Space exploration and technology

Is Solar Electrification Good for Military??


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According to the May 2007 report of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) on US Space Policy:

“The United States considers its space capabilities vital to its national interest, and, accordingly, will take the actions necessary to protect and preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space. This requires effective deterrence, defense, and, if necessary, denial of adversarial uses of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests. The Secretary of Defense is specifically directed to develop capabilities, plans and options to ensure U.S. freedom of action in space and to deny such freedom of action to adversaries when necessary. This requires robust capabilities for sustainable U.S. space control.”

All recent US policies relating to space issues indicates that the US believes that freedom of action in space is important and reject proposals to ban space weapons. Under the United Nations banner they would support discussions on space and disarmament issues, but they will not enter into any negotiations on space weaponry.

On the other hand, this Chinese act of destroying a satellite should not be considered as an one-off event. On 11 January 2007, they successfully carried out an anti-satellite (ASAT) test, but this was preceded by three earlier unsuccessful attempts. Their interests in the weaponisation of space has been known for some time. However, China had continuously talked about establishing an international structure for stopping the weaponisation of space over the last few years while assiduously working towards developing space weapons.

According to a 2001 report, China had also ground tested an advanced anti-satellite weapon called ‘Parasitic Satellite’. It could be deployed on an experimental basis and enter the phase of space tests in the near future. This ASAT system can be used against many types of satellites in different orbits like communication satellites, navigational satellites, reconnaissance satellites and early warning satellites. According to a ‘Space Daily’ report this nanometer-sized “parasitic satellite” is designed to be deployed and attached to the enemy’s satellite. There are three components to the ASAT “parasitic” satellites system: a carrier (”mother”) satellite and launcher, and a ground control system. During conflict, commands are sent to this satellite to interfere or destroy the host satellite. The cost of building these satellites is 0.1 percent to 1 percent of any typical satellite.

It was reported by the media that in September 2006 Beijing had secretly used lasers to “paint” US spy satellites with the aim of “blinding” their sensitive surveillance devices to prevent spy photography as they pass over China. The Chinese aim was not to destroy the US satellites but to make them useless over Chinese territory. It has also been reported that the US military was so alarmed by this Chinese activity that it has begun to carry out test attacks against its own satellites to determine the dimensions of this threat.

The global powers cannot do much about the Chinese ASAT test, apart from condemning it. This is mainly due to the absence of a space treaty regime. For the last few years many players in the global space arena are trying to work out an international regime under the aegis of the United Nations. Although an informal international understanding obtains to desist from sending weapons into space, no mechanism is available to punish infractions.

The United Nations in 1958, shortly after launching its first artificial satellite, started to crystallise its policies on space. The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space was set up by the General Assembly in 1959. The mandate for the committee was to review the scope of international cooperation in peaceful uses of outer space. The committee is also expected to study the legal problems arising from the exploration of outer space. This Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) has 67 member states and makes recommendations to the General Assembly from time to time.

The important disarmament agreement to provide the basic framework on international space law is the Outer Space Treaty, which entered into force in October 1967. This is the second of the so-called “non-armament” treaties (first being the Antarctic Treaty). It guarantees cooperation between states in all peaceful uses of outer space. Unfortunately the treaty only prohibits the presence of nuclear weapons in space and it cannot therefore address the issue of weaponisation of space. Another important space treaty called the Moon Treaty came into being in the year 1979. This treaty declares that the moon (including all celestial bodies) should be used for the benefit of all states and the international community. It also expresses the desire to prevent the moon from becoming a source of international conflict. Unfortunately, the treaty has not been ratified by any nations engaged in manned space missions, so it is a non-starter.

The negotiations on space arena in various international forums have remained un-productive over the last few years. The Conference on Disarmament (CD) has not been able to agree on the formation of an Ad Hoc Committee since 1994 to negotiate a convention for the non-weaponisation of outer space. The prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) initiative is also on the UN agenda since 1982. However, the US and Israel are unwilling to cooperate with the international community on the issue of PAROS. The US has even argued that the existing multilateral arms control regime is sufficient, and that there is no need to address a non-existent threat.

Apart from the hostile attitude adopted by countries like the US towards the establishment of any space treaty, the proposed regime also suffers from the problem of defining weapons in outer space. This is mainly because almost anything can be used as a weapon in space to obstruct satellites. There would also be technical and financial constraints for verifying any irregularities, because of the complex problems involved in the verification of outer space activities.

As a fresh approach to the disarmament discourse on weaponisation of space, analysts like Michael Krepon and Michael Heller have suggested the negotiation of a code of conduct between space-faring nations to prevent incidents and dangerous military activities in space. Also, global cooperation is possible in various other areas of space activities. The international space station (ISS) is one of the finest examples of such collaboration where 16 countries have come together to undertake scientific experiments in outer space on a made-to-order platform. Similar collaborations are possible (in few cases they already exist) in areas like Navigation, Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV), Space Commerce (Launch Business), exploring outer space to study the cosmos and use space assets over problematic border areas (like Kashmir) for strengthening confidence building measures (CBMs).

There now is a need to convert China’s ASAT test into an opportunity to evolve long-term and short-term space policies. There is a need to establish a strategic balance among the larger nations, and break the monopoly on the utilisation of space by a few. In general, it needs to be understood that while the peaceful uses of space and satellites are developing at a dizzying pace, facilitating global information and communication, the most advanced military powers are calculating how they can pursue war in this environment. The challenge for sensible space powers is to continue doing ‘defence’ from space without weaponising it.
 
