Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Solar Sail Countdown

Episode Date: June 20, 2005

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Transcription by CastingWords the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. As you hear this, Cosmos 1, the world's first solar sail, may be orbiting the Earth. Heck, as far as we know, it may be the first one in the galaxy. Our program was put together just before the scheduled June 21 launch from a Russian submarine. By next week, the Planetary Society

and its partners hope to be celebrating as they pilot the sail through space. We'll get a last-minute update from project head Lou Friedman in just a couple of minutes, followed by a conversation with the mission's science and data systems coordinator, Greg Delorey. Even What's Up gets caught up in the anticipatory mood, although Bruce Betts and I still find time for a show-and-tell session, along with this week's space trivia contest.

Yes, yes, there is other space news this week. Oh, you'd like to hear some, would you? All right, you're the boss. The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter has achieved another success with deployment of the second of three spindly booms. This one is 20 meters, or more than 65 feet long. If deployment of the third boom goes well, the spacecraft will start beaming radar at the surface of the red planet looking for water beneath the surface. Details are at planetary.org. Those intrepid planet finders just get better and better at what they do. UC Berkeley's Jeff Marcy has announced discovery of a rocky body that's only seven or so times the size of Earth.

Unfortunately, the planet is thoroughly roasted by its star, so we can't expect to find any life there. And Space Shuttle Discovery has made it back out to Pad 39A with a new and improved external tank. The launch window opens in mid-July. Lou Friedman is coming right up. First, though, we've got Emily Laktawalla. You may not have heard that Emily is the Project Operations Assistant and Image Processing

Coordinator for Cosmos 1. The Planetary Society has also asked her to share her experiences during the solar sail mission in a web blog. You'll find her entries at planetary.org. Planetary Radio didn't want to be left out, so we asked her to put aside Q&A for a couple of weeks. Instead, here's the first edition of Emily's Solar Sail Diary. June 10th.

Project Operations Pasadena, which we call POP, has a lot of work to do between now and launch. We're doing all kinds of rehearsals, getting ready to respond to whatever happens on June 21st at precisely 19.4609 GMT. We have to finalize our plans for how we'll deal with all of the data our mission will generate, and we have to figure out where that data is coming from, which is not a simple task. The Russians will be tracking and communicating with the spacecraft from three different ground stations. Here at the Society, we found help at two American stations

at the University of California, Berkeley, and in Fairbanks, Alaska. On top of that, our spacecraft will be tracked by the U.S. Strategic Command, and they'll tell us where Cosmos 1 is several times a day. And amateur observers around the world will be trying to catch pictures of Cosmos 1 in flight. All of this stuff, data from the American ground stations, strategic command, and solar sail watch, flows through POP. The actual mission operations, like developing and sending commands to the spacecraft, are being conducted by the Russians at NPO Lavashkin. We refer to them as Mission Operations Moscow or MOM, making this a mom-and-pop operation, which seems like a real funny joke if you're sleep-deprived.

That's it for now. More later. Lou Friedman is on the eve of a decades-long personal dream. The executive director of the Planetary Society also heads the Cosmos 1 solar sail project. We went to him for one last update before launch. Lou, obviously a very, very busy time. Thank you for stopping by Planetary Radio's microphone to give us another quick status report on the solar sail. Matt, I'm glad to be here, but I'm even gladder to be on the eve of a really exciting launch.

We've waited a long time for the first solar sail spaceflight. We're about to make it happen, and this represents a lot to me personally and, of course, to the Planetary Society because our motto is we make it happen. Now, we said in last week's show that the spacecraft has been successfully mounted on top of the rocket. Well, now it's inside the sub. And the sub has got its motors, I think, on, ready to go out and do the launch. The launch occurs at 1946 Universal Time on Tuesday, June 21st. And we have to be very careful of time zones in this project.

We're working with about four different ones. And, in fact, during launch day, we're working with six different ones. I've never been on a space project that doesn't get time zones confused, and we're doing it a little bit too. Now, remind us, where will you be during launch? The Flight Control Center in Moscow, we call it MOM, Mission Operations Moscow, to differentiate from POP in Pasadena at the Project Operations Pasadena. But I'll be here in Moscow for this launch. This is where the actual hands-on mission control is done. We have a fully functional communications network in Pasadena ready to assist in this,

including involving the U.S. ground stations as well. I'll be here for the launch, but I will be home for the deployment. When the sail is hoisted in space, I want to be at the Planetary Society with the members and with our staff as we make this exciting venture happen. And who will you be with? These are the Russian principals, the people who played such an important role in building, designing, and building this spacecraft? I'll be here at Lavishkin Space Center. The Lavishkin Association has built many, many spacecraft.

