CONQUERING SPACE

Tests

Test 1 (pdf)

Test 2 (pdf)

Links

NASA

ESA (European Space Agency)

Mars Society

Scientific American

PBS

Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA)

Students for the Exploration and Development of Space

Cosmiverse in the Classroom

Cosmiverse Lesson:

08.08.02 - Rent-A-Space In Space

Hubblesite

Program Tips

Space Shuttle - The Human Time Bomb?

Channel 4

15th March 2003

21:00 - 22:00

An investigation into the recent space tragedy when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere. Was it a genuine one-off disaster - or an accident waiting to happen? The programme attempts to go beyond the immediate technical failures to look back over almost three decades of space shuttle design and uncover the deeper reasons behind the tragic event.

Journey to Mars (NASA)

National Geographic

1st Nov 2002

Documentary assessing the chances of a mission to the only other potentially habitable plant in our solar system in the 21st century

Columbia Disaster

NASA: 1)Columbia 2)Challenger 3)Apollo 13

CNN Special Report

CBS

PBS

ABC

BBC

NPR Search for Answers

NPR History of manned space flight

NYT Interactive Graphic

Challenger O-ring Text

More News

Manned spacecraft planned for this year

China expects to launch its first manned spacecraft in the second half of this year, a senior aerospace official said yesterday.

China Daily, 01/02/2003

China sets date for the moon (BBC 2002)

Habitable planets
may be common

Science & Technology News Service (03 Jan 03 )

PBS: Charles Lindbergh

Columbia: Disaster

Columbia Mission

Space Missions

Space Flight in Fiction

Leading Question: Conquering Space: Sceptics versus Proponents
Aspect	Proponents vs Sceptics
Destinations	neighboring planets
Objectives	research, economic considerations, motivational
Technical Feasibility	propulsion, material properties, terraforming
Financial Feasibility	state funding, private investment
The Human Factor	medical and psychological considerations

MISSIONS: PAST - PRESENT - FUTURE

Example mission: Cassini (click to open) NASA Multimedia Gallery

More project ideas:

Unmanned missions

	Lunar Prospector
	Mars Polar Lander
	Pioneer 10 more

Manned missions

	Apollo 11
	Challenger STS 51L
	more

Student postings: Pathfinder (D. Ernstes et al), Apollo 12-17 (V. Abels et al)

MARS MISSION

Driving force behind Mars Express

November 22, 2002 Source: Cosmiverse.com

The Ferrari Red Paint will not be the only thing breaking all speed records when it hurtles towards the Red Planet on-board the Mars Express spacecraft in 2003. The spacecraft itself has already broken some speed records of its own. Mars Express is the fastest-built satellite of its type in the history of space engineering.

The unique way in which ESA drove the Mars Express project cut the amount of time from the original concept to actually putting contractors to work from the usual five years to just one year. Moreover, two years were shaved off the design and building phase - cutting it from the usual six to four years. However, there has been no compromise on the quality of the mission. Read more ...

Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station

July 19, 2002

In an example of combined human-robot exploration operations, members of the FMARS crew take ground truth reflectance spectrometry measurements for the MISR instrument on JPL's Terra satellite. The FMARS measurements are the northernmost ground truth data taken for the MISR program, and will enable an improved survey of much of the Canadian Arctic.

Los Alamos Makes First Map Of Ice On Mars

DENVER, COLO., Feb. 15, 2003 -- Lurking just beneath the surface of Mars is enough water to cover the entire planet ankle-deep, says Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Bill Feldman.

Welcome to the Red Mars Project of
Gymnasium Haus Overbach

In February 1999, 20 students at Gymnasium Haus Overbach in Jülich (Germany) were asked to read Red Mars, a sci-fi novel by the prize-winning American novelist Kim Stanley Robinson, which is set on the planet Mars in the 21st century. Now the group consists of 60 students (aged 17-19) because two other courses have joined our "enterprise", which by now has developed into a full-scale project on the settlement and colonization of the Red Planet, with a special emphasis on terraforming, the method employed to achieve Earth-like conditions (temperatures, atmosphere etc.) on other planets.

Red Mars opens with a tragic murder, an event that becomes the focal point for the surviving characters and the turning point in a long intrigue that pits idealistic Mars colonists against a desperately overpopulated Earth, radical political groups of all stripes against each other, and the interests of transnational corporations against the dreams of the pioneers.

Amazon.com

The Debate about manned versus unmanned space-flight: Unmanned space-craft are exploring the solar system more cheaply and effectively than astronauts are.

Read more in:

Space Science in the
Twenty-First Century

Imperatives for the Decades 1995 to 2015

Further, it is important to recognize that the limitations on human survival in space are not well known. At present, we are not certain that mission times can be extended greatly beyond those already experienced, even with considerable technological progress. Low gravity leads to loss of bone mass and other physical effects. High-energy, heavy ion radiation causes irreversible damage to cells, including brain cells. Human relationships in a small, isolated group can badly deteriorate and lead to the loss of functional capabilities. We have not demonstrated the feasibility of a closed ecological system yet, and resupply at a great distance for a long period could be formidable. We must address these issues before we can reach a final decision about the nature and extent of human involvement in expanding the frontier of space. Read more ...

Die Shuttle-Flotte ist nur bedingt startbereit, die Erforschung des Mars verzögert sich – bei der Nasa herrscht Krisenstimmung. (Spiegel 1-2000)

Nach dem Versenken der „Mir"-Station träumen russische Weltraumingenieure von einem bemannten Flug zum Mars. (Spiegel 13-2001)

Man's landings on other bodies

My son and I got to talking about the different places where man has actually made contact with other things in the universe. We came up with the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and we counted Saturn because one of the probes when through the rings. Also, asteroid 433 Eros has a space craft setting on it's surface right now. Comets Halley and Giacobini-Zinner have had probes pass through the coma. Probe Giotto hit so much dust while going through the coma of Halley that it lost almost half of it's instruments. We decided

to consider that a "contact."

