Really Rocket Science

Every Halloween, I have grand plans for pumpkin carving. I make sketches. I pick out the perfect pumpkin with all the right proportions. And, inevitably, it ends up looking like a kindergartener's craft project. Well, not this year! Why, you ask? One word: Robots.

For a more traditional pumpkin, you can take the lead of the robotics experts at the Detroit Science Center, who made the cut at extremepumpkins.com thanks to their innovations in halloween hardware. (I have to note their tagline here: "Pumpkin carving has been reborn. This time it is a little bit deformed."...maybe this IS the perfect site to showcase my skills...)

If you're going for something a bit more advanced - with a kind of headless horseman vibe - check out this guy's robot, which he used to carve a rather disturbing likeness of himself.

Of course, if you're looking for more of a chill-out-on-the-couch-while-eating-candy-and-pretend-not-to-hear-the-trick-or-treaters-at-the-door kind of Halloween, virtual pumpkin carving might be more your speed.

To illustrate the extent of my artistic skills, here's my creation:

Happy Halloween!

Over the past several years, there has been an explosion of private investment in the space industry. SpaceX may be the best known, with its founder investing $100 Million of his own money and a tremendous amount of time and energy in the hopes of developing a fleet of privately operated rockets. Richard Branson has also entered the fray with his Virgin Galactic space tourism project. And Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas hotel magnate, has grand plans for a private space station/hotel.

Another player in the commercial space race that you may not have heard of is Copenhagen Suborbitals, which just conducted a successful booster test last week. The test was a major step for the Danish company.

Copenhagen Suborbitals is currently developing a series of suborbital space vehicles designed to validate and test performance, paving the way for manned space flight on a micro-size spacecraft, or MSC...

Two rocket vehicles are under development: a small unmanned sounding rocket, named Hybrid Atmospheric Test Vehicle, or HATV, and a larger booster rocket named Hybrid Exo Atmospheric Transporter, or HEAT, designed to carry a micro spacecraft into a suborbital trajectory in space.

Both boosters systems will be hybrid rockets using epoxy as solid propellant...

Before the spacecraft goes into a zero gravity parabola, the booster system will be jettisoned. After a while of atmospheric re-entry, the spacecraft will be slowed by two episodes of deployed parachutes. Finally, the spacecraft will touchdown on land.

It will not be possible for the astronaut to move around inside the MSC. Only the arms will be free "to operate a few (backup) systems like grabbing on to handles or a vomit bag, as well as additional oxygen mask and the MSC abort system, if necessary after touchdown."

It's that last bit that's drawn Copenhagen a bit of bad press. In fact, Gizmodo compared the idea to a cruel form of punishment:

How's this for a nightmare scenario: you're crammed into a rocket the size of a closet, only large enough for you to stand up in. The top is a clear dome so you can see out, but it's too small for you to bend your legs, let alone walk around in. You are then launched into space. Aaauuughghghghhh!

It's also been described as a "one -man Roman candle ride into space". Though it doesn't look like an entirely pleasant way to travel, if given the opportunity I'm pretty sure I'd pop a few Valium and try to enjoy the crazy, claustrophobic ride.

I'm feelin' a bit old school, so in this week's DIY Friday we're tackling a classic: HAM radio.

This site has just about everything you need to know.

Or you can check out this "homebrew receiver".

Or, if you want to go a bit more hi-tech, you can try this diy radio modem that uses an "iPod" FM Transmitter and a regular FM receiver.

This guy makes HAM radios out of tin cans. (Think SPAM). He even has a miniature one that uses as much power as a Christmas light.

HAM's have a long tradition of public service. Check out this video (hosted by Walter Cronkite!) about how HAM radio comes through in a disaster.

Whichever project you choose, you're going to want to build it while watching one of these classic movies featuring HAM radios. Hitchcock was definitely a fan - "Rear Window", "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "The Birds" all make the list.

Pakistan just bought a shiny new satellite from China, with the help of Canadian company Telesat.

Pakistan says the satellite, called PakSat-1R, for Pakistan in 2011, will be used for domestic telecommunication and broadcast services. Contracts for the deal were signed last week with both the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Chinese President Hu Jintao present.

The satellite's chief contractor is the China Great Wall Industry Corp. This is the third time that the corporation has launched a satellite for another country. In 2007, two satellites were launched for Nigeria.

China has also signed a deal to launch a communications satellite for Venezuela. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised the project on a recent visit to China:

Venezuela's Presidential Office also issued a statement in praise of the upcoming launch of the VENESAT-1 satellite, that will transmit telephone, Internet, video conferencing and other signals throughout the region from the Caribbean to Paraguay on South America's southern tip.

More than 100 Venezuelans have been trained in China to operate the satellite, the office said.

"We will have a tool allowing us to say that there are no borders, or places in our region we cannot reach," the statement quoted Science and Technology Minister Nuris Orihuela, who was accompanying Chavez on his visit, as saying.

