NASA at 50

Minnesota public radio is one of the many media currently celebrating this year’s fiftieth anniversary of NASA with a program yesterday on its history. The BBC also collected a series of videos of many of the space agency’s memorable moments, while Wired had an article about NASA’s half century of “towering achievements”. Kansas City Infozine interviewed several NASA veterans to talk about its accomplishments. The first of several 50th anniversary moments was last month with the signing of the act that brought NASA into existence.

The birth of NASA was the necessity of catching up with the Russians. On 4 October 1957, the Soviet news agency Tass announced to the world that the USSR had successfully placed Elementary Satellite 1 into an elliptical orbit about 900km above Earth. Elementary Satellite 1 became better known by its diminutive "Sputnik". It circled the globe every hour and a half and flew over America seven times a day, in almost taunting fashion. At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had taken a giant technological leap ahead of the US.

When the general American public read about Sputnik, there was much predictable shock and surprise. The Space Age had begun, and it had nothing to do with American might. Many others felt that the oceans could no longer protect the mainland and the Russians had intercontinental warhead capability. The Eisenhower administration rushed to reassure the American people, but also offered their congratulations to Moscow for its achievement. US scientists were simply excited knowing that Sputnik was just the incentive needed to get their satellite program up and running.

Public opinion was now massive in favour of the creation of an aggressive exploration of space. And so, on 29 July 1958 US President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act. The act would lead to the birth of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on 1 October that year. The act provided for “research into problems of flight within and outside the earth's atmosphere, and for other purposes.” It declared that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind and would require “adequate provision”. The act’s eight objectives were to expand knowledge of space, improve the quality of space vehicles, develop space travel for humans, establish long-range scientific studies, preserve the US role as leader in space, using military discoveries for civilian purposes, co-operation with other nations, and effective utilisation of US scientific and engineering know-how.

Since 1915, the field of aeronautic research had been the province of the National Advisory Commission for Aeronautics (NACA). NASA absorbed the NACA and kept the “Aeronautics” in its name. It also took NACA’s 8,000 employees, its $100 million annual budget, its three major research laboratories (Langley and Ames aeronautical laboratories and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory) as well as two smaller test facilities.

The new organisation launched into space exploration programs with Project Mercury. With a well-honed media instinct, NASA decided from the outset its space program would need to be manned in order to keep the public onside. In 1961, Mercury began to pay dividends. In May, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, with a 15-minute suborbital mission. Eight months later, John Glenn became the first true US astronaut when he orbited the Earth. Project Mercury’s six flights achieved the goal of putting piloted spacecraft into Earth orbit and retrieving the astronauts safely.

Project Gemini built on the carefully-planned success of Mercury. Gemini had two-person missions, re-entry rockets within the capsule and the ability to alter its orbit. But on 25 May 1961, President Kennedy raised the stakes again with his “special message to the Congress on urgent national needs”. Given just a month after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, This famous speech called for America to take “longer strides” and take a leading role in space achievement. He committed the US to landing a man safely on the moon by the end of the 1960s and ten billion dollars to fund it.

Kennedy's speech was pure gold to NASA. His estimate as to the cost of the Apollo program was grossly inadequate and it had ballooned out to $25.4 billion by the time it ended. The program overcame the setback of the fire to the Apollo 1 capsule on the ground that killed three astronauts. For all future missions, most flammable items were replaced with self-extinguishing materials, pure oxygen was replaced by a nitrogen-oxygen mixture at launch and the hatch was redesigned to open outward and to be removed quickly.

NASA’s crowning moment came when Neil Armstrong carried out Kennedy’s goal, on time (though over budget) on 20 July 1969. The 17th mission brought an end to the Apollo program in 1972 and NASA looked to new challenges. In 1975, they docked in space with a Russia Soyuz craft in the world’s first international manned space flight. When US astronaut Thomas Stafford shook hands with Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in the docking ring of joined Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft, it was an act that seemed to mark the end of the Space Race.

