spacEurope > The Return

spacEurope was born as a place dedicated to promote and inform about european efforts towards space exploration.
Why?
Not hard to understand…Our companions from the other side of the Atlantic have a great experience and a marketing machine that was indispensable in the aurora of their space exploration programme.
This means decades of hard work to be able to achieve and announcing outstanding events and to find the proper path to deal and learn with the setbacks.

We, Europeans, although the adventure has already started, are now in a context where we cannot forget that there are people paying for evolution and even if their knowledge regarding scientific methods might be short to deal with the technical language and methods used to reach a destiny outside Earth, we, the general public, are curious has any member of the scientific community and have the right to see, even if not educated in this field, to be introduced to the marvellous things happening now with an amazing regularity.
Space has to make part of our daily basis knowledge, it is part of our life, part of past and present and it will, surely, be our future ground.
We want to know and we have the right to know more and on a easy way of understanding.

I am one of those.
A tax-payer, someone curious that, along the last months had fantastic the opportunity of getting answers directly from those making history.
I thank them and praise them to keep on this policy of visiting this house where I want people to find something that goes beyond the agencies’ press releases.
Things are not perfect, but they can get better.
That’s what I try to do, to improve the quality of the site, not easy when your time runs short.
In this eight months of activity some things went well, others not so quite…
Those are the risks of running a blog about the scientific aspects of space exploration without having any formation in the…scientific aspects of space exploration!
But, hey! I’m learning a few things…
And I hope that can improve the nature of the questions presented here without losing touch with the human aspects of the diversity of themes brought to this space.

The objective of this blog is to share with you all the result of that same curiosity and diminish the distance between space and Men.

Now that the spacEurope’s first anniversary is on its way, there will be some changes in this house. Some improvement, some decisions, some innovations:

#01 - I thought about the possibility of bringing advertising to this place…
It will never happen. There will not be, ever in its history, commercial interests in this blog.
Even if the number of visitors rises to a value that would justify it in a economic point of view.
Its nature doesn’t allow it. It does even disapprove it…

The reason for this place is to share, both knowledge and passion for space exploration and that, through my scope, is priceless.

#02 - spacEurope will make efforts to get a more active participation of regular collaborators. Contacts are being made in order to pursue that goal.

#03 - I will start a special series of chronicles that will try to establish a direct dialog between scientists and members of the general public. More information will be available soon regarding this point.

#04 - spacEurope decided to establish annual Awards for those participating in this blog.
It will be something symbolic but, at a same time, a reflection of how appreciated are the efforts done by the scientific community to promote space exploration near the general public.
The date of the announcement will be that of the blog’s 1st anniversary: The 11th of January.

#06 - I’ll resume this blog’s policy to seven points:
-To Learn
-to Share
-to Go Beyond
-to Innovate
-to Debate
-to Inform
-to Dream
-To Merge

-To learn with those making things happen in the space exploration area, from scientists to engineers, from those having an idea to those giving form to that same idea

-To share thoughts, knowledge, news, adventures…
To share implies that several elements make their appearance: Someone providing an input, someone to publish that same input and someone to read it.
Everyone is important, everyone has a role.

-To innovate, this will be a hard step to achieve, but I believe, as this blog persists on a policy of seriousness we will get somewhere, new ideas, new approaches, new visions.
As referred in the previous step, everyone counts. Everyone has a brick to help building a house that, although humble, might bear in each square meter, an idea that will not be discarded.

-To debate, there is a box for comments, feel free to use it, share your ideas, pose questions, create! Disagree! Communicate! There will always be someone on the other side reading to your words. Try, as possible, to identify yourself.

-To merge the natural out-of-boundaries nature of the general public opinions, not restricted to the walls of the scientific building with the well aware thoughts of specialists and try, when possible, to obtain, combining, both seed and land, a new tree, a new fruit, a new direction, who knows?
Create is part of nature, innovate is a natural process, it may happen here.

-That take us to the dream field. And to one premise: Dreams might come true. If there are any frontiers they were made to be crossed, if there are abysses they are there to be explored.

