From Sky to Space: John Young, the Astronaut’s Astronaut

By Benjamin Vermette

When you think of great human achievements, you may think of the Pyramids and other human-built wonders of the world, or of Einstein’s General Relativity theory and other complex products of pure intellect, but you must not omit the moon landings. In fact, landing on the Moon was – in my opinion – by far the greatest triumph humankind ever accomplished. It required an unprecedented amount of organisation and perseverance in order to bring to life, in an extremely limited and troublesome timeframe, the dreams and wonders of every human to touch that little grey ball in the night sky.

To set foot on the Moon, you need a bunch of people – some scientists, some directors and other administrators, some politicians, a ton of engineers, but mainly, you need precisely that: a foot. A lot of people volunteered their foot, but in the end, only 24 feet were chosen, and they were those of (in order of walking on the Moon): Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, Dave R. Scott, James Irwin, John Young, Charles Duke, Jack Schmitt and Gene Cernan. Out of those 12 men, only four still live today (Aldrin, Scott, Duke & Schmitt); a couple of months ago, seven were still walking among us.

When Eugene Cernan passed on January 16, 2017, I thought I’d write a piece about his life http://espritdecorps.ca/from-sky-to-space/from-sky-to-space-a-period-of-mourning he was, and still is, one of my favorite astronauts. And when I heard the passing of John Young on January 5, 2018, I thought I couldn’t go on without at least addressing his career. But before doing so, let me honorably mention Alan Bean, fourth man on the Moon, who died on May 26, 2018, at age 86. An artist who depicted his out-of-this-world experiences through paintings, Al Bean will be remembered as a humane, down-to-earth astronaut.  Now, here is a too brief account of the life of another of my favorite astronauts, John Young.

John W. Young (1930 – 2018)

There is always that one guy who never wants to be in the spotlight no matter how successful he is; just like an uncomplaining dark horse, riding along the toughest roads known to men, and doing it without complaint. John Young was that kind of guy, possessing enough skills and working hard enough to be arrogant, but never being so.

John Young in 1969

Young was born in San Francisco on September 24, 1930, although his family and him quickly moved to Cartersville, Georgia, before moving again to Orlando, Florida. He always described himself as an “old country boy from the south”. His inherent passion for aviation became evident at an early age, as one of his pastimes was to build model airplanes. He then went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, before entering the U.S. Navy through the ROTC program in 1952.

In 1954, he earned his aviator wings to fly F9F Cougar jets for VFA-103, the famous Jolly Rogers squadron. Four years later, Young became a part of the United States Naval Test Pilot School Class 23 where he set two time-to-climb records with the F-4F Phantom II, climbing 9,843 & 82,021 feet in respectively 34.52 & 227.7 seconds. He was in fact a very skilled pilot. As fellow astronaut and former NASA administrator from 2009 – 2017 Charles Bolden recalled, Young and Robert ‘Hoot’ Gibson were the two best pilot he ever met: “Never met two people like them. Everyone else gets into an airplane; John and Hoot wear the airplane. They’re just awesome.”

Later in 1962, Young was selected alongside Neil Armstrong among the ‘New Nine’ group of astronauts, three years after the original Mercury Seven. In preparation for an eventual spaceflight in the Gemini program, Young and his fellow colleagues trained 16 hours a day, doing exercises ranging from land & water survival to mental & physical fitness. During those harsh days of training, he started to gain the reputation of the modest, hard-working man who seems to make all the tough jobs effortless.

In 1965, he finally flew in space for the first time on Gemini 3, the first manned Gemini mission, with his friend Gus Grissom, who later died on Apollo 1 during a capsule fire on the launch pad in 1967.

Gemini 3 is a classic mission in the history of space exploration; a lot of things happened. Although the mission was a near-textbook one on technical terms – in Young’s words: “Gemini 3 was truly an excellent engineering test flight of the vehicle” – it had a minor incident concerning a … corned beef sandwich. Unsatisfied with the food served in space, Young decided to smuggle a corned beef sandwich in his suit, without warning anyone until he actually started to eat it in orbit. Unlike NASA and people on the ground – who were heavily concerned that the crumbs of the sandwich could mess with the electronics on board –  Grissom thought that it was quite a joke, taking a few bites himself: “John’s deadpan offer of this strictly non-regulation goodie remains one of the highlights of our flight for me.”

John Young and Gus Grissom

Gemini 3 was the mission that gave John Young his name. Flying in space was not common in those days – Gemini 3 was only the seventh manned US spaceflight – so astronauts, upon their arrival on Earth, had a traditional welcome parade in the streets of New York and held public appearances with the President. Passing from a southern introvert to a superstar in days was a radical transformation – one that Young wasn’t prepared for. But still, he clung to his reputation of the least emotional man on Earth by showing no signs of fear, and by seeming everything but unprepared.

Soon, the glamorous days were over and Young had to get back to training. He was preparing for another spaceflight, and doing so by logging countless hours in T-38 Talon jets (each astronaut was given one for personal use). It was said that flying the T-38 wasn’t ‘risky’ enough for the astronauts, that they thought it wasn’t ‘spaceflight-like’ enough (a T-38 wasn’t nerve-racking as much as a small capsule on top of a missile). So, the legend says that Young invented a challenge that later became a matter of honour for these spacefaring men: flying the T-38 on an near-empty fuel tank. Today, this practice would be prohibited, but it still shines light on the character that was John Young: a fearless man who always wanted more – the definition of living life at its fullest!

A bit more than a year after his first spaceflight – in July 1966 –  Young was to leave humanity’s cradle for a second time; this time, as commander of the Gemini 10 mission with fellow astronaut Michael Collins. Gemini 10 had a tough mission plan: they had to rendezvous and dock with an Agena booster in low-earth orbit, then use this booster to climb temporarily to almost 800 km of altitude, then drop the booster and meet with a second one (left in space during the Gemini 8 mission), and then wrap up and come home. This mission was set in order to test three critical objectives needed to eventually land on the Moon: rendezvous, docking & EVA (extra-vehicular activity – spacewalk). Note that the difference between rendezvous and docking in space is that the latter necessarily implies that two spacecraft physically connect to each other, while the former only means that the two spacecrafts meet at a reasonable distance from each other (usually around 15 meters). As the mission comprised some of the trickiest maneuvers ever attempted, Young’s wife didn’t want him to go. In a typical John Young manner, he apparently replied: “It’s my job.”

John Young and Michael Collins

Even though the second rendezvous with the Agena booster at 800 km of altitude was completed without electronics, or, in Young’s words, completed “by eyeball, the kind of old technique that you would use in pre-World War I days”, the mission was a success.

But now, the Gemini days were over –  it was time for what all those years of preparation were all about: the moon landings, or the Apollo era.

Two months before Apollo 11’s mission in July 1969 – the historic one when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first wandered on the Moon – John Young, Gene Cernan and Thomas Stafford flew on Apollo 10 on what was to be a “dress rehearsal” for the first moon landing. As Young piloted the Command Module in orbit around the Moon, Cernan and Stafford flew the Lunar Module to about 15 km off the lunar surface – the point where the powered descent would begin on the actual moon landing. Gene Cernan once told journalists that NASA intentionally cut in the Lunar Module fuel tank in order to prevent the crew from actually landing on the surface; had they not, Neil Armstrong probably wouldn’t be as popular.

In 1972, John Young had his fourth and most prominent spaceflight: he commanded the fifth moon landing, Apollo 16.  Along with Lunar Module pilot Charlie Duke, Young spent 20 hours on the surface on the Moon, driving the Lunar Rover for about 30 km and collecting 211 pounds of lunar rocks and thus becoming the ninth person to walk on the Moon. While Young and Duke where collecting rocks and raising dust on the surface, Command Module pilot Ken Mattingly was orbiting above, performing observations of the surface of the Moon.

Ken Mattingly, John Young and Charlie Duke

As mentioned, John Young was one of the calmest and most fearless astronauts. Those characteristics were heavily displayed while he was sitting inside the capsule on top of the gigantic Saturn V rocket right before Apollo 16’s liftoff: “I found out from the flight surgeon later on that my heartbeat was 144 at liftoff,” said Charlie Duke. “John’s was 70.” In his 2012 autobiography Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space, John Young wrote that he “was either calmer than I thought I was or, as I later noted in the space shuttle, I was too old for my heart to go any faster.”

Later in 1972, Apollo 17 became humanity’s last manned mission to the Moon. NASA’s focus shifted from the Moon to Low Earth Orbit, passing from the big and mighty Saturn V rocket to the smaller, reusable Space Shuttle. The thing with the Shuttle was that it had to be landed like an airplane. That meant that NASA couldn’t fly an unmanned mission first to test it – usually, NASA would fly the rocket alone a couple of times before putting astronauts in it. So, for that kind of first mission, you needed a calm, experienced and skilled astronaut to fly and land the Shuttle. And you guessed it, John Young, who now was NASA’s Chief of the Astronaut Office since 1974, was chosen to command the first shuttle mission, known as STS-1, in 1981.

Nine years after his last spaceflight, Young would successfully fly and land what astronauts refer to as the “flying brick” (the Space Shuttle) with co-pilot Bob Crippen.

Later on, the Shuttle went on to carry seven astronauts at a time, but in a hazardous mission like this, NASA thought risking only two lives was more than enough. Even Mission Control couldn’t do much more than to wish Young and Crippen plain luck: “John, we can’t do more from the launch team than say, we wish you an awful lot of luck. We are with you one thousand percent and we are awful proud to have been a part of it. Good luck gentlemen.”

Mission Control’s wish was fulfilled, as John Young landed Space Shuttle Columbia in what was Crippen’s “softest landing [he’s] been into”.

BBC Coverage of the landing of STS-1. The clip starts about 3 minutes after blackout ends.

Young made his sixth and final spaceflight in 1983 as commander of STS-9, a mission that carried Spacelab’s first module to space. He was assigned to fly on STS-61-J and to make a record seventh spaceflight, but the Challenger disaster in 1986 delayed launch schedule.

Young worked for NASA until he took his retirement in 2004, thus becoming the longest-serving astronaut ever.

He passed from complications of pneumonia on January 5, 2018, at the age of 87. His life of conquering both sky and space and of never-ending service to NASA demonstrates his genuine spacefarer character, while his modesty and perseverance show the gentleman he truly was. A cold-blooded pilot like no other, the uncomplaining dark horse will be remembered, although his desire to never be in the spotlight contributed to his fame not being proportionate to his skills.

To my favourite astronaut; may you stay, John, forever young.

From Sky to Space: The Importance of Science Seen Through a Major Discovery

Artist's depiction of a neutron-star collision after inspiral. (Credit: NASA/Swift/Dana Berry)]

 By Benjamin Vermette

Two Colliding Neutron Stars Create Gravitational Waves

For the first time in humanity’s history, and by using the unprecedented technique of measuring both the light and the gravitational waves emitted into space, scientists were able to detect a collision between two neutron stars. The news was made public on October 16, 2017.

Interestingly, it can easily be said that a neutron star collision is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: “Our background analysis showed an event of this strength happens less than once in 80,000 years by random coincidence, so we recognized this right away as a very confident detection and a remarkably nearby source [of 130 million light-years away],” said Laura Cadonati, professor of physics at Georgia Tech and deputy spokesperson for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), one of the observatories that measured the gravitational waves emitted during the collision. “This detection has genuinely opened the doors to a new way of doing astrophysics. I expect it will be remembered as one of the most studied astrophysical events in history.”

But first, what is a neutron star? And what about a gravitational wave?

You’ve probably heard of the term ‘gravitational wave’ sometime in the not-so-distant past. In fact, they’re new to us! Even though Einstein predicted them on paper in 1915 alongside his general relativity theory, gravitational waves were only detected two years ago, on September 14, 2015. (For more on this subject, go to http://espritdecorps.ca/from-sky-to-space/2016/3/23/from-sky-to-space?rq=LIGO)

In order to better understand the core concepts of gravitational waves, we need to build around the fact that space itself is something. Even though you may rightfully think of empty space as dark, cold, and empty, it’s still something. Consider this: empty space can’t be nothing, since we can name it; true, nothingness wouldn’t bear any other name than ‘nothing.’ Now, putting aside philosophy and letting place to cosmology, if empty space is something, then what is it?

For the sake of being gentile with our intuition, let’s imagine space as being a kind of fabric — something that bends and distorts. For instance, you can imagine it as being a big mattress, where the galaxies, stars and planets represent balls of different masses. What happens if you put a big bowling ball on a mattress? Well, obviously, the mattress is distorted; the same happens with space and massive objects — that’s what we call gravity.

This spectrogram combined the signals from both Hanford and Livingston detectors to show the characteristic sweeping chirp. As the neutron stars came closer to each other, circling faster, they produced higher frequency gravitational waves shown by the greenish line sweeping upwards. (Credit: LIGO)]

Try and picture it in your mind: a bowling ball on a mattress creates a deeper area around the ball. Then, if you slide, say, a golf ball near the bowling ball, the golf ball’s path will be curved towards the bowling ball, creating the illusion that the two are mysteriously attracted by an unknown force. Furthermore, you could theoretically succeed in putting the golf ball in ‘orbit’ for a couple of seconds — that is, making the golf ball turn in circles around the bowling ball — if you throw the golf ball on a particular path with a precise speed.

In the end, Einstein’s theory on general relativity is simple (yeah, right — perhaps if you put the mathematics aside); just reread the last paragraph by replacing the word ‘mattress’ by ‘space’, the word ‘bowling ball’ by ‘star’ and the word ‘golf ball’ by ‘planet.’ So, it’s not entirely true that there is a mysterious attractive force between two objects (sorry, you’ve probably been taught so your entire childhood, but that’s the way it is!); rather, objects are attracted to each other because they follow their natural motions, or, in more technical terms, they follow their geodesics.

With that in mind, the concept of a gravitational wave can even be intuitive! What happens when two bowling balls collapse on a mattress? It creates waves, both in the air (where we perceive them as sounds) and on the mattress — it might be hard to detect, but the mattress will jiggle like the surface of a pond after you’ve dropped a rock in it.

Thus, gravitational waves can be caused by a loud cosmic event (like a neutron-star collision or the merger of two black holes) before being propagated through the entire fabric of space. Then, just like regular water waves distort the surface of a pond, gravitational waves distort space, and, since you are a part of space, it distorts you as well — by a tiny amount, but it’s still mind-blowing!

Now, let’s get back to the collision of the two neutron stars scientists discovered by first learning about neutron stars themselves. As you may know, everything is made out of atoms, but the atoms are also made out of something, but what? The atom structure can be separated into two parts: the electronic cloud and the nucleus. The electronic cloud surrounds the nucleus and is made of particles called electrons, while the nucleus is a little package of protons and neutrons. The interesting thing is that if we could bring an atom to the scale of, say, a football stadium (the electronic cloud representing the perimeter of the stadium), then the nucleus would only be the size of a pea! That means that everything is essentially made of … emptiness!

Cool, but how is this pertinent to understanding neutron stars? Well, it turns out that neutron stars are one of the only celestial objects to make exception to this rule: they are not made of atoms therefore they are not made of emptiness. Rather, neutron stars are only made of neutrons, so they are a kind of gigantic atom nucleus! This characteristic makes them darn dense: a single cubic centimetre of neutron-star matter would weigh about 400 million tons. In order to create such denseness, you would have to squeeze over 3,000 CN Towers into the size of a die! However, playing with that die wouldn’t be something I would recommend, as just putting it down on the table would make a hole through the table, through the floor, and through the earth.

Shown here is an animation of two neutron stars merging.

Even though neutron stars are itsy bitsy in a cosmic sense (around 20 kilometres in diameter), their unique density and mass make them capable of generating gravitational waves. However, we need to bear in mind that this time the collision occurred 130 million light-years away — which is a relatively small distance on a cosmic scale, but still significant — so the gravitational waves detected here on Earth were not as powerful and destructive as you might think; in fact, the ones detected disrupted space (and everything in it including you, me and the Earth) by only a fraction of an atom’s width. So, the question now is: How is it even possible to measure and detect distortions on the nanometric scale?

Well, the LIGO facilities and the other gravitational-wave observatories were arranged in such a way that two long cylinders, each measuring precisely the same length, are placed perpendicularly to each other. In those long tubes shine two lasers that are being reflected at both ends. The arms being of the same length, it makes the lasers come back at exactly the same time, cancelling each other out. The only way for the lasers not to come back at the same time and to not cancel each other out is if the tubes change in length. But how can you do that? Just ask … gravitational waves!

he Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) consists of two widely separated installations within the United States — one in Hanford, Washington and the other in Livingston, Louisiana — operated in unison as a single observatory. Aerial view of the LIGO Hanford facility showing the four-kilometre-long arms of the interferometers. (Credit: otherhand.org)

If a gravitational wave passes through the Earth, and subsequently through a LIGO facility, the tubes will change in length, one being longer and the other being shorter. This way, the lasers won’t come back at the same time and won’t cancel each other out; this creates a variation in light intensity that scientists are able to measure and quantify. Then, they try to deduce the origins of the variation in light intensity. In this case, characteristic gamma rays emitted during any neutron-star collision were also detected, helping scientists arrive to the conclusion that a neutron-star collision was indeed at the origin of this precise measurement.

Why should we care?

Gravitational-wave detection is now opening up a whole new sphere of astronomy. As we saw, scientists can now detect cosmic events that would otherwise be invisible. Gravitational waves open up our eyes … or our ears, rather. We have been trying to understand the universe by looking at it for centuries, but we can now listen to its sounds. Humanity has officially recovered its sense of hearing: just imagine the possibilities that can emerge from this.

But in the end, what does it all mean?

Discovering such an improbable event as the collision of two neutron stars in a remote region of our universe by measuring the quasi-insignificant distortions in space caused by the gravitational waves emitted from that event reminds me of what I believe is the true nature of the human mind: Exploration.

Imagine a world where findings in physics had not been applied. This means no more cell phones, computers, or GPS. In such a world, I think physics still wouldn’t be irrelevant. Humankind would still try to understand the universe, because it fills our innate sense of wonder and curiosity. These are the precise states of mind that we have been exploiting since our ancestors started walking on two feet, exploring Africa. These are the precise states of mind that made us an “intelligent” civilization.

Few domains nourish wonder and curiosity as science does. We know the universe has more complexity, beauty and art than we can currently comprehend, so what better way to satisfy our instincts than to study it?

Science and cosmology are in fact the only links to our true origin, the cosmos. So, do we really want to cut space-exploration funding to focus on “true human affairs”? Do we really want to cut our only source of genuine emancipation by putting an opaque box around the Earth? Obviously, no, we don’t want that as this would create an obscure intellectual environment.

The healthiest civilizations have always stayed connected to the stars, whereas the most destructive and cowardly ones operated within an opaque box surrounding their territory, allowing them to apply their dogmatic, unscientific and often despotic worldviews.

Science isn’t only a blind method; it’s a mind-opening philosophy that has a word to say on human affairs because it clearly settles humankind’s place in this convoluted cosmic ocean. No, the Earth is not the centre of the Universe, nor is our sun or our galaxy. This tells us that humans shall not act as if it were so; we are just a temporary coincidence in the history of time and we must cherish and protect that privilege.  

In the end, science is moral.

