Volume 6 • Issue 1

Winter 2011–2012

Space Department Newsletter

J O H N S H O P K I N S U N I V E R S I T Y•Applied Physics Laboratory

7 Years, 5 Billion Miles, 6 Planetary Flybys, and 15 Trips Around the Sun: APL’s MESSENGER Is the First Mercury OrbiterThe Orbit Insertion Event—March 17, 2011APL’s Kossiakoff Center truly was abuzz on March 17, 2011, as hundreds of APL staff, family, and MESSENGER mission enthusiasts gathered to watch the Space Department make history as MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Mercury. At 8:45 p.m. on March 17, the probe’s thrusters fired for 15 min-utes, slowing the spacecraft by 1,929 miles per hour and easing it into an eccentric orbit about the planet closest to the Sun. Almost 7 years of orbital maneuvers and flybys were rewarded with a successful main engine burn that final-ized MESSENGER’s orbit around Mercury.

The historic Mercury encounter was covered during a 2-hour APL-hosted and -produced pro-gram held at the Kossiakoff Center and broad-cast live on the Web and on NASA Television. “This mission will continue to revolutionize our understanding of Mercury during the coming year,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was standing by in MESSENGER mission control as engineers received telemetry data confirming orbit insertion.

By 9:10 p.m. EDT, engineers in the MESSENGER Mission Operations Center at APL received the anticipated radiometric signals confirming nominal burn shutdown and successful inser-tion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the planet Mercury.

The spacecraft rotated back toward the Earth by 9:45 p.m. EDT and started transmitting data. Upon review of these data, the engineering

and operations teams confirmed that the burn executed nominally with all subsystems report-ing a clean burn and no logged errors.

“Achieving Mercury orbit was by far the biggest milestone since MESSENGER was launched more than six and a half years ago,” said MESSENGER Project Manager Peter Bedini, of APL. “This accomplishment is the fruit of a tremendous amount of labor on the part of the navigation, guidance-and-control, and mission operations teams, who shepherded the space-craft through its 4.9-billion-mile [7.9-billion-kilometer] journey.”

The webcast was structured to be open to the global public interested in MESSENGER, Mercury, and NASA’s planetary missions. The program’s hosts, Michael Buckley of APL and Michael Paul of Penn State, spoke with several guests, including the project scientist, the payload manager, and the program area manager, who provided an overview of MESSENGER’s

Continued on page 4

2 Executive’s Note

2 Upcoming Events

3 NASA Interns

3 Powerful Anniversary

4 More MESSENGER

6 RBSP

8 Calendar

Inside

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Volume 6 • Issue 1

J O H N S H O P K I N S U N I V E R S I T Y•Applied Physics Laboratory

As 2012 begins, the Space Department is very busy managing space-craft developments, operating missions throughout the solar system, and conducting cutting-edge scientific research. We are looking forward to the challenges of the coming year and are prepared to execute all of our programs successfully for our sponsors.

One of our biggest milestones in 2011 occurred on March 17, 2011 (EDT), when the MESSENGER spacecraft completed orbit insertion after almost 7 years of cruise and orbital insertion maneuvers. The science data taken from orbit have been featured in NASA press conferences as well as science papers for the journals Nature and Science featuring major scientific discoveries. Mercury continues to surprise us as MESSENGER reveals her many mysteries.

The Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission is in an intensive period of integration and test (I&T) in preparation for thermal vacuum testing which will begin soon. The twin spacecraft are undergoing instrument I&T and other qualification tests on a daily basis. Also, the Multimission Bus Demonstration (MBD) satellite, our smallest spacecraft ever, has finished its qualification processes and is waiting for delivery to the launch vehicle.

In June, the 9th IAA Low-Cost Planetary Missions Conference was held in APL’s Kossiakoff Center. The conference, held every other year, is designed to bring together practitioners, scientists, and technologists in the field of planetary missions to determine targets of opportunity, discuss methods, and analyze problems and failures to create a community of practice for successful low-cost planetary missions. The conference was successfully conducted with more than 100 papers and posters presented and nearly 200 attendees.

Juno launched on Aug. 5 with APL’s Jupiter Energetic-Particle Detector Instrument (JEDI) to observe Jupiter and measure its radiation environment. While it was not considered an affordable selection in the Planetary Decadal survey, the Europa mission concept, a joint mission with APL and JPL, and the orbiter and flyby elements were presented at the Outer Planets Advisory Group (OPAG) meeting in October and were well received.

