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

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: March 5, 2013 6:53:31 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight (and Mars) News - March 5, 2013 and JSC Today

Hope you can join us at Hibachi Grill this Thursday for our monthly NASA retirees luncheon for some fellowship and good food at 11:30.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            This Week at Starport
2.            Innovation Day 2013 Roadshow
3.            Environmental Brown Bag -- Invaders at JSC
4.            JSC NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) Project -- Tomorrow
5.            FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, March 6
6.            'Reaching for Your Own Special Star' With Alan Bean - March 21
7.            NASA's Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing Featured at TopCoder Roadshow
8.            Sixth Annual NASA Golf Tournament -- Register Now
9.            Applications Being Accepted for Scholarship
10.          2013 Yuri's Night Houston 5k Fun Run
11.          RLLS ISS Russia Travel, Cell Phone, Interpreter and Meeting Support Training
12.          Investigating Aircraft and Flight System Mishaps: April 23 to 25
________________________________________     NASA FACT
" In Fiscal Year 2012, nearly $23 million was obligated to contracts performed by veteran-owned businesses in Texas."
________________________________________
1.            This Week at Starport
There are a few rodeo tickets still available in the Building 11 Starport Gift Shop: STYX (two tickets, March 4); Dierks Bentley (one ticket, March 6); and Jake Owen (six tickets, March 13). Single tickets may be purchased.
The last day to order discount tickets to Supercross on April 6 will be March 8. Seats are $23 or $12. Discount tickets to Disney on Ice are still available. All seats are $26 for April 20 and April 21. Pre-order at the Starport Gift Shops.
"Keep Calm and NASA On" shirts are still available in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops.
Sam's Club will be in the Starport Cafés on Thursday and Friday from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM to discuss membership options. Receive a gift card on new memberships or renewals. Cash or check only for membership purchases.
The JSC Federal Credit Union will be in the Starport Cafés tomorrow from 11 AM to 1 PM. Stop to chat with representatives about your membership needs.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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2.            Innovation Day 2013 Roadshow
Innovation Day 2013 will be filled with collaborative and challenging activities aimed at connecting individuals from across the center. You will have the chance to showcase your exhibits, create C3 forum topics and listen to great guest speakers that touch on topics such as organizational culture change and creating new business by focusing on strategic growth and innovation. Check out the Innovation Day 2013 Roadshow presentation for details and deadlines -- some of which are fast approaching!
Suzan Thomas x48772 https://innovation2013.jsc.nasa.gov/

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3.            Environmental Brown Bag -- Invaders at JSC
Join us TODAY in Building 45, Room 751, from noon to 1 p.m. to hear our JSC Wildlife Biologist Matt Strausser (CSC) and Master Naturalist Aloisia Jones (ProDyn) discuss JSC's ongoing efforts to reduce the impact of invasive species on-site and restore important habitat. Be sure to bring any questions you may have about wildlife and native plants to discuss. For more information, check out the JSC Environmental Office website.
Event Date: Tuesday, March 5, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B45 Room 751

Add to Calendar

JSC Environmental Office x40878 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/ja/ja13/index.cfm

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4.            JSC NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) Project -- Tomorrow
You are invited to JSC's SAIC/Safety and Mission Assurance Speaker Forum featuring Jason Poffenberger, NEEMO Dive Ops and Logistics Lead with Wyle Integrated Science & Engineering.
Subject: JSC NEEMO Project
Date/Time: Tomorrow, March 6, from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM.
Location: Building 1, Room 966
Poffenberger works for the Exploration Missions and Systems Office and supports The Exploration Analog Mission Development Forum. This forum was created to ensure a robust scientific approach to analog testing and to provide peer review for all of the products that result from analog mission execution. Learn about the capabilities of the NEEMO project as an analog to human space exploration. He will focus on the most recent mission (NEEMO 16), which was the most complex mission to date.
Event Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Building 1, room 966

Add to Calendar

Della Cardona/Juan Traslavina 281-335-2074/281-335-2272

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5.            FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, March 6
Do you need some hands-on, personal help with FedTraveler.com? Join the Business Systems and Process Improvement Office for a FedTraveler Live Lab tomorrow, March 6, any time between 9 a.m. and noon in Building 12, Room 142. Our help desk representatives will be available to help you work through travel processes and learn more about using FedTraveler during this informal workshop. Bring your current travel documents or specific questions that you have about the system and join us for some hands-on, in-person help with the FedTraveler. If you'd like to sign up for this FedTraveler Live Lab, please log into SATERN and register. For additional information, please contact Judy Seier at x32771.
If you would like to attend, please use this SATERN direct registration link to register: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Gina Clenney x39851

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6.            'Reaching for Your Own Special Star' With Alan Bean - March 21
Join the Rice University Space Frontiers Lecture Series on Thursday, March 21, at 7 p.m. for a special evening with former NASA astronaut and artist Alan Bean. "Reaching for Your Own Special Star" begins at 7 p.m., with a reception in the McMurtry Auditorium in Duncan Hall earlier at 6:30 p.m.
The closest visitor parking for the event (paid) is near Entrance 2. Parking for $1 is available in lot west of the stadium (entrance on Greenbriar Street), but plan for a long walk or ride on the shuttle. All parking must be paid by credit card.
For a campus map, click here.
For details about other lectures and to be added to the mailing list, go here.
Pamela S. Jones 713-348-3353

