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Ares, Constellation, Orion, …

Sounds like pretty new terms? They are all about NASA’s next space program. The Constellation program is simply what is also called the “Vision for Space Exploration“.

In short, it means that new launchers and crew vehicles will be developed to ferry people to the international space station ISS, later on to the moon and even later to Mars. Ares is what the launchers are being called. Ares I will be the rocket that launches humans into space while Ares V is a heavy-lift rocket used to launch the heavy equipment. Finally, Orion is the name of the new crew capsules, also known as “Crew Exploration Vehicle”.

It looks quite doable to return to the moon, but sending humans to Mars is much more challenging. A lot of work needs to be done to solve the issues. I am sure they can be solved if we try hard enough, but the question is if there will be budget allocated to do so.

The Constellation program borrows heavily both from the Apollo as well as the Space Shuttle programs. For example, the overall launcher and capsule design is based on Apollo. The shuttle program contributes its boosters. Some folks tend to say that Constellation becomes more and more an Apollo V2, especially as the budget is quite constrained. It is not yet clear how far resuable the Orion capsules will be.

In my blog, I write about Constellation, Ares and Orion. While it is quite early to know any specifics, it is an interesting time to watch development. If you are interested in a specific topic, just follow the relevant labels.

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Launch Photography through a Telescope?

Do you remember Colin Ake? He is a fellow astronomer and STS-120 launch viewer. And he did a superb job at taking launch pictures:

Even though I did not notice that when I was at the causeway, Colin must have been quite close to my own location. So how come he could take such an up-close picture? Did he use professional camera equipment? Not at all. Being an astronomer, Colin had a Celestron C8 telescope right at hand:

Taking photographs through a scope is challenging. Taking photographs through a hand-held scope is outstanding! I am deeply impressed by the quality of Colin’s pictures.

I got some comments from Colin when I mentioned him in my “up-close picture taking” post. We exchanged a few comments and I was pleased that Colin offered me to show his pictures. I have taken a few from his site and moved them to my own server because I always like to make sure the images I reference will exist as long as my post (being an old web hack, I’ve had to many problems with changing URLs). Unfortunately, it took me some time to do it – much more than I anticipated. I hope Colin doesn’t mind…

If you would like to have a look at the full set, please visit Colin’s picture gallery. I highly recommend that!

Below, I have reproduced some of the shots that I like most:

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rsyslog now does postgres SQL!

I have just finished the integration of a new postgres sql output module for rsyslog. The code was provided by sur5r. I am more than glad that rsyslog now supports the popular postgres sql engine. I am sure this is a very nice addition for the community.

Sur5r’s able-coded code also provided some feedback about the output module interface in general. The good news is that the amount of code needed in the actual output module was as low as initially thought.

But it also proved that module design still is less than perfect: there was a new date format needed to support postgres sql. This could not be done in the output module. Instead, sur5r had to modify the core files. He did this in an excellent way, but the point is that it is not a good thing this was needed at all. It is a result of the old, non-modular syslogd design which we inherited from sysklogd and have not yet changed. In fact, we are at the very beginning of modularization. The next thing on the list is a loadable function interface. With that, such modifications will no longer be necessary, a custom (loadable) function can than be provided.

This enhancement requires a number of changes in the core, most importantly in the template subsystem. This is most probably the next area of work I am heading to.

But for the time being, let’s celebrate that rsyslog now has postgres sql support! It will be released in 1.20.0, hopefully around the end of the week. A preview will be announced on the mailing list somewhat earlier. And if you can’t wait, simply pull it out of anonymous CVS – it’s in there as of this writing.

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rsyslog now part of Fedora 8

Oops… I think I forgot to mention that rsyslog was recently included in Fedora 8. This is an important milestone for the rsyslog project, because it is the first time ever that it appears as the default syslogd in a wide-spread distribution.

Thankfully, a lot of other package maintainers have been found for other distros (I really appreciate your hard work, guys!), but everywhere else rsyslog is “just” an extra. In Fedora 8, it is the default logging daemon. I’d also like to add that Red Hat folks contributed quite a lot to rsyslog, including great testing.

Thanks to everyone who helped make rsyslog this capable. I think its appearance in Fedora 8 is rewarding for all of us!

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rsyslog 1.19.12 released

I just released rsyslog 1.19.12. For the minor change I made in 1.19.11, I created a branch based on 1.19.10. I thought .11 would be the last release in that branch. Obviously, I was wrong. Working on two branches is definitely a lot of not really useful extra work. I’ll try to get thing together this week, then again only working with one branch. That will be the feature-enhanced 1.20.0 release.

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2008 Space Shuttle Launches

I thought I post some potential launch dates for 2008. Only the February date for STS-123 is officially given by NASA, the others are based on well-informed rumor. However, NASA has decided to continue to use space shuttle Atlantis after the Hubble service mission in August 2008. That will most probably affect the overall launch scheduled. I would be very careful planning anything based on the dates given below, as they are likely to change.

February , 2008: STS-122, flown by space shuttle Atlantis.

