The Johns Hopkins Univers ity Applied Physics Laboratory Space Department Newsletter

Fall 2010 • Volume 5 • Issue 2

Continued on page 4 Continued on page 2

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Galileo’s Satellites Still Being Explored after 400 YearsIf you’re looking for life in our solar system—beyond Earth, of course—scientists say Jupiter’s moon Europa is a great place to start. APL is joining the search with a key role in NASA’s flagship-class mission to examine the icy Jovian satellite, the Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) and NASA’s Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO).

EJSM picks up the trail started by the Voyager and Galileo missions, looking especially at the liquid ocean under Europa’s icy shell. “Europa is unique among the large icy moons in that we believe its ocean actually touches the rocky mantle below it,” says APL’s Louise Prockter, deputy project scientist on EJSM. “Europa’s mantle may supply chemical nutrients directly to the water to support life. It’s the ideal place to look for the emergence of habitable words around gas giants.”

The baseline EJSM consists of two primary flight elements operating in the Jovian system: the NASA-led JEO and the European Space Agency-led Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter (JGO). JEO and JGO will execute a choreographed exploration of the Jupiter system before

On the HorizonAs fall begins, all of our programs buzz again with renewed activity. Some of you may already know that Walt Faulconer has left APL to start his own consulting business—one of the things on his “bucket list.”

Kurt Lindstrom, who many of you know, was appointed the Acting Business Area Executive for the Civilian Space Business Area, and Joe Suter was appointed the National Security Space Business Area Executive, giving both business areas new leadership. Since both of our business areas make an excellent team, you will see stories with more of a national security

focus in this issue, and this note will likely rotate between

myself, Kurt, and Joe so that you can

gain a wider apprecia-tion of our skills and programs.

APL

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY2

Oscar Satellites Come “Home”After 21 years on orbit, the remaining Oscar satellites are back under the watchful eyes of APL engineers. Under an agreement with the Navy, the National Security Space Business Area is now operating the spacecraft, which are descendents of the Transit navigation satellites that APL first launched 50 years ago.

APL designed the Oscar series in the 1960s for the Transit system, but when the Navy ended Transit in 1996, the orbiting Oscars gained new life as the Navy Ionospheric Monitoring System (NIMS). The two remaining operational Oscars that make up the NIMS constellation—Oscars 25 and 23—launched in 1988 and 1989, respectively.

The 130-pound solar-powered spacecraft operate in polar orbits and require 107–109 minutes to circle Earth at altitudes ranging from 685 to 715 miles. They had been controlled from the Naval Satellite Operations Center at Point Mugu, Calif. NIMS users—which include research and academic organizations around the world—conduct upper-atmospheric research experiments by monitoring the intensity of the spacecraft’s signals as they pass through the ionosphere, a zone extending from 50 to 400 miles above the ground.

In addition to guiding the spacecraft though their ionospheric mission, APL plans to use them for research and development as well as education. “We plan to have midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy [USNA] here to operate a few passes as part of their hands-on aerospace curriculum,” says APL Oscar Program Manager Dave Manion.

Other leadership changes are occurring around the Laboratory as well: Rich Roca, who had been APL’s director for 10 years, stepped down on July 1. Succeeding him is Ralph Semmel, who has been with APL for 23 years and most recently served as head of APL’s Applied Information Sciences Department and its Infocentric Operations Business Area. Ralph is the eighth director in APL’s history.

Despite these changes at the top, all of our programs are continuing as planned. Now less than two years from launch, Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) is beginning integration and test. The twin spacecraft just returned from having their fuel tanks installed. The probes will measure the particles, waves, and magnetic and electric fields that fill near-Earth space to improve our understanding of how the Sun’s changing energy flow affects them.

Another exciting development is our partnership with JPL on NASA’s next flagship mission, which is currently planed to visit Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter, and other elements of the Jupiter system. The European Space Agency is also contributing a Ganymede orbiter. Although it is in the very early stages of development, this fascinating mission and our efforts are described in this newsletter.

