Space Station Ready for New Robot

A massive robot and Japan’s first room in space are set for delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) next week aboard NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour.

Canada’s two-armed robot, named Dextre for its nimble capabilities, should give astronauts a break from basic repair and maintenance tasks outside of the growing space station. The Japanese Logistics Pressurized (JLP) Module marks the first of three components for that nation’s massive Kibo science lab.

“This flight will be a monumental flight for Japan,” said Tetsuro Yokoyama, operations project deputy manager for Kibo, during a press briefing at Johnson Space Center this week. “We are very close to a long-awaited moment.”

The seven-astronaut STS-123 space shuttle crew, led by commander Dominic Gorie, is slated to launch at 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT) on March 11 aboard Endeavour. The crew aims to install Japan’s new orbital room in a temporary position on March 14, then begin Dextre’s assembly on March 15.

Meet Dextre

To fit the Canadian Space Agency’s $274-million, 3,440-pound (1,560-kilogram) robot into Endeavour’s payload bay, engineers crafted it into large chunks that spacewalking astronauts could assemble outside of the ISS.

Once astronauts latch each piece in place and attach it to a mobile platform on the space station, Dextre will be able to do many standard tasks with an astronaut or earthbound operators at its controls.

“He’s got huge arms, kind of got like a head up there and a lower torso,” said astronaut Rick Linnehan, a mission specialist on the STS-123 mission, comparing it “Gigantor,” a famous cartoon robot. “It allows us to … increase the amount of robotics tasks we do up on station.”

That’s important, NASA officials have said, because spacewalking is risky business for astronauts. The new robot is also expected to give space station crewmembers more time to focus on science and other tasks, they added.

“It’s sitting out there in the harsh environment of space all the time, basically ready to go,” said Daniel Rey, manager for the Dextre project. “It doesn’t require any pre-breathe protocol and it doesn’t require any cleanup. It’s an operational robot that’s pushing the limits of what we can do in space today with robotics.”

Each of Dextre’s seven-jointed arms will possess a “hand” — an orbital replacement unit — backed by a sensor sensitive to less than 1 pound (0.5 kilogram) of force, or about the weight of a small water bottle. The device will use a suite of tools to replace burned-out components outside the ISS, as well as assist spacewalkers with their duties.

Space Closet

Japan’s JLP module will serve primarily as attic space for the three-part Kibo science laboratory when it’s finished some time in 2009. Initially, however, the 9.2-ton cylindrical room will be used to ferry eight systems and science experiment racks to the ISS.

“I feel it’s a little bit small inside,” said Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, noting that the module was slightly larger than a small walk-in closet. “As you know this is a module for storage purposes.” Doi, an STS-123 mission specialist representing the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will deliver the new room to the ISS using Endeavour’s robotic arm.

The module, to be followed by a “back porch” exposed to space and a school bus-sized science lab, is part of Japan’s 680 billion yen ($6.6 billion) space station science initiative, JAXA officials have said.

Aside from Dextre and Japan’s module, Endeavour will carry experiments to Europe’s Columbus laboratory module, as well as a testbed to demonstrate a repair method to fix chinked heat-resistant tiles on a shuttle’s heat shield. NASA is also sending up RIGEX — short for Rigidizable Inflatable Get-Away-Special Experiment — that is a small, automated experiment designed to test making inflatable structures in orbit.

source 

Jupiter

The most massive planet in our solar system, with four planet-sized moons and many smaller moons, Jupiter forms a kind of miniature solar system. Jupiter resembles a star in composition. In fact, if it had been about eighty times more massive, it would have become a star rather than a planet.

On January 7, 1610, using his primitive telescope, astronomer Galileo Galilei saw four small ’stars’ near Jupiter. He had discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons, now called Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Collectively, these four moons are known today as the Galilean satellites.

Galileo would be astonished at what we have learned about Jupiter and its moons in the past 30 years. Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system. Ganymede is the largest planetary moon and is the only moon in the solar system known to have its own magnetic field. A liquid ocean may lie beneath the frozen crust of Europa. Icy oceans may also lie deep beneath the crusts of Callisto and Ganymede. In 2003 alone, astronomers discovered 23 new moons orbiting the giant planet, giving Jupiter a total moon count of 49 - the most in the solar system. The numerous small outer moons may be asteroids captured by the giant planet’s gravity.