Other features might make their appearance such as audio and video updates as long as that is important to subject under light and viable to achieve.

Efforts are being made to make this a place where you will feel at home.
But your cooperation is precious and appreciated.

Ultreya et Sus Eia! Onward and Upward!

Rui Borges
Editor

Sintra - Portugal

PS: Vacations were just great!

Dear Readers
Now that the Phoenix it's on its way and after a couple of months where the moving into new facilities prevented me from gicing the attention I intended to all the incredible things happening I can now dedicate some days to my biggest passion: Walking.
If there is anything you would like to comunicate, suggest, correct, anything, please, feel free to do to my e-mail, I'll be back soon, not before devouring on foot the Rodão marvels, the Amieira scenary, the Almourol imposing sight and Tomar's benign staying.
To you all Ultreya!
I'll be back soon.

Enticing, to say the least...

Phoenix Special > Update > Peter Smith's Reaction

"The Phoenix bird has arisen!"

"Photo credit: Kevin Stube - Exhaust from the rocket hangs in the air to form an image of a Phoenix bird."

I've just received Peter Smith, the Phoenix Mission Principal Investigator's reaction.
Hard will be the wait untill May.
Hard will be to hold the expectation.
Hard will be to dream with the Phoenix landing site.
It is no secret that I deposit a sea of hope in this particular quest but reading the PI's words all I can say is that I hope the Phoenix may pursue its goals and surprises us beyond our expectations.
May the voyage be as safe as it can, may all of us travelling in that CD work as fuel on this immense adventure.
Smith deserves it:

"Several things were unique about the launch. From my position outside the control room, the rocket was heading straight for Mars which was near the Pleides in the sky, but since it had to turn away, it then headed for the horizon for a lap around the Earth. As it crossed Orion's belt, the solid rockets were released and twinkled down to the ocean like a tiny constellation. Finally, the mighty ship was no longer visible and we all we're back to the control room to celebrate another successful launch.

However, since this was a pre-dawn launch, the Sun was nearing the horizon. I walked outside again and noticed that the exhaust plume from the solid stage which is at very high altitude was being illuminated by the Sun against the night sky. The upper winds were twisting the plume so that it was morphing into different shapes. I had never seen anything quite so beautiful and was mesmerised by the artistry of the cloud.

Suddenly it struck me and sent a shiver up my spine.

The cloud was forming the shape of a Phoenix bird with wings and a long tail. Unbelievably the omen was unmistakable: the Phoenix bird has arisen! This is an auspicious sign and to me signifies that the project is destined to accomplish great advances in understanding the hidden truths of Mars.

Later we contacted the spacecraft itself and within minutes had its solar panels open and pointed toward the Sun.
Communications showed that all systems are healthy and we are headed for Mars. As I write this we are well past the Moon and traveling through interplanetary space in good health and conscience."

Phoenix Special > Launch Update > Reactions

From Horst Uwe Keller, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research,Co-Investigator, Atmospheres:

"Altogether it could not go any better. An important step towards our goal to land where nobody before has landed is achieved. The door remains open, the next step - the landing - is the ultimate challenge. The tasks become more and more difficult. I am confident we will make it! We had not worked for many years if we were not convinced that we will achieve our goal to learn more about Mars."

from Stuart Atkinson, Astronomy Author and Outreach Educator:

"... and so Phoenix is on her way to Mars. After all these months and years of waiting, she's cast off her lines from the jetty and headed out of the safe harbour of Earth's gravitational field, setting course for the Next New World, Mars. And like generations of ships' crews familiesbefore us - the families of Columbus', Magellan's, Cook's and Shackleton's crews - we, the space enthusiasts, Mars Nuts, engineers and geeks who comprise Phoenix's 'family', watched her leave; not standing shivering and crying on a windswept, salt-scented quayside, but sitting comfortably in our office chairs and at our bedroom and study desks, watching NASA TV's streaming video of the Delta's launch and fiery ascent into the black Florida night sky...

Godspeed Phoenix! See you again in 9 months, when -all being well - you'll land on Mars and discover something... amazing..."

