Fwd: Chinese rover analyzes moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: December 23, 2015 at 12:16:35 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Chinese rover analyzes moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years

 

22-Dec-2015

Chinese rover analyzes moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years

Washington University in St. Louis

 

The moon was never a fully homogenized body like Earth, analysis of moon rocks made by the Chinese rover, Yutu, suggests. The basalts the rover examined are a new type, chemically different from those retrieved by the Apollo and Luna missions 40 years ago.

 

 

Chinese rover analyzes Moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years

Rover finds volcanic rocks unlike those returned by Apollo and Luna missions, tantalizing clues to the period of lunar volcanism

December 22, 2015

By Diana Lutz

 

 

CNAS/CLEP

The Chinese lunar rover, Yutu, photographed by its lander Chang'e-3, after the lander touched down in Mare Imbrium, a giant impact basin that had been filled by successive lava flows.

 

In 2013, Chang'e-3, an unmanned lunar mission, touched down on the northern part of the Imbrium basin, one of the most prominent of the lava-filled impact basins visible from Earth. 

It was a beautiful landing site, said Bradley L. Jolliff, PhD, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who is a participant in an educational collaboration that helped analyze Chang'e-3 mission data. The lander touched down on a smooth flood basalt plain next to a relatively fresh impact crater (now officially named the Zi Wei crater) that had conveniently excavated bedrock from below the regolith for the Yutu rover to study.

Since the Apollo program ended, American lunar exploration has been conducted mainly from orbit. But orbital sensors mostly detect the regolith (the ground-up surface layer of fragmented rock) that blankets the Moon, and the regolith is typically mixed and difficult to interpret.

Because Chang'e-3 landed on a comparatively young lava flow, the regolith layer was thin and not mixed with debris from elsewhere. Thus it closely resembled the composition of the underlying volcanic bedrock. This characteristic made the landing site an ideal location to compare in situ analysis with compositional information detected by orbiting satellites.

"We now have 'ground truth' for our remote sensing, a well-characterized sample in a key location," Jolliff said. "We see the same signal from orbit in other places, so we now know that those other places probably have similar basalts."

NASA/GSFC/ASU

Chang'e-3 landing site is indicated with a white square in this lunar map, a mosaic made with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Wide Angle Camera. The landing sites of the Apollo missions are in red.

The basalts at the Chang'e-3 landing site also turned out to be unlike any returned by the Apollo and Luna sample return missions.

"The diversity tells us that the Moon's upper mantle is much less uniform in composition than Earth's," Jolliff said. "And correlating chemistry with age, we can see how the Moon's volcanism changed over time."

Two partnerships were involved in the collection and analysis of this data, published in the journal Nature Communications Dec. 22. Scientists from a number of Chinese institutions involved with the Chang'e-3 mission formed one partnership; the other was a long-standing educational partnership between Shandong University in Weihai, China, and Washington University in St. Louis.

A mineralogical mystery

The Moon, thought to have been created by the collision of a Mars-sized body with the Earth, began as a molten or partially molten body that separated as it cooled into a crust, mantle and core. But the buildup of heat from the decay of radioactive elements in the interior then remelted parts of the mantle, which began to erupt onto the surface some 500 million years after the Moon's formation, pooling in impact craters and basins to form the maria, most of which are on the side of the Moon facing the Earth.

The American Apollo (1969-1972) and Russian Luna (1970-1976) missions sampled basalts from the period of peak volcanism that occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago. But the Imbrium basin, where Chang'e-3 landed, contains some of the younger flows — 3 billion years old or slightly less.

NASA/LPI

Four views of the Mare Imbrium basin and the Chang'e-3 landing site demonstrate how different the Moon looks to different types of remote sensing, underscoring the need for ground truth to calibrate the orbital observations. For a larger version of this image click here.

 

The basalts returned by the Apollo and Luna missions had either a high titanium content or low to very low titanium; intermediate values were missing. But measurements made by an alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer and a near-infrared hyperspectral imager aboard the Yutu rover indicated that the basalts at the Chang'e-3 landing site are intermediate in titanium, as well as rich in iron, said Zongcheng Ling, PhD, associate professor in the School of Space Science and Physics at Shandong University in Weihai, and first author of the paper.

Titanium is especially useful in mapping and understanding volcanism on the Moon because it varies so much in concentration, from less than 1 weight percent TiO₂ to over 15 percent. This variation reflects significant differences in the mantle source regions that derive from the time when the early magma ocean first solidified.

Minerals crystallize from basaltic magma in a certain order, explained Alian Wang, PhD, research professor in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. Typically, the first to crystallize are two magnesium- and iron-rich minerals (olivine and pyroxene) that are both a little denser than the magma, and sink down through it, then a mineral (plagioclase feldspar), that is less dense and floats to the surface. This process of separation by crystallization led to the formation of the Moon's mantle and crust as the magma ocean cooled. 

