Outstanding Essay on the by Paul Spudis

In this absolutely outstanding article, Paul Spudis simultaneously lays out the folly of the recently cancelled Constellation, and strategic importance of the original Vision that was its genesis.  I could not agree more.  Constellation was exactly the wrong direction.  The Moon itself is fundamentally strategic...but not just to go there. It is important and strategic to change the fundamentals of space capabilities and use its resources, and for that, a very different architecture, one with In Situ Space Resource Utilization, Propellant Depots, and Re-usable spacecraft is central.  It cannot be an afterthought.  It must consider the private sector from the beginning, and it must invest in those areas where the private sector cannot yet make money.  And the stakes are significant, for humanity and the way of life that will prevail if we are to hope to have a life beyond this cradle called Earth.
From: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1376
The New Space 
Paul Spudis
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Introduction

Recent media reports suggest that China is stepping up their program to send people to the Moon just as America appears to be standing down from it. This circumstance has re-awakened a long-standing debate about the geopolitical aspects of space travel and with it some questions. Are we in a race back to the Moon? Should we be? And if there is a "space race" today, what do we mean by the term? Is it a race of military dimensions or is such thinking just an artifact of the Cold War? What are the implications of a new space race?

Many in the space business purport to be unimpressed by the idea that China is going to the Moon and publicly invite them to waste money on such a stunt. "No big deal" seems to be the attitude - after all America did that over 30 years ago. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recently professed to be unmoved by the possible future presence of a Chinese flag on the Moon, noting that there are already six American flags on the Moon.

Although it is not currently popular in this country to think about national interests and the competition of nations in space, others do not labor under this restriction. Our current human spaceflight effort, the International Space Station (ISS), has shown us both the benefits and drawbacks of cooperative projects. Soon, we will not have the ability to send crew to and from the ISS. But that's not a problem; the Russians have graciously agreed to transport us - at $50 million a pop. Look for that price to rise once the Shuttle is fully retired.

To understand whether there is a new space race or not, we must understand its history. Why would nations compete in space anyway? And if such competition occurs, how might it affect us? What should we have in space: Kumbaya or Starship Troopers? Or is the answer somewhere between the two?

Some History

People tend to think of Apollo and the race to the Moon when they hear the term "space race" but the race began with the October 1957 launch of a Russian satellite called Sputnik. The clear implication of this new Soviet satellite was that if they wanted to, they could lob a nuclear bomb at the United States. This situation led to near panic in America, with outraged demands that we technically catch up to the Soviets as quickly as possible and damn the cost.

The initial phases of the space race were not auspicious for America. In our publicized and televised launches, vehicles frequently blew up while the Soviets appeared to effortlessly achieve an endless series of headline-grabbing space "firsts." American officials working behind the scenes knew that we were not as far behind as it seemed but to reveal that knowledge was to disclose our national technical means of surveillance. So each new Soviet first was officially greeted with silence.

The Russians raised the stakes in the spring of 1961 with the launch of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. Although America followed a month later with Alan Shepard's ballistic hop, the new U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, wanted to issue a challenge, one carefully crafted to be beyond the existing capabilities of both the USA and the USSR, yet reachable by us (but not by them) over the course of a few years. A manned landing on the Moon was selected as the ideal target for such a race. Although no specific strategic goals on the Moon were identified, it was believed that the attainment of this difficult task would demonstrate the superiority of our open, pluralistic capitalist society in contrast to its closed, authoritarian, socialist opposite number.

The so-called "Moon race" of the 1960's was a Cold War exercise of soft power projection, meaning that no real military confrontation was part of it, but rather, it was a competition by non-lethal means to determine which country had the superior technology and by implication, the superior political and economic system. In short, it was largely a national propaganda struggle. Simultaneously, the two countries also engaged in a hard power struggle space race to develop ever-better systems to observe and monitor the military assets of the other. There was little public debate associated with this struggle, indeed, much of it was held in the deepest secrecy. But as the decade passed, military space systems became increasingly capable and extensive and largely replaced human intelligence assets for the estimation of our adversaries' strategic capabilities and intentions.

The United States went on to very publicly win the race to the Moon, giving rise to a flurry of rhetoric pronouncing everyone's peaceful intentions for outer space while the larger struggle continued to play out behind the scenes. NASA's replacement effort for the concluded Apollo program, the Space Shuttle project, promised to lower the costs of space travel by providing a reusable vehicle that would launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. Because of the need to fit under a tightly constrained budgetary envelope and for a variety of other technical reasons, the Shuttle did not live up to its promise as a low cost "truck" for space flight. However, the program resulted in a fleet of four operational spacecraft that flew over 120 missions over the course of its 30-year history.

Although widely cited in American space circles as a policy failure, the Shuttle had some interesting characteristics that led it to be considered a military threat by the USSR. One of the earliest missions of the Shuttle had its crew retrieve and repair an orbiting satellite (Solar Max). Later missions grappled balky satellites and returned them to Earth for refurbishment, repair and re-launch. This capability culminated with a series of Shuttle missions to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which conducted on-orbit servicing tasks ranging from literally fixing the worthless satellite (the first mission) to routine upgrading of sensors, replacement of solar arrays and main computers, and re-boosting the telescope to a higher orbit. The significance of these missions was that the HST is basically a strategic reconnaissance satellite: it looks up at the heavens rather than down at nuclear missile sites from orbit. The Hubble repair missions documented the value of being able to access orbital assets with people and equipment.

Another relatively unnoticed series of Shuttle missions demonstrated the value of advanced sensors. As a large, stable platform in orbit (the orbiting mass of the Shuttle is almost 100 mT), the Shuttle could fly very heavy, high-power payloads that smaller robotic satellites could not. The Shuttle Imaging Radar (SIR) was a synthetic aperture radar that could obtain images of the Earth from space by sending out radar pulses as an illuminating beam. It could thus image through cloud cover, day or night, all over the Earth. In a stunning realization, it was found that it could also image subsurface features; in particular, the SIR-A mission mapped ancient riverbeds buried beneath the sands of the western Sahara from space. The strategic implications of this were immense; as most land-based nuclear missiles are buried in silos, they cannot be hidden from account because of sensors like imaging radar.

The construction of the International Space Station (ISS) became the next frontier for strategic space. One of the most complex spacecraft ever made, it was designed to be launched in small pieces by the Shuttle without an end-to-end systems test on the ground and assembled on-orbit. It worked perfectly the first time it was activated. The building of the ISS documented that not only could people assemble complex machines in space, they could also repair, maintain and upgrade them as well. As the ISS nears completion, much complaint continues about its cost and supposed lack of value, yet even if we get nothing further from it as a research facility, it has already taught us invaluable lessons about the building and maintenance of large spacecraft in orbit.

These new Shuttle capabilities had significant policy implications for the Soviets. To them, it seemed that the Shuttle was a great leap forward in military space technology, not the "policy failure" bemoaned by American analysts. With its capabilities for on-orbit satellite servicing and as a platform for advanced sensors, the Shuttle became a threat that had to be countered. The USSR responded with their own space shuttle (Buran), which looked superficially very similar to ours. The Challenger accident showed that Shuttle was a highly vulnerable system in many respects; even as the Soviets developed Buran, the American military decided to withdraw from our Shuttle program.

During the 1990's, we saw a revolution in tactical space - the use of and reliance on space assets on the modern battlefield. The Global Positioning System (GPS) has made the transition to the consumer market, but it was originally designed to allow troops to instantly know their exact positions. A global network of communications satellites carries both voice and data, and interfaces to the partly space-based Internet (another innovation originally built for military technical research). The entire world is connected and plugged in and spacebridges are now key components of that connection. Fifty years after the beginning of the Space Age, we are now, more than ever, dependent upon our satellite assets.
Space and the national interest

Most people don't realize how the many satellites in various orbits around the Earth affect their lives. We rely on satellites to provide us with instantaneous global communications that impact almost everything we do. We use GPS to find out both where we are and where we are going. Weather stations in orbit monitor the globe, alerting us to coming storms so that their destructive effects can be minimized. Remote sensors in space map the land and sea, permitting us to understand the distribution of various properties and how they change with time. Other satellites look outward to the Sun, which controls the Earth's climate and "space weather" (which influences radio propagation.) No aspect of our lives is untouched by the satellites orbiting the Earth. In a real sense, they are the "Skynet" of the Terminator movies - they are our eyes (reconnaissance), ears (communications) and brains (GPS and Internet) in Earth orbit. Fortunately, they are not yet self-aware. But the people who operate them are.

All satellites are vulnerable. Components constantly break down and must be replaced. New technology makes existing facilities obsolete, requiring replacement, at high cost. A satellite must fit within and on the largest launch vehicle we have; satellites thus have a practical size limit, which in turn limits their capabilities and lifetime. Once a satellite stops working, it is abandoned and a replacement must be designed, launched and put into its proper orbit. 

Satellite aging is normal and expected but satellites can also be catastrophically lost or disabled, either accidentally or deliberately. Encounters between objects in space tend to be at very high velocities. The ever-increasing amounts of debris and junk in orbit (e.g., pieces of old rockets and satellites) can hit functioning satellites and destroy them. NORAD carefully tracks the bigger pieces of junk and some spacecraft (e.g., ISS) can be maneuvered out of the path of oncoming debris, but smaller pieces (e.g., the size of a bolt or screw) cannot be tracked and if they collide with a critical part, it can cripple a satellite.

It has long been recognized that satellites are extremely vulnerable to attack and anti-satellite warfare (ASAT) is another possible cause of failure. Both the US and the USSR experimented with ASAT warfare during the Cold War. Although it sounds exotic, ASAT merely takes advantage of the fragility of these spacecraft to render them inoperative. This can be done with remote affecters like lasers to "blind" optical sensors. The simplest ASAT weapon is kinetic, i.e., an impactor. By intercepting a satellite with a projectile at high relative velocity, the satellite is rapidly and easily rendered worthless.

Despite the fact that the destruction of satellites is relatively easy, it has seldom happened by accident and never as an act of war. Although most space assets are extremely vulnerable, they are left alone because they are not easy to get to. Some orbiting spacecraft occupy low Earth orbit (LEO) and are accessible to interceptors, but many valuable strategic assets are in the much higher orbits of middle Earth orbit (MEO) 3000 to 35000 km and geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) 35786 km. Such orbits are difficult to reach and require long transit times and complex orbital maneuvers which quickly reveal themselves and their purpose to ground-based tracking.

In 1998, a communications satellite was left in a useless transfer orbit after a booster failure. Engineers at Hughes (the makers of the satellite) devised a clever scheme to send the satellite to GEO using a gravity assist from the Moon. This was the world's first "commercial" flight to the Moon and it saved the expensive satellite for its planned use. One aspect of this rescue is seldom mentioned but attracted the attention of military space watchers everywhere. This satellite approached GEO from an unobserved (and at least partly unobservable) direction. Most trips to GEO travel from LEO upwards; this one came down from the Moon, a direction not ordinarily monitored by tracking systems. This mission dramatically illustrated the importance of what is called "situational awareness" in space.

Our current model of operations in space is well established. Satellites must be self-contained and operated until dead, then completely replaced - a template of design, build, launch, operate, and abandon. With few exceptions, we are not able to access satellites to repair or upgrade them. Sometimes favorable conditions allow us to be clever and rescue an asset that had been written off, but the system is not designed for such operation. The current spaceflight paradigm is a use and throwaway culture. Yet thirty years of experience with the Shuttle program has shown us that such is not the case by necessity. What is missing is the ability to get people and servicing machines to the various satellites in all their myriad locations: LEO is easy, but MEO and GEO cannot be accessed with existing space systems. Yet from the experience of Shuttle and ISS, we know that if they could, a revolution in the way spaceflight is approached might be possible.

The Vision for Space Exploration and its implications

The Vision for Space Exploration (the Vision, or VSE,) announced by President Bush in January 2004, called for returning the Shuttle to flight after the Columbia accident, completion of the International Space Station, a human return to the Moon and eventually voyages to Mars and other destinations. This proposal was subsequently endorsed by two different Congresses (in 2005 and 2008) under the control of different parties; both authorizations passed with large bipartisan majorities. The preface to the founding VSE document states that the new policy is undertaken to serve national "security, economic and scientific interests."

Subsequent statements and writings elaborated on the purpose of the VSE. Despite concerted efforts to distort its meaning, the goal of lunar return was not to repeat Apollo but to create a long-term, sustained human presence in space by learning to use the material and energy resources of the Moon. The VSE was to be implemented under existing and anticipated budgetary constraints; the guidance given to NASA for this aspect of the mission was to stretch timetables if money became short. The idea was to create this new system with small, incremental, yet cumulative steps.

The intellectual underpinnings of the VSE began to be undermined by NASA almost immediately. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) made lunar return an Apollo redux, with the development of a large, 150-mT-payload heavy lift vehicle becoming the centerpiece and sine qua non of human spaceflight beyond LEO. An ambitious program to establish an early robotic presence to prospect for resources on the Moon was cancelled, along with the incremental approach outlined by the Vision. Thus, the Moon became a distant goal, with first arrival of humans occurring well after 2020, if then. NASA had chosen something familiar, an architecture very similar to Apollo with little effort made to develop reusable, refuelable spacecraft (although the Altair lander used LOX-hydrogen, so in principle, it could be modified for refueling).

In short, the purpose of returning to the Moon, i.e., to create a sustainable human presence based on the use of lunar resources, got lost in the ESAS shuffle. Lunar return became synonymous with "Apollo on Steroids" and heavy-lift rocket building while ESAS (Constellation) became synonymous with the VSE. Project Constellation, the agency project to develop the new Orion spacecraft and Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles, was a costly, throw-away space system that got us to the Moon with considerable capability, but with little or no thought given to planned surface objectives or activities. The idea of finding and learning to use the resources of the Moon became an experiment slated for the manifest of some future mission, not the primary driver or objective of lunar return. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is currently mapping the Moon and sending us data on the extent and nature of lunar resources, but no lander missions are planned to follow up on its findings. The ingenuity of an incremental program was lost and we created no new capability in space.

The goal of the VSE is to create the capability to live ON the Moon and OFF its local resources with the goals of self-sufficiency and sustainability, including the production of propellant and refueling of cislunar transport vehicles. A system that is able to routinely go to and from the lunar surface is also able to access any other point in cislunar space. We can eventually export lunar propellant to fueling depots throughout cislunar space, where most of our space assets reside. In short, by going to the Moon, we create a new and qualitatively different capability for space access, a "transcontinental railroad" in space. Such a system would completely transform the paradigm of spaceflight. We would develop serviceable satellites, not ones designed to be abandoned after use. We could create extensible, upgradeable systems, not "use and discard." The ability to transport people and machines throughout cislunar space permits the construction of distributed instead of self-contained systems. Such space assets are more flexible, more capable and more easily defended than conventional ones.

The key to this new paradigm is to learn if it is possible to use lunar and space resources to create new capabilities and if so, how difficult it might be. Despite years of academic study, no one has demonstrated resource extraction on the Moon. There is nothing in the physics and chemistry of the materials of the Moon that suggests it is not possible, but we simply do not know how difficult it is or what practical problems might arise. This is why resource utilization is an appropriate goal for the federal space program. As a high-risk engineering research and development project, it is difficult for the private sector to raise the necessary capital to understand the magnitude of the problem. The VSE was conceived to let NASA answer these questions and begin the process of creating a permanent cislunar transportation infrastructure.

So where do we stand with the creation of such system? Is such a change in paradigm desirable? Are we still in a "space race" or is that an obsolete concept? The answers to some of these questions are not at all obvious. We must consider them fully, as this information is available to all space faring nations to adopt and adapt for their own uses.

A new space race

The race to the Moon of the 1960's was an exercise in "soft power" projection. We raced the Soviets to the Moon to demonstrate the superiority of our technology, not only to them, but also to the uncommitted and watching world. The landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 was by any reckoning a huge win for United States and the success of Apollo gave us technical credibility for the Cold War endgame. Fifteen years after the moon landing, President Reagan advocated the development of a missile defense shield, the so-called Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Although disparaged by many in the West as unattainable, this program was taken very seriously by the Soviets. I believe that this was largely because the United States had already succeeded in accomplishing a very difficult technical task (the lunar landing) that the Soviet Union had not accomplished. Thus, the Soviets saw SDI as not only possible, but likely and its advent would render their entire nuclear strategic capability useless in an instant.

In this interpretation, the Apollo program achieved not only its literal objective of landing a man on the Moon (propaganda, soft power) but also its more abstract objective of intimidating our Soviet adversary (technical surprise, hard power). Thus, Apollo played a key role in the end of the Cold War, one far in excess of what many scholars believe. Similarly, our two follow-on programs of Shuttle and Station, although fraught with technical issues and deficiencies as tools of exploration, had significant success in pointing the way towards a new paradigm for space. That new path involves getting people and machines to satellite assets in space for construction, servicing, extension and repair. Through the experience of ISS construction, we now know it is possible to assemble very large systems in space from smaller pieces, and we know how to approach such a problem. Mastery of these skills suggests that the construction of new, large distributed systems for communications, surveillance, and other tasks is possible. These new space systems would be much more capable and enabling than existing ones.