Solar Probe Plus (SPP) continues to make excellent technical progress and passed its mission design review in November. The next step is KDP-B, and the SPP team is hard at work completing the administrative and technical requirements for Phase B. Launch of SPP is scheduled for no later than 2018.

Our newest hardware will never fly in space, but Building 200, the new home for the Space Department, is now fully furnished and occupied. Most staff members have been in their offices for several months, and the labs are functional. Nearly 75% of Space Department staff are now co-located; for most, this will be the first

time they will be together under one roof with all of their colleagues. This building is an excellent step forward in encouraging communi-cation, innovation, and cross-business-area collaboration.

Thank you for your hard work during this incredible year. Please excuse the delay with this publication, but the last year has been exceptionally busy and highly successful. I would also like to welcome and congratulate Steve Arnold on his appointment as the Deputy Business Area Executive for Civilian Space.

Kurt Lindstrom Civilian Space Business Area Executive

Executive’s Note

Mission Assurance Improvement Workshop APL will host the annual invitation-only U.S. Space Enterprise Mission Assurance Improvement Workshop (MAIW) in May 2012. This workshop focuses on documenting best practices and crafting common approaches to mission assurance for the nation’s space program. APL’s Ron Perison and LaTosha Hill serve as co-chairs of the program and arrangements committees, respectively.

Richard Day, Space Department chief of mission assurance, serves as co-chair of the MAIW, which includes senior government execu-tives and mission assurance leaders from the major aerospace prime contractors. “APL offers a vital and unique perspective based on our end-to-end mission capability and core values of comprehensive systems engineering and risk-based mission assurance,” Day says. For more information, contact Richard.Day@jhuapl.edu.

TIMED’s 10th Anniversary Following a Dec. 7, 2001, launch, the TIMED mission has provided a global set of observations on our mesosphere and lower ther-mosphere/ionosphere (MLTI). After 10 years on orbit, the science data from TIMED include observations of the atmosphere through almost an entire solar cycle. A conference on the observations and conclusions from TIMED is being planned for later this year; for more information, please contact either Sam.Yee@jhuapl.edu or Elsayed.Talaat@jhuapl.edu.

Upcoming Events

3Space Depar tment Newslet ter

Winter 2011–2012

A Powerful AnniversaryThis past summer marked the 50th anniversary of nuclear spaceflight—an achievement launched by Laboratory engineers. On June 29, 1961, the APL-built Transit 4A experimental navigation satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The spacecraft contained the first nuclear power source used in a satellite, a grapefruit-sized radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) called the SNAP-3, or System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power, that provided electricity for 4A’s instruments and two of its four transmitters.

NASA, APL, and the Department of Energy marked the anniversary with a June 29, 2011, ceremony at the National Air and Space Museum, during which APL retirees John Dassoulas and Jim Hagan were honored for their contributions to the development, use, and launch safety of space nuclear power sources.

The legacy continues in one of APL’s latest spacecraft, New Horizons, which launched in 2006 and is headed for a 2015 flight past Pluto with an RTG powering its instruments and systems.

Preparing Transit 4A for its 1961 launch are (clockwise from top) Jim Smola, Jack Jones, Dave Moss, Bill Miles, Bob Strider, and Al Gardner.

Education and Public Outreach

Interns from Many Backgrounds Make One Successful ProgramAPL’s summer internship program plays an integral role in cultivating the talents of students interested in science and space. This past summer, the Space Department hosted 21 interns under the NASA/APL Internship Program. This 10-week program, now entering its ninth year, has been productive for both students and Space Department mentors. Interns in this program are undergraduate or graduate students from universities across the country. Internship projects are usually in engineering, science, and computer science.

The Space Department Education and Public Outreach Office manages this program and also provides on-site/off-site tours, brown bag talks, and other resources to help make the summer a success. Internship program mentors create a well-defined project for students and make time to provide a meaningful mentor–intern experience. In addition to the stipend students receive, housing at the University of Maryland is offered at no additional cost to students.

At the conclusion of the summer, each student prepares a presentation regarding his or her summer project. Topics of this year’s presentations ranged from spacecraft integration and testing to geological investigation of Mercury.