The titanium ended up in a mineral called ilmenite (FeTiO₃) that typically doesn't crystallize until a very late stage, when perhaps only 5 percent of the original melt remains. When it finally crystallized, the ilmenite-rich material, which is also dense, sank into the mantle, forming areas of Ti enrichment.

"The variable titanium distribution on the lunar surface suggests that the Moon's interior was not homogenized," Jolliff said. "We're still trying to figure out exactly how this happened. Possibly there were big impacts during the magma ocean stage that disrupted the mantle's formation."

Another clue to the Moon's past

The story has another twist that also underscores the importance of checking orbital data against ground truth. The remote sensing data for Chang'e-3's landing site showed that it was rich in olivine as well as titanium.

That doesn't make sense, Wang said, because olivine usually crystallizes early and the titanium-rich ilmenite crystallizes late. Finding a rock that is rich in both is a bit strange.

But Yutu solved this mystery as well. In olivine, silicon is paired with either magnesium or iron but the ratio of those two elements is quite variable in different forms of the mineral. The early-forming olivine would be magnesium rich, while the olivine detected by Yutu has a composition that ranges from intermediate in iron to iron-rich.

"That makes more sense," Jolliff said, "because iron-enriched olivine and ilmenite are more likely to occur together.

"You still have to explain how you get to an olivine-rich and ilmenite-rich rock. One way to do that would be to mix, or hybridize, two different sources," he said.

The scientists infer that late in the magma-ocean crystallization, iron-rich pyroxene and ilmenite, which formed late and at the  crust-mantle boundary, might have begun to sink, and early-formed magnesium-rich olivine might have begun to rise. As this occurred, the two minerals might have mixed and hybridized.

"Given these data, that is our interpretation," Jolliff said.

In any case, it is clear that these newly characterized basalts reveal a more diverse Moon than the one that emerged from studies following the Apollo and Luna missions. Remote sensing suggests that there are even younger and even more diverse basalts on the Moon, waiting for future robotic or human explorers to investigate, Jolliff said.

© 2015 Washington University in St. Louis
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130

---

 

 

 

China's Yutu moon rover finds new kind of moon rock

The discovery suggests the moon's ancient molten insides weren't homogenized.

ST. LOUIS, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Chinese scientists say they've discovered a new kind of rock on the moon. The rock was discovered by China's Yutu rover, part of the country's Chang'e 3 unmanned lunar mission.

The small rover, deployed in 2013, discovered the never-before-seen mineral composition in an ancient lava flow in the Mare Imbrium. The Mare Imbrium is a formation created when lava filled an ancient lunar crater.

A more recent impact in the middle of the Mare Imbrium, known as Zi Wei crater, exposed the ancient basalt beneath the mare's surface. When the layers of the mare's lava cooled, they formed a type of rock unlike anything geologists have ever seen on the moon.

The rock's composition is detailed in a scientific paper published in the journal Nature.

Scientists believe the lava flow recently sampled and analyzed by Yutu is about about 3 billion years old -- relatively young compared to previously studied lunar rocks.

Because the lava flow is relatively young, its composition hasn't been compromised by errant debris from space. Its mineral composition is likely similar to the deeper basalt. Data from lunar orbiters suggest this type of basalt may also be present in other regions of the moon.

"The diversity tells us that the Moon's upper mantle is much less uniform in composition than Earth's," Bradley Jolliff, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and the only American on the Chinese research mission, said in a press release. "And correlating chemistry with age, we can see how the Moon's volcanism changed over time."

Mineral composition is affected by how fast and at what temperatures magma cools. The latest discovery may lend clues as to the behavior of the moon's molten center billions of years ago.

© 2015 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

 

---

 

 

Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 2): Heppenheimer Ta: 9781588340092: Amazon.com: Books

http://www.amazon.com/Development-Shuttle-1972-1981-History-Volume/dp/1588340090


Sent from my iPad

Killing shuttle illogic !

Killing shuttle illogic--- Walter Cunningham

The self-inflicted hiatus is driven partially by fear of the space shuttle, but mostly by the unwillingness of Congress and the American public to adequately fund manned spaceflight. Timing for terminating the Shuttle and ramping up the Constellation program seems to be driven by the Office of Management and Budget, even though NASA's share of the Federal Budget is a miniscule one-seventh of its peak in the 60s.

The Orion spacecraft will eventually restore an American presence in space, but the heavy-lift and on-orbit servicing capability of the shuttle will be sorely missed, not to mention the Orbiter's dexterous manipulator, or the ability to return 25 tons from space.

This hiatus may be another of those two-steps-forward-one-step-back experiences that has marked NASA's first fifty years. Some consequences of the five-year intermission:

The space industry will lose thousands of experienced and talented workers, especially at the Kennedy Space Center;
Dependency on foreign sources, almost exclusively the Russians, to keep our manned space program going;
The fate of the International Space Station passes out of American hands;
The experienced astronaut corps will suffer attrition and deterioration;
Our position as the world's leading space faring nation will further erode.
NASA survived an earlier hiatus from 1974 to 1981, a period during which we flew one politically motivated, but otherwise meaningless docking mission with the Russians. During that period, the space industry lost tens of thousands of workers, our progress slowed, and our space program has not been the same since. The loss of experience during that period may have contributed to the slow withering of NASA's reputation and credibility. It was not a good thing then and is not a good thing now.

