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Congratulations on Juno

I want to extend our congratulations to NASA and JPL for the successful orbiting of the Juno probe around Jupiter on our Nation’s Birthday, July 4th. Many of us older folk remember that the Viking 1 lander, nearing its 40th anniversary, was planned to land on July 4th, 1976, but was delayed due to dust storms to July 20th – an equally momentous date in Space history!

Juno is a remarkable machine with an assignment in one of the harshest possible environments in the solar system: an orbit close to Jupiter’s massive radiation and magnetic fields.

Juno will now begin its mission of examining the structure of the ‘gas giant’, whose internal dynamics remain poorly understood. Hopefully this will also give design insight to support the upcoming Europa orbiter / lander mission, currently in its planning stage, and second only to a Mars sample return in terms of NASA priority.

Juno is also the deepest space probe to use solar, rather, nuclear power, a testimony to the increasing efficiency of solar power panels, itself a remarkable achievement with many potential benefits to life here on Earth.

Kurt

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Quarterly Summary for 2015Q2

All:

While we have been active as a group, I have been remiss in summarizing all that we are doing to the broader audience. So Kris and I have written a summary of our activities year to date for all. I hope this is helpful in keeping everyone ‘in the loop’. we plan to put these out on a approximately quarterly basis.

Our group continues to have a high pace, with regular meetings, outreach, and activities. We’ve been meeting monthly, with 6 – 10 members, at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Plano , TX . We meet the last Sunday of the month at 6:30 if anyone would like to join us. We’ve discussed a wide range of topics and ideas dealing with the latest findings on Mars, Space and Mars exploration, and our own group’s plans for outreach.

Our group remains active at the local and national level. Activity by members included:

  • A talk on ‘Mars – the Next Frontier’ as a speaker at both the gifted girls and gifted boys at SMU. These 7th graders came from gifted student programs throughout the Metroplex to hear talks on a variety of topics. Both sets of talks were attended by over 60 students.
  • Our group awarded prizes for the best Mars and Space related projects for the 3rd year in a row at the Dallas County Science Fair at Fair Park , sending three members as judges. We saw an amazing variety of science projects from the Dallas area. There were approximately 1000 teams in total in junior and senior high categories, each already a winner from their school. We gave out the ‘Curiosity Award’, our top award with a cash prize, to a project on detecting star brightness using amateur telescopes. We were really struck by the winner’s enthusiasm, technical clarity, and the project’s relevance to space exploration. In addition we gave several honorable mentions. One went to a pair of students who worked on a helicopter vortex lift loss experiment – the experiment was excellent and the presentation exceptionally clear. Another honorable mention went to a student who had worked on a novel way to filter clean water using used cloth instead of heavy sand. While the idea came from the student’s personal experience in a 3rd world country, filtration of clean water with light weight filters is of great interest for manned space exploration. We also gave an honorable mention to a junior high team for work regarding crater patterns from meteorite impacts.

The University Rover Competition is preparing for a record turnout in late May, which our group helps volunteer with. Approximately 40 teams applied, and prepared both an initial proposal and a critical design review proposal and video, from which the top 23 teams were selected to compete at Hanksville. This should be an incredible year!

The whole Dallas Mars Society team is gearing up for an even more incredible Moon Day (Mars Day!) at the Frontiers of Flight Aviation Museum. Our popular rover course will be back, with a refurbished rover, and modified crater obstacle. A new glove box is in the works to give a feel for working with astronaut gloves. We are working on a 3-D printed rover, giveaways, and more!

There has been such a flurry of activity, it is hard to keep up with the space and Mars related news.

SpaceX got closer (but still not there yet!) on its 3rd attempt to land and recover the Falcon 9 first stage. Economically recoverable space launch hardware has been a goal of space flight since Von Braun, but now it looks like we may be on the cusp of it actually happening! Best of luck with the next one!

SpaceX is also on the brink of the abort system test for its manned version of the Dragon capsule. There are now four manned space vehicles in development in the US (SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin), two of which, SpaceX’s Dragon, and the NASA / Lockheed Martin Orion, are explicitly designed to enable manned missions beyond earth orbit and to Mars.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted what may be evidence of near surface liquid water on Mars – kept liquid by the perchlorate salts in the soil. Curiosity may have seen first hand close up evidence of it right on the surface.