The satellite, also known as the Simon Bolivar after the Venezuelan-born South American independence hero, will be launched on Nov. 1 from western China's Xichang launch site aboard a Chinese Long March 3B rocket.

The U.S. sees cause for concern in the rise of China's satellite industry. The Defense Secretary has been charged with reviewing whether allowing companies with US defense contracts to launch satellites in China poses a national security threat. At the center of the debate is a bill signed into law just last week, the "Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009".

Satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space of Europe has built satellites that are free of U.S. parts, which are effectively barred from being shipped to China under U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules. Another company, OHB Technology of Germany, is designing a new satellite line with European Space Agency funds that is intended to include a so-called ITAR-free option for customers wanting to launch from China.

Space Systems/Loral, a major U.S. commercial satellite builder, has complained to U.S. government authorities that the ITAR-free option gives these European contractors an advantage because China's rockets are less expensive to use than U.S., European or Japanese rockets.

Bear with me for a bit of childhood nostalgia: When I was little, I had this great toy plane. I used to go to the park with my dad on the weekends and fly it around. As I got a bit older and bolder, I'd try new maneuvers, often careening way too close to the trees. Well, inevitably I got a bit too careless and broke it. But this weekend, I'm bringing back the toy plane. And this time it's gonna be bigger, badder, and well, just plain awesome.

First of all, the word "toy" doesn't really apply to this week's DIY project. It's more like...special ops tool.

This site provides a wide range of options for your DIY drone, with prices to match your budget. Fellow DIY-ers post helpful tips and videos.

PBS's "Wired Science" did a segment on the site last year:

If helicopters are more your style, check out the ARCHA project (automated remote control helicopter assistant).

Once your DIY drone is done, you can see how it compares to the versions the military really uses in the field. The AE Puma is the latest and greatest in military-grade technology.

The Puma is an upgrade from the RQ-11 Raven, which we posted about in August after it won the Commando Olympics in Afghanistan.

The Japanese Lunar Explorer, KAGUYA, has found a clear difference between the gravity on the far side of the moon and the near side. The discovery is significant because it is evidence of the different interior and thermal history of the two sides.

The lunar gravity field is estimated from radiowave tracking of spacecraft orbiting over the lunar surface. Since the far side of the Moon cannot be observed from the Earth, spacecraft over the far side of the Moon cannot be tracked directly.

Previously the far side gravity of the Moon was obtained basically from the extrapolation of the spacecraft orbit over the near side. KAGUYA has two subsatellites (the relay subsatellite OKINA and VLBI subsatellite OUNA) for the far side gravity measurement.

Since OKINA relays and transmits Doppler tracking signals of radiowave between the main satellite over the far side and the ground radio antenna, the orbits of the main satellite can be determined precisely. Thus we can obtain the accurate far side gravity field of the Moon.

So, what exactly is the "far side of the moon" anyway?

The far side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that is permanently turned away from the Earth. The far hemisphere was first photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959, and was first directly observed by human eyes when the Apollo 8 mission orbited the Moon in 1968. The rugged terrain is distinguished by a multitude of crater impacts, as well as relatively few lunar maria. It includes the largest known impact feature in the Solar System: the South Pole-Aitken basin.

The findings from the KAGUYA explorer were presented by Dr. Sho Sasaki of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan at the 40th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

KAGUYA was the same explorer that brought us the first High-Def images of Earth last year.

Taking a break from the usual how-to entries, today will be an inspirational DIY-Friday. If high-schooler can create devices launched into space, you can do anything, right?

A team of students from UK's Shrewsbury school won a contest to design a device that will be launched on a British-built satellite in 2010:

The competition, launched earlier this year, challenged teams of 14-19-year-olds to design and build a small, compact satellite instrument.

The experiment will be flown as an additional payload on a low-Earth orbiting satellite being built by SSTL.

Conceived by Dr Stuart Eves, from the satellite company, it was set up as an initiative to boost interest in space science among young people.

The winning entry will be given a developmental budget of up to £100,000.

The winning decice is called POISE, "which will measure variations in the ionosphere - the outermost layer of the atmosphere." It could have a pretty big impact (especially for a few teenagers):

Dr Eves praised all the finalists. He said of the winning entry: "We're very excited about the potential for the experiment, since, in addition to supporting navigation safety, some scientists in the US and Taiwan think variations in the ionosphere might also help provide indications of impending earthquakes".

The prize was announced by Soyeon Yi, the Korean astronaut, who you may remember from this post.

Inspired? If so, get to work. There are lots of other space prizes out there – for both high schoolers and adults. This site puts together the list, or follow a blog dedicated to these micro-space-races here. The Moonbuggy race may be the coolest. Yes, even cooler than an ionosphere variation measurer.

Currently, when satellites malfunction, they become (very expensive) space junk. A geosynchronous satellite orbits at 36,000 km (22,300 miles), which puts it outside the range for any type of service or repair. But researchers at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario are hoping to change that.

