Piloted operations at a near-Earth object (NEO)

In late 2006, NASA's Constellation Program sponsored a study to examine the feasibility of sending a piloted Orion spacecraft to a near-Earth object. NEOs are asteroids or comets that have perihelion distances less than or equal to 1.3 astronomical units, and can have orbits that cross that of the Earth. Therefore, the most suitable targets for the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) are those NEOs in heliocentric orbits similar to Earth's (i.e. low inclination and low eccentricity). One of the significant advantages of this type of mission is that it strengthens and validates the foundational infrastructure of the United States Space Exploration Policy and is highly complementary to NASA's planned lunar sortie and outpost missions circa 2020. A human expedition to a NEO would not only underline the broad utility of the Orion CEV and Ares launch systems, but would also be the first human expedition to an interplanetary body beyond the Earth–Moon system. These deep space operations will present unique challenges not present in lunar missions for the onboard crew, spacecraft systems, and mission control team. Executing several piloted NEO missions will enable NASA to gain crucial deep space operational experience, which will be necessary prerequisites for the eventual human missions to Mars.Our NEO team will present and discuss the following:

• •new mission trajectories and concepts;
• •operational command and control considerations;
• •expected science, operational, resource utilization, and impact mitigation returns; and
• •continued exploration momentum and future Mars exploration benefits.

     

Outlook of possible European contributions to future exploration scenarios and architectures

Building upon the important experience acquired with the development of the International Space Station, the major spacefaring countries are working within the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) at the definition of a coordinated framework for expanding the human presence beyond the Low Earth Orbit, the Global Exploration Roadmap (GER). The GER defines a long-range strategy for global exploration and include three major elements.

• •Common goals of ISECG participating agencies for space exploration.
• •Notional mission scenarios which are technically feasible and programmatically implementable. Two mission scenarios were defined in the 1st iteration of the GER: the “Asteroid Next” and the “Moon Next” mission scenarios.
• •Identification of near-term opportunities for coordination and cooperation related to e.g. the development of technologies, the implementation of robotic missions to destination of interest for closing strategic knowledge gaps which need to be addressed prior to human missions as well as the utilization of ISS for demonstration of exploration enabling capabilities.

In 2009 two studies have been awarded by ESA to Industrial Teams led by Thales Alenia Space—Italy and by Astrium—Germany to define, analyze and assess optional European scenarios for future human spaceflight and exploration activities, and to derive the required capabilities for the investigated timeframe until the year 2033. Work on the European scenarios has been aligned with and informed by the international work on the GER.A conceptual design of different Building Block Elements, representing critical contributions to international Design Reference Missions (DRM's) included in the ISECG GER, has been performed and analyzed with respect to programmatic risks, budgets and required technologies. Key driving requirements for the analyzed Building Block elements have been derived from the international DRM's included in the GER.The interim outcomes of the human exploration scenario study will be presented, identifying opportunities for European Contributions to an international exploration undertaking.     

Revolutionary systems and technologies for missions to the outer planets

The Advanced Deep Space System Development Program is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA and is also called X2000. X2000 is organized to create advanced flight and ground systems for the exploration of the outer planets and beyond; it has been created to develop the engineering elements of flight and ground systems. Payloads will be developed by another team. Each X2000 delivery gets its requirements from a set of planned missions, or “mission customers”.The X2000 First Delivery Project supports missions to the Sun (to 4 solar radii), Europa (looking for a liquid ocean), Mars (in support of several Mars missions including a sample return), a comet (including a sample return), and Pluto followed by a trip into the Kuiper belt. This set of missions leads to some outstanding requirements:

• 1.1. Long-life (10–12 years)
• 2.2. Total Ionizing Dose of 4 Mrad (for a Europa Orbiter)
• 3.3. Average power consumption less than or equal to 150 Watts
• 4.4. Autonomous operations that result in an extreme reduction in operations costs

This paper describes the X2000 first delivery and its technologies following a brief overview of the program.     

Satellite constellation mission analysis and design

The considerable surge in satellite constellations has brought to the fore the imperative need for an efficient constellation design and management plan. To address this emerging need, GMV has studied and tested algorithms for the analysis of the key phases in constellation development. These algorithms provide complete analysis capabilities and outline optimal strategies to deal with the following issues of the constellation life cycle:

• •Constellation orbital design
• •Constellation performance evaluation
• •Launch strategy and constellation set-up
• •Constellation replacement and spare strategy
• •Constellation long-term evolution and end-of-life policy.

