The Beginning of the Middle of a Bitter-sweet End.
Hello again, friends!
I have managed to find a little break in my studies to share some thoughts on the events of this past week. Hopefully you all got to experience the great enjoyment of watching Space Shuttle Endeavour lift off on its final ascent beyond Earth this past Monday as the STS-134 mission began. I gave up the last few hours of cramming before a thermodynamics exam, but it was well worth it. With the explosion of social media over the last few years, watching shuttle launches (or any space craft launch, for that matter) has become quite an event. Once again, while watching via USTREAM video, getting updates from Space Flight Now‘s mission status center, and attempting to keep up with the huge amount of #Endeavour and #sts134 hashtag-ed tweets, I had one of the best seats available on that cloudy morning aside from being on site in Florida.
Now let’s get down to some science! Endeavour’s payload included a $1.5 billion physics experiment (AMS-02), Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3), and other spare parts that were taken en route to the International Space Station.
The most interesting payload component, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) has already been mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, and when ready, experiments conducted using this device will be involved with dark energy, dark matter, other particles that still have scientists left standing with burning questions. NASA payload manager Joe Delai shared that “…what AMS-02 discovers will have a revolutionary understanding of how the universe really works – stuff that we have no knowledge of whatsoever right now.” I certainly hope that these experiments can clear up some of our ignorance about dark energy and how it theoretically is causing the universe to expand.
A little bit of light was shinned upon this subject earlier this week by a separate experiment. A “galaxy survey” used data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and the Anglo-Australian Telescope to gather evidence in support of Einstein’s proposal that dark energy is a cosmological constant and is “pulling” the universe apart. So hopefully, AMS-02 will be able to expand on this and give us more of a confirmation of dark energy’s existence, as well as give us some more knowledge on the seemingly ever-elusive dark matter.
Also launching aboard Endeavour, along with many other experiments, was the Planetary Society’s Shuttle LIFE experiment. To quote directly: “the Planetary Society developed the two-phase LIFE – Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment – to investigate the transpermia hypothesis, the idea that a living organism might survive a journey through space to Earth inside a meteorite.” In short, five different kinds of living organisms were launched aboard the shuttle to see if the could survive in some of the harsh conditions they would be susceptible to if there were to ‘hitch’ a ride to Earth in a meteorite. I think this is a fantastic experiment and a great example of just how important our space flight is to all areas of science.
Not only did Monday’s launch mean the chance for the expansion of our scientific knowledge and a greater understanding of the universe, but it also marked what I’ve been calling the ‘beginning of the middle of a bitter-sweet end.’ As you all know, STS-134 is the second to last space shuttle mission, and Endeavour will join the likes of Space Shuttle Discovery and test orbiter Enterprise on their way to museums when she re-enters Earth’s atmosphere in June. Only Atlantis will remain to be launched in what is tentatively scheduled for mid-July. In nearly the same way I felt as I watched the STS-133 crew launch earlier this year, Endeavour’s launch was very bitter-sweet.
While I completely understand NASA’s need to retire the aging fleet, the Space Shuttle has been one of only a couple types of vehicles that have taken humans into space in my lifetime. Understandably, to take away the only thing that my generation has known for such a task (other than the Soyuz rockets and hope of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo) seems to us to be a rather lamentable thing for NASA to do. Nonetheless, I cannot wait until the next program gets up and running to fill in the massive shoes the Shuttle program will leave behind.
On a side note: I was so glad to hear that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her two daughters were still able to attend the delayed launch with her husband, Commander Mark Kelly on board Endeavour. In what has to be one of the best gestures of all-time, Gabby and Mark switched wedding rings before he went into final preparations, and now Com. Kelly is orbiting 200 miles above Earth with Gabby’s ring, and Gabby is recovering very well from skull surgery earlier this week in a Houston hospital with Mark’s ring.
As the Shuttle program comes to an end, I can only watch online and enjoy the rest of STS-134 and wait in anticipation for STS-135. July (given that there are no major delays) will be a month of rejoicing for the overwhelming success of the program, and somewhat of a month of mourning for it’s retirement. Earlier this year, as NASA celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Shuttle program, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden gave a reflection of how the program has influenced the ISS: “We wouldn’t have been able to build that orbiting outpost without the shuttle. We wouldn’t have established that model of global cooperation that serves as a guidepost for how we can work together toward the greater things of which we are capable as human beings.” I could not have said it better myself.
Thanks for reading this rather long post and sorry for rambling on, but I saw this as my opportunity to share some items before the grind of finals week preparation begins. Good luck to the ISS crew, the STS-134 crew, and all of mission control for the rest of this mission, and I’m looking forward to Atlantis.
Let’s change the world!
-Jason
Please, Consider the Following 