They've done a terrific job with ours, a great team effort with Lavishkin, with the Space Research Institute of Moscow. Many of the scientists on our project are from there. We have people who've worked on this project from several other Russian institutes. Of course, tomorrow it's Mikheyev Rocket Design Bureau. It's their show. They've got to get this thing up and into space. It's pretty much out of our hands for a little while. The Navy conducts the launch.

Mikheyev Rocket Design Bureau has built the rocket. But after 20 minutes, when that orbit injection motor fires, the control comes right here to mission operations team, both in, as I mentioned earlier, in Moscow and in Pasadena. We have a team of Planetary Society people and consultants who've worked with us. Somebody asked me the other day how many people have worked on this project, and I think the number is pretty close to 100, which is small by space mission standards, but I can tell you it's a lot for the Planetary Society.

Now, how are you actually going to get word that the launch has taken place? There isn't going to be any video, I think you told me once. That's right. The launch is well out in the ocean. Cell phones don't work out there, but we do have satellite phones, and we'll get the word very quickly from, of course, the Navy. The Russian Navy has their own means of communications, which they haven't told us much about,

including tracking antennas that they've used as part of the Russian strategic forces. So they will have telemetry and information. They'll be passing it along to us. They'll be passing it along to the people at the Lavishkin Association. And we should have word within minutes of both the launch, the exact conditions and the time of launch, whatever telemetry information comes from the spacecraft. And then when orbit insertion occurs, there's a portable station out in Kamchatka, which our team has built in order to get the telemetry from the spacecraft just for this one pass, eight minutes over Kamchatka, and we get the telemetry information about the orbit insertion burn.

And then we have somebody in Majuro, the Marshall Islands, who also is going to be listening for the spacecraft. And we do all of this extraordinary extra work because it's fine if the spacecraft is working perfectly. We don't need any of this. We can wait a day or two for the telemetry. But what if it's a slightly different injection? Or what if something goes a little wrong? Or the spacecraft isn't fully operational? We want to know everything we can, and we want to know it as quickly as possible so that we can do something about it. So we make a big effort to try and observe this orbit insertion and get telemetry as fast as possible. You've talked about this before on this show, but let's give a little bit of review for anybody who hasn't heard that previously.

Why the four-day delay between orbital insertion and inflating those big sails? Well, I have to take a little issue with you. You should really ask me, why are you doing it that quickly? What's the rush? But you have to wait at least four days. You want to get all the air out of the sails. The inflatable tubes and the sails have been packed up very tight. But no matter how tight you pack it, there's always a little air left in the package.

I think we all know this from packing our suitcases. So you want that air to leak out gradually. You don't want it to leak out in an explosive burst by untying the package right away as you get up there because that could be dangerous. So basically the four days is to let the outgassing, it's called, occur in the packaging of the sales. Now, why are we doing it in four days and not taking a good 10 or 11? I'm nervous. I don't want to wait any longer than we have to. You know, things go wrong in space.

We have two competing demands. We don't want to, if something's working, we want to use it. And if something is ready to go, we don't want to build up time. So we'll be having this conflicting pressure actually everywhere along the mission. Hurry up and do something while we have a chance, but don't hurry it up so much that you're taking extra risk. Last question is we're almost out of time. What has been the reaction from your colleagues in the space exploration community? I'm really, really pleased.

We had a beautiful comment from one of the NASA officials about how interested they are in the mission. There's a whole solar sailing community, which has sent us a lot of good luck messages, who really care about the results. There are people who want the results for their technical studies. You know, there's real pride because everybody has contributed to making this happen. It's not just the Planetary Society team. There's a whole decades-long history of solar sailing that everybody has participated in.

The Russian groups have all come in with a great deal of support. I think we have a worldwide interest and positive good feeling about it. Even though they know it's a risky venture and a lot can go wrong, there's still a lot of hopes for this. Lou, good luck and hope you're getting some sleep. Thank you very much. and a lot can go wrong. There's still a lot of hopes for this.

Lou, good luck, and hope you're getting some sleep. Thank you very much. Lou Friedman is the executive director of the Planetary Society and the head of the Cosmos One project, the Solar Sail. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars.

