With the moon visible overhead, Armadillo Aerospace unsuccessfully attempted to win the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup this weekend at Holloman Air Force Base. The only competitor of nine ready to go for the event, Armadillo Aerospace, led by John Carmack of Doom and Quake fame, experienced both successes and failures during multiple launch attempts. While able to rise 50 meters from the launch pad, move laterally 50 meters, and land after staying aloft at least 90 seconds, the teams vehicle was not able to repeat this feat to return to the launch pad within two and a half hours as required by competition rules. Earlier failures included thrust vectoring problems due to a crack in the vehicle’s engine and an aborted launch soon after liftoff. The team was able to repair some damage rapidly to try again later, but their final attempt on Sunday ended in disaster, with flames engulfing the vehicle immediately after the launch sequence began.

Armadillo Aerospace, a private company started by Doom and Quake game developer John Carmack, has been the leading contender for the prize that is intended to accelerate techniques and innovations for future lunar landers. The other eight registrants were not ready by the time of the event to compete. At stake is $350,000 in prize money for first place in level one of the competition. Level two will award a larger prize but requires 180 seconds aloft over rough terrain. Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, explained to the audience that the competition’s return flight requirement is meant to demonstrate reusability of the vehicle within a short amount of time by a small team of technicians. This contrasts with shuttle launches that require many people, several months, and approximately US$1,000,000,000 in costs for turnaround.

The failure by Armadillo Aerospace to walk away with the prize opens up the competition to other teams during the 2008 X PRIZE Cup. According to a representative for the Speed Up team, they only need a few more months to make “Laramie Rose,” their entry vehicle, ready for competition.

Image caption: X PRIZE Moon exhibit and logo at WIRED NextFest

A robotic scavenger hunt to the moon is the next big space competition. The X PRIZE Foundation announced at Wired NextFest, along with representatives from Google, NASA, and one of the Apollo 11 astronauts, the Google Lunar X PRIZE. The largest incentive competition in history, US$30 million will go to the first and second privately funded teams to land a rover on the Moon.

US$20 million will be awarded to the first team who makes a soft landing on the surface of the Moon, drives a least 500 meters, and takes two sets of high definition video and images. The second team to accomplish the same tasks will be awarded US$5 million. In addition, $5 million will be awarded for bonus tasks, including finding artifacts from past mission, finding water ice at the lunar south pole, surviving one full lunar night of frigid temperatures, and driving a total of 5 kilometers instead of 500 meters.

On hand for the announcement were Dr. Peter Diamandis, X Prize chairman Robert K. Weiss, Google co-founder Larry Page, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) founder Elon Musk, and NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale. Video messages from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and director James Cameron were shown. All expressed their support for the latest prize.

According to Page, science has a serious marketing problem. Competitions like the Google Lunar X PRIZE can help promote science and engineering, while continuing to push progress and economic growth. Page announced during his comments a new version of Google Moon with improved resolution and panoramas captured by Apollo.

Through video and speech, the X PRIZE Foundation recapped incentive competitions to date, including the 2004 culmination of the first X Prize for a private manned suborbital launch. Since then, several new prizes have been announced, including the Archon Genomics X PRIZE, Automotive X PRIZE, and upcoming educational, life science, and energy prizes. The latest prize is being marketed as “Moon 2.0″, with previous lunar activity through the final Apollo mission in 1972 referred to as Moon 1.0. While Moon 1.0 was a competition between the superpowers, Moon 2.0 is expected to open up the moon as a resource.

X PRIZE’s Weiss listed surface silicon and water ice as important lunar resources to enable manned missions of the Moon and potentially help with resource issues on the Earth, including energy concerns. Diamandis said the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be the first commercial steps to exploiting the resources of the Moon.

SpaceX’s Musk announced they will donate profits they would normally make on space launches to lower the cost of launch of X PRIZE competitors’ entries. Other organizations like SETI will provide services to competitors for reduced or no cost.

The setting for the announcement - Wired NextFest - allowed for a somewhat elaborate stage, including a remote controlled rover that joined Diamandis at one point, a life-sized model of an astronaut and lunar rover, and a huge model of the moon unveiled for the photo-op at the end of the presentations, with Diamandis exclaiming “Let the race begin!”. In additions to participating representatives and media, there were many students, parents, and teachers in attendance for the announcement.

A video dramatization of a private team winning the Google Lunar X PRIZE in the future included depictions of access to data returned by the mission via the Internet on laptops, iPhones, and video billboards. Currently, a new website - http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/ - has been created to host educational videos, tools, and hands-on activities for students.

