Anu Ojha discusses some of the risks - and rewards - of attempting a sky-dive from the edge of space.

The human space age began on 12 April 1961. This was the date on which Yuri Gagarin undertook a single orbital flight around our planet and into the history books as the world's first cosmonaut (Russian for astronaut).

Yet it can be argued that humanity's first direct experience of the space environment was actually achieved eight months earlier.

On 16 August 1960 US Air Force test pilot Joe Kittinger jumped from a helium balloon 31,341m (102,800ft) above the deserts of New Mexico and set a freefall skydiving record that has stood for more than half a century.

2012 could be the year that Kittinger's record is finally broken by the Red Bull Stratos project and skydiver Felix Baumgartner.

His test jump last month from 2,818m (71,581ft) produced spectacular images and data that are essential precursors to the record attempt from 37,000m (120,000ft) that, if all goes to plan, should happen sometime later this year.

What are the challenges Felix faces in a jump from this height?

To answer this fully, we need to understand what we mean by "space", the "space environment" and where space begins.

In the 1950s physicist Theodore von Karman analysed the aerodynamic lift that aircraft wings (aerofoils) create and looked at the effect of altitude on their efficiency.

We take for granted that, on the Earth's surface, we are effectively at the bottom of an ocean of atmosphere that extends upwards for hundreds of kilometres.

As we ascend higher, the pressure levels and density of the atmosphere decrease, and this means that an aerofoil (a lift-creating surface) will need to move at higher speeds to create the same amount of lift compared to a lower altitude.

Theodore von Karman's modelling showed that at an altitude of 100 kilometres (330,000ft), an aerofoil would need to move at a speed greater than 8 kilometres per second (18000 mph) to create enough lift to support its weight.

The significance of this figure is that, in the absence of air resistance, 8km/s is the horizontal velocity needed at 100km altitude for an object to fall in a curved path that would match the curve of the Earth's surface – in other words, to orbit the Earth.

It's for this reason that 100km is the FAI (Federation Aviation Internationale) internationally-acce​pted boundary of space. Since 1961 only 500 humans have ever gone higher and become astronauts or cosmonauts.*

In terms of human survival, however, space is even closer than the Karman line.

As we ascend in the atmosphere the decreasing air pressure means that water boils at progressively lower temperatures.

On the summit of Mount Everest, which is 8,848m (29,028ft) above sea level - only slightly lower than the altitude commercial airliners fly at -  this figure has reduced from our familiar 100 Centigrade to around 70 degrees.

Higher still, the consequences for unprotected humans become even more insidious. At 20,000m (63,000 ft) the boiling point of water equals a human's body temperature: 37 degrees Centigrade.

A common misconception is that an unprotected human's blood would start boiling in the arteries and veins, but since the skin is a reasonably good pressure vessel this would not be the case.

However, the dramatic outgassing of nitrogen dissolved in the bloodstream (similar to, but far more rapid than the experiences of divers who ascend too quickly from depth) coupled with the effects of explosive decompression and lack of oxygen would result in unconsciousness in seconds, and death within a minute or two.

From an aeromedical, or human physiology and survival perspective, this is the boundary of space.

It's also the reason that pilots of ultra-high flying aircraft such as Lockheed's SR-71 Blackbird wore full-pressure suits almost identical to the orange "pumpkin" suits worn by Nasa astronauts during the launch and landing phases of space missions.  

In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, the suit will keep the pilot alive in the hostile "nearspace" environment 20 kilometres up until the craft descends to a lower altitude.

The first Stratos test jump showed that the project pressure suit (produced by the David Clark company that manufactures Nasa and US Air Force suits) not only maintained a survival environment for Felix but also allowed the flexibility needed for movement and, more importantly, control of body position.

There is a popular misconception that skydiving just involves throwing oneself out of an airplane, or balloon, and whooping all the way to the ground.

In actuality, a human body will tend to tumble uncontrollably when falling and it's up to the skydiver to use their arms, legs and body position to control the airflow around them and maintain stability.

Anyone who has either tried an "Accelerated Free Fall" skydiving course or who has flown in a vertical wind tunnel soon realises that maintaining stability is a major challenge requiring considerable levels of coordination, balance and muscular effort.

If a parachute deploys while a jumper is flailing in an unstable position, a malfunction is much more likely. In the rarefied air of the stratosphere, the much lower air density means that maintaining body position through deflection of the surrounding airflow is far more challenging than at lower altitudes.

