Orion

The Orlando Sentinel reported a "heated" 40-minute conversation between a "red-faced" Griffin and Garver at a book-publication party at NASA headquarters last week According to witnesses Griffin demanded to speak directly to Obama.

President Elect Obama has sent teams to every government agency in order to ensure smooth transition between administrations. Their job is to dig through budgets and plans to find anything that may cause problems for the incoming administration. The Bush White House has ordered full cooperation.

Griffin appears to consider this a personal insult. Witnesses to the "animated conversation" reported Garver as saying, "Mike, I don’t understand what the problem is. We are just trying to look under the hood."

"If you are looking under the hood, then you are calling me a liar," Griffin replied. "Because it means you don’t trust what I say is under the hood."

Griffin was appointed by President Bush four years ago to lead NASA in the efforts for a return Moon shot by 2020 and then on to Mars. He has overseen the selection of Constellation, with its NASA-designed Ares I rocket and Orion capsule for the job. Griffin would like to stay on under the new administration, "under the right circumstances."

Budgetary problems and technical issues with Constellation have been the subject of the transition team's scrutiny. They have asked NASA how much could be saved by cancelling the Area I rocket. They have also asked about accelerating the program. The cancellation question has obviously worried Griffin.

The Orlando Sentinel also reports Griffin is orchestrating a campaign to defend Constellation. It says Griffin is:

"...scripting NASA employees and civilian contractors on what they can tell the transition team and has warned aerospace executives not to criticize the agency’s moon program."

NASA's Chief of Strategic Communications, Chris Shank denied there was an argument or that Griffin is trying to keep information from the Garver's team. He denied that Griffin is seeking a meeting with Obama.

He did acknowledge that Griffin felt the team lack the expertise to assess some of the information they have been given. Griffin, an engineer, has said the Garver is "not qualified" to make decisions on NASA’s rocketry program.

Garver has refused to comment, but people close to her say she has confirmed "unpleasant" exchanges with Griffin and other NASA officials. Garver recently told a Washington meeting of aerospace representatives, "there will be change" to NASA policy. She hinted that there would be a new administrator soon.

The situation is exasperated by Barack Obama’s lukewarm support for the Moon shot during his election campaign. His position early in the primaries was to see more NASA spending on education at the expense of the Moon landings. He shifted several times during the campaign.

Obama only came out firmly in support of the new Moon shot when if became obvious that the loss of jobs in important battleground states such as Florida could derail his bid for the Presidency.

However, these pledges were made when the federal budgetary considerations was very different from those today. It would not be hard to find justification for cutting NASA's budget.

Image Credit: Lockheed Martin Corp.

Ministers agree to finance most of the European Space Agency wish list.

Ministers responsible for space exploration from the 18 European Space Agency (ESA) countries plus Canada met last week. They agreed to fund 9.9 billion euros (US$12.7 billion) of the requested 10.4 billion euro ($13.34 billion) budget. The ESA Council meets once every three years to decide funding on a list of proposed projects. The meeting took place in The Hague on 25-26 Nov.

Afterwards French education minister Valerie Pecresse said, "Investing money in long-term space projects is an appropriate answer to the economic crisis." ESA director general Jean-Jacques Dordain said, "These are investments that can help the economy. This is the right time invest in the future."

Two projects in particular were competing for funds. The ExoMars mission and ESA's continued commitment to the International Space Station (ISS). ExoMars is championed by Italy and aims to land a rover on Mars and drill beneath the surface to a depth of two meters. Unfortunately ExoMars's costs had doubled from those originally projected. Germany, a great supporter of the ISS with a heavy industrial commitment to the station, fought hard to protect the 1.4 billion euro ($1.8 billion) ISS budget.

After two days of haggling a compromise was reached. ESA contributions to ExoMars are capped at 1 billion euros ($1.28 billion), leaving another 200 million euros ($257 million) to be funded through co-operation with other national agencies. The mission will now blast off in 2016, three years behind schedule. Germany received pledges that the ESA can seek another 400 million euros ($513 million) for the ISS if necessary.

Germany's junior minister for economics and technology Peter Hintze said, "The ISS is our biggest technological project and tremendous efforts have been made. Now is the time to reap the benefits of our work." Supporters of the ISS want to get the most out of the station before 2010 when NASA stops flying shuttle missions. An ESA delegate told Reuters, "The real question is the future of the ISS after 2015 when the United States has said it will stop using it."

The Netherlands is to build a new climate satellite to be launched in 2014. The Tropospheric Ozone- Monitoring Instrument (Tropomi) will measure ozone in the troposphere. This is the lowest part of the Earth’s atmosphere containing 80 percent of our air. The Dutch government will provide 78 million euros ($100 million) for the project. The balance of 37–52 million euros ($47.5–66.7 million) will be provided by the ESA. "The data provided by the Tropomi will enable the Dutch Royal Meteorological Institute to provide accurate data about smog," Dutch Economics Minister Maria van der Hoeven said.

Tropomi is part of ESA’s Earth monitoring project which has a total funding of 857 million euros ($1.1 billion). ESA’s new budget also includes money for ESA’s contribution to the Hubble Space Telescope, further development a new version of the Ariane launcher and funding of telecommunications projects.

The Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 has begun its two-year-long science mission. On Nov 15, it sent a 30-kilogram impact-probe crashing to the surface of the Moon. The probe, painted on two sides with the Indian flag, reached the Moon's surface at 20:34 Indian Standard Time (15:04 GMT).

An ISRO representative told the AFP news agency, "During its descent from Chandrayaan-1, an onboard video camera transmitted lunar pictures to the ISRO command centre." The probe also sent back data about the Moon's tenuous atmosphere.

Chandrayaan-1, which roughly translates as "Moon Craft-1," launched on Oct 22 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, an island off the coast of Andhra Pradesh. The one-and-a-half-tonne satellite successfully entered lunar orbit on Nov 8 and is now in polar orbit at a height of 100 kilometres (62 miles).

This is India's first space mission beyond Earth orbit. It joins Japanese and Chinese spacecraft orbiting the Moon. The event generated considerable national pride among Indian's who see the launch as an indication that their country is one of the space faring nations of the 21st century and that India has arrived as a technologically advanced global power.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hailed the launch as a milestone in the India's space program. Saying, "Our scientific community has once again done the country proud and the entire nation salutes them."

The Chandrayaan-1 mission is to provide detailed maps of the Moon's surface and composition. Present maps date from the Apollo era. As well as the Moon Impact Probe, it has ten other instruments onboard. The first four listed below are Indian, then two from NASA, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) and one built by Bulgaria. The Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Bangalore, will turn on theses instruments over the next few weeks.

The TMC will produce stereo images of the surface of the moon, creating maps with an elevation resolution of five meters. It will cover the entire lunar surface over the next two years.

The HySI takes images at 64 different wavelengths of light between blue and the near infrared. It has a resolution of 80 meters and will help identify the mineral composition of the surface of the Moon.

This instrument is an infrared laser that pulses 10 times per second. By measuring the time it takes for the laser light to be reflected from the surface, the height of surface features can be calculated to within 5 meters.

HEX detects high-energy x-rays from radioactive elements on the lunar surface and from cosmic rays hitting the moon. This will shed light on the composition of the lunar surface and may help locate thick deposits of ice.

This instrument provided by NASA will map the both the Moon’s surface and a few meters subsurface using radio waves. It will look for ice deposits.

The second instrument provided by NASA is an infrared mapping spectrometer. This can provide a resolution of 70 meters at hundreds of wavelengths of infrared light.

The C1XS is one of three instruments provided by the European Space Agency. It detects x-ray fluorescence, lower energy x-rays that are emitted when materials are bombarded by high energy x-rays. It will examine the composition of the lunar surface.

SIR-2 looks at sunlight reflected from the lunar surface in the near infrared range. This is a good range for identifying surface minerals.

SARA will examine the surface of the Moon by analyzing particles blasted from the surface by the solar wind.

Made by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, RADOM will measure the magnitude and energy range of radiation near the Moon. This is essential information for any future lunar colony.

Chandrayaan-1 is part of unprecedented international interest in the Moon. NASA aims eventually to establish a permanent lunar colony and plans to launch and sustain human exploration of the Moon by 2018. Other nations are unlikely to leave exploration and exploitation of the Moon solely to the USA.

Image credits ISRO

Richard Garriott, the 47-year-old creator of the Ultima series of computer games, has become the world's sixth space tourist. His 11-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) cost US$30 million.

Garriott and ISS Expedition 18 members Mike Fincke and Yuri Lonchakov launched to the ISS from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct. 12, arriving at the ISS two days later.

Born in Cambridge, England, Garriott now lives in Austin, Texas. He acquired the moniker 'Lord British' when he started school in the US, due to his British accent. His father Owen flew aboard Skylab and the Space Shuttle.

Whilst aboard the ISS, Garriott carried out crystal growing experiments, communicated with students and ham (amateur) radio enthusiasts; staged an art show; took photos of the Earth to be compared to ones taken by his father 35 years earlier and tested products for sponsors.

Garriott, who believes that everyone should have the opportunity to go into space, said he found the most rewarding part of his stay was speaking with students. He said, "I took this opportunity to inspire them with my adventure and let them know they can achieve their wildest dreams as well with hard work and perseverance."

Garriott also installed a device called SpaceCam1. This slow-scan television system broadcasts on amateur radio frequencies. Anyone with a suitable radio receiver and freely available software can receive and decode pictures from the ISS as it passes overhead. Enthusiast received over 1500 pictures in its first week of operation. For more details on how to receive these pictures, see this article on MSNBC.

Garriott and returning Expedition 17 members Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko landed safely in Kazakhstan on Oct 23. After the flight, Garriott said his mission to the ISS had fulfilled, "a lifelong dream to experience spaceflight."

How much would you pay to go into space?

Mars

NASA's Viking missions first spotted this "crustal dichotomy" in the 1970s. Twenty years later the Mars Global Surveyor mission showed that the planet’s crust was up to 30 times thicker in the south than in the north. It also detected magnetic anomalies present only in the southern hemisphere.