Read More About Jupiter

IRS (Indian Remote Sensing Satellite)

Following the successful demonstration flights of Bhaskara 1 and Bhaskara 2 launched in 1979 and 1981, respectively, India began development of an indigenous IRS (Indian Remote Sensing Satellite) program to support the national economy in the areas of “agriculture water resources, forestry and ecology, geology, water sheds, marine fisheries and coastal management”. The Indian Remote Sensing satellites are the main-stay of National Natural Resources Management system (NNRMS), for which Department of Space (DOS) is the nodal agency, providing operational remote sensing data services. Data from the IRS satellites is received and disseminated by several countries all over the world. With the advent of high resolution satellites new applications in the areas of urban sprawl, infrastructure planning and other large scale applications for mapping have been initiated.

Remote sensing applications in the country, under the umbrella of NNRMS, now cover diverse fields such as crop acreage and yield estimation, drought warning and assessment, flood control and damage assessment, land use/land cover information, agro-climatic planning, wasteland management, water resources management, under-ground water exploration, prediction of snow-melt run-off, management of water- sheds and command areas, fisheries development, under development, mineral prospecting forest resources survey, Active involvement of the user ministries/ departments has ensured in an effective harnessing of the potential of space-based remote sensing. An important application of IRS data is in the Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development (IMSD) initiated in 1992. IMSD, under which 174 districts have been identified, aims at generating locale-specific action plans for sustainable development.

The first two IRS spacecraft, IRS-1A (March’ 198 and IRS-1B (August, 1991) were launched by Russian Vostok boosters from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. IRS-1A failed in 1992, while IRS-1B continued to operate through 1999. From their 22-day repeating orbits of 905 km mean altitude and 99 degrees inclination, the two identical IRS spacecraft hosted a trio of Linear Imaging Self-Scanning (LISS) remote sensing COD instruments working in four spectral bands: 0.45-0.52 µm 0.52-0.59 µm, 0.62-0.68 µm, and 0.77-0.86 µm. The 38.5-kg LISS-I images a swath of 148 km with a resolution of 72.5 m while the 80.5-kg LISS-IIA and LISS-IIB exhibit a narrower field-of-view (74-km swath) but are aligned to provide a composite 145-km swath with a 3-km overlap and a resolution of 36.25 m.

Each IRS spacecraft is 975 kg at launch with a design life of 2.5-3 years. The 3-axis stabilized spacecraft is essentially rectangular (1.1m by 1.5 m by 1.6 m) with two narrow solar arrays producing less than 1 kW electrical power. The Spacecraft Control Center at Bangalore oversees ail spacecraft operations, but the principal data reception station for the remote sensing payload is located at Shadnagar. Spacecraft data transmissions are effected via X-band and S-band antennas at the base of spacecraft.

IRS-1A and IRS-1B were to be joined in 1993 with IRS-1E, the modified IRS-1A engineering model’ which had been equipped with the LISS-I and a German Monocular Electro-Optical Stereo Scanner. The spacecraft was lost, however, when its PSLV launch vehicle failed to reach Earth orbit. Thirteen months later, in October, 1994, the PSLV functioned correctly, allowing IRS-P2 to assume an 820-km, sun-synchronous orbit. This spacecraft continued in operations until September 1997. With an 870-kg mass (slightly less than IRS-1A and IRS-1B), IRS-P2 carried the LISS-II system with a ground resolution of 32 m across-track and 37m along-track. The total swath width is 131 km, and the CCD array is tuned to four spectral bands between 0.45 and 0.86 am. The spacecraft’s solar arrays provide up to 500 W and are linked to conventional nickel cadmium storage batteries .

