Lack of nitrogen kills space buffs' hopes for NASA probe

It looks like space buffs' plan to push an aged NASA space probe into a new orbit has come up against a deal-breaker. Weeks after making contact with the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, or ISEE-3, the group of citizen scientists has learned the tanks on the spacecraft are apparently empty of nitrogen, the New York Times reports.

Since the gas is required to fire the thrusters that would alter the probe's trajectory—the group had planned to boot it out of its heliocentric orbit and into one where it could better communicate with Earth—it's a massive problem.

"Odds are, there is nothing we can do," says Keith Cowing, a leader of the reboot project. "Without that, you don't have a rocket." The group fired the thrusters just last week, but when they tried to activate the thrusters yesterday and Tuesday they just sputtered.

Space.com reports scientists initially thought a "valve malfunction" could be at fault, but Cowing last night wrote they were instead pinning the blame on a lack of nitrogen, which is needed to push the fuel, called hydrazine, to the thrusters.

As for why the thrusters appeared to work last week, that was "probably the result of residual hydrazine that was already in the system that had pressure," says Cowing, per Space News.

He says ISEE-3 is now operating in science mode, meaning it's sending data back to Earth that'll be accessible for the next three months or so.

After that, it'll be so far from us that communicating with it will become cost-prohibitive.

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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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Russia plans to send probe to moon in 2015

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will resume a long-dormant quest to explore the moon by sending an unmanned probe there in 2015, the head of the space agency was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

The craft, called Luna-Glob, or Moon-Globe, will be carried by the first rocket to blast off from a new facility that Russia is building in its far eastern Amur region, Roskosmos director Vladimir Popovkin said, according to the Interfax news agency.

"We will begin our exploration of the moon from there," he said of the new space centre that will decrease Russia's reliance of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the ex-Soviet nation Kazakhstan, which it leases.

Russian space officials have said Luna-Glob would consist of an orbital module and a probe that would land on the moon and beam back information about samples it takes from the surface.

The Soviet Union got a jump on the United States in the Cold War space race, sending a probe to the moon in 1959 and putting the first person into space in 1961. But the United States first put a man on the moon in 1969 and Russia has not done so.

The last successful Soviet launch of a unmanned probe to the moon was in the 1970s, and Russia has suffered setbacks in its space program in recent years, including bungled satellite launches and the failure of a Mars probe in 2011.

A successful rocket launch on Tuesday put three military satellites in orbit, the Defense Ministry said.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved a plan last month to spend 2.1 trillion roubles ($70 billion) on space industry development in 2013-2020, to pursue projects to explore the moon and Mars, among other things.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Space agency ends attempt to contact Russian probe (AP)

MOSCOW – The European Space Agency said Friday it has abandoned efforts to contact a rogue Russian space probe, increasing the likelihood it will plunge to Earth.

The unmanned Phobos-Ground probe was to head to the Mars moon of Phobos on a 2 1/2-year mission to take soil samples and fly them back to Earth. But the probe became stuck in Earth orbit after its Nov. 9 launch and attempts to send commands that could propel it toward the Mars moon have been unsuccessful.

ESA said in a statement that although the agency has halted efforts to contact the probe, it will resume if any changes are reported by the Russian space agency.

A spokesman for the Paris-based ESA told The Associated Press that Russia was going to continue to try to contract the probe over the weekend; he spoke on condition he not be named. Russian space officials could not be reached for comment late Friday.

Russian deputy space chief Vitaly Davydov said last month that if the spacecraft is not sent to Mars, it could fall to Earth sometime between late December and late February.

The failed spacecraft is 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons); most of that weight, about 11 metric tons (12 tons), is highly toxic fuel. Experts say that if the fuel has frozen, some could survive the plummet to Earth, but that if it is liquid it will likely combust from the heat of re-entering the atmosphere.

The mission was planned to reach Mars orbit next September and land on Phobos in February 2013.

