The Future and Vision for Space Exploration

What if we were no longer limited only to what we can lift from Earth's surface? Suppose we could live off of the land in space, what would the advent of this scenario mean for future exploration and use of space? Here, I take an inside approach to the future and vision for space exploration to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond...

The human part of the space program has been trapped in stasis for the last 20 years with precious little exploration being accomplished. Worse, we have been locked in low-Earth orbit with no plans to go beyond, even though robotic space exploration passed that horizon years ago. The International Space Station (ISS) could have served as a test bed for farther destination, but didn't largely due to a result of conscious policy decisions. The tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 only drew attention to the hollowness and lack of direction of our space policy.

The President's new vision proposes that the space shuttle be returned to flight to complete the construction of the ISS and then be retired prior to a costly and risky recertification. A new vehicle will be designed and built for human spaceflight, one which can adapt to different kinds of missions going to various destinations. We will conduct robotic exploration of the Moon in preparation for the resumption of human exploration by the middle of the next decade and use the knowledge and capabilities created from these activities to venture beyond, including human missions to Mars.

New Missions and the Vision: A Return to the Moon

The initial steps in our return to the Moon involve a robotic orbiter, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which will be launched in 2008 and will orbit the Moon for at least 2 years. The purpose of this mission is to collect critical information that will pave the way for human return to the Moon. To that end, the LRO will collect detailed data on the Moon's topography in addition to characterizing exotic environments such as the lunar polar regions.

The experiments and others will provide key strategic data to help plan for habitation on and use of the Moon. We have reason to believe that water ice deposits may exist in the permanently dark regions near the lunar poles. However, we do not know the physical state of these deposits, nor do we have a good idea of their quantity.

Before LRO flies, India plans to send a spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, to the Moon in early 2008. Mini-SAR (synthetic aperture radar) is an imaging radar experiment that will fly on this spacecraft in order to map the dark regions of both poles of the Moon. Along with other topographic and morphologic data, these missions will allow us to map the ice deposits of the poles, determine their physical setting, and estimate their abundance.

Lunar ice is valuable both to human life and to develop spacing-faring infrastructure. Water can be purified and used as an outpost and broken down into its component hydrogen and oxygen and as rocket propellant. The ability to make rocket propellant on the Moon has potential to completely alter the current model of spaceflight.

The LRO mission will be followed by other robotic missions to the Moon that can include both orbiters and landers. A series of small spacecraft, or microsats, in lunar orbit can create a communications and navigations infrastructure for the Moon. These microsats can provide continuous communications with areas out of sight from Earth and positional information for both orbital and surface navigation around the Moon. For landers, we can explore the surface using rovers and deliver robotic payloads to begin developing the surface infrastructure near a future outpost. Rovers can access the dark floors of polar craters, gathering detailed information on the ice deposits.

In parallel with this program of annual robotic exploration, the Crew Exploration Vehicle, a replacement for the shuttle, will be developed and tested. No later than the year 2020, humans will return to the Moon using the knowledge gained and the equipment placed by the robotic precursors. Returning to use the Moon's resources will enable us to build a space transportation infrastructure in lunar space. Such a system that allows routine access to the Moon and all points in between is a fundamental step forward in creating a true space-faring capability. A system that can routinely land on the Moon, refuel, and return to Earth orbit while bringing with it fuel and consumables produced on the lunar surface will give us the ability to journey to Mars and beyond.

Paving the Way to Human Exploration on Mars

Although the presidential vision did not set a deadline for the first human mission to Mars, it did affirm the continuation and extension of the existing robotic exploration program. Over the past decade, a robotic exploration strategy has been developed for Mars that emphasizes the characterization and history of water on the planet. A series of orbital and lander missions will offer increasingly sophisticated opportunities to trace the evolution and fate of water in martian geological history. Ground-penetrating radar can map the distribution of ground ice many yards below the surface. Drill holes can allow us access to the subsurface into which sensitive instruments can be lowered to measure and characterize the volatiles present. Spectrometers and other devices can determine surface and subsurface mineralogy, including the state and concentration of water-bearing objects.

Long-range rovers, martian aircraft, balloons, and other vehicles can all return critical information on martian history and processes. Beyond the purely scientific areas of interest, we need to collect data on the surface conditions and environment of Mars in addition to possible toxicological hazards of the surface materials before any human landings. As with the robotic mission series that precedes human arrival on the Moon, the martian precursors will map the surface in detail, document landing hazards, measure the chemistry and physical properties of the surface, and determine the nature of potential chemical or biological hazards to human explorers.

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Far side of the moon

So has any human ever seen the far side of moon? I guess, not ! Because this side of the moon always stays away from us. First directly observed by human eyes when the Apollo 8 mission orbited the Moon in 1968. It includes the largest known impact feature in the Solar System: the South Pole-Aitken basin. A good sight for putting radio telescopes !

The Moon now rotates once as it orbits the Earth, allowing for the same side to always face the Earth so that the far side remains a mystery to any Earth-bound observer.

