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Credits: NASA

 

 

The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) is a mission that will measure the lunar gravity field in unprecedented detail. The twin spacecraft will orbit the Moon in tandem and collect scientific data for several months.

 

 

The GRAIL mission will cost $375 million and launch in 2011 as part of NASA’s Discovery Program. The window for the launch is 26 days long and opens on September 8, 2011.

 

After a dual launch aboard a Delta II 2920-10, the spacecraft will spend three to four months cruising on a low-energy trans-lunar trajectory. The two spacecraft will orbit the moon on 50 km, near-circular polar orbits, with a spacecraft separation of 175 – 225 km. The science phase of the mission will take 90 days, and it will be followed by a 12-month science data analysis.

 

The technique used by GRAIL for collecting scientific data was also used for the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, launched in 2002. Small changes in the distance that separates the two spacecraft are translated in variations of the lunar gravity field.

 

The GRAIL spacecraft are based on the Lockheed Martin XSS-11 bus. The XSS-11 (Experimental Small Satellite 11) is the result of research done at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in the field of agile and affordable micro-satellites. Interesting to mention here is that there were speculations that XSS-11 could also be used as the base for the development of a kinetic anti-satellite weapon (ASAT).

 

The spacecraft is a rectangular composite structure. Two non-articulated solar arrays and lithium ion battery provides power. The attitude control system, the power management system, and the telecommunications system are also inherited from the XSS-11 bus.

 

The payload consists of a Ka-band Lunar Gravity Ranging System (LGRS), which is derived from the instrument carried by the GRACE spacecraft.

 

The spacecraft flight operations will be conducted from Lockheed Martin’s Denver facility. Science Level 0 and 1 data processing will be done at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Level 2 data processing at JPL, the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The final scientific data will be delivered by MIT.

 

While missions like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will find safe landing sites, locate potential resources, and take measurements of the radiation environment of the lunar surface, GRAIL will explore the moon from crust to core, and determine the moon’s internal structure and evolution.

 

More information about GRAIL is available on the GRAIL mission page on MIT’s web site.

 

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Credits: MIT

 

MIT Open Courseware has made available the course 16.346 Astrodynamics, taught by Professor Richard Battin.

 

The course covers the fundamentals of astrodynamics. The focus is on the two-body orbital initial-value and boundary-value problems. The course applications include space vehicle navigation and guidance for lunar and planetary missions.

 

 

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Credits: NASA

 

Beginning in August 1961, the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (later known as the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory) developed the Apollo Primary Guidance, Navigation, and Control System (PGNCS). The PGNCS was an inertial guidance system that allowed Apollo spacecraft to navigate during periods when communication with Earth was interrupted. Both the Apollo command module (CM) and lunar module (LM) were equipped with a PGNCS.

 

 

This summer, June 10-12, MIT is hosting a celebration to honor those who made the Apollo Program possible. The highlights of the event are the Giant Leaps Symposium, In Memoriam: Robert Seamans, and Tours of MIT space labs. For more information, you can visit the MIT website.

 

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Credits: NASA/RASA

 

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a high-energy particle detector. AMS will detect electrons, positrons, protons, antiprotons, and nuclei in cosmic radiation.

 

AMS is a cooperative project that involved more than 200 scientists from 31 institutions and 15 countries. The data gathered by AMS during its three-year mission will help scientists answer important questions about antimatter and invisible mass in the Universe. AMS could detect many types of particles predicted by theorists and determine their astrophysical sources.

 

 

AMS could reveal to scientists unusual astrophysical objects like antimatter galaxies, dark matter, strangelets, microquasars, and primordial black holes.

 

AMS actually refers to two particle experiments: AMS-01 and AMS-02. AMS-01 flew in low Earth orbit (LEO) with Space Shuttle Discovery STS-91 in June 1998. AMS-01 was an AMS prototype (a simplified version of the spectrometer) and was used to test particle physics technology in LEO. AMS-02 is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer designed to be mounted and operated on the ISS.

 

Credits: NASA

 

AMS-02 is a cube-shaped structure with a mass of 6,731 kg. The spectrometer consists of a huge superconducting magnet and six specialized detectors, and requires 2,000 watts of power.

 

The experiment has a 10Gb/sec internal data pipeline and will have a dedicated 2MB/sec connection to ground stations. AMS-02 will gather approximately 200 TB of scientific data during its mission. Four 750 MHz PowerPC computers running Linux will provide the computing power.

 

The spectrometer also contains two star tracker cameras, which detect the orientation in space, and a thermal control system that will control the temperature of the whole experiment. The thermal control system is quite complex. Heat is collected from the detectors and the magnet, and then pushed through conductors to the radiators mounted on the outside of the AMS and radiated into space.

