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Countdown To History

Atlantis blasting off on her maiden mission, October 3, 1985. Courtesy NASA.

Friday July 8th, 2011 is the targeted date for NASA’s final space shuttle mission launch. This is when Atlantis is slated to take off, bringing to an end a largely successful part of NASA’s history of human spaceflight. It seems as if this end has been a long time coming, yet in another way, it seems that it wasn’t all that long ago we were eagerly awaiting the first space shuttle launch. That took place on April 12, 1981, when Columbia took to the skies for the first time as the first reusable orbita spacecraft flight to space.

So, it’s just been slightly over 30 years of roaring blast-offs and delicate orbital dances by astronauts and orbiting “birds” as they deployed satellites, repaired and serviced Hubble Space Telescope, did science experiments, and worked on building the International Space Station. And, in two cases, Challenger and Columbia (the first orbiter), missions ended in tragedy.

It’s been a hell of a great ride, particularly for the astronauts who took their places in the cockpit and middeck of each space shuttle for every mission. I’ve met some of those people, among them Sally Ride, Loren Acton, John Young, John Grunsfeld, Claude Nicollier, Kalpana Chawla, Ellison Onizuka, Marsha Ivins, and Michael Foale. Every one of them is the kind of person you’d want to send to space because they have what we all have come to know as the “right stuff” — that focused view on doing the job right the first time and then sharing what they know with the rest of us.

I met most of these astronauts when I was in graduate school or since then at various meetings. Marsha Ivins came and gave a talk at the University of Colorado during a visit “back home” (she’s a fellow alum) and she was so encouraging about having all of us “keep looking up” that I’ve never forgotten her. Kalpana Chawla was another CU alum, and we heard her give a presentation that was a marvel of clarity and enthusiasm. Claude Nicollier astonished me at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society when he asked for MY autograph (he’d read the book about Hubble that I authored with John C. Brandt), and he was one of the most gracious people I’ve ever met. Same with John Grunsfeld (who asked for my autograph when I should have been asking for his), who visited Hubble a record four times to bring our telescope back up to spec. If it hadn’t been for folks like John and Claude and the crews of astronauts who worked on HST, I’m sure that much of our team’s science wouldn’t have gotten done.

There are scientists around the world whose work has benefited from having flown on a shuttle, or deployed to space from a shuttle. There are also students around the world who benefited from lessons sent back from the shuttles, and ham radio operators who monitored and chatted with the astronauts as they circled the globe on their various missions.

Way back in the 80s, I dreamed of flying in a shuttle, maybe as a payload specialist or something. I never made it. But that dream sent me back to school to at least TRY to make it, and I ended up studying as much astronomy and space science and planetary science as I could gobble up. Ultimately I came out of graduate school more grounded in space than I ever expected. Even though I’m not “of” space travel, I write more about it and share it with other people. For that, I have the space shuttle program to thank — even though I wasn’t “of” that, either. But, as a spur to doing greater things — hey — it worked!

So, as I watch the last launch on Friday, it will be with a tremendous sense of history and pride in a program that showed us what could be done. Sure, it wasn’t without its problems (both technical AND political), but the shuttles showed us what could be done when people put their minds to working and living in low-Earth orbit. I can only hope that the next program does the shuttles one better — which is a tall order to fill for a program that is still being developed. As they retreat into the annals of human spaceflight history, those shuttles are leaving behind some mighty big vapor trails to fill.

Asteroid Flys By, Earth is Still Here

This image of Asteroid 2011 MD was shot by Marco Langbroek five hours before the closest approach, using a "remote" telescope, the 0.61-meter F/10 Cassegrain of Sierra Stars Observatory (G68) in California. The CCD image is a 30-second exposure. The fast moving asteroid has tracked a clear bright trail on the image during these 30 seconds. Field center is approximately RA 15h35m57s, dec. +19.441 degrees. Image from 08:32:00 to 08:32:30 UTC (June 27th 2011).

While you were doing your daily thing a little while ago, a little chunk of rock flew by our planet at a distance of 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles). It was Asteroid 2011 MD, an Earth-grazing object that is about ten meters (about 30 feet) wide and tumbling through space on its way over our atmosphere and through our flock of artificial satellites.

As NASA scientists predicted, the rock didn’t pose any danger to the planet. But, this is yet another reminder that we live in a solar system populated with stuff that also orbits the Sun, stuff that we don’t always see until the last minute. And, every so often, we do spot something that comes uncomfortably close to our planet. This is perfectly normal in solar system asteroid populations and their orbital dynamics, and is usually nothing to worry about. Until it is.

So far, we’ve been lucky, but let’s put this into perspective. The last really huge bash into our planet made life miserable for the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, but it wasn’t made by a ten-meter-wide rock. That object was more like 10 kilometers (16 miles) across. Meteor Crater in Arizona was dug out by something about 50 meters (about 150 feet) across, and that impact probably made life miserable for whatever animals (woolly mammoths, maybe) that happened to be ranging around that formerly grassy and temperate plain on that fateful day some 50,000 years ago.

A lot has been made about the fact that we need some sort of “asteroid early warning system” to keep us apprised of such close flybys. We seem to have one now, since this one was discovered on June 22, 2011. But, I think what the community really wants is better detectors to find these things earlier. The little rocks,which are harder to spot, aren’t quite so much a danger as the big rocks — which we should be able to spot sooner than a few days before they get close enough.

What should we do with that information? Just what we do now. We note the approach, the speed at which the object is traveling, and its size and rotation rate, and astronomers around the world (both amateur and professional) arrange to get images of the thing. In fact, for this one, images and movies are already starting to stream in to places like Spaceweather.com. More will show up as astronomers track its passage.

What if a newly discovered rock is bigger than these little guys, and headed straight for us? Well, that’s the scenario that worries scientists and makes the press salivate and write about each asteroid as if it were “the” one. Such a press frenzy for every little rock chunk is not scientific, but it does sell click-throughs and page views. Believe me, if the big one were on the way, it’d be hard to keep scientists quiet about it, and I can just imagine the über-frenzy the press would lapse into.

Not only would scientists want to study it all the way in (I mean, come on — the opportunity to study an asteroid both visually and spectroscopically as it plunges through our atmosphere is at once an interesting scientific study and a sociological phenomenon), but every politico, evangelist, and wannabe commentator would have their own take on what it “means”. I don’t know about you, but I’d far rather see rational scientific discussion rather than uninformed ranting… but perhaps I’m damning the pundits unfairly ahead of time.

Nah.

In the meantime, we should embrace the science that’s being done on the little guys that rush past. Each one tells us a bit more about our near-Earth orbital environment, and sometimes we even learn more about the kinds of debris chunks that flash past in the night.

The Spacewriter's Ramblings

The Last Space Shuttle Mission

Countdown To History

The World Didn’t End

Asteroid Flys By, Earth is Still Here

Exploring Science and the Cosmos