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Culbertson told the assembled conference attendees that Orbital continues to make progress toward the Antares test launch and COTS demonstration missions and the schedule for the major mission milestones was firming up. He said:

  — the launch facilities at Wallops are nearing completion
  — the hardware for the first three missions are either already integrated or available for integration
  — the Cygnus spacecraft for the first two missions are completing testing and will be ready for integration at the launch site in May
  — pad turnover is scheduled for early April
  — the pad’s first stage hot fire will be conducted in late spring.
  — first test flight is scheduled for early summer
  — COTS demonstration flight will be in late summer (dependent on NASA approval).

Hardware in the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) at Wallops – virtually all the hardware required to carry out the static fire test and Taurus II test flight is already on site. – Image credit: Orbital Sciences Click to Enlarge

Aerial view of the launch complex at Wallops Island. – Image credit: Dave Thompson/Orbital Sciences Click to Enlarge

The first Cygnus spacecraft is about to enter system-level environmental testing at the Dulles plant, following its development and integration process. – Image credit: Orbital Sciences Click to Enlarge

Orbital 2012 COTS and CRS operational schedules. – Image credit: Orbital Sciences Click to Enlarge

Orbital is one of the companies currently under contract to support NASA International Space Station re-supply missions.

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A team of researchers analyzing high-resolution images obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) show small, narrow trenches typically much longer than they are wide. This indicates the lunar crust is being pulled apart at these locations. These linear valleys, known as graben, form when the moon’s crust stretches, breaks and drops down along two bounding faults. A handful of these graben systems have been found across the lunar surface.

This shows the largest of the newly detected graben found in highlands of the lunar farside. The broadest graben is about 500 meters (1,640 feet) wide and topography derived from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) stereo images indicates they are almost 20 meters (almost 66 feet) deep. – Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution Click to Enlarge

“We think the moon is in a general state of global contraction because of cooling of a still hot interior,” said Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and lead author of a paper on this research appearing in the March issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. “The graben tell us forces acting to shrink the moon were overcome in places by forces acting to pull it apart. This means the contractional forces shrinking the moon cannot be large, or the small graben might never form.”

The weak contraction suggests that the moon, unlike the terrestrial planets, did not completely melt in the very early stages of its evolution. Rather, observations support an alternative view that only the moon’s exterior initially melted forming an ocean of molten rock.

In August 2010, the team used LROC images to identify physical signs of contraction on the lunar surface, in the form of lobe-shaped cliffs known as lobate scarps. The scarps are evidence the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today. The team saw these scarps widely distributed across the moon and concluded it was shrinking as the interior slowly cooled.

Based on the size of the scarps, it is estimated that the distance between the moon’s center and its surface shrank by approximately 300 feet. The graben were an unexpected discovery and the images provide contradictory evidence that the regions of the lunar crust are also being pulled apart.

“This pulling apart tells us the moon is still active,” said Richard Vondrak, LRO Project Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “LRO gives us a detailed look at that process.”

As the LRO mission progresses and coverage increases, scientists will have a better picture of how common these young graben are and what other types of tectonic features are nearby. The graben systems the team finds may help scientists refine the state of stress in the lunar crust.

“It was a big surprise when I spotted graben in the far side highlands,” said co-author Mark Robinson of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, principal investigator of LROC. “I immediately targeted the area for high-resolution stereo images so we could create a three-dimensional view of the graben. It’s exciting when you discover something totally unexpected and only about half the lunar surface has been imaged in high resolution. There is much more of the moon to be explored.”

The research was funded by the LRO mission, currently under NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Three weeks after NASA’s space shuttle Challenger exploded, the Soviet Union “opened a new phase in space exploration” when Mir lifted off on Feb. 20, 1986, an archived article on the website news.bbc.co.uk said.

“At next week’s Communist Party congress in Moscow,” the story reported, “the Mir project is likely to be hailed as proof that the Soviets are leading the peaceful exploration of space.”