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7.            NASA's Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing Featured at TopCoder Roadshow
Dr. Jeffrey Davis, Human Health and Performance director, will make a presentation on Collaboration and Open Innovation at NASA as part of the TopCoder Roadshow on March 12. TopCoder, who supports the NASA Tournament Lab through NASA's contract with Harvard Business School, will be hosting a free event at the Gilruth Center focused on Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing. NASA is also featured as part of Harvard Professor Dr. Karim Lakhani's presentation on "The Crowd as an Innovation Partner." For more information and to register for the event, click here.
Event Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2013   Event Start Time:8:30 AM   Event End Time:2:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Lynn Buquo x34716 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov

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8.            Sixth Annual NASA Golf Tournament -- Register Now
Registration is open for the Sixth Annual NASA Golf Tournament!
Proceeds benefit the Starport (JSC-Exchange) Scholarship Program.
Tournament Information:
o             Date: Thursday, April 25
o             Location: Magnolia Creek Golf Club
o             Time: 8 a.m. shotgun start (driving range and breakfast taco bar open at 7 a.m.)
o             Maximum number of golfers: 200 (50 teams)
Registration information:
o             Early Registration: March 1 to 15 | $125 (Individual)/$500 (Team)
o             Regular Registration: March 16 to 29 | $135 (Individual)/$540 (Team)
o             Late Registration: March 30 to April 5 | $145 (Individual)/$580 (Team)
Register online or in person at the Gilruth information desk.
Note: There will be NO day-of registration at the course. All golfers and teams must register by April 5.
Get your team ready to go now -- this event will fill up!
For more information, please call the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304.
Event Date: Thursday, April 25, 2013   Event Start Time:7:00 AM   Event End Time:1:30 PM
Event Location: Magnolia Creek Golf Club

Add to Calendar

Steve Schade x30317 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/golf

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9.            Applications Being Accepted for Scholarship
The NASA College Scholarship Program will award multiple scholarships agencywide to qualified dependents of NASA civil servant employees. The scholarship recipients must pursue a course of study leading to an undergraduate degree in science or engineering from an accredited college or university in the United States. Applications are available online.
The application deadline is March 31.
Amanda Gaspard x31387

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10.          2013 Yuri's Night Houston 5k Fun Run
The 10th Annual Yuri's Night Houston 5k Fun Run is quickly approaching. Hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston, the 2013 event will be held Saturday, April 20, along a brand-new course through the streets of Nassau Bay. There will be some GREAT door prizes, and proceeds will once again go to the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. To register, please click here. Volunteers are also needed. Please contact Mana Vautier if interested.
Mana Vautier 832-422-5494 http://www.yuris5khouston.com

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11.          RLLS ISS Russia Travel, Cell Phone, Interpreter and Meeting Support Training
TechTrans International will provide 30-minute WebEx training classes on March 6, 7 and 8 for the RLLS Portal modules. The following is a summary of the training dates offered:
International Space Station Russia Travel - Wednesday, March 6, at 10 a.m.
Cell Phone - Wednesday, March 7, at 10 a.m.
Interpretation Support - Wednesday, March 7, at 2 p.m.
Meeting Support - Friday, March 8, at 2 p.m.
o             Locating desired support request module
o             Quick view summary page for support request
o             Create new support request
o             Submittal requirements
o             Submitting on behalf of another individual
o             Adding attachment (agenda, references)
o             Selecting special requirements (export control)
o             Submitting request
o             Status of request records
o             View request records
o             Contacting RLLS support
Please send an email to James.E.Welty@nasa.gov or call 281-335-8565 to sign up for these RLLS Support WebEx Training courses. Classes are limited to the first 20 individuals registered.
James Welty 281-335-8565 https://www.tti-portal.com

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12.          Investigating Aircraft and Flight System Mishaps: April 23 to 25
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily in Building 20, Room 205/206. This course provides instruction in aviation and flight systems mishap investigation basics and policy. Topics discussed include: NASA NPR 8621.1B -mishap investigation requirements and terminology, investigator qualifications, board composition and field techniques. Evidence identification, recovery and protection, witness interviewing and site mapping, along with individual component systems and material failures, are key areas discussed during sessions on field investigation. The course contains extensive accident investigation information generally applicable to aviation accidents, which can be applied to other areas of flight systems mishaps such as unmanned aerial vehicles, rockets, balloons, and other spaceflight systems mishaps such as Genesis. To register for this course, you MUST FIRST have completed the required four-part online prerequisite: (SMA-002-07) Overview of Mishap Investigations; (SMA-002-08) Mishap Investigation Roles and Responsibilities; (SMA-002-09) Completing the Investigation and Mishap Report; and (SMA-002-10) Root Cause Analysis. Update Profile First. SATERN Registration Required. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Polly Caison x41279

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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:
·         11 am Central (Noon EST) – File of E35/36 Qual Training Simulation Runs in Star City
·         12:25 pm Central (1:25 EST) – E34's Kevin Ford, Tom Marshburn & Chris Hadfield with Monrovia Unified School District in Monrovia, CA

Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday, March 5, 2013

HEADLINES AND LEADS

House full-year CR offers something for SLS and Commercial Crew

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

The deadline for sequestration has come and gone, but another deadline is looming: the continuing resolution (CR) that funds the federal government at fiscal year 2012 levels expires on March 27. On Monday, the House Appropriations Committee introduced a new continuing resolution that would run through the end of fiscal year 2013. The CR would fund most programs at 2012 levels, but there are a few exceptions in various agencies, including NASA.

