Category: Space

Well, that’s depressing.

Lee Hutchinson has a really cool, in-depth look at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, the 6.2 million gallon pool the agency uses to train astronauts for spacewalk missions.

Clara Moskowitz at Space.com, on the Mars rover:

The computer problem is related to a glitch in flash memory on the A-side computer caused by corrupted memory files, Cook said. Scientists are still looking into the root cause the corrupted memory, but it’s possible the memory files were damaged by high-energy space particles called cosmic rays, which are always a danger beyond the protective atmosphere of Earth.

NASA says the rover should be good to go, as it can run on the B-side computer for some time.

In all my time at the Genius Bar, I never saw anything damaged by cosmic rays. So, yay atmosphere!

Ten year ago, the space shuttle Columbia launched for the last time.

The mission — STS–107 — was the 113th flown.

Everything was normal until re-entry, but the disaster was a result of an incident at take-off. A briefcase-sized piece of foam came off the external tank, striking Columbia on the leading edge of the left wing.

Such foam strikes were considered normal. In fact, on STS–112, a 4”x5”x12” section of foam came off the external tank and struck Atlantis’ left solid rocket booster, leaving a 3“ deep dent just shy of 4” wide.

Turns out, the foam that struck Columbia damaged its thermal protection system, which was made up of a grid of tiles designed to stand up to the heat generated on the shuttle during re-entry.

The strike was caught by numerous cameras at launch, and the tapes were reviewed by NASA. However, as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board would find, the agency decided that in a vacuum of reliable information, the mission would continue as planned.

Director of Mission Operations John Harpold was quoted as saying:

You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS (thermal protection system). If it has been damaged it’s probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don’t you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?

Sadly, Harpold was right: the crew died unexpectedly while re-entering the atmosphere.

Hot gas entered the left wing. While traveling at Mach 19.5 at an altitude of 209,800 feet, the shuttle shed its first Thermal Protection System tile.

17 seconds later, the shuttle began to pitch and yaw, and 58 seconds later, Columbia began to break up. At 8:59:32 EST on February 1, Mission Commander Rick D. Husband uttered the last communication received from the shuttle:

Roger, uh, bu – [cut off in mid-word] …

In the following weeks, debris (including human remains) were found from southeast of Dallas, through East Texas and part of Arkansas.

collectSPACE:

Apollo 17, the last of the missions to land men on the moon, began 40 years ago today with the dawning of a man-made sun.

Lifting off just after midnight (EST) on Dec. 7, 1972, the Apollo 17 mission was the final of NASA’s moon-bound manned flights — and the first night launch. The massive, 363-foot tall (111 meters) Saturn V rocket turned night into day as the long flames from its five powerful F–1 engines bathed the dark sky with a brilliant, bright-as-the-sun light that appeared to spectators to slowly climb skyward from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The photo of the Saturn V launching at night is almost as chilling as the fact that we abandoned moon exploration.

Sean Hollister:

50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy told the United States that man would go to the moon. Soon, another American president may announce that the same celestial body will serve as a waypoint for manned space exploration. The Verge has learned that NASA intends to deploy a robotic lunar rover on the Moon in 2017 to search for water and other resources necessary for space travel, and that NASA may have secured support from the White House for an actual manned outpost — a space station — floating above the far side of the moon.

I’m excited about this. It’s a real shame we spent so much time on the shuttle program while the moon was well within our reach.

Apollo vet Sy Liebergot took Ars Technica writer though the Apollo Mission Control Center. These rooms were used to get men to the moon and back, on technology that is laughably weak by today’s standards.

The tail appears damaged, but the rest of the shuttle looks to be intact.

This video is stunning.