Resources / Read on the web
NASA to put man on far side of moon
Lunar and Planetary Institute
APOD
Far side of moon movie (2005)

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Why does Moon appear BIG in the sky ?

This June 30th brings a moon illusion !The sun and full moon lie on opposite sides of the sky. They are like a see-saw: when one is high, the other is low. Because the summer solstice was just last week (June 21st), the sun is near its highest point in northern skies. The full moon is correspondingly low.

Some researchers believe that the Moon Illusion is Ponzo's Illusion, with buildings and trees playing the role of Ponzo's converging lines. Foreground objects trick your brain into thinking the moon is bigger than it really is.

So? Which of the two lines in the picture above is bigger ? It seems as if the farthest one is a little bigger but actually both of them have the same size. The converging lines in the background of the first line from the top create an illusion in our minds which makes it appear bigger.

Try looking @ the moon with naked eye and then with a hole in a cardboard. Its fun !

PS.: For an indepth knowledge about this topic, visit link

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This time we will live on moon !

Have you ever thought of living on moon ?
" Why Moon ? Because space age lies ahead of us "

Yes ! We are returning to moon by 2020. This time to stay on it .

1.) Human Civilization : Humans would be concocting and exploring the depths of technologies to make this return possible to moon.

2.) Scientific Knowledge : The equipments, instruments and techniques to travel around moon and its various characteristics would be developed by NASA.

3.) Exploration Groundwork : NASA is going to dedicate its team of experts, scientists, researchers and astronauts to plan the voyage back to moon. Shuttle design, Rocket features and planning the whole mission worth billion dollars is the biggest task in facade.

4.) Worldwide partnerships: Lunar Exploration opens the door to new technologies that benefit our society and financial system. It will begin global correlation and mutual associations between various nations participating in the course.

5.) Economic Expansion & Public Engagement : Inhabiting a place other than earth in the solar system certainly opens new avenues of research and resource implementation. It would also give a boost to space tourism and spirit of international cooperation.

Moon turns metric
If you think in pounds and miles instead of kilograms and kilometers, you need to become a little lunar. The whole world is based on metric system except few countries. NASA has agreed to use a single measurement system. This will make the human habitats and vehicles placed on the Moon by different space agencies more compatible with each other. That could come in handy if, say, one agency needs help from another agency's base.

All data will be in compatible units, whether it's scientific data or operational data -- such as how deep should it be drilled to carry out research on moon surface.

Return to Moon
Lastly, return to the Moon gives a very different feeling than the Cold War space race of the 1950s and '60s. This mission would surely bring the nations closer and give a boost to our vision for space exploration.

"The earth is the cradle of mind, but one cannot forever live in a cradle" - Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

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Software Solves Moon Mystery

According to an MSN news source, an Australian computer programmer has found the missing “a” from Armstrong’s famous first words from the moon in 1969, when the world heard the phrase,

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Some historians and critics have dogged Armstrong for not saying the more dramatic and grammatically correct, “One small step for a man ...” in the version he transmitted to NASA’s Mission Control. Without the missing “a,” Armstrong essentially said, “One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind.” But Armstrong intended to say it properly and he believes he did.Some high-tec sound editing computer programmer, Peter Shann Ford proved Armstrong right.

Ford said he downloaded the audio recording of Armstrong’s words from a NASA Web site and analyzed the statement with software that allows disabled people to communicate through computers using their nerve impulses.

In a graphical representation of the famous phrase, Ford said he found evidence that the missing “a” was spoken and transmitted to NASA.“I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford’s analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful,” Armstrong said in a statement.

Well, this proves that Armstrong did say the "a". But the Moon Hoax is still generating questions in the minds of people.Its the most debatable topic on the net.Did we really go to moon ? This document has all the evidences , proofs and other neccessary graphics supporting the fact that we went on moon.It also contains the myths and what hoax believers say.Deep anaysis - Go through it !

Moon Documents

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Sky falls above the moon !

"Every day, more than a metric ton of meteoroids hits the Moon," says Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center's Meteoroid Environment Office. They literally fall out of the sky, in all shapes and sizes, from specks of comet dust to full-blown asteroids, traveling up to a hundred thousand mph. And when they hit, they do not disintegrate harmlessly in the atmosphere as most would on Earth. On the airless Moon, meteoroids hit the ground.

Clues to how often and how hard the Moon is hit lie in data from four seismometers placed on the Moon by the Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 16 missions during 1969-72. They operated until NASA turned them off in 1977. For years, the seismometers recorded all manner of tremors and jolts, including almost 3000 moonquakes, 1700 meteoroid strikes, and 9 spacecraft deliberately crashed into the Moon. All these data were transmitted to Earth for analysis.

Cooke and Diekmann are now loading the old seismic data into machines at the MSFC where they can perform digital calculations at speeds impossible 30 years ago, rapidly trying new algorithms to find previously unrecognized impacts.

