Solar Sail Finally Deploys and Works

If this contraption can work to expectations, this may well be an alternative to letting spent rocket boosters, tired satellites--space junk stay in space.  We can deploy this with every launch and have expectations of bringing down low earth orbit experiments.

Great!  I hope something works and I hope scientists can continue to come up with ways to deorbit satellites, boosters, junk and anything else we shoot upstairs.  For those satellites,  thousands of miles in orbit, what do we do, what is the cost to put a ion rocket on one?  As I understand these ion rockets, they have a low thrust and yet, can work over long periods of continuous firing.  Would this work? Do they cost too much and is the technology even remotely approaching a useful existence?  Continuous thrust over months would certainly allow orbits to decay......Just dreaming.....lakotahope

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by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science@NASA Huntsville AL (SPX) Jan 25, 2011 In an unexpected reversal of fortune, NASA's NanoSail-D spacecraft has unfurled a gleaming sheet of space-age fabric 650 km above Earth, becoming the first-ever solar sail to circle our planet. "We're solar sailing!" says NanoSail-D principal investigator Dean Alhorn of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. "This is a momentous achievement."
NanoSail-D spent the previous month and a half stuck inside its mothership, the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT).

Only one spacecraft has done anything like this before: Japan's IKAROS probe deployed a solar sail in interplanetary space and used it to fly by Venus in 2010. IKAROS is using the pressure of sunlight as its primary means of propulsion-a landmark achievement, which has encouraged JAXA to plan a follow-up solar sail mission to Jupiter later this decade.

FASTSAT was launched in November 2010 with NanoSail-D and five other experiments onboard. High above Earth, a spring was supposed to push the breadbox-sized probe into an orbit of its own with room to unfurl a sail. But when the big moment arrived, NanoSail-D got stuck.
"We couldn't get out of FASTSAT," says Alhorn. "It was heart-wrenching-yet another failure in the long and troubled history of solar sails."

Team members began to give up hope as weeks went by and NanoSail-D remained stubbornly and inexplicably onboard. The mission seemed to be over before it even began.

And then came Jan. 17th. For reasons engineers still don't fully understand, NanoSail-D spontaneously ejected itself. When Alhorn walked into the control room and saw the telemetry on the screen, he says "I couldn't believe my eyes. Our spacecraft was flying free!"

The team quickly enlisted amateur radio enthusiasts Alan Sieg and Stan Sims at the Marshal Space Flight Center to try to pick up NanoSail-D's radio beacon.
"The timing could not have been better," says Sieg. "NanoSail-D was going to track right over Huntsville, and the chance to be the first ones to hear and decode the signal was irresistible."
Right before 5pm CST, they heard a faint signal. As the spacecraft soared overhead, the signal grew stronger and the operators were able to decode the first packet. NanoSail-D was alive and well.
"You could have scraped Dean off the ceiling. He was bouncing around like a new father," says Sieg.
The biggest moment, however, was still to come. NanoSail-D had to actually unfurl its sail. This happened on Jan. 20th at 9 pm CST.

 Activated by an onboard timer, a wire burner cut the 50lb fishing line holding the spacecraft's panels closed; a second wire burner released the booms. Within seconds they unrolled, spreading a thin polymer sheet of reflective material into a 10 meter-square sail.

Only one spacecraft has done anything like this before: Japan's IKAROS probe deployed a solar sail in interplanetary space and used it to fly by Venus in 2010. IKAROS is using the pressure of sunlight as its primary means of propulsion-a landmark achievement, which has encouraged JAXA to plan a follow-up solar sail mission to Jupiter later this decade.
NanoSail-D will remain closer to home. "Our mission is to circle Earth and investigate the possibility of using solar sails as a tool to de-orbit old satellites and space junk," explains Alhorn. "As the sail orbits our planet, it skims the top of our atmosphere and experiences aerodynamic drag. Eventually, this brings it down."

Indeed, mission planners expect NanoSail-D to return to Earth, meteor-style, in 70 to 120 days.
If this works (and there is little doubt that it will), NanoSail-D could pave the way for a future clean-up of low-Earth orbit. Drag sails might become standard issue on future satellites.