In the early 70s, it was assumed that the Apollo spacecraft had served its purpose and would be useless in accomplishing the next generation of objectives in space. NASA was excited about building a brand new spacecraft and flying brand new missions. They are now back tracking and developing Orion—"Apollo on steroids," as some call it. In retrospect, the Apollo command/service module was not the dead-end once thought. It could probably have evolved to service the ISS. After all, most of the trips to the ISS have been made by Russian space "capsules."

When the Apollo program was canceled in the early 70s, following six historic landings on the Moon, the spacecraft was cited as too risky and the cost of Apollo launches too high. The answer was to be the Space Transportation System—the Space Shuttle.

Now, as we rush to cancel the Shuttle program, all we hear is: that it is too risky and shuttle launches are too costly. I assure you, manned spaceflight will always be risky and the Constellation system will be quite expensive.

Since the Columbia tragedy in 2003, critics, both inside and outside of NASA, have been lobbying to send the space shuttle to the NASA junkyard. They have caught the "new car syndrome;" NASA wants a new spacecraft, so they are finding all manner of things wrong with their current model. That means the safest American spacecraft ever, with the most capability of any space vehicle, will be gone before 2011.

Sent from my iPad

Expanding X37 B could get our orbital capabilities back! Critical need not understood by " Leadership" !!

Re Abbey article Lost in Space -- Washington 

The X-37B: Exploring expanded capabilities for ISS missions

March 12, 2013 by Chris Gebhardt--nasaspaceflight.com

However, our leaders don't appear to understand the critical need!

I think not !

We cannot afford to lose our lead among space-faring nations. Narrowing the gap between the shuttle and Orion would reduce the problem of holding on to a skilled workforce and help the United States maintain its lead in space exploration, along with the related science and technology that drives economic growth. U.S. dominance in space hasn't been lost yet, but it is definitely eroding.

What we really need is a fix for the five-year hiatus, not a band-aid. That means both extending the life of the shuttle and moving the launch date for Orion forward. NASA needs a $2 billion appropriation to extend the life of the shuttle for 18 to 24 months, and an additional $2 billion to move the first flight of Orion closer by 18 to 24 months.

Four billion dollars is a drop in the bucket for a $3 trillion federal budget and a $13 trillion economy. The money would enable us to maintain world leadership in a range of technologies essential for our future well-being and allow us to continue to sit at the top of the technical pyramid. As the richest country on the face of the Earth do we really want to be dependent on Russia to launch our astronauts into space? I think not!

Walt Cunningham

Loss of this capability May impact your SAFETY!

November 2015 Total -- Oakwood Lift Station Flow

Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality

Environmental Complaints and Local Services
TOTAL RETENTION LAGOON Monthly operations report 

Facility name.     Total Retention Lagoon/Lift Station                                            Facility ID. S20605

Mailing Address.    PO box 56 , Oakwood, oklahoma 73658

Physical Address  one block east of Michigan & Walnut-- lift station

                               Lagoon is one mile south of lift station.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Month ____November___.       Year.  2015

Flow for month ( in gallons)

113902 gallons

Rainfall. 1.5 inches

Indicate date of each site visit

___________________________________________________________________________________________

       

Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality

https://www.deq.state.ok.us/eclsnew/Forms/619-001%20Total%20retention%20monthly%20operation%20report.pdf


Sent from my iPad

Fwd: Nov. Fm data

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bobby G Martin <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Date: December 4, 2015 at 6:46:24 PM CST
To: Bobby G Martin <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Subject: Nov. Fm data

Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality

Environmental Complaints and Local Services

      TOTAL RETENTION LAGOON MONTHLY OPERATION REPORT

 

 

S20605 lift station 

Facility Name:​      ​​​​​​​​​Facility ID:          

 

 Oakwood lift station

Mailing Address:                  ​     ​     ​     

​​​​​Mailing Address​​​​City​oak​​State​Zip

 Box 56.              

Physical  Address:             ​     ​     ​     

​​​​​Physical Address​​​​City​​​State​Zip

Oakwood, ok 73658

 

 

Month:         ​    Year:        

 

Flow for the month (in gallons):         November total

                     113,902 gallons

rainfall 1.5 inches

Sent from my iPad

Last manned flight 2011. Estimated first manned flight of commercial is 2018 or 2019. Failure delays not factored in. This delay in USA manned operations is not compatible with USA space preeminence!