“These are mechanical systems, which means that eventually they will fail,” notes Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Michael Greenspan, who leads the Queen’s project. But because they are many thousands of kilometres away, the satellites are beyond the reach of an expensive, manned spaced flight, while Earth-based telerobotic repair isn’t possible in real time."

Dr. Greenspan’s solution to this problem is the development of tracking software that will enable an Autonomous Space Servicing Vehicle (ASSV) to grasp the ailing satellite from its orbit and draw it into the repair vehicle’s bay. Once there, remote control from the ground station can be used for the repair, he explains. “The repair itself doesn’t have to be done in real time, since everything is in a fixed position and a human can interact with it telerobotically to do whatever is required.”

The main challenge in this process is computer vision. The robotic system must be able to recognize and track the satellite, even in the harsh illumination conditions of space. Here's a video demonstration of the technology that helps accurately measure the surface geometry of the satellite. It's a light-based radar called LIDAR:

Funding for the Queen's University research is provided by NSERC. NSERC is a federal agency whose vision is to help make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators for the benefit of all Canadians. The agency supports some 25,000 university students and postdoctoral fellows in their advanced studies and promotes discovery by funding more than 11,000 university professors every year.

Loral tried to sell NASA on a space tug last December:

Instead of using a Russian Progress supply spacecraft to retrieve a separately launched pressurized cargo vehicle and guide it back to the space station for unloading, the Space System/Loral-team would use the company's proven 1300-series satellite bus as a refuelable space tug that would remain in orbit for as long as 10 years.

And then, of course, there's the Jules Verne cargo ship, which we've blogged about before.

Boring commute and a weekend to spend in the shop? Try your hand at building your own self-balancing Segway.

Or, if you aren't exactly Dean Kamen, try this slightly scaled down version built, along with a couple LEGO motors, on the open-source Arduino platform. Using relatively simple programming techniques, a huge community of enthusiasts, and a generous selection of tutorials and info, this little guy—dubbed "Arduway"—is one of the community's newest creations.

Feeling ambitious? Check out these projects from the guys at MIT and the University of Minnesota.

MIT set out to build their Segway clone for less than $1,000 and to weigh around 50 lbs. They ended up with a finished product that is functionally identical to a genuine Segway and even includes cupholders!

The Segway folks are even billing the real thing, which comes in around $5,000, as the green alternative to fuel-powered automobiles (segway.com/nogas), citing the fractional cost of ownership and maintenance compared to cars.

Finally, if your DIY juices are really flowing, channel visions of Marty McFly as you take a look at Minnesota's Segskate project—described simply as, "like Segway but it is a skateboard." The video speaks for itself.

Lockheed Martin has successfully demonstrated high performance radiator technology for the Transformational Satellite Communications System TSAT constellation.

Developed by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Sunnyvale, Calif. and Thermacore, Inc. of Lancaster, Pa., the High Performance Loop Heat Pipe (HP-LHP) Deployable Radiator System has been demonstrated to significantly improve the heat dissipation capability over existing systems.

The HP-LHP, designed and matured for TSAT, will provide substantially more radiator area, resulting in a cooler, more stable thermal environment for Lockheed Martin's A2100 spacecraft bus and the communications payload provided by Northrop Grumman.

“This represents another major risk reduction milestone for TSAT," said Mark Pasquale, Lockheed Martin's TSAT vice president. "Our unique approach will afford greater reliability and longevity for TSAT's critical components and serves as another example of our thorough preparation and readiness to proceed with the next phase of this critical communications program."

A loop heat pipe is:

a two-phase heat transfer device that uses capillary action to remove heat from a source and passively move it to a condenser or radiator. LHPs are similar to heat pipes but have the advantage of being able provide reliable operation over long distance and the ability to operate against gravity.

For a more detailed description of the technology, check this out.

Either Lockheed Martin or Boeing will be awarded the multi-billion dollar contract for TSAT this fall. Because of the high stakes surrounding the contract, the Air Force has asked the Pentagon to conduct an independent review of the bids.

TSAT is entwined with another pricey satellite program, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite program, run by Lockheed.

The Air Force told Congress earlier this month that the AEHF program had exceeded congressional caps on cost growth, which could lead to cancellation of the program unless it is certified as essential for national security reasons.

The cost of the AEHF program was now projected to be $9.2 billion, including $2 billion for a fourth satellite added to the Pentagon's budget by Congress, accounting for about 80 percent of the overall cost increase.

TSAT is intended to follow AEHF and shares some of the same protected communications job. Congress added the fourth satellite -- which requires a costly restart of Lockheed's production line -- due to concerns about a gap in providing satellite communications capability to troops if there was a delay in the TSAT program.

The timeline for the launch of TSAT has been a tricky thing to pin down. It was initially planned for 2009. However, a senior Air Force official told Aviation Week that it might be pushed as late as 2018.

I, for one, can't wait until this program is up and running. It's pretty amazing technology, as we've mentioned before.