China’s space exploration has various implications for Africa

From Citizen Daily: <a href="http://thecitizen.co.tz/editorial-analysis/-/23504-chinas-space-exploration-has-various-implications-for-africa">China’s space exploration has various implications for Africa </a>   

When the spacecraft Shenzhou 9 blasted skywards last Saturday, millions of Chinese applauded yet another feat of the oriental nation’s steady technological gains. While Chinese media have been awash with the pride that comes with sending a female astronaut alongside two male colleagues into space, the significance of this latest space exploration mission is more than merely gender representation.
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Liu Yang undoubtedly goes into the history books as the first Chinese woman to do so. Indeed, her involvement in the programme will help answer as such puzzles as: Do men and women respond differently to the space environment?
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But perhaps more important is that China has over the past two decades been largely going it alone in efforts to set up a space station after exclusion from the five-nation International Space Station (ISS) programme by a US veto. If all goes according to plan, China will have its own fully fledged space station orbiting over 300 kilometres from earth in the next decade.
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This will be a huge boost not only for China’s scientific advancement but also her global reputational capital.
Among other reasons motivating the US to exclude China from the ISS—jointly run with Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Union—is the jitters that China could appropriate space technology for military purposes. While the European Space Agency seems to have been at ease with China’s involvement in the ISS, the US has maintained a nay position as witnessed by the tightening of laws in 2011 that put paid to the possibility of such co-operation any time soon.
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Russia has independently co-operated with China but has been limited to the rules of engagement as far as invitation of China to the ISS goes. An assumption can be made that Japan, a traditional geopolitical competitor of China’s, would equally block China from going aboard the ISS.
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With this in mind, one can appreciate the effervescent mood throughout China over the weekend as the country inched closer to owning a space station. But the Champagne bottles will truly pop when the final “building blocks” fall in place and China inaugurates an independent space station in 2020 or thereabouts.
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The symbolism of China’s space exploration achievements is evident in the choice of the name Shenzhou for the spacecraft—it translates into heavenly or divine craft, the  same name that China has used to identify itself at various stages in its 5,000-plus continuous civilisation.
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Shenzhou’s mission is to link or dock with the prototype satellite named Tiangong which has been orbiting space since September last year. Tiangong means heavenly palace in Chinese. Both Shenzhou and Tiangong were blasted into space by the Long March carrier rocket. Long March calls to mind the Chinese Communist Party’s arduous war leading to the 1949 promulgation of the People’s Republic of China.
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China’s advancement in space exploration has various implications for African countries over and above benefits to humanity.
Away from the fanfare and geopolitical developments that are a subtle throwback to the US-Russia space race of the 1960s, China’s latest achievements will contribute to the search for answers to a wide range of planetary phenomena—from climate change to communication technologies.
With few resources to mount their own space programmes, African countries now have greater choice in benefiting from the scientific proceeds of space exploration beyond NASA or ESA.
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 The conditionality and costs of accessing technologies currently associated with space science will almost predictably fall as a direct result of greater availability.    The greater latitude for African countries in negotiating for space technologies from China will certainly increase the “Look East” attraction and can

The Most Important Milestone from China’s Impressive Week of Exploration

From Wired:  The Most Important Milestone from China’s Impressive Week of Exploration

The seafloor from the Alvin submersible; the Earth from an Apollo mission (Image credits: Jeffrey Marlow; NASA)

A very unusual phone call took place over the weekend, and it happened in Chinese.  Both callers were in cramped metal tins with two other people, but the views from their dinner plate-sized windows could not have been more different.  One man looked out to see 7,000 meters of Pacific Ocean water above his submarine; the other saw the arc of the Earth below his space ship and the vast darkness of space in all other directions.
This clever bit of PR underscores an obvious point: it’s been a good week for China’s sea and space exploration programs, as well as for superlative-hunting historians.  It began on June 16^th, when the Shenzhou 9 launched China’s first female taikonaut – Liu Yang – as a member of the three-person crew.  This was the country’s fourth manned mission, and it featured a marquee headlining event: a docking between a manned capsule and the incipient Chinese space station.  It was a unique challenge of hardware, software, and human skill, a technical hurdle that would justify more complicated mission architectures in the future.

And so, on June 18^th, Shenzhou 9 activated its automatic control system and successfully linked up with the Tiangong 1 module.  A couple of days ago, they backed up and did it again – this time manually, just to show that they could, and to prove to themselves that human skills represent sufficient back-up should the automatic pilot fail.  Shenzhou 9’s milestones underscore the characterization of China’s manned spaceflight program as a deliberate, focused, incremental effort to be a long-term player in exploratory ventures.  A recent article in Foreign Policy magazine even warns that China may be positioning itself to claim the Moon.

Meanwhile, in the South Pacific, the Jiaolong submersible dove to a water depth of 7,020 meters in the Mariana Trench, according to China Daily.  The three crew members tested the scientific instruments, snapping photographs, capturing video, and collecting samples during the dive, which was the fourth of six planned tests during the current expedition.