NASA's Webb Space Telescope Receives First Mirror Installation -- WASHINGTON, Nov. 25, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasas-webb-space-telescope-receives-first-mirror-installation-300184486.html


Sent from my iPad

Having this capability in a museum is unbelievable, we need bold leadership to regain WHAT WE HAD!!! As Krantz & Abbey have said, DON'T GO BACK TO CAPSULES---- which is what we are funding with the Commercial approach!

Project Apollo Archive’s albums | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums


Sent from my iPad

Oakwood oklahoma

NOVA | The Case to Save the Shuttle

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/case-save-shuttle.html


Sent from my iPad

The waste of a Resource this Great Country critically needs!

Once you read The Case to Save the Shuttle, & consider the nonsensical waste of taxpayer money, you should be upset enough to write your senators & Representatives!

Fwd: 25 Years Since the Secret Mission of STS-38

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: November 15, 2015 at 8:07:11 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 25 Years Since the Secret Mission of STS-38

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
November 14th, 2015

'Most Serious and Significant Work': 25 Years Since the Secret Mission of STS-38 (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

 

Atlantis roars into the night on 15 November 1990, 25 years ago, tomorrow, to begin the secretive mission of STS-38. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

A quarter-century ago, the world stood on the brink of outright conflict in the Middle East, following the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Against this stormy backdrop of an impending war which would define a generation, as well as set the groundwork for later assaults on Iraq and the eventual overthrow of Saddam, in November 1990—25 years ago, next week—Atlantis rocketed into orbit on the seventh classified shuttle mission for the Department of Defense. To this day, the exact details of what the five-man STS-38 crew did during their five days in orbit remain enshrouded in secrecy. But as with so many aspects of these classified missions, real events and rumors have become strangely juxtaposed and there can be little doubt that it will be many more years before any hard facts about this mysterious flight see the light of day.

As outlined in a previous AmericaSpace series of articles, available here and here, STS-38 was originally targeted for launch in May 1990, but fell victim to a fleetwide series of hydrogen leaks which plagued Atlantis and Columbia. Its crew—Commander Dick Covey, Pilot Frank Culbertson, and Mission Specialists Charles "Sam" Gemar, Bob Springer, and Carl Meade—were announced by NASA on 11 May 1989 and entered a standard 12-month training regime. Springer had flown one previous mission, and Covey two, whilst their crewmates were all embarking on their first flights. For Covey, the assignment did not come as a complete surprise, for in early 1989 he had replaced Brewster Shaw as the Astronaut Office's lead representative on the DoD shuttle missions. In spite of its relatively benign appearance on paper, the assignment exposed Covey to the innermost details of the most secret missions ever undertaken by the shuttle fleet.

The STS-38 crew consisted of (from left) Pilot Frank Culbertson, Mission Specialists Carl Meade, Bob Springer, and Sam Gemar, and Commander Dick Covey. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

The insights to which Covey was privy were far higher than those of his fellow astronauts, who had been assigned to missions. "Each crew was read-into the particular DoD program that they were supporting," he told the NASA oral historian, "but there needed to be someone who was aware of what all of those missions were going to be doing and working that interface with the appropriate agencies within the DoD to make sure that the crew issues that may cross all of those were being taken care of." Covey's role was to manage the classified materials and the staff, whose involvement demanded a level of security clearance beyond "Top Secret." Many of his meetings were held in "special environments" and the importance of his role was underlined by the fact that even the astronauts for one DoD mission did not always know what their fellow astronauts, assigned to another DoD mission, might be working on. From STS-27 in December 1988 until his own flight, two years later, Covey was thus involved with some of the most tantalizing missions ever flown in the U.S. human spaceflight program.

In fact, Covey had been undecided after his second shuttle voyage—STS-26, the post-Challenger Return to Flight (RTF) mission, in September 1988—about whether to remain with NASA or return to his military career. "I was approached … about returning to an Air Force assignment as a Test Wing Commander over at Eglin Air Force Base," he told the NASA oral historian. "Going through the process of making my decision on whether I wanted to accept their offer to come back to a very good job or to stay and fly again, I had discussions with [then-Chief of the Astronaut Office] Dan Brandenstein about what's going to happen next. In that discussion with Dan is when he told me of his intent for me to fly STS-38." With this assignment, the DoD lead representative job made more sense. "Brewster left and went off and flew one of the DoD missions … and so I kind of rolled in behind him in doing that."

As their training progressed, and the shuttle manifest contorted its way through the first full year after the post-Challenger RTF, it became clear that STS-38 would launch no sooner than mid-summer, with Atlantis having touched down at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on 4 March, to wrap up the STS-36 classified mission. Returned from the West Coast to Florida atop the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), the vehicle was rolled into the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on 14 March and underwent a comparatively smooth effort to ready her for STS-38. On 8 June, Atlantis moved into the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for stacking onto her bulbous External Tank (ET) and twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). Ten days later, she was transferred out to Pad 39A, tracking an opening launch attempt in mid-July.

