A cryogenically cooled 5.5 year mission. Has that been done before?
Quote from: agman25 on 06/28/2012 06:11 pmA cryogenically cooled 5.5 year mission. Has that been done before?No but it is possible.This is not going to be a small vehicle. They have it listed on an F9 but something tells me this may end up on an FH.Per the OP, have to say its sort of like an "its about time" moment when it comes to this for me. We should have been getting a better idea of the asteroid and unknown object situation years ago, this should make a big difference.Here's to hoping they don't find anything heading this way.
Quote from: agman25 on 06/28/2012 06:11 pmA cryogenically cooled 5.5 year mission. Has that been done before?This is not going to be a small vehicle. They have it listed on an F9 but something tells me this may end up on an FH.
I don't know much about the B612 foundation.
Quote from: as58 on 06/28/2012 08:01 pmI don't know much about the B612 foundation. Hope this helps:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B612_Foundationhttp://b612foundation.org/
The B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology, for instance a random searchpicked up this web site http://www.teledyne-si.com/infrared_visible_fpas/index.htmlthat shows a MWIR arrays at 16 megapixels in 2008, it is no stretch to assume a 50% improvement in the past 4 years. As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.
AFAICT, one of the big issues with mounting manned missions to NEAs is that the number of known targets is very small
Quote from: BrightLight on 06/28/2012 08:34 pmThe B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology, for instance a random searchpicked up this web site http://www.teledyne-si.com/infrared_visible_fpas/index.htmlthat shows a MWIR arrays at 16 megapixels in 2008, it is no stretch to assume a 50% improvement in the past 4 years. As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.Not even close. This is easily $500 million+And the processing is not simple.
I should have said - order of magnitude, to me 250, 500, 750 is all about the same - more than 100 million, less then 1 billion.Processing is a matter of smart people working hard - If I were at B612 I would consider sending the data to a national lab...
Quote from: MP99 on 06/28/2012 09:11 pmAFAICT, one of the big issues with mounting manned missions to NEAs is that the number of known targets is very smallYou can count the number of possible targets on one hand after cutting off three fingers.A space-based survey is required if anybody is going to do that mission.
You don't think that a private enterprise can be made cheaper than government procured? I'm not doubting your numbers, but I'm wondering about my first question, and, if you think a private can do it for less, how much would it cost to the government.
I was more wondering about FAR overhead, bidding requirements for most costs, government management overhead, etc.
This thread should focus on the issue of whether this not-for-profit has the capability of raising the cash for the mission and managing the mission.
This thread is about to break down on the issue of commercial vs government procurement efficiency, so I would suggest that anyone wanting that discussion start up their own thread.This thread should focus on the issue of whether this not-for-profit has the capability of raising the cash for the mission and managing the mission.
The biggest issue is going to be raising the money. It makes little difference if the cost is $750 million or "only" $200 million--$200 million is a heck of a lot of money, especially for a non-profit activity. How many museums, with long standing reputations, raise that kind of cash?As for oversight, B612 would have to hire an independent company to provide oversight, to tell them that the contractor is doing okay. That is going to add cost.
but we must be that handful of people who have not read the Little Prince and immediately think of the illustrations for the book.
Quote from: Comga on 07/02/2012 03:37 pmbut we must be that handful of people who have not read the Little Prince and immediately think of the illustrations for the book. "The Little Prince" is not a well-known book in the United States.
Bottom line: if you're going to name your organization after a pop culture character, pick one that is easily recognizable, not obscure, weird, and French.
Quote from: FinalFrontier on 06/28/2012 06:19 pmThis is not going to be a small vehicle. They have it listed on an F9 but something tells me this may end up on an FH.The spec sheet provided by B612 give the Sentinel's mass at 1,500kg. Recently released NLS II info states that the Falcon 9 1.1 will have C3 performance of about C3=23 (km/s)^2. I'm not sure what the proposed orbit will take but it sounds doable with out a Falcon Heavy.
This is not going to be a small vehicle. They have it listed on an F9 but something tells me this may end up on an FH.
