 light minutes or 5.8 AU) [NASA].

Paul D. Spudis
The Once & Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

Today is the 42nd anniversary of man’s landing on the Moon. The first step on the Moon – the step that “divided history” to use the words of the time – and the planting of the American flag there seems like a lifetime ago. As a matter of fact, it was.

Tomorrow, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will land back at its launch site, ending that program’s 30-year tenure as the centerpiece of America’s space program. That was not a lifetime ago, but a similar sense of loss is evident.

In both cases, the end of a mission series brought upheaval to the space program, as thousands of workers lost their jobs, sold their homes and moved on but not before helping to write an important chapter in America’s history. The end of the Shuttle program and the dismantling of Shuttle infrastructure at Florida’s Cape parallels the dismantling of our national space program.

Ending this major U.S. space program is not like finishing a highway construction project or a bridge, where skilled workers go on to other construction projects. The people that launched Saturn and Shuttle were highly trained – acquiring expert knowledge through years of experience. They cannot be found on the street, but must be carefully assembled and made into a team, trained in their specific specialties, and tested in actual flight experience.

Unlike the end of Apollo, the end of Shuttle finds uncertainty in our national direction in space. Despite the cawing of the flock of “new direction” supporters, a stunning realization is just now sinking in to a bewildered American public: we’re discarding a national capability with no successor – no strategic direction, no vehicle, no path forward. Not even a “flexible” one.

Seven years ago, a positive direction in space was articulated as the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). In short, it called for the gradual extension of human reach beyond low Earth orbit, starting with a return to the Moon, followed by trips to destinations beyond, including Mars. Despite misinformation in the press, the Vision was not (and still is not) “unaffordable” – its affordability depends on its implementation.

The implementation of the VSE by NASA was predicated on the assumption that the Apollo approach was the best way to establish a new space faring capability. Although such an assumption could be argued, it had the virtue of having an existence proof in that we had done it that way before. A drawback to such an approach is that it opened the program to the criticism that lunar return under the VSE was merely a repeat of Apollo, a canard that wasn’t true then or now.

When Constellation ran into the developmental problems and extra costs that all new programs experience, national leaders became concerned. This concern emanated not from the money being spent (the federal government spends more in 8 hours than NASA spends in a year); the concern was that this new effort appeared to be in support of a “repeat” of Apollo. With few exceptions, most people had never heard the objective of using the Moon to create new space faring capability. Instead, the public repeatedly heard the trite and dismissive “been there, done that” mantra and “We already have six American flags on the Moon,” to quote one notable. And that mis-characterization of the Vision manifested our current direction, i.e., one of no direction.

We discarded both a working transportation system and a strategic path forward in space in exchange for promises of commercial space travel to LEO and dreams of human missions to an asteroid (with nebulous rationale and timetable). Wishing new capabilities into existence without a clear step-by-step path forward would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. The administration came to a fork in the road, pondered the direction our national space program could go, and chose a path with no objective or productive program architecture that America could embrace to stay on top of her game.

Over the course of the Apollo program, our astronauts deployed six American flags on the Moon. For forty-odd years, the flags have been exposed to the full fury of the Moon’s environment – alternating 14 days of searing sunlight and 100° C heat with 14 days of numbing-cold -150° C darkness. But even more damaging is the intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the pure unfiltered sunlight on the cloth (modal) from which the Apollo flags were made. Even on Earth, the colors of a cloth flag flown in bright sunlight for many years will eventually fade and need to be replaced. So it is likely that these symbols of American achievement have been rendered blank, bleached white by the UV radiation of unfiltered sunlight on the lunar surface. Some of them may even have begun to physically disintegrate under the intense flux.

America is left with no discernible space program while the Moon above us no longer flies a visible U.S. flag.

How ironic.

Originally published July 20, 2011 at The Once & Future Moon, (Smithsonian Air & Space). Dr. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. The opinions expressed are better informed than average.