We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in The Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can

catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. There's so much more to the solar sail than we can possibly cover in this radio show. To provide just a taste of its complexity, we called up Greg Delorey, a research fellow at the UC Berkeley Space Science Lab. The lab will serve as one of the ground stations tracking Cosmos 1 as it circles the Earth. But Greg's involvement goes far beyond that important contribution. He is science and data systems coordinator for the mission. Greg, we have talked a lot about on this show,

people will find all kinds of information on the web about how the solar sail works once it gets up there, getting pushed around by photons. But there is much more that happens to a spacecraft once it gets up into orbit. I mean, what else will affect the performance of this first-ever solar sail? Well, Matt, I have to say you've asked what I think is a fundamental question,

the whole point behind the solar sail demonstration. The theory is that if you have a large enough area of sail and space or a flexing surface, sunlight will indeed act as a thrusting force by bouncing off the surface and pushing the object along, whatever it happens to be. However, space is not empty, contrary to what most people might think. There's all kinds of particles and electrons and protons and ions hanging around out in space. Some of them come from the Earth's atmosphere. Some of them come from the sun and are streaming through space.

And these particles, rather than acting like a thrust force, they actually act like drag. And so a good analogy would be the first ocean-going vessels that spread their sails for the first time to see if wind can actually push them against the drag of water. There's a lot of analogies there. And we're certainly going to be looking very closely at the sail performance in light of the fact that we're only going to about 800 kilometers, and there's still potentially some significant drag forces at that altitude. Now tell me something.

We've always, of course, been very careful to say it's the light from the sun, not the solar wind, the particles. But I've always assumed that the particles are coming in roughly the same direction. Maybe they would provide a tiny, maybe infinitesimal amount of extra thrust. You're saying no, exactly the opposite? Well, it depends upon where in space you are. I would compare it again like being at the mercy of currents. If you're in a low altitude, a lot of the particles you're going to be running into

are sort of bound to the Earth, and that means they're not traveling that fast and they're going all kinds of different directions. And so certainly some of them may push you along, but others will slow you down. And in most situations, especially when you're dealing with these populations of particles near the Earth, as we will be, there's probably a net drag force. Now, that's going to be highly variable depending upon solar conditions and on the season that we're in on the Earth and how high the ionosphere is and how high the atmosphere is. But by and large, it's considered to be a drag force.

I see. And maybe the key word there was net drag. Absolutely. Newton's laws still apply, especially in space. Add them up all together. And I think under most circumstances, we're looking at potential drag. Now, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, and I think more detailed models, do confirm that we expect the sunlight pressure to be,

we hope, at least a factor of 10 greater than the drag forces. However, the drag forces will be very variable over the orbit because of the type of orbit that Cosmos 1 is in. And it is nonetheless something we have to keep an eye on to make sure that we can really quantify how much sunlight thrust we're getting. And, of course, we've been putting big objects in space for a long time. What makes the solar sail? I mean, why can't we say for sure this is how this object is going to react when it's 800 kilometers up? Well, it is true that our lab, the tracking station we have, and also NASA tracking stations measure the decay of orbits from satellites very often.

It's fairly well known for a small, compact body. Probably what's not known about the sail as much as we'd like is really the efficiency of the sails in reflecting sunlight and the operational limitations we'll have in terms of how much of the sail area we can point in the right direction, how often it's in shadow, the variation of these particle populations, which is going to be very strong as the solar sail goes in the polar orbit. There's lots of variables there. And again, if you're optimistic and you put all the variables together, you come up with an answer that says we are going to be able to measure thrust.

But nonetheless, to do it scientifically and technically, we need to account for all the forces acting on the sail. And if we're lucky, the other forces don't matter. But if things don't go according to plan, we need to understand why and how. We're talking with Greg DeLore. He's the science and data systems coordinator for the Cosmos 1 mission, the first solar sail. We're talking to him at UC Berkeley, where he is in the Space Science Laboratory. And you mentioned, Greg, a nice segue here, that you guys have one of the ground stations in the network up there. And I guess that's also something you've been very involved with.

I take it it's been an interesting project to put together this ad hoc network of tracking stations. Well, ad hoc is certainly one way to describe it. Most certainly, you know, Berkeley's enthusiastic in supporting this mission, and I've worked with the Planetary Society on a number of projects and am very pleased to be part of this one. However, in working with various organizations throughout the world, including, you know, most notably Russia, we do face a lot of potential barriers in terms of language, cultural, and procedural differences in terms of how we get things done, different conventions in terms of time. Just the time difference alone can be difficult.

