Monthly Archives: February 2015

Summary:

1. My third NASA Social, the “State Of NASA” event
2. I went back to NASA Armstrong, this time at their Palmdale facility
3. Posts for previous NASA Armstrong events here, here, here, here, here,and here
4. The first part of this post, focusing on SOFIA, is here (with an extra bit here)

This is the remote-controlled model for the Towed Glider Air-Launch System being developed at NASA Armstrong. The concept is similar to Virgin Galactic’s “White Knight” aircraft, except that it’s a remotely piloted glider instead of a jet with a pilot and co-pilot.

Doing it this way introduces (they believe) some serious economies into the system. By increasing the “carry efficiency” (ratio of cargo weight to carrier vehicle weight) they can take bigger payloads (rockets). By being a glider, they can reduce the development and operational costs — all the expensive stuff (engines, life support, heavy airframe, fuel tanks) is on the standard jet (such as a military cargo jet or even a commercial business jet) used for towing.

This model has flown already, being towed by a small drone. Next they’ll fly it up to 10,000 feet, then fly it with a small rocket, then test the releasing of the rocket, then test taking it up to 10,000 feet with the rocket attached, and finally taking it up to 10,000 feet with a rocket attached and dropping the rocket (which may or may not fire).

Right now there’s no launch capability that allows someone to put 100 pounds into LEO (Low Earth Orbit). About the smallest rocket available will put 1,000 pounds into orbit for about $50M. This could allow a 100 pound payload to get into orbit for $1M or even less. Once that capability is available, there are a lot of businesses and universities that would like to use it.

Furthermore, the idea should scale up. In theory, if you build a glider the size of a 747, you could tow a rocket big enough to carry a crewed vehicle to LEO, for small fraction of the $75M+ that the Russians are currently charging for a Soyuz seat.

On the other hand, some folks are still confused about the difference between a “towed glider” and a “toad glider.”

Back down in the hanger after lunch, John McGrath showed us the two C-20 UAVSAR aircraft, known to us civilians as Gulfstream III business jets, albeit heavily modified.

The Airborne Science Program at NASA Edwards covers all of the aircraft-based scientific research being conducted. Out at the NASA Armstrong facilities on Edwards Air Force Base, the primary focus is on aeronautical research. (See my posts regarding the November NASA Social there.) In Palmdale, the aircraft are operated in order to provide a platform for researchers to gather the data they need.

Here Mr. McGrath shows us one of the pods that gets mounted under the belly of the C-20. These pods are more or less “plug and play,” so researchers and outside institutions can fill one with their instruments and equipment, then “simply” get it attached to the C-20. I suspect that it’s a bit more complex than that, but the system has been substantially streamlined to make it much faster and easier than it would be if everyone did their own designs and each one started from scratch. In this case, the pod’s instruments had just undergone a major upgrade since the newer instruments were far more sensitive than the previous instruments.

Here you can see how this C-20 is up off its gear and surrounded by equipment. Underneath the aircraft, in the center near where the short, orange ladder is, you can see where the pods get attached, with a couple dozen connecting wires dangling down.

This is the NASA Edwards DC-8, known to us civilians as a DC-8. It also has many modifications, including ports that allow instruments, sensors, and cameras to stick outside the airframe. In addition, many of the stock windows have been replaced with perfectly clear, optically flat windows so that cameras can be used through them without distortion.

The DC-8 allows instruments and the scientists running them to get wherever they need to be. For example, in a couple of weeks the European Space Agency’s ATV-5 cargo spacecraft will be leaving the International Space Station and re-entering to burn up and be destroyed over the South Pacific Ocean. But rather than do a “normal” destructive re-entry, the ATV-5 is heavily instrumented and will re-enter at a shallow angle to the atmosphere. This simulates how satellites enter the atmosphere when they’re making unplanned re-entries, as well as how they ultimately intend to de-orbit the International Space Station.

The instrumentation on the ATV-5 will give the engineers data on how spacecraft break up and are destroyed. The DC-8 will be based out of Tahiti for a few days, and with the ATV-5 re-enters, all of the instruments and cameras onboard will be gathering outside data to complement the data being transmitted from inside the ATV-5 as it is destroyed. (Tahiti for a few days – tough gig!)

Brian Hobbs showed us the ER-2 aircraft, which is a civilian version of the U-2 spy plane. It can get all the way up to 70,000 feet, flying in an environment that’s very similar to actual conditions in outer space. That allows instruments being designed for use on satellites to be tested before launch and modified as necessary. In addition, the ER-2 can fly over a ground location at the same time that an orbiting satellite is flying over, allowing the instruments on the ER-2 to get the data needed to calibrate the instruments on the satellite above.