Warfare in space is not as depicted in science-fiction movies, with flying saucers blasting lasers at speeding spaceships. The real threat from active space warfare is denial of assets and access. Communications satellites are silenced, reconnaissance satellites are blinded, and GPS constellations made inoperative. This completely disrupts command and control and forces reliance on terrestrially based systems. Force projection and coordination becomes more difficult, cumbersome and slower.

Recently, China tested an ASAT weapon in space, indicating that they fully understand the military benefits of hard space power. But they also have an interest in the Moon, probably for "soft power" projection ("Flags-and-Footprints") at some level. Sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit is a statement of their technical equality with the United States, as among space faring nations, only we have done this in the past. So it is likely that the Chinese see a manned lunar mission as a propaganda coup. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that they also understand the Moon's strategic value, as described above. They tend to take a long view, spanning decades, not the short-term view that America favors. Thus, although their initial plans for human lunar missions do not feature resource utilization, they know the technical literature as well as we do and know that such use is possible and enabling. They are also aware of the value of the Moon as a "backdoor" to approach other levels of cislunar space, as the rescue of the Hughes communications satellite demonstrated.

The struggle for soft power projection in space has not ended. If space resource extraction and commerce is possible, a significant question emerges - What societal paradigm shall prevail in this new economy? Many New Space advocates assume that free markets and capitalism is the obvious organizing principle of space commerce, but others might not agree. For example, to China, a government-corporatist oligarchy, the benefits of a pluralistic, free market system are not obvious. Moreover, respect for contract law, a fundamental reason why Western capitalism is successful while its implementation in the developing world has had mixed results, does not exist in China. So what shall the organizing principle of society be in the new commerce of space resources: rule of law or authoritarian oligarchy? An American win in this new race for space does not guarantee that free markets will prevail, but an American loss could ensure that free markets would never emerge on this new frontier.

Why are we going to the Moon?

In one of his early speeches defending the Apollo program, President John F. Kennedy laid out the reasons that America had to go the Moon. Among the many ideas that he articulated, one stood out. He said, "whatever men shall undertake, free men must fully share." This was a classic expression of American exceptionalism, that idea that we must explore new frontiers not to establish an empire, but to ensure that our political and economic system prevails, a system that has created the most freedom and the largest amount of new wealth in the hands of the greatest number of people in the history of the world. This is a statement of both soft and hard power projection; by leading the world into space, we guarantee that space does not become the private domain of powers who view humanity as cogs in their ideological machine, rather than as individuals to be valued and protected.

The Vision was created to extend human reach beyond its current limit of low Earth orbit. It made the Moon the first destination because it has the material and energy resources needed to create a true space faring system. Recent data from the Moon show that it is even richer in resource potential than we had thought; both abundant water and near-permanent sunlight is available at selected areas near the poles. We go to the Moon to learn how to extract and use those resources to create a space transportation system that can routinely access all of cislunar space with both machines and people. Such a system is the logical next step in both space security and commerce. This goal for NASA makes the agency relevant to important national interests. A return to the Moon for resource utilization contributes to national security and economic interests as well as scientific ones.

There is indeed a new space race. It is just as important and vital to our country's future as the original one, if not as widely perceived and appreciated. It consists of a struggle with both hard and soft power. The hard power aspect is to confront the ability of other nations to deny us access to our vital satellite assets of cislunar space. The soft power aspect is a question: how shall society be organized in space? Both issues are equally important and both are addressed by lunar return. Will space be a sanctuary for science and PR stunts or will it be a true frontier with scientists and pilots, but also miners, technicians, entrepreneurs and settlers? The decisions made now will decide the fate of space for generations. The choice is clear; we cannot afford to relinquish our foothold in space and abandon the Vision for Space Exploration.

A Case for Space Based Solar Power

From: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-james_06edi.State.Edition1.1601d78.html

Pamela James: A case for space-based solar power

11:29 AM CST on Friday, February 5, 2010

Ross Perot Jr., I hope you're listening. T. Boone Pickens is preoccupied with some "winds of change" and rethinking his next move. Your ability to save us in our time of need looms once more. The most logical answer to our impending energy crisis is simple. We need to look up ... way up.

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What's The Big Story? Find out atdallasnews.com/opinion

Blog: Opinion

I'm hardly a rocket scientist, but I've been doing a lot of reading lately about space. As it turns out, we don't have to keep plunging pipes into the earth hoping to land on a patch of Jed Clampett's "Texas Tea," nor anguish over the right moment to lasso a wind gust. And heaven help those who resort to littering our landscape with nuclear runoff to quench our thirst for nonstop power.

But Texas can take a leading role in solving our energy crisis by using what's already above our noggins: space and the sun that inhabits it. It's called space-based solar power.

It's not a new concept. According to Howard Bloom – a New York visionary and founder of The Space Development Steering Committee, composed of a gaggle of real rocket scientists such as former astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Edgar Mitchell) – we've been using it for nearly 50 years.

The first American commercial satellite, Telstar, was launched in the early '60s. A mere 35 inches in diameter, this space ball beamed solar power back to earth via its photovoltaic panels. The electromagnetic signals it sent are the same ones we use today that guide our GPS straight to Aunt Freda's lake cabin or to a business meeting in Frankfurt. And the same system that sends us late-breaking news from around the world.

It's also big business.

"Harvesting solar energy in space and transmitting it to earth is a quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar industry," explained Bloom by e-mail. "It's called the commercial satellite business."

To scale up this existing business is America's greatest challenge. In fact, civilization may well depend upon it, Bloom insists.

According to a recent study by 25-year Air Force Research Lab veteran James Michael Snead for the Space Development Steering Committee, even if we use every form of energy we have – the "clean" such as wind, earthbound solar and geothermal; or the "dirty" such as oil, gas and nuclear – we'll still run out well before 2100.

"Using earth-bound energy as the main power source takes unconscionable amounts of space," says Bloom, the steering committee's founder. In some cases, at the expense of entire eco-systems.

Wind turbines produce power only when the wind blows. Solar panels work only when the sun shines – a sun that has a habit of disappearing for eight to 12 hours a day.

On the other hand, space-based solar power runs 24/7 and is five times as intense as the sun that beats down on the Mojave Desert, experts say.

Sure, we have nuclear power. But who wants barrels of highly concentrated radioactive material in their back yard?

It's high time someone comes forward with the courage, the clout and the promotional acumen to see this to fruition. That's where someone like Perot would be perfect. His natural interest in technology and common-sense problem solving, not to mention his ability to get the attention of the media, would make him a good fit to lead a public relations campaign to get this idea rolling.

Our children, our grandchildren and our grandchildren's grandchildren may just darn well depend upon it.

Pamela James is a science co-teacher for McCulloch Middle School in Highland Park ISD and a Dallas-based writer. Her e-mail address isthisdogdonthunt09@gmail.com. 

Hubble Shows Amazing Cosmic Collision

From: http://wjz.com/local/cosmic.collision.hubble.2.1467912.html

Alex DeMetrick has a look at the aftermath of a cosmic collision.

BALTIMORE (WJZ) ― 

Click to enlarge

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A refurbished Hubble Space Telescope is showing Earth the sharpest photos yet of cosmic beauty.

CBS

Related Stories

• Hubble Telescope Reveals Earliest Universe Photo
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• Hubble Reaches Billions Of Years Into The Past
  (12/9/2009)
• Newly Fixed Hubble's Initial Photos Again Amaze
  (9/9/2009)

It's probably happened countless times over the last four billion years or so, but thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, it's the first time it has been seen.

The Hubble Space Telescope was given orders from its operations center in Maryland to take a closer look at what was thought to be a comet.  When the pictures came back, the comet went out the window.

"Well, it's the first time we've witnessed a cosmic collision in the asteroid belt. We know they've happened many, many times in the past, at the time of the formation of the solar system. But this is the first chance we've had to see it happen recently," said Dr. Hal Weaver, Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

It may have happened as recently as late last year, with rocky debris from the crash still trailing behind the largest surviving piece of the collision.

Asteroids are the rocks that never had a chance. Jupiter's gravity prevented them from forming into a planet between it and Mars. They've been a threat to Earth ever since.

While small objects streak the sky all the time, the last big hit in Siberia was in 1908, which makes what's slamming around in the asteroid belt a wise thing to follow.

The asteroid's tail of debris is estimated to be hundreds of thousands of miles long. It is about 98 million miles from Earth, still safely tucked in the asteroid belt. 

Finally NASA Does Something Right (Bold New Approach)

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420990main_FY_201_ Budget_Overview_1_Feb_2010.pdf
Much in line with the recommendations championed on this website, NASA really seems to have made a hard turn in the correct direction to achieve a meaningful and lasting and expandable space logistical infrastructure toward a true spacefaring civilization:


1) It jettisoned the Constellation program
2) It extended the Commercial Orbital Transport (COTS) program to include a crew capability and funded it at $6Billion...Way to go NASA, finally some support to private industry
3) It more than quadrupled the annual budget to deal with finding and cataloging Near Earth Objects from about $4m to about $20m by adding $16m/year...Finally some responsible action.
4) $7.8 Billion over five years for "Funds the development and demonstration of technologies that reduce
the cost and expand the capabilities of future exploration activities, including in-orbit refueling and storage." and "Demonstrates a broad range of key technologies, including in-situ resource utilization and advanced in-space propulsion."
5) Doubled the amount being spent on Climate Change / Earth Monitoring
6) 3.1 B in Heavy Lift & Propulsion Research
7) Actually articulates expansion of Human civilization into space, and precursor missions to Asteroids: "Expansion of robotic precursor: Led by NASA’s Exploration Directorate, this program will send robotic precursor missions to the Moon Mars and its moons Lagrange points Moon, moons, points, and nearby asteroids to scout targets for future human activities, and identify the hazards and resources that will determine the future

course of the expansion of human civilization into space."

More on Extraterrestrials...

The search for aliens should start on Earth, not in space, says Paul Davies

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7068765/The-search-for-aliens-should-start-on-Earth-not-outer-space-says-scientist.html

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jan/25/aliens-space-earth-humans

Aliens visiting Earth will be just like humans, scientist claims

Extra-terrestrials likely to possess human foibles such as greed, violence and a tendency to exploit others' resources, conference to be told

• Ian Sample, science correspondent
• The Guardian, Monday 25 January 2010
• Article history
• Governments should prepare for the worst if aliens visit Earth because beings from outer space are likely to be just like humans, a leading scientist is claiming.
  
  Extra-terrestrials might not only resemble us but have our foibles, such as greed, violence and a tendency to exploit others' resources, saysSimon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleobiology at Cambridge University.
  
  And while aliens could come in peace they are quite as likely to be searching for somewhere to live, and to help themselves to water, minerals and fuel, Conway Morris will tell a conference at the Royal Society in London tomorrow.
  
  His lecture is part of a two-day conference at which experts will discuss how we might detect life on distant planets and what that could mean for society. "Extra-terrestrials … won't be splodges of glue … they could be disturbingly like us, and that might not be a good thing – we don't have a great record."
  
  The US space agency's search for alien life is based upon the mantra "follow the water", a strategy reflecting the fact that, on Earth, where there's water there's life. Recent missions have revealed ice on the moon and Mars.
  
  Astronomers have detected more than 400 planets outside our solar system, some of which sit in the "Goldilocks zone" where the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to form.
  
  Conway Morris will argue that alien life is most likely to occur on a planet similar to our own, with organisms made from the same biochemicals. The process of evolution will even shape alien life in a similar way, he added.
  
  "My view is that Darwinian evolution is really quite predictable, and when you have a biosphere and evolution takes over, then common themes emerge and the same is true for intelligence.
  
  "If you have a planet much smaller than ours, the gravity is so weak it loses its atmosphere. If the planet is much bigger, its gravity is so strong that everything crawls around on the ground, because you don't have to fall far to break everything. It's fantastically dull."
  
  The meeting is the first in a series that marks the Royal Society's 350th anniversary. Future conferences will tackle the science of ageing, vaccines, stem cells and geoengineering: the use of technology to protect the planet from the adverse effects of climate change.
  
  Albert Harrison, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, who is speaking at the meeting tomorrow, will raise concerns about the radio signals humans are sending out to any eavesdropping aliens.
  
  Scientists have used telescopes to listen for alien broadcasts for more than 20 years, but we have also beamed our own signals into space. Harrison wonders if we might be sending the wrong kind of messages.
  
  "Some of them are serious, but there's a lot of hoopla, like love letters and commercials. What would we make of an alien civilisation if the first thing we translated from them was a commercial for a snack food?" he said.
  
  In the spring, scientists will debate whether Earth should be more proactive in trying to make contact with aliens by broadcasting signals to solar systems that might harbour life.
  
  Some enthusiasts believe any alien civilisation capable of reaching us can only have survived long enough to develop the necessary technology by solving major social problems, such as war, poverty and discrimination. Harrison disagrees.
  
  "I do think there's a risk in active searches for extra-terrestrials. The attitude seems to be they're friendly, they're a long way away, and they can't get here. But if you wake up one morning and an armada of extra-terrestrial spaceships are circling Earth, that prediction won't necessarily hold," Harrison said.
  
  If life has evolved elsewhere in our cosmic neighbourhood, we should find out by detecting their waste gases in the atmosphere of their planet or by discovering remnants of extra-terrestrial microbes in meteorites or alien soil samples, he said.
  
  Harrison dismisses fears of public panic if alien life is discovered, of the kind which reportedly followed Orson Welles' infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938.
  
  "The public reaction was overstated. Most people who thought the broadcast was real took sensible actions to protect themselves," Harrison said. "Surveys suggest most people think they will be fine, but they worry about others freaking out."
  
  Ted Peters, professor of systematic theology at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in California, has surveyed religious groups to understand whether confirmation of extra-terrestrials could trigger the collapse of religion on Earth.
  
  His research suggests not, but he believes Christians should clarify whether God's creation covers the whole of space or just Earth.
  

Full NRC Report! Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies: Final Report

Above are the links for both the Interim and the Just-Released Final Report.  Here are the Findings and Recommendations of the Final Report:

