Endeavor is carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station that will perform some inspiring science on measuring dark matter radiation. There’s also a host of spiders, aggressive bacteria and other science experiments that will be run on the iSS. I’ll have more photos and stories up soon.

Specifically, I worked on a revolutionary new Drag-Free and Attitude Control Subsystem, DFACS, that performs autonomous determination and control of the spacecraft’s attitude pointing, angular movements and linear and angular accelerations. You can download an article describing the system that was used for HYPER .

It was at this time, living and traveling extensively through Europe on short trips, constantly connected with a mobile phone, a cheap GPS receiver, and blogging and photo sharing that you could see the convergence and emergence of Where2.0. Fortunately the Wayback machine has my old blog “An American Engineer in Germany” recorded for posterity.

In addition, I was quite frustrated with the satellite industry. The politics and budgets that inexplicably cancel projects years, and millions of dollars/euros – or even when physics gives you a swift kick and dooms your satellite to a 30-minute flight before immediately de-orbiting. Not a rewarding way to end 10 years of hard work.

At Astrium, I was a member of the GOCE satellite team. The goal of GOCE, Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer, was to utilize a very high precision gradiometer in order to measure the magnetic characteristics of the Earth. The benefit is a highly detailed gravitational model of the Earth’s geoide which can then inform ocean circulation and sea-level models, orbital predictions, space-time drag, and more. Since the force of gravity falls off at a cubic rate inverse square from the distance to the mass, GOCE must fly at a relatively very low altitude. It therefore uses continuous ion thrusters to compensate for atmospheric drag, and another reason the DFACS is so important.

About 6 months after leaving Astrium, I had been told that the project was shelved, and never wondered about it.

Then surprisingly, while at the UNGIWG workshop in Rome last February, a director of UNOSAT told me that GOCE was in fact completed and being boxed up for shipment to the launch site! Again I didn’t track it until a couple of weeks ago, twitter showed it’s power again and Astronautics pointed out that GOCE was launching!

On March 17, GOCE launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia. GOCE is the first of ESA’s Core Missions of the Earth Explorer programme – others including atmospheric dynamics, ice sheet thickness measurement, radiative balance, and ocean salinity.

So while the space industry can be quite frustrating, it is undeniably exciting to see something you helped build hurtling around the Earth at approximately 7,700 meters per second just 170 miles above us. GOCE is even using GPS to track its own position in space.

Of course, besides very brief forays to nearby celestial bodies we have relegated ourselves to primary the same orbit we reached 50 years ago.

Here’s to hoping we have the vision and execution to go back to deeper space – both for knowledge and to spread ourselves into more than one basket.

Tags: space, sputnik, mars, moon, spaceexploration, lowearthorbit,

The details are fairly light, but it seems as though NASA is building a VR game on space exploration (remember Microsoft’s Space Simulator, or the free and open-source Orbiter?). I wonder why NASA is rebuilding their own engine rather then picking up and using existing simulators (like Open-SESSAME) on top of the Unreal graphics/physics engine.

I also wonder if, given their presentation venue in SL, if they are considering integration of their space simulator with SecondLife itself. Apparently right now it is possible in SL to have some sort of orbital platform. But imagine if they actually opened up Space Stations, or other planets/moons for exploration/colonization.

Tags: nasa, secondlife, space, simulation, unreal, virtualreality

However, with the increasing number of interplanetary rovers, observations of moons, and perhaps future excursions, it is still useful to define how to properly handle these other reference frames. Luna and Mars are two suggested Microformats that are starting the discussion on how one might mark locations on the two bodies. Additionally, the OGC is working now on determining standards for scientists and developers to publish and share data sources of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, ‘oh my’.

And why does the Earth have to be the only one with cool, “slippy maps”. I quickly put together a map of Mars. It uses the powerful OpenLayers Javascript mapping library to display the tiles from a NASA WMS server.

To produce the locations for the map, I put up a Space Blog, using WordPress and a slightly modified GeoPress to publish Mars lander locations and landing dates. I altered the published Microformats produced by GeoPress to make the class “geo mars” as a suggested way to markup Mars coordinates. The published GeoRSS feeds from the Space Blog then produce the locations and layers automatically on the OpenLayers Mars Map.

To Do: CRS and You

So this is all very neat, and in the end, really easy to setup. However, this is just a demonstration and in no way should be construed as “the way to do it”. Specifically, there are these questions left unanswered:

1. How to define the Microformat and GeoRSS for non-Earth (and non-WGS84) reference frames
2. How to define the Microformats and GeoRSS/Geonames location for non-Earth locations (like “Ares Vallis”)
3. More sources for interplanetary map servers
4. Ways to syndicate, and subscribe to, specific bodies
5. Support for publishing, consuming, and drawing lines – in order to plot out mission profiles
6. Support for publishing, consuming, and drawing areas – in order to plot out mission profiles, landing sites, and expected areas of “mission failures”

I’m sure there are more issues, so please speak up. You know who you space geeks are.