Another application the ER-2 is excellent at is meteorological research, such as the study of hurricanes. If you have instruments at the surface, instruments at several elevations up in the hurricane on aircraft or drones (see the Global Hawk or Ikahana remotely-piloted vehicles in my November posts), the ER-2 lets you get an even higher set of data by flying over the top of the storm. Having this vertical set of data can tell researchers far more than a single set of data from one altitude.

Back in the conference room we got a demonstration of a new technology in strain gauges. On this metal plate, you can see the yellow strip down the middle – it contains sixteen sensors, which connect to that huge bundle of white cables on the desk. This is the way things are done now. On the other hand, the plate also has a “W”-shaped string of fiber optic cable coming down the right side, going back up to the right of the yellow strip of sensors, then back down and back up on the left side. That hair-thin cable has 500 sensors in it, and it connects to the one, thin, yellow cable on the desk.

Obviously if you are building a new plane, ship, car, rocket, bridge, building, or whatever and you need data on the stresses being put on the structure, it’s a lot easier and lighter to have thousands and thousands of sensors on fiber optic cables instead of dozens of sensors using conventional equipment. In addition, where now the conventional sensors are used on the first few test aircraft of a new design and then stripped out due to their weight, the fiber optic sensors can be left in place forever, giving you continuous data over the life of the aircraft.

Other potential uses of this technology would be to embed it into new buildings or add it to existing structures such as bridges. Given the way our national highway infrastructure is starting to crumble, it would be really useful to have a relatively cheap, easy, and highly accurate way to know if the girders on a bridge are cracking and failing.

This is John Kelly, the Principal Engineer on the Towed Glider Air-Launch System (discussed above). Some of the figures he gave us were impressive.

For example, the real world carry efficiency of Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo is 0.71, which is pretty good – it carries 29,000 pounds with a 70,000 pound aircraft. The L-1011 Stargazer system from  Orbital only has a carry efficiency of 0.14, and the B-52 used by NASA to launch the X-43 test vehicle only has a carry efficiency of 0.17. But the models being tested have a carry efficiency of over 1.00 and they believe that the system eventually could have a carry efficiency as high as 2.00.

Finally, Ron Young told us about the Flight Opportunities program that NASA Armstrong runs. In short, by using drones, balloons, and parabolic-flight aircraft (also known as a “Vomit Comet”), NASA Armstrong tried to assist businesses in getting their experiments and instruments into a “space-relevant environment.” They may not quite get you into LEO, but they can get you close or in a simulated environment. This allows you to test and refine your equipment before taking the big (and expensive) step of going to LEO.

For example, the Zero-G 3-D Printer that’s currently running experiments on the International Space Station was first tested on a parabolic-flight aircraft. Operating in twenty-second intervals of microgravity, the major bugs were worked out of the system before it went up to ISS, where it’s now working. In fact, you may have seen a picture of a small ratchet wrench that was printed on ISS just before Christmas. Mr. Young had an identical wrench that was printed on the ground for us to examine and play with – amazingly light, and it’s astonishing that it was printed in one piece, not several pieces and then assembled. This could really be the next big thing in allowing crewed spaceflight into deep space.

And there you have it! A full day of information and some incredible hands-on experiences with the people and the equipment that are doing science and pushing the boundaries of aeronautics and space flight. The NASA Armstrong staff did a wonderful job of taking care of us and I can’t wait for another chance to go back for another NASA Social in the future.

Summary:

1. I’m going to my third NASA Social, tomorrow, February 2nd (I’m really looking forward to it, it’s a big deal for me).
2. Last November I spent two days at NASA Armstrong (here and here) for my first NASA Social.
3. In December at JPL, I had the privilege of attend my second NASA Social.
4. The posts accompanying those events had lots of my Tweets and cell phone pictures, but the better quality pictures were promised for “later.” Now it’s later!
5. Friday I posted the DSLR hi-res pictures from November 18th, the first day at NASA Armstrong, and yesterday I posted the November 19th pictures from NASA Armstrong.
6. Tonight, the hi-res pictures from the December 3rd NASA Social at JPL for the first Orion launch (which actually didn’t get off until December 5th). As I did yesterday, I’ll try not to repeat too much of the material already in the original post.

The talks we saw were held in Von Karman Auditorium. This is a neat place to be, in that there have been many, many historic press conferences held here as JPL sent spacecraft past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Venus, Mercury, landed on Mars, landed on Titan, landed on Mars again and again and again and again…

This is a full-sized model of the Voyager spacecraft, both of which have now left the solar system and are the first artifacts created by humans to enter interstellar space.

