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Space News Update — May 16, 2014 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

Telecom satellite lost after Proton launch failure

Story 2:

Sun’s Sibling Found

Story 3:

Rogozin threatens engine restrictions, ISS lifetime extension

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. Telecom satellite lost after Proton launch failure

An advanced Russian communications satellite was destroyed Thursday when its Proton rocket booster failed minutes after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Express AM4R spacecraft, worth approximately $200 million, was supposed to begin a 15-year mission beaming radio, television, broadband Internet and telephone services across Russia and neighboring countries.

But a few minutes after the 12,720-pound (5,770-kilogram) Express AM4R satellite launched from Baikonur, Russia's primary space base, its Proton rocket ran into a problem.

The failure occurred during the third stage of the Proton's ascent into orbit, according to a statement by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, the Moscow-based manufacturer of the Proton launcher.

An announcer declared an emergency during a live webcast of the launch, and Khrunichev's statement also described the incident as an "emergency situation."

Khrunichev said experts were analyzing telemetry to determine the cause of the failure.

A report by Interfax said debris from the rocket may have fallen the Altai or Amur regions of Russia's Far East.

Spewing a brilliant flame of blue exhaust, the 19-story Proton rocket lifted off at 2142 GMT (5:42 p.m. EDT) to start a nine-hour flight to deploy the powerful European-built Express AM4R telecommunications satellite for Russian government and commercial customers.

The launch was at 3:42 a.m. local time at Baikonur.

The hydrazine-fueled rocket disappeared from the view of a ground-based tracking camera a few minutes later, with no visible signs of any trouble.

But a problem occurred about 545 seconds, or about 9 minutes, after liftoff, according to a report by the semi-official Itar-Tass news agency.

Another report by the Interfax media service said the time of the failure was about 500 seconds after launch.

Both of the times reported for the anomaly occurred during the firing of the Proton rocket's third stage, which is powered by an RD-0213 main engine generating 131,000 pounds of thrust. A four-nozzle vernier steering engine is also mounted on the third stage to keep the rocket pointed in the right direction.

The rocket's guidance, navigation and control system is a triple-redundant digital avionics package on the third stage.

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Thursday's mishap marks the fifth launch failure of the Proton rocket or its Breeze M upper stage in 36 flights since December 2010. Another Proton/Breeze M mission put the Russian Yamal 402 communications satellite in the wrong orbit, but the spacecraft was able to boot itself to the correct location.

The string of mishaps has brought focus on the quality control procedures of Khrunichev and its suppliers, with the Russian space contrator announcing expanded inspections, video monitoring in its factories and other measures to bolster the Proton's reliability.

Thursday's launch was the 397th Proton mission since 1965. Overall, the rocket has a success record matching the world's leading satellite launchers.

Officials said Proton rockets would likely be grounded until investigators find the cause of Thursday's failure and issue corrective recommendations. After a Proton rocket veered out of control moments after a launch in July 2013, an inquiry found technicians installed accelerometers in the rocket upside down, resulting in a two-month grounding of the Proton vehicle.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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2. Sun’s Sibling Found

Stars like our Sun form in groups. We see evidence for this throughout the Milky Way, most famously in the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion Nebula. But after stars begin to emit their nascent light, their gravitational interactions with other nearby "siblings" send them out from their birth cluster and into the expanses of our galaxy.

Even though they travel thousands of light-years from where they first formed, stars carry the signature of their birthplace in the detailed chemical composition contained in their atmospheres and their motions through space. Astronomers have been searching for the lost siblings of the Sun for some time, and they’ve found several candidates. Now, using these lines of evidence, they think they’ve confirmed one.

Ivan Ramírez (University of Texas, Austin) and his team used high-resolution spectroscopy obtained at the McDonald Observatory in Texas and Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to inspect the atmospheres of 30 suspected solar siblings. (These stars are not true "solar twins," stars that appear similar to the Sun with respect to virtually every observable property — including mass, luminosity, and composition — regardless of origin.) The team chose these 30 stars from previous studies that had highlighted them as potential solar siblings, based on motions, ages, and compositions.

Typically, star formation results in the formation of an "open cluster,” a group of young stars that have formed from the same gas cloud. The detailed chemical abundances of this gas cloud, as measured by traces of elements heavier than helium, are preserved within the young stars.

