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See How SpaceX Astronauts Could Survive a Failed Launch

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A few weeks ago, SpaceX successfully tested the launch abort system for its new commercial crew capsule, which is designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017. The company has just released a first-person view video recorded by cameras mounted on the Dragon capsule, so you can take a virtual ride on the capsule as it accelerates from 0-100 mph in 1.2 sec during the first critical pad abort test.

Enjoy the test footage here:


Watch again the test from the outside:

 
NASA tests DARPA Challenge robot for space manufacturing

NASA tests DARPA Challenge robot for space manufacturing | Computerworld

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Team JPL's Robosimian robot.

NASA has big plans for the robot its JPL team used to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge finals last weekend.

The space agency hopes its four-legged robot, which came in fifth place in the DARPA finals, can one day build parts for the International Space Station and satellites in space. The weekend challenge involved two dozen teams competing to see who had built the best robot to aid in disaster response.

Now that the JPL, or Jet Propulsion Lab's robot, dubbed Robosimian, has finished competing, its second job will begin.

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"We actually already have a program with DARPA. Rather than looking at disaster areas, we're looking at assembly work -- in this case, assembly in space," said Brett Kennedy, principle investigator for JPL's team in the robotics challenge. "The dexterity and mobility capabilities that come along with Robosimian could be adapted for zero-g (gravity) environments."

Robosimian is a four-legged robot that can stand upright on two legs and use its other two limbs as arms with hands capable of grasping a lever, holding a tool or turning a valve.

That design might serve well in orbit, on the moon or even on Mars to build satellites, fuel depots or shelters to house astronauts.

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"Assembly in space … it would all be the same robotics problem," Kennedy toldComputerworld. "The most immediate research we're going to be doing… would be more along the lines of building very large telescopes or fuel depots for satellites. Currently, the largest telescopes we can build are limited by the size of the rocket that launches them."

The bigger the satellite, the bigger the rocket needed to launch it. Larger rockets cost more, making it too expensive to launch large satellites.

The same robotics technology also could be used to build fuel depots in orbit. Then robots could be used to refuel satellites, keeping them going far longer.

It also would be more efficient and less expensive to refuel satellites than to build and launch new ones.

If scientists could figure out a way to launch robots, the parts and possibly 3-D printers into space, then have the robots do the assembly work in orbit or, one day, in deep space, it would be far less expensive to do.


By avoiding the structural stresses and high costs of major launches, future satellites would not only be cheaper, but would be bigger and higher functioning.

Late last year, Tethers Unlimited Inc., a Bothell, Wash.-based aerospace and defense research company, announced that it is working on six- or eight-legged robotic spiders to build satellites or even spacecraft in space.

Researchers hope the project, called SpiderFab, could change the way spacecraft are built and deployed.

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NASA's Robosimian is probably a few years away from being tested in space, according to Kennedy.

"If we can point to something we do on Earth that we could do on another planet, that's a very powerful thing to show people," he added. "We can have a different idea of what missions might be."

Robosimian will need to be redesigned for the rigors of space but should still look similar to the way it looked during the DARPA challenge.

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DARPA's goal is to advance autonomous technology and robotics to the point where robots could be sent into damaged buildings after a disaster to turn off systems, inspect damage and look for victims.

In the finals last weekend, the teams were tasked with sending their robots into a simulated disaster scene, taking on eight different tasks, including driving a car, climbing stairs, using a drill to cut a hole in a wall and turning a valve.

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NASA Aiming for Multiple Missions to Jupiter Moon Europa

NASA Aiming for Multiple Missions to Jupiter Moon Europa

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NASA's highly anticipated mission to Europa in the next decade may be just the beginning of an ambitious campaign to study the ocean-harboring Jupiter moon.

In the early to mid-2020s, NASA plans to launch a mission that will conduct dozens of flybys of Europa, which many astrobiologists regard as the solar system's best bet to host life beyond Earth. Space agency officials hope this effort paves the way for future missions to Europa — including one that lands on the icy moon to search for signs of life.