Critical to the analysis are nine man-made impacts. "NASA deliberately crashed some spacecraft into the Moon while the seismometers were operating," he explains. "They were the empty ascent stages of four lunar modules (Apollo 12, 14, 15 and 17) and the SIV-B stages of five Saturn rockets (Apollo 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17)." Their seismic waveforms tell researchers what an impact should look like.


According to the Standard Model, such meteoroids hit the Moon approximately 400 times a year—more than once a day. (Picture a map of Africa stuck with 400 pushpins.) The Apollo seismic dataset can test that prediction and many others.

The analysis is just beginning. "We hope to find many impacts," he says. Regardless of the final numbers, however, their work will have value. "We're developing new algorithms to find meteoroid impacts in seismic data." Eventually, Cooke believes, next-generation seismometers will be placed on the Moon and Mars to monitor quakes and impacts, and when the data start pouring in, "we'll be ready."

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NASA spacecraft hits moon - a search for water

NASA today announced that a small spacecraft, to be developed by a team at NASA Ames, has been selected to travel to the moon to look for precious water ice at the lunar south pole.

The name of the mission is LCROSS, short for Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite. LCROSS is a secondary payload: It will hitch a ride to the moon onboard the same rocket as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) satellite due to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in October 2008.



Left: LCROSS approaches the moon...
Daniel Andrews's team proposed LCROSS. He says , "We think we have assembled a very creative, highly innovative mission." LCROSS will hunt for water by hitting the moon--twice--throwing up plumes that may contain signs of H2O.

It works like this: After launch, the LCROSS spacecraft will arrive in the moon's vicinity independent of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. On the way to the moon, the LCROSS spacecraft's two main parts, the Shepherding Spacecraft (S-S/C) and the Earth Departure Upper Stage (EDUS), will remain coupled. As the pair approach the moon's south pole, the upper stage will separate, and then hit a crater in the south pole area. A plume from the upper stage crash will develop as the Shepherding Spacecraft heads in toward the moon. The Shepherding Spacecraft will fly through the plume using its instruments to analyze the cloud for signs of water and other compounds. Additional space and Earth-based instruments also will study the 2.2-million-pound (1000-metric-ton) plume.


Left: ...and hits. Pictured is the first of two impacts delivered by the split craft.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS are the first of many robotic missions NASA will conduct between 2008 and 2016 to study, map, and learn about the lunar surface to prepare for the return of astronauts to the moon. These early missions will help determine lunar landing sites and whether resources, such as oxygen, hydrogen, and metals, are available for use in NASA's long-term lunar exploration objectives.

NASA NEWS RELEASE

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MOONQUAKES ?

NASA astronauts may need quake-proof houses as they are going back to the moon.
The moon is seismically active.Between 1969 and 1972, Apollo astronauts placed seismometers at their landing sites around the moon,instruments faithfully radioed data back to Earth.

And what did they reveal?

There are at least four different kinds of moonquakes:
(1) deep moonquakes about 700 km below the surface, probably caused by tides;
(2) vibrations from the impact of meteorites;
(3) thermal quakes caused by the expansion of the frigid crust when first illuminated by the morning sun after two weeks of deep-freeze lunar night; and
(4) shallow moonquakes only 20 or 30 kilometers below the surface.

The first three were generally mild and harmless.Between 1972 and 1977, the Apollo seismic network saw twenty-eight of them; a few "registered up to 5.5 on the Richter scale". A magnitude 5 quake on Earth is energetic enough to move heavy furniture and crack plaster. Shallow moonquakes lasted more than 10 minutes. The moon rang like a bell.

On Earth, vibrations from quakes usually die away in only half a minute. The reason has to do with chemical weathering: "Water weakens stone, expanding the structure of different minerals. When energy propagates across such a compressible structure, it acts like a foam sponge—it deadens the vibrations." Even the biggest earthquakes stop shaking in less than 2 minutes.

The moon, however, is dry, cool and mostly rigid, like a chunk of stone or iron. So moonquakes set it vibrating like a tuning fork. Even if a moonquake isn't intense , it just keeps going and going.

"Any habitat would have to be built of materials that are somewhat flexible," so no air-leaking cracks would develop. "We'd also need to know the fatigue threshold of building materials," that is, how much repeated bending and shaking they could withstand.

What causes the shallow moonquakes? And where do they occur? The Apollo seismometers were all in one relatively small region on the front side of the moon, so we can't pinpoint [the exact locations of these quakes].
We're especially ignorant of the lunar poles. That's important, because one candidate location for a lunar base is on a permanently sunlit region on the rim of Shackleton Crater at the Moon's south pole.

Proposals for deploying a network of 10 to 12 seismometers around the entire moon is on, to gather data for at least three to five years. This kind of work is necessary, to find the safest spots for permanent lunar bases.
Other planets must be shaking too.We have to study the moon before establishing habitats on mars or beyond.

NASA NEWS RELEASE

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