Because the program reaches out to students from many backgrounds and universities, it produces great interns. “This year’s interns were an exemplary group of young people, as demonstrated by the contributions they made in their work assignments,” said Linda Butler, when asked about the students in this past summer’s program. She also looks forward to seeing some of them back at APL after graduation to begin their professional careers.

Recruiting for the 2012 NASA/APL Internship Program is under way. More information is available at www.APLapp.com.

APL

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Volume 6 • Issue 1

J O H N S H O P K I N S U N I V E R S I T Y•Applied Physics Laboratory

accomplishments and challenges already met in anticipation of the successful orbit insertion burn. Although actual viewership of a webcast is hard to determine, conservative estimates indicate that more than 80,000 viewers tuned in to observe this historic event.

Launched in 2004, MESSENGER is a mission of extremes: it was built to survive roasting and cooling temperatures that vary by almost 800°F. Such extremes must be endured to gain entry into the innermost planet of the solar system, Mercury. Getting there afford-ably is yet another challenge that MESSENGER, the Discovery-class mission to explore Mercury, has undertaken in its almost 7-year journey to our innermost planet.

On the Web: Download the webcast recording of the orbit insertion event at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_orbit.html.

Mercury Science Campaign Hits Full StrideAfter orbit insertion, MESSENGER has provided tens of thousands of images showing detailed planetary features, giving scientists important clues to Mercury’s origin and its geological history. Since the flybys of Mariner 10 in 1974, Mercury’s surface had been seen only at comparatively low resolution, but it is now in sharper focus.

The spacecraft also has collected extensive measurements of the chemical composition of Mercury’s surface and topography and gathered global observations of the planet’s magnetic field. Data now confirm that bursts of energetic particles in Mercury’s magne-tosphere are a continuing product of the interaction of Mercury’s magnetic field with the solar wind.

“We are assembling a global overview of the nature and workings of Mercury for the first time,” said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “Many of our earlier ideas are being cast aside as new observations lead to new

insights. Our primary mission has another 3 Mercury years to run, and we can expect more surprises as our solar system’s innermost planet reveals its long-held secrets.”

Flyby images of Mercury had detected bright, patchy deposits on some crater floors. Without high-resolution images to obtain a closer look, these features remained only a curiosity. Detailed images have revealed these patchy deposits to be clusters of rimless, irregular pits varying in size from several hundred feet to a few miles wide. These pits are often surrounded by diffuse halos of more reflective material and are found on central peaks, peak rings, and rims of craters.

MESSENGER Is First Mercury Orbiter, continued from page 1

Left: APL Director Ralph Semmel, MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon (Carnegie Institution of Washington), NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, and APL Space Department Head John Sommerer discuss MESSENGER’s sunshade.

Below: Audience at the Kossiakoff Center during the webcast.

APL

APL

“The etched appearance of these landforms is unlike anything we’ve seen before on Mercury or the Moon,” said Brett Denevi, an APL staff scientist and a member of the MESSENGER imaging team. “We are still debating their origin, but they appear to be relatively young and may suggest a more abundant than expected volatile component in Mercury’s crust.”

5Space Depar tment Newslet ter

Winter 2011–2012

MESSENGER’s Program Manager Peter Bedini (APL), Principal Investigator Sean Solomon (Carnegie Institution of Washington), and moderator Mike Buckley (APL) relax and discuss the successful orbit insertion of the spacecraft during the webcast on March 17, 2011.

APL

Instruments designed to measure the quantity of key chemical elements on Mercury have made several important discoveries since the orbital mission began. Elemental ratios averaged over large areas of the planet’s surface show that Mercury’s surface differs markedly in composition from that of the Moon.

Substantial amounts of sulfur have been seen on Mercury’s surface, lending support to prior ground-based telescopic observations that sulfide minerals are present. This discovery suggests that the original building blocks from which Mercury formed may have been less oxidized than those that formed the other terrestrial planets. The result also hints that sulfur-containing gases may have contributed to past explosive volcanic activity on Mercury.

Two decades ago, Earth-based radar images showed deposits thought to consist of water ice and perhaps other ices near Mercury’s north and south poles. These deposits are preserved on the cold, permanently shadowed floors of high-latitude impact craters. MESSENGER is testing this idea by measuring the floor depths of craters near Mercury’s north pole. The craters hosting polar deposits appear to be deep enough to be consistent with the idea that those deposits are in permanently shadowed areas.