Dragon Cargo Operations Underway Aboard Space Station

Mark Carreau – Aviation Week

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were well into the unpacking of the SpaceX Dragon resupply capsule on March 4, after the mission successfully overcame post-launch thruster difficulties that delayed the rendezvous and berthing by a day. Station commander Kevin Ford, assisted by flight engineer Tom Marshburn, grappled the second SpaceX Dragon supply vessel with Canada's 58-ft.-long robot arm on March 3 at 5:31 a.m. EST. "It's not where you start," Ford told Mission Control after the capture. "It's where you finish. You guys really finished this one on the mark." NASA's Mission Control took over at that point, berthing the capsule with the U.S. segment Harmony module via remote commands at 8:56 a.m.

ISS crew unpacks science, apples from Dragon capsule

James Dean - Florida Today

International Space Station residents are unloading some of the nearly 1,300 pounds of supplies and science equipment hauled up over the weekend by SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule. Two freezers for science experiment samples were among the first items transferred to the orbiting research complex. The six-person crew also began setting up a materials science experiment that will run for about three weeks until the Dragon's planned March 25 return to Earth. And they retrieved fresh fruit delivered from an orchard belonging to a SpaceX employee's family.

Orion Components Arrive at KSC in Preparation for Test Flight

Jason Rhian - AmericaSpace.org

There has been talk in some quarters that NASA's next manned spacecraft, the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, will never fly. Someone should probably send NASA a memo. On Wednesday, Feb. 27, at the space agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, members of the media were taken on a tour of the Launch Abort System Facility where they got to see the Launch Abort System (LAS) that will be used on the first flight of Orion, currently slated to take place next year. This mission has been dubbed Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1). No one company could develop and build Orion on its own. Even in terms of one component, multiple subcontractors are needed to provide the required hardware. While Lockheed Martin is busy with Orion, Alliant Techsystems was developing, testing, and building the LAS.

Commercial space race heats up
Antares test could challenge dominance of Falcon 9 rocket

Devin Powell - Nature

The Falcon 9 rocket, which made its fifth successful flight on 1 March, has stolen the spotlight in the commercial space race. Built by SpaceX, a young company based in Hawthorne, California, the rocket has become NASA's choice for hauling cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). But it may soon have competition from a rocket that has kept a low profile. After years of delays, Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Virginia, has slated the first test flight of its Antares rocket for April. If that goes well, its second mission could carry an unmanned Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS within months. "There's no one main problem, no show-stopper," says Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski. "In hindsight, this has just taken us longer to do than we thought it would."

NASA's 'Inspirational' Mars Flyby

Amy Shira Teitel - Discovery News

Planetary flybys are awesome. As a spacecraft swings around the trailing side of a planet it gains speed and direction, momentum engineers can use to accelerate it to its next destination using little if any fuel for mid-course corrections. It's not a new idea. Gravity assists are how the Voyager probes visited the outer planets with one launch, it's how NASA got Apollo 13 home and it's how Denis Tito plans to whip a married couple around the far side of Mars within the decade. And in the mid 1960s, it's something NASA considered as a future application for its Apollo hardware.

'Fire! Fire!' ISS Crew Tested Ahead of Shortened Journey

Alexey Eremenko - RIA Novosti

On Monday the crew of the 35/36th expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) spent six hours in a simulation module waiting for things to go wrong – and they did. It could have been a toilet malfunction (imagine that in space), it could have been a hull breach. It actually was a fire – and though no equipment was really torched in Moscow Region's Star City, the crew had to take it seriously or risk staying home. The standard pre-flight exam, which simulates various emergencies in space, was revised for the ISS mission set to launch from Baikonur on March 29, which is to be the first manned flight of the Soyuz rocket to complete the trip to the station in six hours, not two days.

New crew to space station undergo 'malfunction' tests

Indo-Asian News Service

The crew of the next expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) spent six hours in a simulation module waiting for things to go wrong - and they did. It could have been a toilet malfunction; it could have been a hull breach. It actually was a fire - and though no equipment was really torched in Moscow region's Star City, the crew had to take it seriously or risk staying home. The standard pre-flight exam, which simulates various emergencies in space, was revised for the ISS mission set to launch from Baikonur March 29, which is to be the first manned flight of the Soyuz rocket to complete the trip to the station in six hours, not two days.

Why Astronauts Need Good Teeth in Space

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

Brushing your teeth is not just a daily chore for people on Earth. Good teeth are vital for astronauts in space, but not for reasons you might think. In new video about astronauts and their teeth, the European Space Agency took the streets to find out what people across Europe thought are the reasons spaceflyers need to keep their pearly whites in good shape. While ESA officials revealed the surprising answer to space dental health in the video's end, some public answers ranged from the sensible to outright odd.

501 days in space with your spouse: Could you handle it?

