Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Mars) News

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: February 11, 2013 7:29:38 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight (and Mars) News - February 11, 2013 and JSC Today

My apologies to Barbara Pearson for forgetting to acknowledge that she joined us last Thursday at our monthly Retirees Luncheon and wanted to thank her for taking the time to join us in our monthly fellowship at Hibachi Grill.   Thanks again Barbara!

Monday, February 11, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Valentine Deliveries
2.            African Americans Influence - Lunch and Learn
3.            AAERG Coach's Corner - "A Valentine's Day talk with Steve Altemus"
4.            In the Teague: JSAT Why I Work Safely Valentine's Day Photo Badges
5.            Find out how IT Labs can help you!
6.            Read About It: JSC Bioreactor Drives Advances in Tissue Engineering
7.            NASA Mission Videos are Available in Imagery Online Now!
8.            Free week of Yoga & Pilates at the Gilruth starts today!
9.            NASA@work: New Challenge Available!
10.          Out & Allied @ JSC Employee Resource Group Monthly Meeting
11.          Opportunities in Engineering
12.          Reminder: New JSC Operator Hours
13.          Upcoming April ViTS Classes
14.          No Injuries On This Day - She Was Safe, Not Sorry
15.          JSC Weight Watchers Meeting Time Change
16.          System Safety Seminar ViTS April 26, Building 17, Room 2026 9:30 - 12:30
17.          Job Opportunities
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
" Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without."

-- Confucius
________________________________________
1.            Valentine Deliveries
Just a friendly reminder! As a result of heightened security requirements, all on-site deliveries (other than orders made through Starport) must go through JSC Central Receiving in Building 420. This policy includes deliveries by florists; therefore, if your special someone has Valentine flowers (or anything else) delivered to you at JSC, you will be notified by receiving personnel to pick up your gift in Building 420. For further information, please see the Transportation website.
Beverly Calvert/Aggie Williams X47504/x36507

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2.            African Americans Influence - Lunch and Learn
The African American Employee Resource Group cordially invites the civil servant and contractor community to come and learn about the civil rights era through the eyes of Jerry Woodfill, a 47-year JSC Veteran, on Wednesday, February 13 from 12:00 - 1:00 PM, Building 1, Room 360.
Carla Burnett x4-1044

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3.            AAERG Coach's Corner - "A Valentine's Day talk with Steve Altemus"
The African American Employee Resource Group (AAERG) is proud to present the first in a series of Coach's Corner speaking events on Thursday, February 14 from 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM in Building 1, Room 966. During this event, we will hear from Deputy Center Director, Steve Altemus, on a variety of topics.
These topics include:
1.       JSC 2.0
2.       Strategic thinking
3.       Important issues at JSC
4.       How he is adapting to his new role
5.       Innovation and Inclusion
6.       Why resource groups are important
7.       Significance of diversity at JSC
8.       Q&A
We will have limited capacity in the room, so please use the SATERN link below to sign up to be approved for this offering.
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Orlando Horton x46584

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4.            In the Teague: JSAT Why I Work Safely Valentine's Day Photo Badges
Your JSC Safety Action Team is hosting a Valentine's Day event on Thursday, Feb. 14 in the Teague Auditorium Lobby from 11 AM to 1:00 PM. JSAT volunteers will be on hand to laminate photos of your reason for working safely each day! Begin gathering your favorite photos now -- or take new ones! Bring extra photos and get a photo badge for your spouse or the grandparents. As a time-saver, please pre-trim your photos to 2 '' x 2½''. Photocopies also work well. Drop your photos off for laminating while you participate in the JSC Blood Drive!
Reese Squires 281-483-7776 http://jsat.jsc.nasa.gov

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5.            Find out how IT Labs can help you!
Please join the Human Systems Academy in a lecture featuring IT Labs. Technology is constantly evolving, and we must adapt to keep the pace. IT Labs represents a significant leap from how NASA traditionally evaluates new technologies. Come learn about the IT Labs process for project evaluation which allows for projects to be quickly and effectively evaluated based on essential criteria identified by the program, at defined points in the project's life cycle. This evaluation of quality and potential viability mitigates risk factors of both time and cost, effectively providing a better chance for more projects to be realized. Course ID: JSC-HSA-ITLABS
For registration, please go to https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Event Date: Wednesday, February 13, 2013   Event Start Time:1:00 PM   Event End Time:2:00 PM
Event Location: B35/1958

Add to Calendar

Cynthia Rando 281-461-2620 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov/

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6.            Read About It: JSC Bioreactor Drives Advances in Tissue Engineering
A JSC-developed bioreactor is advancing tissue engineering, leading to possible improved treatment for diabetes, cancer, sickle cell anemia and more. See the full article from the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2011/hm_1.html NTRS is part of the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program, which JSC's Information Resources Directorate helps manage.
To learn more about the NASA Spinoff publication, visit http://spinoff.nasa.gov
JSC IRD Outreach 281-244-5257 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/

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7.            NASA Mission Videos are Available in Imagery Online Now!
Imagery Online (IO) is now the source for all on-orbit mission video from all International Space Station Expeditions and ISS assembly Shuttle missions. IO is replacing the old Convera Screening Room site, also known as the Video Asset Management System (VAMS). JSC team employees can browse or search for video, play video selections, download low-resolution video, add expert descriptions using the wiki function, create edit decision lists (EDL) for requests, and submit requests for video products. IO is now your one-stop shop for current mission imagery - check it out today! Ground-based video in IO is coming soon! For more, go to: http://io.jsc.nasa.gov/app/index.cfm or contact: Leslie Richards, leslie.k.richards@nasa.gov, 281-483-3417; or Maura White, maura.white-1@nasa.gov, 281-244-0322.
IO is a service of JSC's Information Resources Directorate http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov
JSC-IRD-Outreach 281-483-4245

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8.            Free week of Yoga & Pilates at the Gilruth starts today!
Starport's amazing new Yoga & Pilates studio is offering a phenomenal special, this week only!
The Inner Space Studio (located in the Gilruth Center) will have free promotional classes all week long!
•         Monday, Feb. 11, through Friday, Feb. 15
Come try out a free class with one of our experienced Yoga or Pilates instructors!
Also in February, Starport is offering a great Massage discount with all Yoga/Pilates Package purchases:
•         Purchase of a 12-week package comes with $30 discount off a massage (60 or 90 minutes)
•        Purchase of a 6-week package comes with $15 discount off a massage (60 or 90 minutes)
•         Purchase of a four-week package comes with $10 discount off a massage (60 or 90 minutes)
Free Yoga & Pilates Week is ON! Hurry over to the Gilruth Now!
Steve Schade 3-0304 http://www.innerspaceclearlake.com

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9.            NASA@work: New Challenge Available!
New for February - Challenge 1602: Advanced Exercise Concepts for Long-Duration Space Flight (Deadline 2/28)
Are you new to NASA@work? NASA@work is an agency-wide, collaborative problem-solving platform that connects the collective knowledge of experts (like YOU) from all centers across NASA. Challenge Owners post problems and members of the NASA@work community participate by responding with their solutions to posted problems. Anyone can participate! Check it out and submit your solution today.
Kathryn Keeton 281.204.1519 http://nasa.innocentive.com

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10.          Out & Allied @ JSC Employee Resource Group Monthly Meeting
All JSC team members (government, contractor, LGBT, and non-LGBT allies) are invited to the Out & Allied @ JSC Employee Resource Group monthly meeting on Wednesday, February 13th from 12-1 PM in Building 4S room 1200. The Out & Allied @ JSC team consists of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender employees and their allies (non-LGBT supporters). This month, we'll discuss available benefits for same-sex domestic partners, as well as plans for future events, including luncheons and happy hours. Please join us, meet others, and network! For more information about our group, including how to become involved, any listed Out & Allied member on our SharePoint site may be contacted via phone or email.
Event Date: Wednesday, February 13, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Bldg 4S, Room 1200

Add to Calendar

Steve Riley x37019 http://collaboration.ndc.nasa.gov/iierg/LGBTA/SitePages/Home.aspx

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11.          Opportunities in Engineering
The Crew and Thermal Systems Division/EC currently has Rotational and Reassignment opportunities in the Life Support Systems Branch/EC3 available for Engineering Directorate employees. Current positions are for Project Managers, Project Engineers, Systems Engineers, and Subsystem Engineers for GFE & Technology Development Projects, and ISS Environmental Control & Life Support Systems Management.
DURATION: 6 to 12 month detail with option for permanent assignment.
QUALIFICATIONS: Background in biological, chemical, electrical, environmental, mechanical, or aerospace systems preferred. GS-9 to GS-14.
For questions or additional information, please contact Dale Roberts X37539 or Kenneth Brown X33891.
Dale Roberts 281-483-7539 http://ctsd.jsc.nasa.gov/default.aspx

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12.          Reminder: New JSC Operator Hours
As part of the center's efforts to reduce cost, effective since Monday, Feb. 4, JSC's Information Resources Directorate will reduce the hours for the JSC Switchboard Operator Console (x30123). The JSC Switchboard Operator will now be available from 8 to 11 AM. and from noon to 5 PM. Previously, the operator hours were from 6 AM to 6 PM. Any calls from the general public, external NASA centers or onsite personnel outside of these hours will receive the automated message alerting callers the switchboard is closed. Please remember that there are various ways to get contact information for JSC/NASA personnel: - http://phone.jsc.nasa.gov/cgi-isis/phone/phone.cgi - https://people.nasa.gov - The Apple/Android Mobile NASA Contacts App on the NASA App Store: https://apps.nasa.gov/applist Should you need Security, they can be reached at: x33333 for JSC Emergency, x34658 for JSC Non-Emergency.
JSC IRD Outreach x32704 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/default.aspx

