Fashioning Apollo: How the Spacesuit was Developed, Against the Odds

"On July 12, 1969, only 21 layers of fabric, most gossamer-thin, stood between Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and the lethal desolation of a lunar vacuum."

So begins UC Berkeley architecture professor Nicholas de Monchaux’s Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo — a fascinating voyage into the sartorial history of space flight through the parallel history of one of its key technologies: the spacesuit.

Blending material science, iconic photography, and intriguing trivia (did you know that the Apollo mission’s computer-backup system was crafted into a binary pattern that was then physically woven into ropes?), the book itself is cleverly constructed as a series of layers corresponding to the 21 layers of the Apollo spacesuit.

Global Consciousness - Edgar Mitchell: Apollo 14 Astronaut - Cartoon

 

 

All credit for the cartoon goes to Zen Pencils

Second NASA GRAIL MoonKAM Image

Second NASA GRAIL MoonKAM picture is on the ground, it worked perfectly, confirming the trajectory and pointing data!

Astrobotic Technology: Company with local roots aims for Moon

Astrobotic Technology Inc. plans to land it's robot, Polaris, on the North pole of the Moon to search for water, methane and other resources, and win the Google X prize.

Astrobotic Technology has altered its October 2015 mission to the moon in dramatic fashion.

It's headed to the lunar north pole to prospect for natural resources, including water and methane, and abandoning plans to land near the equator with a primary goal of winning the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize.

The new goal is to advance science by confirming the presence of resources necessary for colonization of the moon.

The space robotics company, which holds six NASA contracts to develop robotic equipment for moon missions, changed its strategy to take full scientific advantage of landing its first robot on the moon.

NASA, the European Space Agency, Japan, India and China all completed recent satellite orbits of the moon that indicated the presence of water and other resources there, but without confirmation.

Astrobotic's Polaris robot, which is a lunar rover, also will be able to dig and drill for resources, then analyze and report its findings to Earth. Its landing would represent a major scientific step forward in moon exploration.

"If we get on the ground in the north pole and confirm the presence of resources, that would be the basis for a thriving lunar economy where we could create spacecraft fuel on the moon," said David Gump, Astrobotic president.

Moon: North Pole

Twenty-six teams have joined the competition for the X Prize, which will go to the first private company to land on the moon and fulfill a series of tasks.

Mr. Gump said Astrobotic is the first to announce that it has reserved a launch vehicle, a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX, to carry its robot and lander to the moon.

Led by noted Carnegie Mellon University roboticist William "Red" Whittaker, the company now is redesigning its Polaris robot to transform it into a lunar prospector.

Because the weight the rocket can carry is set, any additional weight added to the robot must be subtracted from the lander, Mr. Gump said.

Originally, Astrobotic planned to land a robot near the moon's equator, which would travel across the lunar surface and send video back to Earth.

The former plan also included a trip near the Apollo 11 landing site, where the first humans stepped on the lunar surface, and provide fresh video of the famous spot.

"The previous robot was designed to be a scout carrying cameras and making long-distance traverses," Mr. Gump said.

Astrobotic also plans to haul payload from space agencies and scientific institutions to the moon at a cost of $820,000 a pound.

NASA GRAIL: Ebb and Flow Flying in Formation

Using a precision formation-flying technique, the twin GRAIL spacecraft will map the moon's gravity field.

The mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth's moon, including the size of a possible inner core, and it should provide scientists with a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

GRAIL is a part of NASA's Discovery Program.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, is home to the mission's principal investigator, Maria Zuber.

The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft.

Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

GRAIL Doing Science on This Week @ NASA - YouTube video

Ebb and Flow, NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL spacecraft, have officially begun collecting science data as they orbit the moon.

Scientists will use the information gathered by the twin spacecraft to produce a high-resolution map of the lunar gravitational field.

That should provide unprecedented detail about the moon's internal structure and composition, and lead to a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

Science activities are expected to conclude on May 29. Also, Station Science on Fire, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden joins The White House to encourage engineering students to "Stay With It", "G.E.M.S." at Stennis Space Center, an honour for the late NACA test pilot Scott Crossfield and more!

Russia's ROSKOSMOS Plans To Send Man To The Moon By 2030

Russia has set forth an ambitious space plan to send cosmonauts to the moon and unmanned probes to Jupiter and Venus and build a network of research stations on Mars, all by 2030.

The blueprint was revealed in a leaked strategy document from Russia's space agency, Roskosmos, published in Kommersant, a business daily newspaper.