If we consider an inflated car tyre, the higher the internal pressure the more rigid it becomes. The same is true for full-pressure suits. Felix's suit has been modified to allow greater flexibility than regular pressure suits and therefore a greater degree of control of body position. One of the major milestones achieved in the first test jump was verification that the suit allowed enough movement to attain a stable body position.

What relevance could this have for future human space endeavours?

As I mentioned earlier, the number of astronauts is far less than one might realise. Since 1961, the total spacefaring population of our planet would fit into one Airbus A380 superjumbo with seats to spare.

Of the 500-odd people who have broken through the "final frontier", 19 have died in the process.**

Getting into orbit and returning safely still pushes science and engineering to its limits - but there is a possible shortcut on the horizon.

The next few years may see a tenfold increase in astronaut numbers through "space tourism", for example the Burt Rutan/Richard Branson led Virgin Galactic project. 

The flight profile for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo will involve the craft and its six passengers being carried to an altitude of 15km on a "mothership" called White Knight Two.

SpaceShipTwo will then be released, its rocket engine will fire and the craft will power upwards on a path that will accelerate it to 4,200km/hr (2,600 mph): a similar launch profile to the X-15 rocket plane which was carried aloft by a B-52 bomber in the 1960s.

It's fair to say that it's more "space theme-park ride" than space tourism. Once the engines cease firing, SpaceShipTwo will coast upwards on a ballistic trajectory (just like the path of a rock thrown in the air) that peaks in excess of 100km altitude.

Passengers will have a stunning view of the curvature of the Earth with a horizon more than a thousand kilometres away. Being effectively outside the atmosphere, the sky will appear blacker than any view possible from the surface of the planet and they will experience a few minutes of "weightlessness"*** before re-entering the atmosphere and decelerating toward an unpowered glider landing back on Earth.

They may not nearly have reached an orbital speed of 8km/s, but they will legitimately be able to call themselves astronauts.

The methodology proved itself in 2004 when Rutan's SpaceShipOne successfully achieved this flight profile, repeated the feat within two weeks and won the $10m Ansari X-prize.

Although there have been a series of delays in the development of SpaceShipTwo (the larger, passenger-carrying version of the pioneering SpaceShipOne is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC), Branson is confident that passenger revenue flights could commence in 2014 with 500 ticket-holders already on the books having paid $200,000 each.

Scaled Composites (Rutan's company which designed and built the Virgin craft) has encountered several dynamic control problems during the testing phases for both SpaceShips One and Two

This is to be expected for any test flight schedule and have to be ironed out before commercial operations begin.

Fare-paying passengers will be required to wear a functional pressure suit, but from the artistic renderings I've seen the primary purpose of these would be to maintain survival conditions in the event of the cabin losing pressure rather than to protect against high-speed exposure to the nearspace environment.

They appear far less robust and capable than the full-pressure suits and parachute capability developed for the Stratos programme.

What difference could the Stratos design make in the event of an in-flight emergency?

In the event of a vehicle breakup, any former occupants still alive would immediately find themselves in a near-vacuum environment, tumbling helplessly as they continue on a ballistic trajectory that will end with them impacting the planet.

One way to counter uncontrolled tumbling, even in the rarefied air at extreme altitude, involves the use of a mini-parachute called a drogue chute.

Originally developed during Project Excelsior – Joe Kittinger's record breaking jump programme - the drogue chute concept is now incorporated on ejection seats worldwide and has helped save hundreds of lives in situations where pilots have ejected from wildly unstable aircraft.

For the Stratos project, in which Felix is launching himself into a near-vacuum environment and nearing (and hopefully exceeding) supersonic speeds, a specific danger is the possibility of flat spin.

Tests with anthropomorphic (human-shaped) test dummies which were released from stratospheric balloons in the 1950s resulted in flat spin rates in excess of 200 revolutions per minute (more than three every second).

In some cases, the arms and legs were ripped away from the torsos and a human being in such a spin state would suffer catastrophic levels of increased blood pressure in the brain.

The Stratos team has further refined the emergency drogue chute concept to specifically overcome an unintentional flat spin state.

In the event that Felix begins tumbling uncontrollably, automatic deployment of this emergency feature should restore enough stability, and in particular minimising head spin, in order to give a fighting chance for main parachute deployment without malfunction once a lower altitude is reached.