NASA flight tested above Earth an inflatable re-entry shield explicitly designed to land the heavier payloads onto Mars needed for manned exploration. This was championed by Bobby Braun when he was chief technologist at NASA – long time members may remember Professor Braun came and talked at our Mars Track at the Dallas ISDC a few years back.

Messenger wrapped up its mission around Mercury, and New Horizons is nearing Pluto. We’ve had a flyby of Ceres, and a landing on a comet.

NASA has a Mars Sample Return as their number one deep mission space priority, and the latest proposed deep space mission for the SLS was a sample return from one of the moons of Mars – a step closer than the asteroid redirect mission. How far we have come!!

Even controversial stories such as a recent paper published about the adverse affects of cosmic radiation on the brain centers on a common theme: people are talking seriously about sending people to Mars!

I’ll try to give an update about every 3 months – the next one should be after the URC, Moon Day, and Convention, so stay tuned!!!”

Kurt

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Monthly Meeting May 26, 6:30PM at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Plano

All,

Yes, another month has gone by, and our next monthly meeting is coming up. We will meet at the Spaghetti Warehouse at 6:30pm in Plano this coming Sunday, May 26 – same as usual!

We have a number of activities and news to discuss;

  • The URC is coming up that week! I leave May 28 to volunteer. We have a record number of teams and the new obstacle course! it should be the most exciting and best URC yet!
  • Mark hit 10,000 re-tweats for the Dallas chapter!
  • The Mars Society national convention, to be held in Boulder in August, is lining up an incredible array of speakers. Those who are planning to go, make your plans!
  • Moon day is coming upon us quickly, and Tom has a number of exciting ideas to make our presence even better than last year.
  • Speaking of conferences, it is coming time to talk about our T-shirt order. We decided at the last meeting to use the convention logo for our design. Now Mark needs to turn it into an actual T-shirt design, and we need to think about how many to order. April A said that she should be at the convention with some students, and they can help us man the T-shirt table in turn for help selling some MDRS cookbooks. Deal!

In national news, both Opportunity and Curiosity safely made it past conjunction and regained contact. Opportunity, deep into its 10th year on Mars, has logged over 22 miles, surpassing the 40 year old distance record of Apollo 17 (which they did it in three days, but…). (The lunakhod 2 lunar rover still holds the extra-terrestial record of 23 miles)

And, closer to home and nearer to Mars, the Explore Mars ‘Humans 2 Mars’ summit held May 6-8 had a variety of major space figures openly calling for NASA’s main manned space priority to be a manned mission to touch down on Mars within 20 years. This is the first time that a time-bound manned mission to Mars was discussed as NASA’s next main goal so openly by such senior government policymakers. We are getting closer all the time to national policy finally coming around to where it belongs: mankind’s next step is Mars!

See you Sunday!

Kurt

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March Meeting Minutes

Yes, a bit late, but here are the March meeting minutes.

We had 8 in attendance, including Donna dropping in to give an update on the debate team’s progress. They sound like they are doing well and more than holding their own in the back and forth in the tough final written rounds. We should hear the results from the final oral arguments in NYC in the next meeting!

We were all saddened to hear of Roger Carr’s passing a few weeks ago, and the society chapter agreed to donate $200 of the chapter’s funds to the National Mars Society in his memory at the next convention. we will miss Roger in Pasadena.

We discussed preparations for a variety of upcoming events, including Tom’s search for a rover for moon day, possibly getting a Mars globe for our table, and Tom showed us some first class draft posters he made. This will draw attention to our table, and we can use it in other locations (like our monthly meetings!), outreach events, and the T-shirt table at the national convention!. We agreed to use $100 of chapter funds towards a display stand, with Tom agreeing to cover any charges above that (thanks Tom!).

Mark has been working with Tom to refine the poster image, and we hope to have a final version for the next meeting.