Open clusters only last for a few hundred millions years, their stars spreading out throughout the galaxy over time. The Sun itself is about 4.57 billion years old, so it’s had plenty of time to get lost.

Fortunately, astronomers don’t need a home address to identify solar siblings. By measuring the motions of stars through space, astronomers can "reverse" their motions and see which stars were near the Sun when it formed. You can imagine watching a video of an explosion in reverse: as you play the movie, things that are initially far apart begin to move closer to one another. The same method works here. However, it is important to model the Milky Way's gravitational field correctly, since it influences the motions of these stars. Ramírez and his team measured motions for 30 suspected siblings and were able to "rewind the tape" on each of them.

Next, the team measured the detailed atmospheric composition of each suspected sibling. In order to be a match, the star needs to not only have been close to the Sun about 4.6 billion years ago, but it also needs to have the same age as the Sun and have similar abundances of iron, silicon, oxygen, and other heavier elements.

After this test, only two of the 30 candidates showed a match to the Sun's chemical composition, and only one, HD 162826, was close to the Sun at the time it formed. Thus, this makes HD 162826 the best "solar sibling" candidate to date. This star is about 15% more massive than the Sun, making it one of the Sun's big brothers. At 110 light-years it is also relatively nearby, shining at magnitude 6.7 in the constellation Hercules.

The team found that, instead of painstakingly looking at as many elements as possible, the most useful tactic is to measure the abundances of a handful of elements that vary greatly among stars that otherwise have similar compositions. One of these elements, barium, should be easily observable with medium-resolution spectra, the team says.

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Although HD 162826 is slightly more massive than the Sun, Ramírez’s team notes that many of the solar siblings are likely to be low-mass M dwarfs, since these are the most common type of star made during star formation. Current capabilities likely won’t be able to identify these little brothers — M dwarfs have crowded spectra that are difficult to analyze, and they’re also inherently dim. But with the launch of ESA’s Gaia, astronomers will have precise measurements on the motions of millions of nearby M dwarfs, which will help isolate which of these were formed alongside our Sun.

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

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3. Rogozin threatens engine restrictions, ISS lifetime extension

Russian-built RD-180 engines that power the first stage of United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket, used to launch U.S. spy satellites, NASA planetary probes and other high-priority payloads, will no longer be sold for use in U.S. military missions, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's deputy prime minister for space and defense, said Tuesday. In an apparent response to U.S. and European sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea, Rogozin, who is on the U.S. sanctions list, also said Russia has not yet agreed with the Obama administration's decision to operate the International Space Station through at least 2024. He said any decision to operate the station beyond the previously agreed-on target of 2020 would depend on a cost-benefit analysis, implying extended operations might not be approved. The space station requires both major partners for normal operations and if Russia decided to pull out in 2020, NASA would have little choice but to follow

suit. "We currently project that we’ll require the ISS until 2020," he said in comments published by the Interfax news agency. "We need to understand how much profit we're making by using the station, calculate all the expenses and depending on the results decide what to do next." Turning his attention to other programs, Rogozin said Russia will consider halting operations at 11 ground stations in Russia that are used by U.S. Global Positioning System navigation satellites by Sept. 1 if the United States does not allow similar Russian ground stations on American soil. In a brief statement, NASA noted a long history of joint U.S.-Russian space endeavors and said "ongoing operations on the ISS continue on a normal basis" with the planned landing of three station fliers Tuesday night aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft and launch of three fresh crew members aboard a Russian rocket later this month. "We have not received any official notification from the Government of Russia on any changes in our space cooperation at this point," the U.S. space agency said. United Launch alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, sells Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets to the Air Force and NASA for a wide variety of payloads ranging from high-priority national security satellites to NASA planetary probes. The Delta 4, designed by Boeing, uses engines built in the United States while Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 relies on the RD-180 for first stage propulsion. The engines are built by NPO Energomash and sold to ULA by AD AMROSS, a partnership between Energomash and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. ULA's use of the RD-180 in a rocket used to launch critical national security payloads has come under fire in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea and the crisis in Ukraine. The Air Force has implemented a study to determine the impact on downstream flights if the supply chain is interrupted and SpaceX, which hopes to compete with ULA for lucrative launch contracts, has filed a complaint in federal court challenging a sole-source Air Force contract with ULA and alleging payments to Russia for the RD-180 violate U.S. sanctions.