Image caption: X PRIZE Moon and rover exhibit at the fourth annual WIRED NextFest

Image caption: X PRIZE exhibit of Apollo astronaut and moon rover at the fourth annual WIRED NextFest

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Center has unveiled upgraded technology, 24/7 staffing, and a new website to be rolled out over the next few months in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and a wider call for better earthquake monitoring. The effort includes HYDRA, a system that will provide more detailed information about earthquakes and their potential for damage based on the region affected. HYDRA is expected to be completed in March 2006.

By providing staffing for operations around the clock, the USGS hopes to provide more timely information about earthquakes soon after they occur. The existing website, located at http://earthquake.usgs.gov, already provides maps, news and an RSS feed about recently detected earthquakes from around the world. A redesign set to debut at the end of January 2006 will enhance the site with information from the new monitoring system.

Emergency appropriations and congressional funding for the effort came last year after the magnitude 9.0 Sumatra Earthquake and tsunami that followed killed nearly 300,000 people on December 26, 2004 in one of the worst natural disasters in recent history. Experts believe that monitoring equipment in the Indian Ocean and improved notification technology could have helped prevent many of these deaths. Although the USGS detected the earthquake immediately after it occurred, they were unable to track down the appropriate authorities in countries in the affected region. Earthquake monitoring equipment and notification already exist for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Earthquakes occur at boundaries where the plates that make up the Earth’s lithosphere and crust collide with, separate from or scrape past each other, as well as localized areas of instability caused by volcanic activity, faulting, and other phenomena. In the United States, 39 states are considered to be at some significant risk of earthquakes. The increasing number of people who live in earthquake prone regions will require continued improvements in current monitoring and notification technologies.

More Information

• USGS Earthquake Hazards Program
  • 01/19/2006 USGS Press Release - “USGS National Earthquake Center goes 24/7 — Staff now on-site night and day to locate and report worldwide quakes“

The sample-return capsule from the Stardust spacecraft landed early this morning in Utah, after gliding through the darkness across the West Coast of the United States. Inside the capsule is valuable cargo: the first cometary and interstellar material to be returned to the Earth for study.

NASA TV covered the landing live while helicopters at the Utah Test and Training Range in western Utah, USA positioned themselves for retrieval in a holding area. As the capsule streaked over Oregon it became the fastest human-made object to descend through the atmosphere, at nearly 29,000 miles per hour (12.8 kilometers per second.) In just seconds it moved out of Oregon and over Nevada and was picked up by infrared ground tracking instruments.

At 10,000 feet above the Earth’s surface, the main parachute deployed, to applause from ground crews. The capsule’s UHF beacon was successfully picked up to help the helicopters with their retrieval. The capsule rapidly decelerated in speed and began drifting to the surface before landing at an estimated 10 miles per hour. Touchdown occurred at approximately 3:10 a.m. Mountain Standard Time. Landing coordinates came immediately and the helicopters quickly began their search in the dark for the capsule.

The search lasted approximately 42 minutes before official confirmation came that the capsule had been located.

Now that the sample-return capsule has landed safely on Earth and been retrieved, it will be transported to Stardust Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, USA where the exacting process of retrieving the individual grains from the aerogel tray can begin. A six-month effort of retrieval, documentation and early scientific analysis will be followed by the release of particles to the general science community for further research.

Last year’s Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1 revealed just how little we know about the small bodies of our solar system. Comets might be more “snowy dirtballs” than “dirty snowballs” or they may instead have more variable compositions than previously understood. Images returned of Comet Wild 2 by Stardust during their January 2004 encounter revealed numerous crater-like features that have likely been modified by gas outbursts from the comet.

More Information

• Stardust – NASA’s Comet Sample Return Mission
• More Stardust Sample-Return Capsule Landing Images
• January 15, 2006 Press Release: NASA/JPL - “NASA’s Comet Tale Draws to a Successful Close in Utah Desert“

After a planetary spacecraft is successfully launched on its long journey to its target planetary object, the various teams involved in the mission must checkout the instruments and subsystems they provided. This usually involves taking images to verify that everything is working properly. The Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) and the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMS) on board The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Venus Express successfully captured images of the Earth-Moon system and demonstrated their ability to help explore the mysteries of Venus.