Other progress in the department is evident in our building plan. The new building on APL’s South Campus will be home to the Space Department next year, and groundbreaking on our new integration and test (I&T) facility, called Building 30, occurred this summer. The new I&T facility is essential to helping both business areas success-fully and efficiently build flight hardware.

With the I&T areas humming again with activity, it’s been an exciting and busy season for us.

John Sommerer Space Department Head

On the Horizon, continued from page 1

Continued on page 5

USNA midshipmen viewed the Navy Oscar satellite during their tour of APL.

APL

Space Depar tment Newslet ter

Fall 2010

3

New Building Will Enhance Space Department Capabilities

The construction for the future home of APL’s space work continues in earnest: on July 16, members of the Space Department were joined by local government and construction representatives in a critical groundbreaking for the new spacecraft design, assembly, and testing facility on the APL main campus.

Designated as Building 30, the $30-million facility is scheduled to open by fall 2012. This 47,500-square-foot building will include optics laboratories, mechanical assembly areas, a flight staging room, harness assembly areas, and rooms for classified testing and assembly operations. These improvements are essential to serve our sponsors through innovative systems that achieve national objectives for NASA and space-related national security missions.

The facility will complement APL’s existing spacecraft building, Building 23, with more modern equipment and infrastructure, taller cleanrooms, and wider entrances. This design will not only increase productivity and simplify workflow but also expand APL’s capacity to assemble larger spacecraft and conduct tests on components (such as large solar array deployments).

“This building will provide additional significant capabilities for our Space Department and enhance APL’s ability to make strategically important contributions to both civilian and national security space missions and projects,” APL Director Ralph Semmel told invited groundbreaking ceremony guests, who included Howard County Executive Ken Ulman.

“What a great occasion for the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Space Department,” said John Sommerer, head of APL’s Space Department. “Just last December, APL celebrated its 50th anniversary as a space-faring organization. This facility will allow us to work on other spectacular voyages of discovery over the coming decades.”

The Laboratory has applied for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for the new building. Overseen by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED is a third-party certification program for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings. The project is already off to a green start: APL was able to recycle 98% of the material from the 50-year-old structure that was demolished to make way for Building 30. APL’s building program has designated that all new campus buildings be built to LEED standards.

Breaking ground for APL’s new spacecraft integration and test facility (Building 30) are (from left) Dave Delgado, APL; Mo Dehghani, APL; John Sommerer, APL Space Department head; Ken Ulman, Howard County Executive; APL Director Ralph Semmel; Mary Kay Sigaty, Howard County Council; Tom Garino, project architect; and Ted Baker, executive vice president, Manhattan Construction.

APL

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY4

Galileo’s Satellites Still Being Explored after 400 Years, continued from page 1

settling into orbit around Europa and Ganymede, respectively. Each orbiter carries approximately 11 complementary instruments that will allow them to monitor dynamic phenomena (such as Io’s volcanoes and Jupiter’s atmosphere), map the Jovian magnetosphere and its interac-tions with the Galilean satellites, and characterize water oceans beneath the ice shells of Europa and Ganymede.

JPL is leading the management

On July 15, 2010, the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., was home to an exhibit celebrating “400 Years of Discovery from Galileo to the Outer Planets.” The event was open to the public and included displays for the Cassini, Juno, and New Horizons missions among others. A replica of Galileo’s telescope was on display, as were images captured by NASA’s outer planet missions.

APLAPL

and design of JEO in partnership with APL. Currently, APL and JPL are working on the details of the design and implementation of JEO, with plans to release the instrument announcement of opportunity in early 2011. JEO would nominally launch in February 2020 and, after gravity assists from Venus and Earth, reach Jupiter in December 2025. A 30-month Jovian system tour would begin with Jupiter orbit insertion, followed by a 9-month Europa science phase that starts with Europa orbit insertion in July 2028 into a circular orbit. The orbiter would ultimately impact the surface of Europa after succumbing to radiation damage or running out of orbit-maintenance fuel.