"You gotta figure, if the first one works, then we're going to go to Europa again," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said late last month during a media event at the Los Angeles facility of aerospace company Aerojet Rocketdyne.


Studying Europa from afar

At 1,900 miles (3,100 kilometers) wide, Europa is only slightly smaller than Earth's moon. But the Jovian satellite is very different from the one that lights up Earth's night sky; Europa is covered by a shell of ice, beneath which sloshes an ocean of liquid water.

Scientists think this ocean is in contact with Europa's rocky mantle, making possible a variety of complex chemical reactions. Indeed, the Europan sea may be capable of supporting life as we know it, which explains why astrobiologists have long dreamed of launching a probe to the icy world.

They will get their wish relatively soon. On May 26, NASA announced the nine science instrumentsthat will fly aboard the agency's Europa spacecraft, which is scheduled to blast off in a decade or so.

That gear includes high-resolution cameras, ice-penetrating radar, a heat detector and other equipment. The probe will reach Jupiter orbit and then use these instruments to study Europa's frigid surface and underground ocean during 45 flybys of the moon over the course of about two and a half years.

The goal of the as-yet-unnamed Europa flyby missionis to better understand the moon's ability to support life, not search for signs of alien organisms. As exciting as a Europa life hunt would be, NASA is just not ready to take that step yet, agency officials said.

"Building a life detector is incredibly difficult," Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA's Washington headquarters, said during a news conference announcing the Europa mission's science payload. "We're not even sure how to go about building it yet."

Going back to Europa?

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Bolden said that people who are frustrated with the scope of the first Europa mission should exercise a little patience, for the agency does not envision a one-and-done effort at the Jupiter moon.

"My friends in the science community — they don't have a lot of faith, either in us at NASA or in Congress, to fund another Europa mission, so they'd like to get everything on this first mission," he said at the Aerojet Rocketdyne facility on May 26.

"That is a sure recipe for disaster, when you try to do all things with one vehicle. We need to do incremental approaches to studying Europa," Bolden added. "We're going to fly a Europa mission in the 2020s sometime, and hopefully, what we find will whet our appetite and there will be follow-on Europa missions."

Indeed, NASA is already thinking, in a preliminary sense, about possible next steps at Europa, said Jim Green, head of the space agency's Planetary Science division.

"At this stage, we are doing some studies — very elementary studies — about landed missions," Green said during the May 26 science-instrument news conference.

NASA tends to study alien worlds in a series of increasingly ambitious steps; a flyby generally comes first, followed by an orbital mission and then a lander or rover. But the initial Europa effort, with its 45 flybys, will basically serve as an orbital mission in terms of science return, Green said, so putting a probe down on the moon's surface is the logical next step.

Indeed, the flyby probe will, in some ways, serve as a scout, returning supersharp images and other data — such as information about the thickness of Europa's ice shell — that will help researchers plan out a potential surface mission in the future.

"We actually don't know what the surface of Europa looks like at the scale of this table, at the scale of a lander — if it's smooth, if it's incredibly rough, if it's full of spikes," Niebur said. "Without knowing what the surface even looks like, it's difficult to design a lander that could survive."

Ideally, Green said, a landed mission to Europa would not be restricted to its surface. Rather, the mission would get beneath the moon, coming into contact with the ocean, or at least with smaller pockets of liquid water trapped under the ice.

"It'd be great to think that the results from this particular mission would lead, in the next decade, to some new and exciting concepts about potentially getting underneath the ice shell," Green said.

"We need to really make those steps — methodical steps in scientific understanding — to determine indeed if this body can be penetrated in a way to be able to get under the ice shell," he added. "But that's, indeed, in the distant future."
 
SpaceX Dragon Pad Abort Test

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SpaceX successfully tested the launch abort system for its new commercial crew capsule, which is designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017. Everything went as planned, and you can watch the replay of the event here:

Pad Abort Test on Livestream

The critical flight test at SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) was basically a trial run for the 8-ton prototype spacecraft’s launch escape system. It consists of eight 3D-printed SuperDraco rocket thrusters built into the bottom half of the capsule, that are used in the case of a launch emergency.