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the algorithms developed to plan and handle a generic constellation. The main effort has been devoted to define a general approach to the problem, so as to allow the characterization of a wide range of possible mission requirements and constraints. A representative Earth observation constellation for fire detection and monitoring (FUEGO) has been considered to assess the effectiveness and the commercial viability of the algorithms and the strategies implemented.     

New approaches to planetary exploration: Spacecraft and information systems design

As a result of studies undertaken during 1981 and 1982, in support of NASA's Solar System Exploration Committee activities, several new approaches have been identified for development of flight hardware as well as ground systems for the execution of U.S. planetary missions through the close of the century. This paper will summarize these new approaches for achieving lower cost in planetary exploration in three different ways:

• •• Use of modified “production line” spacecraft developed by aerospace companies for scientific and commercial use in earth orbit—study results will be discussed which demonstrate that with only modest modifications to existing earth orbiting spacecraft, excellent results can be expected at planetary targets in the inner solar system ranging from Venus to the inner portions of the asteroid belt. Use of both communications satellites typical of those used in geosynchronous applications, as well as low earth orbiting scientific and meteorological satellites will be discussed. The range of changes and the rationale for these changes required to perform planetary missions will be displayed in detail.
• •• The development of a multi-mission modular type spacecraft for planetary missions—a new approach and new flexible spacecraft design proposed for development for planetary missions to comets, main-belt asteroids, and the outer planets will be identified. This Mariner Mark II spacecraft will enable reconfiguration at low cost for adaptation to a wide range of missions. Design concepts which draw heavily on early planetary missions as well as technology developments that are expected to be available in the late 80's and early 90's will be described in detail.
• •• Development of low-cost multi-mission end-to-end information system—a system design including spacecraft command and data handling system requirements, as well as an architecture for a cost effective multi-mission operations system will be described. This system is intended to be applied to both classes of spacecraft/missions described above.

     

Evolution and History in a new “Mathematical SETI” model

In a recent paper (Maccone, 2011 [15]) and in a recent book (Maccone, 2012 [17]), this author proposed a new mathematical model capable of merging SETI and Darwinian Evolution into a single mathematical scheme. This model is based on exponentials and lognormal probability distributions, called “b-lognormals” if they start at any positive time b (“birth”) larger than zero. Indeed:

• 1.Darwinian evolution theory may be regarded as a part of SETI theory in that the factor f_l in the Drake equation represents the fraction of planets suitable for life on which life actually arose, as it happened on Earth.
• 2.In 2008 (Maccone, 2008 [9]) this author firstly provided a statistical generalization of the Drake equation where the number N of communicating ET civilizations in the Galaxy was shown to follow the lognormal probability distribution. This fact is a consequence of the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) of Statistics, stating that the product of a number of independent random variables whose probability densities are unknown and independent of each other approached the lognormal distribution if the number of factors is increased at will, i.e. it approaches infinity.
• 3.Also, in Maccone (2011 [15]), it was shown that the exponential growth of the number of species typical of Darwinian Evolution may be regarded as the geometric locus of the peaks of a one-parameter family of b-lognormal distributions constrained between the time axis and the exponential growth curve. This was a brand-new result. And one more new and far-reaching idea was to define Darwinian Evolution as a particular realization of a stochastic process called Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM) having the above exponential as its own mean value curve.
• 4.The b-lognormals may be also be interpreted as the lifespan of any living being, let it be a cell, or an animal, a plant, a human, or even the historic lifetime of any civilization. In Maccone, (2012 [17, Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 11]), as well as in the present paper, we give important exact equations yielding the b-lognormal when its birth time, senility-time (descending inflexion point) and death time (where the tangent at senility intercepts the time axis) are known. These also are brand-new results. In particular, the σ=1 b-lognormals are shown to be related to the golden ratio, so famous in the arts and in architecture, and these special b-lognormals we call “golden b-lognormals”.
• 5.Applying this new mathematical apparatus to Human History leads to the discovery of the exponential trend of progress between Ancient Greece and the current USA Empire as the envelope of the b-lognormals of all Western Civilizations over a period of 2500 years.
• 6.We then invoke Shannon's Information Theory. The entropy of the obtained b-lognormals turns out to be the index of “development level” reached by each historic civilization. As a consequence, we get a numerical estimate of the entropy difference (i.e. the difference in the evolution levels) between any two civilizations. In particular, this was the case when Spaniards first met with Aztecs in 1519, and we find the relevant entropy difference between Spaniards an Aztecs to be 3.84 bits/individual over a period of about 50 centuries of technological difference. In a similar calculation, the entropy difference between the first living organism on Earth (RNA?) and Humans turns out to equal 25.57 bits/individual over a period of 3.5 billion years of Darwinian Evolution.
• 7.Finally, we extrapolate our exponentials into the future, which is of course arbitrary, but is the best Humans can do before they get in touch with any alien civilization. The results are appalling: the entropy difference between aliens 1 million years more advanced than Humans is of the order of 1000 bits/individual, while 10,000 bits/individual would be requested to any Civilization wishing to colonize the whole Galaxy (Fermi Paradox).
• 8.In conclusion, we have derived a mathematical model capable of estimating how much more advanced than humans an alien civilization will be when SETI succeeds.