To be clear, both of these feats have been accomplished before: orbital maneuvers have been taking place for decades, and two submarines have made it to the ocean’s deepest point.  Even the rate of China’s advancement is somewhat average as space-faring developments go: it’s been nearly nine years since Yang Liwei ushered in the era of Chinese manned spaceflight – a time span that saw NASA go from Alan Shepard to Neil Armstrong in the 1960s.  The lack of haste suggests that China’s space program is more than a stunt to ruffle foreign policy feathers or bolster national pride (though there’s likely an element of that in the long game too.)
In many ways, then, the most important aspect to emerge from China’s week of milestones is this seemingly minor distinction: Jiaolong has now become the deepest-diving scientific submersible, opening up 99.8% of the seafloor to scientific inquiry.  Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard – who were there first to kick up the silt at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 1960 – saw a few fish, the extent of their scientific program.  James Cameron’s sub was poised to pick up some souvenirs during its voyage a few months ago, but technical difficulties curtailed the sample collection effort.
A instrument-laden sub is a different beast altogether  Xinhua news agency’s photos of the sub suggest that it’s a one-armed beast (in contrast to Alvin‘s two arms) with a sophisticated array of cameras, lights, sample platforms, and possibly a vacuum that could be used to slurp up seafloor sediment.

The pursuit of high quality science in the deepest ocean trenches is a subtle but important mental shift, marking the move from trench-diving as exploratory novelty to trench-diving as research.  It’s an intellectual grasping of a harsh, distant environment, much in the way that other extreme environments – think Antarctica – have transitioned from no-man’s land to scientific outpost.  Just how the Chinese will use their new capability remains to be seen (many observers note the country’s interest in deep sea mineral resources), but the hardware itself is an important addition to the world’s scientific arsenal.

China's first manual space docking successful

From English News.cn:  China's first manual space docking successful

BEIJING, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Three Chinese astronauts Sunday successfully completed a manual docking between the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft and the orbiting Tiangong-1 lab module, the first such attempt in China's history of space exploration.

It means China has completely grasped space rendezvous and docking technologies and the country is fully capable of transporting humans and cargo to an orbiter in space, which is essential for building a space station in 2020.

Astronaut Liu Wang, assisted by his teammates Jing Haipeng and Liu Yang, controlled the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft to dock with the Tiangong-1 space lab module at 12:48 p.m., which were reconnected about seven minutes later.

About one and a half hours before the docking, Shenzhou-9 parted from Tiangong-1 to a berth point 400 meters away from the module.

To leave room for adjustments, engineers set up four berth points for the spaceship on the same orbit 5 km, 400 meters, 140 meters and 30 meters away from the orbiting lab.

As highly sophisticated space manoeuvre, manual docking requires the astronaut to connect together two orbiters traveling at 7.8 kilometers a second in space without a hitch.

Shortly after the docking, the smiling and waving astronauts greeted the ground crew via camera.

"The manual docking was beautifully conducted. It was very accurate and swift, " said Liu Weibo, who is responsible for China's astronaut system.

The manual docking was completed in only 7 minutes, 3 minutes faster than the automatic docking, said Liu.

Liu explained to Xinhua the three factors behind today's manual docking success.

Firstly, Liu Wang has grasped the sophisticated manual docking technologies very well and his psychological status has been sound. Secondly, the three astronauts were in close cooperation. Thirdly, the domestically-made docking system was reliable, he said.

The astronauts, 343 km away from Earth, were also greeted by Chinese oceanauts from the Mariana Trench, 7,020 meters beneath the Pacific Ocean, where they just broke the country's dive record in a manned submersible on Sunday morning.

"We hope the manual docking is a great success and wish for brilliant achievements in China's manned space and manned deep-sea dive causes," read the message sent by the three oceanauts aboard the manned submersible Jiaolong.

Wu Ping, spokeswoman for China's manned space program, said Sunday the manual space docking was "a complete success."

She told a press conference in Beijing that the three Chinese astronauts had already re-entered the space lab module to continue their scientific experiments.

The spacecraft and the space lab were previously joined together by an automated docking last Monday. The three astronauts, including the country's first female astronaut, Liu Yang, were sent into space onboard Shenzhou-9 on June 16 from a launch center in northwest China's Gobi desert.

China succeeded in automated space dockings between the unmanned spaceship Shenzhou-8 and Tiangong-1 late last year.

"The automated docking and manual docking are both essential and they serve as a backup for each other," said Zhou Jianping, designer-in-chief of China's manned space program.

The manual docking is a significant step for China's manned space program that celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, as China has fully grasped space travel, space walk and space rendezvous and docking technologies that are essential to building a space station, Zhou said.

China is the third country, after the United States and Russia, to acquire technologies and skills necessary for space rendezvous and docking and be able to supply manpower and material to an orbiting module via different docking methods.

