NASA's next Mars probe ready for Nov. launch, despite gov't slimdown

This artist's conception shows the NASA's MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars. The mission will launch in late 2013.LASP

NASA's next Mars probe should get off the ground on time, no matter how long the government shutdown lasts.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or Maven, got back on track for a Nov. 18 launch on Thursday (Oct. 3), just two days after the government shutdown froze liftoff preparations and put a scare into planetary scientists around the world.

"We have already restarted spacecraft processing at Kennedy Space Center, working toward being ready to launch on Nov. 18," Maven principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote in a mission status update Thursday. "We will continue to work over the next couple of days to identify any changes in our schedule or plans that are necessary to stay on track." [How the Government Shutdown Will Influence Science and Health]

'Launching Maven in 2013 protects the existing assets that are at Mars today.'

- Maven principal investigator Bruce Jakosky

The shutdown — which went into effect at midnight EDT Tuesday, Oct. 1, when the Senate and House of Representatives failed to agree on an emergency spending bill — forced NASA to furlough 97 percent of its employees and cease most of its operations, including work on missions such as Maven that have yet to leave the ground.

So the $650 million Maven mission went into a worrisome limbo in the home stretch of its long march toward launch. A lengthy shutdown could have caused Maven to miss its liftoff window, which officially runs through Dec. 7 (though the spacecraft could actually launch as late as Dec. 15 or so, Jakosky said).

That would be a big deal, because the next opportunity for Maven to get off the ground won't come until early 2016, when Earth and Mars are once again properly aligned.

But those concerns have now evaporated. NASA has determined that Maven qualifies for an emergency exception because of its importance as a communications link between Earth and robots on the Red Planet's surface, Jakosky wrote.

"Maven is required as a communications relay in order to be assured of continued communications with the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers," he said. "The rovers are presently supported by Mars Odyssey launched in 2001 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched in 2005. Launching Maven in 2013 protects the existing assets that are at Mars today."

NASA has no Red Planet relay orbiters planned beyond Maven, he added.

Maven was designed to help scientists learn how Mars' thin, carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere has changed over time, and what those changes may have meant for the Red Planet's ability to support life.

The probe will arrive in Mars orbit in September 2014. It will then use eight scientific instruments to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere for one Earth year, which is about half of a Mars year.

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Perseid Meteor Shower Dazzles Skywatchers Despite Full Moon (SPACE.com)

Skywatchers around the world caught stunning views of the Perseid meteor shower overnight Friday (Aug. 12) despite a bright full moon that threatened to outshine the annual "shooting star" display's peak.

The Perseid meteor shower is often the most dazzling meteor shower of the year, but a fluke of timing put the peak of this year's space rock light show in competition with the August full moon. But accounts from skywatchers suggest the Perseids did not disappoint, despite the moon's interference.

In Woking, Surrey, in England, skywatcher and photographer Carolyne Jackson waited patiently in her backyard, camera at the ready, for a break in the clouds in order spot a meteor. [Skywatcher Photos: The 2011 Perseid Meteor Shower]

"I kept this up for an hour and then reviewed the shots," Jackson told SPACE.com in an email. "Most contained nothing and with having a full moon and light pollution I was not expecting to see anything ... then bingo, on my 27th shot, there was this beauty." [See Jackson's Perseid meteor photo]

The Perseid meteor shower has been observed by skywatchers for at least 2,000 years, according to NASA. The meteors are actually pieces of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. The meteor shower gets its name Perseid from its origin point in the night sky: the constellation Perseus.

Every August, Earth flies through the comet's cloud of debris and the tiny bits of Swift-Tuttle (most of them more than 1,000 years old) burn up in the atmosphere as they streak at nearly 133,200 mph. According to the website Spaceweather.com, international observers reported up to 20 meteors per hour during the Perseids' peak.

"Saw 5 here in Brooklyn," New York City skywatcher Miloy Quezada wrote in a post to SPACE.com's Facebook page. "We were laying on our building's roof, my 2-yr-old couldn't figure out what his dad and I kept pointing at. At first it feels like your eyes are playing tricks on you. It was great to see God's amazing creations."

Just outside New York City, in West Orange, New Jersey, two dazzling fireballs marked the highlight of the Perseid meteor shower, as seen by this reporter.

NASA held an online skywatching party for the Perseids, providing a live camera view where meteors streaked across the frame of an all-sky camera at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. NASA astronomer Bill Cooke and his fellow meteor scientists Danielle Moser and Rhiannon Blaauw hosted a webchat for the Perseids to answer questions from what seemed to be a throng of eager skywatchers online.

