Launchpad Space News, November 2001

Artemis has been getting a little coverage, but not The Artemis Project which Launchpad was originally set up under. No, this is a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite whose clever trick is to communicate with another satellite called SPOT4 with a laser link (image of the event on the right, courtesy of ESA). The distance they are communicating over is bigger than shown, several times the diameter of the Earth, in fact. SPOT4 is orbiting at 832km while Artemis is at 31,000km. Just lining the laser up is a real challenge, but data was sent over the laser beam at a rate of 50Mb/s, which is about 1,000 times faster than a good dial-up internet connection.

So what's in it for us? Well, a few things. Radio communications on Earth and off it are filling up the frequencies, so if some of that can go into laser beams there's more radio to go around. Laser's can be pointed very accurately, which means the power can be concentrated, in theory there is no limit to the distance we can send a laser beam link and the high power means we can send a lot of data. Not just useful for TV satellite links, but handy if there's a space colony out in the galactic sticks, or even on Mars.

Pommie Poly Rocket

Bristling with British ingenuity, Richard Osbourne has built and launched a high-altitude rocket powered by polythene (which chemists now call poly-ethylene) and good old nitrous oxide of car racing fame. This kind of rocket, using a liquid oxidizer and solid block of fuel, is called a hybrid rocket. It allows the thrust to be controlled or even shut off by throttling the oxidizer, has more thrust than a solid-fuel rocket, and has less complex parts than a completely liquid fuel design - which means it's very light and very strong. Using the smallest fuel tank they had, their Deimos-2 made 2,134 metres. That was at one-third of the B4 engine's full thrust. Amateur and professional rocketeers alike are eager to see what it can do at full thrust, when it should shatter the UK's altitude record and may one day make it into space.

China Still Looking Up

The Chinese State Aerospace Bureau is still making enthusiastic noises about China's space efforts. In 10 years, China expects to launch a lunar mission, but even their manned flight may have to wait until 2005 unless they are convinced about the safety of their Long March rockets. These have had an unfortunate track record, and a dead Taikonaut or two is something that China can well do without.

But the reliability of their systems now seems much improved, and they are collaborating with the rest of the scientific world. In particular, with Europe. ESA is putting instruments onboard two Chinese satellites around the end of 2002 to explore the Earth's magnetic field. China plans to launch 30 satellites over the next 5 years, and is developing a new, more environmentally friendly launch vehicle.

ISS Crew 4 To The Fore

Up on the ISS, Mikhail Tyurin and Vladimir Dezhyrov sampled the delights of an American Thanksgiving dinner this month, NASA-style. Commander Frank Culbertson did the traditional handing out of the smoked turkey packets. Empty packets go into the old Progress spacecraft, which are then commanded to re-enter the atmosphere and become multi-million dollar incinerators. This may seem wasteful to you, but. OK, it is wasteful, and I wish they'd recycle the metal having spent about what it cost to make the darned thing out of gold getting it up there.

The station is starting to become more independent. It has logged over 50,000 hours of scientific research and astronauts and cosmonauts made a spacewalk this month, for the first time without a Shuttle standing by.

They burnt one Progress up recently, and another loaded with fresh supplies should have gone up from Baikonur Cosmodrome and arrived by Roundabout publication day. Shortly afterward on the 29^th November, the Space Shuttle flight STS-108 is scheduled (and who knows, may launch on time for once) to bring the Expedition 4 crew. The Italian Rafaello module will be going up on this flight, loaded with supplies including a few special trinkets for Christmas and New Year. There has to be brandy, right?

Happy Birthday Over Mars

While on the subject of anniversaries, the Mars Global Orbiter was sent to Mars 5 years ago this month. It started sending back pictures of Mars on the 12^th September 1997, and we've just received the 100,000th picture back from it! The latest arrival, Odyssey, is now rubbing itself against Mars' thin atmosphere to slow itself down into the right orbit. All going well, we'll be receiving images from that in exotic wavelengths, allowing us to find hot-spots on Mars - the Martian equivalent of Rotorua, if it exists.

Starchaser Goes Nova

Starchaser in the UK have launched their Nova rocket, the engineering proof-of-concept vehicle shown here leaving the launch tower on the left. The fins on 11 metre long, 747kg solid-fuelled rocket are about as tall as a person. Starchaser are calling the launch "85% successful" but are giving few details.

Its successor, Thunderbird, is destined to use technology based on the Nova design, but will be slightly larger at about 16 metres and much heavier at 20 tonnes. Unlike Nova it will use a kerosene/oxygen liquid fuelled rocket and hopefully will win Starchase the X-Prize for the first private manned space vehicle.

Finally, this is the last Launchpad for 2001, allowing us to join in the festivities and recover from our hangovers. So I'd like to take the opportunity to wish everyone on and off Earth a Merry Christmas and a stellar new year. - Vik

This edition is also on the web, just point your web browser to http://olliver.family.gen.nz. vik@olliver.family.gen.nz