From Sky to Space: Who Are the Two New Canadian Astronauts?

By Benjamin Vermette

I was pretty proud to be a Canadian on July 1, 2017. Not only was Canada’s 150th birthday a reminder of the ongoing prosperity of our nation, but it was also the occasion to reveal the two newly discovered Canadian super humans to join the astronaut corps.

Dr. Jennifer Sidey, 29, and Lieutenant-Colonel Joshua Kutryk, 35, were chosen among 3,772 other applicants from all around the country. Even though that’s 1,578 less applicants than the 2008–2009 campaign, it’s an equally glorifying accomplishment: their job is to be a Canadian ambassador to space!

Joshua Kutryk: astronaut, experimental test pilot and fighter pilot. Prior to joining the Canadian Space Program, Joshua Kutryk worked as an experimental test pilot and a fighter pilot. (Royal Canadian Air Force)

So please meet one of Canada’s newest diplomat: LCol Joshua Kutryk. Just like Jeremy Hansen (Canadian astronaut since 2009) or Chris Hadfield (everyone knows who he is — but if you don’t, he’s the guy with the mustache that sang the David Bowie song on the International Space Station), Kutryk is a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot.

As the eleventh male Canadian astronaut, Kutryk is probably one of the most skilled pilots of the bunch. In 2012, he was awarded the prestigious and extremely-hard-to-get Liethen-Tittle Award by the United States Air Force for being the top test pilot graduate. Coincidentally, this same award was also earned by Chris Hadfield in 1988. So, if you want to be an astronaut, just go out there and earn this award. If you can’t for whatever reason, don’t despair: the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) needs people from different backgrounds. Just follow their tips here (and wait for the next recruitment campaign): http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronauts/how-to-become-an-astronaut/default.asp

Canadian astronauts Joshua Kutryk (left) and Jeremy Hansen (right) seize the opportunity to fly together before the start of astronaut training. Prior to joining the Canadian Space Program, they were both pilots with the Canadian Armed Forces. In this picture, they are standing in front of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s 2017 Canada 150 CF-18 Demonstration Hornet. (Canadian Space Agency)

His pilot’s skills also earned him the Tristan de Koninck Trophy for F-18 flying skill in 2007. But besides the flying, Kutryk is also very proficient right here on Earth. He holds a bachelor in mechanical engineer and three masters: one in space studies, one in flight test engineering and another in defence studies. I don’t know him, but can’t say that’s not worth the astronaut title.

Jennifer Sidey of Calgary worked as a mechanical engineer, a combustion scientist and a lecturer at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom (UK) before being selected as Canada's newest astronaut in 2017. (Canadian Space Agency)

The other newly commissioned spacefarer is Dr. Jennifer Sidey, or simply Jenni. She is what half astronauts probably are: an engineer. She grew up in Calgary and earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (just like Kutryk!) from McGill University before earning a PhD in combustion engineering from Cambridge University (UK). It’s worth noting that while at McGill, she conducted research on the behaviour of combustion in microgravity. “It would be incredible to revisit some of those experiments,” she said.

Just before becoming an astronaut, Jenni was an assistant professor and lecturer in internal combustion engines at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. In other words, she worked on developing low-emission combustors by studying the flame.

She looks young, doesn’t she? Well, Jenni Sidey was selected as an astronaut at only 28, which makes her the youngest Canadian to ever hold this title, even younger than predecessors Steve MacLean and Julie Payette, who were both selected at 29 years of age in 1983 and 1992 respectively.

Jenni Sidey completes a requirement in the second series of aptitude tests. Astronaut candidates must successully complete a series of three aptitude tests before being considered worthy of being an astronaut. The first series of aptitude tests took place in February 2017 during an intensive three-day period in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, to test the top 72 candidates' strategic thinking skills and physical fitness. In March, the remaining 32 candidates spent a full week in Halifax, Nova Scotia where they were put through emergency simulations in challenging environments to test their resilience and their ability to think and react under pressure — crucial skills in a harsh environment such as space! In April the top 17 candidates completed final robotics, communication and medical tests at the CSA headquarters (John H. Chapman Space Centre) in Longueuil, Quebec. Lastly, the remaining candidates went through one final interview with a special committee formed of CSA executives, industry experts, and current and former astronauts. (Canadian Space Agency)

As a young professor, Jenni Sidey felt she needed to act as a role model for her young female students. As a matter of fact, she is the co-founder of the Cambridge chapter of Robogals, which is an educational organization that aims to empower women all around the world by encouraging them to study and pursue a career in a STEM (science, technology, engineering & mathematics) field.

Her brilliant career as a professor and as a STEM advocate for women led her to be awarded the prestigious Young Woman Engineer of the Year Award by the Institution of Engineering and Technology in 2016. With all that in her pocket, she becomes Canada’s third female astronaut (after Roberta Bondar and Julie Payette). 

…

Albertans were probably even prouder than me to be a Canadian on July 1 as they saw two of their citizens being appointed as the new Canadian diplomats to space.

So, one is a man and one is a woman. One is a fighter pilot and one is an engineer. Both went through an extremely competitive selection process. But both will not cease to see blood, sweat and tears as they are now required to follow an intensive two-year astronaut training program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will “really” learn how to become astronauts.

Only then, after those intense two years of training and learning, will they be eligible for space flight, just like their two other fellow active Canadian astronauts — Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques, who is scheduled to take off for space in November 2018.

Canadian Space Agency astronauts Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques in front of the Columbus simulator, at the European Space Agency, where they received training on January 18, 2016, on how to operate the Columbus laboratory, which is attached to the International Space Station. (ESA/Sabine Grothues)

Are they the ones that will go to Mars? Joshua Kutryk and Jenni Sidey will probably be a tiny bit old when NASA plans to land a human mission on Mars in the 2030s. But one thing is certain: they will be experienced astronauts who helped pave the way to get on the red planet. And as NASA plans on going back to the moon before landing on Mars, maybe one of them will become the first Canadian on the moon.

A safe bet would be to say that one of the future Canadian astronauts from the two next recruitment campaigns will be eligible to become Canada’s first representative on Mars. This is however super relative, as it depends on when the CSA decides to hold a recruitment campaign. Anyway, for now, let’s just joyfully cheer that the Canadian space program is alive and well!

From Sky to Space: The New Space Race

By Benjamin Vermette

President Trump finances NASA – and its journey to Mars

“Now this nation is ready to be the first in space once again. Today we’re taking the initials steps toward a bald and bright new future for American space flight.”

A black and white image of a young, talented, ambitious, poignant and confident John F. Kennedy may come to mind while reading this passage. It must however be admitted that these words were pronounced by President Donald J. Trump on March 21, 2017.

Nevertheless — and just like Kennedy’s vision for NASA in the early 1960s — Trump doesn’t seem to get NASA just right. Indeed, NASA should be focused on its core mission, which consists of “human space exploration, space science and technology […] and jobs also,” as President Trump mentioned, but one must always bear in mind that NASA, alongside NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), is responsible for a major part of all the Earth science going on.

NASA monitors temperatures; it studies Earth’s climate and the quality and composition of the atmosphere and of the oceans; it helps farmers all around the world as they benefit from its high-end satellites gathering data from the soil; it helps predict natural catastrophes and thus helps saving lives… Briefly, NASA isn’t just about space, about Mars and about the stars: it’s also about air, about water and about dirt.   

March 21st saw President Trump sign a bill authorizing a $19.5-billion budget for NASA in 2017, which is about $300-million more than the 2016 budget under the Obama administration, but 0.03 per cent less if you consider the budget as a percentage of the total federal budget. In other words, this means that the Trump administration supports NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and Lockheed Martin’s Orion program, both destined to mark America’s way to Mars. Also, note that the bill didn’t cut into NASA’s Earth science budget, but according to Sarah Kaplan of the Washington Post, it should see a 5 per cent decrease in the near future.

On March 21, 2017 U.S. President Donald Trump held up his new honorary NASA flight jacket, given to him by the chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office and former Navy SEAL Chris Kassidy (on the left, wearing a blue NASA jacket), during the signing into law of the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017. This bill authorizes the agency to "keep doing what it’s been doing for the past seven years," including working with the private sector. Photo: NASA

The Space Launch System is NASA’s replacement for the Space Shuttle (which in turn was known as the Space Transportation System, or STS). More precisely, it will be America’s next fleet of more powerful rockets that are being built by engineers who know that they must eventually be able to transport humans to Mars. In height, each rocket will be about 40 feet shorter than the Saturn V rocket — the one that sent men to the Moon in the late 60s and early 70s — but when comparing brute force, it is quite impossible to deny that the SLS will be much stronger: it will be capable of lifting more than 173 tons of payload into orbit, whereas the Saturn V could barely reach the sky with 150 tons of material in the backseat.   

Artist depiction of the Space Launch System (SLS), the future Mars transport. For the first time in almost 40 years, a NASA human-rated rocket has completed all steps needed to clear a critical design review. The agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) is the first vehicle designed to meet the challenges of the journey to Mars and the first exploration-class rocket since the Saturn V. Photo: NASA

Ok, so Trump finances a trip to Mars — and a very expensive one at that, because I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone when I say SLS won’t be cheap — while a bunch of private space companies are trying to make their own way to the red planet, but in a particularly less extravagant manner. Wait, doesn’t that sound familiar? Two parties competing to be the first one on an alien celestial body … I think we have the new space race right here my friends!

If you find yourself mildly shocked with the enthusiasm I displayed in my last sentence, rest assured that I do not wish a second Cold War or any of the circumstances it might involve. But the Space Race — apart from making everyone go nuts because they feared a nuclear warhead or a laser coming down from the heavens — grew the government’s interest in space exploration, and this is the aspect I am interested in.

With private companies like SpaceX motivating government agencies like NASA to push harder toward Mars, there should be no fear for the bad uses of space; in fact, there should only be hope as both sectors — the private and the public — are competitively working hand-in-hand to reach the planet that made (and still makes) humanity dream for centuries.

Now that we’ve got this straight, it must be said that, before even thinking of getting to Mars, the companies must reach the Moon once again. SLS’s first flight is scheduled in 2018, when an uncrewed Orion spacecraft will be attached to the newly built rocket in order to make its way into lunar orbit before coming back to Earth.

As for a first crewed mission, 2021 was originally on SLS’s schedule. However, with a new president and with SpaceX announcing it wants to land two humans on the Moon, NASA amended its schedule in order to have the first astronauts fly on SLS in 2019 rather than 2021. Proof that the new space race actually motivates the government!

SpaceX to go to the Moon in this decade!

You read it correctly! SpaceX announced in late February that two private citizens approached them for a pair of tickets to the Moon. The citizens already paid a substantial amount of money and are scheduled to begin their training later this year.

In its statement, SpaceX took a moment to thank NASA “without whom this would not be possible.” In fact, NASA is partly responsible for SpaceX’s success, as it is they who funded the development of SpaceX’s Dragon 2 spacecraft through its Commercial Crew Program, and as it is they who will rely on Elon Musk’s company to transport crew to and from the ISS in the near future. Voilà! There’s the proof that these competitors work hand-in-hand.

But is it easier said than done? To send humans back on the Moon, SpaceX will need to use its Falcon Heavy rocket, which is scheduled to fly for the first time later this year.   

An artist's rendition of the Falcon Heavy rocket. According to SpaceX, "when Falcon Heavy lifts off in 2017, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two." Photo: SpaceX

Yes, the Falcon Heavy will be a lot smaller than SLS — about 130 feet shorter. And it will also be a lot less powerful: At launch, SLS will provide roughly 7,500 kilo Newtons (kN) more thrust than the Falcon Heavy; for comparison, 7,500 kN is the force produced by about 45 F/A-18 Hornets with full afterburners on. But it’s also much cheaper, and that is SpaceX’s forte.

According to NASA, a single SLS launch will cost between $500-million and $1-billion, whereas the Falcon Heavy only costs $90-million per launch, hence the popular saying that SpaceX (and the private sector in general) is a lot cheaper. And since everything these days is about money, some even say SpaceX has more chances to get to the Moon — and eventually to Mars — than NASA because of this important advantage.

Moreover, NASA’s SLS program is already $10-billion over budget, and this may be the very reason why it’s still alive. Indeed, who would want to cancel a program that is sooooo over budget? Perhaps the reason Trump and the Senate want SLS to succeed so badly is because they are already too invested in it now, and are far passed the ‘point of no return.’

However, the SLS isn’t just a money pit as the program has one big advantage when compared to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy: safety. The reason is simple. The SLS is not the fruit of a visionary, determined, and risk-taking billionaire entrepreneur’s utopian desires (like the Falcon Heavy is). No, the SLS is a product of bureaucracy, and that means the risks must be minimized for the sake of NASA’s survival.

It is no hazard that Musk wants to send humans on the Moon by 2018 and on Mars by 2020 (which will eventually lead to a million-person colony on Mars by 2060 http://espritdecorps.ca/from-sky-to-space/spacex-is-going-to-mars), while NASA aims for a crewed mission to the red planet for no earlier than the 2030s. Again, for SpaceX’s first missions to Mars, “the risk of fatality will be high,” Musk admits, whereas for NASA’s, “the first consideration is crew safety.”

It is thus the old vs. the young, the conservative vs. the daring, the bureaucrat vs. the entrepreneur, NASA vs. Elon Musk. Who will win? Will the first person on Mars be a NASA or a SpaceX astronaut?

In my personal opinion, the winner doesn’t really matter: we need to see this new space race not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. Consequently, the most important thing we need to extract from it is the fruitful cooperation between both public and private sectors. One has more experience while the other has more bravado. And let me tell you that in order to travel the 70 million-kilometre unpaved route of radiation and emptiness that separates Earth from Mars, you need both of these characteristics.

NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to the Moon and to an asteroid in the 2020s and to Mars in the 2030s — goals initially outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and again in Trump's NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017. It remains to be seen which organization will get to the red planet first: Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket and its two volunteers or NASA's austronauts in the SLS? Photo: NASA

Although the last space race was about the USSR or the United States, getting to Mars is a bit more complicated than going to the Moon, hence this new space race being about NASA and SpaceX, the public and the private. Here, cooperation is key if humans want to succeed in becoming multiplanetary.

From Sky to Space: A Period of Mourning

Some of the individuals who passed away in 2016 left an indelible mark on the space universe — for many reasons. From left to right: test pilot-turned-astronaut John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth; U.S. astronomer Vera Rubin helped discover dark matter; Carrie Fisher will forever be remembered as Princess Leia, one of the Rebel Alliance's greatest leaders and enemy of the Empire, in a galaxy far, far away; biometeorologist Piers Sellers took part in three Space Shuttle missions; after flying to the moon twice, Eugene Cernan holds the honour of being the last man to have walked on the moon, in December 1972.

By Benjamin Vermette

With the loss of David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Fidel Castro, George Michael, Muhammad Ali, Leonard Cohen, and many others, no wonder some speculate that 2016 was one of the worst years ever. Notwithstanding my opinion on 2016 — which I think was pretty great compared to darker times such as 1349 in Europe, when a quarter of Europe’s population died from the Plague — I must confess that the last two months were particularly tough in the “space” world, as we lost at least five great human beings that kept our eyes pointed toward the sky. In their memory, here is the story of the life and death of John Glenn, Vera Rubin, Carrie Fisher, Piers J. Sellers and Gene Cernan.

John Glenn (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016)

A true American hero and space pioneer, John Glenn was the exact type of guy you thought of as an astronaut — and that even before he became one. As soon as the United States entered World War II, Glenn joined the military with the idea of becoming a pilot. And that’s just what he did! Logging hours upon hours in the cockpit, Glenn was skillfully becoming one of the Marine Corps’ greatest fighter pilots. After World War II, Glenn flew over 60 combat missions in the Korean War, where he shot down three MiGs and earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses and eight other related medals.

Afterwards, in July 1954, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Maryland. As a test pilot, he flew various types of aircraft such as the F8U Crusader, with which he made the first supersonic transcontinental flight in 1957. Flying from southern California to New York City in less than 3 and a half hours, John Glenn made international news for the first time.

A year later, in October 1958 at the beginning of the Cold War, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded. The newly created agency wanted to send a man into space, and was under much pressure to accomplish this goal; it was a feat that would require preparation, experience, and caution. For those reasons, NASA probably thought they should ask well-educated and experienced test pilots to become astronauts.

Well, the thing with John Glenn is that he didn’t meet the first criteria as he lacked a degree in science. In fact, a couple of NASA’s criterions were barely met by Glenn: he was almost too old (40 years old, the limit being 40) and almost too tall (1.79 meters, the limit being 1.80). Nevertheless, Glenn was chosen to be part of a select group of 100 test pilots who met the basic qualifications. After a series of physical and mental tests, he received a call in 1959 asking him if he wanted to be a part of Project Mercury.

After several months of intense training at NASA’s various centres throughout the United States, the competition became increasingly stronger between the seven astronauts as each of them wanted — comprehensively — to become the first man in space. On April 12, 1961, this milestone was reached by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. A couple of weeks later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, leaving only one unattained milestone at the mercy of the six remaining Mercury astronauts: the first American to orbit the Earth.

Unlike Shepard’s 15-minute spaceflight, this second flight was intended to be a five-hour mission, and the perfect guy for this was, you guessed it (or probably already know it), John Glenn. On February 20, 1962, John Glenn, watched by over 135 million people on live television, soared toward the darkness of space on a U.S. Air Force warhead customized to carry the lone man with the goal to complete three orbits of Earth safely. “Zero G and I feel fine,” were Glenn’s first words in space, showing the calm and reassuring nature he possessed even when accomplishing life glorifying exploits.

After splashing down 40 miles short of the planned landing area and being awarded NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal by President John F. Kennedy, John Glenn probably didn’t know the he would not go back to space for another 36 years. Yes, the next time he flew was in 1998 onboard Space Shuttle Discovery. Aged 77, he was NASA’s test subject in trying to better understand zero gravity’s effects on the elderly.

John Glenn, happily sitting in NASA’s jet trainer, the T-38 Talon.

One of the main reasons NASA grounded Glenn in the first place for so many years wasn’t because they viewed Glenn as an incompetent, never-to-fly-again astronaut. On the contrary: as he became the most famous and praised American astronaut — even more so than Alan Shepard — NASA didn’t want to risk his life again by sending him on a risky mission to space. Regarded as a kind of national treasure that needed protection, Glenn finally retired from the agency two years after being the first U.S. astronaut to reach orbital flight to pursue a career in … politics.

In 1964, he ran for the Senate from Ohio; however, an unpredicted injury forced him to resign from the race. Ten years later, in 1974, he was finally admitted in the U.S. Senate as a Democratic member, where he served for 25 years. Note that Glenn also ran for president in 1984, but was unable to win the Democratic nomination.  

After a 95-year exhaustively filled life, Glenn died on December 6, 2016, in Ohio. Surrounded by his family, the hero left behind him one of the most inspiring careers an astronaut can hope to achieve, including a second trip to space at 77 years of age after a 25-year career as a U.S. Senator. A role model for everyone, Glenn’s legacy is imperishable.

Vera Rubin (July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016)

“Watching the stars wheel past [the] bedroom window” was enough to infuse in young Vera Rubin’s mind a spark of interest in astronomy, which later became a passion before becoming her life’s work.