Unfortunately, her sister ship, Columbia, had suffered a series of seemingly inscrutable hydrogen leaks from the 17-inch-diameter (43 cm) disconnect fitting. This hardware, located on the orbiter's belly, allowed liquid oxygen and hydrogen from the ET to enter the aft compartment and power the cluster of three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs). Shortly after the STS-38 stack reached the pad, NASA opted to perform a "tanking test" to verify that Atlantis was not affected by the same problem. Two methods of propellant-loading were followed: an initial "slow-fill" chilled down the pipework in her aft compartment and tank structure, in order to preclude the risk of boiling and the generation of excessive quantities of gas, followed by a higher-rate "fast-fill."

The historic "rollback" of the STS-38 stack (right) on 9 August 1990, which occurred as the STS-35 stack was returning to the pad. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

On 29 June, liquid hydrogen was pumped into Atlantis' ET and, to engineers' dismay, small concentrations of gas were detected in the vicinity of the disconnect hardware when the fueling process moved from the slow-fill into the fast-fill modes. According to NASA, the problem was "both temperature- and flow-rate-dependent," but conviction was expressed that the simultaneous leaks in Columbia and Atlantis were purely coincidental. A second tanking test was performed on 13 July, after which sealants were added to halt the leak, but a third test on 25 July revealed that it continued. Two weeks later, on 9 August—in one of the most enduring images ever taken during the 30-year shuttle program—the STS-38 stack was rolled back from Pad 39A to the VAB, passing the STS-35 stack, as Columbia made her way back out to the launch complex.

Back in the assembly building, Atlantis was destacked from her ET/SRBs and returned to the OPF on 15 August for attention to her hydrogen leakage issues. At length, she was back on Pad 39A by 12 October and promptly sailed through a tanking test, with NASA confidently scheduling STS-38 to fly no sooner than 9 November. Problems with her DoD primary payload enforced a slight delay until the 15th, with media being informed only that the launch would occur during a four-hour "window" from 6:30 through 10:30 p.m. EST. In spite of fears of high winds at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF)—to be used in the event of a Return to Launch Site (RTLS) abort—which initially placed estimates of acceptable weather at just 40 percent, conditions improved to 70-percent favorable and Atlantis speared into orbit at 6:48 p.m., turning night into day across the Space Coast.

"Liftoff of Atlantis," came the call from the Public Affairs Officer (PAO), "and the crew of a classified Department of Defense flight."

In keeping with protocol on these secretive missions, all communications between the orbiter and the ground during the early stages of ascent—including Dick Covey's "Roll Program" call at T+10 seconds and, later, acknowledgement of the engine-throttle-up call from Mission Control—were blacked-out. For Covey, launching in darkness presented few surprises; his first flight in August 1985 had begun on a cusp of daybreak and he was familiar with many of the sights and sounds and sensations involved. Most of Covey's family was in attendance on the night that STS-38 launched, with the exception of his eldest daughter, Sarah, who was on the Clear Lake High School volleyball team, back in Houston, which had just won the region. She was on her way to Austin, Texas, to play in the state championship series and was on the bus when Atlantis roared into orbit. Throughout the flight, Covey would receive uplinked teleprinter messages to keep him aware of the scores.

The STS-38 crew represented all four "core" military services, with Covey and Meade from the Air Force, Culbertson from the Navy, Springer from the Marine Corps and Gemar from the Army and all were graduates of a military test pilot school. (In fact, both Springer and Meade had actually applied to NASA for both the Pilot and Mission Specialist categories.) However, flying with three "rookies" posed its own challenges. "The good news is that we weren't flying a real long mission," Covey told the NASA oral historian, years later, "so they didn't have to worry about a whole lot of things. The bad news was that our most critical operations were all on the first day, right between launch and the time we went to bed; so these guys were going to be adapting to space for a first time, with all of the "gee-whiz" factors, and we had to do our most serious and significant work that first day in deploying a payload."

As Atlantis settled into orbit on the evening of 15 November 1990, only hours before Carl Meade's 40th birthday, the STS-38 crew was ready for four days of classified operations. By this stage, three months after Saddam Hussein's annexation of Kuwait, a growing international military presence was taking shape in the Persian Gulf. Two days earlier, on 13 November, a Titan IV booster had roared into orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, carrying a Defense Support Program (DSP) infrared early-warning satellite, and there was great speculation that the payload to be deployed by Atlantis' crew would be similarly directed toward intelligence-gathering over the Middle East. Little could the STS-38 crew have known, however, that their mission would end not at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., but—for the first time since April 1985—back at their launch site in Florida.