The Shenzhou-9 spacecraft is scheduled to part from the Tiangong-1 module manually in four days and take the three astronauts back to Earth next Friday, which would set a record for the longest space travel in the history of China's manned space program.

Wu Ping said China has planned about 19 billion yuan (3 billion U.S. dollars) in budget for the country's space rendezvous and docking missions

The budget will cover the ongoing Shenzhou-9 spacecraft manned space docking mission, the previous missions conducted by the Shenzhou-7 and Shenzhou-8 spaceships, as well as the mission to be carried out by the Shenzhou-10 spaceship next year.

Since starting the manned space missions in 1992, Wu said, the country has spent another 20 billion yuan on manned space missions carried out by Shenzhou-6 and previous spaceships.

Three astronauts who participated in China's first manual space docking mission also congratulated those who partook a new national dive record set by the country's manned submersible in its exploration in the deep ocean.

"We wish China's manned submersible can make greater achievements! May our motherland prosper!" the three Chinese astronauts said in a video message sent back to Earth from the Tiangong-1 space lab module around 5:40 p.m. Sunday.

 

Op-Ed: Bringing Mars exploration from science fiction to fact

From Pasadena Sun:  Op-Ed: Bringing Mars exploration from science fiction to fact

Earlier this year, thousands of tourists and government workers in Washington, D.C., captured a historic moment on their camera phones when the retired space shuttle Discovery circled over the capital on the back of a 747.

Few probably knew this camera technology came from space research. Every time we take pictures on our phones to send to friends or post on Facebook, we can thank Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Technology created at JPL made possible “cameras-on-a-chip.” They are so popular that 1 million of these are shipped every day, and almost every phone in the country uses them.

JPL's work in space exploration has led to a wide variety of products, including in medical technologies and robotics. This has not only improved the everyday life of Americans, it has created thousands of jobs outside the space industry.

However, there is still more vital, cutting-edge work to be done right here in the San Gabriel Valley as we strive to improve life on Earth while exploring the planets around us. It's up to us to make sure this ground-breaking technological advancement, in space and on the ground, continues.
NASA's Mars Exploration program has the potential today to be what the Shuttle program was a generation ago. It represents the next frontier of space exploration and scientific breakthrough, and America is once again leading the way. JPL is the only place in the world that has developed the science and technology to land on another planet.

In 2004, JPL broadcast the first stunning pictures of the Martian surface from the Mars rover Spirit. This was the first glimpse of what we can achieve, but it is only the beginning. Plans are in the works to bring back soil and rock samples from the Red Planet, a fundamental step toward one day sending humans to Mars. This is not Hollywood science fiction; it's American science fact.

However, over the last few years successive administrations have whittled away at NASA's funding. This year, the Mars Next Decade mission took one of the biggest cuts in NASA's proposed budget. Imagine if we had stopped our most intrepid space exploration in its infancy. We might never have landed on the moon.
In order for the Mars mission to continue its work as one of the most successful in NASA's history, JPL needs to be properly funded. The House has passed legislation that substantially increased funding for the Mars Next Decade program. The Senate has a bill that goes even further in restoring the Mars budget, but the truth is neither proposal goes far enough, and the two chambers of Congress must come together so we don't undercut future advances.

JPL's Mars mission is not only vital for scientific discovery; it's also a key source of jobs for roughly 5,000 JPL employees and countless others in the San Gabriel Valley and Greater Los Angeles — one of the areas hardest hit by the Great Recession. JPL's highly innovative work regularly spawns spin-off technologies that translate into business opportunities, more job opportunities and economic growth.

So it is with community and country in mind that I call on the Senate to act. Senators have proposed funding for JPL, but they need to provide even more. My neighbors are counting on them to keep jobs secure and keep the capacity and knowledge built up over the years of the Mars program here.

Our country is counting on them to ensure that our global edge in science, engineering and technological innovation doesn't wane in the 21st century. And the American people are counting on them to make sure the pride we first felt as Neil Armstrong stepped out on the barren lunar landscape continues in this new era of space exploration, with another giant leap to Mars.

JUDY CHU (D-Monterey Park), is in her second term representing much of the San Gabriel Valley and is seeking election to a district that includes Pasadena.

 

China sends its first female astronaut into space

From DNAIndia : China sends its first female astronaut into space

Liu Yang, a pilot in the People's Liberation Army, has made history by becoming the first Chinese woman to go into space.

The 33 year-old is among the three member crew of the Shenzhou 9 mission, the latest step in China's increasingly ambitious space programme.

As a child Liu Yang's earliest ambition was to be a bus conductor, so she could get to travel on the bus every day. But yesterday (Saturday) she was travelling at several times the speed of sound aboard a Long March rocket.