Scientists hoped that studies of the Phobos soil would help solve the mystery of its origin and shed more light on the genesis of the solar system. Some believe that the crater-dented moon is an asteroid captured by Mars' gravity, while others think it's a piece of debris resulting from Mars' collision with another celestial object.

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Online:

ESA website http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_eu/storytext/eu_russia_mars_mission/43786367/SIG=10k9t67oj/*http://www.esa.int

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Associated Press writer Sarah DiLorenzo contributed to this story from Paris.

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Scientists Propose NASA Probe to Uranus (ContributorNetwork)

According to Space.com, scientists are contemplating sending a robotic probe to Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, described as an "ice giant." Uranus has only been visited briefly by the Voyage 2 flyby probe in 1986.

* The proposed mission, which would orbit Uranus much as Cassini currently orbits Saturn and Galileo once orbited Jupiter, would be launched sometime in the 2020s, when the planet is in the best position to be accessed from Earth. The mission, which would comprise of an orbiter and a probe that would penetrate Uranus' atmosphere, would cost somewhere between $1.5 billion and $2.7 billion dollars.

* Voyager 2 flew within 50,600 miles of Uranus. It managed to image the planet, its rings, and five of its largest moons. It discovered 10 previously unknown moons. Voyager 2 also discovered that Uranus' rotation was 17 hours, 14 minutes, that its magnetic field was "large and unusual," and that the temperature of its equatorial region, which receives less sunlight than the polar region pointed at the sun, nevertheless has about the same temperature.

* Uranus was discovered to be a planet by the British astronomer William Herschel on March 13, 1781. Herschel named the planet "Georgium Sidus" after his royal patron, King George III. Eventually the planet was named Uranus by 1850 in conformity to naming planets after gods of Roman mythology.

* Uranus appears to have been hit by multiple strikes so that its axes, rather than its equator, are parallel to the plane of the elliptic.

* Unlike Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus is composed primarily of rock and ices, primarily water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and methane. Its atmosphere is mainly composed of hydrogen, with some helium and methane.

* Uranus has 13 known rings, common to all of the other outer planets.

* According to 1-2-3problemsolved.com, Uranus' magnetic field is "odd" in that it is not on the center of the planet and is tilted 60 degrees with respect of the axis of rotation.

* Uranus is 2,870,990,000 kilometers from the sun and takes 84 years to revolve around the sun. Uranus is 51,118 in diameter.

* There are 27 moons in orbit around Uranus, only five of which are much larger than the average asteroid. The moons of Uranus are named after characters in Shakespeare's plays and the poems of Alexander Pope. The five largest moons are Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon.

* Questions that the proposed probe to Uranus would try to answer include why does it radiate more heat than do Jupiter and Saturn, why is it so tilted in respect to the plane of the elliptic, and why does its atmosphere have less hydrogen and helium than do Jupiter and Saturn. An orbiting probe around Uranus would also examine its weather patterns.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of

Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post , USA Today, the L.A. Times and The Weekly Standard.

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NASA Launches Twin Spacecraft to Probe Inside the Moon (SPACE.com)

Two identical space probes are on their way to the moon, after launching today (Sept. 10) on NASA's newest lunar science mission aimed at unlocking mysteries of the moon that are hidden beneath its surface.

The two Grail spacecraft blasted off this morning on an unmanned Delta 2 rocket at 9:08 a.m. EDT (1308 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, after windy weather and a technical glitch delayed the mission's launch by two days and threatened to again. A first try earlier today at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) was called off due to high-altitude winds, but weather conditions improved, and the agency was able to take advantage of the day's second launch opportunity.

The $496 million Grail mission (short for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory) will closely study the interior of the moon, from crust to core, and will map the moon's gravitational field in unprecedented detail. The three-month mission is expected to help scientists better understand the composition of Earth's natural satellite and its evolutionary history since it was formed 4.6 billion years ago. [Photos of NASA's Grail Moon Mission]

"We've used gravity science before, however these have been very primitive attempts compared to what Grail will be able to accomplish," Robert Fogel, Grail program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a news briefing on Wednesday (Sept. 7).