 

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

---

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
November 15th, 2015

'The Thing That Was Really Unique': 25 Years Since the Secret Mission of STS-38 (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

As with her launch and the bulk of her on-orbit operations, Atlantis' landing was also shrouded in gloom. She became the first orbiter to return to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in more than 5.5 years when she touched down on 20 November 1990. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Twenty-five years ago, tonight, fire and thunder rattled the marshy landscape of Florida and an artificial sunrise—for just a few minutes—created a new dawn. At 6:48 p.m. EST on 15 November 1990, Atlantis roared into orbit on the seventh classified shuttle mission for the Department of Defense. Aboard the orbiter for the projected four-day flight were Commander Dick Covey, Pilot Frank Culbertson, and Mission Specialists Carl Meade, Bob Springer, and Charles "Sam" Gemar, and STS-38 would deliver a secretive payload into space to support a gradually escalating international military presence in the Middle East, following the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. For Carl Meade, it was the eve of his 40th birthday, but for all five astronauts it was culmination of months of frustrating delays and the pinnacle of five lifetimes spent dreaming about aviation.

As described in yesterday's AmericaSpace history article, Atlantis' launch was originally targeted for May 1990, but shifted to the mid-July timeframe as the busy shuttle manifest took shape in the first half of that year. However, a series of hydrogen leaks associated with the 17-inch-diameter (43 cm) disconnect hardware aboard her sister ship, Columbia, prompted fleetwide inspections and a similar problem was identified on Atlantis. As a consequence, STS-38 flew several months later than planned, carrying a payload which remains shrouded in mystery and rumor, even a quarter-century later.

Its original published designation was "Air Force Program-658" (AFP-658), and initial speculation centered on the possibility that Covey's crew deployed a Magnum Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) satellite—of similar design to the payload lofted by the astronauts of Shuttle Discovery on Mission 51C in January 1985—atop a Boeing-built Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) booster. However, many years after STS-38, on-orbit images of Atlantis' vertical stabilizer revealed no trace of the donut-shaped Airborne Support Equipment (ASE) "tilt-table," which was known to have accommodated all IUS-based cargoes in the payload bay. More recently, it became generally accepted that STS-38 deployed a member of the second-generation Satellite Data Systems (SDS-B) telecommunications relays, inserted into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). All told, it is believed that three SDS-Bs were launched by the fleet of reusable orbiters, on STS-28 in August 1989, aboard STS-38 and finally on the final Department of Defense shuttle mission, STS-53 in December 1992.

The STS-38 patch, emblazoned with the surnames of Atlantis' five crew members, highlighted the "seen" and "unseen" aspects of a Department of Defense mission. Image Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Almost a decade after Covey's mission, in the spring of 1998, imagery and videotapes of an SDS-B under construction were released by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), together with the identity of its prime contractor, Hughes. Physically, the satellite resembled the Syncom-4—also called "Leasat"—military communications satellites, operated by the U.S. Navy, which were deployed from the shuttle in a sideways, frisbee-like motion. The last Syncom-4 was carried aboard STS-32 in January 1990. It has been suggested that the SDS-Bs occupied a high-apogee and low-perigee orbit, ranging from as close as 300 miles (480 km) and as distant as 23,600 miles (38,000 km), and functioning at steeply inclinations which achieved apogee over the Northern Hemisphere. This enabled them to cover two-thirds of the globe, relay spy satellite data of the entire Soviet land mass, and cover the entire north polar region in support of U.S. Air Force communications. Such wide coverage was not possible to geostationary-orbiting satellites.

The SDS-B (possibly codenamed "Quasar") featured a pair of 14.7-foot-diameter (4.5-meter) dish antennas and a third, smaller dish for Ku-band downlink. It is also believed to have carried the Heritage (Radiant Agate) infrared early-warning system for ballistic missile detection capability. Overall, the satellite measured 13.1 feet (4 meters) long and 9.8 feet (3 meters) wide in its stowed configuration, with a launch mass estimated at somewhere in the range of 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) and 6,600 pounds (3,000 kg). Although it is unclear as to how they were deployed, some observers have assumed that they were "rolled" out of the payload bay, like a Frisbee, in a similar fashion to the Hughes-built Syncom-4 satellites. Others have noted that the solid-fueled rocket booster used for the SDS-B was an Orbus-21, physically identical to the motor later fitted to Intelsat 603 by spacewalking astronauts during STS-49 in May 1992. This has prompted alternative suggestions that the SDS-B was deployed "vertically" from a special cradle in the payload bay, in an orientation closer to that of Intelsat 603 than Syncom-4.

Irrespective of how SDS-B departed Atlantis, it is certain that the deployment was completed in the early hours of 16 November 1990, about seven hours into the STS-38 mission, after which the orbiter performed a separation burn to move to a safe distance in anticipation of the firing of the satellite's motor. However, according to observer Ted Molczan, writing in February 2011, the delta-V of Atlantis' burn was less than a tenth of what it should have been for a motor attached to a payload the size of an SDS-B. Moreover, he noted that the satellite itself lingered for some time in low-Earth orbit, rather than initiating its climb to operational altitude at the next available ascending node.

