Space Exploration

A

General Principles of Spacecraft Design

The challenges that spacecraft designers face are daunting. Each component of a spacecraft must be durable enough to withstand the vibrations of launch, and reliable enough to function in space on time spans ranging from days to years. At the same time, the spacecraft must also be as lightweight as possible to reduce the amount of fuel required to boost it into space. Materials such as Mylar (a metal-coated plastic) and graphite epoxy (a construction material that is strong but lightweight) have helped designers and manufactures meet the requirements of durability, reliability, and lightness. Spacecraft designers also conserve space and weight by using miniaturized electronic components; in fact, the space program has fueled many advances in the field of miniaturization.

Since the early 1990s, budgetary restrictions have motivated NASA to plan projects that are better, faster, and cheaper. In this approach, space missions requiring single large, complex, and expensive spacecraft are replaced with more limited missions using smaller, less expensive craft. Although this new approach was successful with spacecraft such as the Mars Pathfinder lander and Mars Global Surveyor 96, budgetary constraints may have contributed to the loss of two other Mars spacecraft, Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander, in 1999. The approach is also difficult to apply to piloted spacecraft, in which the overriding concern is crew safety. However, engineers are always looking for new technologies to make spacecraft lighter and less expensive.

B

Getting into Space

One of the most difficult parts of any space voyage is the launch. During launch, the craft must attain sufficient speed and altitude to reach Earth orbit or to leave Earth’s gravity entirely and embark on a path between planets. Scientists sometimes find it helpful to think of Earth’s gravitational field as a deep well, with sides that are steepest near the planet’s surface. The task of the launch vehicle or booster rocket is to climb out of this well.

Although some launch vehicles consist of just a single rocket, many are composed of a series of individual rockets, or stages, stacked atop one another. Such multistage launch vehicles are used especially for heavier payloads. With a multistage rocket, each stage fires for a period of time and then falls away when its fuel supply is used up. This lightens the load carried by the remaining stages. In some liquid-fuel boosters, strap-on solid-fuel rockets are used to provide extra thrust during the initial portion of ascent. For example, the Titan III booster has two liquid-fuel core stages and two strap-on solid-fuel motors. The largest example of a successful multistage booster was the Saturn V Moon rocket, which had three liquid-fuel stages and measured 111 m (363 ft), including the Apollo spacecraft, in length.

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Despite their utility, most multistage boosters are not reusable, which makes them expensive. Cost-conscious engineers have focused on creating a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle. In an SSTO, the entire spacecraft and booster would be integrated into one fully reusable unit. If successful, this approach would reduce the costs of reaching Earth orbit. However, the technical challenge is enormous: A full 89 percent of an SSTO’s total weight must be reserved for fuel, a much higher proportion than any previous launch vehicle. The payload, the crew, and the weight of the vehicle itself must make up only 11 percent of the SSTO’s total weight.

C

Navigation in Space

Spaceflight requires very detailed planning and measurement to get a spacecraft into place or to send it on its proper path. Some of the Apollo spacecraft were able to travel from Earth to the Moon (a distance of almost 390,000 km, or almost 240,000 mi) and land on the lunar surface within a few dozen meters (several dozen feet) of their target. Careful planning allowed the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft to fly from Earth to Mars, traveling more than 500 million km (300 million mi), and land just 19 km (12 mi) from the center of its target area.

C

1

Flight Paths

To launch a spacecraft into orbit around Earth, a booster rocket must do two things. First it must raise the spacecraft above the atmosphere—roughly 160 km (100 mi) or more. Second it must accelerate the spacecraft until its forward speed—that is, its speed parallel to Earth’s surface—is at least 28,200 km/h (17,500 mph). This is the speed, called orbital velocity, at which the momentum of the spacecraft is strong enough to counteract the force of gravity. Gravity and the spacecraft’s momentum balance so that the spacecraft does not fall straight down or move straight ahead—instead it follows a curved path that mimics the curve of the planet itself. The spacecraft is still falling, as any object does when it is released in a gravitational field. But instead of falling toward Earth, it falls around it. See Orbit.

Using its own thrusters, a spacecraft can raise or lower its orbit by adding or removing energy, respectively. To add energy, the spacecraft orients itself and fires its thrusters so that it accelerates in its direction of flight. To subtract energy, the craft fires its engines against the direction of flight. Any change in the height of a spacecraft’s orbit also produces a change in its speed and vice versa. The craft moves more slowly in a higher orbit than it does in a lower one. By firing its rockets perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, the craft can change the orientation of its orbit in space.