We are on our Way!

ONWARD!

Image credits: Ben Cooper (Visit Ben Cooper's homepage for some fantastic images from the Phoenix launch.)

Today was the day the Phoenix left Earth towards its destiny: the Martian Arctic.
In a moment where feelings are really high up words can't describe the excitment of seing the work of many opening its wings and leaving the cradle where it was thought, conceived and built to deliver a whole new vision of a planet that make us dream since the dawn of mankind.

The Phoenix will take us, after its long flight, ending in May, to unseen landscapes, unstudied grounds and undergrounds, to a step closer towards the answer, for which we journey millions of kms, to the everlasting questions: Why do we exist? Who are we?

Safe journey Phoenix, may you, leaving the ashes behind, open us new windows with your fantastic, fiery rebirth.

Thank You.

Tomorrow, if everything goes as predicted, will be the day of the Phoenix.

First of all “Thank you”.
Thanks to you all who participated in this Phoenix Special.
It was, indeed, a pleasure having your presence here, to learn, to share the enthusiasm and to dream with all of you.

But mostly, thank you and a huge kudos to all Women and Men making this mission possible.

Now that the launch window is about to be open and that the chances of seing the spacecraft setting its sails towards Mars on Saturday, the 4th of August are high all that is left to say is Ultreya et Sus Eia Phoenix!
Onward and Upward Phoenix!
May your scientific pilgrimage retrieve us a newly shaped, richer, truth. May we rejoice and evolve.

I’ll keep this door open to all of you untill the day the Phoenix reaches its destiny.
Now what is required, now what we all desire, is a safe journey.

Humans, in the past, ventured to the Earth’s poles, risking and even losing their lives, now, a robotic lander, fruit of the technology developed by members of that same species, will be launched and headed to the North Pole of another stellar body: Mars.

What a long way we have walked...

"The fully assembled Phoenix Mars Lander is atop the Delta II rocket on pad 17A at cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch."
Photo Credits NASA / United Launch Alliance

We are now, once again, in the frontier between one current truth and a possible future one: as far as we know, given the current facts, we are all alone, as life, in the vastness of the Universe, the Phoenix provides one more chance, remote but a chance anyway, of altering that situation by finding proofs that will permit us to give major steps on the road towards the so awaited discovery of life beyond Earth.

What will the Phoenix sight? What will the Phoenix taste beyond Earth?
The journey towards those answers is about to begin.
A whole new vision of Mars is at such short distance...the Martian Arctic, as land of mistery, is one of the most enticing targets we can imagine, the soil under, the possibility of finding testimonies to end our unbearable loneliness as unique witnesses of the Universe’s expansion...
A lander is about to begin a journey that can change the way we understand ourselves.

Along with the Phoenix travel 250.000 names, accompanying a machine while it defies the Martian arctic, posing questions, digging answers.
I am too among those names crossing the distance, on a quest for more.
We, that ¼ of a million will be escourting a spacecraft that will help us evolve in the best possible way: via science, hard work and truth.

This hours preceding the launch, which we all expect to be the day of a success for the Phoenix, are crowded by all sort of thoughts and feelings and, evidently, the excitement is unavoidable, but this is only a step on the path that will take us across the distances, in the direction of our own beggining, others of major importance were given by teams from both margins of the Atlantic, these people established bridges between cultures through science, raising a vehicule of learning onto space, offering it a destiny, a mission, mankind’s creation, reborned.

Maybe that, a long time from now, what will be remembered will be the first women and men to walk the surface of the Red Planet and other distant worlds, but this machines will have paved the way permitting that to happen, permitting us to succeed on our natural path, they, those machines, will have helped writting the book of evolution.
May we not forget it and reserve them the proper place in Mankind’s History.

I want to see that rocket rising, delivering the work of thousands to the outer domains.
Amazing how, in the current impossiblity of stepping that distant land, we are able to transport our senses to another planet...
The future will, eventually, bring space exploration into one, combined, single front, where the different skills and methods of scientists from different nations will be combined to obtain the most extraordinary results, untill that day arrives this mission remains as an example.
May the Phoenix succeed.
May we all succeed.

