Lunar GPS

With development and testing of the shuttle replacement well underway, the next milestone beyond first flight of the rocket, is a lunar base. In order for the lunar base to be successful, they will need to communicate with Earth. This could pose a challenge for when astronauts are on the backside of the moon.

The current proposal is to launch a number of satellites to act as communication relay for the astronauts, and they could also double as a Lunar GPS system. A few proposals currently exist for where to place the satellites. One is the most obvious of orbiting the moon, but the moon has a very irregular gravitational field due to irregular mass within the moon. So they would have to follow a very specific path. The second idea is to place the satellites in the Lagrangian points where they would be able to see the reverse side of the moon and would remain fixed relative to the Earth-Moon system.

Swing on over to Space.com to check out the full article.

Godspeed

A Party Bag of Topics

Just a bunch of small topics to discuss today.


Tonight there is a total lunar eclipse, be sure to get outside and take a look at it. Happens at 10 pm EST and will be the last lunar eclipse visible in the US until 2010. Go outside and take a look, the moon will turn a cool shade of red due to the red wavelength of light that gets bent in the upper atmosphere of the Earth and projected onto the surface of the moon.

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Space shuttle Atlantis has returned safely to Cape Canaveral today ending its mission to bring a new piece of the ISS into orbit. The shuttle crew completed many tasks and made a successful mission after nearly 2 months of delays due to a faulty fuel sensor. Good to see Atlantis making another successful flight.


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One of the bigger stories of the day was the NAVY preparing to shoot down a failed satellite in orbit. This has been a huge story for the last few days as the NAVY has had to invest millions ($60 million to be exact) in modifications and man hours to prep and launch this missile. The missile will intercept the satellite and break it into many pieces which will easily burn up on re-entry. The whole reason for the shoot down of the satellite was so that the volatile hydrazine fuel won't spread over land if the fuel was to by chance survive re-entry.


Fun day for aerospace in the news!