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13.          Upcoming April ViTS Classes
TOXIC AND HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES (ASBESTOS AND CADMIUM) April 8
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
PERSONAL PROTECTIVE AND LIFE SAVING EQUIPMENT 4April 12
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Shirley Robinson X41284
Shirley Robinson 281-244-1284

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14.          No Injuries On This Day - She Was Safe, Not Sorry
Laura Polkinghorne, USA, took charge of safety when she identified and removed a sharp object in the excess box for office supplies in the building 4N/4S crosswalk area. She was looking through the box for office supplies when she noticed an exacto knife with putty on the tip lying in the box. After picking it up, she discovered that the putty covering the blade was not very secure. She decided to take the knife back to her office to determine proper disposal and prevent someone from accidently cutting themselves while moving items around in the box. The blade was properly disposed of in a Sharps Container located in 4S. Her eye on the buried hazard prevented an injury. Laura took the time to be Safe, Not Sorry!
Rindy Carmichael x45078

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15.          JSC Weight Watchers Meeting Time Change
The onsite Weight Watchers meeting held on Mondays in Building 45, Room 551, will now have the following schedule:
11:45 AM -12:15 PM Weigh In
12:15-12:45 PM Meeting
All Weight Watchers Monthly Pass members can attend. If you are interested in joining, please attend!
Remember, we do not have onsite meetings on Monday holidays, so there will be no meeting on Monday, February 18. As always, at any time you can attend any meeting that accepts Monthly Passes.
Event Date: Monday, February 11, 2013   Event Start Time:11:45 AM   Event End Time:12:45 PM
Event Location: Bldg 45 Room 551

Add to Calendar

Julie Kliesing x31540

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16.          System Safety Seminar ViTS April 26, Building 17, Room 2026 9:30 - 12:30
This seminar serves to provide an overview of system safety origins, definitions, principles, and practices. It includes a discussion of NASA requirements for both the engineering and management aspects of system safety and answers the questions - Why do we do system safety?, What is system safety?, How do we do system safety?, and What does it mean to me? Engineering aspects will include a brief discussion of three typically used analytical techniques - Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). This course will not prepare attendees to manage or perform system safety, only to introduce them to the concepts.
SATERN registration required.
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Polly Caison 281-244-1279

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17.          Job Opportunities
WHERE DO I FIND JOB OPPORTUNITIES?
Both internal Competitive Placement Plan (CPPs) and external JSC job announcements are posted on both the HR Portal and USAJOBS(www. usajobs.gov) website. Through the HR portal, civil servants can view summaries of all the agency jobs that are currently open at https://hr.nasa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/employees_home/239/job_opportu...
To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop down menu and select JSC HR. The "Jobs link", will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply on-line. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies, please call your Human Resources Representative.

Lisa Pesak 30476

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________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.

NASA TV:
·         8:30 am Central (9:30 EST) – ISS Progress 50 Launch Coverage
·         8:41:46 am Central (9:41:46 EST) – 50P liftoff on a four-orbit launch-to-docking profile
·         9:15 am Central (10:15 EST) – Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) Launch Coverage
·         11:02 am Central (12:02 pm EST) – LDCM liftoff (window extends until 50 min after the hr)
·         2 pm Central (3 EST) – 50P Docking Coverage (docking scheduled at 2:40 CST)
·         2 pm Central (3 EST) – LDCM Post launch News Conference

Human Spaceflight News
Monday – February 11, 2013

Curiosity drills a hole (center). The shallow hole in the lower right is from an earlier, partial test drill

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Progress In, Progress Out at International Space Station

Jason Rhian - AmericaSpace.org

One of Russia's unmanned Progress resupply spacecraft left the International Space Station (ISS) Saturday. The departure was timed to make way for a new Progress, which is currently slated to arrive at the orbiting laboratory and workshop Monday. The Progress 48 cargo vessel was at the ISS for about half a year, and then it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, where it was incinerated. The entire process, from unlatching from the space station to the spacecraft's demise, took about four hours total, with departure occurring at 8:15 a.m. EST and reentry occurring around noon.

Hotfire Test of US Antares Rocket Slated for Tuesday

RIA Novosti

The hotfire engine test of the new US Antares medium-class rocket is scheduled for February 12, the Universe Today portal said on Saturday. Antares, formerly known as Taurus II, was developed by Orbital Sciences to carry the Cygnus spacecraft for resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS). Its first stage engine is based on the Soviet NK-33 rocket engine.

To Infinity And Beyond: Would-Be Astronauts Keep Faith In Uncertain Era

Jacki Lyden – National Public Radio

Space exploration has stirred imaginations and piloted hopes and dreams, but the future of space travel looks very different from the age in which Neil Armstrong made it to the moon. Since NASA is no longer doing manned missions, astronaut hopefuls have turned their sites on the private sector. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, is one example of space entrepreneurship. He's been investing in private rockets and spaceships, leading two missions to the International Space Station in 2012.

Lockheed Martin Expanding Human Spaceflight Role

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

Lockheed Martin Space Systems, a longtime powerhouse in robotic spacecraft, is staking a larger position in human spaceflight as a way to stay busy while its big civil-space customers adjust to the new era of budget and political uncertainty. The Littleton, Colo.-based unit will draw on its work with NASA's planned Orion crew capsule to help neighboring Sierra Nevada Corp. human-rate its Dream Chaser entry in NASA's commercial crew sweepstakes. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin crews at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the company built all of the aluminum-alloy tanks for the space shuttle program, will use expertise in composites gained in part from fighter aircraft work, to build the lightweight lifting body structure for the reusable commercial vehicle.

Congress planning an update to commercial launch legislation this year

Jeff Foust – SpacePoltiics.com

While a planned reauthorization of NASA this year is attracting headlines, another space-related priority for members of Congress this year is a reauthorization of the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and an update of the Commercial Space Launch Act. At FAA/AST's annual conference last week, members of Congress and their staffs outlined several potential changes to existing legislation, from an extension of launch indemnification to granting the office authority for regulating on-orbit activities. "I would suggest we could look forward to, at long last, a reauthorization of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), vice-chairman of the House Science Committee, in a speech at the conference Wednesday. "It's becoming very evident even to members of Congress that this industry is critical and we need to reauthorize that legislation."

NASA's Commercial Crew Effort Gets New Deputy Program Manager

Doug Messier - Parabolic Arc

NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) management team is getting a new deputy manager. Kathy Lueders, who manages NASA's International Space Station Program Transportation Integration Office, will take over the role next month. She will replace Brent Jett, who has left the agency after 21 years and four space shuttle flights. "As deputy program manager, Lueders will oversee the facilitation of commercial spacecraft and launch vehicle development and certification efforts, enabling the safe transportation of NASA astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station around the middle of the decade," the space agency said in notice on its website.

Teleoperated Robots to Explore Lunar Farside?

Ray Villard - Discovery News

There is a largely unexplored alien country that is so close to Earth it would take a beam of light less than two seconds to get there. This is the farside of on moon, often misrepresented and the "dark side" (with apologies to Pink Floyd). Because the moon keeps one hemisphere gravitationally locked on Earth, only the eyes of a handful of astronauts have directly seen the lunar farside. An eventual human return to the moon –- call it Apollo 2.0 — should be targeted for the farside. But it is very costly to conduct astronaut landings. If flown today, the Apollo missions would cost a staggering $18 billion per flight. But this is not your father's space race. NASA could take a cue from oceanographers and forge an even closer human/robot symbiosis in planetary exploration. Manned submersible vehicles and numerous teleoperated robots jointly conduct deep ocean exploration on Earth, why not do the equivalent in space? The centerpiece would be NASA's new Orion space capsule. This Apollo-on-steroids vehicle would be lofted into a halo orbit about the Earth-moon Lagrange point L2. This is a gravitationally stable parking lot for spacecraft of all types to stage lunar sorties. The Orion would travel 15 percent farther from Earth than did the Apollo astronauts and spend almost three times longer in deep space.

House Chairmen Say NASA May Have Released DOD Secrets To China

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

The Republican chairmen of the two House committees with NASA oversight responsibility have charged publicly that senior leadership at the space agency may have been involved in the leak of classified information to China and other nations, and that a federal criminal probe into the charges has been dropped under "political pressure." The charges were raised Feb. 8 in letters to FBI Director Robert Mueller and Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department's inspector general, jointly signed by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) who chair the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies subcommittee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, respectively.

Russian, Kazakh experts reached agreement on Baikonur

Itar-Tass

The presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan, Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev, said on Friday that Russian and Kazakh experts and the heads of appropriate agencies had reached a mutually acceptable agreement on how to use the Baikonur space launch site. The two leaders discussed the subject at their talks in the Kremlin on Friday.

Commercial Moon Flights Coming Soon?

Markus Hammonds - Discovery News

How much would you like to see humanity travel back to the moon? Or for that matter, how much would you like to stand amongst the craters of Lacus Somnorium yourself and look up to see your home planet above you, a shining blue marble in the darkness? Since Apollo 17 left the Moon in 1972, no humans have traveled further than a few hundred kilometers from Earth's surface, but an ambitious space travel company has plans to put humans back on the moon — and they'll take anyone who can afford the asking price.

