60TH ANNIVERSARY OF NASA
Pushing the Envelope of Space Technology By Chuck Oldham
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hen the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) was created in February 2013, it marked both a step into the future and another into the past, all the way back to NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). “There is a really strong tie-back to NACA, from a culture and purpose perspective. They were doing R&D to solve problems. One striking thing is they were tackling real problems industry didn’t know how to solve. It also was a very test-rich program – flight tests, wind tunnels – a very applied, go-figurethis-out approach,” said then-Associate Administrator for STMD Michael Gazarik in a 2015 interview. Today, Gazarik is vice president of engineering for Ball Aerospace. “We are here because technology drives exploration and trying to really get back to the NACA culture of workforce in the labs – flying, testing, occasionally breaking – and that’s OK because we’re learning along the way, developing technology and knowledge broadly applicable to the national aerospace community.” STMD also represents a return to the early years of NASA itself, when the space agency was charged with sending a man to the Moon – and returning him alive – in less than a decade. At the dawn of the 21st century – more than 40 years after the last human walked on the lunar surface – STMD has turned its focus on new, piloted missions to the Moon and Mars. “This time it’s not going to be about placing flags and footprints on the surface of the Moon, and it’s not about winning the Cold War,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a visit to NASA’s Langley Research Center. “It’s about having a permanent presence around the Moon for economic activity and eventually taking all of that sustainable architecture and replicating it on Mars.” Some of the programs and projects associated with the new exploration mission include the Orion spacecraft, Exploration Ground Systems, the Space Launch System, the Human Research Program, the Lunar Orbital Platform – Gateway, Advanced Cis-lunar and Surface Capabilities, Exploration Advanced Systems, International Space Station, and the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program.
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Key areas in which STMD is invested in this new drive into the future include entry, descent, and landing on another planet, such as Mars. Going to Mars with humans requires a capability of landing much more than a metric ton, a challenge that has spurred a number of ideas on how to slow down a large spacecraft and land safely on the planet. These technologies will benefit both robotic and manned missions. Technologies STMD is pursuing include the ability to get data back from deep space – increasing the throughput of communications. Most of the images robotic probes have taken on Mars, for example, remain there because there is not sufficient bandwidth to transmit them back to Earth. Another example is propulsion. One of the most efficient ways to move is solar electric propulsion (SEP), which provides a low-level but steady thrust. The first major SEP spacecraft, Dawn, was launched in September 2007 to visit the two largest objects in the Asteroid Belt – one year orbiting the 330-mile-diameter protoplanet Vesta in 2011-12, then 16 months circling Vesta’s big sister, the dwarf planet Ceres (590-mile diameter), beginning in March 2015. Dawn became the first spacecraft to orbit an object in the asteroid belt, and the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies. Dawn’s mission has been extended several times, providing much more than the research originally hoped for, and while it is now drawing to a close, it also succeeded in pushing the limits of solar electric propulsion.