Would the Stratos system really be effective for a space tourist flight gone wrong? Has there ever been a situation with similar pressure and velocity parameters in which someone has survived?

In 1966 Lockheed test pilot Bill Weaver's SR-71 suffered a catastrophic instability resulting in the aircraft's disintegration whilst travelling at 24,000m (78,000ft) and in excess of 3,200 km/hr (2,000 mph, or Mach 3.2).

He did not eject – the aerodynamic forces ripped him from his ejection seat which remained in the cockpit section, he lost consciousness and found himself alive and in freefall. An automatic drogue had deployed creating a stable falling position and he landed with minimal injuries. Two weeks later he was once again traversing the stratosphere in another Blackbird.

This remains the most extreme aerial environment from which a human has escaped relatively unscathed.

A Stratos-derived system could provide an extra survival window during ascent (launch) and descent phases for orbital spacecraft in the event of vehicle loss of control or breakup in the low Mach number regime – especially relevant to the first eight in-flight casualties of the US human space programme (X-15 Flight 3-65-97 and STS-51L, the Challenger mission).

Weaver's experience also illustrates very clearly the potential - I would say necessity - for the inclusion of Stratos-type escape suit systems for all wannabe amateur astronauts if space tourism is to become a commercially sustainable reality.

• 
  Anu Ojha is Director of the UK's National Space Academy programme, based at the National Space Centre and a current skydiver with over 1,200 jumps. The views expressed in this article are his own. 

*The US defining altitude for astronaut status is 80km (50 miles – 264,000ft)

**Including Michael Adams, whose X-15 broke up in flight after attaining a peak altitude of 81km.

*** The technical term is "microgravity". It should be noted that the gravity field strength at 100km altitude are nearly the same as on the surface of the Earth. Because the spacecraft is freely falling in the Earth's gravity field on a curved path that is identical to its occupants, the occupants float inside as if they are “weightless”.

Watch a video of Felix Baumgartner preparing for his jump

Friday 23rd March saw the first explosions to flatten the top of a mountain in Chile. The mountain is being flattened in preparation for construction work to begin on one of the biggest telescopes ever built.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is being built in an attempt to answer some of humanity’s biggest questions. Are we alone in the universe? How did galaxies form? And what is dark energy?

The GMT aims to answer these questions by vastly improving on the resolving power of current telescopes.

With a mirror nearly 25 metres in diameter, the GMT should be able to see detail about 10 times smaller than that seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is a huge achievement for a ground based observatory.

Part of the problem of looking at things from down here on Earth is the atmosphere.
While we are appreciative of our atmosphere, providing us air to breathe and protecting us from harmful radiation, when it comes to looking into the sky the atmosphere itself is one of our biggest obstacles. Not only does it absorb whole swathes of the electromagnetic spectrum, limiting the types of light we can look at from the ground, but any light that does get through has its path altered as it moves through the air. This is known as ‘seeing’ and it is what causes stars to twinkle.

A telescope’s location is very important when trying to minimise the effects of ‘seeing’. This is the reason a lot of telescopes are built on the top of mountains in the deserts of Chile. These deserts are some of the driest places on earth, which reduces the humidity, meaning improved ‘seeing’ (less twinkling). They are also some of the highest locations on our planet, meaning the light from space has to pass through a smaller amount of air in the atmosphere before reaching the telescope.

Location alone isn’t the only way to overcome this hurdle. One of the recent developments in telescope technology is adaptive optics. This will be utilised a lot on the GMT.

Adaptive optics are used to slightly alter the arrangement or setup of the mirrors used in telescopes to reduce the effect the atmosphere has on the light being gathered. In the GMT the secondary mirrors are actually flexible and are mounted on top of hundreds of small motors called actuators. These actuators will alter the shape of the mirror in an attempt to negate the distortions created by the air. All of this sophisticated engineering is being combined in order to build this huge telescope.

The inspiration for the GMT is inspired by the work done by Edwin Hubble in the 20th Century. The observations Hubble made at the Mount Wilson Telescope, California revolutionised our understanding of the universe. As well as having specific challenges, such as imaging exo-planets, scientists will use the unprecedented light gathering power and resolution of the GMT to look at our universe in much greater detail that ever before. This will hopefully lead to discoveries about our universe that we can’t yet begin to imagine.