March, 11th, 2008: STS-123, flown by space shuttle Endeavour

May, 31st, 2008: STS-124, flown by space shuttle Discovery

August, 28th 2008: STS-125, flown by space shuttle Atlantis. This is the famous Hubble space telescope servicing mission. Please note that for this launch it will be the last time in history that you can see two space shuttles being at the launch pads at the same time. Atlantis will be at pad 39A and Endeavour will be at pad 39B, ready to launch for a (hopefully never needed) rescue mission. Pad 39B will be handed over to the Ares/Constellation (NASA’s new moon program) after this launch.

October, 16th 2008: STS-126, flown by space shuttle Endeavour

December, 4th 2007: STS-119, flown by space shuttle Discovery

All missions except STS-125 are ISS construction flights and will be launched from pad 39A.

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Atlantis still set for launch on December, 6th

Space Shuttle Atlantis sitting at the Launch Pad

The agency-level flight readiness review held yesterday concluded with the expected December, 6th launch date for Atlantis STS-122 mission. This continues Atlantis’ exceptionally well processing flow. No major problems occurred and this is probably one of the cleanest mission preparations for a long time.

Space Shuttle Atlantis is sitting at launch pad 39A and will rocket into space at 4:31p EST next Thursday. It will deliver the European Columbus space lab. It will be attached to the Harmony module which was brought up into space by Discovery’s STS-120 mission.

Meanwhile, the international space station crew has more or less finished the connection of Harmony to its final destination. This is a perquisite for STS-122, as Columbus will be mounted on one of Harmonies docking port. There are some news on a failed leak check, but it is said that this was most probably a sensor issue, not an actual leak. Sensor problems are common and so it looks very good from the ISS point of view, too.

What is becoming an increasing concern is abrasion in a solar array rotary joint (SARJ). This was detected a bit prior to STS-120. Discovery’s crew brought some samples back to earth, which are now being analyzed. Some more images and samples have been collected by the ISS crew. While the SARJ issue is no constraint for STS-122, it could (and probably will) affect future missions. Without a properly-working SARJ, the station can not generate enough power to support its final configuration. As far as it looks now, the repair will be quite complex and require a number of spacewalks, maybe carried out in February’s STS-123 mission. But it is way to early to know anything exactly – engineers are still evaluating the problem.

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John Glenn on the NASA Budget

I had the pleasure to be able to listen to great American hero and former Senator John Glenn at World Space Expo 2007. The event was held in November this year in Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Both John Glenn and Scott Carpenter were honored guest on the evening event. Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden discussed with them over their experiences as well as their visions for the future. I take some videos of that event. Thankfully, I also captures John Glenn’s speech on the future NASA budget. He very rightfully stressed that fact that Constellation, NASA’s new moon program, has taken a lot of money from science missions. He explains that there is no special funding for the whole constellation program. But listen yourself:


This speech couldn’t be more on-time: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is thinking about taking that Constellation money from NASA to fund education. So I think it is good to know the fact that NASA has not received any special funding and is already starving in its science activities.

If you listen closely, however, you will notice that John Glenn assigns science priority over the moon program. But that doesn’t mean that money taken away from science should now be removed from the budget at all…

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Astronauts will wear overgloves…

Layers of a space gloveOn the picture to the right, you see the actual layers of a current space glove. I shot this picture when I attended World Space Expo 2007 at Kennedy Space Center. The green part on the left is the inner pressure bladder, the one in the middle is worn above it and can be configured to the astronauts hand. The white glove to the right is the outer layer. NASA always speaks of five glove layers, but I think this refers to layers of material brought up onto the three different glove parts you see in the picture. At least, I could not find anything else (if you happen to know, I’d appreciate to learn about it).

On the recent international space station spacewalks (aka “EVA”), there were very often problems with cut or punctured gloves. Thankfully, these cuts were always only in the outer layers, posing no risk to the spacewalkers. It is believed that there are some unknown sharp edges at the space station, but nobody knows for sure where (thus they are unknown ;)).

Below, find a picture of a damaged space glove. This was taken after a spacewalk on the STS-118 mission:

punctured space glove after STS-118 spacewalk

To protect the astronauts, frequent checking of the gloves is now a requirement during spacewalks. However, the detection of a glove issue can cut a spacewalk short and thus seriously compromise the mission. To prevent that problem, STS-122 spacewalkers will wear overgloves. They made their first live test on the STS-120 spacewalk devoted to repairing the torn solar array.

I have not yet seen an actual picture of these overgloves. But obviously, they cause some loss of feeling and flexibility. As such, tasks carried out by the astronauts may take a bit longer than usual. NASA has put only a conditional order to wear the overgloves. For delicate work, spacewalkers may remove them. This is also possible if time is running out on spacewalk. This poses no extra risk, as the rigid glove-checking guidelines then apply. So the overgloves are actually more to save the mission than the astronaut.

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STS-122 Press Kit Available

For everybody interested, the STS-122 press kit can now be downloaded from NASA. The press kit is an excellent resource for insight information on the flight AND for great pictures. I recommend to have a look at it to anyone really interested in this flight!