LADEE: A Flight of Firsts (Part 3) Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport

The first lunar flight from NASA Wallops/MARS

The Minotaur V rocket that will be carrying the LADEE spacecraft will be launching from a complex on the eastern shore of Virginia that is no stranger to rocketry activity. The Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport is located adjacent to, and operated in conjunction with, NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, VA, a complex that has been launching rockets for aeronautical research since 1945 when it was established by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor to NASA. Some sources estimate that this facility has conducted over 16,000 launches since its opening almost 70 years ago, but this will be the first with a lunar target.

Many flights have left Wallops/MARS aiming to place payloads into Earth orbit, and in a few weeks a resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will be attempted there, but NASA Wallops specializes in sub-orbital science missions that never reach Earth orbit. Those rockets are called "sounding rockets." The flights carry scientific instruments up to 350 miles above the Earth, outside the atmosphere where they can measure things like solar radiation, the Earth’s magnetic fields, astronomy observations, and a whole host of other research topics. The missions are very short duration and the instruments reenter the atmosphere to sometimes burn up and sometimes to be recovered by parachute, but the short duration is offset by the relatively low cost.

The MARS complex has been slowly building up their capabilities over the years from suborbital, to Earth orbit, and soon lunar orbit. While it’s unlikely that they will ever conduct the large launches that we see out of Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg AFB, Wallops and MARS are setting themselves up as the ideal launch site for lightweight orbital payload shots to the ISS and for corporations looking to put satellites into orbit. Given the trend in the miniaturization of electronics it looks like the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport is due to become a key player in the commercial launch world.

Tomorrow's Topic:  LADEE's Launch Profile and "Yo-yo de-spin"
Later this week: Where and When YOU might see LADEE launch!

LADEE: A Flight of Firsts (Part 2) The Minotaur V

The first flight of the Orbital Sciences Minotaur V
 
    The LADEE mission will be riding its way to space aboard a rocket called the Minotaur V, the fifth in a series of rockets that increases its lofting capability with each successive generation. The fifth generation also happens to be a five-stage rocket, meaning five rocket segments that fire successively. When each stage is done firing it is detached from the rocket and left to burn up in the atmosphere. Staging allows the rocket to dump the dead weight and maintain efficiency as it reaches higher altitudes. 

   The Minotaur family of rockets have come into existence as a result of the US military's decommissioning of Minuteman and Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), once in place as our nuclear deterrent against the Soviet Union. The Orbital Sciences corporation was contracted by the US Air Force to convert these missiles into orbital and sub-orbital launchers. They have been used to put satellites into orbit and as targets for anti-ballistic missile tests during which the Air Force practices destroying an incoming, hostile missile. The first three stages of these rockets use solid propellants which make them very safe to work with, stable for long-term storage, and reliable when fired. In fact, the Minotaur family has a 100% success rate to date.
    This launch is the first time that the five-stage configuration will be employed for this family of rockets. To be completely honest, this is not a high-risk "first" because the two commercially developed upper stages have been flow successfully before, however, that's no guarantee that it will be smooth sailing. Each rocket stage has its own computer that controls its ignition and operations and if these computers do not work together properly the vehicle could very well destroy itself, though that is a very unlikely scenario for the Minotaur V. Here's wishing the best of luck to the Orbital Sciences team!

For more detailed information about the Minotaur V rocket, visit Orbital Sciences' fact sheet.


Tomorrow's Topic: Look out Kennedy Space Center, the Mid Atlantic Spaceport is getting busy!

LADEE: A Flight of Firsts (Part 1)

In the world of spaceflight, manned and unmanned alike, "firsts" are avoided whenever possible. "Firsts" are typically expensive, technically challenging, and inherently high-risk. NASA's upcoming LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer) mission will take part in several significant "firsts", which I'll be explaining over the next few days. We'll begin with the spacecraft itself.




The first flight of the Modular Common Spacecraft Bus
Every planetary science spacecraft before LADEE was a custom construction. Planners started with mission objectives and a budget, determined the scientific instruments needed to accomplish their objectives, and then designed the best structure within their budget that could accommodate those instruments. The Modular Common Spacecraft Bus is what it says it is. The MCSB is a system of component segments that can be mass produced to reduce cost and complexity. The spacecraft designers select the necessary modules for their specific mission and the spacecraft is then assembled in less time and with less cost than a uniquely engineered spacecraft. At least that's the concept. LADEE will be the first to put the concept into action.
   Personally, I think it's a brilliant plan because an outstanding amount of a mission's funding goes into the hardware that will take the instruments to their destination(s). If the MCSB lives up to its full potential, planetary science missions have a chance of being flown more frequently and with a greater scientific return per dollar. I'm not usually one to focus on the funding of missions but the general public hasn't typically seen planetary science as being as exciting as manned spaceflight and there tends to be less funding sent in that direction. Thankfully, in the past year the Curiosity rover has brought more focus on science and MCSB might be the key to getting the costs low enough to maintain that focus and support.

Tomorrow's Topic: The first launch of Orbital Sciences' Minotaur V rocket

BANG! ZOOM! Back to the Moon!

         On September 6th, NASA will be launching a new scientific probe to the moon. It’s called LADEE, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. The mission’s scientific aim is to explore the moon’s atmosphere, more accurately called an exosphere. An exosphere is a collection of gasses bound to an object by its gravitational field but those gasses are so thinly distributed that the atoms and molecules don’t even interact with each other. Because of this, we’ve all been taught that the moon has no atmosphere.

            LADEE, a car-sized robotic vehicle, will enter an orbit around the moon at only 20-60 km (12-37mi) in order to pass through the thin lunar exosphere that’s so close to the surface. For 100 days it will use its onboard instrumentation to analyze which gasses are bound to the moon and in what proportion they exist. The other phenomenon that will be investigated is the presence of lunar dust in the exosphere. One lander, sent before our astronauts arrived, Surveyor 7 (1968), photographed strange glowing on the horizon as the sun began to rise and when they arrived our Apollo astronauts also witnessed the glow during their stays on the moon (1969-1972). The prevailing theory is that this is the result of significant amounts of lunar dust above the surface. LADEE will determine if there is indeed any dust present. The interesting part about that experiment is that either way we’ll still have a mystery. If yes, how did it get up there? If no, what caused the glow?

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more on LADEE and everything else spaceflight related!