Space Stories: Roving Students, Preparing for Roman Times, and a New Space Center

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Students at this year’s obstacle course at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center during NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge event. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—NASA: “Dozens of Student Teams Worldwide to Compete in NASA Rover Challenge“

NASA has selected 72 student teams to begin an engineering design challenge to build human-powered rovers that will compete next April at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, near the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024, the Human Exploration Rover Challenge tasks high school, college, and university students to design, build, and test lightweight, human-powered rovers on an obstacle course simulating lunar and Martian terrain, all while completing mission-focused science tasks.

—Space.com: “NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will Launch in 2027. Here’s How Scientists are Getting Ready“

NASA is mobilizing the scientific community to ensure the agency’s next big space telescope will be ready to deliver a “big picture” view of the universe almost immediately after launching. The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope — also known as the Roman Space Telescope, or just Roman — is set to launch in 2027 and will view the cosmos with a staggeringly wide field of view. Its big-picture observations of distant and early galaxies could help scientists solve the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Collectively, this so-called dark universe accounts for 95% of the energy and matter in the cosmos, yet the true nature of dark matter and dark energy eludes scientists.

—SF YIMBY: “UC Berkeley Announces $2 Billion Space Center At NASA Ames Research Center“

New plans have been revealed for a $2 billion research center run by UC Berkeley at the NASA Ames Center in Mountain View, Santa Clara County. The Berkeley Space Center, as it will be called, will reshape 36 acres on the sprawling Ames Research Center, providing a hub for future companies to collaborate with the school and NASA scientists & engineers to improve technology for aviation, space exploration, and how people live and work in space.

Television: The First Season of Star Wars: Ahsoka

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The main character Ahsoka. (Disney)

So now that I have seen the full series of the Star Wars TV series Ahsoka, I can say that it was better than I expected. However, it was pretty slow all the way up until episode 6 when a another galaxy far, far away was introduced.

The first five episodes where slow, predictable, and almost had the feeling of a fan-created film. Everything from the dialogue to the uniforms to the spacecraft was odd. And creating a female-based story that merely mimics earlier tropes, such as the first episode with Ashoka playing Indiana Jones and Sabine Wren playing a disgruntled teenage (much like the younger Luke Skywalker), was a bit too much. Plus, the idea that these women were pining for a lost boyfriend (Ezra) who they needed to save was the cherry on top of a collapsing pile of mess.

The presence of Anakin Skywalker mid-series did not enhance my feelings towards the show. More than anything, I found it confusing. Why is this show trying to resurrect the reputation of a man who slaughtered children in a Jedi daycare and murdered millions by blowing up planets? Did the creators really need a cameo that bad that they would sink to that level?

Only with episode six with the Grand Admiral “Papa Smurf” Thrawn and his Macbeth-like witches did the series become interesting, though I do not know why the storm troopers were unable to wash their armor and the Imperial Star Destroyer was painted up like a hippie van. And did the creatures on the planet remind you of gentle Jawas and warlike Sand People, or is that just me?

Anyway, I will give the show another chance now that I know what is possible, though I would not say this was the strongest showing by Disney. That said, it was better than some of the other Star Wars spin-offs.

Here is my ranking of all the Star Wars live-action series to date:

  1. Andor
  2. The Mandalorian
  3. Ahsoka
  4. The Book of Boba Fett
  5. Obi-Wan Kenobi

I have many more comments about the new series, but I will leave it there. I am dropping in a few more comments I found that parallel mine to some degree.

At least we still have “Andor.”
—Ben Travers, indieWire

No matter how hard it strives for widespread accessibility, it’s a sequel that will be of primary interest to established fans.
—Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

At a time when audiences have thinning patience both for super-heroics and too much fan service, Ahsoka will still need to raise its game to prove it’s more than wish fulfillment for longtime Star Wars fans.
—Eric Deggans, NPR

Space Quote: Rich Bounty from the Asteroid Bennu Sample

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Outside view of the OSIRIS-REx sample collector. You an see sample material from asteroid Bennu on the middle right. (NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold)

“As we peer into the ancient secrets preserved within the dust and rocks of asteroid Bennu, we are unlocking a time capsule that offers us profound insights into the origins of our solar system…The bounty of carbon-rich material and the abundant presence of water-bearing clay minerals are just the tip of the cosmic iceberg. These discoveries, made possible through years of dedicated collaboration and cutting-edge science, propel us on a journey to understand not only our celestial neighborhood but also the potential for life’s beginnings. With each revelation from Bennu, we draw closer to unraveling the mysteries of our cosmic heritage.”