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****cross posted****

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/...100164598.html

India plans radars in space to boost missile defence system
March 9th, 2009 - 7:58 pm ICT by IANS -

New Delhi, March 9 (IANS) India is planning space-based radars to overcome the range impediment for its missile defence system, which was successfully tested March 6 and at present can destroy enemy missiles up to a range of 2,000 km only, an official said Monday.
In a step towards indigenising the ballistic missile defence system, premier military research organisation Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has tested its interceptor missile for a third time.

“The interceptor can kill missiles up to 2,000 km class of systems. In phase-II, we are developing above 2,000 km class of systems… At present, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) is developing a space-based surveillance system that will help us in phase-II,” chief controller of DRDO’s missile systems and the programme director V.K. Saraswat said.

Airborne radars mounted atop aircraft, which India is acquiring from Israel, will help track missiles above 2,000 km. For tracking missiles of the range of 6,000 km, the interceptors will take help of radars mounted on satellites.

Currently, the radars can cover an area of a radius of 600 km.

“You need much more energy for missiles of higher range. In terms of seeker, the time is very less as the speed of the missiles also increases,” Saraswat added.

India March 6 registered a hat-trick as an indigenous interceptor successfully neutralized an “enemy” ballistic missile at an altitude of 75 km and demonstrated its capability to defend itself against Chinese and Pakistani missiles.

The test was a key element in the efforts of the DRDO to put in place a missile defence shield to protect populated areas and vital installations like nuclear power plants from nuclear attacks.

“The whole process of target classification takes 30 seconds. Then the batteries (of the interceptor missile), which are in hot stand-by conditions, can be launched within 100-120 seconds of target detection,” Saraswat said.

“You cannot buy or borrow a ballistic missile defence system. It has to be homegrown. The US system is developed for their defence. The threat profile of our country is different and the system has to be customised to suit the needs of our country,” Saraswat said talking in reference to the Israeli Arrow system and the American Patriot system courting the Indian defence establishment for possible orders.

The DRDO will be conducting five tests each for endo-atmospheric (below 30 km altitude), exo-atmospheric (above 30 km altitude) and integrated missile defence systems.

“By December 2010, we expect to complete the development of the missile system,” he added.

DRDO expects the ballistic missile shield to take care of threats from existing Chinese and Pakistani missiles. While Pakistan possesses missiles with ranges between 400 and 2,000 km, the Chinese arsenal varies from a range of 300 km to 2,800 km.
 
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General: India Needs Ability to Wage Space War

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,368041,00.html

General: India Needs Ability to Wage Space War



NEW DELHI — India said that it needs a military space program to defend its satellites from threats like China's newly revealed ability to shoot down targets in orbit.

The comments by India's army chief raise the possibility of a regional race that could accelerate the militarization of space and heighten tensions between the Asian giants, who have been enjoying their warmest ties in decades.

India urgently needs to "optimize space applications for military purposes," Gen. Deepak Kapoor said Monday at a conference in New Delhi on using space for military purposes.

He noted that "the Chinese space program is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content."


His remarks were first reported by The Indian Express newspaper and confirmed by the Defense Ministry's spokesman on Tuesday.

China destroyed one of its own defunct weather satellites with a ballistic missile in January, becoming the third country, after Russia and the U.S., to shoot down an object in orbit.
Related

In February the United States shot down a satellite that it said posed a threat as it fell to Earth. Kapoor did not mention that, singling out China in a statement analysts said was designed to send a clear message to Beijing.

"In an unsubtle way this is related to China," said Ashok Mehta, a retired Indian army general and leading strategic analyst.

Kapoor said that while militarization of space by India was at "a comparatively nascent stage," there was an urgent need for a military space command for "persistent surveillance and rapid response."

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Anil Kumar Mathur said, "We are not talking about deploying weapons, but about self-defense."

Neither man elaborated on their remarks.

The Indian military does not have its own dedicated spy satellites and uses civilian ones to gather imagery and other intelligence.

India has an advanced civilian space program and frequently launches both types of satellites for other countries, including an Israeli spy satellite in January.

Other Indian generals speaking at the conference said a military space race was almost certain.

"With time we will get sucked into a military race to protect our space assets and inevitably there will be a military contest in space," the Indian Express newspaper quoted Lt. Gen. H.S. Lidder as saying.

"In a life-and-death scenario, space will provide the advantage," said Lidder, who heads the military department that deals with space technology.

Ties between India and China — which together have one-third of the world's population — are at their closest since China defeated India in a brief 1962 border war. Last year, trade between India and China grew to $37 billion and their two armies conducted their first joint military exercise.

However, the two nations remain sharply divided over territorial claims dating back to the war. China claims India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh and occupies a chunk of territory in Kashmir that Indian regards as its own.

Talks on the disputed border have gone nowhere, and Kapoor's "statement is in relation to what is happening on the border dispute and the Chinese taking an uncompromising position," Mehta said.

This, along with China's heavy military spending and a growing rivalry for regional influence, has alarmed the Indian military, which has been increasingly gearing up for possible conflict.

India has announced plans to have aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines at sea in the next decade and recently tested nuclear-capable missiles that put China's major cities well in range. It is also reopening air force bases near the Chinese border.
 
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Indian army chief calls for military space program to counter China

Indian army chief calls for military space program to counter China

http://newshopper.sulekha.com/topic...my-chief-calls-for-military-space-program.htm


©AP
Indian army chief calls for military space program to counter China

NEW DELHI (AP) _ With China blasting satellites out of the sky, India needs a military space program to defend its orbiters, the country's army chief said.