Then, in 1999, came the first mutterings that STS-38 might also have launched a second, more covert payload, known only as "Prowler." Molczan explained that Prowler was deployed 22 hours after the primary payload. The shuttle's crew then apparently performed an unusual maneuver, by lowering their orbit, rather than raising it. "It also happened to arrest the separation from the SDS," Molczan wrote, "and initiate a very gradual overtaking, perhaps to create the impression of a rough station-keeping maneuver [by Atlantis] to keep Soviet attention focused on the SDS." It would also appear that the SDS-B finally fired its Perigee Kick Motor (PKM) during a 16.5-hour period which overlapped the firing of Prowler's own motor. Detection by the Soviet-operated signals intelligence station near Havana might have been circumvented, Molczan continued, by timing the deployment of Prowler very carefully to when Atlantis passed beyond the Cuban radar horizon.

This partial image of Atlantis' payload bay, acquired during the STS-38 mission, reveals the conspicuous absence of the donut-shaped Airborne Support Equipment (ASE) "tilt-table". This removed the possibility that the STS-38 crew deployed a Magnum Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) satellite. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

As for Prowler itself, even today the fiction and the speculation greatly outweigh the facts and the evidence. Due to its brightness, a case has been advanced that it was a Hughes HS-376 spacecraft "bus"—very much like the cylindrical communications satellites launched on several shuttle missions in the early 1980s—with an attached Payload Assist Module (PAM-D) to boost it into geostationary orbit. Molczan suggested a total payload weight of around 9,900 pounds (4,500 kg), of which 2,860 pounds (1,300 kg) was the satellite itself and a further 4,600 pounds (2,100 kg) for the PAM-D, and argued that the ability of the shuttle to carry both it and the SDS-B was well within its performance envelope.

Clearly, STS-38 was a heavy mission, as highlighted by its orbital altitude, which did not venture much higher than about 155 miles (250 km). "You can read a lot into that," Dick Covey admitted, years later, to NASA's oral historian. "We didn't go very high because we couldn't go very high, which says we probably had a heavy payload. That was the thing that was really unique about the whole mission." Of course, for much of the first decade after the conjectured launch of Prowler, its existence was unacknowledged. The presence of two spent rocket motors—codenamed "1990-097C" and "1990-097D" in a catalog of orbital objects—could be explained simply as representing the expended first and second stages of an IUS booster, without raising suspicion.

As to Prowler's nature, labels such as "Geolocation Platform," "Optically Stealthy," and "Inspector" have been banded around over the years and the consensus seems to be that it was some kind of low-observable satellite, employed to rendezvous and secretly inspect other nations' satellites in geostationary orbit, 22,000 miles (35,000 km) above Earth. At face value, the mission seemed impossible. Some observers doubted that it was even possible, in 1990, to conduct unmanned rendezvous in geostationary orbit, although such exercises had long since been routinely performed by the Soviets in low-Earth orbit between Progress cargo craft and the Salyut and Mir space stations. Others countered that geostationary altitudes provide a more benign environment for telerobotic operations and relative motion control and even wondered if Prowler might have performed radio frequency blocking; literally parking itself in front of a satellite's antenna path to block its signals. Still others have gone further: that Prowler did attempt such blocking, albeit experimentally, on U.S. communications satellites, and several analysts have argued that it could have positioned itself within a foot (30 cm) of a target.

Whatever the reality, it is certain that the curtain does not stand to be lifted on STS-38 for many more years to come. Yet this quiet mission had one more surprise in store. Its landing was scheduled for 19 November 1990, after four days in space, but was routinely postponed by 24 hours, due to unacceptable crosswinds at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., which caused all three opportunities for that day to be scrubbed. Unfortunately, the weather in the Mojave Desert on the 20th showed no sign of improvement and, with on-board consumables until the 21st, NASA diverted Atlantis to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). It would mark the first shuttle landing in Florida since Mission 51D in April 1985, which touched down in a crosswind and suffered seized brakes and a burst tire.

It was with some surprise that Covey received a call from Entry Flight Director Lee Briscoe—bypassing the Capcom—and asked him if he was happy to divert to Florida. Although it had been more than five years since a shuttle had made landfall on the East Coast, the answer was a no-brainer for Covey. He had flown so many simulated approaches to Florida that he was more than happy to do so. The landing would occur in the late afternoon and fellow astronaut Mike Coats, flying the Gulfstream Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA) on weather reconnaissance, was responsible for determining whether conditions were optimum to receive Atlantis.

Atlantis concludes the shuttle program's seventh classified Department of Defense mission on 20 November 1990. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

"This is the fall of the year," explained Covey in his NASA oral history, "and one of the things that they do in Florida during the fall is burn the underbrush in their pine forests; a very controlled type of burn, just to get everything down. They were doing that over on the west side of the [Banana] River in Florida and the winds were predominantly from the north-east … so they were blowing that smoke out over central Florida, toward Orlando." Based upon this factor, Coats recommended that Covey should land on the south-eastern end of the SLF, on Runway 33. By the time Atlantis neared the time to fire her Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines for the irreversible de-orbit burn, the winds shifted. "The smoke was coming pretty much right across the southern half of the runway," Covey recalled, "and the northern half was clear."