And that's certainly been a challenge. I think the solution that we've come up with is to keep things as simple as possible. We've built out an ad hoc sort of secure FTP network, file transfer protocol network, that goes from Berkeley to the Planetary Society and also from the NOAA station, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, up in Fairbanks to the Planetary Society. And that really is the bulk of the file transfer and data transfer happening in the U.S. It uses off-the-shelf software, but it's very robust and secure. It will require a certain number of people to keep it running at one time.

But I think it's a tool that's about right for the job, and given the type of operations and the data volume we have from Cosmos 1, it's perfectly sufficient. Greg, we're just about out of time. Where will you be during the mission? Well, it turns out I'm going to be down at Project Operations Pasadena. The POP? The POP, indeed, starting on Monday evening,

and crossing my fingers like everyone else that we have a good launch. Well, we will look for you there, and I wouldn't be surprised if you don't pop up in next week's show, which is the first one we'll be able to do post-mission, even though a lot of people will be hearing this after the launch and perhaps even the deployment of those big sails on Cosmos 1. Thanks very much, Greg. Thanks, Matt. Greg Delorey is the Science and Data Systems Coordinator for the Cosmos 1 mission. He, though, is also a Senior Fellow in Space

Sciences at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, and he is part of the Cosmos One team. I'll be back with Bruce Betts in this week's edition, solar sail edition, of What's Up, right after we visit with Emily once again. She's back right now with another edition of her special presentation, Solar Sail Diary. June 13. About a dozen people assembled here at POP pretty early in the morning for a simulation of the first hours of the Cosmos 1 mission due to take place a week from now. These simulations are terribly important because they point out all kinds of logistical issues

that need to be solved before launch day. Things like how the phone systems work or don't work, how we're going to get word of the precise launch time to the guy who'll be manning our temporary ground station out in the Marshall Islands and stuff like that. Even though this is a rehearsal and everything is fake, it was still exciting to hear the Russian translator's voice coming over the phone from Lavashkin saying, we have launch. If everything goes well a week from today, we'll hear those same words again. Actually, we're pretty confident that we'll hear those words. The Russian Navy is quite good at launching missiles. It's what's supposed to happen next that'll have us biting our fingernails. After launch, the rocket fires a first stage, then a second stage, then a third stage,

and finally the rocket drops away and the spacecraft fires a fourth stage kick motor in order to insert into orbit around the Earth. We'll be very nervous until we hear it confirmed that our temporary ground stations in Petropavlovsk and Maduro have heard from the spacecraft, which will mean that it's basically on course and that the onboard computer is mostly working. Cross your fingers. We end this special

solar sail preview program with Bruce Betts, of course. He's the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he joins us for What's Up. Pretty exciting time. It is. It is. We're all very excited and getting a little tense. We pointed out at the beginning of the show that by the time many people hear this, either the solar sail will be successfully on orbit or not. It might even have sails deployed by the time some people hear this, either the solar sail will be successfully on orbit or not. It might even

have sails deployed by the time some people hear this. So it's an odd way to do radio. It is indeed, but we still try to make it interesting. Well, we'll do our best. And that's all up to you. What do you got for us? Oh, the pressure. Well, finally, my tight cluster of planets is here. Low in the west shortly after sunset, and you will see Venus looking like the brightest star-like object with two other planets closing and then separating from Venus in the night sky. And so we've got Venus hanging out with Mercury, which will be coming up from below, and Saturn going down from above. And they will all cluster and snuggle on the 25th, which is the same day nominally deployment of the solar sails is planned. And then Saturn will continue to drop lower.

Venus and Mercury will get even closer. The three will be within a degree and a half of each other. Then Venus and Mercury will get to within a degree, very, very close. Checking them out in binoculars, if you can, makes it look even more spectacular. It's a celestial ballet. It is a celestial ballet. And up there, hopefully, with it, and everyone else knows but us who's listening now, will be a Cosmos one for solar sail.

If it is up there, if it is working, if the sails do deploy, then all of you, go to Solar Sail Watch. Go try to find it in your night sky. You can go to planetary.org slash solar sail and find out how you can look for it passing overhead. And always remember you can see satellites, especially the big ones like Space Station and SolarSail, in the night sky. And you can find predictions for that, including you can find a link on our website to the Heavens Above website,

which does great predictions for these things. So look up there in the night sky. On to this week in space history. On June 22nd of 1973, in a little while now, the first Skylab crew returned to Earth. Yeah. From the U.S.'s first space station. So soon after Apollo. I'd forgotten that.