In the eighties, NASA returned to human spaceflight with the Space Shuttle program. The first flight of STS-1 (named “Columbia”) in 1981 demonstrated that it could take off vertically and glide to an unpowered airplane-like landing. But the 1986 Challenger disaster on take-off and the 2003 Columbia disaster on landing, seriously damaged NASA’s credibility and made it look for less awe-inspiring challenges. President Bush’s subsequent 25 year plan to return to the Moon and land on Mars has not met with the same enthusiasm as Kennedy’s earlier call.

But there have been many other successes in NASA’s unmanned program. The Hubble Space Telescope has greatly advanced cosmology and returned thousands of astonishing images after its mirror was fixed in 1993. NASA's scientific probes have explored the Moon and all the planets of the solar system except Pluto. Voyager 1 is now the further man-made object in space and is now in the heliosheath on the edge of interstellar space some 16 billion kms away from its home planet. And a new expanded space race is at hand with Japan, China and the EU joining the traditional players. American scientists now say they need the support of private enterprise to succeed in space. But despite concerns about its middle-aged spread, it is hard to imagine the future colonisation of space without some role for NASA.

Sputnik – 50 years on

Russia held celebrations yesterday at Star City to mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik 1. Scientists, engineers and cosmonauts gathered at the space training facility near Moscow to recall the launch of the small spiky module that began the world’s space race. Military officials also laid flowers at the grave of the father of the Soviet space programme, Sergei Korolyov, who is buried at the Kremlin walls.

Sputnik is Russian ("Спутник") for “travelling companion”. Sputnik 1 was an 83 kilo, 56cm diameter sphere with four antennas connected to battery powered transmitters. The transmitters broadcast a continuous "beeping" signal to a suitably impressed earthly audience for 23 days. Sputnik was tiny, barely twice the size of a football, but it could orbit the Earth in 96 minutes.

In 1952, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) decided to establish the International Geophysical Year (IGY) to coincide with the high point of the 11 year solar cycle of sunspot activity later that decade. By some quirk of science, this “year” lasted a whole 18 months from July 1957 to December 1958. The US embraced the IGY program with investigations of aurora and airglow, cosmic rays, geomagnetism, glaciology, gravity, the ionosphere, determinations of longitude and latitude, meteorology, oceanography, seismology, solar activity, and the upper atmosphere. But the ICSU called on its members to do something more: it wanted nations to launch a satellite to map the Earth’s surface.

By 1957 Russia was ready to answer the challenge. In August the Soviets tested their R-7 Semyorka the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile. While the test failed, they designed a modified version of the R-7 for its first space test. Two months later, the R-7 launched Sputnik from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The US was so disturbed by this apparent victory for communism, President Eisenhower gave the go-ahead to create a new federal agency to co-ordinate its space program. NASA was born a year later.

But while the Americans played catch up, the Russians went on to further success. Within a month of Sputnik 1, the Soviets launched the dog Laika into orbit aboard Sputnik 2. Laika was a stray dog picked off the streets of Moscow to become the first living being in space. She didn’t last long. Although Russian authorities told the world, she survived for four days in space, in truth she died within hours of take-off as her pulse rate increased to three times its normal level probably due to overheating, fear and stress. Laika was the first of 13 dog launched into space by the Russian in the next ten years. Scientists used dogs because they could best stand the long periods of inactivity. All thirteen were female as they did not lift their leg to urinate.

The Sputniks led to a string of successes for the Russian space program. In 1961 the tiny Yuri Gagarin became a giant figure as the first man in space – it helped he was just 157cm tall. In 1965 cosmonaut Alexei Leonov exited the airlock of the Voskhod 2 spacecraft to make the first spacewalk. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that the US finally took the lead with its Apollo missions to the moon with its crowning achievement of Neil Armstrong landing on the surface of the Moon.

Fifty years after Sputnik, there are now more than 800 satellites orbiting the Earth. NASA now acknowledges the debt they owe to the pioneer spacecraft. Michael Griffin, NASA’s head, went to Moscow for the 50th anniversary celebrations. He told the Russian Academy of Science how important the early Russian work was. "Without Sputnik there would have been no Apollo,” he said. “Indeed, when the space race of the 1960s was over, it may be said that we in America lost some of our own momentum."