The strategy document lays out the space agency's plans for the next 18 years, including a moon landing for cosmonauts.

"Conduct a demonstrative manned circumlunar test flight with the subsequent landing of cosmonauts on surface and their return to Earth," it reads.

According to the leaked document Russia will replace the Soyuz with the six-seater Angara craft by 2020 as the spaceship that launches Russian payloads.

It will launch from the new Vostochny cosmodrome that is scheduled for completion in 2018. The Vostochny cosmodrome will replace the old Soviet Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan as the choice launch site.

Russia will send robots to the moon to collect samples by 2030. In addition to the planned moon landing, Roskosmos is planning to explore other planets in the solar system and perhaps a follow-up to the International Space Station.

The bold strategy is a sign of Russia's continued commitment to space exploration. The Soviet Union was the first country to send a man in orbit but eventually lost out to the U.S. when NASA successfully landed a man on the moon.

Russia's space program has been in decline since then. It's Mars probe Phobos-Grunt had an immediate engine failure after launch and was stuck in orbit around Earth before eventually crashing back to the planet.

Yury Karash, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, says Russia should focus on sending manned flights to Mars, the next plum goal of many space agencies. NASA has plans to send astronauts to Mars by 2030.

"Back in the 1960s the Soviet Union was competing head-to-head with the United States," he told The Telegraph. "But it is hard to find a better way to hurt Russian prestige and emphasise Russian technological backwardness than by sending cosmonauts to the Moon around 2030, 60 years after Apollo."

CME: Coronal Mass Ejections Could Erode Lunar Surface

The moon and other planets could be severely affected by solar storms and the accompanying coronal mass ejections (CMEs) according to a research by NASA scientists.

The research, which is the first attempt to predict the effects of a CME on the moon, showed that that solar storms and CMEs can significantly remove large amount of materials from the lunar surface and cause atmospheric loss for other planets like Mars that are not protected by global magnetic field.

Rosemary Killen at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., led the research which is part of the Dynamic Response of the Environment At the Moon (DREAM) team within the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

According researchers, CMEs are intense gusts of the normal solar wind with a diffuse stream of electrically conductive gas called plasma blown outward from the surface of the Sun into space. CME in its strong state may contain around a billion tons of plasma moving at up to a million miles per hour in a cloud many times the size of Earth.

Meanwhile, the moon has a little atmosphere, technically called an exosphere, is vulnerable to CME effects, thus the plasma from CMEs can impact the lunar surface. Atoms from the surface are ejected in a process called "sputtering," researchers said.

"We found that when this massive cloud of plasma strikes the moon, it acts like a sandblaster and easily removes volatile material from the surface," said William Farrell, DREAM team lead at NASA Goddard.

"The model predicts 100 to 200 tons of lunar material - the equivalent of 10 dump truck loads - could be stripped off the lunar surface during the typical 2-day passage of a CME."

"Connecting various models together to mimic conditions during solar storms is a major goal of the DREAM project," says Farrell.

Scientists believe that NASA's Lunar Atmosphere And Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), which is scheduled to launch in 2013, will be able to test their predictions. The strong sputtering effect should kick lunar surface atoms to LADEE's orbital altitude, around 20 to 50 kilometers (about 12.4 to 31 miles), so the spacecraft will see them increase in abundance.

"This huge CME sputtering effect will make LADEE almost like a surface mineralogy explorer, not because LADEE is on the surface, but because during solar storms surface atoms are blasted up to LADEE," said Farrell.

However, the moon is not the only heavenly body affected by the dense CME driver gas. Space scientists have long been aware that these solar storms dramatically affect the Earth's magnetic field and are responsible for intense aurora (Northern and Southern Lights). Other planets like Mars, which does not have a magnetic field, and small bodies like asteroids, can also be severely affected by fast-streaming CME gas.

NASA will launch in late 2013 the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission that will orbit the Red Planet to investigate exactly how solar activity, including CMEs, removes the atmosphere.

Lunar Ionosphere: Our Mysterious Moon

How can a world without air have an ionosphere? Somehow the Moon has done it.

Lunar researchers have been struggling with the mystery for years, and they may have finally found a solution. But first, what is an ionosphere?

Every terrestrial planet with an atmosphere has one. High above the planet's rocky surface where the atmosphere meets the vacuum of space, ultraviolet rays from the sun break apart atoms of air. This creates a layer of ionized gas--an "ionosphere."

