Stockton Astronomical Society

Valley Skies - December 2006 Issue

Editor's Corner...

Election of Officers for 2007

Due to an oversight by the entire Executive Committee, we did not have a full slate of nominees ready to present at the November 9 meeting. Frank Wheeler, who has served us so well as Treasurer for the last two years, had decided to step down at the end of the year.

Appeals to the members present yielded a volunteer, Glen Mortensen, to fill the vacancy. All the other officers are willing to serve another year if elected. The election will be held at the December 14 meeting. As required by the SAS by-laws, here are the nominees for club officers for 2007.

President:	Lloyd Altamirano
VP/Program Director:	Jerry Hyatt
Secretary:	Christie Abbott
Treasurer:	Glen Mortensen
Newsletter Editor:	Trevor Atkinson
Member-at-Large:	Becky Greider
Member-at-Large:	Roger Stark

The floor will be open for additional nominations.

...Trevor Atkinson

The Science Directorate at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center sponsors the Science@NASA web sites. The mission of Science@NASA is to help the public understand how exciting NASA research is and to help NASA scientists fulfill their outreach responsibilities.

Sci-fi Life Support

Oct. 30, 2006:  In Frank Herbert's epic ecological novel Dune (1965), set on the fictitious desert planet Arrakis in another star system, water is so precious that even perspiration and breath moisture are captured and purified for drinking.

On real-life voyages to the Moon and Mars, science fact may end up imitating science fiction. Indeed, scientists and engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) are putting the finishing touches on systems for capturing exhaled carbon dioxide and urine and turning them into breathable oxygen and drinking water.

A dune-covered desert planet in our own solar system.

"Early space missions-Mercury, Gemini, Apollo-took with them all the water and oxygen they needed and discarded liquid and gaseous wastes into space," explains Robert Bagdigian of the MSFC. In short, the astronauts' life-support systems were "open-loop" -meaning they relied on resupply from Earth, something still true for the International Space Station, today.

But for any long-duration missions to the Moon or Mars, "it makes sense to close the loop"-that is, to recycle air and waste water instead of just discarding them. Soon the ISS will be testing just such a regenerative system.

The name of the project is Environmental Control and Life Support Systems--better known by its acronym ECLSS (pronounced "EE-cliss"). Bagdigian is the ECLSS project manager.

"The Russians are ahead of us," says Robyn Carrasquillo, engineering manager for ECLSS. "The original Salyut and Mir spacecraft were able to condense humidity right out of the air and use electrolysis-an electric current run through the water-to produce oxygen for breathing." NASA's new regenerative ECLSS, to be launched to ISS in 2008, goes further: "it can recover urine in addition to humidity."

Stepping-stone to the stars. Regenerative ECLSS will get a field test onboard the ISS.

Urine recovery is an engineering challenge: "Urine is so much dirtier than ordinary humidity," Carrasquillo explains. "It can corrode hardware and clog hoses." ECLSS uses a purification process called vapor compression distillation: urine is boiled until the water in it turns to steam. The steam-essentially clean water vapor except for some traces of ammonia and other gases-rises into a distillation chamber, leaving behind a concentrated brown soup of impurities and salts that Carrasquillo charitably calls "brine" (which is discarded). The steam is cooled and condenses back into liquid. This steam distillate is then mixed with the humidity condensate, and the water further purified to become potable. ECLSS can recover 100 percent of moisture in the air, and 85 percent of the water in urine, resulting in a net overall recovery efficiency of about 93 percent.

That's how it works on Earth. In space, there's an additional challenge: "steam doesn't rise." Buoyancy requires gravity, and in the microgravity of a spaceship, steam just "sits there. It doesn't rise naturally into the distillation chamber. So in the version of ECLSS being completed at Marshall for ISS, "we spin the entire distillation system to create artificial gravity to separate the steam from the brine," says Carrasquillo.

ECLSS hardware.

Moreover, in microgravity human hairs, skin cells, lint, and other impurities float around in the air instead of falling to the floor. Thus, the processor requires an impressive filtration system. When clean water emerges at the end, iodine is added to retard the growth of microbes (chlorine, used to purify water on Earth, is too reactive and hazardous to store and handle in space).

The regenerative water recovery system for ISS, weighing about a ton and a half, will "produce half a gallon an hour, more than the current crew of three needs," Carrasquillo says. "This will enable the space station to support a total of six astronauts continuously." The system is designed to produce potable water "meeting purity standards better than most municipal water systems on the ground," Bagdigian adds.