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Such systems are crucial for the safety of the astronauts: The launch abort system drags the crew and spacecraft away from the rocket as far and as quickly as possible if something goes wrong during the launch. Think of it as an astronauts ejector seat.

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“We’re proud to have a launch escape system in case the Falcon 9 is having a bad day, the Dragon crew can get to safety. It’s a capability we had on Gemini and Apollo, and we have it on the Soyuz, but we did not enjoy that on the shuttle. We’re bringing that back to try and make sure our crews are super safe,” said Garrett Reisman, a former astronaut and current director of crew operations at SpaceX to Spaceflight Now. “It doesn’t last long. The boost phase is only a few seconds, and it’s pulling almost 5 G’s when it’s coming off the pad, so it’s going to get out of here in a hurry. My advice to you, if you go outside to watch it, is don’t blink.”

This graphic explains what happened during the event.

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According to SpaceX there was a dummy on board the spacecraft, which experienced nearly 5 G’s at takeoff, when the Crew Dragon spacecraft traveled nearly 100 meters (328 ft) in 2 seconds, and more than half a kilometer (1/3 mi) in just over 5 seconds.

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Space Nuclear Propulsion Office NERVA - a nuclear rocket engine



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Here's Proof That the LightSail Satellite Has Unfurled Properly

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Over the weekend, the LightSail satellite unfurled its gigantic solar sail to help propel it through space. Now, the first images to be beamed back from the satellite prove that it’s really up and running.

The satellite, funded by The Planetary Society to test the technical and economic benefits of solar sails, was originally championed by Caral Sagan and, more recently, Bill Nye. When it first found itself in space, a software glitch stymied communication between it and Earth. But as of Saturday, engineers were able to make contact and deploy the solar sail, demonstrating proof-0f-concept of low-budget space travel. Now, we know they were really successful. A full mission in planned for next year.



SpaceX's New Hangar Is A Mammoth Gateway To The Stars

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To send really big rockets into space, you need equally enormous buildings to construct them in. Enter SpaceX’s new hangar, under construction right next to the pad that used to send Apollo missions to the Moon.

The new hangar — big enough to hold five Falcon 9 rockets, or house the upcoming Falcon Heavy vehicle — is being built next to launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. That real estate comes with some major pedigree — pad 39A was the starting point for all the Apollo missions, plus the first and last launch location of the Space Shuttle. In fact, the hangar sits on the gravel road that NASA’s giant crawler-transporters used taking Space Shuttles to the launchpad.

Work started on the new hangar just a few months ago in February, but it should be ready for the first scheduled test launch of the Falcon Heavy later this year.
 
New Solar Storm Forecast Gives Over 24 Hours Warning of Disruption

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Solar storms start their lives as violent explosions from the sun’s surface. They’re made up of energetic charged particles wrapped in a complex magnetic cloud. As they erupt from the sun’s surface, they can shoot out into interplanetary space at speeds of up to 3,000 kilometers per second (that’s 6.7 million miles per hour). Depending on their direction of travel, these energetic storms can journey past Earth and other planets.

If a solar storm makes it to Earth, it can disrupt a variety of modern technologies including GPS and high-frequency communications, and even power grids on the ground, causing radio blackouts and citywide loss of power. It can also wreak havoc within the aviation industry by disrupting communication methods.

To combat related potential economic losses, affected industries have been seeking a solution that can provide them with at least 24 hours of warning. With enough lead time, they can safely change their operational procedures. For example, passenger planes can be rerouted or power grid transformers can begin the slow process of “winding down,” all of which require at least a day’s notice – a huge jump beyond the 60-minute advance warning currently common. By building on earlier research, my colleagues and I have come up with a technique we think can meet that 24-hour warning goal.

Magnetic fields dictate solar storm severity

The strength with which a storm can affect our everyday technological infrastructure depends largely on the orientation of its magnetic field. Often the magnetic field within a solar storm has a helical structure, twisted like a corkscrew. But, much like tornadoes on Earth, these solar storms undergo significant changes during their evolution – in this case, as they leave the sun and travel toward the planets.