• Finding: Congress has mandated that NASA discover 90 percent of all near-Earth objects 140 meters in diameter or greater by 2020. The administration has not requested and Congress has not appropriated new funds to meet this objective. Only limited facilities are currently involved in this survey/discovery effort, funded by NASA’s existing budget.
• Finding: The current near-Earth object surveys cannot meet the goals of the 2005 George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act directing NASA to discover 90 percent of all near-Earth objects 140 meters in diameter or greater by 2020.
• Finding: The selected approach to completing the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey will depend on nonscientific factors:
• If completion of the survey as close to the original 2020 deadline as possible is considered most important, a space mission conducted in concert with observations using a suitable ground-based telescope and selected by peer-reviewed competition is the best approach.
• This combination could complete the survey well before 2030, perhaps as early as 2022 if funding were appropriated quickly.
• If cost conservation is deemed most important, the use of a large ground-based telescope is the best approach. Under this option, the survey could not be completed by the original 2020 deadline, but could be completed before 2030. To achieve the intended cost effectiveness, the funding to construct the telescope must come largely on the basis of non-NEO programs.
• Recommendation: Because recent studies of meteor airbursts have suggested that near-Earth objects as small as 30 to 50 meters in diameter could be highly destructive, surveys should attempt to detect as many 30- to 50-meter objects as possible. This search for smaller-diameter objects should not be allowed to interfere with the survey for objects 140-meters in diameter or greater.
• Finding: The Arecibo and Goldstone radar systems play a unique role in the characterization of NEOs, providing unmatched accuracy in orbit determination, and insight into size, shape, surface structure, and other properties for objects within their latitude coverage and detection range.
• Recommendation: Immediate action is required to ensure the continued operation of the Arecibo Observatory at a level sufficient to maintain and staff the radar facility. Additionally, NASA and NSF should support a vigorous program of radar observations of NEOs at Arecibo and NASA should support such a program at Goldstone for orbit determination and characterization of physical properties.
• Recommendation: The United States should initiate a peer-reviewed, targeted research program in the area of impact hazard and mitigation of NEOs. Because this is a policy driven, applied program, it should not be in competition with basic scientific research programs or funded from them. This research program should encompass three principal task areas: surveys, characterization, and mitigation. The scope should include analysis, simulation, and laboratory experiments. This research program does not include mitigation space experiments or tests which are treated elsewhere in this report.
• Recommendation: The United States should take the lead in organizing and empowering a suitable international entity to participate in developing a detailed plan for dealing with the NEO hazard.
• Recommendation: Data from NEO airburst events observed by the U.S. Department of Defense satellites should be made available to the scientific community to allow it to improve understanding of the NEO hazards to Earth.
• -----------------
• Finding: The mandated survey to locate 90 percent of near-Earth objects 140-meters in diameter or greater has not yet been funded by the federal government. Because the survey requires several years to budget and build new equipment, and then to conduct the search, completion by 2020 is not realistic.
• Finding: The selected approach to completing the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey will depend on nonscientific factors:
• • If completion of the survey as close to the original 2020 deadline as possible is considered most important, a space mission conducted in concert with observations using a suitable ground-based telescope and selected by peer-reviewed competition is the best approach. This combination could complete the survey well before 2030, perhaps as early as 2022 if funding were appropriated quickly.
• • If cost conservation is deemed most important, the use of a large ground-based telescope is the best approach. Under this option, the survey could not be completed by the original 2020 deadline, but could be completed before 2030. To achieve the intended cost-effectiveness, the funding to construct the telescope must come largely on the basis of non-NEO programs.
• Finding: It is highly probable that the next destructive NEO event will be an airburst from a <50- meter object, not a crater-forming impact.
• Recommendation: Because recent studies of meteor airbursts have suggested that near-Earth objects as small as 30 to 50 meters in diameter could be highly destructive, surveys should attempt to detect as many 30- to 50-meter objects as possible. This search for smaller-diameter objects should not be allowed to interfere with the survey for objects 140-meters in diameter or greater.
• Finding: The best opportunities for physical characterization of most NEOs occur during close Earth approaches when these objects are optically bright. Existing programs of ground-based optical observations for characterization of NEOs are few in number, and are not coordinated among different observing teams. Many observable NEOs are not characterized.
• Finding: The capabilities of Arecibo and Goldstone are complementary and many observing campaigns have utilized their synergy. One of the primary advantages of having two radar facilities is that one can serve as a backup for the other.
• Finding: The number of NEOs observed by radar per year could be increased about fivefold by obtaining sufficient observing time.
• Finding: Radar cannot be used to discover NEOs, but is a powerful tool for rapidly improving our knowledge of the orbit of a newly found object, and thus characterizing its potential hazard to Earth.
• Finding: The Arecibo and Goldstone radar systems play a unique role in the characterization of NEOs, providing unmatched accuracy in orbit determination, and insight into size, shape, surface structure, and other properties for objects within their latitude coverage and detection range.
• Finding: Congress has directed NASA to ensure that Arecibo is available for radar observations, but has not appropriated funds for this work.
• Recommendation: Immediate action is required to ensure the continued operation of the Arecibo Observatory at a level sufficient to maintain and staff the radar facility. Additionally, NASA and NSF should support a vigorous program of radar observations of NEOs at Arecibo and NASA should support such a program at Goldstone for orbit determination and characterization of physical properties.
• Finding: U.S. Department of Defense satellites have detected and continue to detect high-altitude airburst events from NEOs entering Earth’s atmosphere. Such data are valuable to the NEO community for assessing NEO hazards.
• Recommendation: Data from NEO airburst events observed by the U.S. Department of Defense satellites should be made available to the scientific community to allow it to improve understanding of the NEO hazards to Earth.
• Finding: Preliminary theoretical studies on low-altitude atmospheric Tunguska-like airbursts from asteroids as small as 30 meters in diameter suggest significant risk exists from these NEOs.
• Finding: Current models for generation of tsunamis by impacts into, or airbursts above, the ocean are not yet sufficiently reliable to establish threat levels to coastal communities.
• Recommendation: Additional observations and modeling should be performed to establish the risk associated with airbursts and with potential tsunami generation.
• Finding: Dedicated flyby spacecraft missions to NEOs provide only limited information relevant for hazard mitigation issues.
• Finding: Rendezvous spacecraft missions can provide detailed characterization of NEOs that could aid in the design and development of hazard-mitigation techniques. Such in situ characterization also allows calibration of ground- and space-based remote sensing data and may permit increased confidence in the use of remote classification of NEOs to inform future mitigation decisions.
• Recommendation: If NASA conducts human missions to NEOs, these missions should maximize the data obtained for NEO characterization.
• Finding: No single approach to mitigation is appropriate and adequate to fully prevent the effects of the full range of potential impactors, although civil defense is an appropriate component of mitigation in all cases. With adequate warning, a suite of four types of mitigation is adequate to mitigate the threat from nearly all NEOs except the most energetic ones.
• Finding: Civil defense (evacuation, sheltering in place, providing emergency infrastructure) is a cost-effective mitigation measure for saving lives from the smallest NEO impact events and is a necessary part of mitigation for larger events. If an NEO is predicted to impact on a specific, inhabited location, there is likely to be strong pressure for more than the most cost-effective method for saving lives.
• Finding: Slow-push-pull techniques are the most accurately controllable and are adequate for changing the orbits of small NEOs (tens of meters to roughly 100 m in diameter) with decades of advance warning and for somewhat larger NEOs (hundreds of meters) in those few cases where it would pass through a keyhole that would put the NEO onto an impact trajectory. Of the slow push/pull techniques, the gravity tractor appears to be the most independent of variations in the properties of the NEO and by far the closest to technological readiness.
• Finding: Kinetic impactors are adequate to prevent impacts on Earth by moderately sized NEOs (many hundreds of meters to 1 kilometer) with decades of advance warning. The concept has been demonstrated in space, but the result is sensitive to the properties of the NEO and requires further study.
• Finding: Unless a large flotilla (100 or more) of massive spacecraft was sent as impactors, nuclear explosions are the only current, practical means for changing the orbit of large NEOs (diameters greater than about 1 km). They also remain as a backup strategy for somewhat smaller objects if other methods have failed. They may be the only method for dealing with smaller objects when warning time is short, but additional research is necessary for these cases.
• Finding: For a wide range of impact scenarios, launch capability exists to deliver an appropriate payload to mitigate an NEO. For some scenarios, particularly short warning scenarios, the capability is inadequate. Development of foreseen heavy-lift launch vehicles, such as the Ares cargo vehicle, should enable the use of a variety of methods for NEOs up to 2 times larger than is possible with current launch vehicles
• Finding: Mitigation of the threat from NEOs benefits dramatically from in-situ characterization of the NEO prior to mitigation, if there is time to do so.
• Finding: Changing the orbit of an NEO with our current understanding is sufficiently uncertain that, in most cases, it requires an accompanying verification. This is easy to implement with many slow-push techniques but requires considerable additional effort for other techniques.
• Recommendation: If Congress chooses to fund mitigation research at an appropriately high level, the first priority for a space mission in the mitigation area is an experimental test of a kinetic impactor along with a characterization, monitoring and verification system, such as the Don Quijote mission that was previously considered, but not funded, by ESA. This mission would produce the most significant advances in understanding and provide an ideal chance for international collaboration in a realistic mitigation scenario.
• Recommendation: The United States should initiate a peer-reviewed, targeted research program in the area of impact hazard and mitigation of NEOs. Because this is a policy driven, applied program, it should not be in competition with basic scientific research programs or funded from them. This research program should encompass three principal task areas: surveys, characterization, and mitigation. The scope should include analysis, simulation, and laboratory experiments. This research program does not include mitigation space experiments or tests which are treated elsewhere in this report.
• Recommendation: The United States should establish a standing committee with membership from each of the relevant agencies and departments, to develop a detailed plan for treating all aspects of the threat posed to Earth by NEOs, and apportioning among these agencies and departments authority and responsibility for carrying out this plan, in coordination and collaboration with other nations. The committee would be further charged with overseeing on a continuing basis the carrying out of each agency’s and department’s activities under this plan. The Administration should designate one agency or department as the lead; the chair of the committee should be the representative from this agency or department.
• Recommendation: The United States should take the lead in organizing and empowering a suitable international entity to participate in developing a detailed plan for dealing with the NEO hazard.
• Finding: A $10 million annual level of funding would be sufficient to continue existing surveys, maintain the radar capability at the Arecibo and Goldstone observatories, and support a modest level of research on the hazards posed by NEOs. This level would not allow achievement of the goals established in the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act on any timescale. A $50 million annual level of funding for several years would likely be sufficient to achieve the goals of the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act. A $250 million annual level of funding if continued for somewhat under a decade, would be sufficient to accomplish the survey and research objectives, plus provide survey redundancy and support for a space mission to test in situ characterization and mitigation.

NRC Report is out!: Bigger, Better Telescopes Needed to Find Near-Earth Asteroids

From: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/bigger-better-telescopes-needed-to-find-near-earth-asteroids/

If we’re going to protect the Earth from an asteroid, we need to find the dangerous ones whizzing about in the emptiness of space.

Unfortunately, the United States will not complete the survey of large near-Earth objects by 2020 as mandated, but not funded, by Congress in 2005. That’s the conclusion of a new National Research Council Report,Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies, released Friday.

The current budget and astronomical tools are just not sufficient to find all near-Earth objects larger than 140 meters (460 feet) across. Better telescopes than we currently have will be needed. While this has been known within the NEO science community, the final report could bring the realization to the policymakers and politicians who control the purse strings.

“There’s no longer time to meet the goal by 2020,” said Michael A’Hearn, a University of Maryland astronomer and co-author of the report. “There’s no way to do the survey in that length of time because the equipment isn’t even built yet. We say it is not unreasonable to set a new deadline of 2030 and start funding now. We probably can do the job by then.”

Despite the large number of NEO discoveries over the past several years, our current detection instruments like the Catalina Sky Survey, are not up to the task of completing the Congressional mandate, known as the George E. Brown Survey.

“The current instruments, no matter how you operate them are not capable of doing the George Brown survey,” A’Hearn noted.

And that’s to say nothing of the smaller asteroids, those in the 30- and 50-meter (90 to 165 foot) range, which hit Earth far more often than larger objects. Finding and tracking those little guys will require new telescopes like the Large Synoptic Sky Survey and Panstarrs, neither of which currently has the funding to complete construction.

Scientists have increasingly come to understand that the risk of asteroids and comets hitting Earth is real, but quantifying the risk that humans face from such events is much trickier.

“Our estimates of the risk could easily be wrong by a factor of two or three,” A’Hearn said. “I don’t think they are wrong by a factor of 10, but the boundaries, again, haven’t been explored.”

Even the Tunguska asteroid, which exploded over Siberia in 1908, remains something of a mystery. It’s unclear even how large the object was, A’Hearn said, which makes it difficult to know how common such an impact is. The rareness of the event makes it very tough to compare the risk from an asteroid strike with that from automobile collisions or other prosaic problems.

Right now, National Research Council scientists estimate the risk of being killed by an NEO impact is comparable to the risk of being one of the 50 or so people who die on an amusement park ride each year. The difference is that a major asteroid would kill many people all at once.

Another area of high uncertainty is the physics of asteroid impacts. Near-Earth objects of different types may require different mitigation strategies.

“The first thing we need to do is understand what the hazard is,” A’Hearn said. “That’s partly finding them and partly understanding what their effect is. We have to understand in more detail how we’d mitigate against them.”

Former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, a tireless campaigner for asteroid risk awareness, said the latest report was the best of its kind, surpassing an earlier NASA report to Congress on near-Earth object risk.

“I can certainly say that Irwin Shapiro, who I know very well personally, did a terrific job in putting this review together,” Schweickart said.

Lindley Johnson, program executive at NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, which wrote the NASA report agreed.

“It looks to be a very good report,” Johnson said. “It had a very strong team of top scientists in the area on the committee. They had the right people and it looks like they looked at all the right things.”

Differences begin to emerge between people who study near-Earth objects when mitigation options come up. The new report looks at two main ways of deflecting asteroids, following previous reports. First, the asteroid could be hit with some kind of impactor, either conventional or nuclear. Second, a longer-term, more precise technique like a gravity tractor could be employed.

Schweickart argued, however, that a gravity tractor, which would slowly push an asteroid off a collision path with Earth, should be considered a necessary but not independent part of any Earth defense.

“It’s the icing on the cake of stronger deflection needs,” Schweickart said. “It’s not comparable to and should never be considered the primary means of deflection.”

Update 1/25: Typos corrected to include the correct names for the George E. Brown Survey and the National Research Council report.

Image: U.S. Geological Survey/Composite: Tim Warchocki

Lasers to beam energy to Earth from space

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/solarpower/7060015/Lasers-to-beam-energy-to-Earth-from-space.html

Solar energy collected in space and beamed back to Earth by laser could soon be used to power homes and electric vehicles under a project by European space engineers.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Published: 8:30PM GMT 23 Jan 2010
It sounds more like a scheme dreamed up by a James Bond villain attempting to destroy the Earth than a technology that could help provide a solution to the planet's dwindling energy supplies.
Engineers plan to put satellites into orbit around the planet that can gather energy from the sun, concentrate it into powerful laser beams and transmit the energy back to the Earth where it can be used to generate electricity.
While harvesting solar energy in space has been discussed by scientists for more than 30 years, engineers at EADS Astrium, Europe's largest space company, now believe the technology is available to allow them to start building a working prototype.
They hope to have a small demonstrator of a full sized space-based power station, capable of beaming back 10-20kW of power, ready for launch in the next five years.
Using a network of these solar power stations it would be possible to provide energy on demand 24 hours a day – something that is not possible with solar power on the planet's surface which can only produce energy during the hours of sunlight.
"There is a global need for increased energy generation that does not have an environmental impact," explained Matthew Perren, head of innovation at Astrium's headquarters in Paris.
"The real advantage of space solar power is that it can provide power on demand as we can essentially point the laser beam where ever we like on the earth below the orbit.
"Looking to the future we envisage large power stations in space that are capable of transmitting energy to any point in the planet on demand."
Space-based solar power, although more expensive than using solar panels on Earth, is attractive because of its capability to provide a clean, inexhaustible power supply around the clock.
Much of the power of the sun is filtered out by the Earth's atmosphere while clouds and the inability to produce power at night have all limited the use of solar power as an energy source.
In space, however, the sun's rays are far more powerful and even with a relatively inefficient conversion process, could still produce large amounts of power. Most importantly, satellites can be positioned so they are exposed to sunlight for far longer than sites on Earth.
The space power stations would be launched into a geostationary orbit, which means they remain above the same point above the planet, around 22,300 miles above the surface.
With solar panels more than 50 metres across, they would be able to gather large amounts of energy from the sun which would then be converted into a infrared laser beam to be transmitted back to Earth.
One of the key uses of the technology could be to power a new generation of large electric vehicles such as cargo ships and tankers. The satellites could be made to move the laser beam to track the ships as they move across the ocean, providing a constant energy supply.
Scientists at Astrium have already begun work on developing the technology needed to turn a laser beam into movable source of electricity. They have managed to use lasers in the laboratory to power toy cars.
Astrium hopes to work with international space agencies, governments and power companies to develop a network of space based power stations that will eventually be capable of supplying enough energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes.
But it is not the only firm working in the field. In September Japan announced a $21 billion plan to send solar panel equipped satellite into space that could beam enough power back to Earth to supply 300,000 homes.
California has also made a deal with a company called Solaren to design satellites that would beam power back down from solar powered satellites.
But Astrium claims that its approach of using infrared lasers will make the system safer than other proposals which have suggested using microwaves to transmit the energy. If misdirected, microwaves could cause widespread damage, effectively cooking anything in their path.
Such schemes are reminiscent of far fetched plots in James Bond movies such as Die Another Day, where villain Gustav Graves builds a space based laser that he can control as a weapon, and Diamonds are Forever, where Ernst Stavro Blofeld attempts to hold the world to ransom with a laser in space.
Astrium, however, insist that the infrared laser, which is typically used in laser guidance systems for the military, will be safe. As it is beyond the visible spectrum of the human eye, it would also not be harmful to eyesight should anyone look into the beam.
Mr Perren said: "We are concentrating on developing something that is safe. While the laser beam will have some heat in it, we intend for it to be safe for people to walk through unaffected.
"Much of the technology we need has already been tried and tested in existing satellites and spacecraft, but there are technical difficulties that still need to be overcome such as improving the efficiency of converting the energy and increasing the power of the laser we can build.
"It is important to remember that we are not looking to take the place of power stations on Earth, but to provide another piece of the puzzle in finding alternative energy sources."

Russia and Space Solar Power

From: Science & Technology Overview Russia Dec '09
Science&Technology Unit, Embassy of Switzerland in Moscow


Time To Build Space Solar Power Plants
The Russian science news agency Informnauka claims that more and more attention is drawn by scientists in Russia to the use of solar energy including the creation of space solar power plants. The researchers at the Lavochkin Scientific Production Association Federal State Unitary Enterprise suggest a new principle for building such power plants.  The researchers propose to give up the idea of building extremely large constructions and to place the solar accumulators and transmitting antennas on a system of autonomous satellites controlled via a piloting signal from the Earth.  They suppose to use the short-wave range of microwave frequency up to millimetric radio waves for the antenna, which will provide an opportunity to form narrow beams in the outer space with the minimal size of generators and amplifiers. Small generators will allow to reduce the size of receiving antennas by a factor of ten.  Interestingly, the researchers plan to place them on captive balloons at a height of 4.000 km. Such location will ensure that the molecular oxygen will not absorb the millimetric radio waves.  Moreover, a captive balloon can be put anywhere in any region.  The beams of individual satellite antennas should converge at the spot of the receiving antenna location. Each autonomous satellite will present a single element of a large antenna field comprised of a fleet of such spacecrafts. To deploy this project, a rather large photoemitting panel which transforms solar radiation directly into microwave energy is required. Capabilities of modern space-rocket hardware make it possible to build spacecrafts equipped with the panels up to 500 м2 in size in the nearest term. Today, the photoconverter efficiency reaches 60 per cent. Perhaps, by the time the experimental design works to build space solar power plants commence such converters will be produced industrially.  It will take quite a lot of effort. The researchers will have to create a semiconductor structure capable not only of transforming solar energy but also radiating it in the microwave range at the same time. A control system to operate the automatic spacecrafts should be developed as it will allow to form an integrated antenna field of single satellites. The experts believe that in order to address the issues of a future energy crisis and to keep up with the developed countries, Russia must begin the research today.
Sources:
RUSSIAN SCIENCE NEWS, PARK-MEDIA, 29.12.2009, www.informnauka.ru, article on the basis of a publication in
Russia Electronic Scientific Magazine by V. K. Sysoev, G. M. Polishchuk, K. M. Pichkhadze “The Solar Space Power
Plant: The Choice Of Solution.” , http://zhurnal.ape.relarn.ru/articles/2009/050.pdf
Contact for further information: Valentin Sysoev, Doctor of Technics, assistant director of the Federal State
Unitary Enterprise of Lavochkin Scientific Production Association, Khimki; sysoev@laspace.ru

Atlantis Research Announces International Collegiate Solar Power Satellite Design Competition!