Elizabeth Landau - CNN

One man. One woman. Five hundred and one days in an RV-size space capsule. Will they still be speaking when they return? The Inspiration Mars Foundation is seeking to send two people -- potentially a middle-aged married couple -- to space in a capsule that would pass within 100 miles of Mars. Although no formal application process has begun, the Mars mission masterminds are already receiving résumés and technology ideas from interested people, said Jane Poynter, president of Paragon Space Development Corp., which is developing technologies for the mission that's hoping to launch in 2018. Whether the money to finance the Mars mission materializes remains to be seen, but if it does happen: Who would these space adventurers be, and how would they cope? It's never been tried before, so really, no one knows.

Talking science with the House Committee Chair

Ira Flatow - National Public Radio's Science Friday

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, discusses the nation's top science priorities, including the importance of research on how to protect Earth from dangerous asteroids. But in a tight budgetary climate, who will pay? Remember the meteor that exploded over Siberia and the asteroid that took a close swing by our planet? You also remember that these things happened on Friday, the same day. Congressman Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, called these two events a stark reminder of the need to invest in space science. He says we need to study and track near-Earth asteroids and invest in research on how to protect our planet from space rocks.

"We Were At War:" The Need for Apollo 9

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org

The year 1969 was pivotal in so many ways for humanity. At its dawn, American astronauts had newly returned from circling the Moon, and by July it had produced our first piloted landfall on another world. These astonishing achievements continue to resonate today—particularly following last year's untimely loss of Neil Armstrong—but there is one mission, flown in March 1969, which is a decidedly unsung hero of the effort to plant bootprints on the lunar surface. It rose no higher than a couple of hundred miles from Earth, it went nowhere near the Moon … and yet, without it, those historic steps at the Sea of Tranquility could not have been taken. The mission was Apollo 9, and for its astronauts it would be forever remembered as a mission of gumdrops and spiders, sickness and golden slippers … and the flight of "The Red Rover."

MEANWHILE ON MARS...

Curiosity computer swap continues; more troubleshooting on tap

William Harwood - CBS News

Work to carry out what amounts to an electronic brain transplant aboard the Curiosity Mars rover -- a complex sequence of steps to switch operations to a backup flight computer -- is continuing this week amid ongoing analysis to figure out how to resolve memory corruption discovered last week in the rover's active computer. The memory glitch interrupted science operations, forcing flight controllers to put the craft in a low-activity "safe mode" while the computer switch was implemented. Richard Cook, the Mars Science Laboratory project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told CBS News Monday the computer swap was going well and that limited science operations should resume shortly.

Curiosity switched to backup computer after memory glitch

Jason Rhian – AmericaSpace.org

Flight controllers operating NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity have switched over to the one-ton, nuclear-powered robot's redundant computer. This was caused after a memory issue arose in Curiosity's primary computer. On Thursday, Feb. 28, at approximately 11:30 a.m. EST, the rover was placed into safe mode. This is a precautionary mode that reduces the rover's activities to the bare minimum. In the following days the rover will be brought back up to its normal operating level. Like its predecessor, the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, the problem appears to have originated in the rover's flash memory within the affected computer.
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COMPLETE STORIES

House full-year CR offers something for SLS and Commercial Crew

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

The deadline for sequestration has come and gone, but another deadline is looming: the continuing resolution (CR) that funds the federal government at fiscal year 2012 levels expires on March 27. On Monday, the House Appropriations Committee introduced a new continuing resolution that would run through the end of fiscal year 2013. The CR would fund most programs at 2012 levels, but there are a few exceptions in various agencies, including NASA. The table below compares the FY12 levels with those in the FY13 bill for NASA's various accounts
(All values in millions of dollars):

Account                       FY12                FY13 CR
Science                        $5,090.0            $5,090.0
Space Operations         $4,223.6            $4,000.0
Exploration                   $3,770.8            $4,152.0
Cross Agency Support $2,995.0            $2,847.4
Space Technology        $575.0              $575.0
Aeronautics                   $569.9              $569.9
Construction                 $390.0              $390.0
Education                     $138.4              $138.4
Office of IG                  $37.3                $37.3
TOTAL                          $17,790.0          $17,800.0

While most accounts are not changed by the new CR, the bill does decrease funding for Space Operations and Cross Agency Support, while increasing Exploration by a corresponding amount. The CR, like the FY12 appropriations bill, includes specific breakouts for programs in the Exploration account, revealing increases for both the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket and the Commercial Crew program:

Item                 FY12                FY13 CR
Orion                $1,200.0            $1,200.0
SLS                  $1,860.0            $2,119.0
Comm'l Crew     $406.0              $525.0
Expl. R&D        $304.8              $308.0
Expl. Total        $3,770.8            $4,152.0

The $525 million for Commercial Crew is what the Senate had included in its previous FY13 appropriations bill; in the deal between NASA and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the agency, Wolf had agreed to support funding for the program at or near the Senate's level (the House's version of an FY13 appropriations bill last year funded Commercial Crew at $500 million). The increase in SLS funding isn't explained; even with the increase, it falls well short of the $2.64 billion authorized for the program in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act.