The talk of a possible push into space by India's military chief, Gen. Deepak Kapoor, is a sign the rivalry between the two Asian giants could spark a new race to militarize space and highlights India's perception of China as a threat, even as Beijing and New Delhi enjoy their warmest ties in decades.

India urgently needs to "optimize space applications for military purposes," Kapoor was quoted as saying Monday by The Indian Express newspaper. He noted that "the Chinese space program is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content."

Defense Ministry spokesman Praveen Kavi on Tuesday confirmed the comments made by Kapoor at a conference on using space for military purposes.

In February the United States also shot down a satellite it said posed a threat as it fell to earth, but Kapoor did not mention that, singling out China in a move analysts said was designed to send a clear message to Beijing.

"In an unsubtle way this is related to China," said Ashok Mehta, a retired Indian army general and leading strategic analyst.

Ties between India and China — which together account for about one-third of the world's population — are at their closest since China defeated India in a brief 1962 border war. Last year, trade between India and China grew to US$37 billion and their two armies conducted their first-ever joint military exercise.

However, the Asian powers remain sharply divided over territorial claims dating back to the war. China claims India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh and occupies a chunk of territory in Kashmir that Indian regards as its own.

Talks on the disputed border have gone nowhere, and Kapoor's "statement is in relation to what is happening on the border dispute and the Chinese taking an uncompromising position," Mehta said.

This, together with China's heavy military spending and a growing rivalry for influence between the two counties in Asia and the Indian Ocean region, has alarmed the Indian military, which has been increasingly gearing up for possible conflict.

India has announced plans to have aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines at sea in the next decade and recently tested nuclear-capable missiles that put China's major cities well in range. It is also reopening air force bases near the Chinese border.

Now, India is also talking about boosting its military presence in space.

Kapoor said while militarization of space by India was at "a comparatively nascent stage," there was an urgent need for a military space command for "persistent surveillance and rapid response."

He did not elaborate, but army spokesman Lt. Col. Anil Kumar Mathur said, "We are not talking about deploying weapons, but about self defense."

The military currently does not have its own dedicated spy satellites, and instead shares civilian ones for reconnaissance intelligence. But India has an advanced civilian space program and frequently launches satellites for other countries, including an Israeli spy satellite in January.

In January 2007, China destroyed a defunct Chinese weather satellite by hitting it with a warhead on a ballistic missile. It made China only the third country after Russia and the U.S. to shoot down anything in space.

China insists it is committed to the peaceful use of space.

Nevertheless, other Indian generals speaking at the conference said a military space race was almost certain.

"With time we will get sucked into a military race to protect our space assets and inevitably there will be a military contest in space," the Indian Express newspaper quoted Lt. Gen. H.S. Lidder as saying.

"In a life and death scenario, space will provide the advantage," said Lidder, who heads the military department that deals with space technology.
 
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Satellites did not collide but were destroyed: ex-Russian General news

http://www.domain-b.com/aero/space/satellites/20090307_satellites.html


Satellites did not collide but were destroyed: ex-Russian General news
07 March 2009


The former head of Russia's military space intelligence has claimed that the collision of the US and Russian satellites that took place on 10 February 2009 about 500 miles above Siberia was not an accident but was a deliberate destruction planned by US scientists to test new technology for intercepting and destroying satellites. (See: Space crash destroys Iridium-owned satellite)

Major general Leonid Shershnev, the former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said this week that the US Iridium 33 satellite involved in the collision with the non-operational Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, was part of a US military 'dual-purpose Orbital Express research project, launched in 2007.

Speaking to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, Shershnev said that the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was in charge of the space mission of Orbital Express research project and was assisted by engineers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC).

He said that the aim of the project was to look at the technical feasibility of robotic, autonomous on-orbit refuelling and reconfiguration of satellites, which in future would take care of the US national security and commercial space programs.

The project also aimed at allowing the US to intercept as well as manipulate hostile satellites and destroy them from a ground control command center.

Although the project was officially completed in July 2007, Shershnev said that the US continued working on the project to develop advanced technology, where orbital spacecrafts could be monitored and inspected by fully-automated satellites equipped with robotic devices.

Ggeneral Shershnev goes on to say that the collision that took place last month could possibly indicate that the US had succeeded in developing such a capability, where it could manipulate hostile satellites that could be destroyed from a command centre on Earth.

Space analysts say that this is highly possible, although both the satellites were in the same near-Earth orbit at approximately 550 miles, it is highly unlikely that they could have collide as it would be like comparing two grains of sand meeting in a football stadium.

Moreover, they say that these satellites are kept in observation and tracked by many ground-based stations, where even a very tiny object as small as 5cm is observed and less than 10 per cent of the 18,000 objects monitored in low- and high-Earth orbits are working satellites, while the rest are defunct satellites, spent rocket stages and space debris (See: The great junkyard in outer space).

They add that it is likely that the collision was a military test to find out whether a robotic satellite is capable of destroying an enemy satellite.

In February 2008, the US launched a missile from a naval vessel that destroyed one of its own crippled spy satellites while China had done it in 2007, when it destroyed one of its own defunct satellites with a ballistic missile.

Yesterday Russia announced that it was working on developing anti-satellite weapons to match those of the US and China although it said that it is opposed to the arms race but was forced to respond to the moves made by other countries.

General Valentin Popovkin told local newspapers that his country cannot sit back and quietly watch others doing it and said that since Russia has the key element and basic knowledge on such work.

Russia had mooted a proposal, which was backed by China for banning all space weapons, but the US had rejected it.
 