The 1987 Soviet publication “Salyut-Mir” (Novosti Press) described the launch thusly: “A burst of fire threw back the night’s darkness as the 60 million (horsepower) Proton booster lifted off its pad. … Once the rocket reached a low elliptical orbit, the station separated from the last stage of the booster and, switching on its own propulsion system, went into a working circular orbit.”

The Mir space station in Earth orbit.- Image credit: NASA Click to Enlarge

 
“After losing the race to the Moon,” said centennialofflight.gov, “Soviet leaders feared that the Americans would take yet another ‘first’ in in the space race by launching Skylab into orbit and claiming the world’s first space station.” The United States wouldn’t launch Skylab until May 14, 1973, nasa.gov said.

Mir, “a third-generation orbital station,” the publication stated, was originally named Salyut 8. The Soviets launched the Salyut program in 1971 “to salute Yuri Gagarin’s first flight around the Earth 10 years earlier,” Brian Harvey documented in “Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier?” (Springer Praxis 2001).

There were actually “two types” of stations: the “highly secret Almaz military stations,” then the “public set of Salyut civilian stations,” said “Space Stations: Base Camps to the Stars” (Smithsonian/2003). As a consequence of Cold War secrecy, various sources tend to decipher controversial and covert facts, differently.

The Salyut space station program lasted 20 years (see chart above for mission dates.) Salyut 1 had just “one docking port and could not be resupplied or refueled,” said “Space Stations: Base Camps to the Stars.” However, Harvey wrote that the first crew to arrive couldn’t dock. The next crew of three cosmonauts succeeded, entering “the station in June 1971” and transmitting “pictures of life aboard the world’s first orbiting space station” for 24 days.

Unfortunately, as they returned to Earth, a faulty valve in their Soyuz craft “opened” and the air rushed out. The recovery team “found them staring straight ahead, dead in their seats.”

According to “Spaceflight: A Historical Encyclopedia,” “the crew was not wearing spacesuits” as “mission planners had been working under the assumption that they would not be necessary during re-entry when the capsule itself would provide the necessary protection.”

Harvey said “a period of unrelieved gloom for the Soviet space programme” ensued that delayed missions for nearly two years.

Centennialofflight.gov described Salyuts 2, 3 and 5 as military. Russianspaceweb.com said Salyut 2 carried the military designation OPS-1. “Since the authorities did not want to disclose the existence of two space station projects in the USSR, and particularly, to reveal the development of the military Almaz, the OPS-1 was announced as Salyut-2 upon reaching the orbit.” A clue to the mission’s true “nature,” however, was that it transmitted at “the frequency common for Soviet reconnaissance satellites.” Thirteen days after achieving orbit a “loss of pressure” occurred, the cause attributed to a “faulty” weld that caused a propulsion line to burst.

Later investigation found a piece of debris hit Salyut when “the upper stage of the Proton (booster) rocket” exploded due to “pressure changes in its tanks caused by overheating.” The station re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on May 28, 1973.

“The Soviet Manned Space Program” (Salamander Books/1988) theorized that Salyut 2 was to have been one of two stations the Soviets were “to man … simultaneously” in 1973 “to steal some of Skylab’s thunder.” “Spaceflight” said a follow-up to Salyut 2 failed “due to an error in the craft’s stabilization system,” and “was referred to as Cosmos 557. … Soviet space officials quickly disowned it, denying even that it was a civilian Salyut.”

This drawing in the 1987 Soviet publication “Salyut-Mir” delineated the Mir’s components.- Image credit: Novosti Press Click to Enlarge

 
Salyut 3’s “use of military transmission frequencies again confirmed” a covert purpose, “The Soviet Manned Space Program” said. Additionally, among the cosmonauts was “a military engineer.” “Spaceflight” refers to Salyut 3 as “the first manned military surveillance outpost in space,” which “reportedly conducted … photo reconnaissance.” A second crew was unable to dock.”

The Salyut 4 crew “endured a difficult 63 days marred by faults in the Salyut’s environmental system that gave rise to fogged windows and a green mold that grew on the walls of the station,” said “Spaceflight.” This mission “overlapped with the joint Soviet-American Apollo-Soyuz Test Project” in July 1975, and proved the Soviets were able to manage simultaneous missions.”