Atlantis Research, sponsor of the Space Settlement Design competition is excited to announce it will host and sponsor the International collegiate Solar Power Satellite Design Competition.  The Contest would be open to all Undergraduate and Graduate students from across the globe. The preliminary round or the qualifying round would be announced in the first week of February. Registrations would begin with the announcements. The RFP shall be made available to the participants from February 10, 2010, with the finals (live competition) round being held August 6, 2010 to August 8, 2010.  The competition structure will be:

• Max. 8 member teams
• The registration fees for the competition would be USD 120 per international team, and Rs. 5500 per team for Indian teams.
• Prize money for the winning team would be USD 2000.
• 8 teams in all would be invited from the world over for the final round. We might be able increase this number depending upon how much support we are able to gather.
• Atlantis expects some 200 teams to register world-wide.

Atlantis is currently seeking volunteer 20 volunteer judges to review the student proposals and serve as competition judges.

Interested judges or sponsors may contact Atlantis Education at:

Abhishek Agarwal

Email: rickeverest@gmail.com

Ph (India): +91 97170 01231

Ph (US): +1 713 397 0781

Director

Atlantis Frontiers Edutainment Pvt. Ltd.

Ground Floor, K 4/5

DLF Phase II, Gurgaon - 122002

Off: +91 124 4009 936 / 37 / 38 / 39 / 40

Fax: +91 124 4009 935

Website: http://www.atlantisfrontiers.com

Planetary Defense: Interesting Discussion

For those readers interested in Mega engineering ideas and planetary defense, the following weblog entry by James M. Essig might be of interest.  The author discusses everything from deflection of large asteroids, to galaxy-sized thermonuclear devices to deliberately make a local section of the universe more friendly to life by seeding it with more heavy elements.  Includes a healthy dose of both Science (math formulas, but thankfully not obtuse), and theological speculation. 
http://jamesmessig.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/a-post-modern-era-physicists-reflection-on-the-continued-existence-and-development-of-nuclear-weapons-technology-how-i-learned-to-both-love-and-hate-the-bomb-and-a-warning-for-future-generations-re/


Just a few of the interesting tidbits:

The point to be made here is that, literally speaking, there is no upper limit to the mass of a thermonuclear device. Why would mankind choose to produce the extreme sized devices described above is anyone’s guess. However, it may be useful to point out that the cosmos over long time frames is a metaphorical shooting gallery. One has to merely recall the event that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs and realize that over a long enough time period, most probably, even larger threats will present themselves. If we are going to plan for the survival of mankind for the next thousand years, why not plan for our survival essentially for eternity.

A much more practical 1,000 megatons to safety destroy a 1/4 mile wide or even a 1/3 mile wide asteroid might be doable providing at least one third of the bombs energy can be deposited within the asteroid’s material composition. 1,000 megatons of TNT releases the energy required to completely vaporize 2 cubic kilometers of water ice and because of the relatively lower specific heat and heat of vaporization of many solid minerals and metals,  roughly, an equal volume of rock and metal may be vaporized depending on the minerals and metals in question. Note that even though it is relatively easy to bring water from freezing to boiling, the heat of vaporization of water is about 1.85 megajoules/kilogram as opposed to the 0.420 megajoules/kilogram necessary to heat liquid water just above freezing to boiling temperature. The specific heat of water and its heat of vaporization is about as high as they come for ordinary materials.

Our first use of space based nuclear bombs might be our first self-saving act of deflecting a large rouge asteroid with our name on it. Afterward, Project Orion star ships that use low yield atomic bombs, perhaps even low yield pure fusion bombs, can probably get us to the stars within this century if a concerted global effort were to be undertaken to develop the flight hard ware, mission plans, and operational protocol.


I strongly feel that we definitely have the explosive means for dealing with large rouge asteroids given enough lead time and human ingenuity.

OPEN LETTER TO ARPA-E on Space Solar Power

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Marty Hoffert
To: Arunava Majumdar ; Arun Majumdar
Cc: Steve Chu ; David.Danielson; eric; john_holdren
Sent: Wed, January 20, 2010 3:45:55 AM
Subject: Presentation at ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit

Dear Prof. Majumdar:

I write to propose a high-level briefing, perhaps at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Pre-Conference Workshop on March 1 at the Gaylord Convention Center in DC, on space-based solar power (SBSP); and, as a possible specific example, a near-term ARPA-E funded project to test it by laser beaming of solar energy collected in orbit from the International Space Station to collectors on Earth (see attached).

Longer term, but soon, a laser SBSP demonstrator in geostationary orbit could be deployed. If successful, there are many plausible business plans for commercialization, at least as much as for terrestrial solar, with which space-based solar would logically can co-evolve.  Even now, a California company, Solaren, has signed a proprietary agreement with Pacific Gas and Electric to deliver 200 megawatts of electricity from space to their grid by 2016. And whereas, for technical reasons relating to large space components needed for "first power," we don't think their microwave beaming approach is the way to go initially, the technology needs to be taken seriously.

Despite a strong endorsement by the recent Pentagon NSSO Report (see below), and major investments by Japan's space agency and Mitsubishi electric, the US has no agency-funded SBSP programs.  This is bad. Would we have ever gotten the Internet from private sector investments and venture capital only? Twenty years with DARPA and ten more with NSF funding were needed for the Internet, which changed, and continues to change the world, took off. Only logical that ARPA-E, whose charter is to make "transformative" energy systems real, should fund SBSP. It doesn't yet, nor does any other US agency. Most funders are inherently risk-averse. But ARPA presents a unique opportunity to explore a revolutionary energy technology that could run civilization on a global scale with minimum environmental impact. (We realize that this and other assertions on the state-of-the-art, on costs and on weapons implications, must be defended. That's what we want. But it needs doing at a sufficiently high organizational level that ARPA-E decision-makers and advisors, mainly yourself, but also Steve Chu, John Holdren, Jim Woolsey and senior ARPA-E program managers can engage the real issues.

We're fighting to be heard. Pretty accomplished guys (no false modesty here), my son and business partner Eric and I did get a chance to pitch SBSP to Dave Danielson last September at the L'Enfant Plaza ARPA-E offices.  Having received the official ARPA-E "discouragement letter" for our laser SBSP Concept paper along with 98% of fellow proposers -- I know, there wasn't enough money -- I was pleasantly surprised to be contacted by Dave, who informed me that our rejection should be seen perhaps more as a postponement of consideration.  There is not a lot of technological literacy about space solar power -- not surprising in light of the funding dessert we're in.  You have to pay the rent.  Lucky I'm an emeritus professor of physics and Eric has an active software business. It has been a long labor of love to nurture and develop these ideas.  But we, along with competent colleagues whom we have come to know well, can do this job. It might be a good idea to kick off this project for ARPA-E, if it happens, with a technical conference for the major players.  Initially skeptic, by the end of our presentation to Dave Danielson,  he told us that our case was compelling.  Please ask him about this. He has notes on our meeting, and has encouraged us to cite his conclusions. The next step, he said, was to convince you.

I suspect that you are not the only one to convince. I have heard from a colleague that during a recent talk at an IIT in India, Steve Chu was questioned about whether the US was willing to participate in joint research with India on solar power satellites, which the president of India had found exciting as a possible energy source.  His response, I am told, was that so far, Marty Hoffert had not convinced him SBSP costs would not be prohibitive. We have in fact developed a careful cost analysis showing current costs of terrestrial and space-based solar power for base load are comparable, and that both may be expected to drop along standard "learning by doing" curves to someday compete with coal for electricity -- Google's famous SE < C.  NREL's solar energy roadmap is based on these projections, and we have similar ones for launch costs to geostationary orbit. The Chu story may be apocryphal, but technical arguments and perceptions have to be engaged or we'll never get anywhere. We have to talk to you guys.

Hence our request to do a high level briefing on space-based solar power. The upcoming ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, March 1-3, may or may not be the place for it.  I do see from the draft agenda that the Pre-Conference Workshop on Monday has morning and afternoon  breakout sessions on grid scale energy storage, power electronics, solar PV and solar thermal, all of which are component technologies of a space solar power system.  Perhaps you can find a slot for the briefing we propose, or alternately, we could make it another time or place. In any case I've made reservations to stay at the Gaylord Convention Center Feb. 28-March 2 (yesterday was the last day for the conventional rate). And I did indicate to your assistant Norman Kaufmann, my and Eric's desire to participate productively in the meeting in whatever way is useful, not only in giving this talk, but as panel members, etc.  Registration fees are another story as we have no present source of funds other than our pockets for this. We have, so far, not heard back. But I hope, you or Norman will find time from your busy schedule to get back to me soon.

Best regards,

Marty Hoffert
Professor Emeritus of Physics   
Andre and Bella Meyer Hall of Physics
4 Washington Place    
New York University
New York, NY 10003-6621    
                        
NYU Phone:  212-998-3747   
NYU Fax:     212-995-4016
Home Phone: 516-466-9418
Home Fax:    516-487-0734
Cellphone:     516-972-4779
Email:        marty.hoffert@nyu.edu 
Web page:  http://www.physics.nyu.edu/people/hoffert.martin.html

DOWNLOADABLE REFERENCES

TRANSFORMATIVE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY IN GENERAL

• Science paper first-authored by yours truly & co-authored by 17 energy/climate experts on advanced energy tech to address global climate change including letters to the editor &  responses thereto (1 Nov. 2002):

http://homepage.mac.com/marty.hoffert/filechute/Hoffert_etal_Science+Lett.pdf

• Report in Andy Revkin's  New York Times dotEarth blog  (3 Dec. 2007) on a letter to Congress by yours truly co-signed by 36 energy/climate experts -- including three, who, like Steve Chu, are Nobel laureates -- supporting ramping-up investment to $30 billion per year to "develop, demonstrate, and stimulate the commercialization of a range of technologies and approaches that can provide affordable carbon-neutral energy, and to use that energy more wisely." This is similar to my Congressional testimony supporting transformative energy R & D at funding levels that can make a difference for carbon dioxide emission phaseout by midcentury -- a scale sufficient also to stimulate US job-creation near-term. The scaled-down version passed by Congress funds ARPA-E at $400 million for a limited time through the Stimulus Bill. It could only support 2% of round one Concept paper proposals received by ARPA-E -- a scale biased for various reasons against truly transformative carbon-neutral energy systems like space-base solar power.  Many economists now call for much larger energy tech investments for both environmental and economy stimulus reasons, as we did in '07:

http://homepage.mac.com/marty.hoffert/filechute/Hoffert_etal_EnergyLetter.pdf

• My Video Interview on "CleanSkies" on ARPA-E proposal reviews & funding (8 Nov. 2009):

http://www.cleanskies.com/videos/some-question-doe-grant-process

• Science Magazine News article on ARPA-E funding citing my comments (22 August 2009):

http://homepage.mac.com/marty.hoffert/filechute/Mervis-Science-ARPA-E_stum.pdf

• My TV interview on PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on the release of the IPCC "Mitigation Report" making the case for innovative energy research to address climate change (10 Oct 2007):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdTb5xzUXJM

SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER (SBSP)

• My recent talk as a PowerPoint File on "Solar Electricity from Orbit" presented at New Jersey Institute of Technology colloquium, Newark, NJ (4 Nov, 2009):

http://homepage.mac.com/marty.hoffert/filechute/Hoffert-NJIT.ppt

• Eric & my ARPA-E Concept Paper, "Laser PV Tests for Space Based Solar Power" submitted from our startup, Versatility Energy Systems, South Orange, NJ (2 June 2009):

http://homepage.mac.com/marty.hoffert/filechute/Hofferts_arpa-e_Concept_Pa.pdf

• On inter-generational collaboration on solar power from space (27 June 2008):

http://homepage.mac.com/marty.hoffert/filechute/Hofferts%20-%20The%20Son%20Also%20Ri.pdf

• Google Tech Talk video of my overview lecture, "Electricity from Orbit: The Case for R & D," including a comparison of spot sizes on Earth for space mirrors, microwave and laser beams in geostationary orbit and the advantages of starting near-term with lasers, presented at NASA/Ames & Google, Mountain View, CA (5 Dec. 2007):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9YD9-_WTjk

• Pentagon National Security Space Office (NSSO) report supporting space-based solar power for strategic energy security, and the need for institutional research support by a US government agency to underwrite the risk of development (10 Oct. 2007):

http://homepage.mac.com/marty.hoffert/filechute/NSSO-sbsp.pdf

• Space.com online article on Solaren proprietary plans for near-term electricity from orbiting ultralight SBSP employing microwave beaming to address California's 2020 goal of 33% carbon-neutral electricity by 2020 citing my initial response to the idea (2 Dec, 2009):

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/091202-space-power-beaming.html

• NPR News audio clip on Solaren concept for selling carbon-neutral electricity from space to PG & E by 2016, including new info on their distributed component concept from CEO Gary Spirnak (17 Dec., 2009):

http://homepage.mac.com/marty.hoffert/filechute/Solaren-NPR-12_17-09.2.m4a

EADS & SBSP

From: http://www.physorg.com/news183278937.html  retrieved 01-21-2010

Science and technology news

European space company wants solar power plant in spaceJanuary 21, 2010 by Lin Edwards Enlarge(PhysOrg.com) -- EADS Astrium, Europe's biggest space company, plans to put a solar power satellite in orbit to demonstrate the collection of solar power in space and its transmission via infrared laser to provide electricity on Earth.Ads by GooglePhotovoltaic Basic Course - Nationally Accredited Online Course w/ Live Student Support. Find More! - www.Training4Green.comPower Monitors - Pwr Monitors for all applications Energy Management software - www.Measurlogic.com Chief executive officer of Astrium, François Auque, said the system is at the testing stage, but that a viable system collecting and transmitting power from space could be within reach soon. Auque said space solar power is an attractive idea because it is an inexhaustible and clean form of energy. Unlike solar plants on Earth, orbital solar collectors can work around the clock, and there is no interference from clouds or atmospheric dusts or gases, which means the energy hitting photovoltaic cells in orbit is much greater than it would be for the same panels on the ground.Earlier concepts of beaming power to Earth from space were criticized because they relied on microwaves to transmit the power to the ground, which has safety concerns, so Astrium plans to use infrared lasers instead, which means that even if they were misdirected people and objects hit by the laser beams could not be scorched.The transmission of power via infrared laser has been tested in Astrium’s laboratories, and they are now concentrating on improving the system’s efficiency. Work on developing converters to convert received infrared energy to electricity is proceeding rapidly, and Astrium is collaborating in this work with scientists at the University of Surrey, in the UK. The company is hoping to achieve 80% efficiency in the conversion.According to Astrium’s chief technology officer, Robert Laine, at present the power handled by the system is limited by the size of the laser that can be built. A demonstration mission would also be necessary to prove the system works, and this should be possible within the present decade.The concept of harvesting solar power in space has been discussed for at least the last three decades, but the problems of power loss during transmission and the expense and difficulty of assembling large arrays of solar collectors in space have seemed almost insurmountable. However, Astrium is not the only company close to bringing the idea to fruition. Last September Japan announced it is planning to put a small demonstration solar collecting satellite in orbit by 2015. This system will transmit the power to Earth using microwaves.EADS Astrium is seeking investors and partners such as the EU, national governments, space agencies, or power companies, to fund and contribute in other ways to the development of its operational orbital solar collection and transmission system.More information: EADS Astrium -- http://www.astrium.eads.net/© 2010 PhysOrg.com

Astrium develops space power idea (BBC)

 

January 19, 2010

By Jonathan Amos

Europe's biggest space company is seeking partners to fly a demonstration solar power mission in orbit.

EADS Astrium says the satellite system would collect the Sun's energy and transmit it to Earth via an infrared laser, to provide electricity.

Space solar power has been talked about for more than 30 years. However, there have always been question marks over its cost, efficiency and safety.

But Astrium believes the technology is close to proving its maturity.

"Today we are not at an operational stage; it's just a test," said chief executive officer Francois Auque. "In order to implement a solution, of course, we would need to find partnerships and to invest, to develop operational systems," he told BBC News.

Those partnerships could comprise space agencies, the EU or national governments and even power companies, he said.

'Safe' system

Space solar power is an attractive concept because it would be clean, inexhaustible, and available 24 hours a day.

The amount of energy falling on photovoltaic cells placed in orbit is considerably greater than the same solar panels positioned on the Earth's surface. In space, the incidence of light is unaffected by clouds, dust or the filtering effects of atmospheric gases.

Critics, though, have always pointed to multiple hurdles - to the cost of launching and assembling large solar stations in orbit, to the losses in efficiency in conversion, and to the safety issues surrounding some wireless transmission methods, particularly those that use microwaves.

Astrium says the latter can be addressed by using infrared lasers which, if misdirected, would not risk "cooking" anyone in their path.

The company has already tested power transmission via laser in its labs, and is now working on improving the efficiencies of the end-to-end system.