The first observations of the Giant Magellen Telescope are planned for 2020. This marks the start of ‘the age of the super telescope’ with the Thirty Metre Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope planning to be built at a similar time. Once these telescopes begin making observations we will be able to see into our universe with an unprecedented accuracy, which could lead to another revolution in our understanding of the universe we live in.

Written by Josh Baker - Education presenter at the National Space Centre

Our Sun, like any similar star, is a very active object. Every second it throws out almost 2 billion kilograms over all directions as what we call the solar wind, mostly in the form of electrons and protons – but that’s not all.

The news stories you may have seen usually talk about two other types of activity from the Sun – solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). While the solar wind is a constant flow of particles both solar flares and CMEs are individual events, although of very different types.

A solar flare is huge flash of light over a large range of wavelengths. Even though extreme amounts of energy is released, very little of this is as visible light, meaning that most solar flares are invisible to human eyes.

On the other hand, a CME occurs when a massive amount of particles is released from one part of the star in an intensely short period of time. In fact, CMEs are “a billion tons of electrically charged material moving at a million miles an hour” (said by Dr Jim Wild, a Reader in Space Plasma Physics at Lancaster University, at the Royal Institution Summer Science Exhibition 2011).

As the Earth travels around the Sun, which is itself rotating, not all CMEs will reach our planet and the science of prediction in this area is still uncertain.

Both of these types of events increase in frequency as the Sun reaches maximum activity in its eleven year cycle, but here on Earth we are protected from most of the electrically charged particles that reach us by our magnetic field. This channels most of the material around our planet and on through the Solar System. If our magnetic field wasn’t there, this solar material would collide with our atmosphere, stripping it away from the Earth.

Even with this vitally important protection, CMEs in particular can have significant effects on modern life here on Earth. As the CME reaches Earth, the vast number of particles it contains can be thought of as a shock wave. This impact squashes the day side of our magnetic field, distorting its shape. The magnetic field then traps some of these particles and transports them to the polar regions of our planet, where they leak into our atmosphere. This is best known for the spectacular displays of light visible as particularly strong aurorae; both the Northern and Southern lights result from this process, and are much stronger after CMEs reach Earth.

This energy has another effect, which becomes more and more relevant as humanity becomes further dependent on satellite technology, global communication and national energy distribution systems. The charged particles that leak into our atmosphere can disrupt the electronic systems in any computer, including satellites, as well as the electricity transport systems in different countries (for example the UK’s National Grid).

There are currently two missions studying the Sun in great depth, Stereo (a Nasa mission) and SOHO (a joint ESA and Nasa mission). As well as giving us a large amount of data to study to enable a better understanding of these events, they also allow us a few hours warning of any specific CME or solar flare event. This means we can prepare our major electricity systems before these events hit and avoid some of the more devastating effects on modern life.

Thinking back to 200, or even 100 years ago, we were clearly significantly less reliant on electrical systems, especially for safety, not to mention the more recent development of satellite based GPS and communication systems. These have become such an integral part of most peoples’ lives now that the idea of living without them for a while is unthinkable. For this reason CME prediction and understanding has become an important part of research into solar science, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

Written by Megan Whewell – Presenter at the National Space Centre

Over the next few days there is an exciting celestial light show beginning to unfold. Five planets will be jockeying for position with the moon in the early evening for the 2 or 3 weeks.

Any regular star gazers will be aware that Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars have been easily viewable for the last few weeks, Venus and Jupiter over in the west and Mars rising in the early evening in the east.

Currently Venus and Jupiter have been sitting in west sharing the sky with the moon making the two bright objects easily spottable. Many of you may have already seen them not knowing exactly what you were looking at.

Venus is the brightest planet in our night sky, its thick toxic clouds reflecting large amounts of the sun’s light making it very easy to see as it sits below Jupiter over the next few days.

Just below the moon the king of the planets Jupiter shines brightly. Jupiter’s massive size is the cause of its bright appearance. Jupiter makes an excellent target for any telescope wielders, with its four largest moons being visible with even binoculars and small telescopes.

Mars rises in the east from about 6.00pm with his distinctive red glint almost mirroring the arrival and departure of Venus, unless you live in area with a clear horizon best viewing of the bringer of war occurs later in the evening when he’s been given time to rise above the trees or your neighbours roof.

The fourth planet that makes a brief appearance in our evening’s sky is the tiny planet of Mercury. The sun-hugging orbit this planet has makes it incredibly trick to see. Over the next few evenings mercury heads below the horizon about 60 minutes after the sun sets so is only viewable in this small window, but with a clear landscape, precision timing and sharp vision our elusive compatriot can be seen.