Recently, EJSM was featured at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., as part of a celebration of the 400th anniver-sary of Galileo’s significant discovery. Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, and Io were first observed by Galileo in January 1610, with his homemade telescope.

For more information on the mission, visit http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/europajupitersystemmissionejsm/

APL

NA

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Space Depar tment Newslet ter

Fall 2010

5

NASA Honors TIMED Team

APL

IAA Low-Cost Planetary Missions ConferenceJune 21–24, 2011

First Announcement

For more information, visit:http://LCPM9.jhuapl.edu

Dates to RememberOctober 2010 Agenda and call for papers posted Abstract submission opens

December 2010Registration opens

February 2011Abstract submission deadline Deadline for visa requests

March 2011Author acceptance notifications sent

April 29, 2011Early registration ends

June 21–24, 2011Conference

The schedule for the session on Friday, June 24, will depend on paper submissions.

Mark your calendars for the 9th Low-Cost Planetary Missions Conference, organized and hosted by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, and devoted to cost-efficient planetary missions with exciting science results.

Nine years after launch, the TIMED Anomaly Resolution Team was awarded with NASA’s Public Service Group Achievement Award. In June, the team received the award in Greenbelt, Md., as presented by Rob Strain, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Director, with Carolyn Chura, Mission Manager, accepting for the team. The anomaly team was tasked to resolve guidance and control and commanding errors after launch. With that success, the TIMED spacecraft has returned more than nine years of science data on the upper atmosphere.

Manion says that from the Oscar/NIMS ground station in Building 4, APL can also support a class of small, low-cost satellites known as CubeSats, most of which operate on the frequencies covered by the same amateur radio equipment used for the Oscars. “We can show sponsors that we have the infrastructure to support experiments and demonstrations using CubeSats,” says Manion. “There is real value in having the Oscars in space, and we’re still coming up with ideas and capabilities.”

The senior satellites have far exceeded their five-year life expectancy. Manion says Oscar 25 seems to be healthy; Oscar 23 has tired batteries but perks up in full sunlight. “That the satellites have continued to operate in support of other valuable science is a tribute to their initial design and engineering,” Manion says. “It’s nice to have them back home.”

Oscars Come Home, continued from page 2

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY6

Ten years ago, the APL-built Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission made history as NASA’s first spacecraft to orbit and land on an asteroid. Now the team participants from the original NEAR mission are looking at a follow-on that could pave the way for astronauts to explore an asteroid.

For this mission design, APL interns in engineering and science disciplines worked alongside existing team members, including NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Johnson Space Center (JSC) to devise “Next Gen NEAR,” a concept of a robotic precursor for a human visit to a near-Earth asteroid.

“We’ve learned a lot about NEOs [near-Earth objects] using telescopes, Earth-based radar, and two robotic missions, but we’d have to get up close and personal with a specific asteroid again, and learn much more about its environment, before we could send human explorers,” says James Garvin, chief scientist at GSFC, Greenbelt, Md. “But there is nothing intuitive about operating at an asteroid; in fact, sending humans to an asteroid would be one of the most challenging space missions ever. So to make sure we really understand that challenge, we’ve paired NASA experts in small-body robotic and human spaceflight with the only team in the U.S. to design, build, and operate an asteroid-orbiter mission.”

Planners say the mission could launch as soon as 2014 and could begin to return data from a target asteroid the following year. The mission’s goal is to collect data on the asteroid’s surface and interior, and to scope out potential resources as well as hazards to human visitors. “We can’t make these measurements by telescopic remote sensing from Earth or even by spacecraft flyby encounters or distant rendezvous,” says Andrew Cheng, chief scientist in APL’s Space Department, who also served as NEAR’s lead scientist and is on the Hayabusa team.