Necessary efficiency

Robert Laine, Astrium's chief technology officer, acknowledges however that there are still some big challenges to be overcome.

"Today, we will be limited in power by the size of the laser we can build. That's a prime limitation," he said.

"On the receive side, the conversion of this infrared energy into electricity - that's something which is progressing very fast and we are working with the University of Surrey [in the UK] to develop converters.

"The principle is to get a very high efficiency of conversion of the infrared [laser light] into electricity. If we achieve 80% then it's a real winner."

Dr Laine said a small demonstration of the technology ought to be ready for launch in the coming decade.

"Like any technology, someone has to demonstrate it first before it can become an operational system," he told BBC News.

"We have reached a point where, in the next five years, we could build something which is in the order of 10-20 kW to transmit useful energy to the ground."

 

DIAMOND OCEANS POSSIBLE ON URANUS, NEPTUNE

From: http://news.discovery.com/space/diamond-oceans-jupiter-uranus.html

Oceans of liquid diamond, filled with solid diamondicebergs, could be floating on Neptune and Uranus, according to a recent article in the journal Nature Physics.

The research, based on first detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond, found diamond behaves like water during freezing and melting, with solid forms floating atop liquid forms. The surprising revelation gives scientists a new understanding about diamonds and some of the most distant planets in our solar system.

"Diamond is a relatively common material on Earth, but its melting point has never been measured," said Eggert. "You can't just raise the temperature and have it melt, you have to also go to high pressures, which makes it very difficult to measure the temperature."

...Ultrahigh pressures, the kind of pressures found in huge gas giants like Neptune and Uranus are some of the places where ultrahigh temperatures and ultrahigh pressures exist. Eggert and his colleagues placed a small, natural, clear diamond, about a tenth of a carat by weight and half a millimeter thick, and blasted it with lasers at ultrahigh pressures.

The scientists liquefied the diamond at pressures 40 million times greater than what a person feels when standing at sea level on Earth. From there they slowly reduced the temperature and pressure.

When the pressure dropped to about 11 million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth and the temperature dropped to about 50,000 degrees solid chunks of diamond began to appear. The pressure kept dropping, but the temperature of the diamond remained the same, with more and more chunks of diamond forming.

Then the diamond did something unexpected. The chunks of diamond didn't sink. They floated. Microscopic diamond ice burgs floating in a tiny sea of liquid diamond. The diamond was behaving like water.

...Up to 10 percent of Uranus and Neptune is estimated to be made from carbon. A huge ocean of liquid diamond in the right place could deflect or tilt the magnetic field out of alignment with the rotation of the planet.

Space based solar power will be a major theme of the 2010 ISDC in Chicago.

The International Space Development Conference (ISDC) will be in Chicago, May 28-31 2010. http://isdc.nss.org/2010/

50% Favor Cutting Back on Space Exploration

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/january_2010/50_favor_cutting_back_on_space_exploration

Fifty percent (50%) of Americans now say the United States should cut back on space exploration given the current state of the economy, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Just 31% disagree with cutting the space program, and 19% more are not sure.

The new findings mark a six-point increase in support - from 44% last July - for cutting back on space exploration.

Still, Americans are almost evenly divided when asked if the space program should be funded by the government or by the private sector. Thirty-five percent (35%) believe the government should pay for space research, while 38% think private interests should pick up the tab. Twenty-six percent (26%) aren’t sure which is best.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of adults have at least a somewhat favorable view of NASA, including 18% with a very favorable opinion of the government’s chief space agency. Just 20% have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008.

But that marks a sizable drop in support for NASA from a survey last May. At that time, 81% had a favorable view of NASA, including 24% with a very favorable opinion.

The May findings, however, were a 23-point rebound for the space agency fromJuly 2007 when just 58% had a favorable opinion. But, at that time, NASA was suffering some bad publicity, including reports about drunken astronauts.

In the budget President Obama proposes in early February, NASA is hoping for $22 billion for the coming fiscal year, up $3 billion over the current year. This funding, according to news reports, will keep the agency on track for projects including landing on one of Mars’ moons in the next 15 years and further exploring the Earth’s moon.

Women and Americans ages 18 to 29 are more strongly in support of cutting back on space exploration than are men and older adults. Democrats are more likely to agree than are Republicans and adults not affiliated with either party.

Women also feel more strongly that the space program should be funded by the private sector. But unaffiliated adults and those in both political parties are narrowly divided over whether the space program is a government or private business responsibility.

Investors are evenly divided on the question, while non-investors lean slightly more toward private sector financing.

Only 27% of Americans believe the current goals of the space program should include sending someone to Mars. Fifty percent (50%) oppose such a mission, with 24% undecided. The findings on this question are unchanged from last July.

The feelings are virtually identical about sending someone to the moon. Twenty-six percent (26%) like the idea, but twice as money (52%) are opposed to sending someone to the moon as one of the current goals of the space program.

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it’s free) or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

That article brings to mind the famous Matula poll cited in the NSSO Report:

Note that the public is 3x as excited about Space Solar Power than Mars or the Moon, and 2x more excited about Planetary Defense than Mars or the Moon.  Of course, the Moon is important for Space Solar Power, but the Moon's importance MUST be seen in the context of Space INDUSTRIALIZATION and DEVELOPMENT, NOT in terms of Space Exploration.  The poll rightly shows the public is smarter than the policymakers.  They recognize that exploration is not the right game for the 21st century, and want more emphasis on development.  They see the possibilities of commercial space, and want to see NASA play an enabling not inhibiting role.  Which means NASA can't continue to be a National Socialist Space-lines, but rather the anchor customer supporting the industry, and conducting pre-competitive research.

Both a Near-Miss and a Record-Setting Detection

From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34826596/ns/technology_and_science-space/ A near-Earth object hurtled past us on Wednesday, just two days after its discovery was announced.

Orbital projections indicated that the object called 2010 AL30 flew by Earth at a distance of just 80,000 miles (130,000 kilometers). That's only one-third of the way from here to the moon.

If the object had been on a collision course with Earth, it wouldn't have done any damage anyway. But planetary scientists said the asteroid, or whatever it was, set a new standard: A 10-meter-wide (33-foot-wide) asteroid can be detected two days before it potentially hits Earth.

New Glitter PV's for SBSP?

Former SBSP study leaders think this new development in PV's might yield a high efficiency light-weight option for Space Solar Power:
http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Glitter_Sized_Solar_PVs_Produce_Competitive_Results_999.html

From 14 to 20 micrometers thick (a human hair is approximately 70 micrometers thick), they are 10 times thinner than conventional 6-inch-by-6-inch brick-sized cells, yet perform at about the same efficiency.

100 times less silicon generates same amount of electricity

"So they use 100 times less silicon to generate the same amount of electricity," said Okandan. "Since they are much smaller and have fewer mechanical deformations for a given environment than the conventional cells, they may also be more reliable over the long term."

Another manufacturing convenience is that the cells, because they are only hundreds of micrometers in diameter, can be fabricated from commercial wafers of any size, including today's 300-millimeter (12-inch) diameter wafers and future 450-millimeter (18-inch) wafers.

Other unique features are available because the cells are so small. "The shade tolerance of our units to overhead obstructions is better than conventional PV panels," said Nielson, "because portions of our units not in shade will keep sending out electricity where a partially shaded conventional panel may turn off entirely."

Because flexible substrates can be easily fabricated, high-efficiency PV for ubiquitous solar power becomes more feasible, said Okandan.

Each cell is formed on silicon wafers, etched and then released inexpensively in hexagonal shapes, with electrical contacts prefabricated on each piece, by borrowing techniques from integrated circuits and MEMS.

Offering a run for their money to conventional large wafers of crystalline silicon, electricity presently can be harvested from the Sandia-created cells with 14.9 percent efficiency. Off-the-shelf commercial modules range from 13 to 20 percent efficient.

A widely used commercial tool called a pick-and-place machine - the current standard for the mass assembly of electronics - can place up to 130,000 pieces of glitter per hour at electrical contact points preestablished on the substrate; the placement takes place at cooler temperatures. The cost is approximately one-tenth of a cent per piece with the number of cells per module determined by the level of optical concentration and the size of the die, likely to be in the 10,000 to 50,000 cell per square meter range. An alternate technology, still at the lab-bench stage, involves self-assembly of the parts at even lower costs.

Solar concentrators - low-cost, prefabricated, optically efficient microlens arrays - can be placed directly over each glitter-sized cell to increase the number of photons arriving to be converted via the photovoltaic effect into electrons. The small cell size means that cheaper and more efficient short focal length microlens arrays can be fabricated for this purpose.

High-voltage output is possible directly from the modules because of the large number of cells in the array. This should reduce costs associated with wiring, due to reduced resistive losses at higher voltages.

Space Solar Power Dedicated Issue: Online Journal of Space Communication

Please See the new Journal of Online Space Communication's Dedicated journal to Space Solar Power:
http://spacejournal.ohio.edu/issue16/main.html
This is the Journal of Space Communication from the Society for Satellite Professionals International, and reaches an entirely new audience.  Released this past weekend, with withthirty major articles, the journals'  General Editor, Don Flournoy, in  "SUNSATS: The Next Generation Of COMSATS  points out that 

"All the more reason why the building of SunSat/ComSat partnerships is a matter of priority. In January 2008, the Space Solar Power Institute of Atlanta GA, approached the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology with a proposal to form "a congressionally chartered public/private corporation" patterned after the highly successful model provided by the COMSAT Act of 1962. The purpose of the Sun Satellite Corporation would be "to build commercial power satellites to collect and transmit energy to electric power grids under contract to wholesale (utility) customers on earth," a strategy that would improve America's energy security. News about this initiative hasn't yet made headlines, but since such an approach is exactly the one most likely to be taken by such other spacefaring nations as Canada, China, India and Japan - our collaborator/competitors in the race to space for energy - this idea is not going away.

Three Martian meteorites triple evidence for Mars life

From: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1001/09marslife/
BY CRAIG COVAULT
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: January 9, 2010

The team that found evidence of Martian life in a meteorite that landed in Antarctica believes that during 2010, by using advanced instrumentation on now three Martian meteorites, it will be able to definitively prove whether such features are truly fossils of alien life on the Red Planet.
This new information goes well beyond the updated findings released by NASA in November 2009 about signatures for magnetic type bacteria.
"We do not yet believe that we have rigorously proven there is [or was ] life on Mars." says David S. McKay, chief of astrobiology at the NASA Johnson Space Center.
"But we do believe that we are very, very close to proving there is or has been life there," McKay tells Spaceflight Now.

Researchers believe that the Allen Hills meteorite where initial evidence for life on Mars was found was blasted out of the area of Eos Chasma near the far horizon in this ESA Mars Express image. The canyon feeds into the larger Valles Marineris canyon near a feature named "Orson Welles." Credit: ESA

"The possibility of life on Mars has become a scientific issue of profound importance and great public interest," Michael Meyer, the NASA Headquarters senior scientist for Mars exploration, told an audience of several hundred scientists at the recent American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
And in a 2009 editorial, The Economist, a highly regarded British publication, also noted the explosion of both public and scientific interest in Mars saying "the possibility of life on Mars is too thrilling for mankind to ignore."
In the mid-1990s, when the JSC team found what it interprets as Martian fossils inside a meteorite that landed near Allen Hills in Antarctica, it was the only example at the time of suspected fossils in a meteorite from Mars.
The team, however, believes it has since tripled its fossil-like data by finding more "biomorphs" (suspected Martian fossils) inside two additional Martian meteorites, as well as more evidence at other spots in the Allen Hills meteorite itself.

Meteorite scientists document a new find in the Antarctic. The Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program (ANSMET) is funded by the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Credit: ANSMET/NSF

Remarkably, some of the most striking new evidence for life on Mars is being found inside in a meteorite that has been sitting in the British Museum of Natural History in London for nearly 100 years, says McKay.
Had British researchers examined their "Nakhla" meteorite with readily available electron microscopes and other tools like those used by the U.S. team, the new evidence for life on Mars could have been a British discovery, rather than an American one.
The Houston-based scientists believe the age spread of their data, from 3.6 billion to 1.4 billion years ago, shows that a planet-wide network of micro-organisms came to life underground on Mars 3.6 billion years ago during the first billion years after Mars had formed along with the rest of the planets in the solar system.
Mars was much warmer and wetter with a much thicker atmosphere then. Simple life forms were beginning to form on Earth at about the same time.
Scientists are able to tell that the meteorites came from Mars by measuring the noble gases trapped in the rocks and also by their geologic character. The noble gas ratios measured to determine Martian origin are helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon.
The twin Viking landers of the mid-1970s measured Martian surface gas compositions in great detail, and the now more than 80 meteorites have been found and designated as being from Mars.
They all have internal gas compositions that match the Viking lander data, as well as Mars rock compositions measured by spacecraft at the planet.
"Similar biological type findings in three different meteorites that also correlate well with ancient Earth organisms considerably broaden the evidence for at least past life on Mars," says geologist Everett K. Gibson, co-leader with McKay and Kathie Thomas-Keprta on the JSC Mars life study team.
According to the JSC team, the three Martian meteorites with the apparent fossil signatures include what appear to be mats of bacteria and specific other biological signatures that are common to all three meteorites.

Scanning electron microscope image of what JSC researchers believe are the fossil remains of a once-living Martian bacterial mat was found in the Nakhla meteorite from Egypt in storage at the British Museum of Natural History. Credit: NASA

They are also highly similar to undisputed micro-fossil life of ancient organisms found in Earth's rocks like Columbia river basalts in Washington state.
In its November update, the Mars team said that for more than a decade after the Martian meteorite data were first presented in 1996, opponents of the life theory argued that fossil-shaped features and associated chemical purity was just as likely caused by the thermal/shock event that blasted the material off Mars in the first place.
But new research led by Thomas-Keprta of the Allen Hills team in Houston has now proven the thermal theory is invalid. She says that finding strengthens the team's argument that uniquely-shaped "magnetic bacteria" features found in the meteorite were indeed formed by biologic activity on Mars and not some non-biologic thermal event.
The new information from the team here goes well beyond the magnetic bacteria that dominated the NASA November release. McKay and co-leader of the Mars life team, JSC geologist Everett K. Gibson, have since provided Spaceflight Now with much more detail on two other major areas that will be the focus of more verification work starting this year.
Noted astronomer the late Carl Sagan often said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," and the Johnson Space Center Mars life team believe they now have, or by year's end will have, such evidence.
The two new areas involve:

More advanced instruments: Powerful analysis hardware that was unavailable or less capable when the Mars meteorite life analysis began in 1994 is about to be used on the samples in all three meteorites. This includes more capable High Resolution Electron Microscopy tools and a major new tool -- an Ion Microprobe analysis system.The Microprobe system will fire a focused stream of ions onto the biomorph/micro-fossil samples. The ions will flash the sample into plasma containing multiple constituents. A powerful spectrometer will then suck that in and out the other side read out constituents of each sample down to parts per billion level for each chemical or mineral constituent. Those ratios will then be used to determine whether the feature has its origin in non-living Martian geology or something biologic that was previously life on Mars.
The new ion microprobe system should also provide the team with even higher optical resolution than the electron microscopes they have been using while also adding a major new chemical analysis dimension, says McKay.

Triple the meteorite samples: The JSC team is finding more micro-fossil evidence of life in the Allen Hills meteorite discovered in 1984 that in 1996 provided initial evidence of Martian life.The team calculates that the Allen Hills meteorite is made of 4-billion-year-old Martian rock carrying fossil evidence of life dating back to 3.6 billion years.
This is an extremely old sample not comparable to anything on Earth today because all of Earth's crust has been processed and reprocessed as part of Earth's plate tectonics. The sample is already proving the presence of water on Mars back to its early days as a planet. If the fossil evidence is confirmed, it will prove that organisms existed on the planet within about 1 billion years of its formation.
After the initial Allen Hills announcement made in 1996 with President Bill Clinton, the Houston team began to search for similar life examples in other meteorites from Mars. And they found that evidence in the already famous Nakhla meteorite that fell near the town of Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. Nakhla fell in about 40 pieces weighing about 20 lb. total.
The largest sample set from that meteorite has been in the British Natural History Museum in London and virtually all of several pieces of Nakhla, which put on a spectacular show of flaming debris, smoke trails and sonic booms when it arrived at about 9 a.m. local time in the Nakhla region of Egypt south of Cairo.
A local farmer claimed that one piece struck and killed a dog. But scientists believe the story was dreamed up by the land owner at the time seeking to boost prices for buyers seeking to purchase pieces.
Then in 2000 a Japanese search team found another meteorite from Mars in Antarctica. It is designated Yamato 593 and also contains signs of fossil life similar to that seen in the Allen Hills and Nakhla meteorites. Both the Nakhla and Yamato life forms date to only about 1.4 billion years old, if it can be proved more definitively.

Features similar to a fossil of bacterial matting has also been found in the Yamato 593 meteorite discovered by the Japanese in 2000 in Antarctica. Credit: NASA

The new evidence for life on Mars is being substantially increased by the discovery of such potential Martian fossils in additional meteorites beyond the original meteorite discovered in 1984 at Allen Hills Antarctica, says McKay.
Answering whether life, even single-celled organisms, formed on another planet is one of the most profound questions in modern science, especially if the answer is positive.
If that can be verified soon, it will also play a major role in Mars space mission operational decisions and the formation of new exploration policy by NASA and the White House. Examples are:

More focused Mars life strategy: NASA's original strategy was to "follow the water" then shift to a strategy of "follow the carbon." The strategy now, however, has been changed again and the new motto pulls no punches. It now simply reads "find direct evidence for seeking out life," says Meyer. That role will first fall to the Mars Science Laboratory rover undergoing final assembly for launch in September 2011.