Born in Pennsylvania, Vera Rubin paved the way for women’s greater acceptance in science as her work and observations are considered the driving force behind the discovery of dark matter.

In 1948, she earned her BA in astronomy from New York’s Vassar College, before applying for a graduate program in her field at Princeton. She however ended up at Cornell, where she studied under famous physicist Richard Feynman because Princeton didn’t accept women in the astronomy graduate program until 1975. Her alma maters also include Georgetown University, where she completed her doctoral degree in 1954 by attending classes at night while her husband was waiting in the car because she didn’t know how to drive.

She somehow managed to raise four children — they followed in their mother’s footsteps as each acquired a PhD in natural sciences or mathematics — while focusing on her research and the assistant professorship she earned at Georgetown in 1962.

Now let me resume the outstanding research she is most famous for, which seems even more praiseworthy considering her status as a woman in the male-dominated sphere of 1960s astronomical research.

A young Vera Rubin was already observing the stars when she was an undergraduate at Vassar College, where she earned her bachelor's degree in astronomy in 1948.  (Archives & Special Collections, Vassar College Library)

According to Kepler’s laws of motions, the further away a planet is from the sun, the slower it should orbit around it. This implies that innermost planets — such as Mercury, Venus and Earth  go around our Sun faster than the outermost planets — Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. If you think about it, it indeed makes sense: the closer a planet is to its star, the stronger it is pulled because of the more intense gravity, so in order to keep moving around the star and not to fall on its fiery surface, it must move faster.

Rubin thought — and rightly so — that if this were true for solar systems and planetary systems, then it must be true for a galaxy. Like any other good scientist, she started observing galaxies using a telescope in order to refute or confirm her hypothesis (that the outermost stars in a galaxy must move slower around the centre of it than the stars that are closer). Astonishingly, she observed that the outermost stars were moving so fast that if the mass of the galaxy were only that of the stars and dust she could see — or everything else one can directly observe — then either the galaxy would have torn apart or Newton’s law of gravitation was flawed. Rest assured, the latter possibility wasn’t the one that explained the observations: gravity still works. Rather, Rubin embraced another possibility, a much darker one, which later proved to be right: dark matter. 

The reason why Rubin’s calculations weren’t working was because she didn’t account for all the mass of the galaxies she observed; she was only taking into account normal matter (stars, planets, dust, etc.), whereas dark matter was to be considered as well.

On large-scale systems, such as galaxies, dark matter’s effects are so notable that they significantly increase the system’s mass, consequently increasing the speed of the celestial objects that orbit around its centre (in galaxies, the celestial objects are mostly stars).

While we now know that dark matter contributes to roughly 25% of the ‘content’ of the Universe, concretely explaining what it exactly consists of is a more arduous task. Note that ‘normal’ matter makes about 5% of the Universe, while dark energy — a different thing than dark matter — makes up 75%.

As a leading female scientist, Vera Rubin obstinately persevered to finally find a satisfying answer to her observations. She was indeed right when she said that “science progresses best when observations force us to alter out preconceptions.”

She passed away on Christmas Day, leaving the gift to find dark matter’s nature to the future generation of astronomers.

Carrie Fisher (October 21, 1956 – December 27, 2016)

We all remember watching Star Wars IV: A New Hope for the first time and feeling impressed when this beautiful, charismatic and powerful leader named Princess Leia famously recorded herself using R2-D2 to seek help: “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”

However, even if she was Princess Leia in the hearts and minds of many, Carrie Fisher was a lot more. Actress, author and humourist, nothing seemed to be quite enough. In June, she announced she was going to be columnist for The Guardian, providing help to people suffering from mental health problems. A genuine altruist, Carrie Fisher inspired many.

Actor, author, humourist, Carrie Fisher will be tied to Star Wars' iconic Princess Leia. (still from the 1977 original Star Wars film)

Unfortunately, just as Princess Leia’s mother died of exhaustion shortly after her birth (see Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith), Carrie Fisher’s mom, Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, passed shortly after her death, on December 28.

She will be missed, and her legacy on and off the screen will be remembered, and the rebellion will persist as long as peace is not restored in the galaxy, as long as the Force is unbalanced, as long as it is the will of Princess Leia’s soul.

Piers J. Sellers (April 11, 1955 – December 23, 2016)

A NASA astronaut and veteran of three Space Shuttle missions, Piers J. Sellers wasn’t like the others: instead of encouraging us to look up and to dream about the wonders of space, he urged us to look down at the Earth and to realize the seriousness of its disastrously changing climate.

Born in England, Sellers moved to the United States in 1982 to work as a climate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland. He applied to be an astronaut in 1984, but was unfortunately turned down because he lacked a U.S. citizenship. In 1991, he was granted U.S. citizenship and, five years later, his application to NASA’s astronaut program was accepted.

Piers Sellers joined the NASA astronaut corps in 1996 and flew to the International Space Station in 2002, 2006 and 2010, performing six spacewalks and various space station assembly tasks. As STS-112 mission specialist, Sellers is pictured above on the aft flight deck of the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2002. (NASA photo)

His first spaceflight was in 2002 on Space Shuttle Atlantis. He conducted his first spacewalk on his inaugural flight, logging more than 20 hours outside the spacecraft with a total of three sorties. He later flew on Discovery in 2006 and again on Atlantis in 2010. A year later, in 2011, he announced his retirement from NASA, where he had also been director of the Earth Science Division at GSFC.

In January 2016, he announced he had been diagnosed with cancer with only a few months to live, thus motivating him to “live life at 20 times normal speed.”

Sellers was an astronaut, but his legacy will mostly be remembered in terms of climate, as he was an expert in the field. He appeared on Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2016 climate-change documentary Before the Flood and was addressed by many as a driving force in climate research.

By seeing the Earth as a fragile blue rock flying through darkness, he thought that, for the sake of humanity, we need to protect it, for he knew it was the only place we could live. He had a privileged perspective in addressing climate change, so let his message be clear:

“Here are the facts: The climate is warming. We’ve measured it, from the beginning of the industrial revolution to now. It correlates so well with emissions and with theory, we know within almost an absolute certainty that it’s us who are causing the warming and the CO2 emissions. Because it’s warming, the ice is melting, and because the ice is melting and the oceans are warming, the sea is rising.”

Eugene Cernan (March 14, 1934 – January 16, 2017)

The last person I shall address in this eulogistic article is the last man to have walked on the moon, Eugene Andrew Cernan, or simply Gene. The Gene. As one of my favourite astronauts, Gene Cernan is the exact type of guy every young man wants to be at some point in his life: cocky and arrogant, but also crazy smart and skilled.

Like many Apollo-era astronauts, young Gene Cernan was a Boy Scout as he grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. In 1952, he went on to study at Purdue University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1956, before earning a scholarship to become a U.S. Navy ensign. Two years later, Cernan became a naval aviator, while starting to study for a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, which he earned from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1963. As a pilot, he logged more than 5,000 hours in an aircraft, 4,800 of which were in a jet.

In October 1963, shortly after earning his master’s degree, he was selected as a NASA astronaut alongside Buzz Aldrin — the second man on the moon — and 12 other men in what was known as NASA Astronaut Group 3. It would be interesting to consider how devoted to space exploration and how courageous these men were to serve as “spacemen” because being an astronaut in the 1960s wasn’t as safe as it is now. For instance, from the 14 men that were selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 3, only 10 went to space — the other four were killed during training, either in a jet crash or in a capsule fire during a mission simulation.

Cernan’s first spaceflight wasn’t actually supposed to be his first: he was selected as backup crew for NASA’s Gemini 9 manned spaceflight mission, which was scheduled to launch in June 1966. However, Cernan and his colleague Thomas Stafford became the prime crew when Elliot See and Charles Bassett were killed in a T-38 Talon plane crash in Missouri. During this spaceflight, Cernan became the second American and the third person ever to perform an extra-vehicular activity (or EVA, a fancy word for spacewalk), but a couple of things went wrong and he was forced to cut the EVA short.

He served as Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 10 on his second spaceflight in May 1969 — two months before Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind.” Cernan’s spaceflight was a trial run — except for the actual landing and walking on the moon part — for the history-making Apollo 11, in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and walked on the moon for the first time. Cernan once told journalists that NASA intentionally cut in the Apollo 10 Lunar Module’s fuel in order to prevent the crew from landing on the moon, because had NASA given the crew enough fuel to land on the moon and come back, Neil Armstrong probably wouldn’t be as popular.

His third — and last — spaceflight was in December 1972, when he served as commander of the last lunar landing mission, Apollo 17. He is one of the only three astronauts that went to the moon twice. Note that Cernan declined an offer to be the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 16 because he wanted to command his own mission.

Eugene Cernan commanded the Apollo 17 spacecraft in December 1972 and was the last man to leave the moon as the NASA Apollo lunar landing program was cancelled shortly after. (A still from a 2013 YouTube interview on space programs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvcmhHCVijU)

The last words spoken on the surface of the moon were Cernan’s:

“Bob, this is Gene, and I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record: that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

We hope you were right, Gene.

He passed on January 16 at age 82. I was particularly saddened when I heard about his death, knowing that Gene wasn’t so keen about his title of ‘last man on the moon’: rather, he was “quite disappointed [to be] the last man on the moon.” 

SpaceX is going to Mars!

By Benjamin Vermette

SpaceX is going to Mars!

“A million humans could live on Mars by the 2060s.”

That’s insane and it probably won’t happen, some say. What they don’t know is that Elon Musk is the one who said it, and we all know how ambitiously crazy he is. Before detailing and analyzing his plan, let me tell you how I admire his motivation to do such a thing. Musk wants to make humans “an interplanetary species” — that’s it. Considering it’s a very risky mission, commercially speaking, the least we can say is that this successful visionary is pursuing a common goal for all of us, and whether he succeeds in reaching it or not, we all owe him, at a minimum, some regard.

“It’s probably anywhere from 40 to 100 years to fully achieve a self-sustaining civilization on Mars.” – Elon Musk

It’s pretty – dare I say crazy? – to even suggest Elon Musk is able to put 1,000,000 humans on Mars 40 years from now by launching 1,000 rockets sheltering 100 people each. However – and this is what I remind myself every time I think about his goal – the world said the same thing about Musk’s ambitions to create SpaceX in the first place, and the same happened subsequently when he said he was to vertically land a rocket on a barge. One rational conclusion we may come to, based on past experience, is: Take this man seriously.

Elon Musk unveils SpaceX’s future Mars vehicle and discusses the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars. The presentation focuses on potential architectures for sustaining humans on the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead.

At the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Mexico on September 27, Musk exposed for the first time a proposal to colonize Mars. Briefly, it goes like this: The rocket — the biggest and most powerful model ever made — would launch from Earth with 100 humans (or Martians if you prefer). The booster then releases the habitable module (or spaceship) near Earth’s orbit and comes back for a vertical landing on Earth. (The booster is the bottom part of the whole structure — it carries nothing but engines and fuel; the habitable module is the upper part, carrying humans, cargo and engines of its own.)

But the booster’s job isn’t over! Back on Earth, it is attached to a fuel tank. Next, the booster would launch the tank into orbit for it to refuel the spaceship, thus providing the necessary fuel for a 60-million-kilometre trip. After doing this a couple times, the habitable module — still with 100 humans if everything went as planned — would be fuelled and ready to leave for a trip in the unknown, as the booster would fall back to Earth for the last time.

The Earth–Mars trip in itself should last a bit more than seven months. Imagine 80 days in a confined space, flying through the darkness with people you barely know, living with the thought that you may never come back. A priori, it may not be the most pleasant thing — except for the view, because the view from the module would — will — be awe-inspiring. But SpaceX has a solution to customize the spaceship in such way as to render boringness impossible. There will be reading polls, places to watch a movie, and even a restaurant. However, if you like to have a drink on the weekend, the trip might present a disadvantage. Although Musk mentioned nothing about it, he did receive a lot of advice from human-relations experts saying there should be no drugs nor alcohol on the trip. Still worth it, remember: You’re going to Mars!

About 1000 Viking Orbiter red- and violet-filter images have been processed to provide global color coverage of Mars at a scale of 1 km/pixel. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

Once arriving at Mars, the spaceship will lose a large amount of its speed thanks to the drag that will be generated as it goes through the planet’s atmosphere. Note that no parachutes will be used to slow down the spaceship: deploying parachutes at that speed may not be a good idea (as they would simply disintegrate). Now that the spaceship is considerably slowed down, it will land on the red planet’s surface — vertically, of course — and open its hatch to let all hundred humans walk out so they can get the cargo out to install the material necessary for Martin colonization.

About one hundred humans are now installed on Mars, doing what they have been instructed to. But what about the spaceship that brought them there? In order to make the spaceship fully reusable, SpaceX thought they could make fuel on Mars so the spaceship could be sent back to Earth and eventually be reused by another crew of a hundred.

Yes, you read correctly: They could make fuel on Mars. The spaceship is powered — just like the booster — by the currently-in-development Raptor engines. These engines are much more powerful than the Merlin engines SpaceX currently uses on its Falcon 9 rocket, in part because cold liquid methane is used as fuel. Methane is made of hydrogen and carbon, and you can find both on Mars! Carbon is in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, and hydrogen is there in the form of ice. Through methods far beyond the reach of this article, you can make methane using these two substances.

Of course, to do all this, you need one heck of a booster! In fact, you need at least the biggest and most powerful rocket ever made. SpaceX calls it the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). It will be 122 metres tall and weighing at launch 10,500 tons. That’s really heavy! For comparison, the Saturn V, the rocket that carried men to the moon, weighed less than 4,000 tons at lift-off.

A video of the Saturn V launching. The expendable rocket system was used 13 times by NASA between 1966 and 1973, primarily on the Apollo missions to the Moon. The proposed Raptor engines would be 3.5 times more powerful than the Saturn V.

For the ITS to actually lift, it will need to provide 13,000 tons of thrust, hence the required 42 Raptor engines. In total, ITS will be 3.5 times more powerful than the Saturn V. It goes without saying that the ITS will be super expensive: a single one may be worth almost $700-million just to manufacture. Plus, you need money to launch it. And you probably want at least a couple of modules, especially considering SpaceX’s ambitions.

This is why Musk is currently looking at alternative sources of funding, such as NASA or other private companies. He is even paying a part of the project out of his own pocket: “I really don’t have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets, except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multi-planetary,” he said.

As for the cost per person — that’s if you want to be onboard one of SpaceX’s firsts flights to Mars — it’s about the cost of “an average American household,” he said. So, we’re talking between $200,000 and $300,000 CAD per person. However, don’t let the price take your dream away: Musk said he’s constantly working on reducing the cost in order to render it accessible to everyone.

Let’s recap. SpaceX wants to colonize Mars. To do this, they will need to build the biggest rocket ever made, log a series of vertical landings in a row, take care of a spaceship carrying one hundred people, deal with outer-space radiation, make fuel on Mars, ration resources, and find a ton of money.

That’s no big deal for Elon Musk and SpaceX’s engineers. In fact, they are planning to launch ITS for the first time in late 2024. I think that by hard work and dedication, SpaceX will be able to reach such a goal. And this is what Musk has been doing: he’s been working fulltime on the project since … Wait. He’s not working fulltime on it, right? No, he is not. On October 28, he released Tesla’s newest product: a solar roof. That means he is working on several world-changing projects all at once!

Making cleaner energy and contributing in making humans multi-planetary. Not bad.

Other organizations, such as NASA and Boeing, are proposing on-orbit assembly of a Mars craft using multiple super-heavy lift launch vehicles. However, SpaceX’s system will require Earth-orbit rendezvous for the refueling of the second stage spaceship. Image Credit: James Vaughan / SpaceFlight Insider

WHAT HAPPENED IN SPACE LAST MONTH

Aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins checks a sample for air bubbles prior to loading it in the biomolecule sequencer. When Rubins’ expedition began, zero base pairs of DNA had been sequenced in space. Within just a few weeks, she and the Biomolecule Sequencer team had sequenced their one billionth base of DNA on the orbiting laboratory.

 By Benjamin Vermette

DNA sequenced in space for the first time!

Just as architects design buildings, DNA makes you.

Genes are made up of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), which contains the necessary genetic information for your cells to accomplish all their life-depending functions, such as reproducing, growing hair, digesting food, reading this sentence, etc. But just as architects are made of smaller entities themselves, so is DNA.

First, DNA is a molecule, so it’s of course made of smaller atoms. But let’s say it’s an organized molecule, so it contains a special set of atoms that repeat themselves over and over again. These sets of atoms are also molecules, so we can say DNA is a molecule made of smaller molecules (which we call nucleotides). Nucleotides are then made of even smaller molecules, which we call nitrogenous bases, which are the ’characterizing’ element of the DNA segment.

There are only four different nitrogenous bases for DNA, and they are represented by the letters A (adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine) and T (thymine).

Let’s recap. Genes are made of DNA (a single molecule of DNA may contain hundreds of genes). But DNA itself is made of a series of nucleotides, which are in their turn made up of four different types of nitrogenous bases (A, C, G, T) that ‘characterizes’ the DNA, and thus the gene. In the end, atoms (mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphate) make up all of this.

NA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person's body has the same DNA.

But then, how can only four different types of nitrogenous bases account for the extreme diversity of life? Mind you, it’s not the number of different types that counts, but rather the sequence in which they are arranged. Just like the architect’s job was decided by the sequence of events he experienced earlier in his life, the gene’s ‘job’ is decided and made possible by the sequence of nitrogenous base it contains.

So a gene responsible for accomplishing a specific function, say, keeping your hair colour brown, has a different nitrogenous base sequence than another gene that is responsible for dealing with a specific type of virus.

I think you get it. Now, enough biology, let’s get to the cooler stuff, the space stuff!

On August 29, astronaut and molecular biologist Dr. Kate Rubins did just that: she sequenced DNA, meaning she, using a machine, determined the particular order of the nitrogenous bases in a DNA molecule. For the first time, the experience was done in space! In itself, it’s not a new thing as scientists have been sequencing DNA since the 1970s.

The experiment hardware flew on SpaceX’s cargo resupply mission on July 20, along with the International Docking Adapter. (For more on Kate Rubins’s mission check out the August 22/16 entry) The hardware included the sequencing device called MinION, which was developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies.

“The MinION works by sending a positive current through pores embedded in membranes inside the device, called nanopores,” wrote Melissa Gaskill from NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “At the same time, fluid containing a DNA sample passes through the device. Individual DNA molecules partially block the nanopores and change the current in a way that is unique to that particular DNA sequence. By looking at these changes, researchers can identify the specific DNA sequence.”

To reduce the variables to only one, namely, microgravity, researchers did the same experiment on the ground while Dr. Rubins was doing it at an altitude of 400 km and at a speed of 27,000 km/h. Although testing pre-made samples, Rubins’ results matched the ones the teams had on the ground.

Sequencing DNA in microgravity engages a lot of unknowns, such as air bubbles. On earth, air bubbles rise to the top, but not in space. A concern that they might block the nanopores was investigated. To make sure microgravity hides the least amount of potential threats to the investigation as possible, NASA tested the whole experiment underwater, where gravity, pressure and humidity were less controllable variables.

What does this mean for space exploration?