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A temporary injunction barring future purchases of RD-180 hardware was lifted last week after the departments of Treasury, Justice and State submitted letters saying ULA's purchase of the Russian engines was not in violation. But the SpaceX complaint and Rogozin's comments Tuesday have raised fresh questions about the engine's use in the Atlas 5. ULA currently has 16 RD-180 engines in the United States, a company spokeswoman said, enough for Atlas 5 flights over the next two years or so. "We proceed from the fact that without guarantees that our engines are used for non-military spacecraft launches only, we won't be able to supply them to the U.S.," Rogozin said in the Interfax report. As for ULA's inventory of 16 engines already in the United States, Rogozin suggested Russian technicians would not be allowed to service already delivered hardware if military payloads are involved. In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, ULA said the company was not aware of any formal restrictions. "However, if recent news reports are accurate, it affirms that SpaceX's irresponsible actions have created unnecessary distractions, threatened U.S. military satellite operations and undermined our future relationship with the International Space Station," the company said. "We are hopeful that our two nations will engage in productive conversations over the coming months that will resolve the matter quickly." The statement said in a worst-case scenario, ULA could move payloads originally manifested on the Atlas 5 to Delta rockets. "ULA and our Department of Defense customers have always prepared contingency plans in the event of a supply disruption," the company said. "ULA has two launch vehicles that can support all of customers' needs. We also maintain a two-year inventory of engines to enable a smooth transition to our other rocket, Delta, which has all U.S.-produced rocket engines." Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is a board member on the RD-180 Availability Risk Mitigation Study ordered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Speaking at a conference last week, Griffin would not discuss the findings of the panel, but he said based on the track record of earlier programs building an alternative to the RD-180 would take five or six years "best case." If the RD-180 is taken off the table, he said, "there will then be, clearly and obviously, multi-year, multi-billion-dollar delays, and the average payload will be delayed several years." "It will not be good, and it will not be cheap," he said.

Source: CBS News Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

Friday, May 16 Look for Mercury as twilight darkens. It's low in the west-northwest, far to the lower right of Jupiter and lower left of Capella. Mercury is having its highest showing of 2014 (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes). Saturday, May 17 Arcturus shines high in the southeast these nights. Vega shines much lower in the northeast. Look a third of the way from Arcturus to Vega for dim little Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, with its one modestly bright star, Alphecca or Gemma. Two thirds of the way from Arcturus to Vega glimmers the dim Keystone of Hercules. Continue on down past Vega, and you hit Cygnus. Sunday, May 18 Look south after dark for Mars at its highest. Straight below Mars, by more than a fist at arm's length, is the distinctive springtime constellation Corvus the Crow. Its four brightest stars form a distorted rectangle less than a fist in size. Monday, May 19 Now that Vega is well up in the northeast in the evening, look to its lower left (by two or three fists) for Deneb. As Deneb rises higher through the night, a dark sky will reveal that it lies inside the Milky Way band looming up all across the eastern sky. Tuesday, May 20 As the stars come out, Saturn in the southeast, Vega in the northeast, Capella in the northwest, and Procyon in the west-southwest are all at about the same altitude (as seen from about 40° north latitude).

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ISS Sighting Opportunities

For Denver:

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Fri May 16, 4:49 AM 4 min 52° 13 above SSW 31 above ENE

Sat May 17, 4:02 AM 3 min 28° 24 above SSE 15 above E

Sun May 18, 3:16 AM 1 min 14° 14 above ESE 11 above E

Sun May 18, 4:49 AM 4 min 52° 15 above WSW 33 above NNE

Mon May 19, 4:02 AM 2 min 86° 45 above SW 31 above NE

Tue May 20, 3:15 AM 2 min 33° 33 above E 13 above ENE

Tue May 20, 4:48 AM 4 min 24° 11 above W 18 above NNE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

May 17, Saturday

9:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. - Live Coverage of NASA’s 2014 Student Launch Project Competition (“Launchfest”) - from

Magna, Utah - MSFC(NTV-1, NTV-2)

May 18, Sunday

9 a.m. - Coverage of the Departure of the SpaceX/Dragon Cargo Craft from the ISS (Dragon release

scheduled at 9:26 a.m. ET - JSC (All Channels)