I think this is a simply marvelous idea. I’ve been in several European cities when they’ve had “Car Free days”, most recently in Brussels during EuroOSCON. The idea is one day of the week that everyone will go car free, and enjoy the relative quiet and easy biking/strolling about town.

Overall, I am an idealistic technocrat. I really enjoy technology, gadgets, programming, etc. However, I also enjoy natural beauty and the environment as it is. I hope that towns here in the US start promoting these sorts of activities. I mean, what’s the worse that can happen, people actually think its a good idea and turn off their lights at night?

This was done with the increasingly popular jQuery, an up-and-coming javascript framework/library. (via Dr. Nic)

Tags: css, javascript, jquery,

However, what is really distressing is that today’s engineers have to learn at museums. There obviously wasn’t enough documentation, recording, and continuation between generations of engineers for NASA to capture that tremendous knowledge and experience. Instead of learning from their mentors, or reading manuals, workbooks, and photographs, they must resort to figuring out what works by inspecting the actual devices themselves.

Learning by inspection can be a very good learning experience. You are forced to make connections and gain insights on your own. However, it is also very easy to miss what is important.
“Why did they use platinum wires but gold connectors?” (hypothetical question)
“What didn’t work that we’re not seeing here?”

The same thing is happening with today’s nuclear missiles. The current missiles were designed to last 20-30 years. Yet they’re still online, with testing equipment that is severly outdated. Retired engineers are brought back, sat in a room for days with recording equipment and asked to tell their stories. Today’s engineers are now realizing that when they design something with an expected lifetime of 30 years, just imagine it may be 50-70 years before it’s actually replaced.

In essence, the Apollo program must be redone. Granted they now have the relics of the past (including some lingering engineers), and new technology, but they’re doing it with a more limited budget and less gusto from the general public.

I want us to go to the moon. It’s the only place in human history that we have traveled to, returned, and never gone back. Lets try and learn from our mistakes and get this job done.

Tags: space, nasa, exploration, moon, apollo,

In my place, Katie Betchold has done a great job getting my rather large 3′x4′ poster out there, hung up, and my in fact be presenting it today for the 2-minute poster precis. She is totally awesome!

If you don’t, in fact, find yourself in Pasadena, California at the conference, then you can virtually check out my poster (1.8 MB pdf). The accompyaning paper should be in a future IEEE publication available at local newstands everywhere.

The title of the paper is: “The Development and Use of Open-source Spacecraft Simulation and Control Software for Education and Research”, and primarily covers the experiences of developing Open-SESSAME spacecraft modeling and simulation framework, its use at the Space Systems Simulation Laboratory at Virginia Tech, and by various researchers around the world.

And I’m already gettin’ out my party hat for HR1614 which becomes aware of my birth in just 4 short weeks!

HR6416 Stats

It primarily will present the original development as well as current users & users of the Open-SESSAME Framework (Open-Source Spacecraft Simulation And Modeling Environment).

I know there are some space-geeks that check out the blog, I’d like to ask for any comments or feedback you have on the use of open-source software in spacecraft research, simulation, education, operations, and/or analysis. Software packages, experiences, desired features/functionality in software and even open-source hardware.

You can either leave a comment on the site, or email me at simulation@highearthorbit.com.

Check out the launch timeline which occurs today at 1:24pm EST (18:24 GMT). There is a webcam to watch the excitement. Just don’t stand too close, that thars plootoneeum in thar. And in case you didn’t know, the spacecraft is spending precious mass to carry along a couple of items: 430,000 names (submitted via the website), a piece of Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne, and an American flag among other mementos.

New Horizons Wikipedia

Well, I’ve been feeling the pull to go back to spacecraft simulation for my “fun time” activity (yes, I am a geek), so I’ve been reacquainting myself with the current state of space simulation software and toolkits.

• NASA’s current open-source projects

NASA apparently has large support now for open-source software, which makes great sense considering they are a government entity. World Wind has gotten a lot of publicity as it is like an open-source, and very pretty, version of GoogleEarth.

Check out WW2D for a truly cross-platform version of World Wind for those of you running a nice OS (such as Linux, Mac OS X)

• Mission Simulation Facility

MSF is a large scale simulation framework utilitizing HLA and various other packages run by NASA Ame’s. The dynamics engine employs ODE – the open-source dynamics engine as well as ROAMS.

• Open-source linux operating system for onboard spacecraft use

A set of tools, software, and resources for designed, scrapped, and flying spacecraft missions using Linux as their onboard operating system. LinuxJournal has an article, Linux on a Small Satellite by Christoper Huffine that gives a very good and in-depth description of experiences using Linux onboard.

• Hobby Space’s long list of simulator hardware & software

This set of pages has a huge list of software, hardware, resources, and more you may need if you want to build your own shuttle simulator or more. It includes links to most of the major games that have been space simulation and still ongoing ones.

Blogs

What would a modern set of references be without the requisite blogs:

• Music of the Spheres
• Fly me to the Moon