Astronaut and musician perform first original duet from space and Earth

Elizabeth Howell - Space.com

An astronaut and a rock singer recorded an original song together and released it Friday as the first duet of new music performed simultaneously in space and on the ground. A rocket launch and the beauty of planet Earth are the subjects of the song, performed in space by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, while accompanied by Canadian singer Ed Robertson of the band Barenaked Ladies, and others on Earth. The song, called "I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)," focuses on the experience of a person in space missing his loved ones on the Earth below: You can listen to Hadfield and Robertson's space song here.

Space Jam: Astronaut Sings Duet From the Space Station

Nancy Atkinson - UniverseToday.com

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield participated in an annual event for Canadian music students from a unique location: a long-distance perch in the Cupola of the International Space Station. Before launching to the ISS in December, Hadfield wrote a song with Ed Robertson of the band Barenaked Ladies, and Friday morning the song premiered as Hadfield, Robertson and a school glee club sang together: Hadfield performed his part on the space station; Robertson did his in Toronto with the Wexford Gleeks. The song was part of Music Monday in Canada, and while today's premiere was pre-recorded, in May, students across Canada will play the song live with Hadfield in space.

Astronaut Sends Chinese New Year Greetings from Space

Tariq Malik - Space.com

An astronaut on the International Space Station beamed festive messages to Earth Saturday to mark Chinese New Year celebrations across the planet. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, a space station flight engineer, sent good wishes and amazing photos of China via online Twitter messages to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Snake, which began Sunday, Feb. 10.

MEANWHILE ON MARS…

Mars rover completes milestone drill test

William Harwood - CBS News

In a long-awaited milestone, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its powerful drill for the first time Friday, beaming back pictures Saturday showing a pair of precisely bored holes in a flat reddish slab surrounded by a grey residue of crushed rock excavated from the interior. The powdery debris may hold more clues about the role of water in the red planet's past. But in the near term, the successful test prompted NASA science chief John Grunsfeld to declare the nuclear-powered rover fully operational, calling the drilling operation "the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August."

Curiosity rover completes 1st drill into Mars rock

Alicia Chang - Associated Press

In a Mars first, the Curiosity rover drilled into a rock and prepared to dump an aspirin-sized pinch of powder into its onboard laboratories for closer inspection. The feat marked yet another milestone for the car-size rover, which landed last summer to much fanfare on an ambitious hunt to determine whether environmental conditions were favorable for microbes.

NASA's robotic rover Curiosity drills into Martian rock

Deborah Zabarenko - Reuters

For the first time, NASA's rover Curiosity used its on-board drill to collect a sample of Martian bedrock that might offer evidence of a long-gone wet environment, the U.S. space agency reported on Saturday. Drilling down 2.5 inches into a patch of sedimentary bedrock, Curiosity collected the rock powder left by the drill and will analyze it using its own laboratory instruments, NASA said in a statement. This is the first time a robot has drilled to collect a Martian sample.

Curiosity collects powder sample in first drill on Mars

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

NASA's Curiosity rover used its hammering, rotating drill Friday to extract the first powdery samples from within fine-grained sedimentary bedrock, giving scientists their first chance to analyze material from inside a rock on Mars. After a cautious week of tests to show the drill was healthy and operating as designed, the rover's control team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent commands for Curiosity to complete a full drill Friday. Using percussive and rotary motion, the drill bored a hole into a slab of rock scientists say holds evidence of a wetter time on Mars.

Curiosity Rover Drills Into Mars Rock, Collects Sample - A Space First

Mike Wall - Space.com

NASA's Curiosity rover has drilled into a Martian rock and collected samples, marking the first time any robot has ever performed this complicated maneuver on the surface of another planet. The 1-ton Curiosity rover used its arm-mounted drill to bore a hole 0.63 inches (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) deep in a section of sedimentary bedrock on Friday (Feb. 8). The activity paves the way for the first-ever analysis of fresh Martian subsurface material and provides the last major checkout of the robot's gear and instruments, researchers said.

NASA Rover Drills Martian Rock, Looks for Water Clues

Dan Hart - Bloomberg News

The Curiosity rover became the first- ever robot probe to drill into Martian rock as it collected a sample that may reveal further clues about a wet environment in the planet's past. The hole, which measures 0.63 inches (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches deep, was visible in images and other data sent back to Earth today by Curiosity, NASA said in a statement. The rover will use lab instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill, NASA said.

Curiosity Drills A Hole On Mars

Alex Knapp - Forbes

On Friday, Curiosity celebrated six months on the Mars by drilling a hole in the surface – marking the first time that any hole had been drilled into the Martian surface. The rock Curiosity drilled, nicknamed "John Klein" in honor of a project manager who died in 2011, was selected because scientists on the project believed that it holds a chance to find new evidence about what the Martian surface was like back when it had water. To find this evidence, powdered rock created by the drilling will be analyzed by Curiosity.
__________

COMPLETE STORIES

Progress In, Progress Out at International Space Station

Jason Rhian - AmericaSpace.org

One of Russia's unmanned Progress resupply spacecraft left the International Space Station (ISS) Saturday. The departure was timed to make way for a new Progress, which is currently slated to arrive at the orbiting laboratory and workshop Monday.

The Progress 48 cargo vessel was at the ISS for about half a year, and then it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, where it was incinerated. The entire process, from unlatching from the space station to the spacecraft's demise, took about four hours total, with departure occurring at 8:15 a.m. EST and reentry occurring around noon.

As with most things that occur on orbit, the loss of the Progress 48 spacecraft was used to benefit the Expedition 34 crew members on board. In this case, the spacecraft was packed with about 3,700 pounds of garbage.

Even as Progress 48 was meeting its fiery end, the Progress 50 spacecraft was being readied for launch. The cargo vessel was rolled out to the Site 1 launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Progress 50 is currently slated to launch at 9:41 a.m. (8:41 p.m. Kazakhstan time) Monday. The Progress 50 will send some 764 pounds of fuel, 110 pounds of oxygen (including air to breathe), 926 pounds of water, and approximately 3,000 pounds of various equipment. All total, nearly 3 tons of cargo will be ferried to the space station.

Progress 50 will dock at the same port that Progress 48 had been berthed to—the Pirs docking component of the ISS. The process by which Progress 50 will arrive at the station is accelerated compared to most of its predecessors (only two others before Progress 50 have used this method). The cargo ship will arrive at the station just six hours after it was launched. If anything should go wrong, controllers at the ground can switch back to the old, slower method, which would mean it would take two days before Progress 50 arrives at the ISS.

Monday's launch will be covered live. If all goes according to plan, docking should occur at 3:40 p.m. EST.

The Russian Progress is one of four cargo vessels that deliver supplies to the station. The European Space Agency employs its Automated Transfer Vehicle, or "ATV," the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency uses the HTV, and the U.S. has restarted sending supplies to the ISS via Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft. Of all the cargo vessels that visit the ISS, only the Dragon does not burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

Hotfire Test of US Antares Rocket Slated for Tuesday

RIA Novosti

The hotfire engine test of the new US Antares medium-class rocket is scheduled for February 12, the Universe Today portal said on Saturday.

Antares, formerly known as Taurus II, was developed by Orbital Sciences to carry the Cygnus spacecraft for resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS). Its first stage engine is based on the Soviet NK-33 rocket engine.

For the 29-second-long engine test due at about 18:00 local time Tuesday (23:00 GMT), the first stage of the rocket will be rolled out to the launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

If the test is successful, Antares will be test-launched about four weeks later, carrying a Cygnus mass simulator payload.

To Infinity And Beyond: Would-Be Astronauts Keep Faith In Uncertain Era

Jacki Lyden – National Public Radio

Space exploration has stirred imaginations and piloted hopes and dreams, but the future of space travel looks very different from the age in which Neil Armstrong made it to the moon.

Since NASA is no longer doing manned missions, astronaut hopefuls have turned their sites on the private sector.

Private Adventurism

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, is one example of space entrepreneurship. He's been investing in private rockets and spaceships, leading two missions to the International Space Station in 2012.

Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Airlines, has founded a private space company of his own called Virgin Galactic. He says he hopes to open a spaceport in New Mexico for tourists later this year. He'll offer a six-minute, weightless ride into space.

A slew of other private companies are building and testing spaceship prototypes to carry people and cargo, all in the hopes that space exploration will be profitable.

John Grunsfeld, a retired astronaut and associate administrator for science at NASA, says this is all just as it should be. He says it's a natural evolution — a sort of seed company spinoff from NASA.

"The reason they're successful is because we've had 50 years of investment in learning how to explore space," he tells NPR's Jacki Lyden.

The technology that's been developed over the years by NASA is now being used in the private sector.

"When they are successful, it will make our space program stronger and also provide an economic engine for the country," Grunsfeld says.

Eyes On The Stars

For astronaut-hopeful Brian Shiro, these private companies may be his best hope of getting off Earth. Shiro, 34, has wanted to be an astronaut since he went to space camp in middle school. The geophysicist has the skills: math, science, multiple marathons.

He's invested all his vacations and free time to training, and he has a blog, Astronaut for Hire. He's even experienced zero gravity in a centrifuge in a NASA-sponsored training exercise.

He has applied twice to be a NASA astronaut, but last week he found out he once again didn't make the cut. He's not worried; he intends to become an astronaut with or without NASA. Shiro says he's ready at a moment's notice.

