David provides a detailed review of our discussion. We had a fun chat about everything from smallsats to SpaceX to in-space fuel depots to NewSpace Global. (At NSG I am the managing editor of the NewSpace Watch daily report on happenings in the industry and community.)
David also provides a link to the slides (pdf) from my talk about the satellite industry that I gave at the Space Access meeting in Phoenix in the spring.
The Mars One project was given a lot of grief several months ago when an MIT student team found several flaws in their preliminary outline for life support for the people living in a habitat on the surface of the Red Planet. (See Mars One (and done?) – MIT News.) Mars One, however, had contracted a study on life support by Paragon Space Development Corporation. Paragon is a leader in the field of environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) and has been involved in many projects for NASA, Boeing, and others.
Below is a statement from Mars One on the results of Paragon’s assessment of the feasibility of a sustainable habitat on Mars. The general conclusion is that it is feasible to sustain a crew on the planet. The results of the study are available in this document: Mars One Habitat ECLSS Conceptual Design Assessment (pdf).
Amersfoort, 1st July 2015 – Mars One is pleased to present the initial conceptual design of the Surface Habitat Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) performed by Paragon Space Development Corporation®. The ECLSS is one of the key systems required to support a human settlement on Mars and will create a safe environment for the future Mars inhabitants, supplying them with clean air and water while recycling wastes.
“Paragon was provided the opportunity to conduct a completely independent study on the feasibility of a system that would support life on Mars and that study led us to believe that it is an attainable goal.” said Grant Anderson, President and CEO of Paragon. “If the will and the means are provided, we will see humans begin to explore and even colonize other planets in our lifetime.”
Mars One contracted Paragon due to their specialization in engineering and manufacturing thermal control and life support systems with a specific focus on extreme environments.
“An ECLSS design for a permanent human settlement on Mars has never been implemented and will need to consider the unique challenges of an extreme Martian environment.” said Arno Wielders, Mars One’s Chief Technical Officer and Co-founder. “Paragon is very experienced with both Space and extreme Earth conditions. They have an established reputation as an ‘honest broker’ and an impressive track record of developing innovative yet practical life support and thermal control solutions for spaceflight and terrestrial applications, which makes them a good match.”
The ECLSS Functions
The ECLSS will primarily provide water and a healthy and comfortable atmosphere within the habitat. Since shipping resources from Earth to Mars is a costly endeavour, all breathable air and the water for the habitat will be produced using local Martian resources, otherwise known as in-situ resource utilization or ISRU. This process is vital to the long term goal of self-sufficiency for humans on Mars. The functions of the ECLSS are distributed across its five primary systems, which are described below:
The Atmosphere Management System (AMS) controls carbon dioxide and other trace contaminants, produces oxygen via the electrolysis of waters, detects fires, controls the pressures of different atmospheric gases, controls the air temperature, and monitors overall air quality;
The in-situ Resource Processing System (ISRPS) provides two main functions, namely water recovery from Martian regolith (soil) and nitrogen/argon production from the Martian atmosphere;
The Wet Waste Processing System (WWPS) isolates human generated wet waste (such as urine) and extracts purified (but non-drinkable) water that is subsequently processed by the WMS for use by the crew;
The Water Management System (WMS) collects non-drinkable water from the ISRPS, WWPS, and excess humidity in the habitat atmosphere and purifies it to produce clean water for drinking, food preparation, and hygiene;
The Thermal Control System (TCS) balances the heat generated by the crew and electrical devices with losses to the surroundings while maintaining the crew and the equipment within an acceptable temperature range.
“Paragon has been in business for more than two decades developing life support solutions for extreme environments and Mars is the ultimate destination for us.” said Barry Finger, Paragon Chief Engineer and Director of Life Support Systems. “The challenges to humans surviving and thriving on Mars are significant and not to be taken lightly, but we are convinced that the goal is achievable with the tools and technologies that exist today.”
Mars One’s ECLSS has been designed with specific focus on simplicity, redundancy, reliability, and maintainability. The conceptual design has identified an architecture with local resources supplying most of the consumable needs of the Mars One outpost. The full report is available here: Mars One Habitat ECLSS (ECLSS) Conceptual Design Assessment.
About Mars One: Mars One is a not-for-profit foundation that will establish permanent human life on Mars. Human settlement on Mars is possible today. Mars One’s mission plan integrates core technologies that are readily available from industry leaders worldwide. The first footprint on Mars and lives of the crew thereon will captivate and inspire this generation and generations to come. It is this public interest that will help finance this human mission to Mars.
For more information about Mars One, please visit www.mars-one.com
About Paragon Space Development Corporation®: Paragon is a premier provider of environmental controls for extreme and hazardous environments. They design, build, test and operate life support and thermal control products and systems for astronauts, contaminated water divers, and extreme environment adventurers, as well as for unmanned space and terrestrial applications.
Yes, there is methane on Pluto, and, no, it doesn’t come from cows. The infrared spectrometer on NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has detected frozen methane on Pluto’s surface; Earth-based astronomers first observed the chemical compound on Pluto in 1976.
The latest New Horizon image sequence of Pluto and its moon Charon.