Here on Earth, the ionosphere has a big impact on communications and navigation. For instance, it reflects radio waves, allowing shortwave radio operators to bounce transmissions over the horizon for long-range communications. The ionosphere also bends and scatters signals from GPS satellites, sometimes causing your GPS tracker to mis-read your position.

The first convincing evidence for an ionosphere around the Moon came in the 1970s from the Soviet probes Luna 19 and 22. Circling the Moon at close range, the orbiters sensed a layer of charged material extending a few tens of km above the lunar surface containing as many as 1000 electrons per cubic centimeter-a thousand times more than any theory could explain.

Radio astronomers also found hints of the lunar ionosphere when distant radio sources passed behind the Moon's limb.

The idea of an "airless Moon" having an ionosphere didn't make much sense, but the evidence seemed compelling.

As a matter of fact, the Moon isn't quite as airless as most people think. Small amounts of gas created by radioactive decay seep out of the lunar interior; meteoroids and the solar wind also blast atoms off the Moon's surface.

The resulting shroud of gas is so thin, however, that many researchers refuse to call it an atmosphere, preferring instead the term "exosphere."

The density of the lunar exosphere is about a hundred million billion times less than that of air on Earth-not enough to support an ionosphere as dense as the ones the Luna probes sensed.

For 40 years, the Moon's ionosphere remained a mystery until Tim Stubbs of the Goddard Space Flight Center published a possible solution earlier this year. The answer, he proposes, is moondust.

Stubbs--a 30-something scientist who wasn't even born when the Moon's ionosphere was discovered-read the accounts of Apollo 15 astronauts who reported seeing a strange glow over the Moon's horizon. Many researchers believe the astronauts were seeing moondust.

NASA GRAIL: Artist's Rendition

Using a precision formation-flying technique, the twin GRAIL spacecraft will map the moon's gravity field, as depicted in this artist's rendering. 

Radio signals traveling between the two spacecraft provide scientists the exact measurements required as well as flow of information not interrupted when the spacecraft are at the lunar farside, not seen from Earth. 

The result should be the most accurate gravity map of the moon ever made.

The mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth's moon, including the size of a possible inner core, and it should provide scientists with a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed. GRAIL is a part of NASA's Discovery Program.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-B spacecraft successfully executed its first flight path correction maneuver Wednesday, Oct. 5. The rocket burn helped refine the spacecraft's trajectory as it travels from Earth to the moon and provides separation between itself and its mirror twin, GRAIL-A. The first burn for GRAIL-A occurred on Sept. 30.

"Both spacecraft are alive and with these burns, prove that they're kicking too, as expected," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "There is a lot of time and space between now and lunar orbit insertion, but everything is looking good."

GRAIL-B's rocket burn took place on Oct. 5 at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT). The spacecraft's main engine burned for 234 seconds and imparted a velocity change of 56.1 mph (25.1 meters per second) while expending 8.2 pounds (3.7 kilograms) of propellant.

GRAIL-A's burn on Sept. 30 also took place at 11 a.m. PDT. It lasted 127 seconds and imparted a 31.3 mph (14 meters per second) velocity change on the spacecraft while expending 4 pounds (1.87 kilograms) of propellant.

These burns are designed to begin distancing GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B's arrival times at the moon by approximately one day and to insert them onto the desired lunar approach paths.

Read more on NASA Grail Mission

Map of Moon Reveals Titanium Treasure Troves

A map of the Moon combining observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths shows a treasure trove of areas rich in Titanium ores. Not only is Titanium a valuable mineral, it is key to helping scientists unravel the mysteries of the Moon's interior.

Mark Robinson and Brett Denevi presented the results from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission at last week's joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

"Looking up at the Moon, its surface appears painted with shades of grey - at least to the human eye. But with the right instruments, the Moon can appear colourful," said Robinson, of Arizona State University.

"The maria appear reddish in some places and blue in others. Although subtle, these colour variations tell us important things about the chemistry and evolution of the lunar surface. They indicate the titanium and iron abundance, as well as the maturity of a lunar soil."

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Wide Angle Camera (WAC) is imaging the surface in seven different wavelengths at a resolution of between 100 and 400 metres per pixel. Specific minerals reflect or absorb strongly certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, so the wavelengths detected by LROC WAC help scientists better understand the chemical composition of the lunar surface.

Robinson and his team previously developed a technique using Hubble Space Telescope images to map titanium abundances around a small area centred on the Apollo 17 landing site.

