PARMAN’S PAGE Update... I’ve just added a new page devoted to this year’s Open House at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Pasadena, California. I went to the annual event last Saturday, and among the highlights of the trip (which would be my sixth visit to JPL since 1992) was seeing the Curiosity Mars Rover continuing to be built and prepared for its 2011 launch, a new venue devoted to the Juno mission to Jupiter (this spacecraft also launches next year) and seeing the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) up close in person. WFPC2 was installed onboard the Hubble Space Telescope during the STS-61 shuttle flight in December of 1993, and was brought back to Earth during the STS-125 mission last year.



Next year’s JPL Open House should be even more eventful...since along with the launches of Juno and Curiosity, the Dawn spacecraft will be arriving at asteroid Vesta in July of '11. I’m a total nerd...but you already knew that.

LINK: Photos I took at the 2010 JPL Open House

NASA

THE BEGINNING OF THE END...for Atlantis, that is. The orbiter launched on space shuttle flight STS-132 more than half an hour ago...embarking on a mission that will be its 32nd and final (scheduled) journey into space. Atlantis was responsible for being the first U.S. orbiter to dock with the Russian space station Mir in 1995, and launching two successful interplanetary spacecraft over the course of her um, career (Isn’t it awesome when I anthropomorphize a $1 billion+ space vehicle?): Magellan—which studied Venus for four years after lifting off on May 4, 1989 (I watched this launch live on TV), and Galileo—which studied Jupiter for eight years after lifting off on October 18, 1989. Godspeed, Atlantis! Only two shuttle flights remain after she safely returns to Earth on May 26.


NASA / Russian Federal Space Agency


NASA

ANDROIDS... This September, NASA is planning to launch a 'special' crewmember up to the International Space Station (ISS) during the STS-133 shuttle flight. This crewmember, known as Robonaut 2—or "R2" for short—is designed to assist the ISS’ human crewmates by conducting daily chores such as setting up science experiments and wielding tools to conduct repairs. Click here for more details.



Robonaut 2 won’t initially be given free run of the ISS...but eventually, NASA plans to have R2 use its hands to move about the orbital outpost the same way astronauts push and pull their way through the ship’s interior.

...

I expect Robonaut 2 to somehow take over the space station, HAL 9000-from-2001: A Space Odyssey-style, by this Christmas.




All images courtesy of NASA / General Motors

Happy 20th Anniversary, Hubble! Today marks two decades since the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched into orbit by space shuttle Discovery. HST has played such a pivotal role in presenting the cosmos to the world throughout the years that even Google is honoring the occasion (above)...


NASA / ESA / M. Livio & Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

The photo above is of the Carina Nebula, which is located 7,500 light-years from Earth. The image was taken last February using HST’s Wide Field Camera 3...a new science instrument that was installed by space shuttle astronauts during flight STS-125 last year. Speaking of STS-125, don’t forget to check out that awesome IMAX film Hubble 3D (which focuses on NASA's final servicing mission to the space telescope) while it’s still in theaters. Check out the trailer below.

U.S. Air Force

THIS EVENING, an Atlas V rocket carrying an experimental U.S. Air Force spaceplane is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Not much is known about its mission, but what is known is that the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) was originally the brainchild of NASA before it was taken over by the USAF in 2006 after NASA scrapped the program because of a lack of funding.


Boeing Phantom Works

Other things that are known about the X-37B is that it is designed to stay in orbit for up to 270 days (or 9 months), receive electricity from a small solar array that will be unfurled from the vehicle once it is in space (as opposed to running on fuel cells like those used on NASA's space shuttle orbiters), test out surveillance and satellite-repair techniques and possibly carry special weapons, most likely nuclear, that it can deploy over targets in North Korea and Iran. Just kidding about that 'special weapons' part... Or am I?


NASA

At the end of its flight, the OTV will glide in for a touchdown at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California or the space shuttle’s back-up landing site at Edwards Air Force Base (also in California). What the USAF does next with the OTV remains to be seen. Actually, click here for more details on the X-37B's future.


NASA


Boeing Phantom Works


USAF


USAF


Boeing Phantom Works


Pat Corkery / United Launch Alliance


Pat Corkery / United Launch Alliance


Pat Corkery / United Launch Alliance


Pat Corkery / United Launch Alliance


USAF

NASA / Jim Grossmann

OBAMA VISITS THE SPACE COAST... Earlier today, the President flew down to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to make a speech about his new plans for NASA. In his speech, Obama talked about how he wanted U.S. astronauts to visit an asteroid by 2025, finally get to Mars by the 2030s, continue to promote private companies like SpaceX to launch cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS), convert the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle into an ISS lifeboat instead (rather than canceling Orion as previously planned), and authorizing NASA to finalize a new design for a heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLV) by 2015.

...

2015. What I find funny about this is that Obama wants NASA to finalize the design of the HLV a little more than one year before the President would complete a 2nd term in the Oval Office (assuming he got one). So even if NASA does design a new rocket that would efficiently and cheaply take astronauts out of low Earth orbit again, the space agency would be at the mercy of yet another White House administration that would make even more drastic (RE: crappy) changes to the U.S. space program by early 2017...and scrap the HLV and any other thing NASA will try to get done once the space shuttle program ends this year.

Awesome.


NASA / Jack Pfaller

PHOTOS OF THE DAY... These four pics were taken by Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who is currently part of the 6-person crew onboard the International Space Station (ISS). If you want to see more awesome images taken by Noguchi in orbit (using the newly-installed Cupola viewport), visit his Twitter page.