Moonage Daydreams

America will go back to the Moon in order to prepare for a trip to Mars in two decades. NASA announced yesterday they plan to resume manned missions to the Moon by 2020 with a view sending to a manned mission to Mars by 2037. NASA administrator Michael Griffin made the claim at the 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in the Indian city of Hyderabad. But Griffin stated they would need help from the private sector to make it happen. He said greater private investment in satellite and rocket launches is needed to make such missions commercially feasible. “Space tourism may be the only way out to make space transportation economical,” he said. “[but], we have to evolve a mechanism to train the prospective tourists and ensure their safety”.

America is not alone as at least four other countries are planning moon missions. However, a top Indian scientist warned the same IAC conference we should not colonise the Moon or Mars. Dr MYS Prasad said their resources should be shared for the common good. Prasad, who is an Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO deputy director, said the space community needed to avoid the temptation to mine minerals from Moon or Mars until we create an environmentally friendly base. “The biggest ethical question before the space-faring nations is whether mankind is looking at ‘habitation or colonisation’ of Moon and Mars,” he said. “The construction and occupation of bases should be fundamentally treated as habitations rather than colonies in the conventional sense.”

Griffin's 'back to the moon by 2020' statement is a reiteration of a George W Bush claim in 2004. But with a Mars mission like to cost in excess of $1 trillion, it remains speculative at best without commercial or international support. The arguments for and against colonisation of the Moon are likely to hot up as the Asian countries enter the space race. India and China have plans to launch space probes in the next 12 months and Japan has already launched a spacecraft to the moon.

On 14 September Japan launched its Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE for short) from its Tanegashima Island spaceport off the country’s south coast. Better known by the Japanese by its nickname “Kaguya” (for a mythical princess that visited the Moon) the three ton craft is powered by a Mitsubishi H-IIA rocket, the 3 ton rocket. It will orbit the Earth twice before setting off on a two week trip to the Moon. Expected to arrive in a Moon orbit by 3 October, Selene will map and analyse the satellite’s surface, interior and gravitational field.

China will follow suit when it launches Chang’e 1 before the end of the year. Named for the Chinese goddess of the Moon, it will be the first phase of China’s ambitious lunar program. It will be launched before the end of this year. Chang’e 1 represents the “orbiting” phase of the Chinese program and will be followed by a “landing” phase in 2012 and a “returning” phase in 2017. A fourth “manned” phase remains off the agenda for now.

India will also launch its Chandrayaan-L lunar probe in early 2008. And the US’s traditional space rival Russia should not be discounted either. Although their program has been impoverished since the end of the Soviet Union, in 2006 the Duma (parliament) voted a 33 percent increase for Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency. The will bring its budget, including income from the sale of launch services, to $1.7 billion a year. That is serious money and has given Russia the opportunity to consider returning to the Moon, where no cosmonaut has yet to land. It plans a permanent research base by an ambitious 2012.

But as NASA’s Griffin hinted in his IAC speech, private enterprise will play a large part in all future endeavours. Google have offered $20 million to someone who can send a robotic rover to the moon and beam back a gigabyte of data of the trip. But Google have placed a time limit on the prize in an incentive to speed up the race. It drops to $15 million in 2012 and expires altogether in 2014.

The moon has many attractive properties that would attract private investment but perhaps the most precious of these is Helium 3. Helium 3 is a light isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. This configuration is rare on Earth but is abundant on the Moon. Its value to an energy hungry world is as a fusion power source. Its major advantage is that it is not radioactive. Some scientists estimate there is about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. Gerald Kulcinski, has grand ambitions for the isotope. The Director of the Fusion Technology Institute (FTI) at the University of Wisconsin said Helium 3 could be a cash crop on the Moon. "Today helium 3 would have a cash value of $4 billion a ton”, he estimates. "When the moon becomes an independent country, it will have something to trade."