The Shenzhou 9 mission, which blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the remote northwest of China yesterday evening, is a crucial test for China's rapidly-evolving space programme. The ten-day mission will see the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft perform the first manned docking with the Tiangong-1 space lab, a vital step towards China's ambition to have a working space station by 2020.

But it was the presence of Major Liu among the three-member crew that dominated the build-up to Saturday's launch, the fourth manned mission China has sent into space since its first in 2003. Formally introduced to the Chinese people at a televised press conference on Friday, Major Liu has become China's newest national heroine. She is the top subject of discussion on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, with a staggering 33 million posts greeting the announcement that she was to be the first Chinese woman in space.

A communist party member known for giving rousing patriotic speeches, Major Liu has not disappointed her millions of new fans, saying at Friday's press conference how she "yearned to gaze upon the motherland" from space. "I am grateful to the motherland and the people. I feel honoured to fly into space on behalf of hundreds of millions of female Chinese citizens," said Major Liu.

Married, a requirement for all of China's female astronauts, with a passion for cooking and now resident in Beijing, Major Liu has enjoyed a dizzying rise, having only been selected to join the astronaut programme two years ago. Born and raised in Zhengzhou, the capital of central Henan Province, she has been described as a diligent and quiet schoolgirl who enjoyed playing volleyball.

Enrolling in the air force in 1997, Major Liu trained to be a transport plane pilot in Changchun, in the northeastern province of Jilin. Named as a 'model pilot' by the PLA in 2010, she first demonstrated her coolness under pressure in 2003 by safely landing a plane after its right engine had been disabled when it was struck by birds soon after take-off.

Major Liu is the 56th woman to go into space. Her role will be to run the scientific experiments set be to be carried out during the mission.

Shenzhou 9 is expected to dock with the experimental Tiangong-1 space lab in around two days. Major Liu and her two male companions will then spend a week aboard the cramped module. At some point, they will disengage Shenzhou 9 from the space lab and then re-dock it manually. China must master such techniques if it is to achieve its goal of building its own space station by 2020.

 

Huge Asteroid to Fly by Earth Thursday: How to Watch Online

From Yahoo News:  Huge Asteroid to Fly by Earth Thursday: How to Watch Online

An asteroid the size of a city block is set to fly by Earth Thursday (June 14), and you may be able to watch it happen live.

The near-Earth asteroid 2012 LZ1, which astronomers think is about 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide, will come within 14 lunar distances of Earth Thursday evening. While there's no danger of an impact on this pass, the huge space rock may come close enough to be caught on camera.
[Related: Is this the way the world ends?]
That's what the team running the Slooh Space Camera thinks, anyway. The online skywatching service will train a telescope on the Canary Islands on 2012 LZ1 and stream the footage live, beginning at 8:00 p.m. EDT Thursday (0000 GMT Friday).
You can watch the asteroid flyby on Slooh's website, found here: http://events.slooh.com/
2012 LZ1 just popped onto astronomers' radar this week. It was discovered on the night of June 10-11 by Rob McNaught and his colleagues, who were peering through the Uppsala Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.
[Related: Italy crop circle linked to solar eclipse]

Researchers estimate that the space rock is between 1,000 and 2,300 feet wide (300-700 m). On Thursday evening, it will come within about 3.35 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) of our planet, or roughly 14 times the distance between Earth and the moon.
Because of its size and proximity to Earth, 2012 LZ1 qualifies as a potentially hazardous asteroid. Near-Earth asteroids generally have to be at least 500 feet (150 m) wide and come within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) of our planet to be classified as potentially hazardous.
[Related: NASA launches mock asteroid mission - at sea]
2012 LZ1 is roughly the same size as asteroid 2005 YU55, which made a much-anticipated flyby of Earth last November. But 2005 YU55 gave our planet a much closer shave, coming within 202,000 miles (325,000 km) of us on the evening of Nov. 8. A space rock as big as 2005 YU55 hadn't come so close to Earth since 1976, researchers said.
Astronomers have identified nearly 9,000 near-Earth asteroids, but they think many more are out there, waiting to be discovered.

 