–Statement by Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, regarding the recently-arrived sample collected from asteroid Bennu. NASA and its partners are expected to study the sample for the next two years to learn more about the asteroid and our solar system.

Audit Results: More Concern About NASA’s Space Launch System

Posted on by onespaceman2000

First, the US Government Accountability Office reported that NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is unaffordable, and now NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) doubles down on that earlier finding, reporting that the SLS, a key component of the Artemis program, has costs that are spinning out of control.

In its report, NASA’s Transition of the Space Launch System to a Commercial Services Contract, NASA OIG concludes:

Our analysis shows a single SLS Block 1B will cost at least $2.5 billion to produce—not including Systems Engineering and Integration costs—and NASA’s aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50 percent is highly unrealistic. Specifically, our review determined that cost saving initiatives in several SLS production contracts such as reducing workforce within Boeing’s Stages contract and gaining manufacturing efficiencies with Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RS-25 Restart and Production Contract were not significant and, as a result, a single SLS will cost more than $2 billion through the first 10 SLS rockets produced under [the Exploration Production and Operations Contract].

NASA OIG concludes that maybe other contractors needs to be considered, stating:

Although Congress directed NASA in 2010 to build a heavy-lift rocket and crew capsule using existing contracts from the canceled Constellation effort to meet its space exploration goals, the Agency may soon have more affordable commercial options to carry humans to the Moon and beyond. In our judgment, the Agency should continue to monitor the commercial development of heavy-lift space flight systems and begin discussions of whether it makes financial and strategic sense to consider these options as part of the Agency’s longer-term plans to support its ambitious space exploration goals.

Where are these “more affordable commercial options”? Could it be SpaceX? Blue Origin? If so, let’s start the transition ASAP so that the Moon and Mars remain a realistic goal in the near future. We have plenty of talent in this country and a race to the top is what we need, not a space agency stuck with an Edsel rocket system.

The Psyche Mission Begins

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: NASA

It may be Friday the 13th, but the news has been positive about the Psyche spacecraft, which earlier today successfully launched from  NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Here is part of a statement by Arizona State University Professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Psyche mission, from back in 2017 as she awaited word on whether the Psyche mission had been green-lighted by NASA:

I’ve only been working on this project for five and a half years. Some of my competitors have been through the process before with the same ideas, and are coming up on a decade of trying to fly their concept. Still, five and a half years. About 150 people have worked on this concept with me. We’ve written about 2,000 pages, including the step 1 and step 2 proposals and all the written, edited, revised, formatted, and published answers to questions that came in between. We have art and models and videos and new scientific and engineering results because of all our efforts to understand how to get to the metal world Psyche and what we might find if we did, and how we could measure it and send the information back to Earth and understand it and interpret it for everyone in the world.

To say our hearts are in this project would be too facile, too surficial, too trite. We have lived and breathed this. We know and love each other and we know each other’s families and we have learned when to be quiet and let the other person work through a peak of frustration late at night after no rest for weeks. We have sweated through countless reviews and celebrated with numerous cakes and dinners the many intermediate successes that allowed us to get here, the ultimate intermediate success, the privilege to wait for the phone call.

Here is PI Lindy Elkins-Tanton’s quote from earlier today:

We said ‘goodbye’ to our spacecraft, the center of so many work lives for so many years – thousands of people and a decade…But it’s really not a finish line; it’s a starting line for the next marathon. Our spacecraft is off to meet our asteroid, and we’ll fill another gap in our knowledge – and color in another kind of world in our solar system.

Congratulations to PI Lindy Elkins-Tanton and her team on a job well done (so far, of course).