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Kepler Orbits Sun, Begins Search For Earth-Like Planets

NASA has successfully launched its Kepler mission.

"This mission attempts to answer a question that is as old as time itself," Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said. "Are other planets like ours out there? It's not just a science question -- it's a basic human question."

Engineers received signals from the spacecraft at 12:11 a.m. Saturday, and confirmed that Kepler separated from its United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket to enter its last sun-center orbit, about 950 miles behind Earth. The Kepler launched at 10:49 p.m., EST, Friday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The craft is generating its own power through solar panels and will search for Earth-sized planets orbiting stars at distances that could allow water to pool on the planets' surfaces. It could take three years to find such planets, but such discoveries could point to possible locations of life beyond Earth.

Kepler Project Manager James Fanson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., called the launch "stunning" and said its mission will be very meaningful to the human race.

"Kepler will help us understand if our Earth is unique or if others like it are out there," he said in a statement.

William Borucki, principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., said that even if Kepler doesn't find planets like Earth, its mission will have great significance.

"It would indicate that we are probably alone in the galaxy," he said.

For the next 60 days, engineers will make sure Kepler works properly, command it to eject a dust cover, and calibrate its high-powered camera before searching for habitable planets. First it will search "hot Jupiters," or large gas-filled planets that circle quickly and closely around starts.

The Hubble and Spitzer telescopes will also view the planets and their atmospheres. After that, Kepler will likely view planets the size of Neptune before moving on to rocky planets the size of Earth.
 

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NASA's Kepler spacecraft hurtles past moon's orbit

Already 250,000 miles away, Kepler's telescope is set to snap first images in three weeks

March 9, 2009 (Computerworld) NASA's Kepler spacecraft hurtled past the moon's orbit last night, three days into the first leg of its six-year mission to find other Earth-like planets.

The spacecraft, which is carrying a telescope and a series of computers, now is about 250,000 miles from Earth, according to James Fanson, the Kepler program manager. The craft is expected to drift away from the Earth at a rate of 10 million miles per year.

The new telescope was launched months after a computer failure onboard the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope forced NASA to postpone a planned October launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, which was set to do scheduled repairs to Hubble.

NASA engineers first fixed the Hubble's problem by using an online backup system. Two glitches quickly derailed that NASA repair effort. The computer was finally fixed a month later and the Hubble telescope was back in business, snapping pictures of a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies.

Right now, according to Fanson, Kepler is moving at a rate of 5 miles per second.

"We are just at the beginning of what will be two months of calibrations and testing," Fanson told Computerworld. "It will take a while before planet discoveries are made. After several months, we should start to see large planets. And in two to three years, we'll start to see planets that are more the size of Earth."

A protective cover is expected to be popped off the telescope in about three weeks, and then Kepler will take its first images.

The Delta II rocket carried the planet-hunting spacecraft aloft at 10:49 p.m. EST last Friday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Kepler spacecraft is designed to study between 100,000 and 170,000 sunlike stars and find Earth-like planets that may orbit them. Fanson explained that the telescope onboard the spacecraft will measure the brightness of those stars every half hour, allowing scientists to detect any dimming in their brightness caused by orbiting planets passing in front of them.

Based on the dimming of a star's light, Fanson said they should be able to calculate the size of an orbiting planet, along with whether it has a solid surface and if there's the potential for it to have liquid water, which scientists say is crucial to the formation of life.

"It has a telescope, but it's not generating pretty pictures," said Fanson. "What we'll bring down are pixels around target stars, marking the brightness of each of these 170,000 stars."

While the spacecraft is in its initial setup mode, NASA scientists and engineers will be in contact with it 24 hours a day. When the craft moves into scientific mode, NASA will be in communication with Kepler ever four days, and once a month the ground will turn the spacecraft so its antenna points toward Earth so data can be transmitted down.
 

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Have you ever looked at the night sky and thought if some one else was looking at our solar system from a planet that orbits one of the stars that can be seen with our naked eyes in the night sky? Till now we had no technology that could allow us to look at the back yard of our neighboring stars for finding earth like planet; Now here we have Kepler to help us.

The Kepler Telescope will be looking at 3000 light years of local space for comparable environments to ours. Just imagine Kepler finds a planet similar to earth with water, atmosphere and stays at the right distance from its parent star; that would the most challenging thing we could ever imagine. Our next challenge will be "How to reach that planet" and look for what is happening out there.

These are some of the images that will make you understand the Kepler mission:

Kepler, The Planet Hunter



In Details



Range


Range in Milkyway


Enjoy & have a Good day!
 

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The International Space Station to become the second brightest object in the night sky with help from Canadarm2

Move over, Morning Star. Once Canadarm2 helps install the fourth and final set of solar array wings to the International Space Station later this month, the Station will surpass Venus as the brightest object in the night sky, second only to the Moon.

The Space Shuttle Discovery is set to deliver the power-generating solar panels and Starboard 6 (S6) truss segment to the ISS on the 125th mission in the Shuttle program, known as STS-119/15A (slated for launch on March 12, 2009 at 8:54 p.m. Eastern). This final piece of the Station's backbone will bring the ISS to its full length of 102 metres (roughly the size of a Canadian football field), and will increase the quantity of electricity available for science experiments by 50%. This additional power also means that the Station will be closer to being ready to house a crew of 6 astronauts instead of the current 3. Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Dr. Robert Thirsk will be a member of Expedition 20/21-the first 6-person Station crew set to launch in late May 2009.