"If you need an astronaut, I'm here," he says.

Record-breaking former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria says Shiro shouldn't get discouraged. Lopez-Alegria spent seven continuous months in orbit and has done more spacewalking than any other human being. It's not a moment you can relive, he says.

"It's almost like a different dimension, like a dream," he says.

Although he had to meet very specific education requirements to be an astronaut with the government, he expects the opportunity will open up to people with all kinds of expertise.

'Inspiring' Work

As Shiro and others look for private-sector opportunities, NASA is shifting its focus, too. The agency's role, says NASA administrator Grunsfeld, is to keep undertaking things like the Hubble Telescope, Mars rovers and other big-concept ideas.

"What we do at NASA is inspiring. It's reaching, it's visionary, and it inspires people on Earth to try hard things," he says. "I think it's really a sign of great American strength that we do invest the money we do in technology, in these hard projects, in NASA."

That investment isn't what it used to be, though.

"Last year, they did take a hit. They had a relatively flat budget of $17.7 billion — that was still $59 million less than what they got in 2012," says Tariq Malik, managing editor of SPACE.com.

NASA had to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of its planetary science projects, he says.

"And this is in a year when they had a spectacular success: They landed the biggest robot on Mars that can move around, the Curiosity Rover," Malik says.

A budget of $17.7 billion may sound huge, but Grunsfeld says it isn't, really.

"Our country ... invests a tiny fraction of 1 percent in NASA, and this is what's so amazing to me," he says, "is with that small investment, we do so much for the country."

Forget The Moon

President Obama has re-conceived the next big space push: sending astronauts to visit an asteroid by 2025, and then to possibly try for Mars in the mid-2030s. Malik says he thinks visiting an asteroid is gutsy.

"Everyone can see the moon at night. When Obama took office, he scrapped that plan ... to trade with this asteroid one, which they hope will capture the imagination of folks more because it's never been done before," he says.

Malik points out that space exploration is still wildly popular with the public. Last year, NASA got more applicants for the next astronaut training class than ever before. That class will be announced this spring.

Lockheed Martin Expanding Human Spaceflight Role

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

Lockheed Martin Space Systems, a longtime powerhouse in robotic spacecraft, is staking a larger position in human spaceflight as a way to stay busy while its big civil-space customers adjust to the new era of budget and political uncertainty.

The Littleton, Colo.-based unit will draw on its work with NASA's planned Orion crew capsule to help neighboring Sierra Nevada Corp. human-rate its Dream Chaser entry in NASA's commercial crew sweepstakes. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin crews at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the company built all of the aluminum-alloy tanks for the space shuttle program, will use expertise in composites gained in part from fighter aircraft work, to build the lightweight lifting body structure for the reusable commercial vehicle.

And the experience gained from decades of integrating European instruments and other hardware into scientific satellites and space probes will help company engineers and managers as they work to fit a European service module to the back of the Orion capsule. The efforts are designed to keep facilities the company has developed over decades working as steadily as possible while the spacecraft industry transitions into 21st century conditions.

"We're looking across human spaceflight for what other things can we do to bring our processes, people and experience in to level-load a facility better so that our costs are lower, so that we're more effective and efficient in what we do," says Jim Crocker, Lockheed Martin vice president and general manager for civil space.

For the Orion contract, which it won under the George W. Bush administration's Constellation program of post-shuttle vehicles, the company built a high-fidelity Space Operations Simulation Laboratory in Littleton, where it can simulate lighting conditions and sensor performance for proximity operations, autonomous docking and touch-and-go "landings" at the asteroid that has since become the U.S. human objective in space (AW&ST Jan. 9, 2012, p. 44). Crocker says he is already in discussions with Sierra Nevada about using the simulation lab to test Dream Chaser prox ops and docking at the International Space Station (ISS), both autonomously and piloted.

The company also has worked with NASA's Orion program at Johnson Space Center to streamline the certification process required to ready Orion to carry NASA astronauts. Now it will apply that experience to help Sierra Nevada perform the same tasks as the U.S. space agency begins human rating the Dream Chaser and other commercial crew vehicles in the works. Among them are eliminating duplicate specifications, and reducing the "deliverables" NASA requires in the certification process.

"Some of these deliverables are heritage that probably go back to Mercury," Crocker says. "We've just always gotten this particular data package, and it gets put on the list, and nobody was looking at it. [NASA] has been really receptive in saying 'you know, we don't want you to give us something we don't want [or] need. So let's save that money and put it into flight hardware."

That streamlined approach will also apply to the way NASA and Lockheed Martin are handling the upcoming first flight test of Orion hardware. Instead of conducting the test, NASA is buying the test data from Lockheed Martin, and leaving it to the company to generate it. Experimental test flight No. 1 (EFT-1) is scheduled to lift off in September 2014 on a Delta IV heavy on a highly elliptical trajectory that will bring its instrumented Orion test article back into the atmosphere at 80% of the speed it would see on a lunar return. The test is designed to gather early flight data on 10 critical parameters, including how much margin is needed in the ablative Avcoat thermal-protection material on the capsule's reusable composite and titanium heat shield.

Crocker says the shield, fabricated in Littleton, is being readied for shipment to a Textron facility in Massachusetts this week. The EFT-1 launch vehicle is being built at the United Launch Alliance factory in Decatur, Ala., and the adaptor that will join the Orion to the Delta upper stage is being welded at nearby Marshall Space Flight Center. The integrated test lab in Littleton that allows hardware- and software-in-the-loop simulations has just been powered up for the first time, he says.

"By doing this the way we did we believe we were able to accelerate it a little bit," he says, noting that the launch vehicle is either the pacing item or "right on the critical path" for getting the test flight off on schedule.

Sierra Nevada, under a $212.5 million Space Act agreement with NASA to develop the Dream Chaser, is also getting ready for the first free flight test of the test article it built in-house at its Louisville, Colo., factory. That helicopter drop from 12,000 ft. over Edwards AFB, Calif., is expected to demonstrate that the vehicle can glide to a runway landing. Jim Voss, Sierra Nevada program manager for the Dream Chaser, says the atmospheric test article will accelerate to about 300 kt. before touching down for a horizontal landing at 180 kt. Depending on test results, the company plans between 2-5 more of the 30-40-sec.-long tests.

Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada's Space Systems unit, notes the competitively awarded Lockheed Martin deal is a "significant, multi-million-dollar long-term contract" that is likely to expand as the project advances.

"We're going to combine the knowledge that Lockheed Martin has done through their work to date on the Orion program and around their entire space [and aircraft] portfolio with what we're doing," he says.

Lockheed's experience in integrating robotic spacecraft hardware from around the world will prove beneficial as it works with EADS Astrium to meld propulsion/power hardware from the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) into the Orion service module it had originally planned to build itself. That hardware will include the narrow rectangular solar arrays that generate power for ESA's ATV when it delivers cargo to the ISS.

NASA has accepted the ATV hardware for the Orion service module in lieu of cargo deliveries with ATVs as ESA's barter payment for the U.S. portion of common systems operations costs on the ISS. Under the deal, reached late last year after the ESA ministerial conference in Naples, Italy, ESA will work with NASA to build one service module using ATV components and a surplus space shuttle orbital maneuvering system engine.

The agreement, which also includes ATV components for a second Orion service module, will cause a marked change in the appearance of the Orion concept that Lockheed Martin used to win the NASA capsule contract initially. Instead of the twin circular solar arrays the company proposed—the "Mickey Mouse Ears" that have been featured in most concept illustrations of the Orion ever since—the four narrow European arrays will be mounted aft of the crew cabin in the distinctive X-shaped configuration carried on the ATV. However, those European arrays may not survive the integration process, which Crocker describes as being at the "mid-year preliminary design review" stage.

"We've spent a lot of time and effort getting the mass down on this system," he says. "That's one example of a place where mass can easily grow again. We didn't have the flex arrays there because they were cute. [They were] there for loads, and loads translate into mass."

Still NASA sees the European service module as a significant break with the past, allowing an international partner into the transportation "critical path" that was denied them under NASA's old Constellation program.

"For us it's kind of a pathfinder for engagement at that level, so the other partners looking around can say 'OK, we're having this nice dialogue about goals and objectives, but what does that really mean in terms of us being willing to play,'" says Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for policy and plans in NASA's human-exploration directorate. "Here we've shown that we've found [a way] for an international partner to come in and provide a piece of hardware."

While conceding that he'd like the workshare that will go to Europe instead, Crocker agrees that in the long term the combined approach should benefit all concerned.

"We're fully supportive of this," he says. Bringing Europe in helps make it more affordable for all of us."

Congress planning an update to commercial launch legislation this year

Jeff Foust – SpacePoltiics.com

While a planned reauthorization of NASA this year is attracting headlines, another space-related priority for members of Congress this year is a reauthorization of the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and an update of the Commercial Space Launch Act. At FAA/AST's annual conference last week, members of Congress and their staffs outlined several potential changes to existing legislation, from an extension of launch indemnification to granting the office authority for regulating on-orbit activities.

"I would suggest we could look forward to, at long last, a reauthorization of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), vice-chairman of the House Science Committee, in a speech at the conference Wednesday. "It's becoming very evident even to members of Congress that this industry is critical and we need to reauthorize that legislation."