Visionary Peter Diamandis' Five Best Reasons the Future is Better Than You Think

From Forbes.com: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2012/06/13/visionary-peter-diamandis-five-best-reasons-the-future-is-better-than-you-think/">Visionary Peter Diamandis' Five Best Reasons the Future is Better Than You Think</a>
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Peter Diamandis has always dreamed big.
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Like a lot of Baby Boomers, he became fascinated with space exploration as a child watching Neil Armstrong’s 1969 moon walk. Unlike most of them, Diamandis never abandoned his dream. After earning a medical degree from Harvard, Diamandis enrolled in the aeronautics and astronautics engineering program at MIT thinking he would become an astronaut, one of the rare few with the right stuff.
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By 1998, Diamandis was on an even more ambitious path. Convinced that the private sector – not government was best suited to to support space exploration, he established the X Foundation, a non-profit foundation, with the sole purpose of privately funding manned-space travel.  In 2004, the X Foundation awarded a $10 million prize to Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and famed aviation designer Burt Rutan for their streamlined, three-person craft, SpaceShipOne. SpaceShipOne made 16 manned flights before being retired, becoming the first piloted spacecraft not launched by a world government.
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Today, the X Prize has expanded to reward “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.” A recent winner: Elastec/American Marine, a small environmental product firm in Carmi, Ill., for a cleanup device that can remove oil from ocean surfaces three times faster than is currently possible.
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Diamandis’ new book, <i>Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think</i>, cowritten with Steven Kotler, acts as something of an antidote to the gloom that hangs over much of the world today. We recently spoke with Diamandis who offered five reasons the future is brighter than it’s ever been.
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    Beautiful Minds.  Nature has programmed most of us to react faster to danger than opportunity, but entrepreneurs are wired differently. Where most see problems, they see opportunities. Diamandis’ new book spotlights the work of legends like Stewart Brand, Dean Kamen and Craig Venter now focusing their prodigious creativity on some of the world’s most difficult problems. An economic system that continues to reward those who take the greatest financial risks serves as incentive for the smartest – and most daring – of us to think big.<P>
    A Better Mousetrap. Today’s PC is yesteryear’s supercomputer. A Masai warrior’s cellphone has better reach and sound quality than that of an American president only a generation ago. That means that we have greater possibilities to collaborate, to capture and store mountains of data as well as to make sense of it in real-time. Given all that, today’s innovators can make smart decisions with blinding speed.
    The DIY Revolution. Small groups of committed individuals are tackling problems that previously only large institutions could take on. Diamandis points to the Arab Spring as an example of a cluster of people who’ve pushed for and created massive change. Again, technology – in this case, social media – plays a central role allowing the few to influence the many.<P>
    The Rise of the 99%. Diamandis believes “the bottom billion” is poised to plug into the global economy and become “the rising billion.” Communication technology and microfinance will drive what promises to be the largest economic and social change since the Industrial Revolution.<P>
    Power Philanthropists. When entrepreneurs like Bill Gates turn to giving, they’re not content to sit back and write checks. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has become a powerful force for global good by applying business strategies to philanthropy. It boasts a carefully defined mission, the best minds, and a willingness to critically evaluate its work and change course when necessary. Diamandis believes other “technophilanthropists” will do the same as they devote their minds and money to the world’s thorniest problems.<P>

Big problems call for clever solutions. Many may come from a handful of – or even just one -  great mind willing to think big. Diamandis has been in the business of rewarding those intrepid souls. His book is a powerful inoculation against doomsday prophesies.

Hero’ pilot as China’s space woman?

From the Times of India: <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Hero-pilot-as-Chinas-space-woman/articleshow/14040848.cms">Hero’ pilot as China’s space woman?</a>
BEIJING: Successful childbirth was one of the criteria that went into selecting female pilots, one of whom will make the journey in China's first manned flight into space in mid-June. One of the two selected astronauts is already a public heroine for having successfully handled a mid-air emergency. <P>

They were selected out of a group of 15 women, who were initially shortlisted on the basis of several qualities including natural child birth, according to Space International magazine under the China Academy of Space Technology. Other criteria include absence of scars and body odour.<P>

One of the two will be chosen for the space journey. Both are transport pilots with the People's Liberation Army Air Force. Natural childbirth is a sign that shows mature physical and mental condition, according to Xu Xianrong, a professor with the General Hospital of the PLA Air Force. The chosen pilots must also be married and living with their spouses because they need interpersonal skills to live in space with male colleagues.
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The two female astronauts, both 33, have been picked out of nine pilots who had been selected for their flying skills and psychological strength. They include Captain Wang Yaping from Shandong province and Major Liu Yang from Henan province.
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The identities of two male crew members have not been revealed. The PLA said on Saturday it will announce the names of the crew closer to the take off of Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft, which will dock with Tiangong-1 spacecraft. Liu Yang was once caught in a dangerous situation when her plane hit 18 pigeons. The plane's windshield splattered with blood and the cockpit was filled with burning smell. She managed to stabilize the aircraft and made a successful emergency landing 11 minutes after the incident.
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Pang said candidates without scars were shortlisted because a scar might open and start bleeding in space and the cramped conditions would intensify body odour.

Is Space Getting Too Politicized?

From Wired Science: Is Space Getting Too Politicized?

Now that the 2012 Presidential field is officially set, the candidates can finally focus on the question that is on everyone’s mind: what would you, as President, do with NASA?  How would you guide the American space program?

Ok, so space exploration isn’t exactly a high salience issue for most of the country, but it does loom large for several swing state constituencies, most notably the Space Coast of Florida.  A couple of excellent articles in the current edition of Space Quarterly Magazine, excerpted on NasaWatch, contemplate the role space policy may have in the 2012 election.

Eric Sterner sees an opening for Republicans. 

