The NASA Exploration Vision and Initiative 


This category will include much of astrophysics, much of Earth Science, extraneous aspects of Solar System Exploration, and the quest for an understanding of our origins, evolution over the life of the Sun, and our destiny. 

This year, NASA has received new guidance as a result of the Columbia accident. In place of the recent focus of the human space program on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, both in low Earth orbit, NASA will again look outward and humans will travel to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Because this is an expensive undertaking and only limited funds are available, NASA will prioritize its work anew, with a focus on those things which are most important for Lunar and Mars exploration. This applies not only to the space flight activity but also to the Space and Earth science activity in NASA (mission to and from planet Earth). Henceforth, anything that does not serve the goal of exploration of the Moon and Mars will be second priority. This category will include much of astrophysics, much of Earth Science, extraneous aspects of Solar System Exploration, and the quest for an understanding of our origins, evolution over the life of the Sun, and our destiny. All may be sacrificed so that humans may gain access to the Moon and Mars.

The remaining NASA science theme: "Sun-Earth Connections" is essentially the study of the weather and climate in the solar system. It also is slated for sacrifice in the interests of Exploration. Somehow, the seemingly obvious importance of space weather to astronauts and exploration vehicles has been overlooked or under-appreciated. In the rush to stretch available funds to permit development of entirely new space vehicles and infrastructure, we have forgotten that explorers sail into the void at great risk when they ignore preliminary reconnoitering and understanding of the regions they have set out to explore. In view of the origins of the Exploration Initiative in the Columbia accident, the safety of or our Explorer-Astronauts must ultimately become a foreground concern for Exploration.

In the meantime, researchers of the Sun-Earth Connection have refocused their theme as "Sun-Solar System Connections", with a view toward clarifying the applicability of this field of study to the entire Solar System, all of which is bathed in the Sun's outer atmosphere. That atmosphere is unlike any other atmosphere in the solar system because it is hot enough to escape even the huge gravity of the Sun and expands supersonically throughout the solar system, even as the roiling Solar photosphere laces this solar wind with magnetic fields of wildly varying strength and orientation.

The solar atmosphere and solar wind are fluid media that are shot through with the abundant energy of the sun. They transmit that energy throughout the solar system, in parallel with the sunshine of photons across the electromagnetic spectrum. The sunshine is relatively steady and variations by as much a 1% are extremely noteworthy and significant. Unlike the sunshine, the atmospheric and mechanical energy output of the sun has stupendous variations, with significant effects on both the interplanetary medium and upon the planets embedded within it. The more important effects include:
 
• Emission of large fluxes of energetic particles (protons) that permeate the solar system, with effects that can be lethal to humans and to space vehicle systems.  
 
• Emission of billion ton clouds traveling at a million miles per hour.  
 
• Emission of X-ray and UV light bursts.  
 
• Emission of energy that when deposited in a planetary atmosphere, causes it to puff up to many times it's normal density, such that low orbiting spacecraft experience drag and reenter prematurely.  
 
• Production of storms in planetary magnetospheres that accelerate particles and enhance radiation belts of particles with damaging effects on spacecraft systems as well as humans.  

In a late chapter of his book, "Space", called "Dark Side of the Moon", James Michener spun a story about a fictitious Apollo 18 mission that encountered a severe space storm while astronauts were on the moon, and suffered human losses as a direct result. He made it clear that all the Apollo astronauts were at risk continually, and that it was very fortunate no crew had ever suffered this fate. At the same time, it became clear that, when humans return to space exploration, many more risk episodes will be encountered, and safety will quite likely be compromised at some point. To minimize these risks, we must make the maximum possible effort to appreciate, understand, predict, and mitigate them. Sun-Solar Systems Connections is the practical science of space exploration that has identified many of the risks, seeks to understand and predict them, and is therefore essential to their mitigation.
 

Posted: Sun - November 14, 2004 at 05:29 p.m.         | |

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