One issue will be the "evolving role of the FAA in regulating safety," said Ann Zulkosky, senior professional staff on the Senate Commerce Committee, during a panel session at the conference Wednesday afternoon. AST retains its role in protecting the uninvolved public, but is restricted by law from promulgating regulations covering the safety of spaceflight participants. That provision, included in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (CSLAA) of 2004, the last major update to commercial launch legislation, was set to expire last December, but an FAA reauthorization bill last year extended it until October 2015.

Another issue, Zulkosky said, would be the issue of on-orbit authority. AST currently has the ability to regulate launches and reentries, but activities in space after launch and before reentry fall into a gray area, with no single agency having oversight or other authority for all activities. (Some agencies do have specific authority on some issues, like the FCC on spacecraft communications.) "We'll certainly be having conversations with FAA as we look to update legislation in this area," she said, noting that some in industry had proposed giving FAA that authority.

Another topic that will likely either be included in any reauthorization, or done in parallel with it, is another extension of the commercial launch indemnification system. That system was extended for only one year in legislation passed early last month, although the original House version of the bill had included a two-year extension.

"We would love to see it extended for a long period," said Chris Kunstadter of XL Insurance, the chairman of the Business Legal Working Group of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), an industry group that advises FAA/AST, at the conference on Thursday. One issue is the calculation of the "maximum probable loss" to third parties in the event of a launch accident, a level to which launch licensees are liable for, with the government indemnifying any losses above that level. FAA and COMSTAC will look for ways to improve the accuracy of that calculation over the next several months, he said.

One key industry official welcomed plans to examine these and other issues with current commercial launch law. "It is something that should be reopened and looked at in the context of the current state of play," said Tim Hughes, vice president and chief counsel of SpaceX, during a conference panel Wednesday. Hughes helped draft the CSLAA as a staff member of the House Science Committee back in 2004, and he said they didn't anticipate then some developments that have taken place since that bill's passage. "It was not contemplated that there would be commercial entities carrying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station," he said.

Rohrabacher said that it remained vital that FAA recognize that commercial spaceflight is still an emerging industry and not over-regulate it. He noted that the Office of Commercial Space Transportation was originally placed directly under the Secretary of Transportation, and only later moved to the FAA. "The culture of the FAA is based on a mandate to protect passenger safety," he said, but argued that commercial spaceflight, being far less mature than aviation, requires a different regulatory philosophy. "That's a very different mandate and a very different approach, but it's necessary for us to recognize that if we are to be successful in moving the industry forward."

Rohrabacher said that FAA was, for the time being, doing a good job treating aviation and spaceflight differently, but warned he would seek action to move the office out of the FAA should the situation change. "Ultimately, if that proves too difficult for the FAA to reconcile, we may end up having to move this whole job back to the office of the Secretary of Transportation."

NASA's Commercial Crew Effort Gets New Deputy Program Manager

Doug Messier - Parabolic Arc

NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) management team is getting a new deputy manager.

Kathy Lueders, who manages NASA's International Space Station Program Transportation Integration Office, will take over the role next month. She will replace Brent Jett, who has left the agency after 21 years and four space shuttle flights.

"As deputy program manager, Lueders will oversee the facilitation of commercial spacecraft and launch vehicle development and certification efforts, enabling the safe transportation of NASA astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station around the middle of the decade," the space agency said in notice on its website.

Lueders will stay in her current position until after the launch of SpaceX's second Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) mission to the International Space Station. The launch is scheduled for March 1 from Cape Canaveral.

"Lueders currently is the manager of NASA's International Space Station Program Transportation Integration Office," NASA says. "Throughout the past six years, her leadership in that office has been vital to NASA as the agency turned to the private sector to begin transporting critical cargo and supplies to the station following the retirement of the space shuttles.

"She also served in an advisory capacity to CCP while it developed the program approach that will ensure commercial missions are held to the same safety standards as government human space transportation system missions."

Lueders replaces Jett, whose career at NASA included four space shuttle flights, a stint as head of the space agency's Flight Crew Operations Directorate, and finally serving as CCP deputy manager.

In a press release announcing Jett's departure, NASA said:

"Brent has been a remarkable asset to NASA and our human spaceflight programs," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "He was a successful pilot and an accomplished commander. His work in Russia and in Houston has really helped position the agency for our future endeavors with space station and commercial crew operations. On behalf of the entire HEO team, I wish Brent the best of luck in his new phase of life."

After being selected to be an astronaut with the Class of 1992, Jett flew four space shuttle missions – two as pilot and two as commander. His first mission aboard Endeavour on STS-72 in January 1996 included the retrieval of a Japanese free-flying science satellite. He next flew a year later in January 1997 aboard Atlantis on STS-81 to the Russian Mir space station, delivering supplies and experiments and swapping one NASA astronaut for another as part of the Phase I Shuttle-Mir Program.

Soon after his second flight, Jett served as one of the early directors of NASA's operations in Star City, Russia, at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, helping establish the training protocols for astronauts traveling to Mir and eventually to the International Space Station.

His two commands on missions to the station were aboard Endeavour on STS-97 in November/December 2000, delivering early power systems and the first pair of 240-foot-long solar arrays, and aboard Atlantis on STS-115 in September 2006, signalling the resumption of station assembly following the Columbia accident. That mission included the delivery of another power module and deployment of two additional pair of solar arrays, which doubled the station's electrical power generating capability.

His accomplishments on Earth helped position the agency for the future as director of Flight Crew Operations from 2007 to 2011 and as deputy manager of the Commercial Crew Program laying the groundwork for the development of spacecraft that will restore U.S. human spaceflight transportation to and from the station.

"Brent was an incredible leader for the Commercial Crew Program, the agency and the nation," said Ed Mango, Commercial Crew Program manager. "His efforts helped our country put together a strong foundation in order to build a home-grown capability for human access to low Earth orbit."

Jett retired from the U.S. Navy as a captain in 2007 after more than 26 years of service. He had logged more than 5,000 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft and performed more than 450 aircraft carrier landings. His experience on four shuttle missions totaled 42 days in space while traveling 17 million miles and orbiting the Earth 659 times.

Teleoperated Robots to Explore Lunar Farside?

Ray Villard - Discovery News

There is a largely unexplored alien country that is so close to Earth it would take a beam of light less than two seconds to get there.

This is the farside of on moon, often misrepresented and the "dark side" (with apologies to Pink Floyd). Because the moon keeps one hemisphere gravitationally locked on Earth, only the eyes of a handful of astronauts have directly seen the lunar farside.

The glorious NASA Apollo missions only explored half of the moon, the Earth-facing side dominated by frozen lava oceans — the mare. The farside bears unique invaluable secrets to 4 billion years of solar system evolution.

The farside is dramatically different from the nearside. It has the largest and deepest basin on the moon, and possibly the oldest impact site in the inner solar system. It offers fossil evidence for a tremendous lunar cataclysm and lunar magma ocean that once existed.

An eventual human return to the moon –- call it Apollo 2.0 — should be targeted for the farside. But it is very costly to conduct astronaut landings. If flown today, the Apollo missions would cost a staggering $18 billion per flight.

But this is not your father's space race. NASA could take a cue from oceanographers and forge an even closer human/robot symbiosis in planetary exploration. Manned submersible vehicles and numerous teleoperated robots jointly conduct deep ocean exploration on Earth, why not do the equivalent in space?

The same could be done for Apollo 2.0, reports Jack Burns of the University of Colorado and co-investigators. He says that the return to the moon could be accomplished more quickly and affordably than full-blown Apollo-style manned sorties.

The centerpiece would be NASA's new Orion space capsule. This Apollo-on-steroids vehicle would be lofted into a halo orbit about the Earth-moon Lagrange point L2. This is a gravitationally stable parking lot for spacecraft of all types to stage lunar sorties. The Orion would travel 15 percent farther from Earth than did the Apollo astronauts and spend almost three times longer in deep space.

Such an orbit would place a three-person Orion crew in a prime location to get a bird's eye view of the lunar farside and have direct line-of-sight communications with Earth. For one lunar day — two weeks on Earth — The crew would teleoperate any number of small rover vehicles dispatched to the farside. The moon rovers would be "joysticked" by the Orion crew. The light delay travel time for commands would be only 0.4 second — shorter than if sent from ground controllers on Earth. Studies show that the so-called "cognitive horizon" for real-time telepresence is no more than 0.5 second.

Points of interest would include Schrödinger basin, one of the youngest impact sites on the moon. However, the basin walls and uplifted peak ring contain rocks from older episodes in lunar history. What's more, a couple billion years after its formation there were small eruptions of volcanic material scattering young rocks across the surface. The rovers would have a smorgasbord of rocks to select over broad fraction of the moon's history. It would be the geological equivalent of the rich record of the stratified Grand Canyon.

The Schrödinger basin is embedded within the gaping South Pole-Aitkin basin that formed much earlier and contains some of the very oldest rocks in the solar system. This kind of geologic survey would help scientists deduce the kinds of objects that bombarded the moon 4 billion years ago and at what rate. And, this might be forensic evidence for dramatic shifts in the orbits of the giant planets during that early epoch.

The lunar rock record could also tell when organic compounds were delivered to the inner solar system.

The mission would be a proof-of-concept for flights to asteroids and to the Mars system. It would be the first to demonstrate teleoperation of rovers by orbiting astronauts to undertake geological exploration and samples collection.

