Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Aerospace

Apollo-13 — 41 Years Later

apollo-13.jpgThe Apollo-13 astronauts safely returned to Earth on April 17, 1970. Today commemorates the 41st anniversary of the dramatic conclusion to what must have been the most tedious and frightening events in space exploration history.

NASA launched Apollo-13 to be the third manned landing on the Moon. Two days into the mission, an oxygen tank on board the command module exploded, causing the end of the planned mission and initiated a dramatic space rescue effort, both back on Earth and on board the spacecraft.

The flight was commanded by James A. Lovell, with John L. “Jack” Swigert command module pilot, and Fred W. Haise lunar module pilot. The three astronauts and the Apollo-13 ground crew pieced together a rescue plan. Despite limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17, and the mission was termed a “successful failure”.

During the early 1990’s (I don’t remember the exact date), the Management Club at the company where I worked, invited Fred Haise to speak at one of our dinner meetings. He brought along a slide show and much anecdotal history of the Apollo-13 events. Haise recounted his time as an adviser to Bill Paxton, who played the role of Haise in the Apollo-13 film. Needless to say, the movie strayed from the business-like conduct of the astronauts in favor of dramatics, but the story line went more-or-less like the actual events, according to Haise.

After the presentation, I stepped to the podium (along with most everyone else there) and shook the hand of a real space hero.

17 Apr 2010 by Aerospace Rocket Science

Sungrazing Comet

Or should it be SUN-IMPACTOR COMET? I saw this yesterday on SpaceWeather.com:

sungrazerSUNGRAZING COMET: Today, the sun had a comet for breakfast. The icy visitor from the outer solar system appeared with no warning on April 9th and plunged into the sun during the early hours of April 10th. One comet went in, none came out. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) had a good view of the encounter.

The comet was probably a member of the Kreutz sungrazer family. Named after a 19th century German astronomer who studied them in detail, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a giant comet at least 2000 years ago. Several of these fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most are too small to see but occasionally a big fragment like today’s attracts attention.

This has been an active year for big, bright sungrazers. There was one on Jan. 4th, one on March 12th, and now one today. Normally we see no more than 3 or 4 bright ones in a whole year; now we’re seeing them almost once a month. It could be a statistical fluctuation or, maybe, a swarm of Kreutz fragments is nearing perihelion (closest approach to the sun). Stay tuned for doomed comets!

Click on the thumbnail image for full-size movie.

11 Apr 2010 by Aerospace Astronomy Science

F-35 JSF First Flight

Before I retired, I had the opportunity to work on a lot of very interesting and exotic aerospace projects. I worked on projects involving everything from Intercontinental Ballistic Missile systems to Airborne Multimode Radar systems to Geosynchronous Communications Satellite systems. I developed electronics for Electro-optical systems such as Forward Looking Infrared imaging, Laser Rangefinders, Target Designators and Guidance. I developed software for Automated Test Equipment, Cockpit Simulators, Global Communications Satellites and more. Hell – I even was co-inventor on the Barbie Piano project when I briefly worked at Mattel Toys.

Fewer things make me more proud than when a project I worked on gets some press for making a milestone. Although I had more to do with the avionics equipment for the Joint Strike Fighter than the flight systems, it still gives me pride to see the first flight milestone. This is a magnificent aircraft with a host of exotic systems and capabilities. I could tell you about them, but then – well – you know . . .

21 Mar 2010 by Aerospace Aviation Rocket Science

C’mon Global Warming

SOHO Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) solar images last summer and today:

then-now.jpg

Solar activity is starting to increase again after what has been a relatively long quiet spell associated with the minimum part of the solar cycle. February was the first month in quite some time where there were sunspots every day of the month. In the image above from last July (left), the lone bright area below the equator near the center was not associated with a sunspot, but was in an area of magnetic activity.