During Mariner 10’s Mercury flybys in 1974, bursts of energetic particles were observed in the planet’s Earth-like magnetosphere. Four bursts of particles were observed on that flyby. MESSENGER scientists were puzzled that no similar strong events were detected during any of its three flybys of the planet in 2008 and 2009. But now that the spacecraft is in near-polar orbit around Mercury, energetic events are being seen regularly.

MESSENGER Rounds Out a Successful YearOn Nov. 9, 2011, NASA announced that it would extend the mission for an additional year of orbital operations at Mercury beyond the planned end of the primary mission in March 2012. Days later, the MESSENGER spacecraft was named among the “Best of What’s New” in 2011 by Popular Science magazine editors. “It has been an extremely busy yet fulfilling year for the MESSENGER team,” says MESSENGER Project Manager Peter Bedini. “The orbital science campaign has validated the innovative planning approach, and the spacecraft’s instruments are returning science that has been compel-ling and, at times, surprising. Insights derived from these early results have guided the team to identify new objectives on which to focus in the additional year of orbital operations.”

During the extended mission, the probe will spend more time close to the planet than during the primary mission. Scientists hope the extra time in a lower orbit will allow them to address questions about the sources of surface volatiles on Mercury, how late volca-nism persisted into Mercury’s history, and the origin of Mercury’s energetic electrons.

MESSENGER’s Popular Science award was in the Aviation and Space category. Each year, the magazine’s editors review thousands of products in search of the top 100 technical innovations in 11 categories. The winners are included in the December issue of Popular Science; the “Best of What’s New” edition has been the magazine’s most widely read issue since the feature debuted in 1987. Discover Magazine featured MESSENGER at number 25 on its top 100 stories of 2011.

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Volume 6 • Issue 1

J O H N S H O P K I N S U N I V E R S I T Y•Applied Physics Laboratory

APL’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes Spacecraft Enter Environmental TestingTwin Spacecraft Will Explore Sun’s Influence on Earth NASA’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), the twin spacecraft being built and tested at APL, are midway through a challenging series of tests designed to certify their readiness for the August 2012 launch and 2-year mission in Earth’s orbit. Starting in December 2011, RBSP embarked on a space environment test campaign that will last into March 2012. The RBSP team will subject the spacecraft to physical simulations of the stresses of launch and harshness of space opera-tions, but in a controlled test facility where engineers can monitor each spacecraft’s environmental conditions.

“These are complex spacecraft, each with five very sensitive scientific instruments onboard,” says Jim Stratton, mission systems engineer for RBSP at APL. “The environmental tests are designed to really subject the spacecraft and systems to realistic, challenging condi-tions and make sure they are ready to fly.”

The acoustic test will simulate the noises generated during launch and the beginning of supersonic travel, when the launch vehicle passes through the sound barrier (approximately 770 miles per hour). These sounds, which can reach a maximum of 134 decibels, will be duplicated by a specialized speaker system that is controlled via computer to match the sonic profiles of launch and supersonic barrier breakthrough. The RBSP satellites will be mated together and placed at the center of a circular wall of powerful loudspeakers for this test.

The RBSP satellites have undergone a series of vibration tests. The spacecraft were mated together and placed on a special table that

Left: RBSP solar arrays are double checked prior to undergoing a vibration test in the clean room.

Right: RBSP undergoing spin balance test at APL.

APL

APL

7Space Depar tment Newslet ter

Winter 2011–2012

shook them to simulate the intense physical effects of launch and to make sure the probes’ systems and electronics are secure and will operate post-launch.

In January 2012, the spacecraft will undergo an electromagnetic compatibility and interference test. All of the internal systems are turned on without any external power or grounding to verify that there are no electronic issues and that RBSP can successfully perform its science-gathering mission.

RBSP’s most intense test, thermal vacuum cycling, begins at APL’s test chambers in February. For 5 weeks, the craft will endure heating and cooling cycles in a vacuum environment; during the lengthy testing, RBSP will also undergo a 10-day-long mission simulation. In May 2012, the completed RBSP spacecraft are scheduled to leave APL and travel south. “The next 6 months are all about continuing the tremendous efforts of the outstanding team we have assembled for this mission,” says Rick Fitzgerald, program manager for RBSP at APL, “and getting ready to ship the spacecraft to Florida.”

