Never Thought of This One

 Going to the moon and staying there has its hazards. But NASA presents a new one.

A mobile wastewater treatment system built at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida that can help prepare for long-duration missions on the Moon and Mars departed the spaceport and arrived at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Graduate students at the university will test the technology under conditions designed to closely mimic the challenges of operating on another planetary surface. The Divergent Deployable Wastewater Treatment Facility is designed to turn crew wastewater into useful resources, which future explorers will need every day. At the University of North Dakota, teams will integrate this new wastewater system with the university’s Integrated Lunar/Martian Analog Habitat. Student operators and NASA researchers will study how the facility performs when connected to a habitat-like environment and exposed to the kinds of operational limits crews could face on another planet.

 Imagine human waste, with both human and other DNA, floating around the universe, landing on different planets, finding new homes, creating new aliens! 

Never thought of this in old days, just brought it back with you! 

 

Sixty Years

 The Wright Bros flew in 1903 and 60 years later we had international jst flights and supersonic aircraft for both military and commercial.

In 1966 until 1971 I spent significant time at the MIT Instrumentation Lab working on Apollo missions focusing on guidance and navigation. In 1968 the first flight to the moon was a success. Now some 60 years later as I watched the latest approach it did not seem any different. Outwardly we are repeating 1968.

Air-flight made massive changes in sixty years, space flight not so much? Why? 

X-15 to X-59

 NASA and Lockheed unveiled the new supersonic X-59. My first work was on the X-15 tracking atmospheric aerosols. The X-59 is a "quiet" supersonic. As NASA notes:

NASA and Lockheed Martin formally debuted the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft Friday. Using this one-of-a-kind experimental airplane, NASA aims to gather data that could revolutionize air travel, paving the way for a new generation of commercial aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound. “This is a major accomplishment made possible only through the hard work and ingenuity from NASA and the entire X-59 team,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “In just a few short years we’ve gone from an ambitious concept to reality. NASA’s X-59 will help change the way we travel, bringing us closer together in much less time.”

 Interesting how time changes, kind of. I flew the Concorde two times, even then it was a bit out of date. But it made a tremendous difference getting to Europe.

"Andromeda Strain": Redux

 In Creighton's book a Government satellite brings a deadly virus back to earth. After Apollo 11 the moon rocks were treated as highly contagious items. In the recent NASA asteroid samples NASA treats them like local store bought candy. NASA states:

After years of anticipation and hard work by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu finally is on Earth. It landed at 8:52 a.m. MDT (10:52 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, in a targeted area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City. Within an hour and a half, the capsule was transported by helicopter to a temporary clean room set up in a hangar on the training range, where it now is connected to a continuous flow of nitrogen. Getting the sample under a “nitrogen purge,” as scientists call it, was one of the OSIRIS-REx team’s most critical tasks today. Nitrogen is a gas that doesn’t interact with most other chemicals, and a continuous flow of it into the sample container inside the capsule will keep out earthly contaminants to leave the sample pure for scientific analyses. The returned samples collected from Bennu will help scientists worldwide make discoveries to better understand planet formation and the origin of organics and water that led to life on Earth, as well as benefit all of humanity by learning more about potentially hazardous asteroids.

 In the retrieval NASA folks just walked around assuming it was clean. It appears as if the precautions of 50+ years ago just went out the window. Cross your fingers folks! Pray!

NASA Image from Webb

 

NASA and Government Employees

 

NASA has a reputation for delays and mess ups.The current attempt to launch the trip to the moon is just another example.

There is a long history of poor systems planning and integration. After more than sixty years we still see the same poor unpredictable performance while the non Government entities are seamless.

End of a Galaxy

 

From NASA, not with a whimper but with a bang!

NASA Image of the Day

 

Center of Galaxy

From NASA files.

Giving Birth to Stars

Thanks to NASA.

Jupiter

NASA photo of Jupiter with "clouds".

50 Years or So Ago

About 50 years back I spent time designing a tracking system for the X-15. The system tracked Polaris and then as the aircraft was in flight above the atmosphere we scanned down tracking Polaris and measuring various wavelengths to determine absorption. This allowed us for the first time to determine aerosol density and at the same time by tracking Polaris to update gyro drift for better position accuracy.

Back then we had rather crude electronics and a real time environment. No Apps, just a great team to work with.

Hoarders?

The Space Station after 20 years. One wonders how much stuff has been just left around. These astronauts are not always known for neatness.

A View of a Hurricane

The above is a recent NASA photo of the current hurricane.

NASA and Budgets

NASA is a complex and often inefficient organization. Nature notes the just announced delay in the new space telescope.

NASA will delay the launch of its ambitious James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) by nearly a year, until approximately May 2020. That is likely to push the cost of the mission — the most complex space-science telescope ever built — over the US$8-billion limit set by the US Congress. It is the first major setback since NASA revised its plans for the project in 2011, after years of slipping schedules and rising costs. NASA announced the delay on 27 March, saying that engineers needed more time to assemble and test the components of the spacecraft at its main contractor, Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California. Among other problems, the collapsible, tennis-court-sized sunshield that protects the observatory’s 6.5-metre mirror took weeks longer than expected to fold and refold during testing.

The $8 billion will most likely become $9 billion and hopefully they have not messed up like the last one. There is now some sixty years of project management methods and procedures in systems like this and it is amazing that after all of those capabilities we see this again and again!

Happy Asteroid Day!

Yes, today is Asteroid Day. NASA has announced this event. Look up....it will distract you from Washington!

Mercury

Another pic from NASA. It is always interesting to see what our tax dollars are doing. It is a compelling photo.

Another Cool NASA Photo

One should ask how much these cost. Just to check.

Getting Your Money's Worth

NASA has a wealth of photos. The one above is worth considering.

Pluto

From the NASA web site, Pluton and its "moon". Interesting set of photos. But a note: In the old days we had to wear our own clothes. Today NASA seems to get everyone dressed up in matching polo shirts.