MarsBlog.net

Maybe the Russians should just cut their losses and focus on another planet or the Moon – ESA Abandons Effort To Contact Russia’s Stranded Mars Probe:

NASA had also lent its tracking assets to the Phobos-Grunt salvage effort but was unable to pick up any signals from the spacecraft, which was launched Nov. 8 on a mission intended to land on the martian moon Phobos and return samples to Earth. The spacecraft also carries a small Chinese satellite intended for Mars orbit.

“The mission is no longer feasible,” said Manfred Warhaut, head of operations at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. In a conference call with journalists, Warhaut and ESOC operations engineer Wolfgang Hell, who had been in regular contact with Lavochkin, said Russia is unlikely to give up on Phobos-Grunt.

“We are not in a position to continue, but they definitely will not give up,” Warhaut said. “They will continue to try to send thruster commands” to get Phobos-Grunt’s engines to function.

It seems the more ambitious their Mars missions, the more quickly they fail. Which is too bad – the more Mars missions, the better, but also because the Phobos sample return on this mission would have been really interesting.

Posted on December 4th, 2011 under European Space, Russian Space, Space Science, Space Technology. Tags: ESA, Phobos-Grunt, Russia. Comments Off

Although Keith warns that the story is premature and may not be correct in its particulars, this Science Insider preview of the Obama administration’s revised space policy (particularly regarding Constellation) indicates that it might include some longed-for Christmas presents…including (and especially) the cancellation of Ares I.

I can’t say that I’m thrilled at the possibility of handing off Altair and the hypothetical lunar base to international partners, given the distortions that imposed on the ISS (e.g.: the higher-inclination orbit that allowed Soyuz to reach ISS from Kazakhstan). Nor am I especially enthusiastic about the possibility of accelerating the development of the unneeded Ares V, but I do recognize that it would be a political necessity to appease Sen. Shelby (R-Huntsville Makework Jobs) should Ares I actually get the long-overdue and well-deserved axe. Nor am I thrilled that NASA may be given $1-4B more, given the waste that has already plagued Constellation (Ares-1X, MLAS, and Ares I design mitigations, for example).

The potential stocking stuffers in this story, though, are the appearance that commercial cargo to ISS is finally being taken seriously as a part of NASA’s operations, and (personally, since I work on Orion) the possibility that Orion could switch to riding an EELV as it should have from the beginning. If true, the former will be a big boost to a true commercial space transportation industry, and the latter will make our design job on Orion a heck of a lot easier through more benign launch and abort environments and mass margins (not to mention the stack won’t look like a corndog any more — that’s just embarrassing).  While the rumored policy update does nothing to address what I consider to be the root problem — NASA shouldn’t be doing this stuff in the first place, but rather (if anything at all) encouraging through tech transfer and incentives the growth of robust private sector space industries — it would at least be a step towards a somewhat more sensible way of doing what the agency has been tasked with doing.

Posted on December 20th, 2009 under Constellation, European Space, Moon-Mars Plan, Orion, Space Commerce, Space Technology. Tags: altair, ares, atlas, Constellation, delta, eelv, Orion, Space Policy. Comments: 1

A little self-fluffing from ESA on the 30th anniversary of its inception.

(Funny, I would have sworn there were more than just three exclamation points in that piece. Must be the breathless excitement shining through in the text itself.)

Posted on May 31st, 2005 under European Space. Comments Off

Oh, brother…as if the ISS didn’t have enough problems as it is:
Developing a cultural policy for the International Space Station

The International Space Station is a great achievement of human ingenuity and international cooperation, as well as a cutting-edge research facility. But the European Space Agency believes strongly that the cultural world too should have a say in the future of space exploration…”

And…they would believe that, wouldn’t they? I wonder how the prospective participating artists would feel about engineers and scientists (not to mention entrepreneurs) having a say in the future of “art” and “culture”, or offering “critical commentary” on their own work and its value to society?

“…We therefore want to open the ISS to a new community of artistic and cultural users,” emphasises Daniel Sacotte, ESA’s Director of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration.

“Vood you like to touch my Mummenschanz?”

“This new study sets out to investigate and focus the real interest of the cultural world in the International Space Station, to generate a policy for involving cultural users in the ISS programme in the longer term and to develop a first representative set of ready-to-implement demonstrator projects in arts, culture and media,” explains Dieter Isakeit, Head of the Erasmus User Centre for the International Space Station, who is supervising the study on the ESA side, “and in order to provide potential future cultural users with the full context for their engagement with the ISS programme, the study also aims to examine and articulate the contemporary social and cultural significance of the Station in the larger sense of human space exploration.”

Why am I not surprised that this bit of fluffy-cheese artspeak was burbled up by a man whose surname strikingly resembles a colloquialism for a drug-induced state?

It’s not that I’m against artist participation in the ISS as such — it’s possible that the participating artists could produce good material (something NASA’s equivalent arts programs have managed to accomplish). The problem I see is the high probability of this effort turning into a mockery, producing “critiques” of the cultural oedipal complex inherent in the violent phallo-penetrative symbolism of the docking maneuver and the associated sociolinguistic oppression of wymyn by the appropriation of the homonymous term “berthing”. Etc. I mean…these are sophisticated Europeans we’re talking about.

Posted on May 21st, 2005 under European Space. Comments Off

EU to launch new constitution in space!

Facing uncertain prospects on Earth, the European Union constitution is being launched into space. Struggling to raise public interest in the historic document, EU leaders said Friday that European astronauts will bring the charter along when they blast off toward the International Space Station on April 15 from Baikonour, Kazakhstan.

Too bad our Founding Fathers lacked such means of persuasion — they had to make do with letters to the editor explaining the features and safeguards of the proposed Constitution…imagine! How much easier the Federalists’ job would have been if only Ben Franklin had spent his time building rockets instead of flying kites and chasing after Parisian ladies.

“It will undergo full testing before it can be flown,” EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen told reporters at the opening of an EU space exhibit. “You can be sure it will come back.”

Does this mean they plan to man-rate their Constitution?

If and when the thing ever gets implemented, the citizens of Greater France EUrope may come to wish the document had made its return flight aboard a Progress.

French astronaut Michel Tognini accepted a bound copy of the document as well as the EU’s 12 gold-star flag.

“We have to be sure that we don’t destroy your treaty,” he said, jokingly.

Yes, yes, we wouldn’t want that now, would we (he asked, ironically)?

Seriously, though, just think about that for a moment — the EU is sending with its astronaut a bound copy of a very large document (the proposed EU constitution is not a three-page outline like ours), which one would assume (since no indication is given otherwise) that it is on conventional paper. Does this strike anyone else as a bad idea?

Officials at EU headquarters hoped the publicity stunt would help sell the document, which faces ratification in all of the EU’s 25 member states.

See, now, this illustrates a subtle difference between the US and EUrope — when our government uses its space program for a silly publicity stunt, it’s to pay for something already sold, rather than to sell something to the reluctant masses:

An EU survey released last month showed nine out of 10 EU citizens know little or nothing about the treaty that is expected to become the cornerstone of their political life.

Surely, launching it into space will help improve those numbers — no need to actually ‘splain it to the proles, eh?

Posted on February 13th, 2005 under European Space. Comments Off