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Spaceship Earth INTERNATIONAL SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE SPATIUM Published by the Association Pro ISSI No. 26, May 2011 Editorial If the rate of reproduction is taken Basically, this is all well known. as the measure of a species’ fitness Much lesser known, however, is Impressum for survival, then the human species what might be required to prevent turns out to be outstandingly fit: the environmental collapse to which While in the year 1900 the world the actual trends tend to lead us. population amounted to some Clearly, stopping the explosive pop- 1.8 billion, it is now soon reaching ulation growth is a key measure that SPATIUM 7 billion. Today, a mere 11 years are is to be implemented the sooner the Published by the needed to add another billion of better. Yet, this is by far not enough. Association Pro ISSI capita. Rather, a holistic approach is needed that might comprise the establish- Obviously, such rapid growth of one ment of some kind of a suprana- species can not be supported by the tional ecological management of Earth’s limited resources for a long the Earth’s resources. Association Pro ISSI time as it goes at the expense of the Hallerstrasse 6, CH-3012 Bern rest of the biosphere, which needs Interestingly, space programmes Phone +41 (0)31 631 48 96 diversity for safeguarding ecologi- provide a showcase of how such a see cal stability. Now, in the Earth’s his- management authority could be www.issibern.ch/pro-issi.html tory a series of cataclystic events set up. It is precisely here that the for the whole Spatium series caused mass extinctions, wiping out author of the present issue of Spa- uncountable numbers of genera and tium, Professor Roger M. Bonnet, President species that had successfully devel- Executive Director of ISSI, starts Prof. Nicolas Thomas, oped during millions of years afore. developing concepts that might University of Bern Life could always recover again not help humans to further survive on least thanks to the diversity of spe- Spaceship Earth. As the former Layout and Publisher cies. While those catastrophes are Director of the European Space Dr. Hansjörg Schlaepfer thought to have been caused by Agency’s Science Programme, he CH-6614 Brissago cosmic events, such as, asteroid im- has ample experience in successfully pacts, the rapid proliferation of the establishing management schemes Printing hungry human species is provoking for complex space missions. We are Stämpfli Publikationen AG the next and possibly most thor- very grateful to Prof. Bonnet grant- CH-3001 Bern ough mass extinction in the Earth’s ing us his most valuable support for history so far. Pollution of the at- reporting herewith on his talk to mosphere by huge amounts of car- the Pro ISSI association on 10 June bon dioxide stemming from the 2010. May the present issue of burning of fossil fuel, the damage to Spatium help enhancing our read- land and sea by nuclear radiation ers’ awareness of the responsibility emanating from disrupted power with respect to our future plants, pollution of the sea by tre- generations! mendous oil spills, and the like, ex- ert additional stresses on an ecosys- Hansjörg Schlaepfer tem that is already pushed to its Brissago limits. May 2011 SPATIUM 26 2 Spaceship Earth1 with its differences with the real arbitrarily selected the European Introduction Earth, it will help us discovering Space Agency’s Mars Express scien- some essential features of the place tific spacecraft that was launched in where we all live, assessing its June 2003 and whose aim was to The Earth is the largest and most current status and deriving some conduct research of our neighbour elaborate self-sustainable, bio-di- conclusions on our survivability as planet, its geological history, its past verse, international space station at inhabitants of that spaceship for as climate and to prepare future mis- the disposal of mankind. It is the long as possible. I will use two sions in view of possibly finding fos- only one capable of carrying more spaceship models: one of a simple sil forms of, or even active, life on than 7 billions of astronauts or “ter- automatic, unmanned spacecraft, Mars (Fig. 1). ranauts”. How was that station de- and the manned International Space veloped? How did it evolve over the Station (ISS). Typically, a spacecraft like Mars Ex- 4.5 billion years of its existence and press consists of a mission-specific its travel around the Sun? How and payload and the necessary service when did it become habitable and The Mars Express Space- elements. The payload of Mars Ex- inhabited? How and when did it fail craft Model press comprises a suite of scientific to sustain life, and what may alter instruments (see text box “The Pay- its capability to sustain an increas- For the sake of simplification, I start load of Mars Express”). It also in- ing number of inhabitants? Of with a classical model of an auto- cludes service subsystems and aux- course, comparing the third planet matic