Here you can find direct links to all the participations in this special feature:

>Walter Goetz - Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung (MPS)

>Jacqueline Myrrhe - Raumfahrt Concret Magazine

>Daniel Parrat - Institute of Microtechnology University of Neuchâtel - Part I

>Daniel Parrat - Institute of Microtechnology University of Neuchâtel - Part II

>Lewis Dartnell - spacEurope's Resident Astrobiologist

>Susana Direito - Portuguese Astrobiology Working Group

>Saara Reiman - M. Soc. Sci University of Helsinki

>Stephen Oman - General Public Representative

>Stuart Atkinson - Astronomy Author and Outreach Educator

>Peter H. Smith - Principal Investigator

Phoenix Special > ESA's Mars Express will monitor Phoenix's EDL

"ESA’s Mars Express will keep an eye on NASA’s Phoenix lander as it makes its way to the Martian surface, setting an example for international cooperation and interplanetary networking.

At NASA’s request, ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft will be following Phoenix’s Entry Descent and Landing (EDL) phase.

The critical part of the descent lasts about 13 minutes. During this time, the probe will transmit a continuous stream of information to two of NASA’s satellites already orbiting the Red Planet. To be on the safe side, NASA has requested Mars Express, which has been in orbit around Mars since December 2003, to also monitor the EDL phase.

Mars Express has been selected since, in principle, its elliptical orbit makes it possible for the spacecraft to have a continuous view of the lander and to communicate with it for longer periods of time."

More at ESA.int.

ATV arrives at Europe's Spaceport

"After a transatlantic crossing by sea, Jules Verne, the first Automated Transfer Vehicle for the International Space Station, arrived at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, yesterday morning. Nearly two weeks after leaving Rotterdam harbour, the French cargo ship MN Toucan, carrying around 400 tonnes of spacecraft and equipment for the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), sailed into Pariacabo harbour on Monday afternoon.
Operations to unload the International Space Station (ISS) re-supply cargo spacecraft started later the same day. The final section of the ATV spacecraft was disembarked on Tuesday morning and driven by truck to the S5 building at Europe's Spaceport."

Story in pictures at esa.int

Phoenix Launches to Mars
Peter H. Smith > Principal Investigator


As I write these words, the launch of Phoenix to Mars is less than a week away. By coincidence, August 3, 2007 (the first of a 22 day launch window) will be exactly four years from the date of our NASA selection as the first Scout mission. Four years of hard work validating and testing our spacecraft; building and characterizing its scientific instruments; and preparing for the mission itself.

Choosing the scientific goal for Phoenix was easy. In February 2002, Bill Boynton (University of Arizona) and his team announced that the Gamma Ray Spectrometer aboard the Odyssey orbiter had discovered water ice surrounding the permanent polar caps, both south and north. Nearly 25% of the surface area of Mars poleward of 60° has near surface ice: a permafrost region similar to Siberia or northern Alaska. Landing on this unexplored terrain and investigating the properties of the icy soil seemed a natural and attainable goal for a Scout mission. NASA agreed.

Unlike the Earth, Mars is rather unstable in its orbit and tends to realign its spin axis and de-circularize its orbital path with time periods of approximately 100,000 years. As the polar regions are tilted toward the Sun and the orbital path brings the planet to its perigee, global warming occurs and Mars may actually enter a wet period caused by the melting of the permafrost ice.

Our science team strives to answer the questions: can we find evidence that these wet periods actually occur and does this provide a habitable environment for Martian microbes? We know from recent studies of the Earth that life survives under the most extreme conditions from inside the failed reactor at Chernobyl to hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean. If life has ever existed on Mars could it have evolved to find local niches where conditions are favorable?

Our studies of Mars have proven that life is not easily found on the Martian surface. The atmosphere has only the slightest hint that there may be biologically-produced gas (methane) at the parts per billion level. None of the fleet of orbiters can point to a location where life exists. Without exploring the surface, answers will never be found to this most intriguing question—are we alone?