The fifth planet gracing the heavens is Saturn, which rises at around 11pm making it a target for the night owls. Saturn and its stunning rings make a fantastic and popular target for astronomers.

Over the next few weeks the 5 planets along with the fact that 3 of them are very close together makes for some interesting viewing for first timers and experts alike but the highlight of the next month is the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. A conjunction is just when 2 objects appear to come together and this occurs on March 14th. On that evening Jupiter and Venus will appear side by side in the night sky, after which they will drift apart and carry on their celestial journeys.

I encourage you all to look up once in a while and admire the beauty that the sky can offer us, and I hope you enjoy the slow build up to the conjunction as Venus and Jupiter creep ever closer to each other over the next 2 weeks.

Written by Josh Barker, Presenter – National Space Centre

Written by Megan Whewell – Presenter at the National Space Centre

Following the release of their financial budget for 2013, Nasa have officially pulled out of the ExoMars project, much to the dismay of their European partners. ExoMars was intended to be a collaborative project between Nasa and ESA (European Space Agency), but without the Nasa funding, technological input and logistical support ESA will have to look elsewhere if they wish to continue moving forward with this ambitious mission.

ExoMars, in its current configuration, is a two-stage project. The first of which is a Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft planned for launch in 2016, followed by a robotic rover scheduled for launch in 2018. The Trace Gas Orbiter has been planned to study the Martian atmosphere, specifically looking for gases that may indicate living organisms on the planet, and then be used as a ‘data relay’ to send results back to Earth from the following rover-based mission.

This second stage of ExoMars was originally expected to consist of two rovers, one ESA-led (called ExoMars) and one Nasa-led (called MAX-C). They were both going to land at the same location on the Martian surface and undertake complementary experiments searching for evidence of past or present life. MAX-C was also intended to collect samples that may be returned to Earth at a later date for further study. In 2011, because of budget restraints, this plan was altered to one, larger rover (based on the ESA led ExoMars) which would carry scientific equipment relevant to both ESA and Nasa’s corresponding science goals.

With Nasa’s funding for this project completely cancelled, most of these plans will have to at least be restructured, if they are to go ahead at all.  In fact, the Planetary Sciences are bearing the brunt of the budget cuts which state:

“Nasa is terminating further activity on the formulation activity for the Nasa/ ESA ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter 2016 (EMTGO) mission and planning for the previous Nasa/ESA Mars 2018 mission concept. Nasa remains committed to an ongoing Mars Exploration program of robotic exploration missions in support of an integrated strategy of scientific and human exploration, and intends to work with the science community and our international partners in the formulation of a restructured mission.”

This seems to imply that Nasa still believes searching for evidence of past and present life on Mars is worthwhile, just not a mission they can fit into their current budget restrictions.

So what is the future for ESA’s Martian exploration plans? ESA are currently having conversations with Roscosmos (Russia’s Space Agency) about becoming partners in this project, by using Russian launch capabilities for the Trace Gas Orbiter in 2016, possibly including Russian scientific experimentation in return and becoming involved in the following rover based mission. This could be seen as an attractive prospect for Russia, especially given the well-publicised recent failures of their own Martian exploration plans.

It would be an immense shame if this mission were not to succeed in some capacity.  Not only is it one of ESA’s flagship missions, but several key components as well as the test rovers are being devised and constructed here in the UK.  Unfortunately we shall all have to wait for further news before the future of ESA’s Mars programme is anywhere close to certain.

Thursday 26th Jan saw the National Space Centre pay tribute to one of the most prolific television presenters in history. Sir Patrick Moore has hosted all but one of the 705 episodes of BBC’s Sky at Night, which holds the accolade of being the longest running show with a single permanent broadcaster. Having presented the show for over 54 years Sir Patrick has become the iconic figure of British astronomy, being almost synonymous with the hobby.

Having led a colourful life, turning down a place at Cambridge, playing a duet with Albert Einstein and meeting both Orville Wright and Yuri Gagarin, his autobiography makes for a very interesting read but Sir Patrick will always be known for his astronomy and public outreach.

Over his career he held a great interest in observing the moon particularly the far side and has made several discoveries of details on the lunar surface. He is the author of over 70 books ranging from astronomical textbooks to works of fiction but he will always be best known for his broadcasting.