“Republicans may sense vulnerability in the Administration’s handling of NASA and the civil space program. During the 2008 primaries, candidate Obama promised to cancel NASA’s flagship human exploration program, Constellation. He reversed himself for the general election, promising to increase support for it, which he did his first year in office, before finally canceling it in 2010 and then muffing the development and roll-out of a new civil space framework.”

If President Obama wins a second term, Aaron Oesterle envisions a cautious, under-the-radar approach that would expend little political capital.

“Space policy is at best a 3rd tier issue for most people (whether voters or elected officials), and having fought two very bruising battles over space policy, President Obama may want space to pass into the realm of “do no harm” to his other priorities.”

Oesterle’s characterization of Obama’s political calculus reflects a recent trend: despite widespread public support for space exploration, recent polls suggest that the issue is getting increasingly polarized.  The overall percentage of the American population supporting the enterprise remained roughly constant between 2008 and 2010 according to the National Opinion Research Center, but the groups declaring that the government spent “too little” or “too much” both grew by about 5 percentage points.

This is an alarming development, because manned spaceflight seems to work best when it’s de-politicized, or, perhaps more accurately, de-partisanized.  Space exploration is a long game: it requires long-term planning and a consistent goal-driven trajectory that builds on previous accomplishments.  It’s difficult to fold this reality into the “what have you done for me lately?” culture of Washington, where failure to hit quarterly benchmarks is grounds for cancellation.  Of course, government-sponsored space exploration also requires public support, and mobilizing enthusiasm without stoking partisanship is a fine line indeed.

If space exploration is something that we decide is worthwhile (and apparently it is), then the best policy is often to let previous plans germinate.  As administrations come and go, the long term path will rarely be exactly what current leaders had in mind, but it’s better to make some progress toward a palatable destination than to make no progress toward the ideal one.  This approach runs counter to the political impulse to exert strong opinions on every aspect of public life, the principle that if it’s possible to have an opinion, one should be had, ideally if it’s perpendicular to that of the opposition.

Ultimately, constant course corrections waste previous investments, sap institutional purpose and morale, and deliver uninspiring results.  Ironically, in order to make more sustained progress and not be subjected to micromanaging debate, space exploration might be best served by falling off the political radar.

How to safely watch the transit of Venus on Tuesday

From Fox News: How to safely watch the transit of Venus on Tuesday
Many people are planning to watch the transit of Venus on Tuesday (June 5), but it's extremely important that prospective viewers be warned to take special precautions (as with a solar eclipse) to view the silhouette of Venus against the brilliant disk of the sun.

For the United States and Canada the transit will begin when the dark disk of Venus first touches the outer edge of the sun, an event that astronomers call Contact I. From the Eastern U.S. and Eastern Canada, Contact I should occur around 6:03 p.m. EDT (2203 GMT). From the Western U.S. and Western Canada, Contact I should occur around 3:06 p.m. PDT.

It will take about 18 minutes for the black disk of Venus to move completely onto the sun's face; ultimately bringing its black disk just inside the sun's upper left edge. If you imagine the sun's disk as the face of a clock, Contact I will occur between the 11:30 and 12 o'clock position. Venus will then progress along a track that will run diagonally from the upper left to the lower right.

If you wish to generate predictions for the transit times from where you live, the Astronomical Applications Department of the US Naval Observatory has produced an online Transit Computer at: http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/data-services/transit-us

Unlike transits of the sun involving the planet Mercury, those of Venus are readily visible with the unaided eye; the planet appears as a distinct — albeit tiny — black spot with a diameter just 1/32 that of the sun. This size is large enough to readily perceive with the naked eye.

But Again . . . Be Careful!

Eye safety is always a prime concern when dealing with the sun. Observing a transit is a lot like studying sunspots because, after all, you are looking at a dark spot on the sun.

But trying to see a transit is also like trying to view a solar eclipse. You have to be ready at a particular time, and you may have to travel far from home. For the transit of Venus, however, your exact location is much less critical than it is for a total solar eclipse.

In particular, observers in Eastern North America, where the transit will happen in the early evening, your observing site should have a low horizon to the east-northeast. It is a good precaution to check the sun's setting point, to verify that trees or buildings do not block your view. As Venus moves across the face of the sun, it will appear absolutely jet black in contrast to the lighter gray of any sunspots that may also be present on the solar disk.

By far, the safest way to view the transit is to construct a so-called pinhole camera. A pinhole, or small opening, is used to form an image of the sun on a screen that is placed about three feet behind the opening.

Binoculars or a small telescope mounted on a tripod can also be used to project a magnified image of the sun onto a white card. Just be sure not to look through the binoculars or telescope when they are pointed directly at the sun! Venus should appear as a distinct, albeit tiny dot on the projected image.