Sequencing DNA in space means a lot, especially considering the long-duration spaceflights NASA is anticipating. Astronauts will be able to identify microbes in their spacecraft in real time! Knowing what’s in their environment at any time, the astronauts will be aware if a virus is around and, not only that, they’ll also be aware of what kind of virus there is so they can treat it more effectively.

Bad microbes-hunter and a science experiment tool, but what else can sequencing DNA in space be?

You guessed it. No need to extract a sample from Mars’ soil, bring it back to Earth and wait for the results of the analysis to know if the sample contained life. You can do just the same thing, but on Mars!

Therefore, sequencing DNA in space will allow humans to know the answer to “Is there life on Mars?” more rapidly.

Essential for crew safety and helpful for science experiments in space, the new milestone of sequencing DNA in space for the first time was achieved, making us even closer to Mars than before.

“Welcome to systems biology in space,” said Kate Rubins, space milestone-achiever.

Have we found intelligent extra-terrestrial life?

Maybe you’ve seen articles on the Internet congratulating humankind for its discovery of an intelligent civilization not so long ago. Yes, a mysterious signal coming from space was measured by a group of Russian astronomers, but going from this to saying we found life is skipping steps.

Ninety-four light-years away from Earth, a solar system dubbed HD 164595 is believed to be the source of a mysterious radio signal. The solar system in question contains a star of comparable size and brightness to our Sun, and is thought of as a 6-billion-year-old system (slightly older than ours, the Sun being about 4.5 billion years old).

It seems to be the home of a planet about the size of Neptune, which revolves around its sun in a very tight orbit (taking 40 Earth-days to complete one revolution), thus “making it unattractive for life,” said Seth Shostak, astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute.

But this isn’t enough to suggest the signal can’t come from aliens, because the quote needs to be taken as “making it unattractive for life [as we know it]”. So let’s dig deeper to see why the signal was probably not emitted by an intelligent civilization.

First off, the signal was detected using the RATAN-600 telescope in southern Russia. The RATAN-600 is sensitive to a relatively large part of the sky, so many stars are located where the sound seemed to come from, meaning astronomers are just assuming, based on estimations, that it originated from HD 164595. We’re not sure the signal came from where they say it came from, thereupon we can’t be sure of the identity of its sender either.

Second, the beep was measured by a Russian group of astronomers in May 2015. Protocol in the SETI business requires that if a received signal is thought to be emitted by extra-terrestrial intelligence, then the first to receive it needs to warn everyone else so they can turn on their telescopes as well, just to make sure they hear what the first one hears. For some reason, the Russian group didn’t go public after their discovery, so the signal was heard only once. In fact, the group said they were able to detect the sound only once (in 39 attempts), and SETI telescopes turned on as you read this still can’t hear the beep. Isn’t that a strange behaviour for aliens? 

Third, the answer to our question — Did the signal came from E.T.? —  may lie in the signal itself. With a strength of 0.75 Janskys, it was relatively weak. But if it did come from the star, which is, I recall, 94 light-years away, then it needed to be so darn powerful to reach us with this impact! Astronomer Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute did the math, and found that the energy required to emit the beacon was at best the total energy consumption of humankind, and, at worst, 1013 gigawatts. If you remember correctly, in Back to The Future Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown is terrified when he learns he needs 1.21 gigawatts to send Marty back – to the future!

 So imagine how powerful 10,000,000,000,000 gigawatts is!

Okay. Now that we have reasonable arguments to think the signal didn’t come from aliens, we must then ask ourselves, where did it come from?

Maybe it had natural causes, like a radio burst from a star or a galaxy. Or maybe it indeed came from an intelligent civilization: “The signal is real, and may very well be from an intelligent civilization. That civilization, however, is us,” wrote Phil Plait, American astronomer. In fact, the origin of the mysterious signal may be any military satellite, because the wavelength they emit strangely matches the one measured by the Russian astronomers (2.7 cm).

I get it, we’re all (or most of us are) very excited when we look for extra-terrestrial intelligence. But sometimes, especially in science, we need to put our emotions aside in order to have a clear vision of what is really happening.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 explodes on launch pad

On September 1, SpaceX was supposed to perform a static fire test. Indeed, they conducted a fire test, but let’s say it was not very static, unfortunately.

The first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was powered by nine Merlin engines, which can be very powerful if fired correctly. However, one thing than can be even more powerful is when there’s an anomaly concerning the rocket’s kerosene and liquid oxygen tanks.

So, on September 3, SpaceX had a contract to launch an Israeli communications satellite to space; not a big deal, they do things like this all the time. But as you might have guessed, something explosively bad happened two days before during a maintenance test at Cape Canaveral.

A fire static test consists of igniting the rocket’s nine Merlin engines for a brief moment, thus giving teams on the ground time to see if everything is fine and good to go for launch. This time, however, it was obvious to anyone that something was undoubtedly wrong.

(Advance to 1:05)

Both the Falcon 9 and the Israeli satellite, valued at more than CAD $250 million, were lost. Reassuringly, no one was injured on the day of the incident, and hopefully it might warn SpaceX — which is about to send NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) — that a destroyed satellite may eventually lead to dead astronauts if SpaceX’s engineers don’t do their jobs, which I’m sure they’re doing.

Comprehensively, many on the day of the incident doubted SpaceX’s reliability as NASA’s commercial partner to eventually ferry astronauts to and from the ISS. Imagine if, instead of the satellite, there were NASA astronauts in there — which, if I recall, is still not possible yet.

If you remember, SpaceX had a similar mishap back in June of 2015, when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded two minutes after liftoff over the Cape. It contained cargo for the astronauts on board the ISS at the time.

Since then, the Falcon 9 had logged nine successful launches in a row, before obviously failing again, this September.

However, NASA seems not to be of the same opinion. “We remain confident in our commercial partners and firmly stand behind the successful 21st century launch complex that NASA, other federal agencies, and U.S. commercial companies are building on Florida’s Space Coast,” the agency said in a statement, while acknowledging that its partners must learn from their mistakes.

You judge if the statement was honest, or only made diplomatically.

But one thing is sure: we’ll always hear from SpaceX, whether it’s good news or bad news. Let’s hope it’s good news, considering the task they’ll face in a couple of years.

Launch of NASA’s ambitious OSIRIS-REx mission

On September 8, a rocket launched to space. But it wasn’t any rocket; it was an Atlas V rocket containing the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft!

Note that the launch was a success. Even though this Atlas V was near SpaceX’s Falcon 9 when the latter exploded on September 1, no damage was found on the former, hence the on-time launch.

The OSIRIS-REx mission is NASA’s first asteroid-sampling mission. You heard it. They’re going to sample an asteroid. Indeed, that’s a big deal.

In two years, the spacecraft will enter asteroid Bennu’s orbit and prepare to extract samples.

“We’re very excited about what this mission can tell us about the origin of our solar system, and we celebrate the bigger picture of science that is helping us make discoveries and accomplish milestones that might have been science fiction yesterday, but are science facts today,” said NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.

In fact, the mission is playing a big part in our understanding of our solar system. As asteroids are thought to be sources of water and organic molecules, Bennu may have a rich environment from which to sample and consequently perform experiments on.

Canada is playing a major role in the OSIRIS-REx mission, having built the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA), a major science instrument onboard the spacecraft.

Using its lasers, OLA will be able to create a three-dimensional map of the surface of Bennu. This will be very useful, as the spacecraft will analyze the soil before selecting a sample site.

In total, the Canadian Space Agency is investing $61 million over 15 years on the mission.

So let’s hope it’s a success! Let’s hope it brings back answers in its samples when it comes back to Earth on September 24, 2023!  

Astronaut Terry Virts retires

With more than 213 days in space including three spacewalks, astronaut Terry Virts decided to leave NASA.

Virts is an accomplished astronaut: he was the pilot on STS-130, a space shuttle mission, and last flew in space from December 2014 to June 2015, where he commanded Expedition 43 on board the ISS.

He is a graduate of the Air Force Academy, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and of Harvard Business School. As a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, he logged more than 4,300 hours on 40 different aircraft, notably on the F-16, on which he served as experimental test pilot as well.

He was selected to be an astronaut in 2000, and since then he served in many functions, including lead astronaut for the T-38 jet training program, chief of the astronaut office’s robotic branch, and lead astronaut for the Space Launch System program.

After circling the Earth more than 3,600 times, Virts said he was ready to start a new chapter of his life. “After serving 16 wonderful years at NASA, it is time to close one chapter of life and open another. Ad Astra,” he tweeted.

Buzz Aldrin, second man on the Moon and also a test pilot, reassured his colleague: “Don't worry [Terry]. Life can be pretty exciting on Earth too. Your next adventure is just beginning.”

From Sky to Space: What Happened in Space This Summer

Earth-like exoplanet discovered: only 4.24 light-years away

Exoplanets are hard to find: astronomers have to patiently search for that brief shift in a star’s luminosity that indicates the planet has passed in front of it. But we search for such things, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” And we succeed!

I remember being excited while writing an article in May about a group of Belgian astronomers who discovered three Earth-like planets orbiting the dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. The most stunning thing was not that the planets were the first ever discovered around that particular kind of star, but rather their incredibly short distance from us: a mere 40 light-years.

However, an Earth-like planet may exist even closer: ten-times closer, in fact.

You’ve probably heard of Proxima Centauri before — it’s the closest star to us besides the Sun, and is part of the Alpha Centauri star system. On August 12 the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that scientists are preparing to unveil a new Earth-like planet orbiting it.

That means the Earth-like planet is only 4.24 light-years away.

Quoting un-named sources, Der Spiegel noted that the planet “orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its surface — an important requirement for the emergence of life.”

Der Spiegel stated that the European Southern Observatory (ESO) would announce the finding in late August. However, the ESO still has not released any information.   

If confirmed, it would mean a lot. There are a number of reasons why we look for exoplanets: understanding how our own solar system formed, finding extra-terrestrial life, and developing technology. In my opinion, however, one of the biggest incentives is to insure options for the continued survival of the human race. It would be a huge step towards insuring our survival if we knew that a habitable planet orbits the second nearest star to us.

Canadian discovers new dwarf planet beyond Pluto’s orbit

In case you needed yet another reason to feel patriotically Canadian, following the recent Rio Olympics, I have something that could further cheer the patriot in you.

Using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii, an international team of astronomers looked far into the depths of our solar system, as part of the ongoing Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS), to map the stars.

Although it wasn’t what they were looking for, the astronomers chanced to discover a new member of the group we call “dwarf planets."

“OSSOS was designed to map the orbital structure of the outer Solar System to decipher its history," said Prof. Brett Gladman of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "While not designed to efficiently detect dwarf planets, we're delighted to have found one on such an interesting orbit.”

In fact, the first one to spot this newest group member was J.J. Kavelaars, a Canadian astronomer from Canada’s National Research Council. Were there such a thing as science Olympics, we’d have won the gold for this discovery.

Looking at some images taken in September 2015, Kavelaars was able to detect this 700 km-wide celestial object, now dubbed 2015 RR245. “There it was on the screen: this dot of light moving so slowly that it had to be at least twice as far as Neptune from the Sun,” said Michelle Bannister, an astronomer at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

RR245 is not just any old dwarf planet, however. As the 18th largest object in the Kuiper Belt (a disc of objects past the orbit of Neptune), it likely formed some 100 million years ago. A lot of the objects formed at that place and time were literally thrown out of the solar system. RR245, however, managed to stay there: it’s a survivor, just like its bigger brother Pluto.

The most fascinating fact about RR245 isn’t its “survivor” status, however, nor its year-length (RR245 takes about 700 years to go around the Sun).

Rather, the most exceptional fact about RR245 is that when it’s at its furthest point from the Sun the distance is so huge (17 billion km) that light from the Sun takes 16.63 hours to reach it. For comparison, (depicted here), light from the Sun takes just eight minutes to reach us and about seven hours to reach Pluto.

The International Astronomical Union officially recognized RR245 as a dwarf planet, so after its orbit is correctly known and studied, the object will get a new and hopefully cooler name.

Moon photobombs Earth in epic NASA footage

The far side of the moon is a mysterious place, giving birth to countless sci-fi and horror movies as well as inspiring Pink Flloyd’s album of the same name. However, despite what the conspiracy theorists may believe, it’s actually just an unmanned, normal, very bright and beautiful place. And we have the pictures to prove it!

The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) is an Earth-observing and space weather satellite manufactured by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Launched by SpaceX in February 2015, DSCOVR was placed on the L1 Lagrange point, which is a metastable orbit that keeps the satellite always between the Sun and the Earth, meaning it always sees our planet’s bright side.

On board the spacecraft is the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), which is able to take pictures of Earth in 10 different frequencies, from ultraviolet to near infrared.

While their purposes are obviously scientific, the images captured by DSCOVR and EPIC’s are also profoundly inspirational. They also give you an impress of just how fragile earth really is. And they can make your jaw drop.

In fact, that is exactly what happened to me when I viewed the below footage, taken by EPIC, which made up of real images:

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/epicmoon5jul2016.gif

 Kate Rubins arrives on the ISS & my trip to Space Camp

On July 6 at 9:36 pm ET, a trio of astronauts, including NASA biologist Dr. Kate Rubins, launched to the International Space Station (ISS), beginning a relatively short 4-month stay on the orbiting lab.

Normally, they would’ve arrived 6 hours after lifting off, which is the usual amount of time the Soyuz capsule needs to reach and dock with the station. But for Kate Rubins, Soyuz Commander Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), it was different. They had to cope with the old two-day trajectory to meet with the ISS, in order to test some new systems in their upgraded Soyuz spacecraft before enjoying the comfort of the station.

Finally, on July 8, 2:50 am ET, the hatch of the capsule opened as ISS commander Jeff Williams and his Expedition 48 crew welcomed their new colleagues.

Tired and sore from the two-day space road trip in a van-sized habitat, Dr. Rubins enjoyed her first moments ever on the ISS with relief and, of course, a live press conference. Russian cosmonaut Anatoli Ivanishin saw his second voyage on the station begin, while Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi started his first mission as well. The trio’s arrival pumped the ISS crew back to 6 members, which marked the beginning of Expedition 48.

But don’t go thinking Expedition 48 is just like any other expedition: the crew is currently conducting more than 250 science investigations in fields such as biology, Earth sciences, human research and physics.

As Kate Rubins holds a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and a doctorate in cancer biology, she will be her own test subject to help study the effects of microgravity on the human body and on biology in general. "This is the only laboratory we have as humans to study gravity as a variable," she told ABC News before her launch. "There's a world of insights to be gained into human health and disease by understanding how gravity and space radiation influence biology."

Besides performing numerous science experiments, one of Expedition 48’s main goals was to install a new docking port to the station for future spacecrafts.

Called the International Docking Adapter (IDA), the docking port will allow private companies to dock with the station, such as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is currently being developed, and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner. Starting with SpaceX in late 2017, the two companies will rotate ferrying NASA astronauts to the ISS and back, hence a proper docking port being a priority.

On June 28, 2015, SpaceX launched its 7th uncrewed resupply cargo mission to the station. The mission, dubbed CRS-7, was the one intended to carry IDA to space. Unfortunately, the rocket blew up 2 minutes after liftoff.

As a result, more than a year later, on July 20, 2016, SpaceX sent its 9th Dragon cargo spacecraft to resupply the ISS with food, fuel, water and science equiptment to allow Dr. Rubins to sequence DNA in space (which will be a first) and to help study the process of bone loss in space, and of course, a new IDA.

The new docking adapter was, however, not placed in the Dragon’s pressurized compartment; rather, it was placed in the unpressurized “trunk” of the capsule, in order to allow it to be easily retracted.

Subsequently, on August 17, Canadarm2 and Dextre, both Canadian robots on the ISS, successfully retrieved IDA from the Dragon to put it three feet away from where it was to be attached. The whole maneuver took about 6 hours to perform.

However, Canadarm2 and Dextre are not ‘autonomous’ enough to complete the work of attaching IDA to the station: it required a spacewalk.

NASA didn’t have to think a lot as to who would conduct the spacewalk. To install IDA, manufactured by Americans and mostly used by Americans (at least in the near future), you need the two Americans astronauts onboard to get their hands dirty.

Therefore, on August 19, ISS commander Jeff Williams and biologist Kate Rubins suited up to attach to the station what is to be the key element to NASA’s future.

After more than six and a half hours, 36 ounces of water, and an unprecedented sense of accomplishment, Williams and Rubins completed a task that was supposed to be done almost a year ago. This represents a move towards greater American independence from Russia, as private companies such as SpaceX and Boeing slowly taking control of transporting NASA astronauts back and forth from the station.

It was a true team effort, as spacewalk flight director Zeb Scoville explained during a NASA briefing: "There’s a very coordinated interplay between the external crew outside, [those] on the inside, and the ground doing the commanding.”

As a point of interest, this wasn’t Rubins’ first spacewalk. As a kid, she attended Space Camp. For a week, she learned about rocket science and even launched her own rocket. She experienced simulated shuttle missions on realistic simulators where she did a spacewalk and learned about the space program’s history and was inspired to pursue a career in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) field.

Space Camp is a real thing that takes place yearly in the rocket city (Huntsville, Alabama), where I have lived every summer since 2009. To date, five Space Camp alumni are astronauts, including three that have flown to space: Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger (STS-131), Samantha Cristoforetti (Expedition 42/43), and now Kate Rubins (Expedition 48/49).

This summer I was invited to attend the Space Camp Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Four people of incredible success in the aerospace industry were inducted in this class of 2016, including George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic. All remember their trips to Space Camp when they were younger and all remember the positive effect that it had on them.

The thing I enjoyed the most during the induction ceremony was a video that Kate Rubins, who is also a Hall of Famer (class of 2012), recorded to congratulate the new inductees (she couldn’t attend the ceremony because she had launched to space two weeks earlier). To me, it was very inspiring to see this girl who lived the same thing as I do every summer launch to space. One of her statements that stood out the most to me was that “being an astronaut is a realistic career.”

If you want to be inspired, or if you think your kids would love Space Camp as much as I did, I highly recommend you take a look at their website: SpaceCamp.com.

If you’re more of a military/aviation type, you can also do Aviation Challenge, which includes F-18 ultra-realistic cockpit simulators, ground missions such as those conducted by SEAL Ops, as well as Drill & Ceremony introductions.

Space Camp is what inspired me as a kid to be passionate about science and astronomy, which eventually led me to writing these articles at 16 years old!

NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter!

From Sky to Space

Flashback to July 14, 2015, when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft performs historic Pluto flyby after a nine-year voyage in the dark and cold territory of outer space. Then fast forward to July 4, 2016 when NASA’s Juno spacecraft enters gas giant Jupiter’s orbit after a five-year trip in the solar system’s neighbourhood. These sort of galactic milestones are years in the making.

But unlike its colleague New Horizons, Juno wasn’t the first space probe to successfully reach and explore mighty Jupiter.

Both Pioneer spacecrafts flew past the gas giant in 1973 and 1974 as well as Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1979, as did New Horizons when it used a gravity assist from the planet in 2007, en route to Pluto. By borrowing Jupiter’s gravity, New Horizons increased its speed by 23 km/s (83,000 km/h), which in turn shaved three years of travel time off the spacecrafts’ trip to Pluto.