Separately, for NOAA's budget, the House CR sets aside $802 million of the agency's $1.95 billion procurement budget for the GOES-R weather satellite program. The press release from the committee notes that the bill includes a "provision allowing additional funding to maintain the launch schedule for new weather satellites, ensuring the continuation of data for weather warnings and forecasts, including forecasts of severe weather events."

The full House is scheduled to take up the bill as soon as Wednesday. The amounts listed above are still subject to 5% cuts from sequestration, as the CR does not address the deficit reduction requirements of the Budget Control Act.

Dragon Cargo Operations Underway Aboard Space Station

Mark Carreau – Aviation Week

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were well into the unpacking of the SpaceX Dragon resupply capsule on March 4, after the mission successfully overcame post-launch thruster difficulties that delayed the rendezvous and berthing by a day.

Station commander Kevin Ford, assisted by flight engineer Tom Marshburn, grappled the second SpaceX Dragon supply vessel with Canada's 58-ft.-long robot arm on March 3 at 5:31 a.m. EST.

"It's not where you start," Ford told Mission Control after the capture. "It's where you finish. You guys really finished this one on the mark."

NASA's Mission Control took over at that point, berthing the capsule with the U.S. segment Harmony module via remote commands at 8:56 a.m.

The station's crew entered Dragon at 1:14 p.m. EST March 3, essentially teaming with SpaceX to regain the time lost with March 1 post-launch troubleshooting of a blockage in the helium plumbing that pressurized the oxidizer side on three of four thruster pods. By March 2, the NASA-led ISS mission management team was satisfied the SpaceX control team in Hawthorne, Calif., had overcome the blockage and successfully carried out the altitude raising maneuvers required to proceed with a rendezvous and grapple.

"Launching rockets is difficult, and while the team faced some technical challenges after Dragon separation from the launch vehicle, they called upon their thorough knowledge of their systems to successfully troubleshoot and fully recover all vehicle capabilities," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who monitored the launch and troubleshooting from Hawthorne.

The mission is the second flown by SpaceX under a $1.6 billion, 12-flight NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract awarded in late 2008.

The space agency is positioning SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., which received a similar $1.9 billion resupply services contract, to restore U.S. space station cargo capabilities lost as NASA's shuttle fleet was retired in mid-2011.

Orbital Sciences is preparing for its first launch to the station this summer, a demonstration flight that will qualify the Dulles, Va.-based company for regular resupply flights.

The Dragon CRS-2 capsule is scheduled to remain berthed to the station until March 25.

The lengthy stay is paced in part by science experiments included in a 2,700-lb. cargo delivery that will make the return journey as well.

Those investigations examine the root health of thale cress plants grown under varying oxygen levels and the solidification of lead- and tin-based liquids. In the absence of gravity, the investigations could unmask processes that reveal how plants respond to flooding and point to improved processes for producing materials from molten metals.

Over the berthing period, Dragon will be reloaded with just more than 3,000 lb. of research gear and equipment in need of refurbishment as well as protective packaging. SpaceX vessels will be positioned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja, Calif., to await the Dragon's parachute descent for recovery.

ISS crew unpacks science, apples from Dragon capsule

James Dean - Florida Today

International Space Station residents are unloading some of the nearly 1,300 pounds of supplies and science equipment hauled up over the weekend by SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule.

Two freezers for science experiment samples were among the first items transferred to the orbiting research complex.

The six-person crew also began setting up a materials science experiment that will run for about three weeks until the Dragon's planned March 25 return to Earth.

And they retrieved fresh fruit delivered from an orchard belonging to a SpaceX employee's family.

"How you like dem apples?" SpaceX said in a Twitter message, with a picture that showed an apple floating in microgravity.

The Dragon arrived early Sunday, a day late after experiencing some thruster trouble following Friday morning's successful 10:10 a.m. launch from Cape Canaveral.

Station commander Kevin Ford and Expedition 34 crewmate Tom Marshburn snared the Dragon with a 58-foot robotic arm at 5:31 a.m. Sunday.

The spacecraft was attached to the Harmony node just before 9 a.m. and its hatch opened after lunchtime.

This is a Dragon's third visit to the station, the second under a $1.6 billion NASA resupply contract.

Orion Components Arrive at KSC in Preparation for Test Flight

Jason Rhian - AmericaSpace.org

There has been talk in some quarters that NASA's next manned spacecraft, the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, will never fly. Someone should probably send NASA a memo. On Wednesday, Feb. 27, at the space agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, members of the media were taken on a tour of the Launch Abort System Facility where they got to see the Launch Abort System (LAS) that will be used on the first flight of Orion, currently slated to take place next year. This mission has been dubbed Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1).

No one company could develop and build Orion on its own. Even in terms of one component, multiple subcontractors are needed to provide the required hardware. While Lockheed Martin is busy with Orion, Alliant Techsystems was developing, testing, and building the LAS.

Alliant Techsystems, more commonly known as ATK, showcased the company's LAS at an event held at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Abort Systems Facility (LASF). The solid fuel in this motor is inert. In fact the only working motor on this particular LAS is the jettison motor, which will be used to remove the LAS once Orion has reached orbit.

