Category Astronomy

Why did the Mars Observer fail?

On August 22, 1993, just days before the Mars Observer spacecraft was to enter orbit around Mars, it lost contact with the bases here on Earth. The $400 million spacecraft with an estimated overall project cost of $1 billion was designed to study and photograph the Martian surface, but ended in failure.

Following the success of the Mariner programme in the 1960s and early 70s, the Viking programme was the U.S.’s next foray towards our neighbouring planet, Mars. After the probes Viking 1 and Viking 2 successfully landed on the red planet in 1976, over a decade went by before America’s next mission to Mars. That came in the way of the Mars Observer, which was launched in 1992 and had things going well until its ill-fated end.

The mid-1980s saw a high priority mission to Mars being planned to act and expand on the information already assimilated by the Viking programme. With the preliminary mission goals of studying and taking high-resolution photographs of the Martian surface, the Mars Observer spacecraft was initially to be launched in 1990, before being rescheduled to 1992.

Based on Earth-orbiting spacecraft

Based on a commercial Earth-orbiting communications satellite that had been converted into an orbiter for Mars, the spacecraft was built at a cost of $400 million. The payload was made up of a variety of instruments that included a Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS), Pressure Modulator Infrared Radiometer (PMIRR), Thermal Emissions Spectrometer (TES), Mars Observer Camera (MOC), and Mars Balloon Relay (MBR) among others.

The specific objectives of the mission were to find out the elemental characteristics of the Martian surface: defining Mars topography and gravitational field: establishing the nature of Mars magnetic field finding out the distribution and sources of dust and volatile material over a seasonal cycle: and exploring the Martian abmosphere. The MBR was designed to receive information from the planned Mars Balloon Experiment to be carried by a Russian mission for retransmission back to Earth.

Contact lost

The Mars Observer was expected to achieve all this by orbiting the planet for one Martian year (687 Earth days), giving it a chance to observe the planet through the different seasons. The science instruments in the payload were thus designed to study the geology, climate, and geophysics of Mars.

Following a successful launch on September 25, 1992, Mars Observer was scheduled to perform an orbital insertion manoeuvre 11 months later on August 24, 1993. Just days before it, however, on August 22, 1993, communication was lost with the spacecraft even as it was preparing to enter orbit.

When the Mars Observer failed to respond to messages radioed by the ground controllers here on Earth, further efforts to communicate were made-once every 20 minutes. Even though they were met with silence, further attempts were made, less regularly, until the mission was declared a loss on September 27, 1993 and no further attempts to contact were made after that

Propulsion system failure

In 1994, an independent board from the Naval Research Laboratory announced their findings regarding the failure. They suggested that the most probable cause of the communications failure must be a rupture of the fuel pressurisation tank in the propulsion system of the spacecraft

Regardless of what the reason was, an estimated cost of $1 billion, which included the price of the spacecraft along with the costs of space shuttle launching and processing of scientific data was lost. While the science instruments were reflown on two other orbiters, Mars Global Surveyor and 2001 Mars Odyssey, there is no telling if Mars Observer followed the automatic programming to go into Mars orbit flew by the planet, or even if it continues to operate.

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HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT THE RESTROOM SCENARIO IN SPACE IS LIKE?

On May 5, 1961, barely three weeks after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s historic orbit of the Earth, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard waited, strapped into the Freedom 7 spacecraft. He would become the first American in space. What NASA officials hadn’t anticipated was that Shepard would have to endure five hours of delay cocooned in his shiny silver spacesuit before his 15-minute orbit.

“Man, I got to pee,” he frantically radioed launch control. Allowing Shepard to urinate in his suit would destroy the medical sensors he was wired with, but eventually launch control had no option but to let him go. Shepard had to suffer the discomfort of a wet suit till the cooling system inside evaporated the liquid.

Early efforts

NASA hadn’t solved the problem entirely even in 1963 when Gordon Cooper blasted off on the last Project Mercury flight. There was a urine collection device inside the suit, but the urine leaked out of the bag and the droplets seeped into the electronics, leading to a systems failure towards the end of the mission.

If wayward pee was a problem, think of what its twin, poop, could do in the cramped quarters of a spacecraft!

The Gemini project was launched to prepare men for the Apollo moon mission. In 1965, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman spent 14 days flying in Gemini 7, the longest manned mission at the time. They had to poop into a cylindrical plastic bag and add a substance to kill the bacteria and odours. Though the pee could be sent out directly into space through a valve-operated hose, the poo bags had to be stored in the craft till they landed.

By the time the Apollo missions came around, the system hadn’t improved much. The Moon men’s toilet ordeal lasted 45 minutes to an hour. They had to undress completely in a corner of the spacecraft and stick a faecal collection bag to their bottom. Low gravity meant that the poop wouldn’t fall down. The astronauts had to manually help it along with a finger cot, a glove-like covering for a single finger. They also had to knead a germicide into it to prevent the growth of gas-forming bacteria that could cause the bags to explode.

Hit and miss

Accidents did happen. Houston once heard the commander of the 1969 Apollo 10 mission Tom Stafford say, “Give me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air!”