RBSP is scheduled for launch no earlier than Aug. 15, 2012, from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The coordinated measurements of the two RBSP spacecraft will advance our understanding of space weather and the Sun’s influence on the Earth and near-Earth space by probing the planet’s radiation belts, which affect space weather and spacecraft operations.

APL built the RBSP spacecraft for NASA and manages the mission. The RBSP mission is part of NASA’s Living With a Star program, guided by the Heliophysics Division of the NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. The program explores fundamental processes that operate throughout the solar system, in particular those that generate hazardous space weather effects near Earth and phenomena that could affect solar system exploration. Living With a Star is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Learn more about RBSP, and see photos and videos of space environment testing, at http://rbsp.jhuapl.edu.

APL

APL

As has been reported elsewhere, APL’s Civilian Space Business Area lost our highly capable program area manager, Andy Dantzler, suddenly on Oct. 13, 2011. Andy had been with APL for 5 years, and we were very fortunate to have his expertise, humor, patience, and competence at work for us.

After Andy earned his bachelor’s degree in astronomy and physics in 1984 from the University of Maryland, College Park, he went to work as an optical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Mr. Dantzler was the manager of the Earth Observing System and the Landsat 7 instrument manager. He also was assistant chief of the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics and later became director of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

In 2006, he joined APL’s Civilian Space Business Area, where he led the Living With a Star missions, which explored how the Sun’s high-energy rays and energetic particles can generate hazardous space weather effects near the Earth and affect satellite operations, as well as the Earth’s climate.

In 2008, Andy became the first project manager for the Solar Probe Plus program, which will take a probe closer to the Sun than any previous mission has done. He was promoted in 2009 to APL’s program area manager for Civilian Space, a job in which he oversaw program management for all Civilian Space programs at APL, including the MESSENGER mission now in orbit about Mercury and the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Sensei Dantzler was also a third-degree black belt in Judo and was a member of the United States Judo Association. He was a nation-ally certified coach and referee.

Andy is survived by his wife of 17 years, the former Erin E. O’Connor; two sons, Nicholas A. Dantzler and Wesley S. Dantzler, both of Sykesville; a daughter, Melanie M. Celano; his father and stepmother, Taft and Gladys Dantzler of Blacksburg, Va.; his mother, Barbara Surrett Dantzler of Rockville; two brothers, Stephen Dantzler of Rockville and Mark Dantzler of Damascus; two sisters, Roane Dantzler of Rockville and Kathryn Payne of Harpers Ferry, W.Va.; and many nieces and nephews.

In Memoriam

The Space Department Newsletter Explorer is published quarterly.The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 11100 Johns Hopkins Road Laurel, Maryland 20723-6099 Washington (240) 228-5000 Baltimore (443) 778-5000

www.jhuapl.edu and http://civspace.jhuapl.edu

Send updates and inquiries to: Margaret.Simon@jhuapl.edu

John Sommerer, Space Department Head

Kurt Lindstrom, Civilian Space Business Area Executive

Steve Arnold, Deputy Civilian Space Business Area Executive

Joseph Suter, National Security Space Business Area Executive

Dave Watson, Deputy National Security Space Business Area Executive

Cheryl Reed, Civilian Space Program Development Manager

Margaret Simon, Communications Manager and Explorer Manager

Mike Buckley, Senior Writer

Paulette Campbell, Contributing Writer

LaTosha Hill, Contributing Writer

Peggy Moore, Lead Editor

Anne King, Copy Editor

Kelly Livieratos, Copy Editor

Magda Saina, Design Director

Patrice Zurvalec, Layout

Steve Gribben, Illustrator

Ed Whitman, Photographer

Lee Hobson, Photographer

Nick Brezzell, Asst. Photographer

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Calendar March 19–23, 2012 Booth at LPSC The Woodlands, Texas

April 16–19, 2012 National Space Symposium Colorado Springs, Colo.

May 9–10, 2012 U.S. Space Program Mission Assurance Improvement Workshop: Facilitate Mission Success Through Knowledge Sharing APL, Laurel, Md.

For updated news, visit our website: http://civspace.jhuapl.edu