But would this "virtual presence" on the surface of a moon or planet be satisfying enough to budding astronauts? Would they want to stay cooped-up in a capsule rather than bounding along an alien terrain? Imagine Columbus' crew staring at the shoreline on the New World, but not taking a longboat ashore.

House Chairmen Say NASA May Have Released DOD Secrets To China

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

The Republican chairmen of the two House committees with NASA oversight responsibility have charged publicly that senior leadership at the space agency may have been involved in the leak of classified information to China and other nations, and that a federal criminal probe into the charges has been dropped under "political pressure."

The charges were raised Feb. 8 in letters to FBI Director Robert Mueller and Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department's inspector general, jointly signed by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) who chair the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies subcommittee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, respectively.

"We have been informed of an investigation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the NASA Office of the Inspector General and other law enforcement agencies have been working on since 2009 relating to the alleged illegal transfer of ITAR-controlled technology by individuals at the NASA Ames Research Center," the lawmakers wrote, referring to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. "It is our understanding that this illegal technology transfer may have involved classified Defense Department weapons system technology to foreign countries, including China, potentially with the tacit or direct approval of the center's leadership."

According to sources at Ames and on Capitol Hill, the case involves Ames Center Director Simon P. "Pete" Worden and members of the center's staff who are not U.S. citizens. Among the technology in question is a propulsion system originally developed for missile defense applications that was adapted for NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee). Now entering thermal vacuum test at Ames, Ladee is a robotic mission designed to study the Moon's thin atmosphere and conditions near its surface from an equatorial orbit. It is scheduled for launch this summer.

Among the charges mentioned in the congressional letters are allegations that the protected technology information has been disseminated in public conferences overseas "with Chinese and other foreign officials present," and that information-protection "safeguards may not have been used or may have explicitly been ignored on multiple occasions" at Ames.

Worden, a former Air Force brigadier general with a reputation as a bureaucratic entrepreneur, has been the target of unsubstantiated allegations along the lines mentioned in the congressional letters since last summer. He is known to maintain a free-wheeling culture of innovation at Ames, encouraging young engineers and scientists regardless of their nationality to develop new ideas.

But Smith, who is just taking over as chairman of the science panel that authorizes NASA spending, and Wolf, a veteran appropriations subcommittee chair who has blocked NASA from spending any money for space cooperation with China on human-rights grounds, also charged that a computer hard drive confiscated from one member of Worden's staff was "corrupted, as were all the backup copies in the government's possession." In addition to that suggestion of a cover-up, which a congressional staffer said may have occurred while the hard drive was in the possession of the NASA inspector general, the two chairmen also implied that the Justice Department blocked prosecution of the case for reasons that go beyond evidence and legal judgment.

"We were very concerned to learn earlier this week that despite the U.S. Attorney's request for permission from the Justice Department to proceed with indictments, this request was recently denied without explanation, despite the backing of both the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office," they wrote. "We are deeply concerned that political pressure may be a factor and are formally requesting an investigation into the circumstances of the Justice Department's actions with regard to this case."

Asked where any political pressure might have originated, one congressional staffer said Friday, "I have every reason to believe, based on information I've seen, that Worden has a history of leveraging his supporters who may have connections with the White House or senior NASA management to intervene on his behalf."

The lawmakers noted that an assistant U.S. attorney in California was reassigned off the case, and that the statute of limitations on one potential criminal charge expired on Dec. 15, 2012. Wolf, whose subcommittee also controls FBI funding, first raised the issue with the investigative agency that month, according to the letter sent to Mueller.

"I think you've had violations of the law," Wolf told Aviation Week Friday. "You've had the FBI look at this. You've had the U.S. attorneys make a decision to move ahead, and you've had somebody stop it at the Justice Department. I think you have a criminal, and a scandal here."

NASA declined comment on grounds "it would be inappropriate for us to discuss any possible investigation," according to a spokesman, who referred the query to the Justice Department.

A Justice Department spokesman said, "We are aware of and reviewing the letters. However, as a matter of longstanding policy, the Justice Department does not comment on whether a particular person or entity might be under investigation."

Russian, Kazakh experts reached agreement on Baikonur

Itar-Tass

The presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan, Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev, said on Friday that Russian and Kazakh experts and the heads of appropriate agencies had reached a mutually acceptable agreement on how to use the Baikonur space launch site.

The two leaders discussed the subject at their talks in the Kremlin on Friday.

Putin and Nazarbayev discussed a program of bilateral cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan for 2013-2015; the creation of the Common Economic Space and advancement towards the Eurasian Economic Union.

The two presidents agreed to continue close contacts at the high and top levels. One will take place in Yekaterinburg this autumn when the city will be hosting the annual Forum of border regions.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev plans to sign a new Friendship and Cooperation Treaty with Russia in Yekaterinburg, the Urals, in autumn this year.

"We have issued instructions to prepare a new Treaty for Friendship and Cooperation. I hope we will sign it in Yekaterinburg this autumn," Nazarbayev told Putin at their meeting on Friday.

Commercial Moon Flights Coming Soon?

Markus Hammonds - Discovery News

How much would you like to see humanity travel back to the moon? Or for that matter, how much would you like to stand amongst the craters of Lacus Somnorium yourself and look up to see your home planet above you, a shining blue marble in the darkness? Since Apollo 17 left the Moon in 1972, no humans have traveled further than a few hundred kilometers from Earth's surface, but an ambitious space travel company has plans to put humans back on the moon — and they'll take anyone who can afford the asking price.

The Golden Spike Company, formally announced in December last year, are aiming to provide a means to do exactly that. Riding the wave of enthusiasm for private space flight, they intend to provide reliable transport to the surface of the moon. However, with the cost of the tickets currently expected to be the princely sum of $1.5 billion for a two person mission, their customers are more likely to be governments than wealthy tourists.

Named after the ceremonial "last spike" driven into the first continental railroad to be built in the US, Golden Spike's intention is, quoting from their website, to "transform human space exploration by putting in place affordably priced lunar orbital and surface expeditions to the only natural satellite of the Earth — the moon," in much the same way the railroad enabled people to travel across North America in the 19th century. The expected cost of a two person lunar mission for $1.5 billion, while clearly astronomical for private travelers, is an attractive price for government space programs across the world.

Simply, they will be able to launch crewed lunar expeditions for the same price normally expected of robotic spacecraft, making this the cheapest possible way to get to the moon.

Since the end of the 20th century, Russia has already been running commercial space flights, by charging a fee to ferry astronauts from other countries into space. This enabled countries with no space travel capabilities of their own to run a space program, and also allowed a total of 7 wealthy space tourists to go into orbit. Golden Spike intend to follow much the same business structure. As well as taking passengers to the moon, they also intend on making money in a few other ways, such as transporting items and selling much sought-after samples of moon rock — those collected during the Apollo missions have a history of being stolen and sold on for high prices.

The total expected price is $7-8 billion, plus another $1.5 billion per journey. Quite astonishing, in fairness. If the Apollo program were to have been run today, each moon landing would have cost roughly $18 billion, with the full cost being well over $110 billion! With this in mind, many are understandably skeptical that Golden Spike can accomplish the same thing at such a dramatically lower cost, especially seeing as no currently available rocket has enough power to transport a vehicle to the moon.

The trick may be that Golden Spike intend to use a total of four rockets to make the journey. The first two will launch a vehicle and lander into lunar orbit, with the following two sending a crew to rendezvous with those vehicles. They will then be able to use the lander to descend to the lunar surface, before using the second vehicle to return to Earth. While no announcements have been made of which rockets they intend to use, but their website claims that they will use existing launch vehicles. Partner companies currently include Masten Space Systems, who will construct all the craft involved, and Paragon Space Development Corp. who will be providing space suits and life support systems.

It certainly seems that Golden Spike has enough expertise behind it to make the plan into a reality. The company was founded by none other than Alan Stern, formerly NASA's associate administrator for science. During his tenure at NASA, Stern instigated a record 10 major new flight projects and made significant changes within NASA, both in emphasizing the importance of science, and in education and public outreach. From his time in NASA, Stern is also used to accomplishing as much as possible on a tight budget. Among the other notable members of the Golden Spike team are former director of NASA Johnson, Gerry Griffin, former Space Shuttle Manager, Wayne Hale, and space entrepreneurs, Esther Dyson and Taber MacCallum.

Private space companies are becoming ever bolder in their goals, planning everything from suborbital flights around Earth, to mining asteroids, and even lunar mining. However, one thing to remember is that none of these schemes are going to be easy. None of these things have ever been attempted before by private enterprises. While companies like SpaceX celebrate their accomplishments, others will likely be watched with skeptical eyes until they start making progress.

Paying for a trip to the moon may someday be possible, but it isn't quite a dream come true yet. The cost, at least initially, will high enough to bankrupt all but the wealthiest individuals. That said, lunar tourists may yet have another option. The company Space Adventures, responsible for the 7 space tourists who've traveled into orbit so far, have plans of their own. While they may not be able to land you on the surface of the moon, their proposed "Deep Space Expedition" or DSE-Alpha missions are expected to cost about $100 million and will take passengers on a journey once around the moon. This still limits such journeys to millionaires of course. The round trip is over 750,000 kilometers, and it'll take quite a long time to accumulate that many frequent flyer miles.

Astronaut and musician perform first original duet from space and Earth

Elizabeth Howell - Space.com

An astronaut and a rock singer recorded an original song together and released it Friday as the first duet of new music performed simultaneously in space and on the ground.