A variation of the pinhole theme is the "pinhole mirror." To make one, cover a pocket mirror with a piece of paper that has a quarter-inch hole punched in it. Open a sun-facing window and place the covered mirror on the sunlit sill so that it reflects a disk of light onto the far wall inside.

The disk of light is an image of the sun's face. The farther away from the wall you place it the better; the image will be only one inch across for every 9 feet (2.7 meters) from the mirror. Modeling clay works well to hold the mirror in place.

Experiment with different-size holes in the paper. Again, a large hole makes the image bright, but fuzzy, and a small one makes it dim but sharp. Darken the room as much as possible for the best effect. Be sure to try this out beforehand to make sure the mirror's optical quality is good enough to project a clean, round image. Of course, don't let anyone look at the sun in the mirror.

Acceptable filters for unaided visual solar observations include aluminized Mylar. Some astronomy dealers carry Mylar filter material specially designed for solar observing. Also acceptable is shade 13 or 14 arc-welder's glass, which is available for just a few of dollars at welding supply shops.

Unacceptable filters include sunglasses, old color film negatives, photographic neutral-density filters, and polarizing filters. Although these materials have very low visible-light transmittance levels, they transmit an unacceptably high level of near-infrared radiation that can cause a thermal retinal burn. The fact that the sun appears dim, or that you feel no discomfort when looking at the sun through the filter, is no guarantee that your eyes are safe.

Using a Telescope

Projecting the sun’s magnified image through binoculars, or better yet a telescope, on to a white card or screen is relatively safe and can be used for group viewing. For serious transit observing, a telescope with a full-aperture solar filter is much better. These filters are attached to the side of the telescope that faces the sun, not the side facing your eye. This will cause most of the sunlight to be filtered out before entering your telescope.

The transit should be watched only with an appropriate solar filter — a solar filter that is sold by a reputable outlet of astronomical equipment. If your telescope comes with a filter that screws into the eyepiece, discard it immediately! These filters have been known to crack under the intense heat of the sun's magnified image.

Lastly, never look at the sun directly through your telescope, even through your finder scope. It is strongly advisable to cover the finder before the transit, so as to avoid looking through it accidentally.

Somebody recently asked me if they could look at the sun through their telescope while wearing a pair of "eclipse glasses" – special filters mounted on cardboard eyeglass frames. The answer is absolutely not! Such a filter is for naked-eye use only! If you try looking through the eyepiece of binoculars or a telescope while wearing these glasses, the concentrated heat from the sun will almost certainly melt a hole through the filtering material, allowing a sudden burst of dazzling sunlight to reach your eye.

Next Time?

Should poor weather hinder or completely obscure your view of the Venus transit, the next opportunity will not come until Dec. 10, 2117. Unfortunately, most who are now reading these words are not likely to be around when that date finally comes around.

Furthermore, much of North America will miss out on the 2117 event, as the transit will not begin until the sun has set. Only observers in the far west will be able to see the very beginning of Venus’s march across the sun before sunset.

The Venus transit of Dec. 8, 2125, however, will be kinder to North America. Venus will begin its passage across the sun soon after sunrise for the East Coast. For the rest of the continent, Venus will already be on the sun as it rises. The final two or three hours of the transit will be visible from the west coasts of Canada and the U.S.

Launching a for- profit space race

From Star Democrat, an op-ed: Launching a for- profit space race

Chin up, space buffs. Stop mourning the end of America's shuttle program and start celebrating the beginning of the next great adventure a for-profit space race led by young entrepreneurs who want to hurl rockets skyward more efficiently than the federal government ever did.

Last week, a capsule built by the private company SpaceX was launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral and later docked with the International Space Station, where its cargo of supplies was unloaded. The capsule, called Dragon, was scheduled to be packed with science gear and sent home today for a splashdown in the Pacific.

SpaceX is short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Its boss is billionaire Elon Musk, who's 40. The average age of its employees is 30. And they've made history.

"Although cargo hauls have become routine," The Associated Press reported after the Dragon docked with the space station, "Friday's linkup was significant in that an individual company pulled it off. That chore was previously reserved for a small, elite group of government agencies."

In fact, SpaceX could be a blessing for those formerly "elite" agencies. The company is contracted to make a dozen delivery runs. In three or four years, it could start ferrying astronauts into orbit so they won't have to keep flying with the Russians.

Meanwhile, other private companies are designing and testing spacecraft, hoping to go into business with orbital supply flights and even space tourism. NASA is encouraging these ventures it gave $381 million in seed money, for instance, to SpaceX while setting its own sights higher, on future trips to the asteroids and Mars.

The romanticism of space exploration never ended. But from this point forward, it will be shared by private firms whose CEOs and investors believe they can make money in orbit.

Successful SpaceX flight may open new era for researchers

Boston.com: Successful SpaceX flight may open new era for researchers
Early in the 20th Century, cars and airplanes were awe-inspiring. Today both modes of transport have been domesticated — one can build either a car or a small aircraft from a kit. The successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last month, along with parallel advances in commercially operated spacecraft, puts us on the hopeful path of domesticating space exploration and making it far easier to conduct important space research.