With a specific field orientation, the floodgates open, allowing the solar particles to enter the otherwise protective bubble of Earth’s atmosphere (the magnetosphere). This interaction between the solar material and Earth’s magnetosphere is predominately driven by a process of joining each other’s magnetic fields together. This interaction is called magnetic reconnection.

This realignment of the field works in a similar way as two bar magnets attracting. If similarpoles of each magnet (north and north) are brought together, the field lines repel each other. Unlike poles attract and combine together. If the poles are unlike, in our case between the solar storm and the Earth’s magnetosphere, they become magnetically connected. This new connectivity of the Earth’s magnetosphere now contains the trapped energetic particles that were previously isolated in the solar storm. If a large penetration of energetic particles makes it into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, the reaction provides the visual extravaganza that’s often called the Northern Lights.

In search of: advance forecast

To date, predicting the magnetic field structure within solar storms hitting Earth has remained elusive. Modern forecasting centers around the world, such as at NOAA and UK Met Office, are dependent on direct measurements from inside the solar storm by a spacecraft just in front of Earth (for example, the newly launched Discvr satellite by NOAA). Measurements tell us the direction of a solar storm’s magnetic field and thus whether it’s liable to reconnect with the Earth’s magnetosphere in a dangerous way for our technology. We’ve been stuck with less than 60 minutes of advance warning.

The difficulties in creating a reliable forecast have centered around our inability to reliably estimate the initial structure of the storm above the sun’s surface, and the difficulty in observing how storms evolve as they spend about two days traveling to Earth.

My colleagues and I recently published an article in Space Weather that proposes an improved method for predicting the initial magnetic structure of a solar storm. Getting a better handle on the origin of these solar storms is a substantial step toward predicting how the storm can affect us on Earth, and to what extent.

Our method relies on correctly modifying a previous discovery about how the motions of solar plasma (of mostly hydrogen ions) and magnetic field hidden below the sun’s surface can affect the initial structure of a solar storm. It’s called the solar dynamo process. This is a physical process that is believed to generate the sun’s magnetic field. It’s the engine and energy source driving all observed solar activity – that includes sunspots and long-term solar variability as well as solar storms.

We think combining this modified initial storm model with a new method that incorporates a storm’s early evolutionary stages will lead to significant improvements to our forecasting predictions. Triangulating the entire solar storm by using cameras at three locations from NASA’s STEREO and SOHO spacecraft in interplanetary space, using modern modeling techniques we’ve developed, enables a more robust prediction system. Since these cameras are located at very different vantage points in space, we can use them in conjunction to improve our estimations of the total shape and location of the solar storm – much like the depth of field we achieve by seeing the world through two eyes.

Predictions matching reality

So far, we’ve tested this new predictive technique on eight different solar storms, with the first forecasts showing significant agreement with the real data. Further advanced statistical testing with a larger number of storms is now under way within NASA Goddard’s Community Coordinated Modeling Center.

“We’ll test the model against a variety of historical events,” said Antti Pulkkinen, director of Space Weather Research Center at NASA Goddard and a coauthor of the publication. “We’ll also see how well it works on any event we witness over the next year. In the end, we’ll be able to provide concrete information about how reliable a prediction tool it is.”

We’re working toward improving the user interface and implementation into current systems. Once proven reliable and statistically significant for forecasting, our technique may soon become a regular operational tool used by the forecasters at Space Weather Prediction Center at NOAA.
 
50 Years Ago, Ed White Became The First American To Walk In Space

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On June 3rd, 1965, Edward White became the first American astronaut to walk in space. His mission commander, Jame McDivitt snapped this picture over the Pacific Ocean over the course of the Gemini 4 mission. He later described the order to return to the spacecraft as being “the saddest moment of his life.”

White was selected for the Apollo 1 mission in March 1966, along with astronauts Gus Grissom and Robert Chaffee. In 1967, the crew perished when a ‘plugs-out test’ resulted in a fire, trapping the astronauts.