Our name stems from the deliberate reliance on using existing hardware and development teams that seemed doomed to never achieve their goals. After the loss of two spacecraft in 1999, the 2001 mission was canceled. This was particularly painful since it was well into its assembly and test phase. However, no data was returned from the instruments on Mars Polar Lander and the 2001 lander was placed in a large box waiting for the day that it might be given a new mission.

The Phoenix mission reassembles the pieces and activates the engineers and scientists who had spent as many as ten years of their careers developing these space-qualified systems. As the principal investigator of the mission, I aligned the project with the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena to manage the project and design the mission. The development contract as placed with Lockheed Martin in Denver who had originally built the spacecraft and were guarding the box.

Unfortunately, after more than three years valuable pieces had been scavenged from the spacecraft and, on the start of the project, our first job was to inventory just what we had inherited. A series of heritance reviews attended by system experts examined the documentation and engineering calculations that supported the spacecraft design. Clearly, most of the avionics were in good shape since exact copies of the electronic boards were part and parcel of the Odyssey spacecraft and several other spacecraft.

These reviews led to an extensive series of reliability tests starting with the propulsion system. Hot fire tests validated the design of the spacecraft to withstand the pounding that the powerful thrusters impose on its components. All the twelve subsystems on the spacecraft went through similar scrutiny. Finally, in April 2006 the spacecraft began its final re-assembly and test program. The scientific instruments were installed in the summer of 2006 and by the winter the spacecraft started environmental testing to prove that it could survive the harsh environments of space and the Martian surface.

Since May 7 of this year, the spacecraft has been at the Cape Canaveral facility and is now installed 12 stories up on top of the Delta 2 launch vehicle. Once the fuel in loaded you can feel the power of the Delta straining to break the gravitation bonds of the Earth and start its mission to Mars.

While the launch is complex and dangerous, hundreds of payloads have been placed into orbit and the success rate is exceptionally good. The ability to refine the procedures developed through many tough learning experiences has built our confidence that launch will be a low risk phase of the mission. The same is not true of landing on Mars.

The success rate for landing on Mars is poor. Because of the 15 minute or more time delay and the 6 minute deceleration from the top of the atmosphere to the surface, there can be no real time control of events. Mastering the complex sequence of events through the five phases of descent is the work of a team of experts at JPL and LM. The Phoenix landing cannot be tested in advance of the mission; it is a one-time occurrence with the success of the mission at stake.

We simulate landing with super computers carefully modeling the physics of entry, the wind vectors and the thruster control systems. Thousands of computer runs describe the hazards and consequences as model parameters are randomly adjusted. Naturally, the physical properties of the Martian surface are important too. We must find locations where rocks are widely spaced—there are no airbags to soften the impact. So far we have been able to reduce the inherent risks to an acceptable level, but this does not take into account the unknowable system failures that can occur. Landing is the highest risk phase of the mission and occurs on May 25, 2008.

Our scientific mission begins shortly after landing. For three months, the science team assisted by a well-trained spacecraft team operating from the Science Operations Center at the University of Arizona will image the surface, provide locations for digging up samples, and deliver these samples to instruments on the deck of the spacecraft. Powered by solar energy, we have a short amount of time to conduct our experiments, therefore, every day is valuable and the team lives on Mars time with a 24h 40m day. As Mars transitions from summer to winter our operational time shortens and eventually there is not enough energy to heat the spacecraft and the cold temperatures will kill it.

But those few months are crucial for answering the questions posed at the beginning of this article. We will determine whether the soil above the ice has ever been modified by the presence of liquid water. There are key indicator minerals and evaporates (salts) that are strong indicators that water has been present. The detection of complex organic molecules like proteins and amino acids would provide evidence that we have discovered a habitable zone.

Alas, we do not expect to provide a final answer to the life on Mars question, only whether the ingredients for a habitat exist. Are realistic to expect that landing blindly on one spot on Mars will uncover clear evidence for life?

I don’t think so.

However, the mission is valuable as a stepping stone to inspire future missions to follow in our path and search the northern plains for the actual inhabitants of a zone that we determine is habitable.