Understanding how the origin of the moonand how it evolved will shed light on how other rocky planets in the inner solar system formed, said Maria Zuber, Grail principal investigator at MIT.

"We have orbital reconnaissance of the surface, we have lunar samples which we can analyze in Earth labs," Zuber said. "The piece of the puzzle that has been missing in trying to reconstruct lunar evolution is understanding of the lunar interior." [Related: 20 Most Marvelous Moon Missions]

The two spacecraft, called Grail-A and Grail-B, are flying on an energy-efficient path to the moon, and are expected to arrive at their lunar target around New Year's Day (Jan. 1).

The twin probes will then enter into tandem orbits around the moon, separated from each other by a distance of about 75 to 225 miles (121 to 362 kilometers). The spacecraft will circle the moon about 34 miles (55 km) above the surface.

As the Grail spacecraft chase each other around the moon, regional differences in the lunar gravitational field will cause the probes to speed up or slow down, changing the distance between them, explained Sami Asmar, Grail deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Microwave signals bounced back and forth between Grail-A and Grail-B will measure this distance, which will help researchers construct accurate maps of the moon's gravity. The instruments onboard the Grail probes are so precise they will be able to calculate the distance between them to within less than the width of a human red blood cell, Asmar said. [Video: Grail's Mission to Map Moon Gravity]

Understanding how the moon formed and evolved will help scientists piece together clues of how other large objects in the inner solar system came to be.

"The moon is a fantastic body … in terms of learning about early planets," Zuber said. "It's nearby, it's accessible, and it preserves the record of what early planets are like. Other planets in the inner part of the solar system have gone through the same processes that the moon has gone through."

The Grail mission is also expected to raise public awareness about the moon, and special cameras aboard the probes will be used to encourage middle school students to participate in lunar science and follow along with the Grail expedition.

The so-called MoonKam project, which will capture pictures of the lunar surface for students on Earth, is being led by former NASA astronaut Sally Ride and her educational company Sally Ride Science.

As part of their public outreach efforts, NASA also invited 150 Twitter fans to attend the launch and share their experiences with the public through social media.

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Rocket lifts off with satellites to probe moon (Reuters)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – An unmanned U.S. rocket blasted off on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to deliver twin robotic probes to the moon in the hope of learning what is inside.

The 124-foot (37.8-meter) booster soared off its seaside launch pad at 9:08 a.m. EDT, arcing over the Atlantic Ocean as it raced into orbit.

Less than two hours later, both probes were flying freely from the rocket's upper-stage motor and were communicating with NASA's Deep Space Network.

"I couldn't be more pleased," Jim Adams, deputy director of NASA's planetary division, told reporters after the launch.

Liftoff of the Delta 2 rocket occurred two days later than planned due to high winds at the launch site and because of time required to review data on the rocket after its tanks were drained of fuel following an earlier launch scrub on Thursday.

The twin satellites on board are headed to a point in space 932,0570 miles away where gravitational pull from the Sun and Earth balances out.

From there, the NASA Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, satellites will make a long, slow approach to the moon, arriving on December 31 and Jan 1.

The twin GRAIL probes are designed to precisely map the moon's gravity so scientists can learn what lies beneath the lunar crust and whether the moon's core is solid, liquid or some combination of the two.

Combined with high-resolution imagery, ongoing analysis of rock and soil samples returned by the 1969-1972 Apollo missions and computer models, the gravity maps are expected to fill in the biggest missing piece in the puzzle of how Earth's natural satellite formed and evolved.

MAPPING MOON GRAVITY

The small boxy probes are designed to fly single file over the lunar poles, mapping the dips and swells in lunar gravity.

Linked by radio waves, the spacecraft will be able to detect changes in the tug of lunar gravity as small as one micron -- about the width of a red blood cell.

Pockets of terrain with more mass will cause first one and then the second satellite to speed up slightly as they fly over, changing the distance between the two probes in minute, but measurable amounts. Less dense regions will cause the probes to slow slightly.