There is a proposed Discovery class mission from JPL called NEOCam that would operate in Earth orbit. As a Discovery-class mission, it is in the $425 million class (without launch vehicle). Put a similar spacecraft in orbit near Venus, with cryo-cooling, and it's going to cost more. (snip)Simply put, what B612 is proposing to do is neither simple nor cheap.
Quote from: Blackstar on 06/28/2012 11:09 pmQuote from: BrightLight on 06/28/2012 08:34 pmThe B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology... As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.Not even close. This is easily $500 million+And the processing is not simple.You don't think that a private enterprise can be made cheaper than government procured? I'm not doubting your numbers, but I'm wondering about my first question, and, if you think a private can do it for less, how much would it cost to the government.
Quote from: BrightLight on 06/28/2012 08:34 pmThe B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology... As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.Not even close. This is easily $500 million+And the processing is not simple.
The B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology... As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.
Now maybe you'd get some of that in a private procurement, but probably not more than you would with a government procurement.
B-612 was the name of the asteroid the little prince lived on.
Of course my parents did hitchhike to Woodstock while I was in utero...
Their reflight of Curiosity is discussed as $1.5B "plus or minus $200M"
With all due respect, JPL is not a good basis for cost estimation.
Quote from: Comga on 12/23/2012 04:18 amTheir reflight of Curiosity is discussed as $1.5B "plus or minus $200M"1-I wonder how much of that is creating the new instrument/experiment package?2-ISTM B612 won't be bootstrapping innovative new instrument types on their mission.
From the spec. sheet on there web site,http://b612foundation.org/media/sentinelmission/this looks like it could be a real nice optic, my first cut analysis says on order 25 micron pixel pitch, f1 to f2, probably Cassigrain, no big technology hurtles.
Quote from: Blackstar on 07/03/2012 12:23 PM Bottom line: if you're going to name your organization after a pop culture character, pick one that is easily recognizable, not obscure, weird, and French.Sigh.
Quote from: Blackstar on 07/03/2012 12:23 pmBottom line: if you're going to name your organization after a pop culture character, pick one that is easily recognizable, not obscure, weird, and French.I fart in your general direction. Have a nice day !
This cannot be a Cassegrain, as those are narrow field devices with curve fields, and far IR field flatteners are troublesome and unnecessary. F/1 and F/2 are way too fast.
Quote from: Comga on 12/24/2012 02:51 amThis cannot be a Cassegrain, as those are narrow field devices with curve fields, and far IR field flatteners are troublesome and unnecessary. F/1 and F/2 are way too fast.The primary might be that fast; IIRC Kepler was pretty similar.But like Kepler, the optimal for a wide field would be a Schmidt with the focal plane in the middle of the tube.
Quote from: MP99 on 12/23/2012 02:36 pmQuote from: Comga on 12/23/2012 04:18 amTheir reflight of Curiosity is discussed as $1.5B "plus or minus $200M"1-I wonder how much of that is creating the new instrument/experiment package?2-ISTM B612 won't be bootstrapping innovative new instrument types on their mission.1-By total coincidence, this past week I happened to talk to the person who headed the team that did the independent cost estimate for the Mars 2020 rover and asked him that exact question. According to him, when the Mars Program Planning Group evaluated several possible rover designs, they baselined the instrument package as a sample cacher, essentially the same one that was in the planetary science decadal survey. (If I remember correctly, that cacher had 19 cylindrical sample compartments.) The instrument package also included a drill. They had to make minor variations depending upon the size of the rover (like adjusting the size of the drill), but he said that the instrument suite did not drive the cost estimate for the Mars 2020 rover. In addition, he said that they went through JPL's MSL/Curiosity books quite thoroughly in order to develop their estimate. (Think of it as an outside audit.) I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that the $1.5 billion estimate for the Mars 2020 rover is not a JPL estimate, it is an independent estimate.2-You might want to look at their proposal more closely. From what I remember there are two aspects to it that are new. The first is the survey detector itself. Nothing like that has been flown before. Now it's not totally unprecedented (WISE and Kepler had survey telescopes), but it is not a clone of a previous instrument. Second, it has a cryo-cooler technology that has not been flown before. Now I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that they're not talking about taking off-the-shelf components here. They're going to have to develop this stuff.