This is a bit of a tangent, but it does use space assets, so I'm adding it here

The CIA Is Shutting Down Its Secretive Climate Change Research Project

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The Central Intelligence Agency has announced that it’s closing down MADEA, a decades-old research program that shared classified information with scientists to study how climate change might exacerbate global security risks.

MEDEA, or Measurement of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, was a CIA initiative that ran from 1992-2001, and then again during the Obama Administration. The program allowed civilian scientists to access classified data, including topography data captured by spy satellites, and ocean temperature and tidal readings collected by Navy submarines. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement; civilian scientists had access to data they wouldn’t normally have access to, while the CIA learned about security risks that might be spawned by climate change.

But as Tim McDonnell of Mother Jones reports, the program has come to a close.

In a statement, a CIA spokesperson explained: “Under the Medea program to examine the implications of climate change, CIA participated in various projects. These projects have been completed and CIA will employ these research results and engage external experts as it continues to evaluate the national security implications of climate change.”

Some experts are concerned about the program closure — especially now. As McDonnell writes:

Marc Levy, a Columbia University political scientist, said he was surprised to learn that Medea had been shut down. “The climate problems are getting worse in a way that our data systems are not equipped to handle,” said Levy, who was not a participant in the CIA program but has worked closely with the US intelligence community on climate issues since the 1990s. “There’s a growing gap between what we can currently get our hands on, and what we need to respond better. So that’s inconsistent with the idea that Medea has run out of useful things to do.”

The program had some notable successes. During the Clinton administration, Levy said, it gave researchers access to classified data on sea ice measurements taken by submarines, an invaluable resource for scientists studying climate change at the poles. And last fall, NASA released a trove of high-resolution satellite elevation maps that can be used to project the impacts of flooding. But Levy said the Defense Department possesses even higher-quality satellite maps that have not been released.


Others argue that MEDEA has outlived its life, and that the over-taxed intelligence agency needs to direct its attention elsewhere.

At the same time, however, climate change has been referred to as a “threat multiplier.” It’s unlikely, therefore, that the CIA is totally giving up on climate change; the agency may find ways to facilitate civilian research. “Otherwise,” as Francesco Femia, co-director of the Center for Climate and Security, told McDonnell, “we will have a blind spot that prevents us from adequately protecting the United States.”
 
A Direct Image Of Another Solar System’s Kuiper Belt

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By using the Gemini Planet Imager, an international team of astronomers have captured an image of a protoplanetary disc that shares remarkable similarities with our own Kuiper Belt — though as it was at a much earlier time in our Solar System’s history.

The young system, called HD 115600, is located about 360 light-years away. A bright ring of dust can be seen surrounding the host star, which is just slightly bigger than our own. The disc of planetary debris extends out at a distance between 37 and 55 AU, a distance that’s similar to the one between the Kuiper Belt and our Sun. Also, the brightness of the disc implies that it’s comprised of silicates and ice, which are also found in the Kuiper Belt. It’s thus an excellent example of what our Solar System might have looked like billions of years ago.

“It’s almost like looking at the outer solar system when it was a toddler,” noted principal investigator Thayne Currie, an astronomer at the Subaru Observatory in Hawaii, in a statement.

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More from the University of Cambridge release:

The current theory on the formation of the solar system holds that it originated within a giant molecular cloud of hydrogen, in which clumps of denser material formed. One of these clumps, rotating and collapsing under its own gravitation, formed a flattened spinning disc known as the solar nebula. The sun formed at the hot and dense centre of this disc, while the planets grew by accretion in the cooler outer regions. The Kuiper Belt is believed to be made up of the remnants of this process, so there is a possibility that once the new system develops, it may look remarkably similar to our solar system.

The discovery shows that the proto-planetary environment of our Solar System may not be uncommon.

Read the entire study at The Astrophysical Journal Letters: “Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of a Young Extrasolar Kuiper Belt in the Nearest OB Association.”

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The Gemini Planet Imager is a collaborative project between:

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Dunlap Institute, Gemini Observatory, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (HIA), Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL), Lowell Observatory, SETI Institute, The Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI), the University of Montreal,University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and the University of Georgia.
 