     

Antarctic communication

A reliable communication facility has been a major requirement for the setting up of remote research stations, particularly when it is in Antarctica, where the problems are more severe. None of the traditional communication equipment can effectively overcome the distances and elements covered.A new all solid-state generation of satellite communication equipment (Debeg 3211) is available today to meet the requirements of reliable communication—telex, voice and slow-scan video transmission. The equipment operates with all C- band (4–6 GHz) domestic satellites. This type of satellite terminal has opened up a whole new era of private reliable communications from Antarctica.Maritime satellite communication provides a number of advantages over the conventional radio communications. Among them are:

• •instantaneous, high-quality service at any time of the day or night, unaffected by weather or ionospheric disturbances;
• •privacy of communications;
• •direct dial capability for voice and telex communications;
• •interconnection of services to the worldwide public telecommunications networks.

     

Experience of the Salyut-7 propulsion system (PS) repair operations

The paper describes initiation and nature of the PS contingency situation and analyzes the capabilities for its elimination. The following activities for restoration procedures to provide propulsion system functioning are considered in full scope:

• 1.a) Methods and program development to provide repair-restoration operations (RRO)
• 2.b) Equipment development and manufacture (instruments, rigging, devices etc.)
• 3.c) Repair-restorations operations definition in ground conditions on mock-ups and cosmonauts training.

Furthermore the prepared restoration procedures performed during the flight are described as well.     

Microbolometer in space: IASI and PICASSO-CENA

Microbolometers are infrared detectors of an emerging technology mainly developed in US and few other countries for few years. The main targets of these developments are low performing military and civilian applications like survey cameras.Applications in space are now arising thanks to the design simplification and the associated cost reduction allowed by this new technology.The paper describes two applications in development in SODERN:

• 1. an infrared camera for the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI): this camera integrated in IASI is used to take pictures of the main instrument field of view and to correlate them with other instrument measurements;
• 2. an infrared radiometer for PICASSO-CENA based on the same camera design.

In both cases, the use of microbolometer detectors leads to very competitive designs in terms of volume, mass, power consumption and cost.     

Communication constraints,indexical countermeasures,and crew configuration effects in simulated space-dwelling groups

Previous research with groups of individually isolated crews communicating and problem-solving in a distributed interactive simulation environment has shown that the functional interchangeability of available communication channels can serve as an effective countermeasure to communication constraints. The present report extends these findings by investigating crew performance effects and psychosocial adaptation following: (1) the loss of all communication channels, and (2) changes in crew configuration. Three-person crews participated in a simulated planetary exploration mission that required identification, collection, and analysis of geologic samples. Results showed that crews developed and employed discrete navigation system operations that served as functionally effective communication signals (i.e., “indexical” or “deictic” cues) in generating appropriate crewmember responses and maintaining performance effectiveness in the absence of normal communication channels. Additionally, changes in crew configuration impacted both performance effectiveness and psychosocial adaptation.     