Yeah. On to random space fact! Yeah. On to random space fact! Now, usually I don't dive into the numbers and get quantitative in random space fact, but this is a good one. If you're going to remember a number about the planets, besides that there are nine of them and we're the third one, remember that at the Earth we receive approximately 1370 watts per square meter from the sun. And why I mention that this week? Because, of course, that is the power per area that will be utilized by the Cosmos 1 solar sail. So you say 1370, 1370 watts per square meter.

Yes, that's up above the atmosphere. The atmosphere trims some of that out. But, of course, solar sails fly above the atmosphere. And, yes, that's the amount coming from the sun. It's also useful if you're ever trying to figure out, you know, doing math problems with the planets, as I know most of you are. It helps you because

you can scale that easily to the other planets and figure out how much power is received there. So 1370 watts per square meter. Very impressive. We've got to learn how to do more with that on the surface here. That's my little editorial comment. Okay. What else have you got? Well, let's go on to the trivia contest. We asked you who was the first child born to people who had both flown in space. How'd we do, Matt?

of the little baby, the little cutie. Our winner this week, Christoph Pollitt. Christoph Pollitt, who wrote to us from his home in Belgium, who said on November 3, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, married Andriy Nikolaev, another cosmonaut. They had a daughter, Elena Andriynovna, who was born in 1964.

So, first child of astronauts, and she's now a doctor in Russia. Excellent. Isn't that cool? That is cool. A good deal longer than nine months after either of their missions, and they never flew together. I know, you were really interested in that a couple weeks ago. You can forget about it, E! E! Entertainment Network.

There's nothing to report here. Move on. Answer the following question. The Cosmos 1 spacecraft will launch or has launched on a Volna rocket, a converted ICBM from the Russian Navy. What does the word Volna mean in English? I don't know. What is the translation? I don't know, but you're not asking me. I'm not, and you're not even eligible to enter. How do people enter? Pretty much everyone else is.

So go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to email us your entry and we'll see who wins. Please do that by the 27th. Oh, for the love of God, please do it. And please get that to us by Monday, June 27 at 2 p.m. Monday, June 27

at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Get your entry in and win a solar sail poster just like Christophe in Belgium. Is it show and tell time yet? It is show and tell time. I love show and tell time. Look at this. Do you know what this is?

I have no idea what that is. Well, it's a black box, but I'm going to open the black box. By the way, I'm very impressed that you choose to do show and tell on the radio. I know. Go ahead. He's opening a black box.

TV has nothing on it. I'm not sure I didn't see what's in it before. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a rock. No, it's more than a rock. Well, it's still a rock. Pick it up and you'll know. Well, it is a rock. You're right.

It's a rock that looks like a meteorite. It is. It's a chondrite. It's a chondrite. Isn't that cool? Well, my friend, the intrepid explorer Landis Bell gave this to me. Friend, the intrepid explorer Landis Bell gave this to me. You'll notice that the box, the small black box that the meteorite was sitting in, is filled with sand.

Indeed. This is sand from the Sahara Desert. He said he was walking along because he goes out there on archaeological digs. And you see these things all over the place. And he just picked it right up and brought it back to me. Isn't that nice? That is nice. The Sahara is indeed probably second behind Antarctica for providing the largest number of meteorites on Earth. And this one does have a beautiful fusion crust. As I describe it to everyone, it's

about the size of a... okay, it fits in my hand. And maybe someone else should have described it, but it's got a nice fusion crust which is when it comes through the atmosphere uh the outside of the rock basically burns and singes and so you end up with this darker crust on the outside called the fusion crust which has been nicely chipped away in one place so we can see the inside it is beautiful uh thanks for bringing something in to show and tell matt oh it was my was my pleasure. I think we're done. We're done. And everybody, go out there and, speaking from my own experience,

look out for the night sky and think about the joys of sleep. Thank you, and good night. He's Bruce Betts. He knows a lot of stuff, and he's here with us every week for What's Up. A special edition of Planetary Radio next week as we cover the launch and, knock on wood, successful deployment of the first solar sail. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society, based in Pasadena, California, and in outer space. Have a great week, everyone.