My question is this: Are there other bodies where man has actually touched the place with a probe? We thought that maybe Io or Europa had seen probes land or crash on the surface. Does anybody know of a web site that chronicles the encounters with other planets and various objects in our Solar System? Have there been any probes to the Sun?

Source: SEDS Forum

COLUMBIA DISASTER

The Columbia Disaster (CBS)

Columbia Crew Bios (CBS)

Challenger Disaster (CBS)

Investigation - Baltimoresun.com (x)

New York Times

Orlando Sentinel: ONLINE SPECIAL: Remembering Columbia

Space Station Mission Now In Doubt Feb. 1, 2003 CBSNews.com

(CBS) If the U.S. space shuttles are grounded, the astronauts aboard the international space station could be retrieved, but the mission there might not be salvageable.

That's because there's a Russian Soyuz vehicle attached to the space station that could bring the three astronauts onboard back to Earth at a moment's notice. (more)

NASA Vows to Find Cause of Shuttle Disaster (Sat Feb 1, 2003 By Jeff Franks)

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (Reuters) - Shaken NASA (news - web sites) officials vowed to find out what caused the space shuttle Columbia to break up over Texas on Saturday, saying they would look closely at the impact of a piece of foam insulation that struck the orbiter's left wing at takeoff. (more)

NASA emails reveal shuttle disaster scenarios (NewScientist, 27 Feb)

A string of NASA emails released on Wednesday reveal an intense internal debate over the consequences of potential damage on the space shuttle Columbia's left wing up until the day before the shuttle was destroyed. Columbia disintegrated during re-entry on 1 February with the loss of all seven crew.

Analysis: Shuttle disaster 1 February, 2003, 15:51 GMT BBC

It could have been a failure of the heat-protection tiles that exposed parts of the shuttle that could not withstand the intense heat of re-entry. It could have been an explosion in the aft section that damaged the tail causing the shuttle to fragment. To determine what happened Nasa will want to gather all the fragments and piece them together. It will also analyse in detail the images of the fragmenting fireball falling to Earth. (more)

Early Nervous Nellies -
The Denver Post, 2003-02-06

Background: Lewis&Clark

What brought down Columbia: debris or ice? (NYT)

Challenger's technical fault: O-ring

Shuttle Columbia to land in Florida on Saturday

Spaceflight Now, January 31, 2003, bY WILLIAM HARWOOD

(extract) ..... The only issue - and Cain said it was not significant - is a bit of possible tile damage on Columbia's left wing. Video of launch shows what appears to be a piece of foam insulation from the shuttle's external tank falling away during ascent and hitting the left wing near its leading edge.

Space Disasters Since Exploration Began (Feb 1, 2003)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The break-up of the space shuttle Columbia on Saturday with seven astronauts on board, including the first from Israel, was the latest in a series of accidents since space exploration began in 1957 with the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite. (overview)

Ilan Ramon: "Personally I think it's very peculiar to be the first Israeli up in space. Especially because of my background, which is kind of a symbol of a lot of other Israelis' background. My mother is a Holocaust survivor. She was in Auschwitz. My father fought for the independence of Israel, not so long ago. I was born in Israel and I'm kind of the proof for them, and for the whole Israeli people, that whatever we fought for and we've been going through in the last century (or maybe in the last two thousand years), is becoming true." Source: www.israel.org/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0mx40 (more)

Future of the Space Shuttle: Rettung im All (in German) PM Article April 2003

COLUMBIA MISSION

Shuttle-Mission mit Grillen

Columbia startet am Donnerstag - Vier deutsche Versuche

Köln - Mit Fischen, Schnecken, Grillen und Menschen als Versuchsobjekten startet das Space Shuttle Columbia am kommenden Donnerstag vom Kennedy Space Center (Florida) zur Forschungsmission "Neurolab" ins All. Vier der 26 wissenschaftlichen Experimente werden von deutschen Forschern geleitet, teilte das Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) am Dienstag in Köln mit. Source: rhein-zeitung.de English reference text (EADS) EADS

SPACE FLIGHT IN MOVIES

FILM: 2010 Channel: TCM

Date: Donnerstag 17th Oktober 2002

Sci-fi drama about a joint Russian-American voyage to Jupiter to discover exactly what happened to the ill-fated exploratory mission nine years earlier. Sequel to Stanley Kubrick's seminal '2001: a Space Odyssey' which includes a cameo appearance by Arthur C Clarke, who penned the follow-up novel on which the screenplay is based

Director: Peter Hyams

Starring: Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, Madolyn Smith

(1984, PG, 4 Star)

IMDb (link)

IMDb link

SPACE.com Exclusive: For Tom Hanks, Apollo 13 Was a Personal Adventure

By Robert Myers Producer 11 April 2000

Tom Hanks admits it. He was nervous about playing astronaut Jim Lovell.

"At first I was very intimidated by it," Hanks says. "Because along with a lot of the PR assumptions that had been made both by the media and sort of fomented by NASA as well, there was this sort of all-encompassing hero aspect of what an astronaut is. As though there is only one type of astronaut."

When filmmaker Ron Howard chose Hanks to play the famed astronaut in his 1995 film, Apollo 13, the Oscar-winning actor was faced with an unusually personal challenge: He would be portraying one of his childhood heroes.

SPACE FLIGHT IN MUSIC