The photo at the top of this entry (taken yesterday) shows a surreal shot of space shuttle Discovery docked to the ISS. The pic directly above (taken on April 6) shows the ISS passing over an aurora while orbiting the dark side of the Earth...with the Moon looming in the background. The shot below (taken on April 2) shows the ISS flying from an aurora a few days before. The two capsules seen are Russian-made Progress and Soyuz spacecraft. The final image (taken on April 5) shows the ISS flying away from another aurora the day before. The Progress spacecraft is visible.





All images courtesy of Soichi Noguchi / Twitter.com

Jupiter DIRECT... Just thought I'd give props to the webmaster of NASAWatch.com for summing up how I myself feel about a rocket that’s been discussed on space-related message boards for the past few years: the Jupiter DIRECT, or just 'DIRECT', launch vehicle. I’m not gonna go into any technical detail about DIRECT (since I would essentially be promoting this fantasy rocket if I did), but the way some of its supporters—or ‘fanboys’ according to the NASAWatch webmaster, Keith Cowing—fawn over this vehicle on online message boards (particularly that of NASASpaceflight.com) would make you think that DIRECT was God’s gift to human spaceflight.


If there’s (currently) one good thing that came from President Obama’s plan to scrap the Constellation moon program, it’s that NASA will have to rely on commercial launch vehicles to send astronauts into space...taking a ‘shuttle-derived launch vehicle’ (SDLV) like DIRECT out of the equation. The only SDLVs that I would've supported were the ones NASA was developing before Obama changed its plans: the Ares I and V rockets. I would totally be annoyed if NASA gave serious thought to building a contraption that was conjured up by some chump on the Web. The way that several space fanboys talk about DIRECT is analogous to the way lots of movie fanboys (I’d include myself in this group, admittedly) talk about upcoming summer blockbusters: Getting into serious discussions about what they want to see and hope will be in the film...to the point where they start accepting rumors or ideas that are posted online as fact...and then realizing at the end that the powers-that-be in Hollywood created a final product that is totally far from what the fanboys visualized.

Case in point with that final (long-ass) sentence in the previous paragraph: The next Batman film. Type in ‘Batman 3’ on Google, and you’ll see rumors about Johnny Depp playing The Riddler, or Philip Seymour-Hoffman portraying The Penguin. Admittedly again, I’ve been guilty of writing fan fiction about the next Batman flick a few years back, but according to the NASAWatch article linked to at the top of this Blog, at least I would never write letters to Warner Bros. and/or plan to picket outside this studio to make the executives go with my ideas.

(If you’re too lazy to check out that NASAWatch article, it's about how the creator of DIRECT proposed to conduct a protest rally outside the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and sent letters to White House officials and other folks in Washington D.C. to influence space policy)

To end this entry... When it comes down to it, space advocates can keep harping on about a launch vehicle that they want to see become a reality, but NASA—like filmmakers working on the next Hollywood tentpole flick—will come up with its own rocket when the time (and money) comes. Fanboys on spaceflight and film message boards should realize that 97% percent of the time, an idea that they’re concocting online will remain just that: an Internet concoction.

That is all.



PS: That final 3% would be fanboys providing input on such movies as 2002’s Spider-Man (Peter Parker having biological webshooters instead of mechanical ones), 2006’s Snakes on a Plane (Samuel L. Jackson saying "motherf**kin" a couple of times in the film after it wasn’t originally in the script) and Transformers 2 (a ‘Pretender’ robot—played by Isabel Lucas—being included in this movie).

HUBBLE 3D... Last Saturday, I drove down to the California Science Center in downtown Los Angeles to watch the new IMAX film...which contains footage that was shot by astronauts during the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission (flight STS-125) last year. It was a great documentary! It’s always awesome to see and hear a majestic space shuttle launch on a 7-story-high IMAX screen, and I enjoyed the visual FX that was used to bring several Hubble images of the cosmos to 3rd dimensional life. The scene depicting a primordial solar system being born in the Orion Nebula was the best one.



This is the 5th space documentary that I’ve seen on IMAX. Other flicks include Blue Planet, Destiny in Space, Space Station 3D and Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D (the last two of which I saw during my trip to NASA's Kennedy Space Center last year). A non-space documentary I saw on IMAX was 1998’s Everest...which was narrated by Liam Neeson. Speaking of narrators, the only gripe I have about Hubble 3D was Leonardo DiCaprio doing the voiceover. Stick to acting, Mr. DiCaprio. He seemed as out of place talking about space exploration as Tom Cruise did in Space Station 3D (Mr. Katie Holmes did the narration for this film). Where’s Morgan Freeman (or Neeson again, for that matter) when you need him?

Other than that, I’d totally watch Hubble 3D again...and I’ll even buy it on DVD when it gets released. Two thumbs up.



All images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures / IMAX Filmed Entertainment / NASA

PHOTOS OF THE DAY... Yesterday, Scaled Composites’ White Knight II (a.k.a. VMS Eve) and SpaceShipTwo (a.k.a. VSS Enterprise) took off on their very first "captive carry" flight from an airfield in California’s Mojave Desert. This 2-hour, 54-minute flight started what is scheduled to be a year-long series of airborne tests for the private spaceliner. If things go well, SpaceShipTwo will begin suborbital flights into space in 2011...and the vehicle should begin ferrying paying customers 68 miles above Earth later that year, or early 2012. If I was one of those 300+ lucky SOBs who already shelled out $200,000 to ride onboard the Enterprise, I’d totally be more ecstatic. But I didn't, so I won't. But these vehicles sure are cool. All images courtesy of Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composites