This is a (half?) scale model of the SMAP (Soil Moisture Active/Passive) spacecraft that launched earlier this week from Vandenburg Air Force Base in central California. The antenna on top launches in a folded up configuration (the model of the folded antenna is the tube on the floor in front of the middle solar panel) and then opens up after reaching orbit. SMAP will be used to get global readings on whether the soil is frozen or thawed (critical data relating to methane release from the Arctic regions as the area warms) and to measure how much moisture is in the soil (critical to improving long-term weather forecasts).

On the other side of Von Karman Auditorium is a half-scale model of the Cassini spacecraft, with the shield-like Huygens probe attached. Cassini has been orbiting Saturn and returning a massive number of pictures for over ten years, while Huygens was dropped into the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, where it parachuted down and landed, sending pictures and data from the surface. (That landing video, as well as this one, are spectacular!)

In the JPL visitor’s center next to Von Karman Auditorium are many other spacecraft models, pictures, and information on JPL planetary exploration missions over the past fifty years. This is a full-sized model of the Galileo spacecraft that was launched from the Space Shuttle toward Jupiter. The model is accurate to the point where it shows the primary antenna on top in the partially deployed condition that it got stuck in, seriously decreasing the rate at which data and pictures could be sent back to Earth. Despite that, all of our best knowledge to date about Jupiter and its moons come from Galileo and the work that the JPL engineers did to work around that antenna problem as best they could, performing minor miracles in the process.

During the event there was a long session televised on NASA-TV, originating from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but also taking questions from the other centers which were having simultaneous NASA Social events, such as JPL.

An unexpected surprise was an impromptu talk by Rob Manning who is currently the Chief Engineer of the LDSD project at JPL (see below) and was formerly the Chief Engineer on the Mars Science Laboratory (aka, “Curiosity”) which successfully landed on Mars and has now been climbing Mt. Sharp there for over two years.

When it comes to putting spacecraft on other planets and successfully doing what was previously thought to be impossible, the engineers and scientists at JPL are truly giants in the field, and “rock stars” to us space geeks and nerds. Rob Manning is one of those rock stars and it was a real treat to get to talk to him.

Once we got out of Von Karman (and into the rain) we saw several projects that are in the process of being built and tested. We got a talk by Deputy Project Manager Jennifer Trosper, another Mars rover exploration “rock star,” about both the current Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) and the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity). We also saw an engineering model of the InSight lander which will be launched in March 2016 to land on Mars and study the deep interior of Mars. A lander, not a rover, here you can see the grid laid out in front of the spacecraft as they test the arm to see where it can reach and to calibrate the mechanics of that motion.

This is the next Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) test vehicle which is being prepared for a launch and test later this year. Last year’s first LDSD test off the coast of Hawaii validated the concept and gathered vital data, but it also shredded the parachute immediately, which was highly unexpected. That’s okay, that’s how you learn in this business. If you’re not breaking things, you’re not trying hard enough.

Finally, a completely unexpected surprise and more über-squeeing moments for me. First of all, the room we’re sitting in is the primary control room, the room you see in the videos of the JPL engineers and scientists celebrating wildly when a spacecraft lands on Mars or otherwise succeeds. (Like this one from when Curiosity landed, that whole “seven minutes of terror” experience.) THAT room.

Better yet, our escorts and speakers were Bobak Ferdowsi (on the left, aka “Mohawk Guy”) and Steve Collins (aka “Long Haired NASA Guy”). Space geek “rock stars” with a BIG “R”! And both of them two of the nicest guys you could ever meet, they answered all of our questions, posed for pictures and selfies, and put up with all of us geeking out.

But wait, there’s more! Not only did we get to go into the primary control room, but then we got to go out onto the floor of the JPL Mission Control Room. Being here was way, way up on the bucket list! Places where they launch rockets and places where they run them are as close to “sacred ground” as I get, and the JPL Mission Control Room is close to the top of the list.

by the way, in the middle of the big screens at the top you can see the status of the Deep Space Network antennas, showing which ones are active at the three DSN sites (Goldstone, Canberra, and Madrid) and which spacecraft they’re talking to. Even better, that information, in fact, that exact up-to-the-minute DSN status display is available here on the NASA-DSN web page. It makes a great screen saver!

So there you have it! Now to bed and off to NASA Armstrong in the morning for my third NASA Social! Tweets and pictures galore to follow, I promise!