Sir Patrick has only ever claimed that his goal is to inspire and interest people in the subject of astronomy and when asked to comment on the reason for the shows success merely stated, “Astronomy's a fascinating subject. You look up... you can't help getting interested and it's there. We've tried to bring it to the people. It's not me, it's the appeal of the subject.".

Another year and a spate of space science successes have been announced, so let’s have a look back at some of our achievements over the past 12 months. Following Christmas tradition we will look at subjects covering past, present and future.

Space Past.

Rather than look at past achievements we will look at long term missions and the milestones they have reached this year. When discussing space science legacy there are a couple of big players that immediately spring to mind.

We will begin with the most famous telescope of all time, the Hubble Space Telescope. At just over 21 years old, this year saw the telescope make its one millionth observation, securing its place as one of astronomy’s great instruments.

Over its lifetime Hubble has provided ground breaking discoveries and been an inspiration to generations with its breathtaking images from the universe around us. With no more servicing missions planned, it is unsure for how much longer Hubble will peer out into space but we are sure it still has some visual treats in store for us.

Another mission that continues to amaze is the Voyager programme. The two Voyager spacecraft, launched in the 1970s, were tasked with exploring the outer planets and ultimately the edge of our solar system. This pair of probes returned a wealth of information about the outer giant planets providing a massive boost to our understanding of our solar system.

What truly makes this mission exceptional is that as of 1998, Voyager 1 became the most distant man made object. It is currently predicted to hold this record for a while as no other probe is moving fast enough to overtake it. Although this is a pretty good record to hold, the Voyager probes are still returning new scientific data from the very edge of our solar system, and they look to do so for the next 10-20 years before power supplies even begin to run low.

When talking about legacies in space there is one more programme which is virtually impossible to avoid, and that is the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttles were remarkable crafts, being the first reusable space vehicle to make multiple flights into orbit and proving to be extremely versatile. Space Shuttles were involved in manned space missions, satellite launches and resupply as well as repair missions over their 30 year career.

They are best known for their use in constructing, supplying and re-crewing the International Space Station, being one of the primary services used in association with that programme. Over its career the Shuttle has faced some controversies, being criticised for not fully achieving its goal of reducing the cost of spaceflight, but overall the Shuttle programme has had a massive impact on space flight.

The advances in technology and lessons learned will have an impact on future space flight projects for many years to come.

Space Present

Moving forward, there are a great many ongoing missions that are still feeding back vital scientific data and research. Space science has enabled the construction of huge networks of satellites responsible for a variety of tasks, from monitoring the weather to providing communications, as well as conducting research in both Earth observation and deep space experiments.

One of the missions having large success recently is the Kepler Space Telescope. This bus sized spacecraft stares at a patch of sky studying over 150,000 stars looking for planets. It achieves this using extremely sensitive equipment looking for tiny changes in the brightness of a star. This change in brightness is a result of a planet moving between the star and the telescope.

So far the telescope has found more than 30 planets outside of our solar system and there are over 2,000 candidates that it continues to investigate. So it can be seen that the telescope still has a lot of potential, with at the very least another year of operation and the engineers constantly refining the techniques used to interpret the data gathered by this telescope.

Another ongoing mission that should be recognised is Messenger. The Messenger probe became the first probe to orbit Mercury, out solar system’s innermost planet. Messenger entered the orbit of Mercury on the 18th March this year and begun its primary investigations in April.

The primary purpose of Messenger was to determine the composition, geological history and study the magnetic field of the planet. Over the last 8 months the probe has handled its tasks proficiently providing a wealth of scientific data, confirming theories and discovering completely new features of our neighbourhood’s smallest planet. Messenger’s most surprising discovery was the relatively large amount of water in the planet’s tenuous outer atmosphere.

The probe’s success was enough to convince Nasa to extend its mission lifetime by a whole year, allowing the probe to observe the 2012 solar activity maximum from up close. Messenger has provided us with a vast amount of information about Mercury and looks to continue to do so throughout 2012.

Space Future

Space science and exploration are areas that are constantly moving forward. As we celebrate the successes of one endeavour we eagerly await the results of the next. 2011 has been a very successful year in space with some major discoveries but there are still a great many exciting things on the horizon.