A rocket launch and the beauty of planet Earth are the subjects of the song, performed in space by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, while accompanied by Canadian singer Ed Robertson of the band Barenaked Ladies, and others on Earth.

The song, called "I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)," focuses on the experience of a person in space missing his loved ones on the Earth below:

"If you could see our nation from the International Space Station, you'd know why I want to get back soon."

Hadfield and Robertson began co-writing the song when Hadfield was still in training in Russia for his five-month mission on the International Space Station. Next month, Hadfield will be the first Canadian commander on the orbiting complex when the Expedition 35 mission begins.

A duet from longtime friends

Hadfield and Robertson first met more than a decade ago when Hadfield gave the award-winning Barenaked Ladies band a tour of Mission Control in Houston.

The duet, mixed in Toronto earlier this week, included other members of the Barenaked Ladies as well as the Wexford Gleeks, a youth choir from the Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts. Hadfield performed from the cupola, which is an observation deck on the ISS.

"Welcome to the cupola. I'm ready to play a little music," Hadfield said, clutching a guitar, in a video of the song recording released today.

"Indeed. Your scenery looks a little nicer than ours," Robertson responded from the studio.

Hadfield then proudly showed off his guitar pick, to which Robertson quipped: "I know, yours matches your mission patch."

As the collaborators sang, Hadfield periodically looked up through the cupola windows to gaze at Earth. On one occasion, he did so right after singing, "Pushed back in my seat, look out my window – there goes home."

Despite the great distance between the collaborators, Robertson wrote that the work of writing the song mostly went smoothly between himself and the orbiting astronaut. The exception came when they were finalizing the chorus.

'Chris always felt that it was a real mouthful'

"It's a line in the chorus that I wrote, 'If you could see our nation from the International Space Station.' Chris always felt that it was a real mouthful, and it is a real mouthful, but that's what's cool about it," wrote Robertson on a blog for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., Canada's national broadcaster.

"His alternate was 'From way up here on this space station.' So I said, 'You just sung the exact same number of syllables and haven't changed the meaning of it. You just didn't say 'International Space Station', which is this awesome place where you actually are, so I really want you to sing that line."

Hadfield is reportedly working on making enough songs for an album — in between his other duties on station. He released another original song from orbit in December called "Jewel in the Night."

When the album is released, Robertson already has a suggested title for Hadfield.

"How about, 'Turns Out in Space Lots of People Can Hear You Scream?'" he offered.

Hadfield isn't the first musical astronaut to perform on the space station. In April 2011, NASA astronaut Cady Coleman collaborated with Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson on the ground to play the band's song "Bourree" over a satellite connection. Coleman played the flute during the performance, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of humanity's first spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961.

You can listen to Hadfield and Robertson's space song here.

Space Jam: Astronaut Sings Duet From the Space Station

Nancy Atkinson - UniverseToday.com

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield participated in an annual event for Canadian music students from a unique location: a long-distance perch in the Cupola of the International Space Station. Before launching to the ISS in December, Hadfield wrote a song with Ed Robertson of the band Barenaked Ladies, and Friday morning the song premiered as Hadfield, Robertson and a school glee club sang together:

Hadfield performed his part on the space station; Robertson did his in Toronto with the Wexford Gleeks. The song was part of Music Monday in Canada, and while today's premiere was pre-recorded, in May, students across Canada will play the song live with Hadfield in space.

The song is called "I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)," it begins with the words:

Eighteen-thousand miles an hour
Fueled by science and solar power
The oceans racing past
At half a thousand tons
Ninety minutes moon to sun
A bullet can't go half this fast.

Music aficionados can find the sheet music here.

Hadfield plays the guitar and sings with a couple of bands on Earth. Before he began his Expedition on the ISS, he told Universe Today he would be doing as much singing as he could in space.

"Music is really important to me, ever since I've been a kid. I've always played guitar and sang," he said, "and I'm really hoping to have the chance to sit weightless with the guitar on board and play music, and also record some of the music I've written."

He also is working to finish some songs he started writing on Earth while living on the ISS, which he called "a particularly inspirational environment" and maybe write some news ones.

"We have all the recording equipment we need on board," he said. "It is basic but it is good enough to be able to record and I'm hoping to record at least one full CD's worth of original music up there. It's neat – I'm writing with my brother who is a musician, and he pointed out that a lot of the traditional folk songs came from people who were the first on the frontier — the early explorers, sailors, miners, and the fishermen — the people who are involved in the day-to-day of a specific human experience. To think I might be involved in helping to write some of the first space faring music, music that people might play and sing as they leave Earth for Mars, it is an interesting time in history."

This isn't the first Earth-Space musical collaboration: in 2011 astronaut Cady Coleman did a flute duet with Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson.

Astronaut Sends Chinese New Year Greetings from Space

Tariq Malik - Space.com

An astronaut on the International Space Station beamed festive messages to Earth Saturday to mark Chinese New Year celebrations across the planet.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, a space station flight engineer, sent good wishes and amazing photos of China via online Twitter messages to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Snake, which began Sunday, Feb. 10.

"Happy Chinese New Year! May it be filled with joy and success," Hadfield wrote. "To celebrate, we sent a Progress spaceship to burn like fireworks in the sky."

That unmanned Russian Progress 48 spacecraft undocked from the space station early Saturday to clear a parking spot for a new robotic cargo ship, Progress 50, due to arrive at the station on Monday.

Hadfield then posted a series of dazzling photos of China from space, including a view of daybreak over Taiwan, a striking image of Shanghai at night, amazing windswept clouds and a view of the city of Hangzhou.

"Hangzhou, China. As one of the few space-faring nations, I salute China, her astronauts, and their accomplishments," Hadfield wrote.

In 2003, China became the third country (after Russia and the United States) to achieve human spaceflight with the successful launch of its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, aboard the country's Shenzhou spacecraft. The country subsequently took bolder steps into space, with two-person and three-person spaceflights, a spacewalk and the launch of the Tiangong 1 space laboratory module.

In 2012, China launched its first crew to the Tiangong 1 space module, a three-person team that included the country's first female astronaut, Liu Yang.

In 2013, China is expected to launch another crewed mission to the Tiangong 1 space lab (the Shenzhou 10 mission), as well as the Chang'e 3 moon mission, which is expected to send a lander to the lunar surface.

Hadfield is one of six astronauts currently living aboard the International Space Station. In addition to the Canadian, the station's Expedition 34 crew includes three Russian cosmonauts and two American astronauts.

MEANWHILE ON MARS…

Mars rover completes milestone drill test

William Harwood - CBS News

In a long-awaited milestone, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its powerful drill for the first time Friday, beaming back pictures Saturday showing a pair of precisely bored holes in a flat reddish slab surrounded by a grey residue of crushed rock excavated from the interior.

The powdery debris may hold more clues about the role of water in the red planet's past. But in the near term, the successful test prompted NASA science chief John Grunsfeld to declare the nuclear-powered rover fully operational, calling the drilling operation "the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August."

Since Curiosity was lowered to the surface of Gail Crater Aug. 6, engineers have been systematically activating, calibrating and testing the rover's complex sample acquisition hardware, its robot arm and its laboratory instruments to make sure the spacecraft can meet its scientific objectives.

The goals of the planned two-year mission are to search for signs of organic compounds and to look for evidence of past or present habitability.

The powerful robot arm-mounted impact drill was the last major sample collection system to be tested and it appears to have worked as advertised, first drilling a test hole 0.63 inches across and 0.8 inches deep and then a sample collection hole 2.5 inches deep.

"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," Avi Okon, a drill engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.

The drill is designed to channel rock powder into storage chambers before delivery to Curiosity's complex sample-handling system.

Actual analysis of the first drill sample will not begin until after engineers complete a process using part of the rock powder to "clean" the sample handling system to remove any contaminants that might have made it to the red planet from Earth.

"We'll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly," Scott McCloskey, a drill systems engineer, said in a NASA statement. "Then we'll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample."

The Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis, or CHIMRA, system is designed to vibrate a powder sample over a sieve to screen out any particles larger than 150 microns across, or six-thousandths of an inch.

After the cleaning process, some of the fine-grained rock collected by the drill will be delivered to ports on Curiosity's upper deck that will route it into the Chemistry and Mineralogy, or CheMin, suite of instruments for a detailed chemical analysis.

Another set of instruments, known as the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, package is designed to look for signs of organic compounds like those necessary for life as it is known on Earth.

Louise Jandura, chief engineer for the sample acquisition system at JPL, said the successful drilling test was the culmination of an extensive test program on Earth to make sure the drill aboard Curiosity could "interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars."

"To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth," she said in the NASA statement.

Curiosity rover completes 1st drill into Mars rock

Alicia Chang - Associated Press

In a Mars first, the Curiosity rover drilled into a rock and prepared to dump an aspirin-sized pinch of powder into its onboard laboratories for closer inspection.

The feat marked yet another milestone for the car-size rover, which landed last summer to much fanfare on an ambitious hunt to determine whether environmental conditions were favorable for microbes.

Using the drill at the end of its 7-foot-long robotic arm, Curiosity on Friday chipped away at a flat, veined rock bearing numerous signs of past water flow. After nearly seven minutes of pounding, the result was a drill hole 2 1/2 -inches deep.

The exercise was so complex that engineers spent several days commanding Curiosity to tap the rock outcrop, drill test holes and perform a "mini-drill" in anticipation of the real show. Images beamed back to Earth overnight showed a fresh borehole next to a shallower test hole Curiosity had made earlier.