Yeah, I forgot they were doing mid-IR (5-10 micron). I'm not quite convinced that's the most efficient route (because of the sunshield, they are always looking at high phase angle, so reflected sunlight is going to be far brighter than mid-IR emission), but hey, it's their money...
Quote from: clongton on 12/29/2012 11:14 pmIt creates an HLV that's too big. My question is: too big for what? Without knowing the mission, how can we know the ideal size for SLS? For all we know it might be too small.
It creates an HLV that's too big.
Duane Day, the study director of "Defending Planet Earth", ... concluded ... should a large NEO object be observed heading our way a response would be difficult to coordinate as, "there would likely be a tendency for the entire social structure to collapse".
"The actuarial argument is important," [Clark] Chapman now told [Brian] Wilcox. But, unlike with Hurricaine Katrina, we can do something about an asteroid."
Schweickart's bold vision had carried the day, and the recommendations included ... spending as much as three billion dollars over ten years to, among other things, place an infared telescope into a Venus-like orbit, and test both kinetic impacotrs and gravity tractors.
NASA has already indicated that it doesn't have the [$650 M] needed to fund the telescope.
Hate to disappoint you but there is already a major consortium undertaking this very project which Ed Lu ought to know about. It's called NEOShield and is auspiced by the European Space Agency (ESA). One of the major participants is EADS Astrium, the largest aerospace company under the ESA umbrella. From its website: http://www.neoshield.net/en/index.htm
The B612 Foundation unofficially began in 2001. Astrophysicist Piet Hut and former astronaut Ed Lu held a 2001 workshop on Near-Earth Asteroids in Houston.
From the above-cited article:"To open Earth’s eyes, the B612 Foundation has partnered with Boulder, Colo.-based Ball Aerospace to design and build a roughly $500 million infrared space telescope able to spot hundreds of thousands of asteroids.The proposed spacecraft, which has passed a preliminary technical review, is the size of a FedEx van . The foundation hopes to launch it on a SpaceX rocket by 2018, possibly from Cape Canaveral."To my knowledge, this is the first time I've seen an article actually quote a price for their space telescope. I noted earlier that JPL's NEOCam proposal was for the Discovery program, which is in the $450 million range. That is for an Earth orbiting satellite. I think that B612's estimate of "roughly $500 million" is probably low. Sending the spacecraft to a near-Venus orbit and cryo-cooling it increases the cost. And I know from the NEO study we did a few years ago that Ball Aerospace's cost for a similar mission was in the $600 million cost range.
2-You might want to look at their proposal more closely. From what I remember there are two aspects to it that are new. The first is the survey detector itself. Nothing like that has been flown before. Now it's not totally unprecedented (WISE and Kepler had survey telescopes), but it is not a clone of a previous instrument. Second, it has a cryo-cooler technology that has not been flown before. Now I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that they're not talking about taking off-the-shelf components here. They're going to have to develop this stuff.
Perhaps I'm reading the article too literally, but it says that the "roughly $500 million" is for the telescope; launch and other mission costs are not mentioned.Regarding the $600 million-ish estimate from Ball for the past NEO study, did did that include the launch? If so, I'd guess we're talking about an Atlas V? If B612 uses a Falcon, that might knock a couple of hundred million off.
There is no way that B612 has anybody capable of managing a contract in the hundreds of millions of dollars, or anybody capable of conducting technical oversight.
Sounds like someone is feeling a little competitive with advances in the private sector.