On the first Space Shuttle mission in 1981, astronauts had to unclog smelly blocked toilets. Frozen urine ejected from the Russian Mir space station, damaged the station’s solar panels over time, reducing their effectiveness by around 40%.

Today, on the International Space Station (ISS), each astronaut is given his or her own funnel for peeing. It attaches to a hose. Urine is sent through a filtration system and recycled into drinking water. There is a proper sit down toilet for more serious business. The waste is sucked into a canister, which is stored and later shot back towards Earth along with other trash, where it burns up in the atmosphere.

Did you know?

Astronauts go through ‘positional training’ on Earth to perfect their aim since the toilet on the ISS has a narrow opening. The mock toilet has a camera at the bottom. Astronauts don’t actually go, but watch a video screen in front of them to check that their alignment is spot on. The toilet costs millions of dollars, so missing the target is not an option.

During a spacewalk or an EVA (extravehicular activity), astronauts wear a maximum absorbency garment, which is essentially a large diaper.

NASA’S 2020 Lunar Loo Challenge, which invited designs from the public for compact toilets that would work well in both microgravity and lunar gravity received tremendous response. The Artemis program plans to land a man and the first woman on the Moon by 2024.

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WHERE SHOULD A ROCKET LAUNCHING SITE BE LOCATED?

Many factors are taken into account while choosing a location for a site from where spacecraft are launched. Firstly, the launch site should be at a remote location as far away as possible from populated areas to reduce the chances of human fatalities on the ground in case of a rocket disaster. It is preferable if it is located next to a major water body such as a sea so that parts shed by flying rockets can fall into the open ???an.

The site should be accessible by land, air, and sea to avoid unnecessary transportation costs and delays. Scientists also prefer a site that has pleasant, mild weather conditions.

Launch sites are usually located near the Equator. Earth rotates from west to east. The surface velocity of the rotation is maximum (about 1600 km/hour) at the Equator. A rocket launched in the easterly direction from a site close to the Equator benefits greatly from the natural boost provided by the surface velocity of Earth’s rotation. This cuts down the cost of rockets used to launch satellites that are destined for the geo-stationary orbit, which runs parallel to the Equator. Most launch sites such as the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana; Cape Canaveral in the U.S.: Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh; and Thumba in Kerala – are located near the Equator.

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WHO IS BARBARA MORGAN?

On August 8, 2007, space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-118 mission was successfully launched. Among the crew members was Barbara Morgan, the first teacher to travel into space. Barbara Morgan, in full Barbara Radding Morgan, (born Nov. 28, 1951, Fresno, Calif., U.S.), American teacher and astronaut, the first teacher to travel into space. Morgan earned a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1973.

Among the many new things during the COVID-19 pandemic was the school classroom, or the lack of it. During the height of the pandemic in the last two years, students were often seen attending virtual classrooms from homes with the teachers conducting the classes from their houses.

A group of students in the U.S. experienced something similar 15 years ago. Only that their teacher, Barbara Morgan wasn’t teaching virtually from the comfort of her home. Morgan was the first teacher to travel into space and she did do some teaching while in space!

Born in November 1951 in Fresno, California, Morgan obtained a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University in 1973. Having received her teaching credentials by the following year, she began her teaching career in 1974 in Arlee, Montana, teaching remedial reading and maths.

She taught remedial reading, maths, and second grade in McCall, Idaho from 1975-78, before heading to Quito in Ecuador to teach English and science to third graders for a year. Following her return to the U.S., she returned to McCall, Idaho, where she taught second through fourth grades at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School until 1998.

Teacher in Space

Morgan’s tryst with space began in July 1985 when she was selected as the backup candidate for NASA’s Teacher in Space programme. As the backup to American teacher Christa McAuliffe, Morgan spent the time from September 1985 to January 1986 attending various training sessions at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. After McAuliffe and the rest of the crew died in the 1986 Challenger disaster, Morgan replaced McAuliffe as the Teacher in Space designee and worked with NASA’s education division.

Morgan reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1998 after being selected by NASA as a mission specialist and NASA’s first educator astronaut. Even though Morgan didn’t participate in the Educator Astronaut Project, the successor to the Teacher in Space programme, NASA gave her the honour of being its first educator astronaut.

Following two years of training and evaluation, Morgan was assigned technical duties. She worked in mission control as a communicator with in-orbit crews and also served with the robotics branch of the astronaut office.

Further delay

Even though she was assigned as a mission specialist to the crew of STS-118 in 2002 and was expected to fly the next year, it was delayed for a number of years following the 2003 Columbia disaster. It was on August 8, 2007 that Morgan finally flew into space on the space shuttle Endeavour on STS-118.

The STS-118 was primarily an assembly-and-repair trip to the International Space Station (ISS). The crew were successfully able to add a truss segment, a new gyroscope, and external spare parts platform to the ISS. Morgan served as loadmaster, shuttle and station robotic arm operator, and also provided support during the spacewalks. All this, in addition to being an educator.