Weighing in at 14 metric tons, the S6 truss segment containing the solar array wings takes up the Shuttle's entire payload bay. On Flight Day 4, astronauts Sandra Magnus and John Phillips will use Canadarm2 to lift the S6 segment from the payload bay and hand it to the Shuttle's Canadarm, controlled by astronauts Tony Antonelli and Joseph Acaba from inside Discovery's aft flight deck. As Canadarm holds the truss segment, Canadarm2 will move to the worksite where it will install the S6, then reach back to grasp the truss segment from the Shuttle's robotic arm, where it will remain parked overnight. It will take a full day to move the S6 from the Shuttle bay to its overnight position, and will require Canadarm2 to stretch out to its full length of 17 metres-a delicate maneuver with such a heavy payload. As always, Canadarm2's operations will be monitored closely by American and Canadian flight controllers on the ground in Houston and at the Canadian Space Agency's headquarters in Quebec.
Wow! This will sure help the armatures to spot ISS and picture it more easily. Between you can have a look at the below web page to track the ISS & if it ever comes above your head please don't miss to see it passing pretty quick in the sky

Heavens above - Track ISS

ISS NOW
 

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MRO Sees Deimos

Here’s an excellent set of images of Deimos, the smaller of the two Martian moons, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, just a couple days before the spacecraft mysteriously shut itself down. The MRO shut itself down as a precaution after a problem was detected. The MRO rebooted its computer on February 23rd, and the ground team brought the science instruments back online on March 2nd. The experts think a cosmic ray “hit” caused an erroneous voltage reading and the rest is history. Thankfully everything is fine with the spacecraft.

Diemos has an average diameter of about 7.7 miles so it’s a very small moon. Being small it follows gravitational field of the moon is weak, and sure enough you could stand on the moon (ok if you could) you could easily throw a ball into orbit because the escape speed is only about 12 miles per hour.

See how smooth the Martian moon appears



MRO at HiRISE
 

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Space station has close call

WASHINGTON -- The near-hit of space junk Thursday was a warning fired shot across the bow of the international space station, experts said. There's likely more to come in the future.

With less than an hour's notice, the three astronauts were told they'd have to seek shelter in a Russian capsule parked at the space station in case a speeding piece of space junk hit Thursday.

If it hit and they were in the main part of the station, they'd have only 10 minutes of safety, Mission Control told them. A hole in the space station could mean loss of air, loss of pressure and eventual loss of life.

The crew moved so fast that they may have left their instruction manual on the other side of a closed hatch. Inside the Soyuz, they waited for 10 minutes, ready to flee to Earth if the worst happened. On the ground, space debris experts fretted.

"We were watching it with bated breath," NASA space debris scientist Mark Matney said. "We didn't know what was going to happen."

The debris missed. Engineers still don't even know by how much and may never get a good figure. It could have been a few hundred feet or a couple miles.

Commander Mike Fincke said they watched out the Soyuz window.

"We didn't see anything of course. We were wondering how close we were," he radioed Houston.

Matney, who has been with NASA since 1992 called it the closest call he can ever remember.

But it happened a month after two satellites collided in orbit, adding several hundred pieces into the space litter belt. And in the last few years, the problem of debris in space has gotten much worse with satellites destroyed on purpose.

"It's yet another warning shot that we really have to do something about space debris now. We have to do something on an international level," said Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who tracks everything in orbit.

"As we continue to put stuff up there, the predictions are that the rate (of close calls) will increase," added William Ailor, director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, Calif.

The U.S. Space Command tracks 13,943 orbiting objects 4 inches or larger. Only about 900 of those are working satellites, McDowell said. The rest is litter. There are thousands more smaller pieces of junk that can't be tracked as easily.

In space, size doesn't matter too much after about 3 or 4 inches. Speed does. The object that put the scare into the space station was probably 5 inches, Matney said. McDowell figures it was even bigger, maybe a foot: "a long thin thing" with a thread or string attached.

It was traveling 5.5 miles per second -- about 20,000 mph, according to NASA spokesman Josh Byerly.

At that speed, something 5 inches "will wreck your whole day," Matney said.

Usually with enough warning, NASA will just move the space station out of harm's way. But NASA didn't learn of the threat until Wednesday night. This piece was in an odd orbit that kept dipping into Earth's atmosphere, making it hard to track, Matney said.

NASA didn't notify the astronauts until a couple hours after they woke on Thursday because they wanted to try to get more information about the debris, said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring.

The object likely was a "yo weight" used to stabilize a global positioning satellite placed in orbit in 1993, McDowell and Matney said. It is ejected when the satellite is in its proper position.
May have given some serious head ache to the astronauts and the crew at ground; anyway thank god its missed ISS & everything is safe now; the most worrying part is, there are 1000s more debris that are not tracked by NASA is flying out in the space; hope they won't fly in to the danger zone
 

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China to put military base in space

Just as the US halts manned flights into space due to the phasing out of the space shuttle, China is planning to increase its manned space program by developing a 17,000 lb. military space laboratory.

According to Space , the Tiangong 1 space base project is being led by the General Armaments Department of the People's Liberation Army, and will be the second Chinese station development project.

The State Media stated that the first mission to the outpost in early 2011 by an unmanned probe to test robotic docking systems. Subsequent missions will be manned to utilise the new pressurised module capabilities of the Tiangong outpost.

The base has also been given a number One designation indicates that China may build more than one such military space laboratory.
The station is a large module with docking system making up the forward half of the vehicle and a service module section with solar arrays and propellant tanks making up the rest.