"minimum size to make a crater" for an asteroid on Earth? I'm aware that it depends on the composition, angle and direction of re-entry etc. but I'm wondering of a ballpark figure as to how big a rock would need to be to survive all the way to the ground... secondaries that are much smaller (having broken off the main piece during atmospheric entry)
On a somewhat related note, anyone happen to know what would be the "minimum size to make a crater" for an asteroid on Earth? I'm aware that it depends on the composition, angle and direction of re-entry etc. but I'm wondering of a ballpark figure as to how big a rock would need to be to survive all the way to the ground in substantially one piece and what kind of kaboom it would produce.I assume Meteor Crater in Arizona is way bigger than the minimum for a hole in the ground.And yes, I'm aware that such an impact would almost certainly have some secondaries that are much smaller (having broken off the main piece during atmospheric entry)
On a somewhat related note, anyone happen to know what would be the "minimum size to make a crater" for an asteroid on Earth?
I applaud the effort of B612 foundation but I'm going to be a pessimist here;Asteroid threat will be downplayed and tracking & detection resources will be minimal because there is no immediate ROI on it.
Quote from: Jarnis on 04/23/2014 05:15 amOn a somewhat related note, anyone happen to know what would be the "minimum size to make a crater" for an asteroid on Earth? The Chelyabinsk one punched a hole in the ice. Assume that was ground and it would have left a crater. Just about any rock that makes it to the ground at terminal velocity is going to leave an indentation in the ground, so I imagine that the size can be pretty small. It will depend upon what you consider to be a "crater."
I was thinking more along the lines of "minimum size for it to stay together mostly intact" resulting in a big boom on impact,
Quote from: Jarnis on 04/23/2014 01:20 pmI was thinking more along the lines of "minimum size for it to stay together mostly intact" resulting in a big boom on impact, At the risk of being a nudge, I'd only add that it doesn't have to stay together mostly intact to cause significant impact damage. Most of the Chelyabinsk meteor blew up and burned up. The piece that hit the lake would have caused significant damage to a building if it hit.But these things are really hard to wrap our heads around. When I was a kid, the popular depiction of an asteroid/meteor was a big chunk of iron that hit with a lot of velocity and power. It's harder to understand/comprehend a big pile of rubble that can cause immense blast damage and leave relatively little material on the ground.
The ability of the Sentinel space telescope to detect up to 80 percent of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects at least 40 meters in diameter is possible if it works in parallel with a ground-based telescope, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), now under construction, said mission director Harold Reitsema,.
Space Telescope Concepts Seek To Detect Smaller Near-Earth AsteroidsQuoteThe ability of the Sentinel space telescope to detect up to 80 percent of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects at least 40 meters in diameter is possible if it works in parallel with a ground-based telescope, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), now under construction, said mission director Harold Reitsema,.- See more at: http://spacenews.com/space-telescope-concepts-seek-to-detect-smaller-near-earth-asteroids/#sthash.0ftgvYum.dpuf
Well I was rather surprised TBH to hear something about them again after all this time as I thought they might have gone the way of the dinosaurs.
Maybe they aren't really trying to get NASA to pay to build it, but to pay for data once it's launched? That's very low risk for NASA, but would help B612 get funding to build it.
Panstarrs is cataloging the bigger asteroids. They are not finished yet. The projects are complimentary.ATLAS gives you warning to get people out of the way when it is too late to think about other action.
And ATLAS provides such last minute warning that effective evacuation is probably not possible.
ATLAS can provide one day's warning for a 30-kiloton "town killer," a week for a 5-megaton "city killer," and three weeks for a 100-megaton "county killer".
Quote from: Star One on 04/28/2015 09:09 pmSpace Telescope Concepts Seek To Detect Smaller Near-Earth AsteroidsQuoteThe ability of the Sentinel space telescope to detect up to 80 percent of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects at least 40 meters in diameter is possible if it works in parallel with a ground-based telescope, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), now under construction, said mission director Harold Reitsema,.- See more at: http://spacenews.com/space-telescope-concepts-seek-to-detect-smaller-near-earth-asteroids/#sthash.0ftgvYum.dpufWell, yeah, and if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon...How long ago did B612 propose Sentinel? And how much money have they raised toward building it? And are the original cost estimates given to them by the contractor valid anymore considering that they are now old?I don't think that people take them seriously anymore. They might have been better off if they had started smaller, like an asteroid-spotting CubeSat, and gotten some traction with that. But they ran out of the gate with a half-billion-dollar-plus spacecraft and have not met any milestones. I'm entirely sympathetic to their cause, but what matters is results.
