Observatories and Instruments

Apparition (Countdown Clock), Kennedy Space Center, November 26, 2011

I’m still adding photos, but the base set from launch morning can be found on my flickr site.

Liftoff of the ULA Atlas V rocket carrying Mars Science Laboratory. Photo credit: JR

As I’m sure anyone with any interest in the subject has heard by now, NASA celebrated a successful launch of the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover) Saturday at 10:02:00.211 a.m. EST. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the launch, as well as several pre-launch presentations/Q&As and gatherings, as part of a NASA Tweetup. I haven’t sorted through all my photos, much less all my thoughts, but as my mind and life return to normal, I’ll be taking using this website to store some of my impressions of the experience.

I’ll have more to say about the Tweetup later, but let me start with the topic of the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex (KSCVC).

Apollo Lunar Module (LM-9, unused) at Saturn V Center, KSCVC. Photo credit: JR

I took two different tours of the KSCVC—the first, the standard bus tour that comes with the price of admission, the second, a more extended tour with the NASA Tweetup group that included part of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. My lingering impression is this: Kennedy Space Center, along with the rest of the NASA-affiliated sections of the space program, is trying to work through a rather ambiguous moment in space history. The Space Shuttle program is over; Constellation was cancelled; the U.S. National Space Policy is in its infancy; current launches (like the Mars Science Laboratory or the upcoming Space X launch) are all unmanned; the launches are taking place on the Air Force Station rather than Kennedy Space Center… Perhaps because of these factors, my tour guides were having difficulty locating the ever-shifting line between past, present and future.

For instance, the parts of NASA’s story that are clearly history, like the Apollo fire and the lunar landing, had a clear narrative in the interpretive signage/docent talks. There was a strong thread tying together Cold War patriotism, heroic sacrifice, daring fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants engineering, American technological superiority, and the human will to conquer (space and everything else). That thread began to unravel when it came to the Space Shuttle program, though. The Challenger and Columbia tragedies, and the measures taken afterward to prevent them from happening again, folded fairly neatly into the master narrative of U.S. space history. The end of the Space Shuttle program, however, was a little more tricky. My guides kept slipping from past tense to present and then back again, “This is where we stack the Shuttles…*stacked* the Shuttles.” “We launch, uh, used to launch, from 39A…”

I think people are still in denial, or even shock, that the end of the Shuttle program is actually here. That end came so recently (the final Space Shuttle mission, STS-135, was in July 2011) it’s easy to forget that another mission isn’t just around the corner. But I think real cause of the slippage is that there isn’t a clear path forward from here in terms of manned missions. While NASA is involved in many different space exploration initiatives, Kennedy Space Center derives a large part of its identity from manned launches.

Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center. Photo credit: JR

The photo above shows LC-39A, the last launch pad to be used for the Space Shuttle program. So far, it’s been left intact. I heard various explanations for this decision, some of which emphasized practicality (“We don’t know what we’ll need in future, so it doesn’t make sense to take it down if we might have to put it all back up again”), some of which highlighted something closer to nostalgia (“It’s symbolic, to remind us and visitors of what we accomplished with the Shuttle”). The truth probably falls somewhere in between—NASA can’t spare the money to break down what doesn’t need to be broken, so what’s the harm is letting it do some emotional work for us?

There’s a certain longing for manned space flight among NASA and its supporters. So many of the presentations I heard during the Tweetup framed the Mars Science Laboratory in terms of future manned exploration, as if that is the natural procession of science, and the only reason to fly unmanned missions (first we do a fly-by, then we do an orbit insertion, then we land a rover, then we manage a sample return, and then we send humans!). I’ll have more to say about that later. For now, I’ll just leave it at: I wonder what is lost/gained when we approach missions as part of a chain that culminates in human travel? How would the discussion change if we considered unmanned exploration as an end instead of a means?

Sedimentary Debris, Gale Crater. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University, R. Luk.

Today’s image shows the mound of debris layered across the floor of Mars’ Gale Crater. This debris mound, which ranges in height from 2.8 to 3.4 miles above the floor of the crater, surrounds a central peak, visible in the back left of the image. Scientists posit that the layers of sedimentary rock could function as an archive of 2 billion years of geological activity on the planet. It will be up to Curiosity, the new Mars Science Laboratory rover, to explore this mound of sedimentary deposits and report back on the constituent elements of each layer.

For more on the MSL landing site, see the Mars Odyssey & THEMIS Gale Crater’s History Book, NASA’s Gale Crater, MSL Landing Site Images, and NASA’s “The Strange Attraction of Gale Crater.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA RELEASE

Urbana, Illinois Resident is One of 150 Selected to Attend NASA Tweetup for Mars Rover Launch, November 23 and 25, 2011

NASA Twitter Followers Will Tweet from Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

Urbana, Illinois (November 9, 2011) – NASA will bring together 150 Twitter followers to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for a two-day Tweetup, November 23 and 25, 2011. The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Urbana, Illinois resident Susan Johnson-Roehr has been selected as one of 150 @NASA Twitter followers to attend and Tweet the event. Curiosity is anticipated to arrive at the Red Planet’s Gale crater in August 2012.

During the two-year mission, the rover will investigate whether a selected area of Mars offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life and will preserve evidence about life if it existed.

As a NASA Tweetup attendee, Johnson-Roehr and the other 149 Twitter users will interact with engineers and scientists as well as tour the Kennedy Space Center. If all goes as scheduled, participants will view the spacecraft launch. In addition, participants will meet other tweeps and members of NASA’s social media team. Attendees were selected through a lottery system in which more than 1,050 @NASA Twitter followers registered.

“It will be an honor to represent Champaign-Urbana and the University of Illinois at the Tweetup. I checked out my first astronomy book from the public library in my hometown in 1979 and I’ve been following the U.S. space program ever since.  Being part of the NASA Tweetup means I’ll be meeting the people that make planetary exploration programs like the Mars Science Laboratory successful,” Johnson-Roehr said. “Plus, I’ll get to interact with 149 other attendees who share my interest in astronomy and space exploration. We’ll all be chronicling our NASA Tweetup experience for our followers on Twitter and through various Internet and social media sites.”

Susan Johnson-Roehr is a Visiting Lecturer in the School of Architecture at University of Illinois, where she specializes in the history of astronomy and architecture. Follow her Tweets at twitter.com/big_valley.

NASA Tweetup participants are traveling from across the United States and the globe to attend. View the list of list of registered attendees on the NASA Tweetup Twitter account: http://twitter.com/NASATweetup/mars-curiosity

NASA held its first Tweetup on Jan. 21, 2009, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA’s Tweetup Twitter account is http://twitter.com/NASATweetup and participants will be using #NASATweetup in their updates while tweeting. Information about NASA Tweetup can be viewed on http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup .

About the Mars Science Laboratory Mission
Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Mars Science Laboratory is the fourth space mission launching this year. Aquarius, launched June 10 to study ocean salinity, was the first; Juno, launched Aug. 5 to study the origins and interior of Jupiter; and the twin GRAIL orbiters, which departed for the moon on Sept. 10. The MLS Curiosity rover is equipped with 10 science instruments and will search Mars for evidence it has had environments favorable for microbial life. The rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release the gasses so that its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Find additional information about the Mars Science Laboratory mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.

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