Answers from space

For the first time in human history, school children enjoyed lessons from space, conducted by Morgan. Apart from speaking to the students while in space, she also fielded questions. For one question from a student on how fast a baseball will go in space, she even had another astronaut Clay Anderson throw the ball slowly before floating over to catch it himself. While that opened up the opportunity of playing ball with yourself while in space, she also informed the student that the ball can be thrown fast, but it is avoided in order to not cause any damage to the craft and the equipment on board.

Following the first lessons from space, the Endeavour returned to Earth on August 21 after travelling 5.3 million miles in space. Having carried 5,000 pounds of equipment and supplies to the ISS, it returned with 4,000 pounds worth of scientific materials and used equipment.

As for Morgan, she retired from NASA in 2008 to become the distinguished educator in residence at Boise State University. A post created exclusively for her, it entailed a dual appointment to the colleges of engineering and education. As someone who strongly believes that teachers are learners, she continues to teach and learn, be it from space, or here on Earth.

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WHAT IS THE LUNAR RAINBOW?

A rainbow is a thing of beauty. We know that a rainbow is produced when sunlight is refracted by water droplets in the atmosphere. However, what happens if water droplets reflect and refract moonlight? Simple. We get a moonbow, and no, they aren’t a figment of your imagination.

Moonbows are known as moon rainbow or lunar rainbows. They are much fainter than rainbows because of the lower intensity of moonlight (which is reflected sunlight), and their colours are too faint to be perceived by the human eye. They often appear a ghostly white. However, the colours can be seen through photography. They can be viewed most easily when the Moon is at or nearest to its brightest phase, full-moon. The best time to see moonbows is a couple of hours before sunrise or after sunset. Did you know that they are said to have first been mentioned by Aristotle back in 350BC and that there are certain parts of the world where you are more likely to see them, such as Hawaii?

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WHICH STAR BECAME THE FIRST STAR OTHER THAN OUR SUN TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED?

Vega became the first star other than our sun to be photographed. Visible in the summer sky of the northern hemisphere, Vega is a bright star located about 25 light years from our Earth. On July 16-17, 1850, The days when we could look up to see star-studded skies feel like they are numbered. Especially in cities, as the light pollution makes it impossible for us to enjoy the celestial show. Some stars, however, shine bright enough such that they can be seen even on a moonlit night or from light-polluted cities.

Vega is one such star visible in the summer sky of the northern hemisphere. The brightest star in the constellation Lyra, it is also known as Alpha Lyrae. The fifth-brightest star visible from Earth, it is also among the closest of all bright stars at about 25 light years away.

The Summer Triangle

Along with two other stars – the distant Deneb and the fast-spinning Altair-the blue-white Vega forms an asterism known as the Summer Triangle. These three stars are usually the first to light up the eastern half of the sky after sunset.

Beginning around June and until the end of the year the Summer Triangle pattern can be discerned in the evening every day. Vega, which sinks below the horizon for just seven hours each day, can actually be seen on any day of the year. At mid-northern latitudes on midsummer nights, Vega is usually directly overhead.

The blue-white light of Vega is so bright that it has been observed through the centuries. Be it the Hindus, Chinese, or the Polynesians, the star features prominently in many ancient cultures. Its name, meanwhile, comes from the Arabic word wagi, which means “falling” or “swooping”

First to be photographed

The brightness has meant that Vega has remained relevant in modern times as well, notching up a number of firsts. The first of those firsts came in 1850, when Vega became the first star to be photographed, other than our sun.

On July 16-17, 1850, a 15-inch (38 cm) refractor at the Harvard College Observatory was employed to capture it. Harvard’s first astronomer, William Cranch Bond, had been dabbling with celestial photography at the behest of John Adams Whipple, an American inventor and photographer. Using the daguerreotype process, the duo achieved a 90-second exposure of Vega that yielded the first photograph of a star other than our own. Bond and Whipple, in fact, kept at it and their daguerreotype of the moon the next year created quite a stir at the international exhibition held in London’s Crystal Palace.

Spectrum of a star

A couple of decades later, Vega was again central to another first. Henry Draper, an American doctor and amateur astronomer, was a pioneer in astrophotography. He chose Vega as his subject when he created the first spectrographic image of the star in 1872. Breaking down Vega’s light to reveal the various elements making up the star, Draper had taken the first spectrum of a star other than our sun.

Late in the 1990s, Vega rose to prominence once again after American astronomer Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact” was made into a Hollywood movie. As the movie showed an astronomer discovering a signal appearing to come from Vega while searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, the star captured popular imagination.

Vega’s blue-white light indicates surface temperatures of about 9,400 degree Celsius, much hotter than that of our sun (4,000 degree Celsius). Vega’s diameter is nearly 2.5 times that of the sun, while its mass is also more than twice that of our sun.

Vega is only about 450 million years old, making it a youngster when compared to our sun, which is 4.6 billion years old. Despite Vega being a 10th of the sun’s age, both stars are classified as middle-aged as they are halfway through their respective lives. This means that while our sun will run out of fuel only after another 5 billion years, Vega will burn for only another half-a-billion years.

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