The Beautiful Art That Helped Inspire Space Travel

Chesley Bonestell was born long before the flight of the first airplane, and yet he’s well-known as the most influential people in aerospace art. The painter, designer and illustrator died the year of the Challenger disaster—1986—but not before witnessing humankind embrace space in much the way he’d dreamed.

You see, Bonestell not only helped to popularize manned space travel and inspire sci-fi art and illustration, his ideas directly influenced the way US space scientists imagined the future of space exploration from Earth’s orbit to the Moon and other planets.

Wernher von Braun, the father of the US space program once wrote that “In my many years of association with Chesley I have learned to respect, nay fear, this wonderful artist’s obsession with perfection. My file cabinet is filled with sketches of rocket ships I had prepared to help him in his art work—only to have them returned to me with penetrating detailed questions or blistering criticism of some inconsistency or oversight.”

The following set of images shows a fraction of Bonestell’s very best works of art. They prove that he earned the title of “Father of Modern Space Art”.

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The Space Shuttle’s Military Launch Complex In California That Never Was

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Everybody identifies Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center as the epicenters of America’s now defunct Space Shuttle Program. What most people don’t know is that the Shuttle almost had a second home at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the south central coast of California.

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For the last quarter of the 20th Century, launch pads 39A and 39B, the massive Vehicle Assembly Building, the sprawling Shuttle Landing Facility, the iconic Launch Control Center, the Orbiter Processing Facility and the Crawler Transporters were all icons of Kennedy Space Center.

Set among the lush backdrop of the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, on the central east coast of Florida, like the massive Apollo rockets that came before it and took man to the moon, this sprawling combination of infrastructure would be the operational home of America’s Space Shuttle Program — at least, NASA’s side of it.

While the Shuttle program was still getting off the ground (pun very much intended!), a miniaturized version of KSC’s Launch Complex 39 was being quietly built at Vandenberg AFB. Compared to the long distances and flat topography that separated critical and in some cases volatile infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Vandenberg’s compact Space Launch Complex Number 6 looked more like an elaborate Hollywood set of some evil villain’s secret space project, not another Space Shuttle launch facility.

Looking at pictures of the facility today conjures images of Moonraker. But it was here, at SLC-6, that the Air Force was planning on launching dozens of Shuttle missions, lofting and servicing everything from spy satellites to exotic “Star Wars” weapons platforms into space.

The Pentagon, along with their NASA partners, had bet heavily on the idea of a reusable ‘space plane’ for their orbital needs. High hopes were placed on the Shuttle’s ability to deliver reliable and constant access into low-earth orbit. Sadly, these hopes would prove hollow as the luster of the idea of a true Space Shuttle collided with the gritty realities of the real Space Shuttle’s actual design and the limits of its 1970’s era technology.

In summary, the U.S. Air Force alternative launch facility would largely support the ‘dark arm’ of the Shuttle program, one based around shadowy military payloads, not white-world science and discovery. Kennedy Space Center could also support these types of mission to a certain degree, although crucial polar orbit flights that were preferred for spy satellites were out of the question if they originated from KSC.

Such a flight path would send the Shuttle over populated areas during launch, traveling over an area ranging from South Carolina to the Great Lakes. The Shuttle’s boosters would drop somewhere near Brunswick, Georgia, and its main tank would end up whipping around the globe over Russia and China, and ending up in the Indian Ocean... Hopefully.

All this, as well as payload limiting issues, precluded Kennedy Space Center as a launch site for polar orbit flights. On the other hand, Vandenberg AFB’s locale had no such limitations, with the Shuttle being able to launch on a southwesterly direction over the Pacific on its way to polar orbit without any reservations about public safety and with little negative impact on the Shuttle’s potential payload for such a flight profile.

Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex Six (SLC-6) was originally designed and built at a very high coast (some say $3B) as the launch pad for Titan II rockets that would support the 1960s equally as Bond-esque ”Manned Orbiting Laboratory.” Basically, this concept was a spy satellite-like space station that would be manually operated by astronauts for extended periods of time. The program was cancelled in 1969 as unmanned satellites could get the job done at a fraction of the cost and without the risk to human life. Looking back, this was an eerie foreshadowing of things to come for SLC-6’s next tenant.

