Tag Archives: Moon

Investigating the Apollo Valley

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Mauna Kea

Patrick Russell investigating the geology of Apollo Valley on Mauna Kea, Hawaii

In July, I joined a team from Johnson Space Center and elsewhere in investigating the geology of Apollo Valley with rover-deployed scientific instruments. Apollo Valley is a former 1960s Apollo-era astronaut training site at 3,505 meters (11,500 feet) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The project was funded by NASA’s Moon and Mars Analog Mission Activities Program, which funds projects that simulate scientific, robotic, and human aspects of exploring the Moon and Mars, with the goal of designing the most effective, efficient, and well-integrated future missions.

With plentiful basalt lava flows and cinder cones in a dry, barren environment, Mauna Kea is a good analog for the Moon and Mars. Reworking of rocks by ice and water provides another analogy to likely Mars processes. I led the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) investigation, with the radar antenna mounted off the back of the rover. Other rover-mounted instruments included panorama and video cameras, a Moessbauer spectrometer, and navigation instrumentation.

By sending radar waves into the subsurface and detecting their reflections off objects and layers and different materials, GPR provides a view of the upper 3-6 meters (10-20 feet) of the subsurface. We were able to trace surrounding lava flows under the bouldery valley fill to some extent, from which we can estimate the volume of material filling the valley. Also evident were multiple layers of cinders, sands, and gravels that sometimes interfingered or truncated against each other, suggesting multiple episodes of material movement (by wind, water, or mass wasting) and different source directions.

Another important aspect of the project was the pre-field planning and post-field data analysis based solely on rover-collected data, by scientists who were not in the field, to determine how to improve planetary geologic exploration and science return from remote, robotic operations.

The rover itself (~272 kg. or 600 lbs. with four ~40 centimeter- or 16 inch-diameter wheels treaded with small metallic plates) was developed by a Canadian company, Ontario Drive and Gear, in coordination with the Canadian Space Agency, with a view towards future planetary surface missions. The rough lava surfaces, bouldery terrain, and slopes at the site provided grueling physical tests of particular interest to the rover’s engineering and design team. The rover turned in an impressive performance, proving to be quite capable on terrains far rougher than traversed by the rovers currently on Mars.

Patrick Russell is a geoscientist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum.

Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 Extravehicular Gloves and Visor

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Extravehicular gloves and visor worn by Neil Armstrong when he took his first steps on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

There is a new display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport.  Along the south wall of the James S. McDonnell Space Hanger, in a large storefront case, are the extravehicular (EV) gloves and visor that Neil Armstrong wore when he first stepped on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969.  These three components of Armstrong’s A7-L spacesuit are a small portion of what hundreds of millions of people saw on the television broadcast of his first steps on the lunar surface.  But they are also the most immediately identifiable.  The gloves have the blue silicone fingertips and the stainless steel fabric that wraps the hands with the long white gauntlet with instructions printed on the left one.  The visor is the giant sun goggles that astronauts needed to survive in absence of the Sun-filtering effects of the Earth’s atmosphere.  These objects were placed on display on Tuesday afternoon as part of the Museum’s memorialization of Neil Armstrong’s life.

Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 Visor

Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 EV Gloves

The first question that might come to mind to many of the visitors seeing the gloves and visor is why these components and not the rest of his spacesuit?   The short answer to that question is that the Museum is trying to preserve Armstrong’s suit and all the other spacesuits in the national collection for generations to come.  When the news of Neil Armstrong’s death was released to the public, I was shopping for a swim team picnic and immediately began to text our spacesuit conservator, Lisa Young.  We both immediately recognized that the significance of Armstrong’s life and his role in the space program called for a significant action on the part of the Museum.  The components of Armstrong’s spacesuit that he returned from the Moon have been on display almost continuously from the time in 1973 when NASA transferred them to the Museum until 2001 when my predecessor Amanda Young made the very difficult decision to remove them for conservation purposes.  Objects in the spacesuit collection are rotated on and off display based on their individual needs as determined by Museum collections specialists. The climate and display conditions in the existing display were not ideal for preserving the spacesuit for decades.  The natural deterioration processes of the synthetic materials; interactions between components of the suit, humidity, light and the traditional upright display position were all contributing to a worsening condition of the suit.  By 2001, Lisa Young had determined that storage conditions of a moderate temperature (60 degrees Fahrenheit or 15.5 degrees Celsius) and low relative humidity (<30%)  are the ideal conditions to maximize the stabilization of the materials in the suit. Once removed from display, Neil Armstrong’s suit was stored under those conditions for 10 years, first at the Museum’s Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland, and more recently at the Museum’s modern storage facility at the Udvar-Hazy Center. Lisa and I decided that these three of all the suit components were the best able to withstand the hazards of display outside of their storage containers for a brief period of time.

Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit, currently in storage at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. Photo credit: Mark Avino

Once we made that decision, a remarkable number of Museum divisions had to come into play to make the display happen.  The Exhibits Design and Exhibits Production units had to approve a design and location including approving, editing, and producing exhibit labels.  The Smithsonian’s Office of Protection Services had to ensure that the display conditions met the Institution’s monitoring requirements.  Our chief conservator, Malcolm Collum, swung into action in the midst of moving his laboratory from Suitland to the Udvar-Hazy Center and produced a detailed condition report prior to display.  Our mount maker, Glenn Rankin, had to build new mounts to fit the glove and the visor that met both conservation and exhibit requirements.  Then Samantha Snell, Jeannie Whited, and Jennifer Stringfellow of the Collections Division worked to assure that the transport of the artifacts from storage to the Conservation lab and finally to display went smoothly and without incident.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s spacesuits were formerly on display together, pictured here in 1999. Buzz Aldrin’s suit is currently on display in “Apollo to the Moon.” Photo credit: Eric Long

The gloves and visor will be on display for about two weeks.  When they return to storage, we hope that it will not be for another decade.  Neil Armstrong’s death has emphasized to all of us at the Museum the importance of sharing our precious collections related to the Apollo program with the public.  The Museum plans to complete a renovation of its Apollo to the Moon gallery on display at the Museum in Washington, DC.  The new gallery, which is planned for 2018, will tell the story of how the United States built the Apollo program in eight years on the basis of 15 minutes of human spaceflight experience.  In that gallery, visitors, including those who have no personal memory of seeing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969, will see his spacesuit kit and other personal materials on display.  At that time, the suit and its components will be displayed under conditions that will come close to our storage standards.  Once we have established these new display standards for our spacesuit collection, we will be able to share more of our collection with the public while preserving it so that visitors will be able to view it for generations.

Neil Armstrong in his Apollo 11 spacesuit with visor on the table in front of him. Photo credit: NASA

 

Cathleen Lewis is a curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

All photos by Dane Penland, National Air and Space Museum, unless otherwise noted.

Because of the fragility of the suits, the Air and Space Museum joined with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) to create Suited for Space based on Amanda Young and Mark Avino’s book, Spacesuits: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Collection.  Near full-sized images of spacesuits from the Museum’s collection bring you up close, and x-rays give you the inside-look at some suits and their components. The exhibit is currently showing at the Center for Earth and Space Science in Tyler, Texas and will open at the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall in July 2013.

Seeing Beneath the Surface of the Moon

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“Remote sensing” is a term used to describe many different types of observations carried out at a distance. Aerial photos, satellite images of the Earth and planets, and telescope views of our solar system are all forms of remote sensing used to understand geology, climate, hazards, and changes over time. Not all remote observations use the wavelengths of light visible to humans; there is a wealth of information contained in how a surface reflects or emits radiation across the spectrum from radio waves to gamma radiation. Scientists at the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies use radar signals, transmitted from satellites in lunar orbit or from the largest radio dishes on Earth, to probe below the dusty surface of the Moon. Radio waves, which have a much longer wavelength than visible light (the Museum’s research uses signals with 12.6-centimeter and 70-centimeter wavelengths), penetrate up to 30-40 meters into dry material and reflect from buried layers or rocks suspended in the thick dust. By carefully measuring the time between the transmitted and received radar signals, and the subtle changes in frequency caused by the rotation of the Moon, the radar “echoes” can be assembled into an image that resembles a photograph, but revealing aspects of lunar geology often hidden from optical cameras. Studies using the new radar maps trace the outlines of ancient lava flows now buried by material hurled from giant impact craters, find rocky material in resource-rich areas that might pose hazards to robotic exploration, and “light up” for the first time areas near the poles that are in permanent shadow from the Sun. Ongoing work suggests that some areas of the smooth lunar “seas,” or maria, may have very rugged, boulder-covered lava flows hidden by billions of years of overlying dust; how such rough deposits might form remains a mystery. The lessons learned from studies of the Moon are guiding efforts to design a radar sensor for Mars that will look beneath that dust-covered surface to reveal additional geologic signatures of past and present water.

Aristoteles

A 12.6-centimeter wavelength radar view of the lunar crater Aristoteles (87 km diameter). Rugged areas, such the northern interior wall of the crater, appear bright to the radar, and smooth or dusty parts of the surrounding region appear dark. The radar lighting comes from the lower left, so the walls of the crater cast "radar shadows" just as they would for illumination by the Sun. The surrounding clusters and chains of smaller craters were formed by debris ejected from the main crater.