Coats held off from advising a landing on the Runway 15 "end"—which would have required Covey to perform a left-hand maneuver during final approach—and the astronauts were advised that the smoky conditions might prove problematic. Added to this was the fact that it was near sunset on the Space Coast and the refractive effect caused the smoke to appear thicker. A little after 4:30 p.m. EST, as Atlantis came within minutes of touching down on Runway 33, the astronauts could see very little through their windows. That said, Covey and Culbertson had great confidence in the shuttle's guidance capabilities and as the vehicle rolled out on final approach, they spotted the Precision Approach Position Indicator (PAPI) lights on the runway perimeter, barely visible through the smoke. These gave Covey the visual reference that he needed, but as Atlantis descended lower, passing into the smoke, he could see nothing but the lights; the runway itself was invisible to him. At length, the smoke cleared and there, right ahead, lay the runway.

"Frank lowered the landing gear and we landed," he recounted, "and I think, technically, I get to log an instrument approach on that!" Touchdown came at 4:42 p.m. EST. Atlantis had flown through conditions of visibility which would ordinarily never have been sanctioned and for several years afterwards, Covey enjoyed reminding Coats of his recommendation, for the Runway 15 end of the SLF was totally clear of smoke by landing time! Two weeks later, an increasingly confident NASA announced its intent to resume "operational" shuttle landings in Florida and STS-43, launched in August 1991, became the first post-Challenger mission to be specifically directed to KSC as its primary End of Mission (EOM) site. By the close of the 30-year shuttle era in July 2011, no less than 78 landings—almost 60 percent of the total 133 successful shuttle touchdowns—had been completed in Florida. 

 

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

---

 

Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: A real classic

http://keeptheshuttleflyingc.blogspot.com/2015/11/fwd-real-classic.html


Sent from my iPad

APPROPRIATE EO capability for the Greatest Nation on Earth!

• 
  
  Edit

One that has an equal or larger payload capability of the space shuttle.  

Can you believe we are pursuing an inferior approach that has us landing in Siberia ice or an ocean, or a desert!

This is totally INAPPROPRIATE  for this THE GREATEST NATION on the EARTH!

Below from Wikipedia .

Single-stage-to-orbit

Page issues

The VentureStar was a proposed SSTO spaceplane.

A single-stage-to-orbit (or SSTO) vehicle reaches orbit from the surface of a body without jettisoning hardware, expending only propellants and fluids. The term usually, but not exclusively, refers to reusable vehicles.^[1] No Earth-launched SSTO launch vehicles have ever been constructed. To date, orbital launches have been performed either by multi-stage fully or partially expendable rockets, or by the Space Shuttle, which was multi-stage and partially reusable.

Launch costs for low Earth orbit (LEO) range from $4500 to $8500 per pound of payload ($10,000–$19,000 / kg).^[2] Reusable SSTO vehicles offer the promise of reduced launch expenses by eliminating recurring costs associated with hardware replacement inherent in expendable launch systems. However, the nonrecurring costs associated with design, development, research and engineering (DDR&E) of reusable SSTO systems are much higher than expendable systems due to the substantial technical challenges of SSTO.^[3]

It is considered to be marginally possible to launch a single stage to orbit spacecraft from Earth. The principal complicating factors for SSTO from Earth are: high orbital velocity of over 7,400 metres per second (27,000 km/h; 17,000 mph); the need to overcome Earth's gravity, especially in the early stages of flight; and flight within Earth's atmosphere, which limits speed in the early stages of flight and influences engine performance. The marginality of SSTO can be seen in the launch of the space shuttle. The orbiter and main tank combination successfully orbits after booster separation from an altitude of 45 kilometres (28 mi) and a speed of 4,828 kilometres per hour (1,341 m/s; 3,000 mph). This is approximately 12% of the gravitational potential energy and just 3% of the kinetic energy needed for orbital velocity (4% of total energy required).

Notable single stage to orbit research spacecraft include Skylon, the DC-X, the Lockheed Martin X-33, and the Roton SSTO. However, despite showing some promise, none of them has come close to achieving orbit yet due to problems with finding the most efficient propulsion system.^[1]

Sent from my iPad

Shuttle clearly should be flying today!

We are slipping behind in space capabilities.  Rubio is correct on national security!

Below is from Wikipedia ,  & clearly illustrates why we developed our capabilities .

Now our capabilities are declining, Shuttle clearly should not be in a museum!

The United States was the dominant world power in the early 1950s. The U.S. government's U-2 spy-plane flights over the Soviet Union provided intelligence that it held the advantage in nuclear arms.^[6] The successful launch and orbit of Sputnik 1suggested that America's challenger had made a substantial leap forward in technology and posed a serious threat to American national security. This spurred the United States to making substantial federal investments in research and development, education, and national security.^[6]

Sent from my iPad