VIRTIS from l’Observatoire de Paris (Paris Observatory) in collaboration with l’IASF-Rome, l’IAS-Orsay and l’DLR-Berlin captures ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths of light. Different wavelengths reveal different characteristics of a planetary body, such as its reflectivity, thermal properties, atmospheric details, etc. The VIRTIS observations of the Earth-Moon system were primarily meant to checkout and calibrate the equipment, but the images may also be used for scientific comparison with future images taken of Venus.

VMS from the Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung (Max Plank Institute for Solar System Research) took the image at the top of the page showing the Moon and Earth in (counterclockwise from the top left) infrared 1, ultraviolet, visible, and infrared 2 light. The Earth is overexposed in these images because the Moon is so much smaller and fainter and therefore its image is harder to capture.

To the left is the Earth captured by VIRTIS in visible light and to the right is the Earth in infrared, revealing its thermal radiance. Antarctica is the brightest red (indicating the weakest radiance) spotch at the bottom of the globe.

Images of VIRTIS (examples below) during laboratory calibration while still located on the Earth are located on the VIRTIS team site.

More Information

• ESA Website
  • ESA Press Release - “Earth-Moon observations from Venus Express“
  • Venus Express Mission
  • Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS)
  • Venus Monitoring Camera (VMS)

The soft blue pool of light in claustrophobic darkness, the white and crème-colored towers of limestone, the shimmer of hot fluids mixing with cold sea water, the occasional life form swimming back - it is another day in the exciting exploration of the Lost City Hydrothermal Field. Half a kilometer below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, the two IFE ROVs Argus and Hercules are being kept busy while scientists a quarter of the world away keep their eyes fixed on monitors displaying live high definition video and images.

This is all new. The Lost City has been little explored until now and the technology allowing scientists on land to participate is cutting-edge. So far the Lost City 2005 mission has been an unqualified success, demonstrating the ability to extend human activities through telepresence by putting some of the most remote and dangerous locations within the grasp of our robotic arms. This is being there by not being there.

There are two fronts taking humans into the Great Frontiers. Telepresence is the first, allowing us to go to places not safe for our bodies at this time. The second includes the follow-up technologies that finally make such locations accessible to humans in bodily form. In space we send robotic spacecraft out through the solar system while we continue working on technology to take humans safely out into our own local celestial neighborhood. Meanwhile, under the ocean unmanned ROVs explore sites like the Lost City while technical divers in shallower waters keep setting new records for the greatest depths ever dived by a human without a vehicle.

The ocean, outer space, and cyberspace are the Great Frontiers. We explore in person and with robotic surrogates, taking agonizing step after agonizing step toward no destination but “further,” “out there,” and “where no person has gone before.” Frontier Channel is dedicated to these explorers, human and otherwise.

More Information

• The Lost City 2005 - Live video
• NOAA Ocean Explorer - The Lost City 2005
• Immersion Presents
• Jason Foundation for Education Lost City Hydrothermal Vents
• The University of Washington School of Oceanography
  • Dr. Deborah S. Kelley
• The University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography
  • Dr. Robert D. Ballard

The European Space Agency’s SMART-1 spacecraft continues to capture images of the Moon in a mission to test new technologies and return new data about our nearest celestial neighbor. In one of the latest images, Hadley Rille, an enormous lava channel over 3.3 billion years old, stretches toward Mount Hadley in the upper right. Geologists believe the formation was created when lava still flowed on the surface of the Moon early in its formation. Because the Moon is so small, it lost much of its internal heat early. Heavy bombardment by meteors and/or comets also likely ended early in its history. Without an atmosphere or lengthy internal heating like the Earth, the Moon’s surface is static and ancient.

Apollo 15 astronauts landed near Hadley Rille in 1971. The United States hopes to return humans to the Moon by 2020. They will make use of data returned by SMART-1 and future lunar orbiters, landers, and rovers to work out requirements for manned missions and eventual outposts and colonies.

More Information

• ESA Press Release - “SMART-1 views Hadley Rille near Apollo 15 landing site“
• SMART-1 Mission Site
• Advanced Moon micro-Imager Experiment (AMIE)

Researchers have been busy exploring the Lost City Hydrothermal Field today. New image stills captured from the mission’s live Internet video feed reveal tall chimneys of calcium carbonate looming in the deep and dark waters and several life forms passing by. A jelly fish appeared to inspect the IFE ROV Hercules as it inspected the jelly fish.