Some psychophysiological and behavioral aspects of adaptation to simulated autonomous Mission to Mars

“Mars-105” experiment was executed in March–July 2009 in Moscow, at the Institute for Bio-Medical Problems (IBMP) with participation of European Space Agency (ESA) to simulate some specific conditions of future piloted Mars mission. In the last 35 days of isolation, in order to simulate autonomous flight conditions, some serious restrictions were established for the crew resupply and communication with Mission Control (MC). The objective of the study was to investigate psychophysiological and behavioral aspects (communication) of adaptation during this period of “high autonomy”. We used computerized analysis of the crew written daily reports to calculate the frequencies of utilization of certain semantic units, expressing different psychological functions. To estimate the level of psycho-physiological stress, we measured the concentration of urinal cortisol once in two weeks. To investigate psycho-emotional state, we used the questionnaire SAN, estimating Mood, Activity and Health once in two weeks.During the simulation of autonomous flight, we found out the different tendencies of communicative behavior. One group of subjects demonstrated the tendency to “activation and self-government” under “high autonomy” conditions. The other subjects continued to use communicative strategy that we called “closing the communication channel”. “Active” communication strategy was accompanied by increasing in subjective scores of mood and activity. The subjects, whose communication strategy was attributed as “closing”, demonstrated the considerably lower subjective scores of mood and activity. Period of high autonomy causes specific changes in communication strategies of the isolated crew.     

Piloted operations at a near-Earth object (NEO)

In late 2006, NASA's Constellation Program sponsored a study to examine the feasibility of sending a piloted Orion spacecraft to a near-Earth object. NEOs are asteroids or comets that have perihelion distances less than or equal to 1.3 astronomical units, and can have orbits that cross that of the Earth. Therefore, the most suitable targets for the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) are those NEOs in heliocentric orbits similar to Earth's (i.e. low inclination and low eccentricity). One of the significant advantages of this type of mission is that it strengthens and validates the foundational infrastructure of the United States Space Exploration Policy and is highly complementary to NASA's planned lunar sortie and outpost missions circa 2020. A human expedition to a NEO would not only underline the broad utility of the Orion CEV and Ares launch systems, but would also be the first human expedition to an interplanetary body beyond the Earth–Moon system. These deep space operations will present unique challenges not present in lunar missions for the onboard crew, spacecraft systems, and mission control team. Executing several piloted NEO missions will enable NASA to gain crucial deep space operational experience, which will be necessary prerequisites for the eventual human missions to Mars.Our NEO team will present and discuss the following:

• new mission trajectories and concepts;

• operational command and control considerations;

• expected science, operational, resource utilization, and impact mitigation returns; and

• continued exploration momentum and future Mars exploration benefits.

Comparative assessment of human–Mars-mission technologies and architectures

We compare a variety of mission scenarios to assess the strengths and weaknesses of options for Mars exploration. The mission design space is modeled along two dimensions: trajectory architectures and propulsion system technologies. We examine direct, semi-direct, stop-over, semi-cycler, and cycler architectures, and we include electric propulsion, nuclear thermal rockets, methane and oxygen production on Mars, Mars water excavation, aerocapture, and reusable propulsion systems in our technology assessment. The mission sensitivity to crew size, vehicle masses, and crew travel time is also examined. Many different combinations of technologies and architectures are applied to the same Mars mission to determine which combinations provide the greatest potential reduction in the injected mass to LEO. We approximate the technology readiness level of a mission to rank development risk, but omit development cost and time calculations in our assessment. It is found that Earth–Mars semi-cyclers and cyclers require the least injected mass to LEO of any architecture and that the discovery of accessible water on Mars has the most dramatic effect on the evolution of Mars exploration.     

Crew autonomy for deep space exploration: Lessons from the Antarctic Search for Meteorites

Future piloted missions to explore asteroids, Mars, and other targets beyond the Moon will experience strict limitations on communication between vehicles in space and control centers on Earth. These limitations will require crews to operate with greater autonomy than any past space mission has demonstrated. The Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) project, which regularly sends small teams of researchers to remote parts of the southern continent, resembles a space mission in many ways but does not rely upon a control center. It provides a useful crew autonomy model for planners of future deep space exploration missions. In contrast to current space missions, ANSMET gives the crew the authority to adjust competing work priorities, task assignments, and daily schedules; allows the crew to be the primary monitor of mission progress; demands greater crew accountability for operational errors; requires the crew to make the most of limited communication bandwidth; adopts systems designed for simple operation and failure recovery; and grants the crew a leading role in the selection and stowage of their equipment.     