As of late 1999 five IRS satellites were operating, and more were scheduled for launch by the year 2000. IRS-1C, successfully launched on December 28, 1995 on board a Molniya rocket of Russia, was the last Russian launch of the program (Molniya rather than Vostok, while IRS-1D was orbited by India’s PSLV. IRS-P3 was launched by PSLV in 1996 with a German modular electro-optical scanner and an Indian visible-lR scanner.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and its commercial marketing arm, ANTRIX Corp. Ltd., successfully launched the IRS-1D Earth imaging satellite on 29 September 1997 from Sriharikota, India. The satellite is an identical twin to the IRS-1C, launched in December 1995. The dual use of these satellites provides 5.8-meter resolution images to customers twice as often as was possible with just the IRS-1C.

IRS-1C and IRS-ID introduced a heavier (1,350 kg), more capable Earth observation platform. The spacecraft bus will be similar to those of IRS-1A and IRS-IB, but a slightly larger solar array generates more than 800 W. Both IRS-1C and 1D produce 5.8-meter panchromatic (0.50.75 µm - black and white) imagery, which is resampled to five-meter pixel detail. This resolution, which as of early 1998 was the best of any civilian remote sensing satellites in the world, is superior to the 8-meter resolution initially reported for the panchromatic imager. These satellites are also equipped with two-band Wide Field Sensors (WiFS) that cover a 774-square-kilometer (481-square-mile) area in a single image, as well as LISS-3 4-band (0.52-0.59, 0.62-0.68, 0.77-0.86, and 1.55-1.70 µm) multispectral sensors that provide 23.5-meter resolution multispectral coverage. The 23.5-meter resolution imagery is resampled to produce 20-meter pixel detail. The spacecraft also carry a 2-channel (0.62-0.68 and 0.77-0.86 µm) wide-field sensor (190 m resolution) .

The IRS C,D Pan sensor sacrifices swath width for its higher resolution. However, it can be pointed off the orbit path which allows 2 to 4 day revisits to specific sites. IRS-1C and IRC-1D data can be received and procured from EOSAT (USA) or in India at the NRSA, Hyderabad.

Upcoming launches include IRS-P5 in 1998, IRS-2A in 2000, and IRS-2B in 2004, all with the new LISS-4 sensor suite.

IRS-P4 (OCEANSAT-1) will have payloads, specifically tailored for the measurements of physical and biological oceanography parameters. An Ocean Color Monitor (OCM) with eight spectral bands, Multi-frequency Scanning Microwave Radiometer (MSMR) operating in four frequencies will provide valuable Ocean-Surface related observation capability. The OCEANSAT-1 was slated for launch by PSLV in early 1998.

IRS-P5 (CARTOSAT-1) has an improved sensor system that provides 2.5 m resolution with fore-aft stereo capability. This mission caters to the needs of cartographers and terrain modelling applications. The satellite will provide cadastral level information up to 1:5000 scale and will be useful for making 2-5 m contour maps.

IRS-P6 (RESOURCESAT-1) will be a state-of-art satellite mainly for agriculture applications and will have a 3-band multispectral LISS-IV camera with a spatial resolution better than 6 m and a swath of around 25 km with across track steerability for selected area monitoring. An improved version of LISS-III with four bands (red, green, near IR and SWIR), all at 23 m resolution and 140 km swath will provide the essential continuity to LISS-III. These sensors will provide data which will be useful for vegetation related applications and will allow multiple crop discrimination and species level discrimination. Together with an advanced Wide Field Sensor (WiFS) with 80 m resolution and 1400 km swath, the payloads will greatly aid crop/vegetation and integrated land and water resources related applications. The IRS-P6 is slated for launch by PSLV by end of 2000.

The IRS-2 series (OCEANSAT-2/CLIMATSAT-1/ATMOS-1) will be an integrated mission that will cater to global observations of climate, ocean and atmosphere. Microwave instruments to cater for oceanographic applications will be mainly a Ku band Altimeter, Ku band Scatterometer, Microwave Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Radiometer for observing oceanographic parameters like winds, sea surface temperature, waves, bathometry and internal waves. Instruments for atmospheric chemistry applications include spectrometers, sounders and radiometers for studying the atmospheric constituents, pollution and for monitoring ozone and greenhouse effect. Instruments to observe climate and meteorological parameters will include microwave sounders, radiometers and rain radars.

IRS-3, beyond 2002, will have all weather capabilities with multi-frequency and multi polarisation microwave payloads and other passive instruments.

SOURCE