With NASA’s ambitious Hubble repair mission behind us, it is time to take note of the next major mission to launch and mark an important milestone. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter remains on track for its June 17th launch. The LRO will substantially add to NASA’s knowledge of lunar polar conditions. Space.com notes the following mission goals:
Using a suite of seven instruments, LRO will help identify safe landing sites for future human explorers, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment and test new technology. The probe’s instruments will also allow scientists to explore the moon’s deepest craters, look beneath its surface for clues to the location of water ice, and identify and explore both permanently lit and permanently shadowed regions.
Joining the LRO in June will be the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. Its mission is to impact the moon in a crater. The resulting plume of lunar material will be studied by the LRO, Earth-based instruments and possibly the Hubble Space Telescope for possible water ice, as well as other chemical compounds.
I’m looking forward to the successful launch of LRO and LCROSS.
The Opportunity Rover on Mars passed a phenomenal milestone recently: it has traveled more than 10 miles to date over 5 years of operations! That’s not bad for a rover that was designed to travel 1km over 1 year of operation. I’ll say this for NASA: they like things to be spectacular. Either spectacular successes or spectacular failures seem to be the result of missions – manned and unmanned.
Deregulation and conflict of interest juxtapose in very dangerous territory. News is slowly coming out that the credit raters knowingly gave their best rating to securities that didn’t deserve it. Bond and securities issuers pressured rating agencies like Standard & Poor, Moody’s and Fitch, Inc. into issuing AAA ratings that they shouldn’t have. Not surprisingly, those corporations made very large profits, in no small part because with excellent ratings, securities rose in value and more could be issued … with excellent ratings. It was but one positive, though artificial and unethical, feedback cycle that kept driving housing prices through the roof in the 1990s and 2000s. Also in the article: a severe admonishment from Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. I had a lot of respect for Rep. Waxman coming out of the 2006 election cycle. The past two years has shown me that he’s too ready to issue his rebukes but he hasn’t really exercised the oversight for which his committee is responsible. I suppose getting beat up by the right-wing for decades will do that to you. Will Waxman push for enforcement of regulations under an Obama presidency? Time will tell.
Have people really adopted more efficient driving habits? Will the money saved on falling gas prices go instead to reducing household debt, which runs into the trillions of dollars? Here again, time will tell.
More economic stimulus is being discussed within Washington. Should taxpayers get more cash or should the money instead be spent on infrastructure projects? I vote projects. They’re not as quick to enact, but they will deliver longer-lasting and more substantial economic growth. Make a good portion of the projects related to renewable energy development and you’ll knock a whole bunch of birds down with one stone. A more sane energy policy, mitigation of human forced climate change, improved domestic security, more jobs, a stronger economy. Giving people checks that they spend once is the weaker solution. Adding to the already enormous national debt with no medium- to long-term plan just doesn’t make sense.
India launched its first mission to Earth’s moon. Chandrayaan-1 will map the moon in greater deatil than what was done by the Apollo missions in the 1960s, by the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft (launched last year), or by China’s Chang’e-1 spacecraft (also launched last year). Chandrayaan-1 cost $80 million. The U.S. is planning on sending the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to the moon next year. That spacecraft will cost $500 million, but will provide even greater mapping resolution than Chandrayaan-1.