Strategic, technological and ethical aspects of establishing colonies on Moon and Mars

With the vast experience gained by Aerospace Community in the last five decades, the natural future course of action will be to expand Space Exploration. Our understanding of Moon is relatively better with a number of unmanned satellite missions carried out by the leading Space Agencies and manned missions to Moon by USA. Also a number of unmanned satellite missions and surface rover missions were carried out to Mars by those Space agencies generating many new details about Mars. While the future exploration efforts by global community will also be centered obviously on Moon and Mars, it is noteworthy that already NASA had declared its plans for establishing a Surface Base on Moon and developing the technical infrastructure required. Surface Bases on Moon and Mars give rise to a number of strategic, technical and ethical issues both in the process of development, and in the process of establishing the bases. The strategic issues related to Moon and Mars Surface Bases will be centered around development of enabling technologies, cost of the missions, and international cooperation. The obvious path for tackling both the technological development and cost issues will be through innovative and new means of international cooperation. International cooperation can take many forms like—all capable players joining a leader, or sharing of tasks at system level, or all players having their independent programmes with agreed common interfaces of the items being taken to and left on the surface of Moon/Mars. Each model has its own unique features. Among the technical issues, the first one is that of the Mission Objectives—why Surface Bases have to be developed and what will be the activity of crew on Surface Bases? Surface Bases have to meet mainly the issues on long term survivability of humans on the Mars/Moon with their specific atmosphere, gravity and surface characteristics. Moon offers excellent advantages for astronomy while posing difficulties with respect to solar power utilization and extreme temperature variations. Hence the technical challenges depend on a number of factors starting from mission requirements. Obviously the most important technical challenge to be addressed will be in the areas of crew safety, crew survivability, adequate provision to overcome contingencies, and in-situ resource utilization. Towards this, new innovations will be developed in areas such as specialized space suits, rovers, power and communication systems, and ascent and descent modules. The biggest ethical issue is whether humankind from Earth is targeting ‘habitation’ or ‘colonization’ of Moon/Mars. The next question will be whether the in-situ resource exploitation will be only for carrying out further missions to other planets from Moon/Mars or for utilization on Earth. The third ethical issue will be the long term impact of pollution on Moon/Mars due to technologies employed for power generation and other logistics on Surfaces. The paper elaborates the views of the authors on the strategic, technical and ethical aspects of establishing Surface Bases and colonies on Moon and Mars. The underlying assumptions and gray areas under each aspect will be explained with the resulting long-term implications.     

Strategic,technological and ethical aspects of establishing colonies on Moon and Mars

With the vast experience gained by Aerospace Community in the last five decades, the natural future course of action will be to expand Space Exploration. Our understanding of Moon is relatively better with a number of unmanned satellite missions carried out by the leading Space Agencies and manned missions to Moon by USA. Also a number of unmanned satellite missions and surface rover missions were carried out to Mars by those Space agencies generating many new details about Mars. While the future exploration efforts by global community will also be centered obviously on Moon and Mars, it is noteworthy that already NASA had declared its plans for establishing a Surface Base on Moon and developing the technical infrastructure required. Surface Bases on Moon and Mars give rise to a number of strategic, technical and ethical issues both in the process of development, and in the process of establishing the bases. The strategic issues related to Moon and Mars Surface Bases will be centered around development of enabling technologies, cost of the missions, and international cooperation. The obvious path for tackling both the technological development and cost issues will be through innovative and new means of international cooperation. International cooperation can take many forms like—all capable players joining a leader, or sharing of tasks at system level, or all players having their independent programmes with agreed common interfaces of the items being taken to and left on the surface of Moon/Mars. Each model has its own unique features. Among the technical issues, the first one is that of the Mission Objectives—why Surface Bases have to be developed and what will be the activity of crew on Surface Bases? Surface Bases have to meet mainly the issues on long term survivability of humans on the Mars/Moon with their specific atmosphere, gravity and surface characteristics. Moon offers excellent advantages for astronomy while posing difficulties with respect to solar power utilization and extreme temperature variations. Hence the technical challenges depend on a number of factors starting from mission requirements. Obviously the most important technical challenge to be addressed will be in the areas of crew safety, crew survivability, adequate provision to overcome contingencies, and in-situ resource utilization. Towards this, new innovations will be developed in areas such as specialized space suits, rovers, power and communication systems, and ascent and descent modules. The biggest ethical issue is whether humankind from Earth is targeting ‘habitation’ or ‘colonization’ of Moon/Mars. The next question will be whether the in-situ resource exploitation will be only for carrying out further missions to other planets from Moon/Mars or for utilization on Earth. The third ethical issue will be the long term impact of pollution on Moon/Mars due to technologies employed for power generation and other logistics on Surfaces. The paper elaborates the views of the authors on the strategic, technical and ethical aspects of establishing Surface Bases and colonies on Moon and Mars. The underlying assumptions and gray areas under each aspect will be explained with the resulting long-term implications.