But don’t think that Jupiter’s quasi routine to welcome visitors undermines the importance or scientific value of Juno’s mission. Being the second spacecraft ever to enter Jupiter’s orbit, – the first one being Galileo, which navigated around Jupiter’s surroundings from 1995 to 2003 – there will be plenty of untapped data for it gather and a significant study to maintain.

…

Launched on August 5, 2011, from an Atlas V rocket at the Cape, Juno inherited a seemingly particular flight trajectory to get to the fifth planet from the Sun. 

In October 2013, two years after takeoff, Juno travelled back to mother Earth for agravity assist, increasing speed by 3.9 km/s (more than 14,000 km/h). The Earth-flyby was also a good opportunity for the maintenance teams on the ground to test some of Juno’s systems before the do-or-die manoeuvres of Jovian orbital insertion.

And then came the American Independence Day of 2016. As I tweeted that day, were I American, I would have had trouble prioritizing between celebrating my country’s birthday and Juno’s entrance into Jupiter’s orbit (which happened that day at 11:53 p.m. ET). But again, as my tweet said, Independence Day happens every year.  

To get into orbit, Juno needed to slow down – a lot. That’s why it fired its thrusters for more than 35 minutes. Thirty-five minutes is a very long time for a spacecraft to  burn; the ground teams where getting increasingly excited as they waited to know whether the burn worked or not – and they needed to wait a relatively long time, because a signal from Juno to Earth, traveling at the speed of light, takes 48 minutes to complete. A 20-minute burn would have been enough to get the spacecraft into orbit, but not into the correct one, hence the additional 15-minute burn. In total, the slow-down burn lasted 2,102 seconds and was only one second off the predicted value, which is too small to have a disturbing effect on anything.

And that’s how you get a spacecraft into Jupiter’s orbit!

…

There’s something a bit special about Juno’s systems. As an interplanetary probe, it needs a stable source of power to be able to function in the arid and unfriendly conditions of space. Normally, a spacecraft of that kind uses nuclear power to maintain its instruments and to keep warm.

But Juno is not like that. It uses the old school, but still effective method of solar power, which is normally never used for interplanetary missions but just for Earth-orbiting satellites or similar spacecrafts.

Using its three 10-meter long solar panels, for a huge total of 18,000 solar cells, it can produce the 405 watts needed for keeping the instruments and avionics working. Mind you, 405 watts is not a lot of power; not even enough to run your hair dryer.

This is why, once in stable Jovian orbit, Juno’s number one task was to turn and face the sun to recharge its 750-pound solar arrays. Then Juno had to turn its antenna towards Earth before it was able to send new data home.

Juno is equipped with fantastic systems, notably the JunoCam. However, the JunoCam is not considered a scientific instrument; it’s more for the public. As a high-resolution, visible-light and colour camera, it is considered to be Juno’s eyes. It provides the public with the opportunity to see the work that Juno is doing.

The first image of Jupiter from Juno in orbit took by the JunoCam and sent to Earth on July 12.

But Juno’s mission, which will start for real on October 19, isn’t just space photography. On October 19, Juno will use an engine burn to pass from the 54-day orbit it is currently in, to a shorter 14-day orbit. That’s when the real science will begin.

By recording data from Jupiter’s internal composition, Juno will help scientists answer critical and lasting questions about the gas giant, such as: “Does it have a rocky core?”, or “how does it have so much water?”, and even, “how was Jupiter formed?”.

Because Jupiter plays a major role in the gravitational features of our solar system, this data could literally be a critical key to answering the broader existential question (at least, for me): “How was the solar system formed?”

This is awe-inspiring! We humans often look at the sky and wonder how it all happened. But wondering isn’t enough to get real and rigorous answers. So what do we do? We build probes, launch them on a rocket, and send them into space to do the science for us. And not only that, but we also build it to takes pictures of what we used to see as only a little point of light in the night sky. Maybe all this could make a person feel smaller. But for me it has the opposite affect – it makes me feel bigger. We are actually able to build something, and to make it take pictures – which I remind you was completely impossible to even do on Earth a couple decades ago – of something nearly 900 million km from home! How can someone not be inspired, or at least impressed by that?

It’s also worth remembering that our big brother planet, the mighty Jupiter, is constantly protecting us from asteroids that would otherwise wipe Earth out. Personally, I think understanding more about Jupiter is a good way to show thanks for that.  

From Sky to Space: Canadian Astronauts wanted!

From Sky to Space

Hate your job? Canadian astronauts wanted!

Actually, it’s kind of hard to hate your job if you work in a science field. But anyway, I think you’ll like that astronaut thing as well.

If you have a science degree with at least three years of relevant professional experience (a master’s degree is equivalent to one year of professional experience, a PhD to three years) this is your chance: the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced on June 17 its intention to recruit two new astronauts! If you are Canadian and in excellent medical shape, please fill this online form (https://emploisfp-psjobs.cfp-psc.gc.ca/psrs-srfp/applicant/page1800?poster=908307&toggleLanguage=en) and who knows, you’ll perhaps be the next Chris Hadfield. But don’t miss out: you have until August 15!

After this the CSA will invite those who meet the basic requirements to do the online public service entrance exam (from August 23 to September 6). Those who will “pass” the exam will then be invited to be interviewed and to pass medical examinations. The CSA will then gradually restrain the number of candidates based on the interviews and medical tests results. Finally, in the summer of 2017, after one year of tests, interviews, exams and intensive physical challenges, the two new Canadian astronauts will be announced. These two lucky Canadians will be relocated to Houston, Texas, in August 2017, to begin NASA’s basic astronaut training.

Do you have chances? Let’s look at the statistics. Canada has had three astronaut recruitment campaigns. On the first one in 1983, six astronauts, including Marc Garneau, current federal Minister, were selected from more than 4,000 applicants. On the second campaign in 1992, four new Canadians were selected to be part of the astronaut corps, including Chris Hadfield and Julie Payette. That year, more than 5,000 candidates applied for the job. On the third recruitment campaign, this time in 2009, only two candidates on more than 5,000 survived the tests and finally became astronauts; they are Jeremy Hansen and David St-Jacques.

The chances are thin, indeed. They are even thinner if you consider that this time the number of applicants might be well over 5,000 because of the constantly growing communication network (notably social media). For instance, NASA’s latest astronaut recruitment campaign in December 2015 (http://espritdecorps.ca/from-sky-to-space/2016/1/13/qkditqbsl5b0wi2u15ri3xhmkib7zv) received 18,300 applications, far surpassing the previous 1978 record of 8,000! 

But don’t worry. If you have the right stuff you’ll get selected, if not you won’t. But that’s OK. It will still be an incredible experience. After all, I don’t know of any other jobs with all-expenses paid voyages to space.

Gravitational waves discovered again

Remember that thing physicist discovered in September 2015, which revolutionized the whole astronomy field and solidified Einstein’s General Relativity theory? (http://espritdecorps.ca/from-sky-to-space/2016/3/23/from-sky-to-space)

Yup. Gravitational waves. Well, they’ve been discovered again!

On December 26, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facility detected for a second time the sounds of space. A paper in Physical Review Letters, published on June 15, officialize the discovery (http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.241103).

How were these gravitational waves formed? First, you need to understand what are gravitational waves. 

In a way, it’s not true that two objects attract each other; the objects bend the space around them, causing a change in their paths. What you need to understand is that empty space is something, like a fabric. Envision it like a bowling ball on a mattress, the bowling ball being a massive celestial object like the Sun or a black hole, and the mattress being the fabric of space (and time). Of course the bowling ball bends the mattress, causing any object, for instance a golf ball, to curve when it passes near the bowling ball.

Is there a special and mysterious force of attraction between the golf ball and the bowling ball? No!

The same happens when the moon orbits the Earth, or the Earth goes around the Sun, or the International Space Station revolves around us. They are like the golf ball going around the bowling ball: they follow their natural motion, or what is called in science their ‘geodesic’, because of the curved space-time.

So, empty space shares qualities with a fabric; it is able to bend, compress and dilate, giving birth to all kinds of physical events, such as gravitational waves.

So, empty space being a fabric and flexible enough to bend, it ought to be flexible enough to undulate and to vibrate, predicted Albert Einstein in 1915.

Well he was right (surprise!).  When, for instance, two black holes collide, it is such a massive event that some of the energy from the collapse transforms into ripples of empty space, which we call gravitational waves. 

As David St-Jacques puts it, it’s similar to people in North America asking: “Hm. Could we sense it if a cliff were to collapse on a European coast? Would the waves reach us?”

Waves obtained due to the energy liberated from the cliff collapse move through both water and air (the sound that is generated in the air by this energy occurs in the form of sound waves).

The same goes for when two black holes collide; the energy liberated from this event transforms into waves, which interact with the fabric of space, spreading beyond the point of the collision.

It’s just like the waves of a cliff collapse, but in the emptiness of space.

This time, the two black holes that merged were 1.4 billion light-years away, and each had a mass of about 14.2 and 7.5 solar masses (mass of the Sun). The final black hole (the one formed of the two that merged) had a mass of about 20.8 solar masses. As you can see, the masses don’t add up right. The missing 0.9 solar masses were converted into energy, into the form of gravitational waves!  But how can one possibly measure such tiny amounts of energy spread on such huge distances? Just ask LIGO! 

The LIGO facilities were arranged in such a way that two long cylinders, each measuring precisely the same length (4 km), are perpendicular to each other. 

In those long tubes, two lasers are shining, being reflected at both ends and those being of the same length; it makes the lasers “come back” at exactly the same time, cancelling each other out.

The only way for the lasers to not come back at the same time is if the tubes change in length. But how can you do that? Just ask… gravitational waves!

If a gravitational wave passes through Earth, and subsequently through a LIGO facility, the tubes will change in length by a fraction of an atom(!), one being longer and the other being shorter. This way, the lasers won’t come back at the same time, and won’t cancel each other out!

It’s incredible what the human mind can accomplish, from the engineer that designed LIGO to the physicist that predicted gravitational waves.

It will open up a whole new field of astronomy!

Rocket landing gone wrong for SpaceX

  On June 15, the ambitious company SpaceX, owned by Tesla Motors and PayPal CEO Elon Musk, launched its Falcon 9 rocket to deploy two communication satellites from Cape Canaveral.

As usual, after succeeding its primary mission (deploying both Eutelsat 117 West B and ABS 2A communications satellites), it tried to land the first stage of its rocket… on a ship navigating in the ocean. Up till now, nothing abnormal.

However, as the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket came down to find its landing-target (the drone-like barge-ship), it mysteriously failed and therefore didn’t succeed in landing safely on the ship. Unfortunately, this ended a recent streak of flawless rocket landings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H1FcVeV_II this video shows the June 15 failed rocket landing attempt as well as the three previous successful ones

So what went wrong? According to SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk, it “looks like early liquid oxygen depletion caused engine shutdown just above the deck”. What a sad way to end a three successful landing-streak. But that’s not how Musk sees it. “As mentioned at the beginning of the year, I'm expecting ~70% success rate on landings for the year. 2016 is the year of experimentation,” he tweeted.

We still don’t have a lot of details of what went wrong that day, but we can be sure SpaceX is working on it. After all, 2016 is the year of experimentation. 4th test rocket launch and landing for Blue Origin

Surprisingly, SpaceX isn’t the only private aerospace company to perform vertical rocket landings. Blue Origin, society owned by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, also attempts the feat.  In fact, it was the first company to do so! However, we need to understand the difference.

SpaceX sends its rocket into orbit, which means you need a lot of thrust and power to get there. After the first stage of the rocket sends the payload into orbit, it starts to fall, with a very high velocity, to land on a barge or on the ground.  But Blue Origin’s payload/rocket doesn’t go into orbit. It sends its New Shepherd rocket out to an altitude of about 100 km (the frontier of space) and then makes it land on the ground. This is what we call a suborbital flight. Blue Origin’s version of a rocket landing is simpler than SpaceX’s, because the rocket comes down from a lower altitude, without a high lateral velocity, etc.   

But it’s still a vertical rocket landing!

On June 19, New Shepherd flew again. It was the fourth flight with the booster, and the sixth flight with the capsule (designed to carry astronauts). This time, the mission was to send the capsule to about 100 km, and then land it with one of the three parachutes intentionally failing, all this while successfully landing the booster.  And it worked! The capsule landed safely with only two functioning parachutes, while the booster landed vertically on the ground back in Texas, where it was launched.

Launch 0:12 rocket landing 1:50 capsule landing with one failed parachute 2:45. This is a huge step towards commercializing space, as Blue Origins intends to send tourists in space on suborbital flights and to land them and their booster on the ground safely. However, space tickets might be a little more expensive than an intrastate flight.   

From sky to space: DAVID ST-JACQUES WILL FLY IN SPACE!

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The first Canadian in space since Chris Hadfield

In November 2018, roughly six years after Chris Hadfield blasted off to space, Canadian astronaut David St-Jacques will launch using a Russian Soyuz rocket to spend six months onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The Hon. Navdeep Bains, minister of innovation, science, and economic development, made the announcement on May 16 at the Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. Dr. Saint-Jacques said he knew he was selected as the next Canadian in space well before the announcement rendered him even more famous.

Engineer, doctor, Cambridge astrophysicist and astronaut, David St-Jacques is now 46 years old, and plans to train hard for the next two years before fulfilling a demanding and emancipating task, which is representing Canada on a floating laboratory that is the product of international cooperation.

"The doctor in me is eager to conduct experiments and experience first-hand the effects of microgravity on my body, the engineer in me is eager to operate Canadarm2, the astrophysicist in me is eager to look at the stars while floating in my space suit, and of course, the adventurer in me, he's just eager," he said at the announcement on May 16.

David St-Jacques will be part of a crew of six astronauts – mostly American and Russian – for most of his time on the ISS. He’ll be conducting scientific research, perhaps performing a spacewalk, and above all he’ll be talking to his family on the phone.

I had the opportunity to meet him at the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute’s ASTRO 2016 conference held in Ottawa from May 17 to May 19. At first, you may think one will be impressed because of all his degrees and his extraordinary career. But it’s not because of that. Dr. Saint-Jacques is a humble, down to earth human with an incredible job. He says he’s just like everyone else, but he just goes to space sometimes. 

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The Canadian Space Agency’s president Sylvain Laporte, David St-Jacques and me in Ottawa on May 18.

Best of luck to him, not only for the mission, but also for the next two years of intensive training in Russia and Japan!

After two tries, the expendable BEAM module is now inflated.

Arrived on the International Space Station (ISS) on April 10 using a SpaceX Dragon cargo resupply mission (http://espritdecorps.ca/from-sky-to-space/2016/4/22/from-sky-to-space-spacex-landed-its-rocket-on-a-barge), the Bigelow Expendable Activity Module (BEAM) began a two-year journey as the first of its kind.

Developed in Las Vegas, BEAM is an inflatable module that can be attached to the ISS. It’s only a prototype (for now) but the long-term goal for Bigelow Aerospace (BEAM’s contractor) is to use similar inflatable spacecrafts for long-duration mission such as NASA’s journey to Mars. So as you may have guessed, Bigelow Aerospace really wants its prototype to work as planned…

But it didn’t! At least on May 26, when the astronauts onboard the station tried for the first time to inflate BEAM. Jeff Williams, a flight engineer on the station (this is one position you can be on the station if you’re not commander), realized that the module wasn’t expanding anymore despite the fact that they were still pumping air into it.

So they stopped the inflation process for a complete day and tried again on May 28. After being precisely guided by Houston as to which step to follow, Williams finally succeeded to flawlessly inflate the module, expanding it from its original 2.1-meter length to an impressing 7-meter.

https://twitter.com/astro_tim/status/736738454793392132 BEAM’s expansion on the second try

Bigelow aerospace fully understood the decision of NASA to stop the inflation on the first try. “We recognize that BEAM is a first of-its-kind spacecraft, and we are in full support of safety being the number one priority,” Bigelow Aerospace said in a statement.

BEAM is an original and innovative idea. It can launch in a tight space on a rocket, and then expand to shelter astronauts on a multiple-day voyage. It can be useful, and NASA knows it! Perhaps as a tool to get to Mars…?

India successfully tests its first reusable spacecraft

On May 23, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) – the Indian equivalent of NASA – launched its first reusable spacecraft to test its resistance to high temperatures during re-entry as well as other navigation systems.

The spacecraft, a 22-foot winged ‘mini’ Space Shuttle, was subject to an investment of $14 million since it was approved for development in 2012.

Known as the Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), the craft launched to an altitude of 65 kilometers while reaching Mach 5 for a total mission time of about 13 minutes.

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RLV-TD will undergo four experimental flights: the first one, which was completed on May 23; the hypersonic flight experiment and the landing experiment (both are on the same flight); the return flight experiment and the scramjet propulsion experiment.

With its $1.2 billion annual budget, ISRO is far from NASA’s $18.5 billion’s. And it’s probably years away before the RLV-TD gets on the market. But it makes India part of a short, elite and select group of countries that invests in the space industry and develops reusable spacecrafts. 

It’s interesting to see how emerging markets increasingly invest in space exploration (think of India, China, Brazil, Ukraine, etc.).

Human emancipation and exploration should have less financial restrictions.  

SpaceX update

As an anniversary for the 25th SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launch, the private company owned by successful entrepreneur Elon Musk launched THAICOM 8 on May 27, before landing its rocket on a barge-like drone-ship… again.

THAICOM 8 is a 3100kg Thai communication satellite that will provide better services for Southeast Asia.

After successfully placing the satellite in orbit, the first stage of the Falcon 9 was coming down smoothly for an attempt to land on a barge in the Atlantic. And it succeeded! The rocket-landing process is starting to become routine!

 30-second, accelerated video of May 27’s rocket landing

SpaceX’s next launch is scheduled for June 16, where it will launch the Eutelsat 117 West B and ABS 2A communications satellites from Cape Canaveral. This sounds like another barge-ship rocket landing!

Discovery of Earth-like planets

An artist's illustration of the three exoplanets orbiting around TRAPPIST-1, an ultra cool dwarf star. (Wikipedia)

By Benjamin Vermette 

Discovery of 3 potentially habitable planets 

Some look for life in the ocean, others look for it deep down into the earth. Some even look for life in their own soul, in their hearts, and others look for it on exoplanets tens of light-years away from home.  

On May 2, a team of Belgian astronomers published their discovery of three Earth-like planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star named TRAPPIST-1. That’s a big deal. They are the first planets to ever be discovered orbiting that particular kind of star.

But the most exciting thing of this discovery is that the planets are so close to us! Only 40 light-years away! That makes them subject to unprecedented studies and observations.

The Belgian TRAPPIST telescope discovered these celestial bodies as they passed in front of the star, and the fact that the star is relatively faint will make the observations easier.

Typically, when a new planet outside our solar system is discovered, it is much bigger than Earth, it is much farther away than these three newcomers and it orbits much brighter stars. But these recently located planets don’t respect any of these criterions! That’s what makes them special and interesting for science investigations.

“These are the first planets similar in size and temperature to Earth and Venus for which we can study the atmospheric composition in detail, and really constrain the surface conditions and habitability,” said lead author Dr. Michaël Gillon from the University of Liège.