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A half decade or so later, the Shuttle Program was being developed at a rapid pace and the military wanted to take advantage of this new technology. In 1974, the then-defunct Space Launch Complex Six (nicknamed “Slick Six″) was reborn into the military Space Shuttle’s new west-coast home. Construction at the site began in 1979 and was mostly completed by 1985, with the Defense Department going so far as having the aerodynamic test Orbiter, the Enterprise, mocked up on the pad complete with its external tank tank and boosters. This was done to validate the pad’s proper fitment for Shuttle Launch System. This event also offered many of the pictures you see in this article.

Once the Enterprise arrived, the shuttle stack was assembled right on the pad, just as it would be during a real pre-launch evolution. This was far different than doing the complex and somewhat dangerous task at a dedicated Vehicle Assembly Building, like the one that sits some three and a half miles away from the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center.

During normal operations, SLC-6 would have had its orbiter delivered via roadway from a processing facility built 16 miles to the north, near Vandenberg AFB’s main runway. The Shuttle’s main fuel tank would have been delivered by barge from Louisiana and its boosters would be delivered in sections by train. Upon splash down, recovery of the Shuttle’s spent boosters and fuel tank would managed by Naval Surface Warfare Center Hueneme in Oxnard, California.

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The whole setup was eerily compact for those who had brought the Space Shuttle to life at Kennedy during the half decade prior, and because of the secretive payloads that would be launched out of SLC-6, the whole operation had a high-security military twist to it. The safety of distance that was omni-present at Kennedy Launch Complex 39 was all but erased at SLC-6. Even the launch team and control was going to be located right at the launch complex in a fortified control center just 1,200 feet from the pad!


The small size of the facility was especially troubling considering the amount of damage a shuttle stack could do during a catastrophic failure on the launch pad or during assembly, an event that has been commonly described as analogous to a nuclear explosion. How accurate this description is remains unclear, but there is no doubt that the shuttle stack is a dangerous thing when sitting on the pad ‘cocked and locked.” Even when unfueled, the Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) are 150 foot tall tubes packed with highly explosive material that has no ‘off switch’ once they are ignited.

After fitment checks were complete, the first flight of a USAF controlled Shuttle mission from SLC-6, dubbed officially STS-62-A, was slated to be made byDiscovery — which was to be the USAF’s dedicated Orbiteron October 15th, 1986. The launch would put the Orbiter into polar orbit where its crew would deploy the highly classified Teal Ruby experimental surveillance craft and operate a package of classified sensors that were to be installed in Discovery’sexpansive payload bay.

Then, on January 28th 1986, Challengerblew up shortly after launch, grounding the already delayed and far over-budget Space Shuttle Program indefinitely. This left the Air Force and the Defense Department to re-think their planned reliance on the costly and seemingly unreliable Shuttle for heaving critical and very expensive spy and communications satellites into orbit. The truth is that the Shuttle’s capability to provide anywhere near the number of flights that the program had promised was largely in question long before the loss ofChallenger. With all this in mind, the decision was made to put SLC-6 on caretaker status and by 1989 the Pentagon’s Shuttle Program was officially shuttered.

In the end, 11 Shuttle flights did carry classified payloads into orbit for the military from 1982 to 1992, albeit none reached polar orbit as all were launched form KSC.

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The fact that the Shuttle never used SLC-6 may have been a good thing in retrospect. There were numerous integration issues and unsolved problems with the site during its construction, and it seemed like as soon as one issue was solved another would pop up. Acoustic suppression was one of these problems that first reared its head when Columbia was launched from KSC in 1981, marking the Shuttle’s first flight.

During Columbia’s launch, the acoustic waves that bounced back off the pad from the Shuttle’s main engines and its solid rocket boosters were so powerful that they could have caused the stack to rip itself apart, killing all onboard and destroying the Shuttle and its surrounding infrastructure in the process.