One major mission that is holding many peoples interest is the Mars Science Laboratory. The launching of Curiosity, a Mini Cooper sized autonomous rover, in November marked the start of a potentially very exciting epoch. This mission, along with a potential NASA/European follow up (ExoMars) aims to conclusively prove whether or not Mars can or ever has been able to support life. T

he two missions have slightly different approaches, Curiosity will study the geology of Mars and is the precursor, looking to arrive on Mars in August 2012, whereas ExoMars is planning to look for chemical markers that would indicate that life is, or has been, present. Curiosity has a big head start having already travelled over 75,000 million kilometers, while ExoMars is still being built and is scheduled to launch in 2018. Humanity has wondered for a long time whether or not we are alone in the universe and between them these two missions could get us closer to the answer.

Another exciting area to watch over the course of the next few years is the development of relationships between private and government funded space travel. Historically it has been government that have been the main proponents of both manned and unmanned spaceflight. Over the last couple of years this seems to be shifting as several commercial enterprises have announced their intention to provide spaceflight services.

Some companies are focussing on the ‘tourism’ aspect, looking to capitalise on people’s fascination and personal exploration desires, while others look to be taking a more utility based approach, by working with the already established agencies to take over their routine transport missions. This approach aims to reduce the day to day costs of maintaining a human presence in space, therefore allowing the big government agencies to focus on innovation and deep space missions, both manned and unmanned. With this in mind, late this year Nasa unveiled their proposed Space Launch System (SLS) as the future of their human spaceflight exploration programme.

The SLS will be the biggest rocket ever built for space travel, and will have the capabilities to take humanity further into space than ever before, with eyes on the target of Mars. This project is already gaining momentum and with hopes that a focus on human space exploration will reignite the fervour last seen during the Apollo program, the SLS is certainly something to watch.
 
Overall, 2011 has been a fantastic year for humanity’s involvement and understanding of space. Great progress has already been made but the future looks just as bright, with some imminent missions and developments. Not only is there short term promise with Kepler and Messenger, but there are a wealth of projects still in early stages of planning that look to take us and our understanding further out into our universe.

The National Space Centre wishes you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Written by Josh Barker, Presenter at the National Space Centre.

The big news in particle physics is the announcement that two teams at CERN have found ‘tantalising’ hints of evidence for the Higgs particle, although a more definitive answer is expected summer 2012.

But why is this big news? Over the course of this blog I shall attempt to outline why physicists are quite so excited about this announcement, and how it may impact on future space science and astronomy investigations.

Physicists use a framework called the Standard Model to describe all the known particles, and therefore pretty much everything we know about in the universe. While this doesn’t include dark matter or dark energy (the practically unknown entities that seem to consist of about 95% of our universe), it is the best description developed so far of that other 5%.

The Higgs particle is the last undiscovered part of the Standard Model of matter.  Every other particle that makes up this ‘zoo’ has been experimentally discovered and verified, but without the Higgs particle the theory that underpins the Standard Model would fall apart.

The Higgs particle is predicted to be the reason that all other particles have mass, but ironically its own mass is not predicted by the theory. This means that scientists have had to search through different possible masses for the Higgs, and so have been narrowing down the range for the last few years. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, based in Geneva, is the newest instrument in this search and is where these latest results have come from.

Around the 27km supercooled particle racetrack of the LHC are 4 detectors, including Atlas and CMS, which are the two that produced the data for this latest announcement. The team using Atlas have “restricted the most likely mass region for the Higgs” to a small range, with specific indications around a particular mass, and the team using CMS say they “cannot exclude the presence” of the Higgs in a mass range very similar to that suggested by the Atlas results.

At this stage neither team has results statistically significant enough to announce either an official observation, or discovery, but say they hope to confirm whether these indications lead to something more concrete over the course of the next year.

So why is this important for space science and astronomy? Other than the immediate confirmation that the Standard Model theory of matter scientists have been using to describe the universe for the last 50 years is correct, any insight into the nature of the elusive Higgs particle is likely to lead to a much deeper understanding of the nature of the whole universe.

This is especially important when studying the structure and distribution of matter around the universe, and even to investigations into that unknown idea of dark matter.  And historically with every new scientific discovery made, ingenious people have found ways to exploit new knowledge.  With a better understanding of mass and gravity, could we manipulate these Higgs bosons to our own advantage?

The search for the Higgs particle may be undertaken by particle physicists, but any results have ramifications for all parts of physics and our overall understanding of the universe and our place within it. Look out for more news in 2012.