In addition to providing drinking water for the crew, the water recovery system will supply water to the other half of ECLSS: the oxygen generation system (OGS). The OGS operates by electrolysis. It splits water molecules into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen, which is vented outside the spacecraft. "The air loop needs pretty clean water, so the electrolyte cells don't get contaminated and foul," Bagdigian points out.

"Regeneration is far more cost-effective than resupplying the station with water from Earth," Carrasquillo says, especially after the space shuttle is retired in 2010.

Recycling up to 93 percent wastewater is impressive. But for missions of months or years to the Moon or Mars, some later version of ECLSS must achieve closer to 100 percent efficiency.

Then, astronauts would be ready to survive on our own solar system's versions of Dune.

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Martian Devils

by Dr. Tony Phillips

Admit it. Whenever you see a new picture of Mars beamed back by Spirit or Opportunity, you scan the rocks to check for things peeking out of the shadows. A pair of quivering green antennas, perhaps, or a little furry creature crouched on five legs...? Looking for Martians is such a guilty pleasure.

Well, you can imagine the thrill in 2004 when scientists were checking some of those pictures and they did see something leap out. It skittered across the rocky floor of Gusev Crater and quickly disappeared. But it wasn't a Martian; Spirit had photographed a dust devil!

The top half of this image is part of a series of images of a passing dust devil on Mars caught by Spirit. In the bottom half, the image has been filtered to remove everything that did not change from one image to the other. Notice the faint track left by the dust devil. Credit NASA/JPL/Mark T. Lemmon, Univ. of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

Dust devils are tornadoes of dust. On a planet like Mars which is literally covered with dust, and where it never rains, dust devils are an important form of weather. Some Martian dust devils grow almost as tall as Mt. Everest, and researchers suspect they're crackling with static electricity-a form of "Martian lightning."

NASA is keen to learn more. How strong are the winds? Do dust devils carry a charge? When does "devil season" begin-and end? Astronauts are going to want to know the answers before they set foot on the red planet.

The problem is, these dusty twisters can be devilishly difficult to catch. Most images of Martian dust devils have been taken by accident, while the rovers were looking for other things. This catch-as-catch-can approach limits what researchers can learn.

No more! The two rovers have just gotten a boost of artificial intelligence to help them recognize and photograph dust devils. It comes in the form of new software, uploaded in July and activated in September 2006.

"This software is based on techniques developed and tested as part of the NASA New Millennium Program's Space Technology 6 project. Testing was done in Earth orbit onboard the EO-1 (Earth Observing-1) satellite," says Steve Chien, supervisor of JPL's Artificial Intelligence Group. Scientists using EO-1 data were especially interested in dynamic events such as volcanoes erupting or sea ice breaking apart. So Chien and colleagues programmed the satellite to notice change. It worked beautifully: "We measured a 100-fold increase in science results for transient events."

Now that the techniques have been tested in Earth orbit, they are ready to help Spirit and Opportunity catch dust devils-or anything else that moves-on Mars.

"If we saw Martians, that would be great," laughs Chien. Even scientists have their guilty pleasures.

Find out more about the Space Technology 6 "Autonomous Sciencecraft" technology experiment at nmp.nasa.gov/st6/TECHNOLOGY/sciencecraft_tech.html, and the use of the technology on the Mars Rovers at nmp.nasa.gov/TECHNOLOGY/infusion.html. Kids can visit spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/nmp_action.shtml and do a New Millennium Program-like test at home to see if a familiar material would work well in space.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Gems from the e-mail archives:

2005 Darwin Award Winners:

Each year, the Darwin Awards are bestowed honoring the least evolved among us. Here are the winners for 2005:

1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked..... And now, the honorable mentions:

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and, after a little hopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence, sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.

3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer...$15. (If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?)

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."

9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 a.m., flashed a gun, demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away. A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER!

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.

In the interest of bettering humankind please share these with your friends and family ... unless of course one of these 10 individuals by chance is a distant relative or long lost friend. In that case be glad they are distant and hope they remain lost.

Copyright © 2006 by Stockton Astronomical Society
Last Updated: 12/7/2006
http://astro.sci.uop.edu/~sas/Newsletter/VS0612.html