It looks similar to the European Automated Transfer Vehicle. The US Air Force once thought of having a military lab in space but scrapped the plan in 1969.

It looks like the lab would operate autonomously and be visited periodically by Chinese astronauts. China is also planning a larger 20-25 ton 'Mir class' station that will follow by about 2020 launched on the new oxygen/hydrogen powered Long March 5 boosters.
 
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Keck Teaming Up With Kepler To Find Other Earths

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Keck_Teaming_Up_With_Kepler_To_Find_Other_Earths_999.html
Keck Teaming Up With Kepler To Find Other Earths

by Staff Writers
Kamuela HI (SPX) Mar 13, 2009
For nearly a decade, Cal-Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy and his colleagues have been using the W. M. Keck telescopes to discover giant planets orbiting distant stars. Now, with the successful launch of NASA's Kepler mission, they will be using Keck I's ten-meter astronomical eye to discover distant Earths.
Kepler will pick out Earth-like candidates. Keck will then zero in on them and determine, with certainty, if they are at all similar to our home planet.

"Keck and NASA have a long-standing partnership to push astronomy research to its fullest potential. This Keck-Kepler collaboration gives that partnership a compelling new scientific focus," said Taft Armandroff, the Director of Keck Observatory headquartered in Kamuela, HI.

Kepler was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center last Friday. Aboard the spacecraft is an 84-megapixel camera that will focus on a single region of the sky and snap repeated images of 100,000 stars looking for those that dim periodically.

By studying the stars' episodic decreases in starlight, astronomers will be able to determine the diameter of the object that passes in front of the star, blocks its light and causes the dimming.

"Kepler does not tell astronomers with certainty if the object taking a bite out of the starlight is a planet or another star.That is where Keck plays a crucial role to the Kepler mission," said Marcy, a frequent Keck user and Kepler mission co-investigator.

He, along with a large international planet-hunting team, has discovered nearly half of the 300-plus known planets outside the Solar System.

Astronomers call the objects Kepler detects transits because from the telescope's perspective the planet candidate seems to eclipse its parent star's light.

The phenomenon is similar to the Moon eclipsing the Sun during a total solar eclipse. But a distant planet eclipsing its parent star will only block a small fraction, 1/10,000, of the star's light. The Moon, by contrast, blocks nearly all of the Sun's light in a total solar eclipse.

In the Kepler-Keck duo, once Kepler team members find an Earth candidate and determine as best they can that they're not looking at two stars orbiting each other, they will hand the object off to Marcy and his colleagues. The team will use Keck I telescope and its instrument HIRES, the High Resolution Spectrometer, to monitor how the light coming from the parent star changes as the planet candidate orbits.

HIRES is an instrument that spreads light collected from the telescope mirrors into its component wavelengths or colors. This is called a spectrum. When the planet candidate orbits around the back of the star, its gravity will ever so slightly pull on the star causing the star's spectrum to shift toward redder wavelengths.

When the planet comes around in its orbit to cross the face of the star, it will pull the star in the other direction, and the star's spectrum will shift toward bluer wavelengths. HIRES will detect these shifts and give astronomers the star's radial velocity, or the speed at which the star moves toward or away from Earth. Based on this speed, Marcy and his team will be able to calculate the mass of planet candidate.

"Keck's HIRES is the only game in town that can measure spectral shifts caused by an Earth-sized planet. No other telescope is big enough," Marcy said. "That is why NASA is really heavily dependent on the Keck telescopes right now."

Calculating the planet candidate's mass is important because it tells astronomers whether a planet or another star is eclipsing the parent star. If the object turns out to be a planet, Marcy and his team can then use the Keck-calculated mass and Kepler-calculated diameter to determine the planet's density.

"In a sense it's as if we are taking the planets and dunking them in a bathtub to see if they float. A rocky planet like Earth would sink," Marcy said. Earth has a density of about five grams per cubic centimeter. Gas giants, on the other hand, have a density close to water at about one gram per cubic centimeter.

"Studying the radial velocity of the planet candidates Kepler discovers is a key endeavor in understanding our place in the cosmos. It will help answer one of humanity 'biggest questions, "Are we alone?" Armandroff said.

Marcy and his colleagues plan to start studying Kepler's candidate Earths with Keck I and HIRES during the last three night of July 2009.

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New Horizons Detects Neptune’s Moon Triton :)

Add another moon to the New Horizons photo gallery: the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager detected Triton, the largest of Neptune’s 13 known moons, during the annual spacecraft checkout last fall.

New Horizons was 2.33 billion miles (3.75 billion kilometers) from Neptune on Oct. 16, when LORRI, following a programmed sequence of commands, locked onto the planet and snapped away.

“We wanted to test LORRI’s ability to measure a faint object near a much brighter one using a special tracking mode,” says New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, “and the Neptune-Triton pair perfectly fit the bill.” LORRI was operated in 4-by-4 format (the original pixels are binned in groups of 16), and the spacecraft was put into a special tracking mode to allow for longer exposure times. “We needed to achieve the highest possible sensitivity,” Weaver adds.

Mission scientists also wanted to measure Triton itself. “Among the objects visited by spacecraft so far, Triton is by far the best analog of Pluto,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. The Voyager 2 spacecraft took spectacular images of Triton during its flyby of Neptune in 1989, showing evidence of cryovolcanic activity and cantaloupe-like terrain.