The oft-uttered lament of university-based experimentalists like me has been the lack of access to space. Every time NASA releases an “Announcement of Opportunity” for space-based science missions of any size, there are 30 to 50 responses from which typically one or two are selected for the flight. Even if one assumes that only a third of these proposals are of the highest quality, the still means each launch leaves a lot of high-quality projects on the ground.

According to a 2000 report by the Space Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences, high launch cost has been a primary impediment to placing more payloads in orbit. The argument has been that putting a not-so-expensive experiment aboard a high-cost launcher is not prudent. Those cost concerns are why university space specialists should welcome the new Falcon 9, and the Minotaur built by the Orbital Sciences, which now offer competitive low-cost launch options.

However, even more than 50 years after the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 started the space race, space missions remain custom-built projects, slow to develop and expensive to produce. In scientific exploration, the current rate of about one $100-300 million mission per year, along with an occasional $1-5 billion project, cannot support a broad range of experiments or accept the risk inherent in the more speculative — and thus more interesting — explorations. This has led to the “too large to fail” mindset, that only flies flight-proven, not state-of-the-art, technology. To make the next leap, companies like SpaceX and Orbital Sciences must turn space missions into a volume commodity.

Unfortunately, the work force capable of making this transformation happen remains remarkably small. The engineering and scientific infrastructure for aerospace is still in its adolescence due mainly to independently set goals for each NASA mission that have resulted in case-by-case designs. But there are some hopeful signs this is changing.

The NASA rocket and balloon programs, collectively called the suborbital program, have become the national leaders for hands-on training for developing a scientifically and technically competent workforce. CubeSats, the approximately one kilogram, self-contained satellites championed in the US by the National Science Foundation, have now seen worldwide acceptance. The Air Force-sponsored University NanoSat program is similarly stimulating technical creativity among university students. These are the programs that deliberately involve students in meaningful roles and encourage experimentation and innovation where failure is an acceptable option.

They are also a template of standardization and workforce development that the space industry should follow. The development of open standard for spacecraft, infusion of state-of-the-art technology, and a blueprint for low-cost satellite missions for science exploration would open up a new era. Such steps could revitalize the enthusiasm for scientific space exploration that has suffered in recent decades and make space accessible to a broad community. That could be the legacy of the commercial space age.

Houston: NASA Joins Community In Shuttlebration Weekend Celebration

From Sacramento Bee: NASA Joins Community In Shuttlebration Weekend Celebration

HOUSTON, May 30, 2012 -- /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Houston has been with NASA's Space Shuttle Program for 30 years and 135 missions, and this weekend, Houston and NASA will celebrate together as a souvenir of the program arrives in Clear Lake.

A full-scale shuttle replica will be arriving by barge in Clear Lake on Friday, June 1, destined for a permanent home as a space shuttle visitor experience at Space Center Houston, the official visitor's center of NASA's Johnson Space Center. To commemorate its arrival, Space Center Houston has a full weekend of activities planned, where attendees can not only witness the attraction's arrival, but learn more about space exploration – past, present and future.

The Shuttlebration Weekend, as the event is being called, will begin Friday afternoon June 1, as the new attraction arrives at the Johnson Space Center dock at the intersection of NASA Parkway and Space Center Blvd. – the same dock that saw the arrival of the Saturn V rocket in 1977.

Along with this unique and historic site, the public is invited to take a look at some of the hardware NASA is developing for future exploration, including its Space Exploration Vehicle rovers. Attendees will also have a chance to see a spacesuit demonstration, meet an astronaut and even touch a moon rock in the Driven to Explore exhibit. Food and entertainment will also be available at the street party, which will open at 2 p.m.

On Saturday, June 2, the Space Shuttle attraction will be loaded onto a mobile transfer vehicle for transport to Space Center Houston. The lakeside load-out will take a full day to complete. No public events are planned.

Early in the morning on Sunday, June 3, the attraction will make a three-hour trek down NASA Parkway from the Hilton to its permanent home at Space Center Houston. It will be escorted by the Space Exploration Vehicle rovers, local scout troops and marching bands. Upon arrival at Space Center Houston, the public will have another chance to see the new attraction up close, along with a full-scale mockup of NASA's new Orion spacecraft. And attendees can again meet an astronaut and touch a real moon rock during the free public celebration, which will be held in the Space Center Houston parking lot from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For more information on the Shuttlebration activities, visit the Space Center Houston website at:

http://www.spacecenter.org/shuttlebration.html

For information on how traffic will be affected in the area throughout the weekend, visit:

http://www.shuttlevolunteer.com/content/traffic/traffic.asp

For more information on NASA programs – past, present and future – visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/30/4526423/nasa-joins-community-in-shuttlebration.html#storylink=cpy