The measurements are so precise that scientists have to factor out a myriad of other forces, including the pressure of sunlight and the gravitational influences of all other planets in the solar system, even the dwarf planet Pluto, currently about 2.9 billion miles (4.7 billion km) away.

Scientists believe the moon's building blocks were large chunks of debris jettisoned from Earth after a collision with an object as big as Mars.

The moon's ancient face reveals a history of impacts over the eons and other events, such as flowing rivers of molten lava. The GRAIL researchers' job is to determine how all these processes impacted the moon internally.

"Large impacts deposit a great deal of energy into a planet. They heat the interior. They potentially could cause the convection pattern to change. They can contribute to the way a planet de-gasses," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary scientist Maria Zuber, lead researcher and manager of the $496-million GRAIL mission.

Besides unraveling the moon's history, GRAIL scientists expect to extrapolate their findings to other rocky bodies, both in our solar system and eventually to those beyond.

United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, manufacture and provide launch services for the Delta 2 rocket. Lockheed Martin also is the prime contractor on the GRAIL satellites.

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Sandra Maler)

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Rocket lifts off with satellites to probe moon

1 of 4. These undated NASA images show the various stages of pre-launch preparations of NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft at Space Launch Complex 17B on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, which were released September 7, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Sat Sep 10, 2011 1:20pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned U.S. rocket blasted off on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to deliver twin robotic probes to the moon in the hope of learning what is inside.

The 124-foot (37.8-meter) booster soared off its seaside launch pad at 9:08 a.m. EDT, arcing over the Atlantic Ocean as it raced into orbit.

Less than two hours later, both probes were flying freely from the rocket's upper-stage motor and were communicating with NASA's Deep Space Network.

"I couldn't be more pleased," Jim Adams, deputy director of NASA's planetary division, told reporters after the launch.

Liftoff of the Delta 2 rocket occurred two days later than planned due to high winds at the launch site and because of time required to review data on the rocket after its tanks were drained of fuel following an earlier launch scrub on Thursday.

The twin satellites on board are headed to a point in space 932,0570 miles away where gravitational pull from the Sun and Earth balances out.

From there, the NASA Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, satellites will make a long, slow approach to the moon, arriving on December 31 and Jan 1.

The twin GRAIL probes are designed to precisely map the moon's gravity so scientists can learn what lies beneath the lunar crust and whether the moon's core is solid, liquid or some combination of the two.

Combined with high-resolution imagery, ongoing analysis of rock and soil samples returned by the 1969-1972 Apollo missions and computer models, the gravity maps are expected to fill in the biggest missing piece in the puzzle of how Earth's natural satellite formed and evolved.

MAPPING MOON GRAVITY

The small boxy probes are designed to fly single file over the lunar poles, mapping the dips and swells in lunar gravity.

Linked by radio waves, the spacecraft will be able to detect changes in the tug of lunar gravity as small as one micron -- about the width of a red blood cell.

Pockets of terrain with more mass will cause first one and then the second satellite to speed up slightly as they fly over, changing the distance between the two probes in minute, but measurable amounts. Less dense regions will cause the probes to slow slightly.

The measurements are so precise that scientists have to factor out a myriad of other forces, including the pressure of sunlight and the gravitational influences of all other planets in the solar system, even the dwarf planet Pluto, currently about 2.9 billion miles (4.7 billion km) away.

Scientists believe the moon's building blocks were large chunks of debris jettisoned from Earth after a collision with an object as big as Mars.

The moon's ancient face reveals a history of impacts over the eons and other events, such as flowing rivers of molten lava. The GRAIL researchers' job is to determine how all these processes impacted the moon internally.

"Large impacts deposit a great deal of energy into a planet. They heat the interior. They potentially could cause the convection pattern to change. They can contribute to the way a planet de-gasses," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary scientist Maria Zuber, lead researcher and manager of the $496-million GRAIL mission.

Besides unraveling the moon's history, GRAIL scientists expect to extrapolate their findings to other rocky bodies, both in our solar system and eventually to those beyond.