However, at first glance, these planets may seem to have nothing special. Perhaps they even seem 'scientifically irrelevant’. TRAPPIST-1B and TRAPPIST-1C, as two of the three planets are dubbed, have a revolution period of respectively 1.5 and 2.4 Earth days, which means they perform one complete revolution around their sun in a very small amount of time. As Kepler’s laws told us, the closer the object is to the other, the faster it orbits. Following this logic, this means the planets are very close to their sun, so they’re very hot, right?

Almost. Yes, they orbit very close to their mother-star, but this one is really cold! When I say really cold, I mean it has surface temperatures of only 2,277 degrees Celsius. So the planets are probably not ‘inferno’ worlds.

TRAPPIST-1D has years lasting a more reasonable amount of time – however very uncertain – than its two brothers: 4.5 to 73 Earth days.  

The closest planets receive as much as four times the amount of radiation we receive here on Earth, which makes them on the limit of what scientists call the ‘habitable zone’. The outermost one seems to be doing just fine in terms of radiation.

Because of this, the temperatures on these objects might vary from slightly higher than water’s boiling point and a lot below freezing.

However, being uncertain that these planets are solid, scientists tell us that the star, TRAPPIST-1, is rich in heavy elements, which suggests that they might in fact be rocky planets.

As an ultra cool dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1 is very stable: they won’t change for tens of billions of years, which provides a suitable environment for life to grow on its planets.

“Why are we trying to detect Earth-like planets around the smallest and coolest stars in the solar neighbourhood?” Dr. Gillon said in a statement. “The reason is simple: Systems around these tiny stars are the only places where we can detect life on an Earth-sized exoplanet with our current technology. So if we want to find life elsewhere in the universe, this is where we should start to look.”

Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, currently under construction and to be launched by 2018, might revolutionize the search for life. It potentially has the capacity to detect biological molecules in other planets’ atmospheres!

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Prof. Stephen Hawking’s dream 

Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner announce new project "Breakthrough Starshot". (James Keivom/NewYork Daily News)  

What happens when you put a Russian billionaire and one of the world’s most brilliant scientists in the same room? Not only do you get an ambitious research project, but you also get some money to fund it.

Milner’s project, named “Breakthrough Starshot”, was introduced at the One World Observatory in New York in mid-April. Endorsed by renowned-physicist Stephen Hawking, Breakthrough Starshot consists of a $100-million research and engineering program that will eventually allow sending space probes to the nearest star system, Alpha Centuri. More precisely, the project seeks to create ‘chip’ devices that can travel at 20% the speed of light, take marvellous pictures in empty space, as well as being extremely small.

A gigantic laser beam here on Earth will provide the necessary thrust to these high-end devices so they can travel the 4.37 light-years separating us from Alpha Centuri in about 20 years. Since the ‘chips’ are designed to carry a sail on their back, the photons from the light beam will be enough to power them through interstellar space.

At this rate, these spaceships would get to Pluto in about 24 hours! A trip that took humankind’s fastest spacecraft yet, New Horizons, more than 9 years!

The cool thing is that those relatively cheap spacecraft could be deployed not only once but multiple times, to ensure that Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Prof. Stephen Hawking’s dream come true, to ensure that humans finally reach the stars for the first time.

SpaceX made the news again

On April 27, hours after it revealed a plan to send a commercial mission to Mars in 2018, SpaceX was awarded an $82 million contract to launch a government GPS satellite.

This contract is the first competitively sourced National Security Space launch services contract in more than a decade.  

The satellite, GPS III, will be the second of its kind to ever be sent in orbit, as it is planned to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, in May 2018.  It is a high-tech Global Positioning System, as it is expecting to meet the increasingly higher needs of both military and civilian users. It is equipped with a special anti-jamming system as well as with the common L1C signal, which is compatible with many other global navigation satellites.

SpaceX winning this contract means that they have eliminated the monopoly that United Launch Alliance (ULA) had on military space launches for nearly a decade.  

However, note that ULA didn’t compete for the GPS III launch contract, saying they had accounting issues, problems with the imports of their Russian-made rocket engines, and according to rumours, problems with SpaceX’s low fees.

"This GPS III Launch Services contract award achieves a balance between mission success, meeting operational needs, lowering launch costs, and reintroducing competition for National Security Space missions," said Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, Air Force Program Executive Officer for Space.

The $82.7 million contract supports the rocket production, launch procedures, mission planning, and spaceflight certification.

Supporting SpaceX means supporting Musk. Supporting Musk means supporting ambition. And this is yet another step towards Mars.

SpaceX landed its rocket… on a barge!

By Benjamin Vermette

SpaceX launched its ninth unmanned cargo resupply mission to the ISS on April 8, 2016 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Alan Walters / awaltersphoto.com)

The ambitious company SpaceX launched its ninth unmanned cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 8 2016 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission, dubbed CRS-8, will be forever written about in history books.

CEO of Tesla Motors, PayPal, Solar City and SpaceX, young billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk proved his earnest intention of installing a permanent rocket-reusability strategy by landing, for the first time in human history, the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone-like barge-ship.

Note that it’s not the first time they succeeded in landing the Falcon 9 on something; they did it on steady ground in Cape Canaveral in December 2015 (click here to read more about this mission).

The following youtube video posted by SpaceX captures their most recent feat. 

Uploaded by SpaceX on 2016-04-09.

Following a perfect launch on Friday afternoon by the Falcon 9 rocket, everyone was becoming excited for another ‘experimental’ rocket landing on a barge. After deploying its Dragon cargo spacecraft into orbit and towards the ISS, the first stage flipped over, found the right trajectory, slowed down from 20,000 km/h, and succeeded in landing on the barge in a non-explosive fashion.

It wasn’t SpaceX’s first try to complete this feat; they’ve already dedicated other rockets to this. In other words, the rockets blew up trying to land on the barge (read more about these attempts in my previous articles: Hubble, SpaceX, Falcon, Messenger and More... and SpaceX Failed to Land Their Rocket on a Barge-ship).Elon Musk called them RUDs (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly).

But now, it’s a different story. Launching a rocket, deploying gear into space intended for some humans on the ISS, then landing the remaining part of the rocket, all inside 9 minutes, how can this even be physically possible? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Elon Musk.

“It's another step toward the stars,” he said during a press conference.

It is indeed, but what does it mean for the future of space exploration?

Landing the rocket on steady ground, as they did in December 2015, is great. However, landing it at sea is essential for SpaceX’s reusability strategy. After launch, the rocket is hundreds of kilometers east of the Cape. Landing it on an autonomous drone-ship not only saves fuel but when mastered, will also diminish risks.

Adding extra fuel to a rocket for landing may not seem cost-effective, but building a rocket from scratch is way more expensive. As a matter of fact, building a Falcon 9 costs $60 million, while refueling it is only about $250,000.

Musk predicts his reusability strategy to contribute cutting the spending “100-fold”. According to his predictions, SpaceX’s launches’ fees could shrink from $61.2 million (compared to $225 million for its competitor ULA) down to $600 000. This 44 year-old visionary hopes that one rocket will be able to support up to 20 spaceflights.

Even if the space industry-leading company SpaceX performed an out-of-this-world accomplishment, its main mission was of course to respect its contract with NASA, which is to deliver goods to the ISS when needed.

As you may have guessed, this is exactly what they did, the Dragon cargo spacecraft that successfully launched on April 8th was flawlessly delivered to the ISS, where it arrived and docked on April 10th.

But what exactly was on the Dragon spacecraft?

First, there was equipment for an interesting science investigation, which is called the Rodent Research-3-Eli Lilly Investigation.

When humans reside in space, gravity no longer affects their body. This results in decreases in bone density, muscle strength and heart-pumping efficiency. This is why astronauts need to exercise so much in space!

This investigation will use mice to better understand the effects of a particular antibody known for its capability “To prevent muscle wasting in mice on Earth”.

Another science experiment, called Micro-10, “will study fungi in space for the purpose of potentially developing new medicine for use both in space and on Earth”. A couple similar science experiments, generally concerning the study of the human body in space, are now possible due to the arrival of the required equipment on the ISS.

But the major experiment that the Dragon spacecraft carried, was not typical. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is an inflatable module that attaches to the station. It is only a prototype (for now), but the long-term goal is for BEAM to be used in NASA’s future missions to Mars.

After installation on April 16, the inflatable structure grew to attain almost 13 feet in length while having a 10.5-feet diameter.

It is scheduled to stay on the space station for a period of two years, during which the astronauts of the ISS will enter the module three-to-four times a year to retrieve data from the sensors onboard.

If everything goes as planned, Bigelow Aerospace, BEAM’s contractor, might launch another of their prototypes into space by 2020. But this time, it won’t be BEAM, but what they call the autonomous B330 expanding habitat. 

A depiction of how the B330 prototype is expected to look like in 2020. (Bigelow Aerospace)

As a matter of fact, Bigelow Aerospace announced, on April 11, that they have discussed a partnership with the private rocket manufacturer United Launch Alliance (ULA) to launch their B330 prototype in 2020.

The idea of an inflatable space module is promising: it takes less room on a rocket, but once in space, it provides a place for astronauts to live and work. NASA may even consider these modules when the time comes to plan a journey to Mars!

While the ISS is studying medicine in microgravity, hence its motto “Off the Earth for the Earth”, it is also considering prototypes for long-duration spaceflights and studying the effects it would have on a human.

The journey to Mars is happening!

GRAVITATIONAL WAVES DISCOVERED!!!

By Benjamin Vermette

An artist`s depiction of the destruction of a binary system of dwarf stars where the dwarf stars produce gravitational waves by orbiting each other. (DANA BERRY/NASA)

OMG.

Gravitational waves were discovered! On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) turned up the volume on their detector to hear the sounds of deep space.

It is a major breakthrough – it was even called a “revolution in physics”. Einstein predicted these waves in his general relativity theory a century ago.

To officialise the discovery, an announcement was made on February 11 through a press conference in Washington DC as well as a published paper in Physical Review Letters. It was followed worldwide by scientists and media.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves,” said David Reitze, the executive director at the LIGO laboratory, at the press conference. “We did it!”

But what exactly are gravitational waves?

In 1915, brilliant physicist Albert Einstein published a paper on general relativity.

As I explained in one of my previous articles, the theory of general relativity describes gravity.

In a way, it’s not true that two objects attract each other; the objects bend the space around them, causing a change in their paths. What you need to understand is that empty space is something, like a fabric. Envision it like a bowling ball on a mattress, the bowling ball being a massive celestial object like the Sun or a black hole, and the mattress being the fabric of space (and time). Of course the bowling ball bends the mattress, causing any object, for instance a golf ball, to curve when it passes near the bowling ball.

Is there a special and mysterious force of attraction between the golf ball and the bowling ball? No!

The same happens when the moon orbits the Earth, or the Earth goes around the Sun, or the International Space Station revolves around us. They are like the golf ball going around the bowling ball: they follow their natural motion, or what is called in science their ‘geodesic’, because of the curved space-time.

So, empty space shares qualities with a fabric; it is able to bend, compress and dilate, giving birth to all kinds of physical events.

As David St-Jacques, Canadian astronaut puts it: “If things like massive black holes on the other edge of the Universe were to collide with each other, that would be such a dramatic and massive event that it would send ripples through space-time itself.”

As he explained, it was similar to people in North America asking: “Hm. Could we sense it if a cliff were to collapse on a European coast? Would the waves reach us?”

Waves obtained due to the energy liberated from the cliff collapse move through both water and air (the sound that is generated in the air by this energy occurs in the form of sound waves).

The same goes for when two black holes collide; the energy liberated from this event transforms into waves, which interact with the fabric of space, spreading beyond the point of the collision.

It’s just like the waves of a cliff collapse, but in the emptiness of space (kind of).

“[Albert Einstein] realized that if space is flexible enough to warp, then it should also be able to ripple, to vibrate, to undulate. “And it’s these ripples we call gravitational waves,” said physicist Brian Greene.

So how did LIGO discover those?

1.3 billion light-years away from Earth, two enormous black holes collided, and they caused observable gravitational waves.

The two black holes originally had masses of 29 and 36 solar masses (the mass of the Sun). “After they merged they created a single black hole with a mass of 62 times that of the Sun. You may notice those masses don’t add up right; there’s 3 solar masses missing. That mass didn’t just disappear! It was converted into energy: the energy of the gravitational waves themselves,” wrote Phil Plait, American astronomer, for Slate.

And that’s a lot of energy, enough to distort and bend your body when it passes through you. Only by a tiny, little-bitty amount, but still!

Welcome to the age of gravitational wave astronomy. Learn more at http://www.phys.ufl.edu/darkcosmos

The video above demonstrates the effect (exaggerated) of gravitational waves passing through Earth. 

The LIGO facilities were arranged in such a way that two long cylinders, each measuring precisely the same length, are perpendicular to each other.

 Aerial view of one the LIGO facilities. (NASA)

In those long tubes two lasers are shining, being reflected at both ends and those being of the same length, it makes the lasers “come back” at exactly the same time, cancelling each other out.

The only way for the lasers to not come back at the same time, is if the tubes change in length. But how can you do that? Just ask… gravitational waves!

If a gravitational wave passes through Earth, and subsequently through a LIGO facility, the tubes will change in length by a fraction of an atom (!), one being longer and the other being shorter. This way, the lasers won’t come back at the same time, and won’t cancel each other out!

This video will teach you about this in more detail. 

But what does it means, anyway?

In the end, this is what gravitational waves are to the human ear: faint little chirps. This linked soundcloud account features this subtle noise. 

So, how do these faint little chirps influence us, and the future of physics?

The detection of gravitational waves opens up a whole new sphere of astronomy.

Gravitational waves have always been passing through Earth. In the past, physicists have been deaf concerning gravity waves, but now, being able to detect and measure them opens up a whole new way of seeing (or hearing, if you prefer) the universe.

But physicists, astronomers and scientists are not the only group to which the detection of gravitational waves is relevant.

Imagine a world where findings in physics had not been applied, so no more cell phones, computers, and GPSs would exist.

In such a world, physics wouldn’t be irrelevant. I think humankind would still try to develop physics, to understand the universe, and to feed our sense of wonder, because curiosity and imagination is part of us. This is what we have been exploiting since our ancestors started walking on two feet, exploring Africa.

We want to know, we ask questions, we try to understand the world we live in, not only physically, but socially and economically too. Wonder is built into us, just like curiosity.

This is exactly what physics provides to humans. They nourish wonder and satisfy curiosity. We know the universe has more complexity than we can currently comprehend, so what better way to dream, wonder and imagine than to understand it?

If theoretical physics such as cosmology seem irrelevant to you and you have no motivation for understanding your environment or learning something, just do it for the sake of it; the grave will provide plenty of time for not-knowing.

If this doesn’t satisfy you, just think that the dinosaurs didn’t have the right resources to predict and prevent their own extinction. But we do. Thanks to science.

By Benjamin Vermette

The above is an artist's depiction of the view from "Planet Nine". Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Is there a 9th planet in our solar system?

Caltech researchers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown have found evidence of a ninth planet in our solar system. 

The planet, dubbed Planet Nine, would have a mass 10 times that of Earth and take 10,000 to 20,000 years to make a single revolution around the Sun, hence its late discovery (which shouldn’t be called a discovery yet). Planet Nine would be orbiting the Sun 20 times further out than does Neptune – the outermost planet –, if it exists, and on a highly-elliptical orbit.

Note that the planet was not observed directly: strange behaviours of some Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) lead to the conclusion that a ninth planet might be required. "Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there," says Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science. "For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the solar system's planetary census is incomplete."

Evidence and a mathematical model was enough to get some astronomers – amateurs and professionals – started on a quest for the observation of Planet Nine.

The whole story started in 2014, when a student of Mike Brown found out that orbital features of some KBOs (small celestial objects beyond Pluto) were similar and thus suggested the presence of a small planet to explain this phenomenon.

Brown, an observer, took the problem to Batygin, who is a theorist, and for a year and a half they worked the problem out. Brown observed the sky as well as the KBOs while Batygin worked out what was possible on the physical standpoint using math and physics. “I would bring in some of these observational aspects; he would come back with arguments from theory, and we would push each other. I don't think the discovery would have happened without that back and forth," says Brown.

Shown here is the possible orbit of Planet Nine along with other distant bodies of our solar system with highly-eccentric elliptical orbits. Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC) 

Note the irony: Mike Brown, potential discoverer of Planet Nine (if it gets officially discovered), was one of the active astronomers who led to Pluto losing its ‘planet’ status, hence his Twitter handle @plutokiller.

Even if the scientific community isn’t sure the planet exists yet, Brown showed a little confidence on his Twitter profile: “OK, OK, I am now willing to admit: I DO believe that the solar system has nine planets,” he wrote.

Evidence is evidence. Astronomers worldwide are on it: stay tuned for facts.

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New Canadian vision system for the ISS

On January 7 the Government of Canada awarded a $1.7-million contract to Neptec Design Group Ltd. of Ottawa, Ontario, to design and build a new high-technology space vision system for the International Space Station (ISS).

Mounted on Dextre, the vision system will be used to support the inspection and maintenance of the ageing structure of the ISS, as small meteorites and space debris regularly hit the Station. It’s not the first time that Neptec’s vision systems are used in space: it previously designed a laser camera system that, mounted on Canadarm2, was used to inspect the tiles of the retired US Space Shuttle while it was in space.

Using a combination of three sensors – an infrared and a high-definition camera, as well as a 3D laser – the vision system will also assist spacecrafts as they dock with the ISS.

Showing Dextre on the right held by Canadarm2 and holding the vision system (www.asc-csa.gc.ca). 

As the system will launch to the ISS in 2020, its imagery will be available to the public, offering a new view of the station no one ever saw before.

“The Government of Canada is pleased to contribute this new technology that combines these strengths, while giving the world a new vantage point on the International Space Station," said the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.

This investment enforces Canada’s role as a reliable space-technology innovator and as a driving force of the world’s space activities.

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SpaceX failed to land their rocket on a barge-ship

The promising private company SpaceX, owned by ambitious billionaire Elon Musk, succeeded in landing its rocket on a steady landing platform in Cape Canaveral on December 21st (Refer to my previous post on January 15 for details on this.)

But that was ‘easy’, they wanted a more challenging test: landing their rocket on a drone-like barge-ship, sailing freely on the sea, for example. 

On January 17, after flawlessly launching and deploying the Jason-3 ocean-mapping satellite, the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket called the ball. Hovering through 3- to 4-meter waves, the football-field-sized landing platform waited patiently for the booster to perform the final ‘touchdown’. 

The booster found the platform, deployed its landing legs and landed for a couple seconds, and then this happened. The linked video, posted on Elon Musk's instagram page, shows footage of Falcon 9's landing attempt.

This was the third time SpaceX tried to land the Falcon on a ship, and it was almost a charm.

As Musk said on his Instagram and Twitter accounts, a defective collet might have been the mishap’s cause. Collets are intended to secure the locking of the landing legs. As the leg was not locked tightly enough, it could not support the aircraft's weight, and down it went. The root cause may be that condensation from heavy fog at launch got in there and then froze when it got colder in the upper atmosphere, perhaps cracking the collet.