"It was a perfect execution," drill engineer Avi Okon at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Saturday.

Previous Mars landings carried tools that scraped away the exterior layers of rocks and dirt. Opportunity and Spirit — before it died — toted around a rock grinder. Phoenix, which touched down near the Martian north pole in 2008, was equipped with an ice rasp to chisel frozen soil.

None, however, were designed to bore deep into rocks and collect pulverized samples from the interior.

With the maiden drilling out of the way, it'll take several days before Curiosity transfers the powder to its instruments to analyze the chemical and mineral makeup.

The cautious approach is by design. Curiosity is the most high-tech spacecraft to land on Earth's nearest planetary neighbor and engineers are still learning how to efficiently operate the $2.5 billion mission.

The team won't know until next week how much rock powder Curiosity collected. But judging by the small amount left in the drill hole, Okon said he was confident the rover has enough for its upcoming lab analysis.

Another unknown is whether any Teflon rubbed off from the drill and got mixed with the rock sample. Before Curiosity launched, engineers discovered that microscopic flakes of Teflon can break off from the instrument and have been studying workarounds. Okon said any Teflon contamination would be small because Curiosity did not drill for long.

As images from the drilling operation streamed to Earth, some team members shared their excitement on social media.

The "full drill hole was a success! I'm sure it was LOUD and they heard the drilling action for MILES!" tweeted rover driver Paolo Bellutta.

Mission managers previously predicted that drilling would be the hardest engineering task since the landing, which relied on never-before-tried tricks including a rocket-powered platform and cables that lowered Curiosity in an ancient crater last August.

The dramatic landing gave way to a labor-intensive checkup of Curiosity's various instruments. The drill was the last tool to be tested.

While Curiosity executed the first rock drilling on Mars, the method has been used on other celestial bodies.

The Apollo astronauts wielded a handheld, battery-powered drill into rocks and delivered pieces to Earth. The Soviets deployed spacecraft that drilled into the lunar surface to collect rocks for Earth return and also used robotic drills on missions to Venus.

Once Curiosity finishes its rock analysis, the team's focus will turn to starting the drive to a mountain, expected to take nine months with stops. It is there that scientists hope Curiosity would uncover signs of organic molecules, the chemical building blocks of life.

NASA's robotic rover Curiosity drills into Martian rock

Deborah Zabarenko - Reuters

For the first time, NASA's rover Curiosity used its on-board drill to collect a sample of Martian bedrock that might offer evidence of a long-gone wet environment, the U.S. space agency reported on Saturday.

Drilling down 2.5 inches into a patch of sedimentary bedrock, Curiosity collected the rock powder left by the drill and will analyze it using its own laboratory instruments, NASA said in a statement. This is the first time a robot has drilled to collect a Martian sample.

"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

Curiosity drilled into a rock called "John Klein," named for a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011.

In the next few days, ground controllers will command the rover's arm to process the sample by delivering bits of it to the instruments inside Curiosity.

Before the rock powder is analyzed, some will be used to scour traces of material that may have been deposited onto the hardware while the rover was still on Earth, despite thorough cleaning before launch, NASA said.

The drilling and analysis is part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project, which is using the Curiosity rover to figure out whether an area in Mars' Gale Crater ever offered a hospitable environment for life.

Curiosity collects powder sample in first drill on Mars

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

NASA's Curiosity rover used its hammering, rotating drill Friday to extract the first powdery samples from within fine-grained sedimentary bedrock, giving scientists their first chance to analyze material from inside a rock on Mars.

After a cautious week of tests to show the drill was healthy and operating as designed, the rover's control team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent commands for Curiosity to complete a full drill Friday.

Using percussive and rotary motion, the drill bored a hole into a slab of rock scientists say holds evidence of a wetter time on Mars.

The drill carved a hole 1.6 centimeters, or 0.63 inch, wide and 6.4 centimeters, or 2.5 inches, deep, NASA said. The rock selected for the first drill, named John Klein after the mission's late deputy project manager, features light-toned veins. Rocks with similar features on Earth only form in the presence of water, according to researchers.

Pictures beamed back to Earth on Saturday show the fresh hole surrounded by a ring of powder. The drill collects fine-grained samples as it bores into rock through an auger into a holding chamber, where it awaits delivery to Curiosity's sample analysis instruments, which can examine the material's chemical and mineral composition, plus look for organic compounds.

"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," said Avi Okon, drill cognizant engineer at JPL.

Before delivering the sample to Curiosity's instruments, some of the powder will be used to clean the drill assembly. There could still be contaminants from Earth on some of the rover's hardware, according to NASA.

"We'll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly," said JPL's Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer, in a press release. "Then we'll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample."

Once the material is in the rover's scoop, it will dump the powder through a screen-like sieve that allows only the smallest particles to flow into Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars and Chemistry and Mineralogy instruments.

The drill is the last instrument to be used in Curiosity's extensive toolkit, which includes a brush, laser, scoop, stereo eyes and ovens. NASA officials declared the rover fully operational after Friday's drill.

"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, in a statement released Saturday. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America."

Curiosity Rover Drills Into Mars Rock, Collects Sample - A Space First

Mike Wall - Space.com

NASA's Curiosity rover has drilled into a Martian rock and collected samples, marking the first time any robot has ever performed this complicated maneuver on the surface of another planet.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover used its arm-mounted drill to bore a hole 0.63 inches (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) deep in a section of sedimentary bedrock on Friday (Feb. 8). The activity paves the way for the first-ever analysis of fresh Martian subsurface material and provides the last major checkout of the robot's gear and instruments, researchers said.

"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed now is a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America."

Curiosity will process the sample over the next few days, researchers said. The rover will use some of the material to scour its sample-handling hardware clean of any residues that may remain from Earth before transferring any powder to the analytical instruments on the rover's body.

"We'll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly," said Curiosity drill systems engineer Scott McCloskey, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "Then we'll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample."

Drilling so deep into a Red Planet rock is a complex and unprecedented maneuver, so the mission team worked its way up to the first effort in a steady, stepwise fashion.

About two weeks ago, Curiosity began assessing the target rock, which is part of an outcrop called "John Klein" that was exposed to liquid water long ago. The rover first pressed down on the rock with its arm-mounted drill in a series of "pre-load" tests. It then used the drill's percussive action to hammer the outcrop without spinning the drill bit, which cleared the way for a recent "mini-drill" that bored into rock but didn't collect samples.

Getting Curiosity ready for all these steps — and for yesterday's successful full-up drilling run — also took a lot of prep work here on Earth, researchers said.

"Building a tool to interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing program," said JPL's Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system. "To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth."

Curiosity landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on the night of Aug. 5 to determine if the area has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. Along with its 10 science instruments and 17 cameras, the rover's drill is considered key to this quest, for it allows scientists to peer deep into Martian rocks for evidence of past habitability.

NASA Rover Drills Martian Rock, Looks for Water Clues

Dan Hart - Bloomberg News

The Curiosity rover became the first- ever robot probe to drill into Martian rock as it collected a sample that may reveal further clues about a wet environment in the planet's past.

The hole, which measures 0.63 inches (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches deep, was visible in images and other data sent back to Earth today by Curiosity, NASA said in a statement. The rover will use lab instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill, NASA said.

Controllers at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration will issue commands to have Curiosity's robotic arm process the sample for analysis. Some of the rock powder will also be used to scour traces of material deposited on the rover's hardware before it left Earth, NASA said.

Curiosity arrived on Mars in August after a 352 million- mile (563 million-kilometer) journey and a subsequent plunge through the planet's atmosphere that was dubbed "7 Minutes of Terror." Scientists behind the $2.5 billion mission are trying to determine if Mars once had an environment capable of sustaining life.

Starting in 1976, Viking landers sent by NASA to Mars found geological features such as river valleys, grooves carved into rock and stream networks that typically form from large amounts of water and suggested that rain may have once fallen there.

The Spirit and Opportunity rovers that preceded Curiosity have demonstrated water flowed on the surface and soaked the ground. Spirit and Opportunity also measured minerals in rocks and soils.

Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Nov. 26, 2011.

Curiosity Drills A Hole On Mars

Alex Knapp - Forbes

On Friday, Curiosity celebrated six months on the Mars by drilling a hole in the surface – marking the first time that any hole had been drilled into the Martian surface.

The rock Curiosity drilled, nicknamed "John Klein" in honor of a project manager who died in 2011, was selected because scientists on the project believed that it holds a chance to find new evidence about what the Martian surface was like back when it had water. To find this evidence, powdered rock created by the drilling will be analyzed by Curiosity.

"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," drill cognizant engineer Avi Okon in a NASA press release.

The hole that was drilled is a little under two-thirds of an inch in diameter, and is two and a half inches deep. Over the next few days, Curiosity's controllers will start to process the sample collected. Some of the powder will be used to scour the instruments to make sure no remnants from Curiosity are in the sample. Then the sample will go through the rover's Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device.

From CHIMRA, the samples will be sieved and delivered to two different instruments: the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. The CheMin instrument will use X-rays to determine how the atoms in the rock are arranged within its structure. That will illustrate for scientists how the crystals in the rock developed, and may provide a clue as to whether water played a role in that development. The SAM instrument will be used to examine the samples for elements such as methane which may indicate that there was once life on the Martian surface.

"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," said NASA's John Grunsfeld. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America."

END

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Monday, February 11, 2013

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