When a satellite's mission ends, it would deploy the sail and return to Earth via aerodynamic drag, harmlessly disintegrating in the atmosphere before it reaches the ground. Experts agree that something like this is required to prevent an exponential buildup of space junk around Earth.
Alhorn and colleagues will be monitoring NanoSail-D in the months ahead to see how its orbit decays. They'd also like to measure the pressure of sunlight on the sail, although atmospheric drag could overwhelm that effect.

No matter what happens next, NanoSail-D has already made history: It has demonstrated an elegant and inexpensive method for deploying sails and become the first sail to orbit Earth. Eventually, the team will diagnose the sail's reluctance to leave FASTSAT-"and then we'll be batting a thousand," says Alhorn.
A follow-up story on Science@NASA will explain how sky watchers can track and photograph NanoSail-D before it returns to Earth. Stay tuned for "Solar Sail Flares."

Runway Directions Have Changed in One Florida Airport. All By Themselves

Many of us older pilots remember the magnetic deviations that had to be taken into account when planing cross country flights.  On our trust E6B computers, we'd calculate wind drift, mag. dev. and density altitude just to take into accounts variations that occur while we are in the air.  Humidity, high and low pressure systems change our actual altitude enough, that we have to periodically get barometric pressure readings from the nearest FSS or ATC.

I don't recall any time where I have seen where the Magnetic fields had shifted enough to warrant a repainting of the numbers on runways.  The amount of variation in True North and Magnetic North varies considerably across the United States.  Interesting article by Jeremy A Kaplan and Jana Winter from FoxNews. .... lakotahope



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Magnetic North Pole Shifts, Forces Runway Closures at Florida Airport

By Jeremy A. Kaplan

Published January 06, 2011

| FoxNews.com

Gary A. Glatzmaier / UCSC

A computer simulation shows the Earth's magnetic field lines and two poles, with blue lines directed inward and yellow lines directed outward.

The planet's northern magnetic pole is drifting slowly but steadily towards Russia -- and it's throwing off planes in Florida.

Tampa International Airport was forced to readjust its runways Thursday to account for the movement of the Earth's magnetic fields, information that pilots rely upon to navigate planes. Thanks to the fluctuations in the force, the airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to change taxiway signs to account for the shift, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The poles are generated by movements within the Earth's inner and outer cores, though the exact process isn't exactly understood. They're also constantly in flux, moving a few degrees every year, but the changes are almost never of such a magnitude that runways require adjusting, said Paul Takemoto, a spokesman for the FAA.

The magnetic fields vary from place to place. Adjustments are needed now at airports in Tampa, but they aren't immediately required at all airports across the country.

So just how often is something like this necessary? "It happens so infrequently that they wouldn't venture a guess," Takemoto told FoxNews.com. "In fact, you're the first journalist to ever ask me about it."

Takemoto was quick to point out that the change, which also was required at Tampa's smaller Peter O. Knight airport, will have no effect on passenger safety.

"You want to be absolutely precise in your compass heading," he pointed out. "To make sure the precision is there that we need, you have to make these changes." 

Kathleen Bergen, another spokeswoman for the FAA, explained that runway designations and charting rely upon geomagnetic information. "Aviation is charted using latitude and longitude and the magnetic poles," she told FoxNews.com.

The busiest runway at Tampa International will be re-designated 19R/1L on aviation charts. It had been 18R/36L, indicating its alignment along the 180-degree approach from the north and the 360-degree approach from the south, explained an article in the Tampa Tribune detailing the changes. Later this month, the airport's east parallel runway and the seldom used east-west runway will be closed to change signs reflecting their new designations as well.

"The Earth's poles are changing constantly, and when they change more than three degrees, that can affect runway numbering," Bergen said.

While rejiggering the runways is a very extreme event, the fields are constantly in flux and constantly being remapped, explained Lorne McKee, a scientist with the geomagnetism division of Natural Resources Canada.