This is a hypothesis, but one thing is for sure: “Definitely harder to land on a ship. Similar to [land on] an aircraft carrier [versus on the ground]: much smaller target area [on the ship], [which is] also translating & rotating,” Musk tweeted.

It’s still a success to me. Launching a rocket at high speeds and making it deploy a satellite takes some innovation, especially when it’s a private company. But making the rocket flip-over in space and come back to Earth from more than 100 km of altitude, making it slow down and find the barge using its fins to control itself and deploy its landing legs is indeed a success to me.

“It’s a freakin’ technological triumph that they can get anywhere near a landing,” wrote Phil Plait, blogger for Slate.

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The Dream Chaser has won the ISS resupply contract award!

On January 14, after delaying the announcement multiple times, NASA finally awarded the second round contract of resupplying the International Space Station (ISS) to three commercial cargo companies. The first round contract was awarded to SpaceX and Orbital ATK in 2008.

The Dream Chaser, previously designed to be a human-carrying spacecraft, was adapted to be unmanned for the possible future cargo missions to the ISS, in case it won the second round contract. And it did!

This amazingly designed spaceship, owned by Sierra Nevada Corporation, will join SpaceX and Orbital ATK, the two other recipients, in 2019, date when the contract will begin service.

Designed by a 50-year-old soviet space shuttle mockup, the Dream Chaser will deliver up to 5500 kg of cargo to the ISS per trip. It will launch on top of a rocket, dock with the station, and when it’s ready it will detach from the orbiting lab and perform a runway landing, just like the American Space Shuttle did.

Image of the cargo version of the Dream Chaser docked to the ISS. (SNC)

Since the Dream Chaser has never flown into orbit, Sierra Nevada said they would drop the spacecraft from a helicopter for it to perform a landing demonstration in the coming months.

Originally, the contract was intended to only have two recipients, but having three is more advantageous. “One of the considerations from an operational standpoint with ISS is it’s really important to have more than one supply chain, and multiple offerers means that at any given time, the sequence of flights could be one Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, Orbital ATK, so if you lose one, you have the ability for another one being right after it from a dissimilar redundancy, or a different supplier, so that’s a big help to us,” said Kirk Shireman, NASA’s International Space Station program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The contract provides a minimum of six flights per selectee, from 2019 to 2024, but “it is likely we will buy more than 18 flights, so we have three winners, and if we need more than 18 flights, then we’ll talk about what happens on those flights,” said Shireman.

The exact value of each recipient’s contract is not precisely known, but Orbital ATK said in a press conference that its six original flights are valued at $1.2 to $1.5 billion USD.

By Benjamin Vermette 

Landing of first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 on December 21, 2015. (spacex.com)

Third time’s a charm: SpaceX landed their rocket! 

After two failed attempts in January and April 2015, the private company SpaceX finally succeeded in landing their… rocket!

Owned by young billionaire Elon Musk, SpaceX rewrote history books on December 21st as they performed a vertical landing of the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket back at Cape Canaveral, about 10 minutes after it launched.

The second stage of the rocket (the upper part) carried 11 small communication satellites while the first stage (the bottom part) had 9 SpaceX Merlin engines to power them into orbit.

Once the first stage burn was over, the two stages cleanly separated while the bottom one turned around and started an engine burn to slow down as it was headed to the landing zone in Florida.

As it was trying to steady itself, the first stage deployed four landing struts and touched down safely at precisely 9 minutes 44 seconds after it departed: 

It may seem an easy thing to do, but don’t fool yourself: nothing in space is easy. As Miles O’Brien, science reporter, pointed out in an interview with CNN, “this is like balancing a broom pole on your nose, and only harder, lots harder.”

Still not convinced? Look at this video Musk took after the landing, it shows how huge the rocket is!

Minutes after the rocket landing, the second stage completed the mission: it successfully deployed the 11 communication satellites. What a wonderful comeback for SpaceX as their last mission on June 28 was a complete disaster: the rocket blew up in the sky and all the cargo was lost (Read my previous column for more details on this). 

Such a performance is a major breakthrough: it reduces launch cost while creating a 100% reusable rocket!

"Falcon 9 back in the hangar at Cape Canaveral." Musk said on Instagram on January 1st. "No damage found, ready to fire again."

We need private companies like SpaceX to lead the way in attempting risky and futuristic feats such as a vertical rocket landing: only then will modern spaceflight evolve.

Congrats SpaceX on such a milestone!

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Einstein’s theory of General Relativity turns 100… Relative to Earth

“Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's General theory of Relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.” - Professor Stephen Hawking

Basically everything you know about gravity is wrong – unless you’re a physicist, in which case I’m sorry for the offense.

In 1905, shortly after working as a patent clerk, the young Albert Einstein proposed a new theory: the Special theory of Relativity, or STR (not to confound with the General theory of Relativity).

Briefly, it proposes a connection between space and time, which translates into a breathtaking phenomenon. For instance, according to STR, the faster you go, the slower time passes (note that this was tested multiple times, and turns out to be true). Imagine: you’re in a spaceship, going 50% the speed of light (about 150 000 km/s) and you decide to go around our solar system for a while. After a certain amount of time (relative to you) you decide to come back on Earth for a drink (because you’re feeling it). However, when you come back, it is possible, depending on the amount of time you just spent at high speeds, that humanity is gone, or that the Earth is gone, or just that your grandkids are older than you. That’s simple STR fun facts.

However, gravity didn’t seem to apply to Einstein’s STR, so he decided to create a whole new theory which completely changed the world’s way of seeing space and time. 10 years later, on November 25th, 1915, Einstein published his final paper on his theory of General Relativity, just before lecturing his colleagues at the prestigious Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

The major breakthrough of General Relativity from a popular standpoint is that it defines gravity. We know Isaac Newton discovered, in the XVIIth century, a mysterious force: gravity. He wrote a couple mathematical laws describing this force (which is still used today) without further knowing what it was.

Einstein showed – I recall, 100 years ago – that space is something, like a fabric, and it can get bent, distorted, ripped apart, or compressed, by matter. And the bending of space is what causes gravity.

So forget everything you heard in high school (maybe not): two masses don’t attract each other. Masses bend space around them; think of it like a bowling ball on a mattress. What happens if you slide a golf ball next to the bowling ball on your mattress? It curves. Its path will change, like the Moon around the Earth, like the Earth around the Sun, and so on. Did its path bend because of a force of attraction between the two? No! It followed its natural motion.

You don’t stand on the Earth because you are attracted by it, you are just falling, and following your natural motion.  The Earth merely stops you from falling.

Anyway, just try to generally see it that way: matter tells space how to bend, and space tells matter how to move.

In sum, Einstein showed space can warp, causing gravity, and he also showed time can warp. So, Einstein’s theory of General Relativity just turned 100 relative to Earth. At another place in space, in may only be 1 year old!

Everything is… relative!

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1st mirror now installed on promising James Webb Space Telescope

With a primary mirror 6 times larger in area than Hubble’s, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be the biggest and most powerful astronomical observation-object of all times. With its full structure as big as a tennis court, it will be placed between the Earth and the Sun at a Lagrange point, 1.5 million km from Earth, as Hubble orbits at about 250 km of altitude. Currently in the process of construction, it has a ticket to launch in 2018. 

A full scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest space telescope to ever be built, was on display in Austin, Texas in the Southwest Interactive Festival. (wikipedia)

Recently, towards the end of November, NASA successfully installed the first of 18 mirrors on the JWST, initiating a major construction breakthrough.

The engineers of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland strategically used a robot arm to install a 1.3-meter hexagonal-shaped gold-plated mirror. Along with another 17 of its kind, this mirror will form what is called the primary mirror, which is 6.5-meter long (for comparison, this is 2.7 times larger than Hubble’s one). The full assembly of these mirrors should be completed towards the beginning of 2016. 

Assembly of the telescope's mirror in NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. (nasa.gov)

“After a tremendous amount of work by an incredibly dedicated team across the country, it is very exciting to start the primary mirror segment installation process," said Lee Feinberg, JWST optical telescope element manager at Goddard. "This starts the final assembly phase of the telescope."

The gold coating on the mirrors were chosen for its capacities to reflect infrared light, as the mirrors are primarily made of lightweight beryllium, chosen for its usefulness in extremely low temperatures.

The JWST is a major technological achievement, and will surely answer big cosmological questions, such as: how did the universe begin and evolve, how will it end (or will it end?), how did our solar system form and will help astronomers and scientists on the search for extraterrestrial life.

We, Canadians, can be proud: the Canadian Space Agency works with NASA and the international science community to make this project reality! 

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Japanese spacecraft finally enters Venus’ orbit 5 years after its 1st try

What a show of interplanetary mechanics-application and perseverance.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) finally succeeded – after a first try five years ago to the day, in December 2010 – to place its Akatsuki spacecraft in Venus’ orbit.

Back then, on its initial try on December 6 2010, Akatsuki – which means “Dawn” – brushed past Venus at high speeds on what was supposed to be a lovely orbital catch. JAXA’s engineers later determined that this failure was due to the probe’s main engine incapacity to generate power in reason of a cracked valve in the propulsion system.

The following five years was for Akatsuki somehow a bright “dark” period. In orbit around the Sun, it was depressively waiting for the mission’s officials to make a decision about its fate. But as you may have guessed, the team didn’t give up: they gave Akatsuki a second opportunity to complete its tasks.

On December 6, 2015 this time, the spacecraft relied on the firing of its minor thrusters to escape the Sun’s orbit and head towards the cloud-covered planet. And it worked! Even if the probe isn’t as close as previously planned to Earth’s sister, it will still be able to fulfill its scientific objectives – as long as it stays in good shape – such as studying the planet’s greenhouse gas-filled and toxic atmosphere.

It’s like being on a commercial flight and trying to land a second time 5 years after the first attempt! 

(Published December 4, 2015)

by Benjamin Vermette

Mars atmosphere mystery solved

Strong evidence suggests that there was a time when Mars was a nice little cozy planet, where rivers streamed next to a sea as large as Earth’s Arctic ocean. Temperatures were relatively warm and the atmosphere was dense enough to keep the water on its surface.  Mars seemed to have had suitable conditions for biological evolution to take place.

But how did the atmosphere go away? Why did Mars transition, from a planet with the capacity to harbour life, to the Mars we know today, which is cold and dry?

According to new results from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which has been studying the planet’s atmosphere since it started orbiting in September 2014, everything started about 3.7 billion years ago. It was during this time that Mars’ magnetic field “switched off”.

Solar wind, a stream of charged particles (mainly protons and electrons) coming from the Sun at speeds of millions of kilometres per hour, were no longer shielded when it passed the red planet due to the absence of a magnetic field. The wind thus gave the carbon dioxide and oxygen ions in the air sufficient energy to leave the atmosphere by generating an electric field in the upper atmosphere, perhaps causing auroras.

Solar winds displacing ions of Martian atmosphere. (NASA Scientific Visualization Studio) 

This video demonstrates this phenomenon more clearly. (ObservingSpace.com)

The current escape rate of the planet’s atmosphere is about 100 grams per second. However, during intense solar storms such as coronal mass ejection, which happened to Mars in March 2015, the escape rate can be amplified by a factor of 10 or 20, according to MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Emissions of ultraviolet light from the Sun also played a role in stripping off our neighbour planet’s atmosphere.

So the question remains: Is it true that less than 4 billion years ago, before this entire chaotic saga started, Mars had an environment suitable for life? The lack of evidence makes scientists struggle on this question, but at least it’s a reasonable question to ask, considering a recent study showed that Earth sheltered life as early as 4.1 billion years ago.

"Mars appears to have had a more clement environment for just as long as it took life to form on Earth," Jakosky said. "That doesn't tell us that life did form on Mars, but it says it's very plausible. It's at least not a stupid idea to ask whether it did."

The question now is whether the same can happen to Earth. Yes, indeed. And it is happening right now. Earth is actually losing atmospheric pressure, but don’t worry, it’s insignificant. What protects us from what happened on Mars is Earth’s strong magnetic field, which, due to our planet being bigger, is not inclined to disappear as it did on the red planet.

Thanks again, $671-million MAVEN, for answering our questions and doubts!

JOB ALERT: NASA is currently recruiting astronaut

Looking for a job? Are you American? Do you have a bachelor’s degree in engineering, biological science, physical science, mathematics or are you a medical doctor? NASA will be accepting astronaut-applications from December 14 through mid-February. Applications will be accepted at www.usajobs.gov. 

It is preferable to possess an advanced degree in such fields, along with at least three years of related professional experience, or at least 1000 hours of pilot-in-command time in a jet aircraft.

The chosen astronauts will be announced in mid-2017 after a complex selection process, which goes from intense physical challenges to IQ tests. They will need perfect vision (applicants with corrected vision through laser surgery are now accepted) and an extremely good blood pressure.

The selected astronaut class will possibly be the first one to step on Mars, but one thing is for sure: they will contribute to NASA’s journey to the red planet. “This next group of American space explorers will inspire the Mars generation to reach for new heights, and help us realize the goal of putting boot prints on the Red Planet,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

The new astronauts will be the first generation of space pioneers to fly in the Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and in the SpaceX Crew Dragon, both currently in the design and construction process.

But wait. Don’t ditch your job too quickly. According to WIRED, your chance of being selected, considering the projected number of applications, is less than 0.17%. It seems practically impossible, however, I don’t know any other jobs that come with an all-expenses paid voyage to space. 

Astronaut Scott Kelly’s recent activities during his “year in space”

Launched to the International Space Station (ISS) for an almost-year-long mission in space, American astronaut Scott Kelly has been busy in the past few weeks.  He, and his American colleague Kjell Lindgren who was also onboard the ISS, performed two seven-hour spacewalks recently.

On October 28, after gearing up their spacesuits, they: installed cables for a new docking mechanism, mounted a physics experiment and lubricated the station’s Canadarm2. One week later, on November 5, reconfiguring one of the ammonia cooling systems was their task.

Previously, towards the middle of October, Scott Kelly became the American with the most days passed in space, surpassing Mike Fincke at 382 days. By the time he comes back, he will have logged 500 days. That is pretty impressive, but not if he were Russian: cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov spent 400 consecutive days on Mir in 1994; and Gennedy Padalka, who launched alongside Kelly in March, lived in orbit for 879 days – and he said he wanted to break the thousand mark.

To celebrate, NASA made this amazing video:

Female-only moon mission experiment in Russia

In Russia, on October 28, a simulated flight to the moon started onboard an isolated mock spacecraft. Six Russian women, aged 22 to 34, began an eight-day experiment to study females’ behaviour in high-stress environments – such as during a spaceflight – as well as their ability to handle pressure. 

After more than a week under constant observation, on November 9, the girls were “unleashed” and set free to review the mission.

The ladies – Yelena Luchitskaya, Darya Komissarova, Polina Kuznetsova, Anna Kussmaul, Inna Nosikova, and Tatyana Shiguyeva – all had experiences and expertise in medicine, biomedical sciences or psychology. Their main mission checklist, excluding simulating a landing on the Moon, consisted of 10 scientific experiments which left them with about 1 hour and a half of free time per day to read, socialize, etc.

Experiment supervisor Sergei Ponomaryov explained one of the mission’s goals: “There’s never been an all-female crew on the ISS. We consider the future of space belongs equally to men and women and unfortunately we need to catch up a bit after a period when unfortunately there haven’t been too many women in space.”

Unfortunately, the women were asked sexist questions during the press conference prior to the start of the mission, such as “How will you deal without makeup for eight days?”.

58 female astronauts have flown in space – 49 come from NASA, 4 come from the Soviet/Russian space program.

NASA postpones second round of ISS commercial resupply contract

NASA has postponed for a third time its selection of two commercial cargo companies to be awarded the second round contract of resupplying the International Space Station (ISS). The first round contract, which will end in 2018, was awarded to SpaceX and Orbital ATK in 2008.

On November 5, the day when the agency was supposed to announce the victors, NASA assured the selection will be made before January 30, 2016. This delay is partly due to SpaceX CRS-7’s mishap on June 28, where the company and the whole resupply system were perturbed. Specific details about this mishap are expanded on in my previous article. 

The contract, dubbed CRS-2, is valued between $1 billion and $1.4 billion and is intended to begin service in 2018 and end in 2024.

Two companies will be selected between Orbital ATK, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and Lockheed Martin to deliver about 20,000 kg of cargo to the ISS per year. Note that Boeing, one of the original contenders, will no longer be running. NASA didn’t specify its choice of ignoring Boeing, but the company will now put its main focus on the commercial crew contract. Unofficial sources state that Lockheed Martin is out too, but this was not confirmed either by Lockheed or NASA.

SNC and its Dream Chaser spacecraft, which were bypassed by NASA for the first round of the ISS commercial resupply contract as well as for last year’s commercial crew contract, are still in the race and hope to be successful.

“We are still in the competition, but cannot make any statements beyond that yet as we are still in a open competition.” said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of SNC’s Space Systems.

The Dream Chaser spacecraft, first designed to be a human-carrying spaceship, is now being adapted to be unmanned for the possible future cargo missions to the ISS.

Sierra Nevada Corporation`s Dream Chaser spacecraft undergoing ground testing at NASA`s Edwards Air Force Base in California. (wikipedia)

5 companies originally battled ferociously for this contract. 4 remain. 2 will survive.

(Published on October 27, 2015)

By Benjamin Vermette

NASA Confirmed the Presence of Liquid Water on Mars’ Surface

On September 28, NASA called a major press conference to announce “a major science finding concerning Mars”.  

What it was in reality was that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera showed spectrum evidence of, to make long story short, salty water flowing on the red planet. Be aware that this flowing water is temporary, not persistent liquid water. But why?

It is thought that water from Mars’ atmosphere is “absorbed” by Mars’ surface, where it stocks until it is dense enough for it to flow. This process would be made possible because of the presence of a chemical called perchlorate in the Martian soil, substance with the capacities to hold water. But the thing is, Mars’ atmosphere is really thin – 1% the density of Earth’s – and it’s not filled with water either. Even this seems unlikely. However, it is the preferred hypothesis of the scientists, which admits the actual source is still a mystery.

And how about life on Mars? Does water mean life? Well scientists know that microbial life can survive similar conditions here on Earth, but as they say, knowledge of the conditions on Mars is still too limited to apply a reasonable comparison. We also know Mars hitherto had vast amounts of flowing water on its surface which was comparable to the size of the Arctic Ocean here on Earth. It seems to me that Mars had a better chance of harbouring life millions of years ago.

The question of life in Mars’ salty liquid surface water is a mystery, and it may still be for a while because NASA and other space agencies are not allowed to investigate it. "The problem [of exploring habitable regions of Mars] is not exploding rockets, shrinking budgets, political gamesmanship or fickle public support," Lee Billings writes for Scientific American. "Rather, the problem is life itself – specifically, the tenacity of Earthly microbes, and the potential fragility of Martian ones."

We wouldn’t want to kill microscopic Martians. Let them evolve. 

Stephen Hawking May Just Have Solved a Huge Black-hole Mystery

A black hole is a zone in space that has so much gravitational attraction that nothing – not even light – can escape, hence their names ‘black holes’.

However, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who already changed our way of seeing black holes, recently explained a new radical theory that might have solved the so-called ‘information paradox’. This would mean that there actually is a method to escape those cosmic giants.