An elaborate water acoustic suppression system was added to Kennedy’s 39A and 39B launch pads after that inaugural flight in an attempt to deaden the damaging sound waves. Although SLC-6 was built with a water acoustic suppression system, it was a totally different and a much more modular design than KSC’s. This system would have only been validated during an actual Shuttle launch and there were concerns that there was not enough water onhand or enough storage for the contaminated waste water after the launch.

Nearby cliffs could have also bounced shock waves back at SLC-6 during launch, which could have caused damage to buildings and the shuttle itself, or even worse. Weather was also an issue, with high winds and cold temperatures, along with dense fog, being a regular issue at Vandenberg AFB. As such, the rolling shed-like buildings that covered the launch pad could be rolled into place around the shuttle stack, but these were austere structures and paled in comparison to the well-built and climate controlled interior of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center.

By the mid 1980s, the potential hazard of trapped liquid hydrogen during launch also became a huge issue with SLC-6s compact design and its reused exhaust ducts. It was feared that ambient hydrogen could ignite a fire below the Shuttle during launch, causing an explosion that would blow the Shuttle’s tail apart as it was lifting off the pad or even after an emergency engine shutdown.

The Shuttle’s acoustic and hydrogen abatement issues, along with the danger from the raw heat and blast of the Shuttle’s engines and SRBs during launch to the nearby structures, could have all ended up being non-factors. Still, just as mentioned earlier, there is no denying that SLC-6’s launch pad design and the Shuttle’s close proximity to its service structures and critical infrastructure, could have led to massive disaster if the there was a catastrophic accident during assembly or launch. Additionally, the shaking and concussion from launches may have demanded heavy maintenance to the facility after every launch, with nearby delicate computer systems being a major concern.

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After the cancellation of the Defense Department’s arm of the Shuttle Program, SLC-6 was used by multiple defense contractors with varying results (see a full launch list here). By the early 2000s, a legend that the complex was badly cursed had grown to massive proportions, as so many billions of dollars had been poured into the installation, under the guise of a whole slew of programs, with very little to show for it in the end.


Finally, in the mid 2000s, Boeing took over the facility and re-utilized much of the Shuttle’s infrastructure for their Delta IV rocket program. The first Delta IV Medium rocket was triumphantly launched from the long beleaguered complex in 2006. Since then, the once doomed SLC-6 has performed extremely well launching large payloads into space, most of which contain America’s most high-tech and secretive space-based spying technologies. This is somewhat of an ironic reprieve for the site as it had unsuccessfully been envisioned as facilitating just that mission for close to half a century.

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Here's Why The New Horizons Spacecraft Won't Be Stopping At Pluto

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In less than five weeks, New Horizons will zip past the Pluto-Charon system in a brief but historic encounter. Given the huge interest in Pluto, it’s fair to ask: Why won’t mission planners let the probe hang out a while?

The simple reason is that New Horizons can’t make a stop at the Pluto-Charon system. It’s a constraint that has as much to do with engineering as it does with basic physics.

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In order to get New Horizons to Pluto in a reasonable amount of time (in this case 9.5 years), NASA had to get the probe moving very, very fast. And a probe on the move can be difficult to slow down.

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After its launch from Cape Canaveral on January 19, 2006, the probe entered into an escape trajectory featuring a speed of 16.26 kilometers per second (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph), setting a new record for the highest launch speed of a human-made object flung from Earth. New Horizons’s encounter with Jupiter offered a subsequent gravitational assist that increased its speed by an additional 4 km/s (14,000 km/h; 9,000 mph). Once at the Pluto-Charon system, the spacecraft will pass through at a velocity of about 13.8 km/s relative to the dwarf planet (49,680 km/h; 30,800 mph).

That’s obviously a lot of momentum. To get New Horizons into Pluto’s orbit, mission planners would have to reduce its speed by over 90%, which would require more than 1,000 times the amount of fuel the probe can carry. That’s a technologically unfeasible proposition. And so, the probe will have no choice but to zoom past Pluto, feverishly snapping pics and taking measurements before being flung outward towards the Kuiper belt.

Which is a pretty neat consolation prize. The New Horizons mission will be far from over after its July 14 encounter with Pluto.
 

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