"Since the fields change relatively slowly, they're marked out at 10 degree increments," he explained. The field has swung from approximately 10 degrees east in the late 16th century to 25 degrees west in the early 19th century -- before returning to a current value of about 3 degrees west.

It wasn't immediately clear when or even if changes would be required at other airports. And even the rate of change is inconsistent, McKee said, noting that it's changing much more quickly at the poles themselves.

Beyond just sliding around the planet, the magnetic north and south poles have been known to completely flip as well; these reversals, recorded in the magnetism of ancient rocks, are unpredictable. The last one was 780,000 years ago. Are we overdue for another? No one knows.

FoxNews.com's Jana Winter contributed to this report.

China Unveils New 5th Gen Fighter

Looking at some of the pictures and video stills of this Chinese product, I'd say it is one big ass fighter plane.  Looks bigger than the F22 of the USA, but maybe it is an illusion.  Maybe, it is just a mockup with a Volkswagen motor driving the wheels so it can perform it's high speed ground tests?  

So, the United States dismantled it's production capabilities of it's 5th gen figher, (F22), due to various reasons.  $200 Million is alot of reasons, but what is the reality of China and Russia putting their 5th Gen fighters up in the air and they tackle our F22's and F35's.  I'm going out on a limb a little and guessing that Defense Secretary Gates canceled further production of the F22 so we can develop and sell the F35 with a few of our allies.  We'll make an attempt to sell the F35, without all of the software updates, and we will never sell the F22 to anyone.  Although, Japan wants them and I am sure Israel could use them to hit Iran in the near future.

Chengdu J-20 fighter--A BIG, BIG FIGHTER.  WHY??  .... lakotahope


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China reveals new stealth jet

The photos show the J-20 with a canard-delta twin-engine configuration, diverter-less supersonic intakes and a shaped nose that is consistent with the use of active electronically scanned array radar, the Defense News Web site reported.

by Staff Writers Beijing (UPI) Jan 4, 2011 China has revealed pictures of its first stealth fighter jet on a Chinese non-governmental Web site of a prototype of the Chengdu J-20 fighter being built for the Chinese air force. Chinese aviation experts say they have been snapping pictures of the aircraft since it took to taxi tests ahead of its first flight test in the coming weeks.
But is the sighting for real? Some experts claim the photos are fake or simply Photoshopped fighters created on computer screens.
Questions also arise over the unusually large Chinese red star painted on the tail.
"The red star insignias are normally smaller with parallel adjacent red bands," Defense News reported.
Other experts, though, say they believe the jet is genuine and long overdue.
"China has the money, they have the industrial expertise, they have the scientific base, the drive and motivation and of course the benefit of American research over 30 years acquired by legal or illegal means," one anonymous observer was quoted by a Time magazine blog site. "These enablers give China wide latitude in matching or exceeding American designs that are now 20 years old."
The photos show the J-20 with a canard-delta twin-engine configuration, diverter-less supersonic intakes and a shaped nose that is consistent with the use of active electronically scanned array radar, the Defense News Web site reported.
The design is viewed as similar to the Martin F-22 Raptor and the Sukhoi T-50 fighters and some observers maintain that the twin-engine configuration could signal use of the Russian-built Saturn 117S (AL-41F1A) engine.
Even so, the release of the J-20 photos follows comments made last week by U.S. Pacific Commander Adm. Robert Willard that China had reached the "initial operational capability" of its first anti-ship ballistic missile, the Dong Feng 21D.
The new weapon, the "D" version of China's DF-21 medium-range missile, entails firing the mobile missile into space, returning it into the atmosphere and then maneuvering it to its target. The deployment of the DF-21D is viewed as a potent threat because it will force U.S. aircraft carriers to operate further from potential hot spots in the Pacific.
Under U.S. military strategy, the Pentagon is obliged to send several strike groups to waters near Taiwan in the case China follows through on threats to retake the island.
The lone U.S. aircraft carrier strike group based permanently in the region is USS George Washington. Its home port is in Japan. A second carrier is planned for Hawaii or Guam.