Experts say landing on a small body is completely different than landing on a planet like Mars. “We’ve worked together to design the Next Gen NEAR concept of operations to parallel, to the extent possible, operations of a future human mission,” says Rob Landis, a NASA mission operations specialist from JSC.

This past spring, President Obama announced a new direction for the nation’s space program, including plans for NASA to send the first human mission to an asteroid by 2025. This requires building a capability to live and work in deep space, beyond the

Earth–Moon system. Beyond our Moon, asteroids near Earth (or NEOs) are our closest and most accessible planetary neighbors, making them a practical stepping-stone for expanded human space exploration. Only two missions—NEAR and Japan’s Hayabusa—have ever visited and touched the surface of a NEO.

The Next Gen NEAR spacecraft would run on commercially available subsystems and carry lightweight scientific instruments (such as a camera, composition-measuring spectrometers, and even a surface-interaction experiment) with flight heritage. It would be fitted with solar power, propulsion, and communica-tions systems that are compatible with launch on a medium-class rocket toward any one of several targets. It would also have payload capacity to spare for a co-manifested mission, as was done with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite spacecraft.

“This is a simple, straightforward mission that can launch in 2014, stay within tight cost and schedule constraints, and return the necessary data, for less than the cost of a low-risk Discovery-class mission,” Cheng says. “It can provide the critical capability NASA needs for the new robotic-precursor exploration program.”

The project has also captured the spirit of NASA’s Summer of Innovation, with interns at APL playing a key role in the Next Gen NEAR study. Challenged to design an asteroid mission on a capped budget and tight schedule, 15 college interns worked with senior engineers and scientists from APL, GSFC, and JSC in the APL mission design laboratory, called the ACE Laboratory. Their innovative mission and spacecraft concepts contributed to Next Gen NEAR. “Everybody was fired up to work on this project,” adds Daniel Kelly, the systems engineer on the student team and an aerospace engineering graduate student at the University of Michigan. “This joint team really clicked.”

APL

APL Designs Its Next Asteroid MissionNext Gen NEAR Taps Creativity of NASA/APL Interns and Experts in Robotic and Human Spaceflight

Interns worked closely with NASA and APL staff to create mission concepts for Next Gen NEAR.

Space Depar tment Newslet ter

Fall 2010

7

APL Events October 22, 2010Space Academy JHU/APL Campus, Laurel, Md.

December 14–17, 2010Booth at American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, Calif.

February 2011 9th IAA Low-Cost Planetary Missions Conference (LCPM9) abstract deadline http://LCPM9.jhuapl.edu

March 18, 2011MESSENGER Mercury Orbit Insertion Mercury and JHU/APLhttp://messenger.jhuapl.edu

For updated news visit our website: http://civspace.jhuapl.edu

Be part of our missions and visit our online store:http://www.civilianspacestore.com/

The Space Department Newsletter Explorer is published quarterly.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory11100 Johns Hopkins Road • Laurel, Maryland 20723-6099 Washington (240) 228-5000 / Baltimore (443) 778-5000www.jhuapl.edu and http://civspace.jhuapl.edu

Send updates and inquiries to: margaret.simon@jhuapl.eduJohn Sommerer, Space Department HeadKurt Lindstrom, Acting Civilian Space Business Area ExecutiveJoseph Suter, National Security Space Business Area ExecutiveCheryl Reed, Civilian Space Program Development ManagerSteve Arnold, Deputy Program Development ManagerMargaret Simon, Communications Manager and Explorer ManagerKerri Beisser, E/PO Manager Mike Buckley, Senior WriterKristi Marren, Contributing WriterPaulette Campbell, Contributing Writer Peggy Moore, Copy Editor Anne King, Copy Editor Magda Saina, Design DirectorPatrice Zurvalec, LayoutSteve Gribben, IllustratorEd Whitman, PhotographerBill Rogers, PhotographerNick Brezzell, Asst. Photographer

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