"I can't express enough just how invaluable a piece of equipment this is for crews of upcoming missions; having flown on the space shuttle four times, we didn't have a system like this on shuttle. The crew, when they're on board the Orion capsule, will feel much more comfortable knowing that this abort motor and the entire abort system will be their savior should they need it," said Brian Duffy, a former space shuttle commander who currently works at ATK. "From the time they are on the launch pad, until they are in a part of the flight profile where they no longer need an abort system and will jettison it, this system will work to keep them safe in the event of an accident."

EFT-1 will be a unique mission. NASA's Space Launch System, or "SLS," is the United States' planned next generation heavy-lift booster. It will not, however, be ready in time for EFT-1. As such, NASA has tapped United Launch Alliance to provide one of the company's powerful Delta IV Heavy rockets to propel EFT-1 into orbit. Orion will then travel some 3,600 miles away from Earth and return at approximately 20,000 miles per hour. The purpose behind this is simple: when Orion returns to Earth at these speeds, its protective heat shield will be put to the ultimate test.

"During this mission we'll take Orion out some 15 times higher than where the space station currently orbits and then bring it back," said NASA Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer.

Meanwhile, in California, Aerojet announced that it has finished building both the jettison motor as well as the Crew Module Reaction Control System (CM RCS) pod assemblies for the Orion that will fly the EFT-1 mission.

The jettison motor stands out on the EFT-1 LAS, as it is the only active motor on the LAS structure. The LAS, provided by Utah-based Alliant Techsystems (ATK), is filled with inert fuel. While one might argue that there is no need for an escape system to be mounted to a spacecraft that will carry no crew—the opposite is true. EFT-1 is a test flight, providing NASA with data about the handling characteristics of the spacecraft. As such, having this Orion resemble as close as possible the real thing is crucial."We are pleased to complete the EFT-1 flight jettison motor ahead of schedule and under budget," said Aerojet Vice President of Space & Launch Systems Julie Van Kleeck. "Aerojet's jettison motor represents the next generation in launch abort system technology. Our team has taken the Apollo-era launch abort motor design and significantly advanced it through the application of modern propellants, materials, and innovative design features."

Aerojet has shipped the EFT-1 CM RCS pods components to the Operations and Checkout Building at KSC. These should provide the full complement of primary and secondary control required for maneuvers upon reentering Earth's atmosphere.

Orion will use Aerojet's MR-104G 160-lbf thrust monopropellant engines. These are legacy systems having been used on both of the Voyager missions, as well as Magellan's mission to Venus. They also have been used on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Landsat satellites.

"This marks shipment of the first two pods in a series that will culminate in a total of eight pods comprised of four single engine and four dual engine pods," said Van Kleeck. "The EFT-1 CM RCS builds upon the successful MR-104G Engine Design Verification Testing that was conducted in 2011."

Commercial space race heats up
Antares test could challenge dominance of Falcon 9 rocket

Devin Powell - Nature

The Falcon 9 rocket, which made its fifth successful flight on 1 March, has stolen the spotlight in the commercial space race. Built by SpaceX, a young company based in Hawthorne, California, the rocket has become NASA's choice for hauling cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). But it may soon have competition from a rocket that has kept a low profile.

After years of delays, Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Virginia, has slated the first test flight of its Antares rocket for April. If that goes well, its second mission could carry an unmanned Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS within months. "There's no one main problem, no show-stopper," says Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski. "In hindsight, this has just taken us longer to do than we thought it would."

Both companies have received hundreds of millions of dollars from NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme. With the space shuttle retiring in 2011, the agency wanted alternatives to paying for ISS deliveries aboard the Russian Progress and Soyuz craft. NASA deliberately put two companies in competition with each other to keep prices down over the long run and to attract other customers. "The government is the necessary anchor tenant for commercial cargo, but it's not sufficient to build a new economic ecosystem," says Scott Hubbard, an aeronautics researcher at Stanford University in California and former director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

With 30 years of experience in making satellites and rockets, Orbital once seemed the safer bet. Instead of assembling its vehicles from scratch like SpaceX, Orbital uses parts made by companies with proven track records. The core of the first stage of Antares was designed and built by veterans KB Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, both based in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. Cygnus's sensors come from Mitsubishi Electric in Tokyo and its pressurized cargo module was built at a Thales Alenia Space plant in Turin, Italy. "Orbital used more heritage technology," says Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's commercial crew and cargo programme. "That was less risky for us."

But the company did not enter COTS until 2008, two years after SpaceX. With the clock ticking, NASA allocated less money for Orbital and ordered a simpler ship. Unlike SpaceX's Dragon capsule, Cygnus can't carry sensitive biological experiments, such as those that grow protein crystals in microgravity. It burns up on re-entry, so it can't return samples to Earth. And it can't be modified to carry humans.

Nor has it yet flown. Orbital chose to launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia; less crowded than Cape Canaveral in Florida, which hosts most NASA rocket launches, Wallops usually caters for smaller vehicles such as scientific balloons and sounding rockets. The facility's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport had to build a new launch pad for Antares, which took longer than expected. Originally scheduled for 2010, the demonstration launch slipped to 2012, and then to 2013, after Hurricane Sandy hit the spaceport last October.

Antares' engines, built half a century ago for Russia's Moon programme and recently refurbished, have also proven finicky. A test on 13 February was aborted when pressure anomalies were detected in one of the engines. A successful test on 22 February means that Orbital can now proceed to a launch in April.