Triton is only slightly larger than Pluto (1,700 miles [2,700 kilometers] in diameter compared to Pluto’s 1,500 miles [2,400 kilometers]). Both objects have atmospheres primarily composed of nitrogen gas with a surface pressure only 1/70,000th of Earth’s, and comparably cold surface temperatures (-390° F on Triton and -370° F on Pluto). Triton is widely believed to have once been a member of the Kuiper Belt (as Pluto still is) that was captured into orbit around Neptune, probably during a collision early in the solar system’s history.

New Horizons can observe Neptune and Triton at solar phase angles (the Sun-object-spacecraft angle) that are not possible to achieve from Earth-based facilities, and this unique perspective can provide insight into the properties of Triton’s surface and Neptune’s atmosphere.

LORRI will continue to observe the Neptune-Triton pair during annual checkouts until the Pluto encounter in 2015.

New Horizons is currently in electronic hibernation, 1.2 billion miles (1.93 billion kilometers) from home, speeding away from the Sun at 38,520 miles (61,991 kilometers) per hour.




The top frame is a composite, full-frame (0.29° by 0.29°) LORRI image of Neptune taken Oct. 16, 2008, using an exposure time of 10 seconds and 4-by-4 pixel re-binning to achieve its highest possible sensitivity. The bottom frame is a twice-magnified view that more clearly shows the detection of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon. Neptune is the brightest object in the field and is saturated (on purpose) in this long exposure. Triton, which is about 16 arcsec east (celestial north is up, east is to the left) of Neptune, is approximately 180 times fainter.
 

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Dawn Finishes Mars Phase

Mission Status Report: NASA's Dawn Mission

With Mars disappearing in its metaphorical rearview mirror, NASA's Dawn spacecraft's next stop is the asteroid belt and the giant asteroid Vesta. Dawn got as close as 549 kilometers (341 miles) to the Red Planet during its Tuesday, Feb. 17, flyby.

Dawn's navigators placed the spacecraft on a close approach trajectory with Mars so the planet's gravitational influence would provide a kick to the spacecraft's velocity. If Dawn had to perform these orbital adjustments on its own, with no Mars gravitational deflection, the spacecraft would have had to fire up its engines and change velocity by more than 9,330 kilometers per hour (5,800 miles per hour).

The achieved goal of the flyby was to obtain this orbital pick-me-up, making possible its voyage to asteroid Vesta and, later, the dwarf planet Ceres. But Dawn's science teams used this massive target of opportunity to also perform calibrations of some of the scientific instruments. Calibration images were taken by Dawn's framing camera, and the Gamma Ray and Neutron Detector also observed Mars for calibration. These data will be compared to similar observations taken by spacecraft orbiting Mars.

Further observations were planned during the flyby, but fault detection software canceled the data collection and put the spacecraft into safe mode, a limited-activity precautionary status. The cause was determined to be an inappropriate software response to an expected temporary loss of valid data from the spacecraft's star tracker in the vicinity of Mars, and engineers were able to restore the spacecraft to normal operations within 48 hours.

While the spacecraft will never be back in the vicinity of Mars again, the Dawn team is using the event to fine-tune its software.

The spacecraft has already traveled about 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) beyond Mars. It has 30 months and 1.8 billion kilometers (1.1 billion miles) to go before its rendezvous with Vesta in 2011.

Dawn's 4.8-billion-kilometer (3-billion-mile) odyssey includes orbiting Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. These two giants of the asteroid belt have been witness to much of our solar system's history. By using Dawn's instruments to study both objects for several months, scientists can more accurately compare and contrast the two. Dawn's science instrument suite will measure geology, elemental and mineral composition, shape, surface topography, geomorphology and tectonic history, and will also seek water-bearing minerals. In addition, the Dawn spacecraft's orbital characteristics around Vesta and Ceres will be used to measure the celestial bodies' masses and gravity fields.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of California, Los Angeles, is home of the mission's principal investigator, Christopher Russell, and is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Other scientific partners include Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany; DLR Institute for Planetary Research, Berlin; Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome; and the Italian Space Agency. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.
NASA Dawn Official Web Page

One of the interesting mission to be watched in near future; hope to see you help us in exploring the asteroid belt dear Dawn :drink:
 

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Another Space-Rock Buzzes Earth

Just two weeks after Near Earth Object 2009 DD45 buzzed the Earth at a distance of only 40,000 miles, another sizable space rock, designated 2009 FH, passed nearly as close. According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's NEO Program the object came closest to the Earth at 5:17am Pacific time (12:17 Universal Time) on Wednesday, March 18, 2009, passing at a distance of 79,000 kilometers (49,000 miles) above the surface.

For comparison, the average distance of the Moon is nearly five times as great, at 384,000 kilometers. Communications satellites, which travel in geostationary orbits, are positioned at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, or half the closest pass of 2009 FH.

Estimated at around 15 meters in diameter 2009 FH is approximately half the size of 2009 DD45. Both space rocks are in orbits around the Sun that intersect the Earth's own, suggesting that they will visit our planet again in the future.

2009 FH was first detected by Rik Hill of the Catalina Sky Survey in the Catalina Mountains in Arizona. Follow-up observations took place from observatories in Charleston, Illinois; Socorro, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; and Wrightwood, California.

Three past recipients of The Planetary Society's Shoemaker Grants were involved in the discovery and tracking, including 2002 recipient Richard Kowalski of the Catalina Sky Survey, 2007 recipients Robert Holmes of the Astronomical Research Institute in Illinois, and James McGaha of the Sabino Canyon Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.

"The asteroid flyby will be a good viewing opportunity for both professional and amateur astronomers" said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near Earth Objects Office at JPL. "The object poses no risk of impact to Earth now or for the foreseeable future."
 