“We already knew there was methane on Pluto, but these are our first detections,” said Will Grundy, the New Horizons Surface Composition team leader with the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. “Soon we will know if there are differences in the presence of methane ice from one part of Pluto to another.”
Methane (chemical formula CH4) is an odorless, colorless gas that is present underground and in the atmosphere on Earth. On Pluto, methane may be primordial, inherited from the solar nebula from which the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago. Methane was originally detected on Pluto’s surface by a team of ground-based astronomers led by New Horizons team member Dale Cruikshank, of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California.
Come Fly with New Horizons on its Approach to Pluto
Images from New Horizons show the view from aboard the spacecraft closes in on the Pluto system for a July 14 flyby.
This time-lapse approach movie was made from images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera aboard New Horizons spacecraft taken between May 28 and June 25, 2015. During that time the spacecraft distance to Pluto decreased almost threefold, from about 35 million miles to 14 million miles (56 million kilometers to 22 million kilometers). The images show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, growing in apparent size as New Horizons closes in. As it rotates, Pluto displays a strongly contrasting surface dominated by a bright northern hemisphere, with a discontinuous band of darker material running along the equator. Charon has a dark polar region, and there are indications of brightness variations at lower latitudes.
Same sequence as above but with some extra information included
The New Horizons spacecraft has made a critical observation in preparation for its upcoming observations of Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. Just hours after its flyby of Pluto on July 14, the spacecraft will observe sunlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere, to help scientists determine the atmosphere’s composition. “It will be as if Pluto were illuminated from behind by a trillion-watt light bulb,” said Randy Gladstone, a New Horizons scientist from Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio. On June 16, New Horizons’ Alice ultraviolet imaging spectrograph successfully performed a test observation of the sun from 3.1 billion miles away (5 billion kilometers), which will be used to interpret the July 14 observations.
This spectrum of the Sun obtained by New Horizons’ Alice instrument on June 16, 2015, will be used to interpret the spacecraft’s upcoming observations of Pluto’s atmosphere.
Credits: Photo credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
New Horizons is now less than 11 million miles (18 million kilometers) from the Pluto system. The spacecraft is healthy and all systems are operating normally.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Follow the New Horizons mission on social media, and use the hashtag #PlutoFlyby to join the conversation. The mission’s official NASA Twitter account is @NASANewHorizons. Live updates will be available on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/new.horizons1
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Here is a separate notice about a course correction for the spacecraft:
With just two weeks to go before its historic July 14 flight past Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft tapped the accelerator late last night and tweaked its path toward the Pluto system.
The 23-second thruster burst was the third and final planned targeting maneuver of New Horizons’ approach phase to Pluto; it was also the smallest of the nine course corrections since New Horizons launched in January 2006. It bumped the spacecraft’s velocity by just 27 centimeters per second – about one-half mile per hour – slightly adjusting its arrival time and position at a flyby close-approach target point approximately 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.
While it may appear to be a minute adjustment for a spacecraft moving 32,500 miles per hour, the impact is significant. New Horizons Mission Design Lead Yanping Guo, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, says without the adjustment, New Horizons would have arrived 20 seconds late and 114 miles (184 kilometers) off-target from the spot where it will measure the properties of Pluto’s atmosphere. Those measurements depend on radio signals being sent from Earth to New Horizons at precise times as the spacecraft flies through the shadows of Pluto and Pluto’s largest moon, Charon.
In fact, timing and accuracy are critical for all New Horizons flyby observations, since those commands are stored in the spacecraft’s computers and programmed to “execute” at exact times.
This latest shift was based on radio-tracking data on the spacecraft and range-to-Pluto measurements made by optical-navigation imaging of the Pluto system taken by New Horizons in recent weeks. Using commands transmitted to the spacecraft on June 28, the thrusters began firing at 11:01 p.m. EDT on June 29 and stopped 23 seconds later. Telemetry indicating the spacecraft was healthy and that the maneuver went as designed began reaching the New Horizons Mission Operations Center at APL, through NASA’s Deep Space Network at 5:30 a.m. EDT on June 30.
“We are really on the final path,” said New Horizons Project Manager Glen Fountain, of APL. “It just gets better and more exciting every day.”
“This maneuver was perfectly performed by the spacecraft and its operations team,” added mission principal investigator Alan Stern, of Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “Now we’re set to fly right down the middle of the optimal approach corridor.”
New Horizons is now about 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) from the Pluto system – some 2.95 billion miles (4.75 billion kilometers) from Earth
Yesterday was the 107th anniversary of the Tunguska airburst that leveled a 2000 square kilometer area of forest in Siberia. So June 30th is now commemorated as Asteroid Day and there were various events and many articles about asteroids and the threat of asteroid and comet impacts on earth. For example,
The New Horizons probe will pass by Pluto 14 days from now. Closest approach will happen on July 14 at 11:49:57 UTC. Here is a video update released today:
![nh-6-30-15_pluto_movie_nasa_jhuapl_swri[1]](http://hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/nh-6-30-15_pluto_movie_nasa_jhuapl_swri1.gif "Pluto")
