Carnival of Space #127 is hosted by Brian Wang at Next Big Future.

 

The blog posts cover topics like the Ares I-X flight, NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently orbiting the Moon just 50 km off the surface, the HiRISE view of Phoenix in the Martian spring, armadas of robots exploring distant planets, the Chandra Source Catalog, which was loaded onto Google Sky, the Skylon Spaceplane, EMDrive propulsion system, and much more.

 

 

Back in January 2009, I announced the 4^th Global Trajectory Optimization Competition organized by CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales).

 

The purpose of the competition is to stimulate research of techniques for finding the optimal trajectory for different space missions. I came across the GTOC4 competition results and I would like to share them.

 

A total of 47 teams registered for the competition! The competition problem was disclosed on March 2, 2009, while March 30, 2009, was the deadline for submitting the solutions. In June the presenters were selected and in September 2009 the teams presented their methods and solutions during a one-day workshop held in Toulouse, France.

 

 

The problem proposed to the teams this year was called How to maximize the relevance of a rendezvous mission to a given NEA by visiting the largest set of intermediate asteroids.

 

The formulation of the problem proposed by CNES was

 

“… let us assume that a spacecraft is launched from the Earth. This spacecraft has to visit (flyby) a maximum number of asteroids (from a given list of NEAs). Finally, it must rendezvous with a last asteroid of that same list within ten years from departure.

 

The performance index to be maximized is the number of visited asteroids, but when two solutions are associated with the same number of visited NEAs, a secondary performance index has to be maximized: the final mass of the spacecraft.

 

Moreover, we assume that the spacecraft is equipped with an electric propulsion system and that gravity assists are not allowed during the mission.”

 

The CNES team mentioned that the proposed problem aimed at fulfilling some important criteria: “the design space is large and leads to an important number of local optima, the problem is complex but in any case it can be solved within the 4-week period allowed for the competition, its formulation is simple enough so that it can be solved by researchers not experienced in astrodynamics, and even if some registered teams have already developed their own optimization tools for interplanetary missions, the problem specificities make it new to all the teams.”

 

The winner of the GTOC4 competition is Moscow State University, followed closely by The Aerospace Corporation and the Advanced Concepts Team, ESA.

 

 

 

 

Carnival of Space #126 is hosted by Jason Perry at The Gish Bar Times.

 

The blog posts cover topics like LCROSS and Kaguya missions, the final report of the Augustine Commission, the potential of moonbases, the Space Elevator Games beaming competition, a new geologic map of the volcano Prometheus on Io, a new visualization of the Chandra Source Catalog, and much more.

 

 

A Rockot launch vehicle lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on November 2, 2009, at 02:50 CET. Rockot carried to orbit two new ESA satellites: SMOS and PROBA-2.

 

SMOS was released by the Breeze-KM upper stage some 70 minutes after the launch. After arriving at a lower orbit, the upper stage released Proba-2 around three hours after the launch.

 

 

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, which is the second Earth Explorer Opportunity mission to be developed as part of ESA’s Living Planet Program, will provide global maps of moisture over the Earth’s landmasses and salinity over the oceans. These observations will improve our understanding of hydrology and ocean circulation patterns.

 

PROBA-2 is part of an ESA program called In-Orbit Technology Demonstration Program, which is dedicated to the demonstration of innovative technologies. The PROBA-2 payload consists of scientific instruments that will make observations of the Sun in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum and will measure certain properties of the plasma surrounding the spacecraft.

 

 

 

 

Carnival of Space #125 is hosted by Robert Simpson at Orbiting Frog.

 

This week you can read about superconducting magnets used to enable hyperdrive propulsion, the LCROSS mission, surprising early results from the IBEX mission, the Kepler mission, variable stars, affordable microgravity research on the International Space Station, and much more.

 

 

On November 13, 2009, the Rosetta spacecraft will swing by Earth for the last time. This maneuver will provide the boost needed by the spacecraft to reach the outer Solar System. The critical swingby events are described on ESA’s web site.

 

Rosetta’s mission began on March 2nd, 2004, when the spacecraft lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana. In order to optimize the use of fuel, the probe has a very complicated trajectory to reach its final target, the comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The long trajectory includes three Earth-gravity assists (2004, 2007, and 2009) and one at Mars (2007). The probe uses the gravity wells of Earth and Mars to accelerate to the speed needed for the rendezvous with the comet.

 

Read more about Rosetta…

 

 

 

 

Carnival of Space #124 is hosted at We are all in the gutter, looking at the stars.

 

This week you can see an interesting picture of our nearest galactic neighbour Andromeda, you can read about the discovery of a new ring around Saturn, Halley’s Comet, sunspots, Orbital Gun Launch Systems, Skylab Orbital Workshop, and much more.

 

 

 

 

Carnival of Space #123 is hosted by Chris Dann at Weird Warp.

 

This week you can read about space tourism, the Messenger spacecraft, the Cassini mission, the Mars Science Laboratory, heliospheric crossings and their consequences, space travel, nanotechnology, the space elevator, and much more.

 

 

Carnival of Space #122 is hosted at Cumbrian Sky.

 

This week you can read about possible practical applications for the water found on the Moon, the past ten years of Chandra science, space shuttle artifacts, relativistic effects on solar sails, the famous HR Diagram, the much-anticipated crash of LCROSS into the Moon, and much more.

 

 

In Fly Me to the Moon : An insider’s guide to the new science of space travel, Ed Belbruno explains in simple terms advanced mathematical techniques using a general subject called dynamical systems theory. He describes how we can use chaos to change the way we maneuver in space.

 

Ed Belbruno makes the important point that chaos can be used as a way to get a handle on the unpredictability in sensitive motions of a spacecraft.

 

 

The unpredictability results from the subtle combination of gravitational pulls and tugs on a spacecraft moving in space. An immediate application is low-energy transfer trajectories to lunar orbits.

 

Belbruno tells the stories of Hiten, the Japanese lunar mission rescued in 1991; HGS-1, a commercial Earth orbiting satellite that had strayed into an undesired orbit; LGAS, a low-budget NASA mission; and SMART-1, the ESA mission that tested low-energy lunar transfers in 2003.

 

The low-energy trajectories can be used for purposes other than sending automated cargo spacecrafts to permanent settlements on the Moon. Ballistic captures, as they are also called, could be used for a robotic mission in the Jovian system, to shed light on the apparently unpredictable trajectories of comets and other Kuiper Belt objects, and to explain the origin of our Moon or the Panspermia hypothesis.

 

While it is written for a non-technical audience, the book is grounded in solid theoretical research, and would be of interest to engineers and space enthusiasts alike.