May 20, Tuesday

7 - 8 a.m. - Live Interviews with Expedition 39 Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA - JSC (All

Channels)

11:10 a.m. - ISS Expedition 40 In-Flight Interview with CNN’s Original Video Division - JSC (All Channels)

11:30 a.m. - Space Station Live - JSC (All Channels)

Watch NASA-TV’s regular daily program online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

May 16 - [May 16] GPS 2F-6 Delta 4 Launch May 16 - Comet P/2013 EW90 (Tenagra) At Opposition (3.142 AU) May 16 - Centaur Object 10199 Chariklo Occults 2UCAC 15354997 (14.8 Magnitude Star) May 16 - Asteroid 2014 HL132 Near-Earth Flyby (0.052 AU) May 16 - Asteroid 697 Galilea Closest Approach To Earth (2.035 AU) May 16 - 45th Anniversary (1969), Venera 5, Venus Impact

May 17 - [May 14] Cassini, Titan Flyby May 17 - Comet P/2012 B1 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (3.165 AU) May 17 - Comet C/2014 G1 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (4.679 AU) May 17 - Asteroid 2010 JO33 Near-Earth Flyby (0.010 AU) May 17 - Asteroid 2014 JH15 Near-Earth Flyby (0.020 AU)

May 17 - [May 10] Asteroid 2014 JA31 Near-Earth Flyby (0.066 AU) May 17 - Asteroid 3498 Belton Closest Approach To Earth (1.584 AU) May 17 - Asteroid 7220 Philnicholson Closest Approach To Earth (1.753 AU) May 17 - Asteroid 7755 Haute-Provence Closest Approach To Earth (1.764 AU) May 17 - Asteroid 6824 Mallory Closest Approach To Earth (2.692 AU) May 17 - 45th Anniversary (1969), Venera 6, Venus Impact

May 18 - [May 11] Dragon Spacecraft Return to Earth (International Space Station) May 18 - Comet C/2012 V1 (PANSTARRS) At Opposition (2.934 AU) May 18 - Comet 163P/NEAT At Opposition (3.738 AU) May 18 - Comet P/2011 C2 (Gibbs) Closest Approach To Earth (5.244 AU)

May 18 - [May 11] Asteroid 2014 JT54 Near-Earth Flyby (0.034 AU) May 18 - Asteroid 2014 FP47 Near-Earth Flyby (0.096 AU) May 18 - Asteroid 88292 Bora-Bora Closest Approach To Earth (1.165 AU) May 18 - Asteroid 8277 Machu-Picchu Closest Approach To Earth (1.340 AU) May 18 - Asteroid 6563 Steinheim Closest Approach To Earth (1.410 AU) May 18 - Asteroid 2636 Lassell Closest Approach To Earth (1.786 AU) May 18 - Plutino 2006 HJ123 At Opposition (34.359 AU) May 18 - 45th Anniversary (1969), Apollo 10 Launch May 19 - Comet 15P/Finlay At Opposition (1.751 AU) May 19 - Comet C/2013 G3 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (3.448 AU) May 19 - Asteroid 2014 HF184 Near-Earth Flyby (0.077 AU) May 19 - Asteroid 2014 GD50 Near-Earth Flyby (0.099 AU) May 19 - Asteroid 2063 Bacchus Closest Approach To Earth (0.399 AU) May 19 - Asteroid 125071 Lugosi Closest Approach To Earth (1.374 AU) May 19 - Asteroid 12759 Joule Closest Approach To Earth (2.187 AU) May 19 - 10th Anniversary (2004), Hayabusa (MUSES-C), Earth Flyby May 19 - Dick Scobee's 75th Birthday (1939) May 19-22 - 30th National Space Symposium, Colorado Springs, Colorado May 20 - Comet 272P/NEAT At Opposition (2.841 AU) May 20 - Comet 141P/Machholz At Opposition (3.233 AU) May 20 - Comet 226P/Pigott-LINEAR-Kowalski At Opposition (4.163 AU) May 20 - Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann At Opposition (5.144 AU) May 20 - Asteroid 242708 (2005 UK1) Near-Earth Flyby (0.094 AU) May 20 - Asteroid 9250 Chamberlin Closest Approach To Earth (1.544 AU) May 20 - Asteroid 4345 Rachmaninoff Closest Approach To Earth (1.940 AU) May 20 - Asteroid 305254 Moron Closest Approach To Earth (2.015 AU)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

NASA's Saucer-Shaped Craft Preps for Flight Test

NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project, a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle, has completed final assembly at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii.