Remember that the sun is a star, like all stars, whose business is to fuse lighter elements into heavier ones; our sun fuses hydrogen into helium. This process results in chaotic magnetic behavior of the solar plasma which fluctuates in intensity over an eleven year cycle. We wrote “Ultimate Global Warming – SPF 2 Million Won’t Be Enough” to describe the process.

Evidently, we’re on the upswing after what some scientists (real ones, not climate liars) say was a very extended inactive period, which some feared would put the sun into many years of minimal activity. It is likely that such an extended period, the Maunder Minimum, was the cause of the “Little Ice Age” during the 1600s and 1700s. We wrote “Correlating Sunspots to Global Climate” which illustrates the phenomenon using animations and graphics.

Personally, after the winter we have been having in North America this season, I will be glad to see the sunspots bring us back to our subtropical weather patterns. Old folks like warmer weather, y’know. C’mon global warming! 🙂

02 Mar 2010 by Aerospace Environment Global Warming

Chocolate Rocks on Mars

chocolate.jpgCubical rocks lie in a spot designated “Chocolate Hills” by the JPL team. These remind me of stones quarried to build ancient structures on our planet.

Excerpt from the Mars Rover website:

Opportunity at a sweet spot on Mars

This rock has a thick, dark-colored coating that is interesting to scientists because many of the rocks in the surrounding area have the same mysterious dark stuff. The coating could be remnants of a layer that was changed by the action of water and weather or, it could be a layer of rock that melted when a meteor (less than a foot across) impacted Mars, ejecting this rock and others and creating the crater “Concepcion”. Knowing its origins will help them understand the history of Mars. Opportunity’s mission is to figure out the “ingredients” of this morsel by studying the chemicals in it.

The article is silent about the shape of the rocks.

16 Feb 2010 by Aerospace Rocket Science

Solar Tsunamis

There are signs that the current solar cycle, presently in a relatively low activity state, is on the move to become more active as we enter the second year of the eleven-year cycle. This is a movie of an event captured last February that scientists are calling a “solar tsunami.” It is a towering wave of plasma that lifts itself more than the width of the Earth above the solar surface and hurls massive amounts of solar matter into space.

From NASA:

The twin STEREO spacecraft confirmed their reality in February 2009 when sunspot 11012 unexpectedly erupted. The blast hurled a billion-ton cloud of gas (a “CME”) into space and sent a tsunami racing along the sun’s surface. STEREO recorded the wave from two positions separated by 90o, giving researchers an unprecedented view of the event:

tsunami.gif

Above: A solar tsunami seen by the STEREO spacecraft from orthogonal points of view. The gray part of the animation has been contrast-enhanced by subtracting successive pairs of images, resulting in a “difference movie.”

Please note that this is actual science and not the filtered version that you get from, say, the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. You can click on the movie above to see a larger version.

25 Nov 2009 by Aerospace Environment Global Warming Rocket Science

STEREO Solar Globe Movie

solar-movie.gifOver at the STEREO Solar observation website, they now feature an animated image of most of the solar globe. From the vantage points of the STEREO Ahead and Behind spacecraft, images are processed into this movie of the globe. Note the hot regions near the right edge just before the blank region – those spots are not in view of the SOHO spacecraft which sees the sun from the same angle as the Earth from its station at L1, the first Lagrangian point between the Earth and Sun.

From the STEREO website:

STEREO consists of two space-based observatories – one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind. With this new pair of viewpoints, scientists will be able to see the structure and evolution of solar storms as they blast from the Sun and move out through space.

This movie shows a spherical map of the Sun as it currently appears, formed from a combination of the latest STEREO Ahead and Behind beacon images. The movie starts with the view of the Sun as seen from Earth, with the 0 degree meridian line in the middle. The map then rotates through 360 degrees to show the part of the Sun not visible from Earth. The black wedge shows the part of the Sun not yet visible to the STEREO spacecraft.

06 Oct 2009 by Aerospace Rocket Science

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