 

 

AMS-02 has a little bit of history associated with it … due to the Space Shuttle accidents, which reduced the number of orbiters available, and the decision to retire the Space Shuttle fleet, AMS-02 faced cancellation (a long list of elements meant to be part of the ISS were cancelled for the same reasons). Because an additional shuttle flight was added to the launch manifest, most likely AMS-02 will make it to the space station.

 

The plan for AMS-02 is that it will be attached to the zenith side of the S3 section of the Integrated Truss Structure on the ISS. A Payload Attachment System will be used to keep the spectrometer in place on the truss segment.

 

Credits: NASA

 

According to the missions schedule, AMS-02 will be installed on ISS as part of the Space Shuttle Discovery STS-134 mission, together with the last ExPRESS Logistics Carrier (ELC-4), in late 2010.

 

STS-134 will be the last Space Shuttle flight before the deadline set to end Space Shuttle operations on September 30, 2010.

 

 

To make things more interesting (and Space Shuttle operations cheaper), it has been proposed that the last mission should end through a destructive re-entry. In this scenario, the reduced crew of three will remain on the space station and return to Earth onboard Soyuz spacecraft.

 

You can read more about AMS-02 on a dedicated web page at MIT. There is also a web page dedicated to AMS-02 at CERN.

 

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Credits: Donna Coveney/MIT

 

MIT is developing an ion propulsion system that uses nitrogen as propellant. The new system is called Mini-Helicon Plasma Thruster.

 

Research and development of the Mini-Helicon is taking place at MIT’s Space Propulsion Laboratory (SPL).

 

 

“The Mini-Helicon is one exciting example of the sorts of thrusters one can devise using external electrical energy instead of the locked-in chemical energy. Others we in the SPL work on include Hall thrusters and Electrospray thrusters. This area tends to attract students with a strong physics background, because it sits at the intersection of physics and engineering, with ample room for invention,” said Manuel Martinez-Sanchez, director of the SPL and a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

 

The Mini-Helicon has a simple design: a quartz tube wrapped by a coiled antenna, surrounded by magnets. The gas used as propellant is pumped into the quartz tube, where it is turned into plasma. The magnets confine, guide, and accelerate the plasma into an exhaust beam, which creates the thrust.

 

The Mini-Helicon design has its roots in a larger and more powerful propulsion system developed in collaboration with former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz. A team led by Oleg Batishchev, principal research scientist in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, did a theoretical analysis showing that components of the larger system could be used for different applications. The idea “was that a rocket based on the first stage [of Chang-Diaz’s system] could be small and simple, for more economical applications,” said Batishchev, who noted that the team’s prototype would fit in a large shoe box.

 

Batishchev notes that it could be years before the technology can be used commercially, in part due to certification policies through NASA and other agencies.

 

For more information about MIT’s Mini-Helicon, check out the MIT News Office website.

 

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Credits: NASA

 

If you want free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT, without any registration required, you can find them at MIT Open Courseware.

 

MIT Open Courseware reflects most of the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. One of the courses that caught my eye was an engineering course called Aircraft Systems Engineering.

 

 

Even if the formal title of the course is Aircraft Systems Engineering, the lectures are focused on Space Shuttle design. If you are a space enthusiast and have a technical background, you will probably enjoy these lectures.

 

The course was taught by Professor Jeff Hoffman and Professor Aaron Cohen.

 

Jeff Hoffman is a former Space Shuttle astronaut. He was a NASA astronaut from 1978 to 1997, having made five space flights and becoming the first astronaut to log 1,000 hours of flight time aboard the Space Shuttle. In 2001, Jeff Hoffman joined the MIT faculty, where he teaches courses on space operations and design and space policy. His principal areas of research are advanced EVA systems, space radiation protection, management of space science projects, and space systems architecture.

 

Aaron Cohen served as Director of NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He was Manager of the Command and Service Module in the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. In 1972, he was appointed Space Shuttle Orbiter Project Manager, responsible for design, development, production, and test flights. He also served for a year as the Acting Deputy Administrator for NASA.

 

One of the guest lecturers is Dale D. Myers. He was NASA Deputy Administrator between October 6, 1986 and May 13, 1989. In the first lecture of the course, Dale D. Myers gives a presentation on the beginning of the Space Shuttle program and describes how the external environment generated the requirements that forced the configuration of the Space Shuttle. This is a must-see, like any other lecture given by someone who has many years of experience under his/her belt. Watching this lecture reminded me of one of my professors back in university, who used to say that the must-have organ for a good engineer is the nose.

 

The course covers the subsystems of the Space Shuttle, including the requirements that shaped the design, the testing of each subsystem, and how they were operated. The structure of the orbiter, the thermal protection subsystem, the Space Shuttle main engines, landing and mechanical systems, the power systems, accident investigation, etc. are all covered by guest lecturers that were directly involved in the design and construction of the Space Shuttle.

 

I hope you enjoy the videos as much as I have. Happy New Year and all the best for 2009!

 

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