United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, manufacture and provide launch services for the Delta 2 rocket. Lockheed Martin also is the prime contractor on the GRAIL satellites.

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Sandra Maler)

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NASA probe to asteroid begins collecting data (AP)

PASADENA, Calif. – The Dawn spacecraft has begun collecting data about the asteroid Vesta.

The NASA probe made its first detailed observations of the surface Thursday from a distance of 1,700 miles and will spend the next several weeks taking images from that altitude. Afterward, it will spiral closer to the asteroid to get a better view.

Dawn slipped into orbit around Vesta last month after a four-year journey and beamed up early pictures revealing a rocky body with radically different northern and southern hemispheres.

Vesta resides in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists hope to better understand the conditions of the early solar system by studying asteroids.

Dawn will circle Vesta for year before moving on to a bigger asteroid, Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.

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NASA's Juno probe sets sail for Jupiter

An Atlas V rocket with NASA's Juno spacecraft payload is seen the evening before its planned launch at Space Launch Complex 41 of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, August 4, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Bill Ingalls/NASA

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Fri Aug 5, 2011 4:55pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday, sending a robotic scout on its way to Jupiter to gather details about how the solar system formed.

The Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA's Juno spacecraft lifted off at 12:25 p.m. (1625 GMT), the first step in a five-year, 445-million mile (716-million km) odyssey to the largest planet in the solar system.

Launch was delayed almost an hour while United Launch Alliance fixed a technical problem with ground support equipment. The Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture builds and flies Atlas and Delta rockets for NASA, as well as the military and commercial customers.

"Next stop is Jupiter," an elated Scott Bolton, head of the Juno science team, told reporters after launch. "I couldn't be happier. This is sort of like a dream come true."

Upon arrival in July 2016, Juno is to spend a year in an unprecedented polar orbit around the giant planet, measuring its water content, mapping its magnetic fields and searching for signs of a solid core.

With more than twice the mass than all its sibling planets combined, Jupiter is believed to hold a key piece to the puzzle of how the planets formed some 4.65 billion years ago from the gas and dust left over after the birth of the sun.

"We're really looking for the recipe for planet formation," said Bolton, who is with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

"We're going after the ingredients of Jupiter by getting the water abundance as well as very precise measurements of the gravity field that will help us understand whether there's a core of heavy elements or a core of rocks in the middle of Jupiter."

INSIDE RADIATION BELTS

The measurements will help scientists sort through theories about what the early solar system looked like and how Jupiter, believed to be the first planet to form, was created.

To make its observations, Juno will soar as close as 3,100 miles above Jupiter's cloud tops, the first spacecraft to fly inside the planet's radiation belts.

With its sensitive electronics housed in a vault of titanium, Juno should last through 33 orbits around Jupiter, which is about a year on Earth.

Its last maneuver will be a plunge into the planet's thick atmosphere, which will incinerate the probe to avoid possible contamination of Jupiter's water-bearing moons.

Now that NASA has retired its shuttle fleet, the U.S. space spotlight is shifting toward the robotic probes and observatories that have brought the biggest leaps in understanding the cosmos.

More than 10,000 people flocked to the Cape Canaveral area to watch the Atlas launch, the first rocket to fly from Florida since the shuttle's retirement last month. That was part of an outreach effort by NASA, which typically invites around 300 guests for an unmanned rocket launch.

"We're extremely excited about coupling the energy that the nation has for human spaceflight into understanding what we're doing in science because right now science is really the positive face of this agency," said Jim Adams, NASA's deputy director for planetary science.

The Juno mission is the second in NASA's lower-cost, scientist-led New Frontiers program, and it was accomplished on schedule and within its $1.1 billion budget.

The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics of Denver, Colorado.

In addition to launching science probes and other satellites, United Launch Alliance is in the process of certifying its Atlas 5 rockets to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, one of several possible commercial rockets contending to replace NASA's space shuttle fleet.

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Xavier Briand)

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