Next rover site selection: The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, named Curiosity and planned for launch in September 2011, will be specifically targeted for landing at a carbonate-rich site. It will be equipped to specifically look for Martian life as well as habitable areas for Martian organisms. MSL will be NASA's first dedicated astrobiology mission to Mars since the two Viking landers in 1976. Data from the meteorites will be very important in the analysis of MSL life-related findings, Gibson says.

Life's role in the solar system: If the meteorites' biomorphs prove to be true fossils of Martian life, the data will play a huge role in the assessments for life elsewhere in the solar system, such as in the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa. NASA plans to launch in 2020 a major new outer planets spacecraft -- the new Europa Jupiter System Mission -- to orbit Europa and assess the potential for life there.

Life's role in the Milky Way: Positive life determinations from the three meteorites would play a role in the assessment of life on Earth-like planets in the galaxy being sought out by the new Kepler observatory spacecraft that has already discovered five Jupiter-size planets in orbit around distant stars.

Broader study of carbonates: McKay says that all three of the meteorites contain substantial carbonate rock where the apparent fossils are located. Neither rover on the Martian surface has been able to study carbonate rock. If Opportunity can last another year, it will reach Endeavour crater, where such high priority carbonate rock is assessable.

Rover Opportunity drive strategy: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft has found clay-bearing rocks lying directly in the path ahead for the Mars rover Opportunity. It will reach its 6th anniversary on Mars on January 24th and is driving dozens of feet each day toward Endeavour crater that is surrounded by carbonate-rich rock types like that holding fossils in the meteorites. If it can survive another year to drive the final 7-8 mi. to Endeavour crater, the rover will be able to image and analyze this totally new rock type never visited by a rover before. As a carbonate like that in the meteorites, the area ahead of Oppy could have provided a wet, warm, and non-acidic habitat for the formation of life on Mars, Steve Squyres, rover principal investigator, tells Spaceflight Now."Even though we do not think the Endeavour crater is where these meteorites came from on Mars, any information that Opportunity could provide on the layering of similar carbonate rocks would be very useful to us," said Gibson.

Johnson Space Center team believes pits in Nakhla meteorite were left by living bacteria. Some of remaining bacteria is also in each pit. Credit: NASA

The other rover, Spirit, marked its 6th anniversary on Jan. 4, but NASA is resigned to declaring Spirit's roving days are over where it has been stuck since April in water and volcanically altered soils near the equator on the opposite side of Mars from Opportunity. Given Spirit is stuck for good, the science team is now preparing a detailed stationary spacecraft science program for Spirit but may try and run and steer its stuck wheels even deeper to tilt its solar array deck more toward the sun so the spacecraft can survive at least one more winter on Mars.
Analysis of the Allen Hills, Nakhla and Yamato meteorites show the rock was blasted from depths as shallow as one-half mile and as deep as four miles. This puts them directly in the subsurface water table of Mars, Gibson said.
Maria Zuber, who heads MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science addressed the latest Mars water data this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C.
"Recent observations of Mars from orbiting and landed spacecraft have dramatically changed our understanding of the distribution and amount of water at and beneath the surface throughout the planet's history," says Zuber.
"There is definitive evidence for a watery past, including standing water on the surface, during Mars' early history, and the details of the global hydrological cycle, groundwater upwelling and aqueous chemistry have been elucidated.
"There is evidence that much past surface water is currently stored in the upper crust in the planet's impact-generated regolith," she says. "And present-day Mars contains abundant water ice within a meter of the surface," says Zuber.
The "biomorph" features discovered in the Yamato 593 meteorite look identical to those found inside the Allen Hills and Nakhla meteorites says McKay.
Those Martian samples are also contained along with a mineral substrate called Iddingsite. In such material, the presence of carbonate is a giveaway for what on Mars would have been an underground aquifer with substantial water to generate this type of sample, McKay tells Spaceflight Now.
The Iddingsite deposits continue to form and change the longer water flows through the rock providing additional evidence about the life forms that create tiny biomorphs -- the early stage for fossils that are most abundant with Iddingsite.
Not only is there now abundant evidence for underground Mars life, the Japanese Yamato and Egyptian Nakhla samples, as well as increased samples of apparent fossils, look identical to samples in the Allen Hills meteorite.

Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program map of Antarctica shows the major search area for meteorites where ice moving toward mountains moves meteorites to the surface, where they can be easily seen. Allen Hills (AH) region is at the bottom while Yamato area is at top. Credit: ANSMET/NSF

"Every biologist that I have shown these new Nakhlite and Yamato pictures to agree that they are microbial remains and fossils," McKay says.
And all of them look very similar or identical to the Earth fossil life examples found in Columbia River basalts in Washington State.
The Martian samples have been recovered from Martian depths ranging from an estimated one-half mile below the surface to as much as about 4 miles deep.
Allen Hills team members tell Spaceflight Now that this is especially fortuitous because many assessments about where Mars life would most likely survive is underground, out of reach from solar radiation and where aquifers most likely exist to hold life-giving water.
This is also because those depths match assessments on where the underground Martian water table would have been the most active. Many Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor images show what appear to be discharges of water from canyon and crater walls.
That data was summarized initially before the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.
NASA rolled out the findings again in greater depth before the American Geophysical Union Meeting last week in San Francisco. That meeting was attended by 16,000 international scientists and managers who work in the field of geology, geophysics and other exploration related fields.
Some of the data described here was prepared by McKay initially for presentation to the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.
"The biomorphs in these last two meteorites are nearly identical, supporting our hypothesis that they formed on Mars," McKay told Spaceflight Now.
He also noted that the similarity of the biomorph features across the three main Mars meteorite samples also argues against contamination by material that instead may have formed on Earth.
And Nakhla also scores big when it comes to "following the carbon."
"We see considerable carbon in Nakhla," says McKay.
He cited the work of University of Arizona geoscientist Dr. A.J. Timothy Jull, who has shown that at least 70 percent of the carbon in Nakhla is not from Earth but had to come from Mars.
The new Martian life evidence has come to light just as President Barack Obama is examining increased funding for NASA.
That federal budget decision is being made in the wake of presidential review commission findings that the agency needs at least $3 billion more annually to develop new launchers and spacecraft that would both replace the space shuttle and send astronauts beyond Earth orbit with Mars the ultimate destination before mid-century.
That Mars is the ultimate destination is pretty clear in the report by a team headed by Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin. But how to go about it remains the bigger unanswered question.
Independent researchers in New Mexico and Hawaii say images and geochemical data from MRO and the European Space Agency Mars Express orbiter indicate that the Allen Hills meteorite was blasted out of the southern end of the vast Valles Marineris in a canyon at a junction called Eos Chasma.
In a striking coincidence, this location believed the source for the first meteorite found to carry evidence of Mars life to Earth is fed directly by a channel named after the late "Orson Welles."
In 1938 he panicked the entire U.S. with his Halloween radio news bulletin broadcast of H.G. Wells fiction "War of the Worlds" about the first Martian landing in New Jersey.
This is the second of a pair of articles updating the analysis of evidence for life on Mars carried to Earth in meteorites. The first appeared in Spaceflight Now on Nov. 24, 2009.

Video: Planetary Defense - WISE Spacecraft - NASA

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=101753031
Michio Kaku on Fox regarding the WISE telescope.

Space Based Solar Power - Energy Source of the Future or Doomsday Weapon?

From: http://www.overidon.com/2010/01/space-based-solar-power-energy-source-of-the-future-or-doomsday-weapon/

Space Based Solar Power – Energy Source of the Future or Doomsday Weapon? Space Based Solar Power is so cool. It’s something you’d expect to see in a science fiction movie. Basically, Space Based Solar Power uses an orbiting space satellite to collect solar energy via mirrors and use  photovoltaics to convert the energy. Then the energy is transmitted to a collector on Earth via RF (Radio Frequencies) or else by laser beams. Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) makes sense because it collects energy outside our atmosphere and it doesn’t get blocked by clouds. Also SBSP isn’t really affected by the daily rotation of the earth and the time of day because it’s out in space. This type of energy generation could solve a great deal of our energy problems in the USA and for other countries as well. But this technology could easily be used as a doomsday weapon. Think about it, the Space Based Solar Power designs say that they will use mirror reflector systems that are as big a 5km each. That means a SBSP satellite could harness the power of 10 square km of pure solar power and direct that energy into a laser beam or microwave emitter. With that kind of power behind a laser or microwave emitter someone could link an orbiting system to a tracking system similar to a military version of Google Earth and fry or melt a target from space.

In spite of the very possible application of Space Based Solar Power for deadly military purposes I think that SBSP is an excellent idea. It has many positive problem solving aspects to it economically and environmentally. Click here to check out this link to the NSS to learn more about the Advantages to Space Based Solar Power. I like how the NSS says that SBSP doesn’t compete with farm-land. That makes total sense. There is unlimited room to build Solar Mirrors in space. So as long as we have the resources to build the Space Based Solar Power satellites then the relatively small receiver stations on Earth will leave room for farms or cities or natural wilderness. Another thing that the NSS brings up is that setting up SBSP is costly but it is no where near as expensive as constant military operations in places that hostile for collecting oil.

I have Some concerns about Space Based Solar Power that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere on the web. One such concern is that the current designs proposed by the NSS look thin and flimsy and they don’t look like they’d withstand an asteroid or very much space debris. So my suggestion to the designers of SBSP is that they make the construction modular and loosely connected. This way if a major asteroid hit a section of mirrors they would simply snap off instead of threatening to destroy the entire satellite and especially what I would expect to be the expensive Photovoltaic converters and the RF emitter. If part of the mirrors broke off it wouldn’t be that big of a deal because another space transport could go up and repair the SBSP satellite at a later date and it could still function albeit with less efficiency.

-Tyler

CIA shares intelligence with climate scientists

From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34699949/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

As we often find after-the-fact, cutting edge technologies and capabilities designed for one thing end up being useful for unintended peaceful purposes.  It is terrific that the world can engage its intelligence assets to track climate change.  Could we find a similar match of capabilities in our security space capabilities be applied to the Near Earth Object (NEO) / Planetary Defense.

Nasa's Kepler planet-hunter detects five worlds

By Jonathan Amos

Science correspondent, BBC News
From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8440392.stm
Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope has detected its first five exoplanets, or planets beyond our Solar System.


The observatory, which was launched last year to find other Earths, made the discoveries in its first few weeks of science operations.

Although the new worlds are all bigger than our Neptune, the US space agency says the haul shows the telescope is working well and is very sensitive.

The exoplanets have been given the names Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b.

They were announced at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington DC.

The planets range in size from an object that has a radius four times that of Earth, to worlds much bigger than even our Jupiter.

And they all circle very close to their parent stars, following orbits that range from about 3.2 to 4.9 days.

This proximity and the fact that the host stars are themselves much hotter than our Sun means Kepler's new exoplanets experience an intense roasting.

Intriguing density

Estimated temperatures go from about 1,200C to 1,650C (2,200F to 3,000F).

"The planets we found are all hotter than molten lava; they all simply glow with their temperatures," said Bill Borucki, Kepler's lead scientist from Nasa's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

"In fact the upper two are hotter than molten iron and looking at them might be like looking at a blast furnace. They are very bright in their own right and certainly no place to look for life."


Kepler 7b will intrigue many scientists. It is one of the lowest-density exoplanets (about 0.17 grams per cubic centimetre) yet discovered.

"The average density of this planet with its core is about the same as Styrofoam," explained Dr Borucki. "So it's an amazingly light planet, something I'm sure theoreticians will be delighted to look at in terms of trying to understand [its] structure."

Kepler blasted into space atop a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 6 March, 2009.

It is equipped with the largest camera ever launched into space. The telescope's mission is to continuously and simultaneously observe more than 100,000 stars.

It senses the presence of planets by looking for a tiny "shadowing" effect when one of them passes in front of its parent star.

'Water worlds'

Kepler's detectors, built by UK firm e2v, have extraordinary sensitivity.

Nasa says that if the observatory were to look down at a small town on Earth at night from space, it would be able to detect the dimming of a porch light as somebody passed in front of it.

The space agency hopes this sensitivity will lead it to planets that are not only Earth-size but which orbit their stars at distances more favourable to life, where liquid water might potentially reside on their surfaces.


The mission's scientists told the AAS meeting that Kepler had measured hundreds of possible planet signatures but that these needed further investigation to establish their true nature.

To confirm the existence of the most ideal Earth-like planets would take a few years, they warned.

In the meantime, all detections will help scientists improve their statistics on the distributions of planet size and orbital period.

The follow-up observations needed to confirm the new exoplanets' existence used a suite of ground-based facilities including the Keck I telescope in Hawaii.

California's Renewable Mandate

From: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0118/outfront-california-renewable-clean-energy-or-bust.html

California's Renewable Mandate
Lee Gomes, 01.18.10, 12:00 AM ET
Solar energy beamed to earth from outer space: It's Popular Mechanics-style engineering with a whiff of science fiction--the stuff, maybe, of a Discovery Channel documentary. But a way for a quarter-million California homes to be getting their electrical power, and not in 60 years, but in 6?

That's the plan. The state's Public Utilities Commission in December approved a proposal by Pacific Gas & Electric to buy power from a southern California startup named Solaren.

Solaren is the creation of ten or so veterans of the region's aeronautics and defense industries; as of a few weeks ago it had neither a Web site nor an office. What it has is some grandiose ideas.

So why is PG&E mixed up in this? Utilities are facing a requirement from the legislature to get 20% of their power from renewable sources by 2010, though an extension will likely be granted. PG&E currently gets 14% from renewables, including geothermal and biomass. You'd think getting to 20% would be an easy task in a big state with deserts, coastlines and windy mountain passes. PG&E is having a rough time at it, though.

In some cases renewable energy technologies remain expensive or unproven. At other times solar and wind farms have been blocked by environmentalists or neighbors who didn't care to look at these things. So the company says it is taking something of a portfolio theory approach to alternative energy sources, embracing a collection of them with the expectation some might not work out. Solaren would seem to be the riskiest of the lot.

Solar panels would be lifted by rockets into an orbit 22,000 miles high, where they would unfurl themselves into an array roughly a third the size of New York's Central Park. Rays from the sun, which are plentiful at that elevation, would be converted to electricity and then beamed down via microwaves to someplace along the PG&E grid. Birds and airplanes would have to keep a distance from the beams.

All of the individual pieces of such a power system have been built before, many times. But never at such a scale. The folks at Solaren say they have concrete ideas on how to make the whole thing work--how to assemble a solar array without astronauts, for example--but aren't providing many details to outsiders.

PG&E says its only commitment to Solaren has been to agree to buy whatever power the company can generate (estimated at 2% of PG&E's needs today). Solaren estimates that to get its panels off the ground it will need several billion dollars, which it is in the process of raising from private investors.

Naturally the plan has attracted skeptics. Not because of the basic idea; space solar power is being pursued in various forms all over the world, including by Japan's space agency. The doubts involve whether the meager resources available to Solaren are up to the moon-shot ambitions of the undertaking.

Martin Hoffert, a New York University physicist who is a big believer in space power, says this is properly the work of a government outfit like NASA. The science might be mostly on the mark, but what's happening in California, he says, "is the wrong business plan."

It may not be wrong for PG&E, though. If Solaren's panels never fly, the utility can say it tried very, very hard to get renewable energy and needs another extension.

Space Solar Power and the Environment

New material:

http://space.alglobus.net/papers/sspEnvironment.pdf

It's conclusion: "When we examine the environmental costs of long term energy production, it is

fairly clear that SSP built from lunar materials is far superior to coal, oil, gas,

and nuclear energy."

Is SSP competitive with Nuclear?

http://alspolitics.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-ssp-competitive-with-nuclear.html

Russia weighs in on asteroid worries Space chief joins debate, calls for mission to divert near-Earth object

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

updated 9:34 p.m. ET Dec. 30, 2009

MOSCOW - Russia’s space chief said Wednesday that a spacecraft may be dispatched to shift an asteroid's course and reduce the chances of Earth impact, even though U.S. experts say such a scenario is unlikely.

Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's Federal Space Agency, told Golos Rossii (Voice of Russia) radio that officials would hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to the asteroid Apophis. He said his agency might eventually invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project.

When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated its chances of smashing into Earth in its first flyby, in 2029, at 1 in 37.

Further studies have ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles (29,450 kilometers) from Earth’s surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters.

Researchers currently put the chances that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 at 1 in 233,000, and NASA says another close encounter in 2068 involves a 1-in-330,000 chance of impact. The collision risk is expected to fall to zero as more observations are made.

“It wasn’t anything to worry about before. Now it’s even less so,” said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Four years ago, NASA drew up a plan that called for a spacecraft to be sent to Apophis in 2019 if the threat did not disappear entirely by 2013, when the asteroid will be well-placed for detailed study.