Having another cargo carrier would provide a safety net for the ISS. That need was made clear when Dragon's thrusters initially failed during the flight last week, almost preventing the spacecraft from docking with the station. But there is skepticism about whether competition will drive down prices. "This is a mixed-up crazy business and a small market that isn't all that price sensitive," says Henry Hertzfeld, a space-policy expert at George Washington University in Washington DC.

Factors such as political or military concerns often shape demand, he says. And reliability is as much of a concern as price. The market could grow: private space stations, orbiting fuel depots and asteroid-mining operations have all been proposed as future clients for commercial rockets. But for now, supplying the ISS and launching satellites are the major niches.

SpaceX is making inroads with the latter: it has contracts for launches with the US Air Force and commercial operators in Israel, Thailand, Luxembourg and Mexico. Orbital, too, wants to develop business beyond NASA, but it has not yet booked any launches. "Right now, we're focused on getting the rocket launched," says Frank Culbertson, executive vice-president of Orbital's advanced-programmes group. "Then we can talk to other customers."

NASA's 'Inspirational' Mars Flyby

Amy Shira Teitel - Discovery News

Planetary flybys are awesome.

As a spacecraft swings around the trailing side of a planet it gains speed and direction, momentum engineers can use to accelerate it to its next destination using little if any fuel for mid-course corrections. It's not a new idea. Gravity assists are how the Voyager probes visited the outer planets with one launch, it's how NASA got Apollo 13 home and it's how Denis Tito plans to whip a married couple around the far side of Mars within the decade.

And in the mid 1960s, it's something NASA considered as a future application for its Apollo hardware.

NASA's study of manned flybys came via Bellcomm, a division of AT&T established in 1963 to assist the space agency with research, development, and overall documentation of systems integration. In the mid 1960s, flybys with upgraded and modified Apollo hardware seemed like a natural stepping stone between the Apollo lunar missions and the agency's inevitable next steps of an Earth-orbiting space station, manned Mars landings, and manned missions in orbit around Venus.

It was Bellcomm mathematician A. A. VanderVeen who studied the manned flyby possibilities for NASA.

In 1967, he identified 5 favorable launch opportunities for a Mars flyby between 1978 and 1986. Two windows in 1979 and 1983 were ideal, feasible with then-existing launch technology and had the shortest transit time between planets. VanderVeen found that very little propulsion was needed with these launch windows.

After the initial burn towards Mars, physics would take over and guide the spacecraft to its rendezvous with Mars. Probes would do the hard work. Approaching Mars, the crew would release automated probes, one of which could even land on the surface, collect a sample, and launch to rendezvous with the spacecraft on its way back to Earth. VanderVeen also noted that these dates were perfect: Mars was bound to be NASA's next target after Apollo.

But weight was a persistent issue in all the Mars flyby scenarios; the propulsion needed to launch a spacecraft into Earth orbit then fire it off to Mars was substantial. VanderVeen found an elegant, and scientifically exciting, solution: add a Venus flyby to the Mars trip. Mars, Earth, and Venus align with the sun five times every 32 years, but Venus and Mars alignments happen more frequently making double (Earth-Venus-Mars-Earth) or even triple (Earth-Venus-Mars-Venus-Earth) flybys a viable mission. Taking advantage of favorable launch windows to Venus also reduced overall launch weight.

VanderVeen found triple flyby opportunities in February 1977, as well as in 1981 and 1983. He described the 1981 mission in detail in a report from September 1967. The 790 day mission would begin, ideally, with a launch on May 26, 1981. It would swing by Venus on Dec. 28, past Mars on Oct. 5, 1982, past Venus again on March 1, 1983 before splashing down on Earth on July 25.

VanderVeen kept looking for possible flyby windows, and the more he looked the more he found them. He found a chance in 1978 for a dual-planet flyby, an Earth-Venus-Mars-Earth mission that had the option of adding a second pass by Venus on the return leg from Mars. This mission would ideally launch on Nov. 28, 1978, the crew would pass Venus on May 11, 1979, Mars on Nov. 25, Venus again on Jan. 29, 1980 and return to Earth on Jan. 31, 1981. It would be an 800 day mission.

With every launch opportunity, VanderVeen highlighted the unique scientific aspect of each mission. By virtue of the planets' continual motion around their own axis and orbits around the sun, each flyby window presented the potential crew with a different view of the planet. In windows would have the crew fly over a planet's pole, others around the equator. Some missions would take the crew around the night side of the planet, others would have then swing around the day side. But, scientifically speaking, there were no bad paths. Whatever the crew couldn't see and record visually they could measure with infrared sensors and mapping radars.

These flybys never really stood a chance at flying. Not only were they predominantly proof of concept mission studies designed to show what Apollo hardware was capable of, NASA's future was too uncertain to really plan something so lofty at the time.

Maybe the time is right now. Maybe Dennis Tito's team will discover some awesome multi-planet flyby opportunity as a backup in case Inspiration Mars misses its January 2018 launch date.

'Fire! Fire!' ISS Crew Tested Ahead of Shortened Journey

Alexey Eremenko - RIA Novosti

On Monday the crew of the 35/36th expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) spent six hours in a simulation module waiting for things to go wrong – and they did.