This experimental flight test is designed to investigate breakthrough technologies that will benefit future Mars missions, including those involving human exploration. Three weeks of testing, simulations and rehearsals are planned before the first launch opportunity on the morning of June 3. LDSD was built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and shipped to Kauai for final assembly and preparations.

"Our Supersonic Flight Dynamics Test Vehicle number 1 arrived at the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on April 17," said Mark Adler, project manager of the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator project from JPL. "Since then, we have been preparing it for flight. One of the last big assemblies occurred on April 30, when we mated the vehicle with its Star-48 booster rocket."

During the June experimental flight test, a balloon will carry the test vehicle from the Hawaii Navy facility to an altitude of about 120,000 feet. There, it will be dropped and its booster rocket will quickly kick in and carry it to 180,000 feet, accelerating to Mach 4. Once in the very rarified air high above the Pacific, the saucer will begin a series of automated tests of two breakthrough technologies.

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In order to get larger payloads to Mars, and to pave the way for future human explorers, cutting-edge technologies like LDSD are critical. Among other applications, this new space technology will enable delivery of the supplies and materials needed for long-duration missions to the Red Planet.

The upper layers of Earth's stratosphere are the most similar environment available to match the properties of the thin atmosphere of Mars. The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator mission developed this test method to ensure the best prospects for effective testing of the new and improved technologies here on Earth.

Anyone with Internet access will be able to watch live as video from the June test is relayed from the vehicle to the ground. The low-resolution images from the saucer are expected to show the vehicle dropping away from its high-altitude balloon mothership and then rocketing up to the very edge of the stratosphere. The test vehicle will then deploy an inflatable Kevlar tube around itself, called the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD). After the SIAD inflates, the test vehicle will deploy a mammoth parachute called the Supersonic Disk Sail Parachute.

While people watching at home may be fascinated by how these two new technologies operate, the NASA flight team will actually be concentrating on a more fundamental question - "Will the test vehicle work as planned?"

"This first test is a true experimental flight test," said Ian Clark, the LDSD principal investigator from JPL. "Our goal is to get this first-of-its-kind test vehicle to operate correctly at very high speeds and very high altitudes. "

Although there is no guarantee that this first test will be successful, regardless of the outcome, the LDSD team expects to learn a great deal from the test. NASA has two more saucer-shaped test vehicles in the pipeline, with plans to test them from Hawaii in summer of 2015.

"We are pushing the envelope on what we know," said Clark. "We are accepting higher risk with these test flights than we would with a space mission, such as the Mars Science Laboratory. We will learn a great deal even if these tests, conducted here in Earth's atmosphere at relatively low cost, fail to meet some of the mission objectives."

As NASA plans increasingly ambitious robotic missions to Mars, laying the groundwork for even more complex human science expeditions to come, the spacecraft needed to land safely on the Red Planet's surface will become larger and heavier. This new technology will enable those important missions.

More information about LDSD is at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/ldsd/

Source: JPL Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Voyager's Neptune Composite Image Credit & Copyright: Assembly/Processing - Rolf Olsen,

Data - Voyager 2, NASA Planetary Data System

Explanation: Cruising through the outer solar system, the Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Neptune on August 25, 1989, the only spacecraft to visit the most distant gas giant. Based on the images recorded during its close encounter and in the following days, this inspired composited scene covers the dim outer planet, largest moon Triton, and faint system of rings. From just beyond Neptune's orbit, the interplanetary perspective looks back toward the Sun, capturing the planet and Triton as thin sunlit crescents. Cirrus clouds and a dark band circle Neptune's south polar region, with a cloudy vortex above the pole itself. Parts of the very faint ring system along with the three bright ring arcs were first imaged by Voyager during the fly-by, though the faintest segments are modeled in this composited picture. Spanning 7.5 degrees, the background starfield is composed from sky survey data centered on the constellation Camelopardalis, corresponding to the outbound Voyager's view of the magnificent Neptunian system.

Source: APOD Return to Contents