Bruce Campbell is a geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum.

What are Your Favorite Aerospace History Conspiracy Theories?

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We have been discussing at the National Air and Space Museum the possibility of pursuing an educational workshop on the place of conspiracy theories in modern America, especially as it relates to aerospace history but also in the broader context of our national history. Does it hold any interest for you? If we go forward with this idea it will be focused on teaching critical thinking and analysis of evidence. What do you think of this possibility?

Of course, as a society we embrace ideas of conspiracy as an explanation of how and why many events have happened all the time. Conspiracies play to our innermost fears and hostilities that there is a well-organized, well-financed, and Machiavellian design being executed by some malevolent group, the dehumanized “them,” which seek to rob “us” of something we hold dear.

Conspiracy theories abound in American history. Oliver Stone’s film, J.F.K., shows how receptive Americans are to believing that Kennedy was killed as a result of a massive conspiracy variously involving Fidel Castro; American senior intelligence and law enforcement officers; high communist leaders in the Soviet Union; union organizers; organized crime; and perhaps even the Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Stone’s film only brought the assassination conspiracy to a broad American public. For years amateur and not-so-amateur researchers have been churning out books and articles about the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. It has been one of the really significant growth industries in American history during the last 45 years.

Numerous other instances of significant movements in American history have also been motivated at least in part by the possibility of conspiracy. The anti-Masonic crusade in the early nineteenth century was prompted by a fear that Masons were conspiring to overthrow the government and establish a totalitarian state in which they were supreme. Near the same time an anti-Catholic effort arose to fight a perceived “papal conspiracy” to take over the U.S. The Populist movement of the 1890s was predicated in part on a belief that there was a grand conspiracy of business interests in the East who sought to subjugate farmers by setting prices and making them dependent on “moneyed interests.” Some have argued that in 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt manipulated events in the Pacific to provoke the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor so he could join the Allies in a war against Nazi Germany. More recently, some argue that there is a conspiracy of scientists, politicians, and others to convince the world of global warming and thereby force changes in the economy and lifestyle. There is a counter-conspiracy that a well-organized conspiracy exists to defeat belief in global warming and thereby ensure that nothing of significance changes.

If we were to go forward with an educational program relating to aerospace conspiracies and their place in our history, I would ask for your list of major conspiracy theories in air and space. I will start with my list. Please understand that I do not specifically subscribe to any of these theories. What do you think of them? What else would you add? What do you think does not need to be discussed? I welcome your thoughts.

Here is my list of major aerospace conspiracies:

  • The Wright brothers were not the first to fly—small numbers of advocates argue that Alberto Santos-Dumont, John Joseph Montgomery, or some other experimenter was actually first and that a conspiracy—who is involved in the conspiracy is idiosyncratic—exists to keep the truth from the public.
  • Amelia Earhart did not die in a Pacific plane crash in 1937—she was really an American spy captured by the Japanese or she suffered some other such nefarious end.
  • Denials of the Moon landings—a small but vocal group insists that humans have never landed on the Moon and that the U.S. government is lying to us about it.
    • Saturn V

    The Launch of a Saturn V during the Apollo program. Some believe humans never landed on the Moon.

  • Extraterrestrials are visiting Earth, and have been since at least 1947 at the time of the “Roswell Incident”—advocates claim that the government knows the truth of this but denies the allegations. This is a broad area that includes Area 51, alien spacecraft, extraterrestrial bodies, and perhaps even live aliens residing in the U.S. while the government is withholding this truth.
    • Face On Mars

    This image was taken at Mars by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter in 1976. It caused a sensational speculation that it was an artificial construct built by an intelligent civilization on Mars.

  • The face on Mars—the Viking orbiter in 1976 took a single photograph of a part of the Martian surface that appeared to look like a human face staring up toward the sky. NASA insists it looks this way because of light and shadow on a hillside but conspiracy theorists belief that this is part of a cover-up to keep the truth of alien life on Mars quiet.
    • Face on Mars

    A later image from Mars Global Surveyor showing the same hill that supposedly had a human face.

  • The 9/11 attacks by airplane into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were staged by government agents because…the reasons given are broad and often shocking.
  • The Apollo 1 astronauts killed on January 27, 1967, were eliminated by NASA dirty deeds to keep them from revealing…choose the secret of your choice.
  • The Air Force has a super secret spaceplane, the Aurora, which flies military missions into orbit on a regular basis.
  • Contrails from highflying aircraft are actually chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for some nefarious purpose undisclosed to the general public.
  • The Bermuda Triangle—a region in the western part of the Caribbean bounded roughly by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico—is a place where presumably a mysterious force makes aircraft and surface vessels disappear and the U.S. government is lying about it.

