sary, we can open a shunt and get more of fly-by exploration of the biggest planet in mander, it fulfills a dream started decade
the heat load into space.” the solar system. ago when, as a young girl, she yearned to
follow Captain Kirk into space.
“The Pluto mission is also different from That will require more than a few
Messenger,” Hill added, “in that this is command decisions. Because of weight “When they had the landing on the
a fly-by. All the science has to occur in considerations, the computational power Moon,” recalled Commander Bowman,
about 72 hours, whereas with the Mer- is relatively small. “Our total capacity is “My Mom let us stay up and watch as
cury mission, if we lose science for a day, 128 gigabits,” she said. “So once you get (Neil) Armstrong stepped out of the
it is no big deal. data, you can command erase and free Lunar Module. That was pretty exciting.
more space for use. Every single day there
“If Pluto loses a day, we have wasted nine is a data dump.” “I’m not an astronaut, but I’m in
years. There is no second chance. We can’t space exploration, so that worked out
back up and go by Pluto again. We had She works with the different mission just fine.”
to design this system to protect itself for teams to schedule the transmission time
up to a year without any contact from the and computer space needed for different —By Roger Witherspoon
ground.” tasks. “They all come back to me,” the
Commander said, “and I have to sign off
The distance to Pluto makes the opera- on them.”
tional mode different as well. At the outer
reaches of the solar system, the time delay Exploring deep space is a long way away
for signals – traveling at light speed – will from studying crystals as a chemistry “Hughes was devel-
be nine hours. “Once we get to Pluto,” major at the University of Virginia. But
said Hill, “we will record an enormous she had a long-standing desire to go into oping military space
amount of science data, and it will go into space “And I thought physics was the way
a solid state recorder. Then, for the next to go.” craft and serving as a
nine months, we have on-board algo-
rithms to compress the data and cycle it Upon graduating, she first worked in technical adviser to
back to Earth.” semi-conductor research for Hughes
Aircraft, looking for silicon, which could Space Command,”
Another major difference between the two increase the detection of various wave-
space craft is their relative speeds. Mes- lengths. she said. “We
senger is being pulled into the sun by the
huge star’s gravity, and a major maneuver “Hughes was developing military space evaluated the data
will involve slowing it down into an orbit craft and serving as a technical adviser to
around Mercury, rather than plunging Space Command,” she said. “We evalu- that came down
headlong into the sun itself. ated the data that came down from the
satellites, and told them if it was OK or from the satellites,
New Horizons however, is flying away not. That’s how I first got involved in
from the sun, and fighting against its space.” and told them if it
huge gravitational pull and losing speed
as it goes. “From Earth,” said Bowman, In 1996 she was involved in launching was OK or not.
“the spacecraft was flying at 36,000 miles and running the MSX military surveil-
an hour. We have about 70 kilograms of lance satellite, working with the Applied That’s how I first got
propellant, and that is all we have for the Physics Laboratory, a non-profit research
entire mission. So we are being very center affiliated with Johns Hopkins involved in space.”
judicious as to how we expel that.” University.
To keep the craft from dying of inertia “Working here, you have the support
Commander Bowman will oversee a dive from the engineering teams that design
into Jupiter’s gravity well through Febru- and build the space craft,” she said, “and
ary and March, 2007, to add another then you operate them. There is a depth
9,000 miles per hour to the craft’s speed of knowledge to draw upon.”
and ensure its proper rendezvous with
Pluto eight years later. If they miss the The following year, Bowman was asked to
gravity well, it will take the craft five join the APL’s operations planning center,
additional years to coast to Pluto, and and began her career as a space com-
they would miss the opportunity for a mander. For the 46-year-old Space Com-
26 USBE & Information Technology I January/February 2007
http:www.blackengineer.com
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