The video feed switches to other views during transit and maintenance when the ROVs are not deployed. These views include locations onboard the Ronald H. Brown such as the ROVs deck locations and the researchers’ van full of displays and computer equipment. After ROVs are deployed, a grid of video sources called the “template” is often displayed. Land-based researchers viewing the video feeds via a stream over Internet 2 can choose from the different sources.

The ROVs do more than just capture high definition video and images. Hercules is equipped with arms operated by a human safely aboard the Ronald H. Brown. The operators use Hercules to collect rock samples and organisms, capture liquid and gas samples with specially designed samplers, and make small scratches and holes in the formations to inspect their interiors. When the mission is completed early next week, the research will be far from over. Lost City is the first such hot springs formation discovered in the oceans and there remain many mysteries yet to be solved by scientists.

More Information

• The Lost City 2005 - Live video
• NOAA Ocean Explorer - The Lost City 2005
• Immersion Presents
• Jason Foundation for Education Lost City Hydrothermal Vents
• The University of Washington School of Oceanography
  • Dr. Deborah S. Kelley
• The University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography
  • Dr. Robert D. Ballard

NASA grounded the remaining space shuttle fleet today after video of yesterday’s Discovery launch revealed that a large piece of insulation foam had fallen off the fuel tank. The debris did not hit the Discovery orbiter but the video footage was a frightening reminder of a similar incident that led to the Columbia disaster in 2002 which claimed the lives of all seven astronauts onboard. In that accident a chunk of foam struck Columbia’s left wing. NASA and independent reviewers concluded that hot gases entered the orbiter through the damaged area during reentry, leading to its disintegration.

New measures meant to fix the insulation foam problem apparently failed. Several chunks of the material fell off Discovery’s fuel tank during launch, including one piece over two feet long. As the fuel tank drifted away from the shuttle as they neared orbit, crew members took still images of an area of missing foam. Both crew and NASA engineers will continue the inspection of Discovery over the next few days. So far it appears Discovery was unharmed during launch.

With several ground-based imaging systems trained on Discovery during launch and new technology onboard for the crew to inspect their own vehicle, the safety measures put into place for the STS-114 mission have been unprecedented. However, NASA officials stated in a press briefing earlier today that they will not launch another shuttle until the insulation foam problem has been fixed. What this may mean for the future of the space shuttle program is unclear. The fleet is expected to be retired in 2010.

Future construction on the International Space Station (ISS) depends in part on the space shuttle to ferry equipment, supplies, and new modules. Construction has already been delayed because of the Columbia disaster. Over budget and behind schedule, ISS has not yet realized its original goals, which included a full complement of scientists to conduct cutting-edge research. The smaller crews onboard ISS must spend a large portion of their time on station operations and maintenance rather than scientific research.

NASA and industry partners are developing a next-generation Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) to replace the space shuttle fleet. The first CEV is not expected to be completed until the middle of next decade, leaving a gap in ability to send humans to low-Earth orbit. This gap might be filled by technology being developed by privately-owned companies and other countries, including Russia and China, although no formal arrangements have been considered or made yet.

More Information

• NASA Returns to Flight
• STS-114 Crew

NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery successfully launched this morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. The return to flight comes 2 ½ years after the Space Shuttle disaster claimed the lives of seven astronauts returning to Earth after a successful mission.

The liftoff occurred at 10:39 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The return to flight has been an arduous process of improving safety and inspecting equipment in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster. Experts believe the accident was caused by debris that damaged the space shuttle during launch. For this current launch, a plethora of surveillance equipment watched for similar incidents. The measures detected debris falling from Discovery but it does not appear that any damage occurred to the space shuttle’s skin. Video and images of the launch will be closely reviewed for the next several days and the crew will continue their own inspection throughout their mission.

The Discovery STS-114 crew includes:

• Commander Eileen Collins
• Pilot James Kelly
• Mission Specialist Charles Camarda
• Mission Specialist Wendy Lawrence
• Mission Specialist Soichi Noguchi
• Mission Specialist Steve Robinson
• Mission Specialist Andy Thomas

Their mission is to test new safety techniques developed over the past few years and to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). The crew will also undertake spacewalks to deploy new ISS modules.

The space shuttles were developed in the 1970s. NASA plans to retire the remaining fleet around 2010 while a next-generation Crew Exploration Vehicle is developed. NASA hopes to return humans to the moon by 2020 after President Bush outlined new space exploration goals last year focused on the Moon and Mars.

More Information

• NASA Returns to Flight
• STS-114 Crew