unmanned satellite, and I have iliary equipments that should secure of the Solar System to a Space Sta- tion might look audacious. There is, however, some relevance and merit in the use of that model for the Earth. Theoretical models may combine physical equations and observations to characterize the conditions of an object or of a complex system. They are useful for interpreting its char- acteristics and sometimes forecast its evolution. As a scientist, I like to use models for describing the Sun, predicting the weather, understand- ing the climate and its evolution, knowing perfectly well however that they are vastly imperfect, often providing a coarse representation of reality. Here we adopt the “space- ship” model to characterize our Fig. 1: The Mars Express spacecraft in a blown up sketch of the spacecraft’s planet. With its similarities, but also essential elements. 1 The present issue of Spatium reports on a lecture given by Prof. Roger-Maurice Bonnet, Executive Director, International Space Science Institute, Bern for the Pro ISSI association on 10 June 2010. For exhaustive further information on the subject, the reader is referred to (1); see the references and notes at the end of the text. SPATIUM 26 3 the proper functioning of the space- dium size room. Astronauts that payload and subsystems remain craft during its entire lifetime and would fly beyond the orbit of Ju- within their operational temper- provide communication links be- piter would only survive with ature range. It consists of several tween the spacecraft and ground non-solar energy! elements, the main one being the control, and vice versa. Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI), a • The thermal control subsystem that set of multiple layers of plastic These subsystems include: ensures that the spacecraft, its sheets onto which thin coatings of silver or gold are deposited. • The structure to which all other The MLI reflects most of the in- elements are attached and that The Payload of coming solar radiation back to shelters the various pieces of Mars Express space, thereby avoiding over- equipment, heating, while keeping the heat – High Resolution Stereo generated within the spacecraft • The power subsystem, very prom- Camera (HRSC) – High res- to avoid excessive cooling. Some inent on the figure, made of two olution surface imaging internal sources of heating might large solar panels covered with – Energetic Neutron Atoms sometimes be necessary to pro- numerous photovoltaic cells, Analyzer (ASPERA) – How vide specific temperatures in which convert solar radiation the solar wind erodes the various areas of the spacecraft. into electrical current. From an Martian atmosphere These are often using nuclear ecological point of view, this is energy but in relatively small an excellent energy supply sys- – Planetary Fourier Spectrom- amounts. tem, clean and non-polluting. eter (PFS) – Study of the at- All spacecraft in orbit around mospheric composition and • The payload is the noble part of the Sun are using solar energy! circulation the mission: its “raison d’être”. It When solar energy is not avail- – Visible and Infrared Mineral- justifies the existence of the able however, during long nights ogical Mapping Spectrometer spacecraft. It is described in the or eclipses, or when the space- (OMEGA) – Determination text box on the left. craft are at large distances to the of the surface composition Sun, one may also use nuclear and evolution processes The Mars Express model is, how- energy produced by Radioiso- ever, too simple: it does not include tope Thermal Generators. The – Sub-Surface Sounding Radar any of the subsystems necessary for size of the solar panels is adjusted Alti meter (MARSIS) – sustaining astronauts. The space sta- to the operational requirements, Search for water in the tion model, where the presence of and to the availability of solar ra- subsurface man is its supreme justification, is a diation on orbit. In the case of – The Radio Science Experi- better model, which I now describe Mars Express, as Mars circles the ment (MaRS) – Sounding of briefly. Sun on a much larger orbit of the internal structure, atmo- some 225 million km than the sphere and environment Earth (150 million km), the so- lar radiation is less than half of – Ultraviolet and Infrared Mars that in the vicinity of Earth, and Atmospheric Spectrometer this requires the panels to be de- (SPICAM) – Determination signed accordingly larger. Actu- of the composition of the at- ally, the active area of the Mars mosphere of Mars 2 Express panels is roughly 12 m , – Lander (Beagle 2) – Geo- delivering some 650 W (2), suf- chemistry and exobiology ficient for illuminating a me- SPATIUM 26 4 The ISS Model systems necessary to ensure its hab- tion of ISS) provided by the differ- itability and to make it a comfort- ent partners involved in the station The International Space Station is friendly shelter providing a pleasant (USA, Russia, Europe-ESA, Italy, shown on Fig.
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