The head of NASA's Near Earth Object Program, Don Yeomans, said in an e-mail that more accurate calculations "will almost certainly remove any possibility of an Earth collision" in 2036. "While Apophis is almost certainly not a problem, I am encouraged that the Russian science community is willing to study the various deflection options that would be available in the event of a future Earth threatening encounter by an asteroid,” Yeomans said.

Without mentioning NASA's findings, Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit Earth by 2032," Perminov said.

"People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people," Perminov said.

How to dodge an asteroid
Scientists have long theorized about asteroid deflection strategies. Some have proposed sending a probe to rendezvous with a dangerous asteroid and use subtle gravitational effects to change its trajectory. Such a strategy, employing an "asteroid tractor," would require years or even decades to work.

Others have suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid and alter its momentum, or using nuclear weapons to hit it.

Perminov wouldn't disclose any details of the project, saying they still need to be worked out. But he said the mission wouldn't require any nuclear explosions.

Hollywood action films "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon," have featured space missions scrambling to avoid catastrophic collisions. In both movies, space crews use nuclear bombs in an attempt to prevent collisions.

"Calculations show that it's possible to create a special-purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision without destroying it (the asteroid) and without detonating any nuclear charges," Perminov said. "The threat of collision can be averted."

Boris Shustov, the director of the Institute of Astronomy under the Russian Academy of Sciences, hailed Perminov's statement as a signal that officials had come to recognize the danger posed by asteroids.

"Apophis is just a symbolic example, there are many other dangerous objects we know little about," he said, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

Questions about Russian role
NBC News space analyst James Oberg agreed that the asteroid impact threat merited more international attention, but he worried that the Russian statements were "way overblown" and might be counterproductive.

"Naturally, Russia wants to link up with U.S. and European scientists to work out a plan, at our expense. This is a consistent Russian goal," he said in an e-mail. "Russia really has nothing to contribute to such an effort aside from cheap boosters — and all of them too small for any serious asteroid deflection effort."

Last year, space experts issued a report urging the world's governments to come up with contingency plans to address potential threats from near-Earth objects, with the final decision to be made by the U.N. Security Council. That report is currently under consideration by a U.N. committee.

"Asteroid deflection, and the much more pressing issue of orbital debris cleanup, must be undertaken in a world consensus mode, since unilateral efforts could be stymied by objections of some space powers not party to the project," Oberg said. "Once again, the problem is not in the stars, but in ourselves."

This report includes information from msnbc.com and The Associated Press.

SSP discussion proliferates

SSP Video Appears on Two new sites:
http://diysolarnow.com/blog/solar-power-kits/space-based-solar-power
http://www.handyman-source.com/646/space-based-solar-power/
http://www.golivemobile.net/sample/blog/?p=853

Giant asteroid to pass earth at close range 270-metre rock will swing by in 2029 — and it could be back after that

from: http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/article/744268--giant-asteroid-to-pass-earth-at-close-range
The head of Russia's space agency called on Wednesday for a massive planetary effort to deflect a massive asteroid as it skips by the Earth in 2029.

"People's lives are at stake," Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio. "We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people."

Perminov said that Russia will consider building a spacecraft designed to nudge the Apophis asteroid away from the Earth, and invited NASA, the European Space Agency and the Chinese space agency to join him.

The Apophis asteroid, the size of just under three football fields, was first spotted heading towards Earth five years ago. At that time, it was suggested that there was a 2.7 per cent chance it would strike our planet in 2029. That alarming initial estimate has been seriously downgraded since, but continues to hold the attention of expert observers.

Apophis will first pass us at close range in just under twenty years. It may graze the Earth, missing us by only 30,000 km, less than the distance between the earth and the moon. But, at this point, astronomers have ruled out the possibility that it will hit us.

However, there is a very small chance that it will pass through a 600 metre-wide "gravitational keyhole" as it swings by. That would alter the course of the rock and cause it to slingshot back and hit the Earth in 2036. New NASA calculations released in October put the chances of impact during the second pass at 1-in-250,000.

That doesn't sound too terribly alarming, but as Dr. William Ailor, of California's Aerospace Corporation said Wednesday, "That's a pretty high probability if you're betting the planet."

In April, Ailor chaired the bi-annual Planetary Defense Conference that brings together the world's leading asteroid experts.

"There are still issues around how great does the risk have to be before you start planning a mission like this. But ultimately, everyone agrees that we will have to do this sooner or later," Ailor said.

Prof. Donald K. Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, says the time to make a decision on Apophis is in late 2012 and early 2013, when it makes another close approach, within about nine million miles of Earth.

"The additional optical and radar data taken then will almost certainly remove any possibility of an Earth collision in April 2036. To my mind it would make sense to wait until 2013, refine the orbit and in the very unlikely event that the impact probability increases, then begin planning possible deflection options.

"While Apophis is almost certainly not a problem, I am encouraged that the Russian science community is willing to study the various deflection options that would be available in the event of a future Earth threatening encounter by an asteroid. We haven't found one yet but it does make sense to study deflection options in advance."

A variety of deflection methods have been suggested in past: gravitational tractors, landing a manned mission on Apophis, knocking it off target by ramming it or striking it with nuclear weapons. There is no broad consensus on what might work best.

"There's also the question of how you design the 'campaign' to attack the asteroid. You'd probably have to launch multiple vehicles, in case some failed," Ailor said.

Five years ago, Ailor said, the Aerospace Corp. ballparked the cost of such a mission at $80 billion (U.S.). NASA's current annual budget is a little over $17 billion. Perminov, sounding less than expert on the whole subject, got the year of impact wrong (2032), couldn't cite the latest estimates accurately and seriously underestimated the potential cost. But he's right about the risk.

Ailor points out that the asteroid which exploded over Tunguska, Russia in 1908 was only 30 metres across. It devastated more than 2,000 square kilometres of forest. Apophis is 270 metres in diameter.

What if it hit the Earth directly?

"That'd be a very bad day," Ailor said. "Probably not the end of all life as we know it. But a bad day."

Russia May Send Spacecraft to Asteroid

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/air-space/ci.Russia+May+Send+Spacecraft+to+Asteroid.opinionPrint
- AP 
- December 30, 2009
Russia's space chief said Wednesday his agency will consider sending a spacecraft to a large asteroid to knock it off its path and prevent a possible collision with Earth.
MOSCOW — Russia is considering sending a spacecraft to a large asteroid to knock it off its path and prevent a possible collision with Earth, the head of the country's space agency said Wednesday.
Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis, telling Golos Rossii radio that it would invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project once it is finalized.
When the 885-foot asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37, but have since lowered their estimate.
SLIDESHOW: How Could Scientists Prevent an Asteroid Impact?
Further studies ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles above Earth's surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters.
In October, NASA lowered the odds that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 from a 1-in-45,000 as earlier thought to a 1-in-250,000 chance after researchers recalculated the asteroid's path. It said another close encounter in 2068 will involve a 1-in-330,000 chance of impact.
Without mentioning NASA findings, Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032," Perminov said.
"People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people," Perminov said.
Scientists have long theorized about asteroid deflection strategies. Some have proposed sending a probe to circle around a dangerous asteroid to gradually change its trajectory. Others suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid and alter its momentum, or using nuclear weapons to hit it.
Perminov wouldn't disclose any details of the project, saying they still need to be worked out. But he said the mission wouldn't require any nuclear explosions.
Hollywood action films "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon," have featured space missions scrambling to avoid catastrophic collisions. In both movies space crews use nuclear bombs in an attempt to prevent collisions.
"Calculations show that it's possible to create a special purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision without destroying it (the asteroid) and without detonating any nuclear charges," Perminov said. "The threat of collision can be averted."
Boris Shustov, the director of the Institute of Astronomy under the Russian Academy of Sciences, hailed Perminov's statement as a signal that officials had come to recognize the danger posed by asteroids.
"Apophis is just a symbolic example, there are many other dangerous objects we know little about," he said, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

Why might ET talk?

Below is an interesting discussion about reasons that might compel a civilization to broadcast its existence.

From: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/12/the-human-species-urge-for-et-communication-a-galaxy-insight.html

The Human Species' Urge for Contact - The Search for ET (VIDEO)

The search for extra-terrestrial life assumes two things: that there is some, and that it wants to talk, and while the first is obvious to anyone with even the remotest understanding of the size of the universe the second still poses a lot of questions. The fact is there's only one E.T. whose communications motives we ever understand, and all he wanted was to get off our crazy dirtball.  And we made him up.

Those interested in interstellar inquiry (which we really hope is all of you) should check out the METI discussion linked at the end of this post. The Benford brothers launch an interesting discussion on the costs and constraints of any communicating aliens, and while the idea of applying economic limitations to alien life is depressing it's well worth thinking about.  There's also a discussion of the motivations for messages, and the sort of signal we should expect from each.

Thinking broadly, high-power transmitters might be built for wide variety of goals other than communication driven by curiosity. Here are a few examples:

Kilroy Was Here. These can be signatures verging on graffiti. Names chiseled into walls have survived from ancient times. More recently, we sent compact disks on interplanetary probes, often bearing people’s names and short messages that can endure for millennia.

High Church. These are designed for durability, to convey the culture’s highest achievements. The essential message is this was the best we did; remember it.

The Funeral Pyre: A civilization near the end of its life announces its existence.

Ozymandias: Here the motivation is sheer pride; the Beacon announces the existence of a high civilization,even though it may be extinct, and the Beacon tended by robots.

Help! Quite possibly societies that plan over time scales ~1000 years will foresee physical problems and wish to discover if others have surmounted them. An example is a civilization whose star is warming (as ours is), which may wish to move their planet outward with gravitational tugs. Many others are possible.

Leakage Radiation: These are unintentional, much like objects left accidentally in ancient sites and uncovered long after. They do carry messages, even if inadvertent: technological fingerprints. These can be not merely radio and television broadcasts radiating isotropically, which are weak, but deep space radar and beaming of energy over solar system distances. This includes “industrial” spaceship launchers, beam-driven sails, “planetary defense” radars scanning for killer asteroids, and cosmic power beaming driving interstellar starships with beams of lasers, millimeter or microwaves.

Believe and Join Us: Religion may be a galactic commonplace; after all, it is here. Seeking converts is common, too, and electromagnetic preaching fits a frequent meme.

Interstellar communication is no easy feat (assuming you haven't found any kind of space-time shortcut). People like to joke about how an aliens first look at us will be I Love Lucy or American Idol (in which case we'll be very lucky to avoid extermination), but physically it'd be easier for the alien to warp here and buy the DVDs.  Television transmitters aren't exactly interstellar beacons.  The most powerful transmission tower in the world only emits 2.5 Megawatts - assuming zero losses (and while you're at it wish for a unicorn), by the time the signal reaches the closest star it's spread out over 130 billion square kilometers, only twenty picowatts per square meter.  Not even a trillionth of a lightbulb and, in case you haven't noticed, the only thing we can see that far away is stars.

We have to assume than any information we intercept is either intentionally beamed at us (or out at random) or based on technology we haven't imagined yet.  We should really hope for the latter or it's going to be a long cold existence of extremely slow shouting at each things.

Luke McKinney

Asteroids and Nukes in Space

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/12/18/0516246/The-Social-Difficulty-of-Saving-Earth-From-an-Asteroid
"When it comes to stopping a cataclysmic Earth vs. asteroid event, social science and international political leaders have more difficult questions yet unanswered than physicists do, according to report delivered at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting. Wired has a discussion of an analysis authored by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who worries that the international community is nowhere near ready to begin the complex and inevitably controversial task of deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Among the questions to be answered is whether to modify the Partial Test Ban Treaty to allow nuclear weapons in outer space. Another possibility to avoid the destruction of civilization would require the international community to choose an area on the globe where an asteroid might be 'aimed.' Who would decide which nations get placed in the asteroid's crosshairs?"

ALIEN 'WATER WORLD' FOUND

Exerpts From: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/12/16/2152989.aspx
by Alan Boyle

Astronomers say they have detected a planet just six and a half times as massive as Earth - at a distance so close its atmosphere could be studied, and with a density so low it's almost certain to have abundant water.

The alien world known as GJ 1214b orbits a red dwarf star one-fifth the size of our own sun, 40 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, the astronomers reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"Astronomically speaking, this is on our block," David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, lead author of the study, told reporters this week. "This is a next-door neighbor. For perspective, our own TV signals have already passed beyond the distance of this star."

He said the planet was detected using an array of eight off-the-shelf, 16-inch telescopes equipped with commercially available cameras.

"Since we found the super-Earth using a small ground-based telescope, this means that anyone else with a similar telescope and a good CCD camera can detect it too," Charbonneau said in a news release. "Students around the world can now study this super-Earth."

Super-Earths - planets that are roughly two to 10 times Earth's mass - represent the hottest frontier in the years-long search for worlds beyond our solar system. Planet-hunters reported finding their first transiting super-Earth in February, and earlier this week, other researchers addedtwo more super-Earths to the list.

Those planets orbit stars like our own sun, but the brightness of GJ 1214b's parent star is hundreds of times dimmer. The planet is also much closer to the star than any of our own solar system's planets, orbiting at a distance of only 1.3 million miles (2 million kilometers). That combination suggests that the planet's surface temperature would be about 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius), Charbonneau's research team reported.

Charbonneau speculated that GJ 1214b was a little too hot for life as we know it, "but it didn't miss it by very much."

The planet's discovery was hailed as a potential breakthrough by Geoffrey Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley who is a pioneer in the planet quest. In a commentary written for Nature, Marcy said Charbonneau and his colleagues "provide the most watertight evidence so far for a planet that is something like our own Earth, outside our solar system."

How it was found
GJ 1214b was detected thanks to an innovative telescope system, a cleverly focused observation campaign - and perhaps a little bit of luck. The eight-telescope array, dubbed the MEarth Project, was set up at the Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona. The telescopes were programmed to gaze at 2,000 low-mass stars and check for slight, regular dips in light that could be caused by a dark planet's transit across the star's disk.

Relatively dim, relatively close stars were favored because the planet's dimming effect would be more noticeable than it would be with brighter, bigger, farther-out stars.

Just a few months after the MEarth Project began, graduate student Zachory Berta spotted the signature of GJ 1214b's 38-hour orbit. Based on the pattern of the dimming, the team figured out that the planet was 2.7 times as wide as Earth.

The astronomers then turned to another instrument, the HARPS spectrometer on the European Southern Observatory's La Silla telescope in Chile, to figure out the planet's mass. Such mass calculations depend on another technique that checks for the slight wobble in a star's motion caused by a planet's gravitational pull. The HARPS observations indicated that the planet was 6.55 times as massive as Earth.

Putting those measurements together, the team was able to model the planet's density and composition. The best fit for the data was a mixture consisting of about three-quarters water and other ices, one-quarter rock and a gaseous atmosphere.

Implications of a water world
Although the surface temperature on GJ 1214b would be well above water's boiling point on Earth's surface, Charbonneau said the planet could nonetheless possess an exotic form of liquid water due to extreme atmospheric pressure at the surface. In today's news release, Berta said the pressure may turn at least some of the water into a rare crystalline form known as ice-seven.

"Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a water world," Berta said.

On Earth, organisms have been found living near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where superheated water is held under high pressure. But Charbonneau said he wouldn't want to bet that life could endure under GJ 1214b's crushing conditions.

In fact, it's too early to bet heavily on any detailed description of GJ 1214b. Fortunately, Charbonneau said, the star is close enough that the Hubble Space Telescope could someday analyze the composition of the planet's atmosphere. "That will make it the first super-Earth with a confirmed atmosphere - even though that atmosphere probably won't be hospitable to life as we know it," he said.

Knowing what the atmosphere is made of, and how thick it is, could help astronomers determine whether their characterization of GJ 1214b as a water world is correct. "It's possible that what you have is a ball of rock with a much bigger envelope of light gas," Charbonneau said.

The larger implication of the Nature study is that other super-Earths may be waiting out there with just the right conditions for life. "We found this planet in the first six months," Charbonneau noted. "We had only looked at a small fraction of the stars that we planned to look at through the entire project. That means that either we got really lucky - which is possible - or these planets are common."

Two planet-hunting spacecraft, NASA's Kepler and the European Space Agency's COROT, are expected to find hundreds of super-Earths and Earth-sized planets in the years to come. The first scientific results from the Kepler mission are due to be reported next month in Washington at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Solar Plant in Space Gets Go-Ahead

From: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/solar-plant-in-space-gets-go-ahead/

Solar Plant in Space Gets Go-Ahead

by Todd Wood

California regulators on Thursday went where no regulators have gone before — approving a utility contract for the nation’sfirst space-based solar power plant.

The 200-megawatt orbiting solar farm would convert solar energy collected in space into radio frequency waves, which would be beamed to a ground station near Fresno, Calif. The radio waves would then be transformed back into electricity and fed into the power grid.

“At the conceptual level, the advantages of space-based systems are significant,” said Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, during a hearing on Thursday. “This technology would offer around-the-clock access to clean renewable energy, and while there’s no doubt this project has many hurdles to overcome, both regulatory and technological, it’s hard to argue with the audacity of the project.”

“It’s hard to argue with the audacity of the project.”

— Michael Peevey, California Public Utilities Commission

A Southern California start-up called Solaren will loft components for the solar power plant into orbit and sell the electricity it generates to Pacific Gas and Electric, the major utility in Northern California, under a 15-year contract. The project is supposed to be turned on in 2016.