To travel from one planet to another, a spacecraft must follow a precise path, or trajectory, through space. The amount of energy that a spacecraft’s launch rocket and onboard thrusters must provide varies with the type of trajectory. The trajectory that requires the least amount of energy is called a Hohmann transfer. A Hohmann transfer follows the shape of an ellipse, or a flattened circle, whose sides just touch the orbits of the two planets.

The trajectory must also take into account the motion of the planets around the Sun. For example, a probe traveling from Earth to Mars must aim for where Mars will be at the time of the spacecraft’s arrival, not where Mars is at the time of launch.

In many interplanetary missions, a spacecraft flies past a third planet and uses the planet’s gravitational field to bend the craft’s trajectory and accelerate it toward its target planet. This is known as a gravitational slingshot maneuver. The first spacecraft to use this technique was the Mariner 10 probe (see Mariner), which flew past Venus on its way to Mercury in 1974.

C

2

Navigation and Guidance

Most spacecraft depend on a combination of internal automatic systems and commands from ground controllers to keep on the correct path. Normally, ground controllers can communicate with a spacecraft only when it is within sight of an Earth-based receiving station. This poses problems for spacecraft in low Earth orbit—that is, within 2,000 km (1,200 mi) of the planet’s surface—as such craft are only within sight of a relatively small portion of the globe at any given moment. One way around this restriction is to place special satellites in orbit to act as relays between the orbiting spacecraft and ground stations, allowing continuous communications. NASA has done this for the U.S. space shuttle with the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS).

At an altitude of about 35,800 km (about 22,200 mi), a satellite’s motion exactly matches the speed of Earth’s rotation. As a result, the satellite appears to hover over a specific spot on Earth’s surface. This so-called stationary, or geosynchronous, orbit is ideal for communications satellites, whose job is to relay information between widely separated points on the globe.

Spacecraft on interplanetary trajectories may travel millions or even billions of kilometers from Earth. In these cases their radio signals are so weak that giant receiving stations are necessary to detect them. The largest stations have antenna dishes in excess of 70 m (230 ft) across. NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory operate the Deep Space Network, a system of three tracking stations with several antennas each. The stations are in California, Spain, and Australia, providing continuous contact with distant spacecraft as Earth spins on its axis.

Much of the work of ground controllers involves monitoring a spacecraft’s health and flight path. Using a process called telemetry, a spacecraft can transmit data about the functioning of its internal components. In addition, engineers can use a spacecraft’s radio signals to assess its flight path. This is possible because of the Doppler effect. Because of the Doppler effect, a spacecraft’s motion causes tiny shifts in the frequency of its radio signals—just as the motion of a passing car causes the apparent pitch of its horn to go up as the car approaches an observer and down as the car moves away. By analyzing Doppler shifts in a spacecraft’s radio signals, controllers can determine the craft’s speed and direction. Over time, controllers can combine the Doppler shift data with data on the spacecraft’s position in the sky to produce an accurate picture of the craft’s path through space.

The guidance system helps control the craft’s orientation in space and its flight path. In the early days of spaceflight, guidance was accomplished by means of radio signals from Earth. The Mercury spacecraft and its Atlas booster utilized such radio guidance signals broadcast from ground stations. During launch, for example, the Atlas received steering commands that it used to adjust the direction of its engines. However, Mercury flight controllers found that radio guidance was limited in accuracy because interference with the atmosphere tends to make the signals weaker.

Beginning with Gemini, engineers used a system called inertial guidance to stabilize rockets and spacecraft. This system takes advantage of the tendency of a spinning gyroscope to remain in the same orientation. A gyroscope mounted on a set of gimbals, or a mechanism that allows it to move freely, can maintain its orientation even if the spacecraft’s orientation changes. An inertial guidance system contains several gyroscopes, each oriented along a different axis. When the spacecraft rotates along one or more of its axes, measuring devices tell how far it has turned from the gyroscopes’ own orientations. In this way, the gyroscopes provide a constant reference by which to judge the craft’s orientation in space. Signals from the guidance system are fed into the spacecraft’s onboard computer, which uses this information to control the craft’s maneuvers.

The Global Positioning System satellites, which enable ships, airplanes, and even hikers to know their positions with extreme accuracy, play a similar role in spacecraft. The space shuttle Atlantis was equipped with GPS receivers during an upgrade in late 1998.

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