Hey, guys: *not everything is cheaper from orbit*. In fact, usually, if you can do it from the ground, it's cheaper on the ground. Save the orbit stuff for places it really helps.A friend of mine is PI on the ATLAS project, which is bringing up ground based telescopes to give early warning of smaller nearby asteroids that may hit us (think 1 day to 1 week warning). If the first two telescopes succeed, there will probably be others elsewhere in the world.See http://fallingstar.com/home.php
Quote from: jg on 05/04/2015 11:31 pmHey, guys: *not everything is cheaper from orbit*. In fact, usually, if you can do it from the ground, it's cheaper on the ground. Save the orbit stuff for places it really helps.A friend of mine is PI on the ATLAS project, which is bringing up ground based telescopes to give early warning of smaller nearby asteroids that may hit us (think 1 day to 1 week warning). If the first two telescopes succeed, there will probably be others elsewhere in the world.See http://fallingstar.com/home.phpGuess what else? The most recent well known near-miss, the chelyabinsk meteor- came at us from the direction of the sun, and was completely undetectable by ground based assets that everyone likes to hype as the solution.I'm actually really supportive of doing as much ground-based cataloging and discovery as possible, but to do planetary protection right you also need some orbital assets.In defense of the B612 group- I recently sat through a presentation given by the awesome Rusty Schweickart that focused on the politics of planetary defense, which turns out to be overwhelmingly the most difficult problem to solve in the grand scheme of things.Everyone interested in planetary defense should look up what Rusty's been saying on the topic of late...
Yes and no. Chelyabinsk, no. It came out of the Sun, and nobodycould have seen it in time. A Chelyabinsk clone coming from the otherdirection, yes.There's a volume of space inside of which an asteroid of a given sizeis detectable that depends strongly on the angle from illuminationeffects as well as the 1/r^2 size effect. It looks just like a candleflame, blown away from the Sun. Picture attached for 30m size, biggerthan Chelyabinsk.For Chelyabinsk the side-to-side size of the candle flame (along theEarth's orbit) is roughly the distance to the moon, and the distancecoming in from the anti-Sun direction (i.e. full-moon typeillumination) is about 10 lunar distances. Inasmuch as yer typicalasteroid covers about 2 lunar distances per day that tells you whatthe warning time is.Chelayabinsk came in along the wick and there was no warning time atall.
Any idea what the units are on that graph? From reading his commentary, it seems to be neither Earth radii nor lunar distances.
NASA announced that they've terminated their Space Act Agreement with the B612 foundation because "the group has missed its technical deadlines and raised only $1.6 million in 2013, the most recent year for which figures are available. The foundation needs roughly $30-40 million annually to keep Sentinel on track."http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-drops-partnership-with-private-asteroid-hunt-1.18462
In a June 19 interview, Ed Lu, the co-founder of B612, said the foundation is focusing instead on smaller, but more numerous, NEOs. “The real gap is the 100 times as many asteroids smaller than 140 meters but still large enough to destroy things on the ground,” he said. The lower end of that size range, he said, is roughly 20 to 40 meters in diameter, with an estimated population of several million asteroids.B612 is studying a technology called “synthetic tracking” to more effectively detect small asteroids. That approach, he said, uses high-speed graphics processing to compensate for the motion of asteroids in long exposures, allowing smaller telescopes to detect these objects.“We’ve had quite a bit of success testing this technology already on the ground,” he said. “We are looking towards building an Earth orbit demonstrator of the technology.”Ultimately, Lu said he envisions a constellation of likely 5 to 10 satellites, each carrying a telescope with an aperture of 15 centimeters. “They’re not cubesats, but they’re not much larger,” he said.Lu said the foundation would provide more details about its small satellite plans later this year, including a schedule for flying the first demonstration spacecraft. “The timescale is quite short,” he said.