Solaren, founded by veterans of Hughes Aircraft, Boeing and Lockheed, plans to deploy a free-floating inflatable Mylar mirror one kilometer (0.62 miles) in diameter. This will collect and concentrate sunlight on a smaller mirror, that in turn will focus the rays on photovoltaic modules, according to the company’s patent.

In an interview with Grist in April, Gary Spirnak, Solaren’s chief executive, said that the vital part of making a space-based solar farm economically viable was to take the weight out of the system to reduce the number of rocket launches.

Still, Mr. Spirnak, who previously ran space shuttle flights for the United States Air Force, acknowledged that putting a solar power plant in space would cost a few billion dollars more than a terrestrial photovoltaic farm generating the equivalent amount of electricity.

The rate that P.G.& E. agreed to pay Solaren for the electricity produced by the solar station remains confidential. Also, regulators said on Thursday that the utility could not count the project toward its renewable energy mandates unless certain milestones were met.

Space Solar Power Discussed on Indian Defense Website Bharat-Rakshak

Space Solar Power discussed on Bharat-Rakshak, the premier website and blog on the Indian Military.
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&p=783446
The poster asks:
QUESTIONS FOR YOU, DEAR BRF MEMBER............
1. What do you think is the potential for "Space Based Solar Power" to meet the energy needs of India?
2. Have you seen this discussed in the Indian press/media? (If so, please provide links or outline discussions.)
3. Who seems 'on board' with this idea? (Politicians, academics, business people -- kindly provide names.)

Citizens for Space-Based Solar Power

Here is another Space Solar Power Blog, the Citizen's for Space-Based Solar Power:
http://c-sbsp.org/
As of today, it had received 8,005 hits...small, but an increasing number of people have heard of the idea since its renaissance post 2007.

SGAC releases a film about the true facts around asteroids that threaten Earth

From: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29733

The Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) Near Earth Object (NEO) Working Group has released a film about NEOs and planetary defense. The volunteer made documentary presents the opinions of international experts on issues surrounding defending Earth from asteroid and comet impacts.

The general public has constantly feared threatening asteroids. At the same time, scientists and astronomers have long analyzed the potential devastation that an impact from space could cause. Only recently, engineers have been designing realistic missions to stop these natural disasters. Encouraged by this fearful mystery that lies around asteroids, as well as by the latest intense planetary defense research, the SGAC NEO Working Group had the initiative of making a film that conveyed non-exaggerated facts about the dangers we face from space impacts, based on recent research and the opinion of international experts on planetary defense. The film can be watched athttp://www.spacegeneration.org/node/2681
[Film is in 4 Parts]

China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) Reviews Space Solar Power

In a recent seminar coinciding with the International Conference on Space Information Technology (ICST09), held 24-28 Nov, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), held a special seminar on Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) involving researchers from MIT and the Space Journal.

Controversy flares over space-based power plan

From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34239347/ns/technology_and_science-future_of_energy/
...Last week, California regulators proposed a plan to approve a 15-year contract with the American company Solaren Corp. to supplyspace-based solar power to utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) by 2016. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has also teamed up with a private Japanese coalition to design a solar space station for launch by the 2030s.

Such projects encourage scientists who dream of harnessing the sun's power directly, without the interruption of cloudy skies and Earth's day-night cycle. Marty Hoffert, a physicist at New York University and one of the staunchest supporters of space solar power, suggests that today's technologies allow space solar power to provide energy as cheaply as the usual solar panel arrays on Earth....Hoffert has pushed for the laser beaming approach as newly effective cost-cutting measure, and even submitted a proposal with his son to ARPA-E, the U.S. Department of Energy's new agency.  "The cost to first power doesn't have to be in the hundreds of billions," Hoffert said. His proposal includes laser transmission tests on the ground in an NYU lab, and then a space experiment launched to the International Space Station.

Jeff Foust Reviews Energy Crisis Solution From Space

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1517/1

Braun lays out a brilliant vision

It is terrific news that there is a committe to review NIAC, which for such a miniscule budget (~1$M) provided such a goldmine of imagination and innovative thinking.  And fantastic to see someone on the board put together a list so similar to what has been advocated in this Blog.  Kudo's Dr. Braun (Co-Chair of the Committee to Review the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board National Research Council)


Testimony given to the Subcommittee on Space & Aeronautics :: October 22, 2009
http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2640

Strengthening NASA’s Technology Development Programs

• Dr. Robert D. Braun
• Dr. Raymond S. Colladay
• Mr. Christopher Scolese
• 
  

Dr. Braun Makes this statement in his testimony-

"I share with these recent high-school graduates a list of accomplishments that I believe our nationʼs civil aeronautics and space program is capable of achieving in my lifetime:

Ten Anticipated Paradigm-Changing Civil Aeronautics and Space Advances
1) Quantify Causes, Trends and Effects of Long-Term Earth Climate Change
2) Accurately Forecast the Emergence of Major Storms and Natural Disasters
3) Develop and Utilize Efficient Space-Based Energy Sources
4) Prepare an Asteroid Defense
5) Identify Life Elsewhere in our Solar System
6) Identify Earth-like Worlds Around Other Stars
7) Initiate Interstellar Robotic Exploration
8) Achieve Reliable Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Transportation
9) Achieve Affordable Supersonic Business Travel
10) Achieve Permanent Human Presence Beyond the Cradle of Earth"

Ask Me about Space Solar Power: Space Solar T-Shirts and Coffee Cups!

http://www.cafepress.com/spacesolarpower
You can now display your vision for the future of Space Power...hats, coffee cups, etc.

Japan eyes solar station in space

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/japanspaceenergysolartechnology

or http://www.physorg.com/news176879161.html

Japan eyes solar station in space (AP)

November 8, 2009

By Karyn Poupee

TOKYO (AFP) – It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan's space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves.

The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades.

With few energy resources of its own and heavily reliant on oil imports, Japan has long been a leader in solar and other renewable energies and this year set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

But Japan's boldest plan to date is the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometres (square miles) in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth's atmosphere.

"Since solar power is a clean and inexhaustible energy source, we believe that this system will be able to help solve the problems of energy shortage and global warming," researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of the project participants, wrote in a report.

"The sun's rays abound in space."

The solar cells would capture the solar energy, which is at least five times stronger in space than on Earth, and beam it down to the ground through clusters of lasers or microwaves.

These would be collected by gigantic parabolic antennae, likely to be located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs, said Tadashige Takiya, a spokesman at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The researchers are targeting a one gigawatt system, equivalent to a medium-sized atomic power plant, that would produce electricity at eight yen (cents) per kilowatt-hour, six times cheaper than its current cost in Japan.

The challenge -- including transporting the components to space -- may appear gigantic, but Japan has been pursuing the project since 1998, with some 130 researchers studying it under JAXA's oversight.

Last month Japan's Economy and Trade Ministry and the Science Ministry took another step toward making the project a reality, by selecting several Japanese high-tech giants as participants in the project.

The consortium, named the Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer, also includes Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp.

The project's roadmap outlined several steps that would need to be taken before a full-blown launch in 2030.

Within several years, "a satellite designed to test the transmission by microwave should be put into low orbit with a Japanese rocket," said Tatsuhito Fujita, one of the JAXA researchers heading the project.

The next step, expected around 2020, would be to launch and test a large flexible photovoltaic structure with 10 megawatt power capacity, to be followed by a 250 megawatt prototype.

This would help evaluate the project's financial viability, say officials. The final aim is to produce electricity cheap enough to compete with other alternative energy sources.

JAXA says the transmission technology would be safe but concedes it would have to convince the public, which may harbour images of laser beams shooting down from the sky, roasting birds or slicing up aircraft in mid-air.

According to a 2004 study by JAXA, the words 'laser' and 'microwave' caused the most concern among the 1,000 people questioned.

Space Based Solar Power on TED

Peter Sage from SpaceEnergy lays out the case for Space Based Solar Power




http://spacemovement.blogspot.com/2009/11/peter-sage-speaks-on-ssp-at-ted.html
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Space-Solar-Power/95417219921
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_m6tlF901g&feature=player_embedded

Also, Space Solar Power made #1 of WSJ's top "Five Technologies that Could Change Everything":
From: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703746604574461342682276898.html

SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER

For more than three decades, visionaries have imagined tapping solar power where the sun always shines—in space. If we could place giant solar panels in orbit around the Earth, and beam even a fraction of the available energy back to Earth, they could deliver nonstop electricity to any place on the planet.

Source: New Scientist

Sunlight is reflected off giant orbiting mirrors to an array of photovoltaic cells; the light is converted to electricity and then changed into microwaves, which are beamed to earth. Ground-based antennas capture the microwave energy and convert it back to electricity, which is sent to the grid.

The technology may sound like science fiction, but it's simple: Solar panels in orbit about 22,000 miles up beam energy in the form of microwaves to earth, where it's turned into electricity and plugged into the grid. (The low-powered beams are considered safe.) A ground receiving station a mile in diameter could deliver about 1,000 megawatts—enough to power on average about 1,000 U.S. homes.

The cost of sending solar collectors into space is the biggest obstacle, so it's necessary to design a system lightweight enough to require only a few launches. A handful of countries and companies aim to deliver space-based power as early as a decade from now.

Blogger's Note, as of right now, that list of companies include: 
SpaceEnergy (http://www.solarenspace.com/)
Solaren (http://www.solarenspace.com/)
ManagedEnergy (http://managedenergytech.com/)
Welsom Solar
PowerSat (http://www.powersat.com/)
HelioSat
PlanetPower
Packer Engineering (http://www.packereng.com/services/research_development.html)
Space Island Group http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/solarsat.html)
and several of the major Aerospace and Energy companies have displayed tepid interest.

Stellar blast is record-breaker

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8329865.stm
By Victoria Gill 
Science reporter, BBC News

Astronomers have confirmed that an exploding star spotted by Nasa's Swift satellite is the most distant cosmic object to be detected by telescopes.

In the journal Nature, two teams of astronomers report their observations of a gamma-ray burst from a star that died 13.1 billion light-years away.

The massive star died about 630 million years after the Big Bang.

UK astronomer Nial Tanvir described the observation as "a step back in cosmic time".

Professor Tanvir led an international team studying the afterglow of the explosion, using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii.

Swift detects around 100 gamma ray bursts every year

He told BBC News that his team was able to observe the afterglow for 10 days, while the gamma ray burst itself lasted around 12 seconds.

The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is an example of one of the most violent explosions in the Universe.

It is thought to have been associated with the cataclysmic death of a massive star - triggered by the centre of the star collapsing to form a "stellar-sized" black hole.

"Swift detects something like 100 gamma ray bursts per year," said Professor Tanvir. "And we follow up on lots of them in the hope that eventually we will get one like this one - something really very distant."

Another team, led by Italian astronomer Ruben Salvaterra studied the afterglow independently with the National Galileo Telescope in La Palma.

Little red dot

He told BBC News: "This kind of observation is quite difficult, so having two groups have the same result with two different instruments makes this much more robust."

"It is not surprising - we expected to see an event this distant eventually," said Professor Salvaterra.

"But to be there when it happens is quite amazing - definitely something to tell the grandchildren."

A GAMMA-RAY BURST RECIPE Models assume GRBs arise when giant stars burn out and collapse During collapse, super-fast jets of matter burst out from the stars Collisions occur with gas already shed by the dying behemoths The interaction generates the energetic signals detected by Swift Remnants of the huge stars end their days as black holes

The astronomers were able to calculate the vast distance using a phenomenon known as "red shift".

Most of the light from the explosion was absorbed by intergalactic hydrogen gas. As that light travelled towards Earth, the expansion of the Universe "stretches" its wavelength, causing it to become redder.

"The greater that amount of movement [or stretching], the greater the distance." he said.

The image of this gamma ray burst was produced by combining several infrared images.

"So in this case, it's the redness of the dot that indicates that it is very distant," Professor Tanvir explained.

Before this record-breaking event, the furthest object observed from Earth was a gamma ray burst 12.9 billion light-years away.

"This is quite a big step back to the era when the first stars formed in the Universe," said Professor Tanvir.

"Not too long ago we had no idea where the first galaxies came from, so astronomers think this is a profound moment.

"This is... the last blank bit of the map of the Universe - the time between the Big Bang and the formation of these early galaxies."

Data from two powerful telescopes confirmed the result

And this is not the end of the story.

Bing Zhang, an astronomer from the University of Nevada, who was not involved in this study, wrote an article in Nature, explaining its significance.

The discovery, he said, opened up the exciting possibility of studying the "dark ages" of the Universe with gamma ray bursts.

And Professor Tanvir is already planning follow-up studies "looking for the galaxy this exploding star occurred in."

Next year, he and his team will be using the Hubble Space Telescope to try to locate that distant, very early galaxy.

Asteroid Explodes in the Atmosphere: It reveals gaps in planetary defense systems

Yet further confirmation that we need increased attention to short-term warning for small threats:
From: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Asteroids-Explodes-in-the-Atmosphere-125310.shtml
On Friday, the American space agency released a full report, in which it gave details about the asteroid that exploded high in the planet's atmosphere on October 8, in the skies over Indonesia. According to NASA, the asteroid blew up with the strength of 50,000 tons of TNT, an explosion about three times more powerful than the one that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of the World War II. The recent explosion is therefore one of the largest ever recorded, the same source reveals.
Experts estimate that the asteroid was at least ten meters across, and that the extremely energetic explosion took place at an altitude of about 15 to 20 kilometers. The conclusion belongs to Peter Brown, who is an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), in Canada, and also a member of the team that conducted the analysis of the rogue object. There were neither casualties at ground level, nor any material damages following the explosion.
The new event, astronomers highlight, should draw the governments' attention to the fact that the Earth's defense systems are not even remotely foolproof. Experts argue that an asteroid that is at least 20 meters across can possibly cause a lot of damage to the ground, but say that observatories equipped to identify such small space rocks are very few. “If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes. A survey that finds all of the 20-meter objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars,” Minor Planet Center Director Tim Spahr says.
The expert and UWO colleague Elizabeth Silber estimated the immense energy of the explosion from infrasound waves that were collected halfway around the world by a listening network, specialized in detecting hidden nuclear explosions. The two astronomers say that this is not a rare event. Such a small asteroid hits the Earth about once every ten years, which is almost continuous by cosmic standards.
The White House needs to develop a defense policy against these space rocks by no later than October 2010. The deadline was imposed by the Congress. It is expected that the decision will be communicated through a National Research Council report, due to be released by the end of 2009, NewScientist informs.

Shiva Crater

Did a very large comet or asteroid strike (600 by 400 kilometers across, likely made by a body 40 kilometers across) the Indian coastline and kill the dinosaurs?


Shiva: Another K-T Impact?

Diagram of Shiva impact area. Credit: Sankar Chatterjee.

by Leslie Mullen for Astrobiology Magazine
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/deepimpact-04r.html


Shoemaker-Levy 9 revisited: or The Geology of the K/T Impact Craters on Earth or Wiping out the Dinosaur with Five Simultaneous Impacts…or
Thomas J. Teters
http://starmon.com/KT_craters.html


http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3IORF1Ei3LIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA31&dq=Chatterjee+and+Rudra+1996+Shiva&ots=ngYDm9C0s_&sig=pv_rRhdm0ZaWQ32GCjDhgN4SnuA#v=onepage&q=&f=false


THE SHIVA CRATER: IMPLICATIONS FOR DECCAN VOLCANISM, INDIA-SEYCHELLES RIFTING, DINOSAUR EXTINCTION, AND PETROLEUM ENTRAPMENT AT THE KT BOUNDARY
CHATTERJEE, Sankar1, GUVEN, Necip2, YOSHINOBU, Aaaron2, and DONOFRIO, Richard3, (1) Geosciences, Texas Tech Univ, MS Box 41053, Lubbock, TX 79409-3191, sankar.chatterjee@ttu.edu, (2) Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech Univ, Lubbock, TX 79409-1053, (3) Exploration and Development Geosciences, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73069

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/finalprogram/abstract_58126.htm


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONTEMPORANEOUS SHIVA IMPACT STRUCTURE AND DECCAN VOLCANISM AT THE KT BOUNDARY
CHATTERJEE, Sankar, Geosciences, Texas Tech Univ, MS Box 41053, Lubbock, TX 79409-3191, sankar.chatterjee@ttu.edu and MEHROTRA, Naresh M., Paleobotany, Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany, 53 University Road, Lucknow, 226007, India
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009AM/finalprogram/abstract_160197.htm


Shiva: Another K-T impact?
by Leslie Mullen  
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/1281/shiva-another-k-t-impact

NASA Refines Asteroid Apophis' Path Toward Earth

DC Agle 818-393-9011

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

News release: 2009-151 Oct. 7, 2009

NASA Refines Asteroid Apophis' Path Toward Earth

PASADENA, Calif. -- Using updated information, NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid. The refined path indicates a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036.

The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields. The new data were documented by near-Earth object scientists Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They will present their updated findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Puerto Rico on Oct. 8.

"Apophis has been one of those celestial bodies that has captured the public's interest since it was discovered in 2004," said Chesley. "Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million."

A majority of the data that enabled the updated orbit of Apophis came from observations Dave Tholen and collaborators at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy in Manoa made. Tholen pored over hundreds of previously unreleased images of the night sky made with the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter (88-inch) telescope, located near the summit of Mauna Kea.

Tholen made improved measurements of the asteroid's position in the images, enabling him to prov