Salyut 5 “focused on conducting military photo surveillance,” and used “scrambled voice communications.”

Salyut 6’s redesign featured two docking ports to “receive supplies and fuel ferried to it by unmanned” craft. Cosmonauts could now “stay aboard the stations for much longer periods,” allowing them to “conduct more complex and scientifically rewarding research.” Seventeen crews used the facility over five years; five of those crews set records for “long-durations stays.”

Ten crews used Salyut 7, six of them increasingly longer missions; among them were three cosmonauts who made “a record-setting stay of 237 days.” When the station re-entered Earth’s atmosphere it “rain(ed) debris over parts of Argentina.”

This Mir model previously hung in the New Mexico Museum of Space History.- Image credit: Ron Keller Click to Enlarge

 
Salyut 8, or Mir, was home to “28-long duration crews” with “near-continuous habitation,” according to “Spaceflight.” Ironically, Mir “outlived the totalitarian regime responsible for its development.” When post-Soviet Russia brought Mir back to Earth after “89,067 orbits,” cosmonauts had occupied the station for “4,594 of the total 5,511 days the space station was in orbit.” Among occupants were “40 Soviet and Russian cosmonauts (15 of which visited more than once), 18 international visitors, including (five) French and (four) German cosmonauts, and (seven) U.S. astronauts who lived and worked aboard the station for extended periods.” Nine space shuttle crews “visited briefly during shuttle/Mir docking operations,” as well.

On March 23, 2001, news.bbc.co.uk reported that Moscow “crashed” Mir “into the southern Pacific Ocean,” into “a watery grave” following a “fiery” atmospheric re-entry.

Michael Shinabery is an education specialist and Humanities Scholar with the New Mexico Museum of Space History. E-mail him at michael.shinabery@state.nm.us.

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Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the University of Maryland, College Park; and Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Mass., created the map using 2.5 million carefully screened, globally distributed laser pulse measurements from space. The light detection and ranging (lidar) data were collected in 2005 by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System instrument on NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat).

“Knowing the height of Earth’s forests is critical to estimating their biomass, or the amount of carbon they contain,” said lead researcher Marc Simard of JPL. “Our map can be used to improve global efforts to monitor carbon. In addition, forest height is an integral characteristic of Earth’s habitats, yet is poorly measured globally, so our results will also benefit studies of the varieties of life that are found in particular parts of the forest or habitats.”

The map, available at http://lidarradar.jpl.nasa.gov, depicts the highest points in the forest canopy. Its spatial resolution is 0.6 miles (1 kilometer). The map was validated against data from a network of nearly 70 ground sites around the world.

The researchers found that, in general, forest heights decrease at higher elevations and are highest at low latitudes, decreasing in height the farther they are from the tropics. A major exception was found at around 40 degrees south latitude in southern tropical forests in Australia and New Zealand, where stands of eucalyptus, one of the world’s tallest flowering plants, tower much higher than 130 feet (40 meters).

The researchers augmented the ICESat data with other types of data to compensate for the sparse lidar data, the effects of topography and cloud cover. These included estimates of the percentage of global tree cover from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite, elevation data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, and temperature and precipitation maps from NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and the WorldClim database. WorldClim is a set of freely available, high-resolution global climate data that can be used for mapping and spatial modeling.

In general, estimates in the new map show forest heights were taller than in a previous ICESat-based map, particularly in the tropics and in boreal forests, and were shorter in mountainous regions. The accuracy of the new map varies across major ecological community types in the forests, and also depends on how much the forests have been disturbed by human activities and by variability in the forests’ natural height.

“Our map contains one of the best descriptions of the height of Earth’s forests currently available at regional and global scales,” Simard said. “This study demonstrates the tremendous potential that spaceborne lidar holds for revealing new information about Earth’s forests. However, to monitor the long-term health of Earth’s forests and other ecosystems, new Earth observing satellites will be needed.”

Results of the study were published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences.

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