Tag: danleppold

OA-6 Regolith and Saffire Payload Experiments

Regolith and Saffire Payload Experiments

The regolith experiment called Strata-1 onboard the OA-6 Cygnus Spaceship will run for a year on the International Space Station and will examine how particles behave in space. We often imagine a big comet or asteroid as being a solid chunk of rock or ice, however that may be not the case. Several tubes of materials that might simulate particles on a low gravity celestial body (like an asteroid, comet, or small moon like Phobos) will be allowed to interact, clump, settle, break apart, and generally respond to the microgravity and acceleration/deceleration of the International Space Station. Personally I think this is one of the most important experiments of this mission because landing on or deflecting an Earth bound asteroid depends on understanding how it will interact with a spaceship from Earth. We don’t have to go back to the time of the dinosaurs to discuss impacts in our solar system. On Earth the recent Feb 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor, the 1908 Tunguska Event, and the July 1994 Jovian impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 act as warnings that we may someday need to visit and deflect a comet or asteroid in deep space.

An asteroid might look “solid” in a radar image but in reality it might be millions or billions of individual particles held loosely together. A spacecraft attempting to land on it might stir up the surface regolith particles and create a beehive like mess. Strat-1 will help us better understand how those particles might settle or interact with an approaching spacecraft.

University of Central Florida picture of Strata-1
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This experiment also links the Swamp Works visit in that if we are mining regolith to make pavers or heat shields on Phobos or some other celestial body, we had better understand how the dust the mining robots kick up will behave.

For more information visit:

http://physics.cos.ucf.edu/microgravity/flight-projects/strata-1/

The only OA-6 Mission Experiment that will take place entirely on the S.S. Rick Husband Cygnus Spacecraft is the Saffire Experiment and will be the largest man made fire in space. After the spaceship is undocked it will maneuver away (unmanned) from the International Space Station and then conduct the fire experiment. After the experiment is complete it will reenter the atmosphere and harmlessly break up over the Pacific. Fire in space is something that immediately strikes emotions because of the Apollo 1 disaster that killed three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Although small fire experiments have been conducted in the past, this experiment will use a much larger piece of material. Hopefully Saffire will provide a better understanding on how a space fire will propagate, how the gases and particulates will behave, and develop better safety procedures on the ISS. The experiment was designed to stay on board Cygnus Spacecraft to not only minimize danger to the ISS but to also eliminate the need to “clean up” after the experiment is over. Below is a picture of the Saffire experimental box and a short video on burning droplets of fuel in space.

Figure of the Saffire Experiment from Space.com
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NASA Johnson liquid fuel fire in space video:

NASA Swamp Works Tour

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Swamp Works Research Lab

The main lab in this high tech research lab run by NASA scientists reminded me of a “make your space” library concept or a playroom for the characters on the Big Bang Theory TV Series. The large open air lab design promotes interaction between research teams. From our viewing area the room was filled with computers, 3-D printers, drone prototypes, robot miners and robot parts, a regolith testing area (fully enclosed to insure the particles did not escape into the work area), and pieces and parts of complex machinery. I was instantly drawn in by the pure science and experimentation that was clearly not just on display. The room was literally alive even though none of the scientists had arrived to work yet (we were there very early in the morning). I thought to myself that this is the type of work space or job that would be difficult to leave at the end of the day.

The experiments and research was organized to address the next big challenge and that is space exploration to another world like an asteroid, planet, or moon (not just Earth’s). Drones to fly into very steep craters and then mine for water, larger heavier robotic miners that will be able to land prior to a manned mission and mine the regolith (soil), and finally machines that will take the mined regolith, extract any water or resources, then almost like a 3-D printer, create landing pavers that will fit together to form a landing pad. Dream it, build it, experiment with it, refine it, test it in the regolith chamber. I would imagine this is the ideal place where scientific ingenuity and invention become reality.

Application and Spinoff Potential
As I gleaned down on the almost alive workspace in the main Swamp Works Lab I immediately realized how the technology breakthroughs and inventions that were being created will benefit society outside of space exploration. My geology background steered my thoughts towards the extraction and exploration of methane gas hydrates on the ocean floor. Space; with its low or microgravity and low pressure environments, presents similar challenges as the unique environmental conditions found in the deep ocean. It is estimated that there is enough energy stored in methane gas hydrates in the Gulf of Mexico alone to provide all the energy needs our country needs for the next few hundred years. Why are we not mining it? Because we have not “thought it off of the ocean floor yet”, but I believe it is research like the topics that are currently being addressed at the Swamp Works Lab that will eventually lead to the breakthroughs needed to make mining methane gas hydrates a reality on Earth.

We were not permitted to photograph the active work space at the Swamp Works Lab, but they did provide a few photos on their Facebook page and are as follows:

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The Regolith Chamber

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After touring Swamp Works we were taken to an adjacent research lab investigating dust mitigation and robot built reentry heat shields for spacecraft (similar manner to the regolith landing pad construction). The heat shields were cool, but it was the dust mitigation that I found fascinating. One problem that was encountered during the Moon missions was that the lunar regolith was very hard to remove and was profoundly abrasive. Because the Moon is not large enough to hold an atmosphere there is very little chemical weathering. Micrometeorite bombardment powders the mostly basaltic rock into very fine yet very angular particles. These obsidian-like fractured grains are very abrasive, are dangerous when inhaled, and must be removed from astronaut suits, space sensors, as well as from the sides and windows of any spacecraft or structure. Since there is no water on the moon it is very difficult to just “brush off the dust”, and it gets into every little nook and cranny of the spacesuits. But at the Swamp Works scientists have figured out a way to remove the dust but creating an electrostatic force field. This invention can be incorporated into spacesuits as well as structures, and once turned on, can very effectively remove dust contamination. Dr. Carlos Calle, manager of the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Lab was gave us a demonstration which I was permitted to videotape. It sounds like something out of a movie but I can see astronauts entering a room where they activate their suits and all the dust almost instantaneously jumps off of them and is whisked away into a collector system. Can you imagine how useful this will someday be in our lives? Just activate the room and vaarrooom, it is clean. The first video of Dr. Calle shows how the dust can be removed when you activate the system (which uses very little energy and can be realistically used with a solar powered system). The second video shows how if the system is left on it can repel dust to prevent it from sticking to the surface in the first place.

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Dust Repelling Force Field

Read more:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/home/mitigating_dust_prt.htm