Other upcoming events include supporting the University Rover Challenge at MDRS in late May – it looks like Kurt and Kris are going to take the plunge and go – a first to MDRS for both of us. Kurt was gearing up for his annual talk to the gifted students program at SMU, and we discussed T-shirt designs.

We’ll hear progress on these fronts and more at next month’s meeting! We will gather together next week on Sunday, April 29 at the Spaghetti Warehouse on rt 75 and 15th street in Plano at 6:30. same time – same same place!

We hope to have a final version of our display poster, and discuss other preparations for our Moon Day display, such as a rover!

Also we should get a final report on the local debate team’s performance in the NYC finals from Tom.

Kris and Kurt have committed to going to support the annual University Rover Competition at the MDRS hab in Hanksville, Utah in late May (but after our May meeting).

Kurt will give a outbrief of the talk at the SMU gifted boys program for 7th graders (my talk on Mars – it went very well, and had over 60 students in one session).

We also need to start on T-shirt designs and orders in earnest….

Mars continues to be in the news, or rather the threat to the entire Mars exploration budget for the next several years. NASA looks to be trying to push any new starts in Mars exploration out to beyond 2018, but the fight continues in congress. I’m sure we’ll hear more from Bob at the convention. In the meantime MSL continues its travel to Mars flawlessly, and MAVEN – the next and last planned US Mars mission – an orbiter looking at Mars’s atmosphere, is preparing for a 2013 launch.

The sign up for the Pasadena conference is open – I hope we can have a big turnout to see MSL land! This will be the biggest Mars event for many a year – i am looking forward to savoring it.

Kurt

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Meeting This Week, Sunday, Feb 26!

All:

Yes, it is time again!  Meeting this Sunday, February 26, at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Plano, off of rt 75 at 15th street, at 6:30pm.

Ken of the NSS will be there to give a 60 – 90 minute talk about space exploration – everything from near term to space based solar power and whatever.  He brings his own projector and so this promises to be a good show.

Tom brings us news of success with the student debating team arguing the issue of manned space exploration (I won’t tell all the details, but they have won an all expense paid trip to NYC, so they are doing mighty well!)  our dallas chapter has had the opportunity to help coach them on the next round as the argue for ‘The Case for Mars’.

Kris brings us more on the slow but still moving forward saga of publishing the past Mars convention papers, and the URC competition.

Also on our minds is the fateful 2013 NASA budget, which promises to knock back Mars exploration by years (that is a lot of extra spaghetti dinners till our last meeting – we’ll have that one while watching the first human set foot on Mars).  We really do need a call to arms on this one, and we can discuss what we have done and will do.  If you have already written your congressman or the President, please bring a printout of your letter to share with the group.

See you this Sunday.

Kurt

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Yes, another month has gone by…

All:

Yes, another month has gone by.  Thanksgiving is upon us, Christmas and New Year’s is around the corner, and MSL is about to launch!

We will be having our regular monthly meeting this Sunday at 6:30 pm at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Plano, same as always, near rt 75 and 15th street.

Our meeting comes right after the scheduled liftoff of the MSL, scheduled for 9:02 AM central on Saturday, November 26.  After the delay from Friday I doubt we’ll be able to get any video of it, but we will have a member there as an eyewitness!  As you probably know, Mark S has been invited as part of the NASA tweetup to attend and witness the launch!!  Mark will not be back in time for a first hand accounting, but we’ll catch up with him and hear about it from him in time.  One of our own will be personally in attendance to see the most important launch regarding Mars since Viking!!  I’m sure it will be an awesome sight and we’ll get word back from Mark.

We can also discuss the progress regarding our editing and publishing the proceedings and papers from the last series of Mars Society conferences.  Progress has been slow of late as we head into the always busy holiday season, but stay tuned.  As we move into the new year we also need to start thinking about the initiatives we discussed regarding the University Rover Competition and the Moon Day for 2012.

I do need to apologize that I have not kept things moving as much as I had hoped and wanted. Looking back 2011 has been a great year for our group, highlighted by our hosting the 2011 convention, and 2012 looks to be an exciting year.

See you all Sunday!

Kurt