Samples around the site spanned a broad range of titanium levels. By comparing the Apollo data from the ground with the Hubble images, the team found that the titanium levels corresponded to the ratio of ultraviolet to visible light reflected by the lunar soils.

"Our challenge was to find out whether the technique would work across broad areas, or whether there was something special about the Apollo 17 area," said Robinson.

Robinson's team constructed a mosaic from around 4000 LRO WAC images collected over one month. Using the technique they had developed with the Hubble imagery, they used the WAC ratio of the brightness in the ultraviolet to visible light to deduce titanium abundance, backed up by surface samples gathered by Apollo and Luna missions.

The highest titanium abundances on Earth are around xx percent. The new map shows that in the mare titanium abundances range from about one percent to a little more than ten percent.

In the highlands, everywhere TiO2 is less than one percent. The new titanium values match those measured in the ground samples to about one percent.

"We still don't really understand why we find much higher abundances of titanium on the Moon compared to similar types of rocks on Earth. What the lunar titanium-richness does tell us is that the interior of the Moon had less oxygen when it was formed, knowledge that geochemists value for understanding the evolution of the Moon," said Robinson.

Lunar titanium is mostly found in the mineral ilmenite, a compound containing iron, titanium and oxygen. Future miners living and working on the Moon could break down ilmenite to liberate these elements. In addition, Apollo data shows that titanium-rich minerals are more efficient at retaining particles from the solar wind, such as helium and hydrogen. These gases would also provide a vital resource for future human inhabitants of lunar colonies.

NASA JPL Sept News: Details of GRAIL Mission to Moon

For more information visit: Grail.nasa.gov

NASA GRAIL Mission: Final Preparations for September Launch

NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to study the moon is in final launch preparations for a scheduled Sept. 8 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

GRAIL's twin spacecraft are tasked for a nine-month mission to explore Earth's nearest neighbor in unprecedented detail.

They will determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and advance our understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon.

"Yesterday's final encapsulation of the spacecraft is an important mission milestone," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Our two spacecraft are now sitting comfortably inside the payload fairing which will protect them during ascent. Next time the GRAIL twins will see the light of day, they will be about 95 miles up and accelerating."

The spacecraft twins, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, will fly aboard a Delta II rocket launched from Florida. The twins' circuitous route to lunar orbit will take 3.5 months and cover approximately 2.6 million miles (4.2 million kilometers) for GRAIL-A, and 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) for GRAIL-B.

In lunar orbit, the spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them. Regional gravitational differences on the moon are expected to expand and contract that distance.

GRAIL scientists will use these accurate measurements to define the moon's gravity field. The data will allow mission scientists to understand what goes on below the surface of our natural satellite.

"GRAIL will unlock lunar mysteries and help us understand how the moon, Earth and other rocky planets evolved as well," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

GRAIL's launch period opens Sept. 8 and extends through Oct. 19. On each day, there are two separate launch opportunities separated by approximately 39 minutes. On Sept. 8, the first launch opportunity is 8:37 a.m. EDT (5:37 a.m. PDT); the second is 9:16 a.m. EDT (6:16 a.m. PDT).

Long-lost lunar rover successfully zapped with laser

Long-lost lunar rover successfully zapped with laser

Mirror mirror, on the moon, whose discovery has been a boon? The answer: a long-lost lunar rover. Now that we have a fix on its location, the rover's reflectivity could come in particularly handy for studying the moon's wobble.

Astronomers measure the moon's distance from Earth by bouncing laser beams off reflectors delivered to the surface by lunar missions. Three were left behind by Apollo astronauts and one is attached to the back of a Soviet-built robotic rover, Lunokhod 2.

Now, astronomers have managed to bounce laser light off another Soviet rover, Lunokhod 1, after a hiatus of nearly 40 years.

Lunokhod 1 landed on the moon in 1970 and last communicated with Earth by radio in 1971. It also has a reflector on its back but could not be targeted as its exact location was not known.

That changed in March when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted Lunokhod 1. On 22 April, a team led by Tom Murphy of the University of California, San Diego, fired a laser at the new coordinates and got a reflected signal back. "We found it within minutes of our first attempt," Murphy says. "Once we knew where it was, it popped right out."

Lunokhod 1 is closer to the edge of the moon's Earth-facing side than any other reflector. That makes it useful for measuring slight wobbles in the moon's orientation, which could help reveal its internal structure. It could also allow precise tests of general relativity, which predicts how the moon should move in response to the gravity of Earth, the sun, and other solar system bodies.