Do you have other conspiracy theories relating to air and space history that we might discuss?

Roger D. Launius is a senior curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Is Resistance Futile?

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In Star Trek: The Next Generation the intrepid crew of the United Starship Enterprise repeatedly face the Borg, cyborgs intent on assimilating the biological creatures of the universe into their collective consciousness. Their meme, “resistance is futile,” serves as a convenient tagline for this ongoing plot device in the fictional series, but it also may foreshadow a more realistic future for humanity as we reach into space. When considering the far future and the potential for humans to colonize other bodies in the solar system and beyond, perhaps humanity will adapt to the space environment through modifications of the human body like those found on the Borg.

This idea was first broached by scientists Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in a 1960 NASA study. They remarked: “Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space.”  They proposed a variety of modifications that would allow humans to withstand radiation, the absence of atmospheric oxygen, and other hazards of space. They coined the term “cyborg” to describe this adaptation.

Sojourner and Astronaut on Mars

The classic image of humans and robots working together is depicted in this NASA artwork. Sojourner, the Mars Pathfinder rover named after former slave and famous abolitionist Sojourner Truth, is visited many years after its mission by a descendant of its namesake, in this artist’s rendering. Like the human, Sojourner the rover paved the way for those that followed. This image was produced for NASA by Pat Rawling.

Since that time, NASA has refrained from serious consideration of the ideas offered by Clynes and Kline, although a few studies in the 1960s investigated these possibilities. But what of the future, especially the distant future? To date, human presence in space has consisted of what might be characterized as extended camping trips, often a week or more but rarely exceeding a half year in length.  Yet space advocates continue to propose far lengthier stays, from planetary outposts to solar system colonization.

If colonization of the solar system, and the rest of the galaxy, is truly desirable, will it be done by Homo sapiens?  In undertaking this cosmic venture, humans might change, especially if very long periods of time are involved.  Humans born and raised on extraterrestrial locations would change naturally in response to different conditions.  Given advances in biotechnology, others might reengineer themselves.  The current debate over the superiority of humans versus robots in space could disappear in the presence of such alterations.

A provocative possibility appears in the rapid rise of biotechnology, suggesting that humans may become cyborgs through the application of sophisticated machinery in ways at least initially unrelated to space exploration. In many ways we are already there, with millions of people enjoying a better quality of life, or in some cases life itself, through the incorporation of pacemakers, joint and limb replacements, cochlear hearing implants, artificial organs, and a potential list of even more sophisticated enhancements. Future possibilities are astonishing.

How might we remake the human body to more effectively meet the rigors of space exploration? Skeptics may scoff at this possibility as nothing more than bioscience fiction, but space exploration was itself fiction in the truest sense of the word less than 75 years ago. Advances in biotechnology could take place with similar speed.

Robonaut

NASA’s Robonaut (foreground) is a step forward in terms of human/machine interaction. Here it performs a mock weld while Ames Research Center's K10 robot assists two EVA crew inspecting a previously welded seam.

The result, given sufficient time, may be the emergence of a new age of space exploration. Technological developments now beginning to take place might permit a true merger—humans equipped with robotic parts or machines possessing sentient qualities. In that sense, humans and robots would explore space together—really together.

The implications of such developments for the future of space exploration are fascinating.  They are made more interesting when one considers the degree to which humans might change during the millions of years available to colonize the galaxy. Who knows what derivations of the human form could emerge? Such developments would alter the traditional debate over space exploration in ways that provide a new paradigm quite different than the one casting humans with all of their biological limitations into the extraterrestrial realm. Such developments might make space travel more attainable, though in unconventional ways.

So, is there a Borg in our future? Possibly; even probably. In fact, we may already be there with all of the biotechnological enhancements now routinely offered to human beings. This possibility, moving as it does away from the necessity of maintaining organic life under Earth-like conditions throughout the cosmos, offers a fascinating option for space travel. If we did not require Earth-like conditions to survive, our ability to colonize strikingly diverse non-Earth-like worlds would expand. Many spheres, including those within the local solar system not currently suitable for human occupation, might prove acceptable. Is it possible that once cyborgs emerge—and undertake space travel—they will shoulder the burden of carrying the essence of humanity to other worlds? Resistance may be futile, if the Borg really are us. But they need not be feared.

Roger D. Launius is senior curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum. Howard E. McCurdy is professor of public affairs at the American University,Washington, D.C. They pubished Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), from which the ideas here are taken.