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Satellite boat ID system in place by 2011


March 22: India is planning to put a mechanism in place for monitoring and tracking of fishing boats through the automatic identification system (AIS) via satellite.

This comes after the horrific Mumbai attacks when the attackers infiltrated into India’s commercial capital through the sea-route. Defence sources said the mechanism could be in place by 2011.

Defence sources say the task of fitting thousands of fishing boats with AIS equipment is very challenging and could prove to be very expensive since the cost of equipping one fishing boat with is equipment could come to Rs 60,000.

Sources said this was the reason why the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is devising ways to bring the cost down drastically to just Rs 5,000 per boat.

A national AIS chain is being planned at 85 locations installed in lighthouses across the country. The ultimate aim is to ensure that all ships and boats in Indian waters are tracked constantly.

Interestingly, the AIS was initially devised as an anti-collision system but it has evolved into a security system to protect a country’s territorial waters.

The AIS will be a crucial component of India’s coastal security system. India has already cleared plans for acquisition of fast patrol boats to police the territorial waters to ensure that terrorists once again don’t infiltrate through the sea-route. Plans are also afoot to establish a long-range identification tracking system as well for ships and boats.

Meanwhile, India and Bangladesh have held talks on resolving the issue pertaining to their respective claims on the New Moore Island located between the two countries, also known as Purbhasha or South Talpatti Island, defence sources said.

Sources said that hydrographers of the two countries met recently for talks on the issue. India’s contention is that the island is part of it since it is only 4.9 km from the Indian mainland coast while it is 7.1 km from the Bangladesh coast.

However, Bangladesh has also been laying claim to the island.

http://www.asianage.com/presentatio...atellite-boat-id-system-in-place-by-2011.aspx
 

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Phew! Russian shuttle manages to dock with space station despite engine failure

Astronauts on board Russia's Soyuz spacecraft breathed a sigh of relief after they managed to manually dock with the International Space Station.

They were forced to take action after an engine failure knocked out the automatic docking system when they were less than 100 metres from the ISS, Russian space officials said.

The shuttle was carrying Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt who will form Expedition 19 with Mr Wakata.

They were accompanied by U.S. billionaire and Microsoft developer Charles Simonyi, who has made history as the first space tourist to make the journey twice.

The trio were greeted with hugs and smiles from Expedition 18 crew members, Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchako and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.

Vitaly Lopota, chief of space corporation Energiya, said they would review the algorithms behind the docking system it programs into its ships.

Concerns have been raised about the safety of the Soyuz TMA spacecrafts before because some of the most recent re-entries have not gone smoothly.

Hungarian-born Simonyi, 60, made his fortune developing software at Microsoft. He will spend a week on the station before returning to Earth with Mike Fincke and Yury Lonchakov on April 7.

But as Russia increases the size of the crews it sends to the ISS, there will be no more room for space tourists, even though they pay tens of millions of dollars for the privilege of joining a mission.

Russia has borne the brunt of sending crews and cargo to the multinational ISS since the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry in 2003, killing its crew of seven.
That was another close call related to ISS in last few weeks after the concerns over the satellite debris. Anyway these sortta challenges will make the team get more experienced with tough situations. Good work and happy to say the crew made it.
 
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Shenlong Space Plane Advances China’s Military Space Potential

http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.174/pub_detail.asp

A chance December 11, 2007 release of a photo on a Chinese website has led to a rare unofficial “declassification” of a new Chinese unmanned test space plane.[1] Designated the “Shenlong,” or Divine Dragon, this small aircraft was shown suspended from the fuselage of a Xian H-6 bomber and launch aircraft. So far there has been no official Chinese government, PLA or Chinese corporate or space program related disclosure about this program. However, from this photo and other Chinese sources, it is possible to conclude that the Shenlong constitutes a second Chinese air-launched space-launch vehicle (SLV) program, but for the purposes of testing technologies for a future re-usable unmanned or manned space shuttle or other trans-atmospheric vehicle.



Original Shenlong Photo: First seen on December 11, 2007, the Shenlong space vehicle is seen suspended from a Xian H-6 bomber from an unknown unit. Source: Chinese Internet

While both unmanned and manned space planes could serve a range of scientific and commercial missions, it is also clear that the PLA envisions such vehicles to perform military missions. Chinese military literature has long suggested the PLA seeks to dominate outer space and its successful January 11, 2007 interception and destruction of a satellite demonstrated the PLA now has an initial space combat capability not currently possessed by the United States.




Shenlong Closeup: This out-take from the December 11 photo shows the Shenlong to be a small rocket powered unmanned space plane, as seen from the black heat shielding. Source: Chinese Internet

Initial Shenlong Details

The photo made available on Chinese military issue Internet sites on December 11 shows a small rocket powered aircraft suspended beneath the fuselage of a Xian H-6 bomber. The small aircraft has a black underside consistent with heat-shielding necessary for re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere from space. This would indicate that Shenlong is meant to be a reusable space craft. In November 2006 China revealed another air-launched space launch vehicle very similar in configuration to the U.S. Orbital Sciences Pegasus air launched SLV, which is not intended to be reusable. The new aircraft seen on December 11 does not appear to have a vertical stabilizer or wing-tip stabilizers, which would be necessary for stability, but a subsequent Chinese-Internet released photo indicates this aircraft may have a large vertical stabilizer that will require a different carriage method for the H-6 bomber. The absence of a stabilizer for the December 11 aircraft raises the possibility that its main purpose may be to test its aerodynamic compatibility with the bomber, and that it may not be the version that is launched into space
 

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