In addition to the Perseids and the nearly full moon of August, and is known as the Full Sturgeon moon among other names, the International Space Station also made an appearance in the Friday night sky.

Cooke snapped an eye-catching photo of the space station streaking over Huntsville using one of the Perseid all-sky cameras and posted it on Twitter, where he posts updates as @MeteorScientist.

"ISS pass over Huntsville at 9 tonight," Cooke wrote. The space station is making a series of passes over the United States this week. Here are some tips to spot the space station in the night sky.

Some of the best views of the Perseid meteor shower actually occurred earlier this week, when the moon was not at its brightest and therefore didn't wash out the shooting star display.

Photographer and amateur astronomer Nick Rose managed to catch a view of the Perseids on Aug 10 from Millbrae, Calif., just outside San Francisco.  [See Nick Rose's Perseid meteor photo here]

"With around 90 or so photos I took this morning only one of them had a Perseid meteor," Rose told SPACE.com in an email. "Even though Perseus is in the direction of the San Francisco International airport with a lot of [light pollution] I was still able to get a pretty good photo."

Back in New York City, skywatcher Peter Orrick was amazed at what he saw on Aug. 10.  

"I was in Central Park and noticed a bright streak across the sky crossing from east to west then it split into two streaks!" Orrick told SPACE.com in an Aug. 10 email. "I'd never seen a meteor that bright!"

Editor's note: If you snapped an amazing photo of a Perseid meteor this year and would like to share it with SPACE.com for our Perseids 2011 gallery, please send them to managing editor Tariq Malik at: meteor showers of 2011 here.

You can follow SPACE.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Despite budget stress, US space ties strong: NASA (AFP)

PARIS (AFP) – Relations between the United States and its partners in space remain strong, despite tighter budgets and concerns about costs and delays in building the space station, NASA chief Charles Bolden said on Friday.

"We're talking about having vision and looking to the future, but planning that future in a very constrained fiscal environment," Bolden said in an interview on a tour to meet with European counterparts.

"I wouldn't say we're scaling back the dreams, what we're doing is that we are descoping, or at least discussing ways to descope, some of the missions that we've been planning for a number of years to fit within tighter budgetary constraints."

Bolden explained that "descoping" entailed scrutinising joint projects to pare back some costs but without affecting their key goals.

He gave the example of talks last month in which a joint US-European mission to Mars involving two landers examined options of having only one lander and reducing the instrument payload.

The NASA administrator met in Paris with the heads of the European Space Agency (ESA) and France's National Centre of Space Research (CNES). He heads to Italy next week for talks with Italian space agency chiefs.

The trip takes place when the US space shuttle is about to be phased out after helping to complete the International Space Station (ISS), a giant erector-set project troubled by cost blowouts and delays.

The United States has borne the lion's share, but indirect costs have also hit the Europeans and reduced the scope of scientific research aboard the orbital outpost.

That has sparked some grumbling about the point of the ISS and doubts whether Europe should join the US in future "prestige" projects such as a return to the Moon and, perhaps by 2030, explore Mars.

Bolden argued that the US partnership with ESA, Canada, Japan and Russia not only remained strong, it also had been fortified.

"The International Space Station has made everybody more willing to team up with America and the other partner nations," he said.

"Over the past 10 years we've seen what we can do in spite of the naysayers, in spite of all kinds of challenges. We have an operating space station that has been permanently occupied for a little bit more than 10 years now, has a full-time crew of six, always has an international crew onboard rather than any one nation, and is being serviced by more than four nations right now."

In recent weeks, the ISS has been visited by ESA's robot freighter, Japan's HTV spacecraft, Russia's Soyuz and Progress and the shuttle Endeavour.

Endeavour's sister, Atlantis, is set to launch to the ISS on July 8, the final mission in the 30-year shuttle programme. Bolden himself flew four times, twice as commander.

The reusable orbiter programme was driven by hopes of ushering in an era of simple, low-cost space travel.

But it turned out to be complex and massively expensive, requiring careful maintenance to address safety issues that led to the loss of two out of the five-shuttle fleet.

Phaseout means the United States will be without its own manned space capability for the first time in half a century.

Until a likely rocket-and-capsule alternative, provided this time by the private sector, becomes available, US astronauts will depend on getting into space aboard Russia's veteran Soyuz.

Bolden played down the significance of this, saying the United States had had experience of a similar gap after the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003.

"Almost all the companies tell us that they can have the capability available within three years after being awarded a contract. So we're talking about 2014, 2015 timeframe, which is about three years, a little bit more than three years from now," he said.

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