When an object enters a black hole, it gets destroyed. Everybody agrees on that. However, what scientists have been arguing about is what the black hole does with the object’s information. That information could be, for instance, the number, arrangement and order of the object’s atoms, the object’s energy level, trajectory, etc. Einstein’s theory of General Relativity states that all information must be destroyed as it enters the cosmic hole but the modern theory of quantum mechanics claims it can’t.

The key to Hawking’s new theory dates way back to the 1970s, when Stephen Hawking said that black holes could actually emit something, which is information-less photons (think of photons as tiny “particles” of light). This emission is called ‘Hawking radiation’, and the physicist recently posed that Hawking radiation could “pick-up” information and move it beyond the black hole. But why hasn’t he thought of this before?

“I propose that the information is not stored in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but on its boundary, the event horizon,” he said at the end of August at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. The event horizon acts as a point of no return: once you pass this point, you are doomed to die in the black hole. He said that information of a 3D object that was destroyed is stored as a 2D hologram on the event horizon, phenomenon known as ‘super translation’. Thus the information gets carried by Hawking radiation: but it’s not all good news since the information is basically useless. "The information about ingoing particles is returned, but in a chaotic and useless form," he said. "For all practical purposes, the information is lost."

"The message of this lecture is that black holes aren’t as black as they are painted," Hawking said. "They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly come out in another universe."

Yep, you heard. The Professor said “the hole would need to be large, and if it was rotating, it might have a passage to another universe. But you couldn't come back to our universe.”

"So, although I'm keen on spaceflight, I'm not going to try that."

NASA SLS Completes Critical Design Review

“We’re building a rocket that’s going to take humans out further than we’ve ever been, deeper into the solar system than we’ve ever been, that’s a really exciting thing,” said Todd May, Deputy Center Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Officially, NASA has finished the design of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will hopefully carry astronauts to asteroids, maybe back to the Moon, and eventually to Mars. This milestone is seen as approval for the engineers to begin full-scale construction of the rocket, even though some parts are still being built.

The major change this design review brought to the initial SLS is that the 20-story core stage of the rocket will not be painted in white as previously thought, but orange, the natural color of the core stage foam insulation – the same rusty orange as the Space Shuttle’s external tank.

In consequence, this removes a lot of weight: “Not applying the paint will reduce the vehicle mass by potentially as much as 1,000 pounds, resulting in an increase in payload capacity,” said Shannon Ridinger, a NASA spokesperson. “This is similar to what was done for the external tank for the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle was originally painted white for the first two flights and later a technical study found painting to be unnecessary.”

SLS before design review. (Wikipedia)

SLS after design review. (NASA)

Note that the grey and orange stripes we can see on the solid rocket boosters may or may not be painted on the boosters for the first SLS test flight in 2018, NASA officials said. 

Powered by four liquid-hydrogen-fuelled RS-25 engines (which are basically former Space Shuttle engines) and two solid rocket boosters, SLS is expected to produce as much as 8.4 million pounds of thrust.

Its first test flight will be in 2018, as it will perform an uncrewed spaceflight to lunar orbit. A crewed mission is expected to launch in 2023, if everything goes well, on another flight to lunar orbit. 

Successful Heat Shield Test for Future Mars Exploration Vehicles

NASA is still testing and developing new technologies for future Mars’ crewed missions, and building a functional heat shield is one of them.

A heat shield is what keeps the capsule – carrying cargo or humans – from bursting into flames. In fact, when the capsule enters an atmosphere at high speeds (in this case Mars’ thin atmosphere), air in front of the speeding spacecraft gets compressed and thus creates heat, and eventually fire. Let me clear one misconception here—it’s not friction that creates fire—it’s compressed air. This is exactly what happens when you see a shooting star which, unfortunately, is not a star but rather air that gets compressed in front of the meteoroid coming at high speeds in our atmosphere. This compression creates heat and fire and thus the “shooting star” illusion. So, to protect the capsule from catching fire, a heat shield is required to insulate it and to deflect fire.

Modern rockets are designed with limited space to carry the spacecraft and its heat shield. However, NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, employs engineers that have a solution to counter this limitation: the Adaptive Deployable Entry and Placement Technology (ADEPT) heat shield. Deployed mechanically, ADEPT is made out of carbon fabric, which expands and opens like an umbrella.

At the beginning of October, Ames’s engineers successfully completed a heating simulation of an ADEPT model using temperatures similar to those it will face during a Mars’ re-entry. Reaching 3100 degrees Fahrenheit, the extremely hot airflow was deflected by the 21-inch diameter nozzle of the shield. The blue streaks you see are due to the decomposition of a resin installed on the surface of the shield to prevent degradation of the fabric joints.

Heating simulation testing ADEPT heat shield. (NASA)

Provided a couple of more years of development, ADEPT will probably protect astronauts as they enter Mars’ atmosphere for the first time. This is a key step toward NASA’s journey to the red planet.

Crewed Orion Capsule Launch Delayed to 2023

On September 14, NASA announced a two-year delay of its first launch of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carrying a crewed Orion spacecraft.

Actually, this is not NASA’s fault. The blame is on the American Congress, which decides where to direct the required funding.

The Space Launch System is the new rocket that NASA is trying to develop to send astronauts back to the Moon and eventually to Mars. However, had the Congress primarily funded the Commercial Crew program instead, which promotes private companies like SpaceX to send Americans in space, a test crewed launch would have been possible in 2015. However, this time Congress funded SLS and Orion – which will receive an additional $7 billion USD – so its first crewed mission is scheduled in 2023.

SLS and Orion are big and powerful, but expensive. Commercial crew is cheaper, but say, less controllable? They could both send humans to Mars, but in different time frames.

Congress must fairly fund what is best for NASA, and NASA must present a clear vision of its plan to go to Mars.

You don’t want ads getting on rockets or on spacesuits to maintain a wealthy space business.

In Video: NASA Crashes Plane for Test

Towards the end of August, NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia was the home of a third and last simulated crash of a Cessna 172 for safety’s sake.

Scientists and engineers at Langley dropped a 1974 airplane from a 30-meter height, which was carrying multiple cameras and sensors, as well as five Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs). ELTs are used to send signals to satellite in case of an emergency, to allow rescue teams to know the position of the crashed plane.

The test was conducted to improve ELTs, which have “to work in extreme circumstances of an airplane mishap,” NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Included in those extreme circumstances are the possibilities of excessive vibration, fire and impact damage. NASA research is designed to find practical ways to improve ELT system performance and robustness, giving rescue workers the best chance of saving lives."

The Search and Rescue Mission Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland financed this simulated drop on cement as well as the whole ELT research.

(Published on October 6, 2015)

By Benjamin Vermette

300-Year-Old Science Mystery Solved

Why is Iapetus half-light, half-dark? This question has been in the minds of scientists since 1671, the year when astronomer Giovanni Cassini discovered a new, faint moon orbiting along Saturn’s western side.

Cassini tried to follow this newly discovered satellite in its orbit, but the moon was completely invisible when it was on Saturn’s eastern side. The following year, the same happened. Cassini saw Iapetus on Saturn’s western side, but not on the eastern side. It was only in 1705, after more than three decades of telescope evolution and improvement, that Cassini was able to see the moon on both sides of Saturn, even though it was six times fainter on the eastern side than on the western side.

Why? In 2007, more than 300 years after Giovanni Cassini saw his first glance of Iapetus, the Cassini space probe arrived at Saturn and started to observe the mysterious moon from up close.  What it found there was spectacular. Iapetus was in fact two-toned, with one hemisphere about fifteen times more reflective than the other.

But again, why? Iapetus is not like Saturn’s other moons, as it orbits the gas planet twice as far out. 

Iapetus's orbit around Saturn. (wikipedia)

Even further from Saturn than Iapetus is Phoebe, a failed comet that was captured by Saturn’s gravity long ago. Phoebe has been emitting a stream of particles for a long time, and this stream has even formed a ring of particles around Saturn. This dust and ice ring has been found to be very large — in fact, large enough so that it ‘touches’ Iapetus’s orbit — and less dense than any other ring discovered so far. Phoebe and its ring particles circle Saturn clockwise, however, Iapetus revolves counter-clockwise. What this means is that Iapetus gets hit by some of the particles emanating from Phoebe’s ring, like bugs on a windshield. So one side of Iapetus is darkened by those black particles from Phoebe’s ring, while the other hemisphere stays clean.

In other words, the darkened side of Iapetus is hotter (because it’s black), than the bright side (which is colder). When ice hits the ‘black’ side, it boils down from its solid phase and evaporates back into outer space, which is why the dark side stays black. The ice can only survive on the ‘white’ side of Iapetus because no ice can stay and take shelter on the ‘black,’ hot hemisphere. And this is why there’s a bright side and a dark side.

If science wants an answer, it will get it, even 300 years later.

Evidence Of Alien Life Found On Comet 67P

On November 12, 2014, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Philae lander accomplished a first in humanity’s history: it performed a soft landing on the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a celestial body about 500 million kilometres from Earth. 

Photograph of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by Rosetta's Philae Lander. (wikipedia) 

And in late August 2015, scientists claimed that the Philae lander had made contact with alien life — at least in the view of two leading scientists in charge of this mission.

In fact, according to The Guardian, astronomer and astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe of the University of Cardiff and his colleague Max Willis believe that features on comet 67P are best explained by the hypothesis of alien life living under the crust. Calm down, it’s not an intelligent civilization with an evil plan to destroy humankind; it would just be microbial life.

Upon landing, the Philae lander confirmed the presence of an organic-laden black crust on 67P. Since all organic matter originates from once-living organisms, Wickramasinghe and Willis maintain that the matter in the crust came from some sort of alien microbial life.

To strengthen their arguments, Willis and Wickramasinghe declared that the presence of frozen lakes on the comet means that water — a prerequisite key for life — exists on 67P.

Unfortunately, the Philae lander is not equipped with special instruments to confirm the presence of microbes on its home comet; it was originally planned to do so, but this aspect got cancelled during the project’s approval phase.

At best, if these claims are right, they prove that we are not alone in the universe. However, if they are (and they are likely to be) wrong, they prove that there is organic matter on a random comet, and that it must have come from somewhere …

A Twice-In-A-Lifetime Event Occurred On September 27

A total lunar eclipse happens a couple of times per year. But a lunar eclipse combined with a supermoon is much more unique, and this is what we call a Super Blood Moon.

First of all, what is a lunar eclipse?

As you may know, the Earth revolves around the Sun while the moon revolves around the Earth. A total lunar eclipse is when the Earth gets between the Sun and the Moon, thereby creating a shadow over the Moon and giving the Moon a little red tint. This happens two or three times a year.

What’s the difference with a solar eclipse? This is when the Moon gets between the Earth and the Sun, causing a shadow to move over the Sun in daytime here on Earth. These are much more unusual.

And what is a supermoon?

The Moon goes around the Earth in an elliptical orbit. Logically, this causes the Moon to sometimes be at its most distant point from the Earth (apogee) and sometimes at its closest point (perigee). A supermoon occurs when the Moon is at its perigee (closest to us) so it appears to us up to 14% larger in diameter. Surprisingly, the difference in size is barely noticeable to the naked eye.

However, when you see a very large moon on the horizon, it’s probably not a supermoon as it only appears larger due to an optical illusion.

On September 27, a total lunar eclipse occurred when the Moon was a supermoon. Combined, these two phenomena are so rare they only took place 5 times since 1900, the last time being in 1982.  

Super Blood Moon captured from Upton, Merseyside. (wikipedia)

I hope you didn’t miss the show, because the next time a Super Blood Moon will happen will be in 2033.

September Was The Month When The World Didn’t End

Brace yourselves brave humans, because between September 22, 2015, and September 28, 2015, a massive asteroid will violently hit our home planet and destroy life as we know it! But wait … I’m still alive! We’re still alive! We survived!  

Once again, an online community of biblical conspiracy theorists claimed our end. But this time people went so crazy that NASA needed to call a press conference to clarify everything.

In fact, the self-proclaimed prophet Reverend Efrain Rodriguez had, since 2010, constantly warned NASA about an upcoming deadly asteroid. Rodriguez said that a message from God revealed to him the imminent apocalypse where an asteroid would have hit the ocean near Puerto Rico and cause a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing everyone in North and South Americas.

Rodriguez also claimed that President Obama was briefed on the subject and that a major intervention to protect the "rich and powerful" had been made.

A meeting between the French foreign minister and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in May 2014 would also have been a proof of the September 2015 disaster: "We have 500 days to avoid climate chaos. And I know that President Obama and John Kerry himself are committed on this subject and I’m sure that with them, with a lot of other friends, we shall be able to reach success on this very important matter," said the French foreign minister.

And of course, conspiracy theorists exploited this statement as far as they could; especially on the online blog called Coercian Code – Dark Times Upon Us, which declared: “This was the public announcement to the world of what is coming on September 24 2015, the end of the 500 day count, when the Abyss will open and the days of darkness will begin.”

Without surprise, we "survived" this prophetic announcement, as we did in 2000 and in 2012.

Fools are everywhere. Fortunately, science is too, to set things right from wrong.

New Horizons’ Historic Flyby

(Published on September 18, 2016)

By Benjamin Vermette

History has been made on July 14, 2015. For the first time ever in humanity’s history, a man-made spacecraft flew through the dark and cold territory of the only major celestial object at the very edge of our solar system, the dwarf planet Pluto. At their farthest points, Pluto is 7.5 billion kilometers from Earth which means light, which travels at roughly 300 000 kilometers per second, needs about seven hours to make a single Earth-Pluto trip, a trip that took the NASA’s New Horizons probe more than nine years (and this is still the fastest space-probe ever built).

An artist's depiction of the New Horizons' proximity to Pluto and Charon. (wikipedia)

New Horizons: An Engineering Beauty

Launched on January 19, 2006, the New Horizons probe took off with one main objective in mind: rewriting history books. Mapping the surface and composition of Pluto and Charon (Pluto’s biggest moon), looking for rings and additional moons around Pluto, searching for an atmosphere on Charon and characterizing the neutral atmosphere of Pluto and its escape rate were only secondary objectives. About nine hours after launch, it reached the Moon’s orbit, a feature that took the Apollo modules more than three and a half days. It was just beginning its journey to the dwarf-planet Pluto.

To get to the edge of the solar system, New Horizons gathered unique systems designed by renowned engineers:

·         This grand-piano-sized probe uses 16 small hydrazine-fuel thrusters mounted around the spacecraft. The thrusters were designed in different sizes so the Pluto-explorer craft could perform major manoeuvres just as well as small ones;

·         X-band communications system was equipped on New Horizons so it could relay science data and status reports to Earth in exchange of commands based on precise radiometric tracking;

·         A single radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) is enough to provide, on average, the 230 watts needed for the electrical systems onboard the space-probe to get power. The RTG gets power through the natural process of radioactive decay of plutonium dioxide. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Department of Energy provided New Horizons 24 pounds of plutonium dioxide just before launch.

The NASA New Horizons spacecraft is literally a combination of the most high-end technologies for every system needed. That’s why it’s surprising when you learn the total cost was only $700 million. It’s the most cost-effective space machine ever built. New Horizons is the future.

New Horizons’ Journey, From A To Z

On September 21, 2006, only about seven months after a Mars flyby, New Horizons took the first images of Pluto at a distance of roughly 4,200,000,000 km, or 28.07 Astronomical Units, which means 28.07 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun. The pictures were taken using the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), a (very) long-distance camera critical for tracking distant targets to help specialists manoeuvre the probe through the Kuiper belt objects.

LORRI also took a picture of Jupiter on September 6, 2006, before the whole New Horizons spacecraft received a gravity assist from the gas giant, with its closest approach being on February 28, 2007. Using Jupiter’s gravity, New Horizons saw its speed increased by 23 km/s (83,000 km/h). That meant the probe would arrive three years earlier to Pluto.

This wonderful technological achievement, otherwise called New Horizons, spent most of the rest of its journey in hibernation mode, waiting for the big day, July 14, 2015.

At 11:49:57 a.m. UTC on a Tuesday, July 14 2015, a gold-coloured space-exploring machine built by man brushed past the frontier of our solar system, more precisely at 12,500 kilometers above Pluto’s surface. After nine and a half years of hard work and patience, New Horizons was there!

This historical flyby gathered a lot of scientific data; some of which is still classified by NASA (no, there are no aliens on Pluto), other data that is still being processed by New Horizons and will be sent home soon, and breathtaking close-up Pluto pictures.  

Close up photo of Pluto's surface captured by the New Horizons spacecraft. (nasa.gov)

This is one of the close-up pictures of Pluto’s surface, and guess what this image brought? Questions! 11,000-foot icy mountains on Pluto: How? According to NASA geologists, they formed 100 million years ago. This makes them the youngest mountains in the solar system! Ah, science! Numerous pictures were taken, of Pluto, Charon and its other moons. You can find them on the NASA website. (nasa.gov) 

Cool. So, New Horizons flew by Pluto. Where is it going next?

On August 28, 2015, the NASA’s New Horizons’ team announced their jewel’s next destination. Nearly a billion and a half kilometers beyond Pluto lies a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) dubbed 2014 MU. It’s kind of an ancient KBO that is believed to have formed where it orbits right now. New Horizons is expected to reach its new target on January 1, 2019.

Is Pluto A Planet?

The good old debate persists, after its first apparition on September 13, 2006, when Pluto was demoted to a ‘dwarf-planet’. There are three basic criteria given by the International Astronomical Union that a celestial object, mainly from our solar system, must meet to earn the official title of ‘planet’:

1.     The object must be in orbit around the Sun. Pluto is, no doubt;

2.     The object’s gravity must be massive enough to put it in a shape of hydrostatic equilibrium. Basically, this means the object is symmetrically rounded into a spheroid shape, which means, obviously, Pluto meets the second criterion as well;

3.     The object must have cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. That means the planet must be gravitationally dominant of its orbital zone. Pluto fails that third criterion. It isn’t gravitationally dominant. Pluto is only 0.07 times more massive than the mass of the objects in its orbit (Earth is 1.7 million times the mass of the objects in its orbit, which includes the Moon, the Space Station, etc.).This is why it was demoted.

However, a lot of definitions of planet exists, and a lot of people think Pluto should be given back its status of a planet because it meets all of the criteria of their favourite planet definition. Since the Pluto flyby on July 14, the debate is more intense than ever. As a matter of fact, the debate became so explosively acute that a petition is out to declare Pluto a planet again:

Wait! Before signing the petition, remember: if Pluto falls out of its orbit and falls towards the Sun, its ice will melt and it will form a tail which is strange behaviour for a planet. (Friendly reminder: it’s a comet’s behaviour.)

Our solar system is like any other solar system in the galaxy, and our galaxy is like any other galaxy in the Universe. But for us, it’s special. Our solar system is a vast and convoluted cosmic ocean, the only one which, as far as we know, has the right capacities to harbour life, and humanity has relatively just started to sail on it. Yet, we have discovered so many astonishing facts about it that our only motivation to keep navigating its interplanetary vacuum is our quest for knowledge; nothing about patriotic pride and nothing about a certain ‘space race’. Only since July 14, can we declare, as an intelligent civilization in being, that every major island of our own cosmic ocean has been explored, and this is something to be proud of.