It could have been a toilet malfunction (imagine that in space), it could have been a hull breach. It actually was a fire – and though no equipment was really torched in Moscow Region's Star City, the crew had to take it seriously or risk staying home.

The standard pre-flight exam, which simulates various emergencies in space, was revised for the ISS mission set to launch from Baikonur on March 29, which is to be the first manned flight of the Soyuz rocket to complete the trip to the station in six hours, not two days.

"If everything goes well, the short trip may become standard procedure for flights to ISS starting late 2013," said Sergei Krikalev, the head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, 25 kilometers east of Moscow.

Cutting flight time to the ISS was made possible by computing equipment improvement over the past decade and the accumulation of ballistic data from past launches, which allowed for more precise launch calculations, Krikalev said on Monday.

But the shorter trip has its own risks because the crew has less time to react to emergencies, Krikalev told RIA Novosti after exams began in Star City on the second day of the four-day-long cosmonaut exam session, set to wrap up on Wednesday.

After the US Space Shuttle program was concluded in 2011, the expendable Soyuz spacecraft, whose first modification debuted in 1967, remain the sole means of reaching the ISS for humans, though a number of programs to replace the Shuttle are in the works under NASA's aegis. One of the tentative successors, the privately owned Dragon, completed an unmanned flight to the ISS on Sunday.

The main and backup spaceman crews assemble for exams at dawn at two separate but equally huge hangars at the Gagarin Center, whose size dwarfs the life-sized spacecraft simulators inside.

Crew captains draw exam tasks listing various emergencies they will have to deal with during the simulation flight. The tasks are coded, so only the examiners know which five kinds of space trouble the crews will be facing that day.

"The main emergency will be…fire!" Valery Korzun, who oversees cosmonaut training at the facility, told reporters after the main crew disappeared in the ISS simulator.

"But hush! They may overhear us and know what they've got coming," he said in a dramatic whisper.

However, cosmonauts never really flunk the tests – not after years of preparation. "It's too late to be afraid of anything at this stage," Alexander Misurkin, one of the three members of Expedition 35/36, said before entering the station's imitation module.

Both teams passed the tests with flying colors on Monday, same as on the first day of the exam session on Friday, Gagarin Center's press service reported. The media were not allowed to observe exactly how they fought the mock fire and other space trouble.

The 35/36th ISS mission comprises two Russians – Misurkin, a space newbie, and Pavel Vinogradov, who completed two space flights – as well as US astronaut Christopher Cassidy, a former Navy SEAL who flew to the ISS on a Space Shuttle in 2009.

The mission is poised not just to test a new launch procedure, but also to break a record: Vinogradov, who is expected to mark his 60th birthday on August 31 in orbit, is on track to become the oldest Russian in space.

The record is currently held by Valery Ryumin, who flew in 1998 at the age of 58. Both he and Vinogradov still fall far short of the world record holder US astronaut John Glenn, who made his second and last trip to space in 1998 when he was 77 years old – 36 years after his first flight at the dawn of the space era.

New crew to space station undergo 'malfunction' tests

Indo-Asian News Service

The crew of the next expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) spent six hours in a simulation module waiting for things to go wrong - and they did.

It could have been a toilet malfunction; it could have been a hull breach. It actually was a fire - and though no equipment was really torched in Moscow region's Star City, the crew had to take it seriously or risk staying home.

The standard pre-flight exam, which simulates various emergencies in space, was revised for the ISS mission set to launch from Baikonur March 29, which is to be the first manned flight of the Soyuz rocket to complete the trip to the station in six hours, not two days.

"If everything goes well, the short trip may become standard procedure for flights to ISS starting late 2013," said Sergei Krikalev, head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, 25 km from Moscow.

Cutting flight time to the ISS was made possible by computing equipment improvement over the past decade and the accumulation of ballistic data from past launches, which allowed for more precise launch calculations, Krikalev said.

But the shorter trip has its own risks because the crew has less time to react to emergencies, Krikalev said.

After the US Space Shuttle programme was concluded in 2011, the Soyuz spacecraft, whose first modification debuted in 1967, remains the sole means of reaching the ISS for humans, though a number of programmes to replace the Shuttle are in the works under NASA's aegis.

One of the tentative successors, the privately-owned Dragon, has completed an unmanned flight to the ISS.

The main and backup spaceman crews assembled for exams at two separate but equally huge hangars at the Gagarin Center, whose size dwarfs the life-sized spacecraft simulators inside.

Crew captains drew exam tasks listing various emergencies they will have to deal with during the simulation flight.

The tasks are coded, so only the examiners know which five kinds of space trouble the crews will be facing that day.

"The main emergency will be fire!" Valery Korzun, who oversees cosmonaut training at the facility, said after the main crew disappeared in the ISS simulator.

Cosmonauts never really flunk the tests - not after years of preparation.

"It's too late to be afraid of anything at this stage," Alexander Misurkin, one of the three members of Expedition 35/36, said before entering the imitation module.

Both teams passed the tests with flying colours, the Gagarin Center said.

The media was not allowed to observe exactly how they fought the mock fire and other space trouble.

The 35/36th ISS mission comprises two Russians - Misurkin, a space newbie, and Pavel Vinogradov, who completed two space flights - as well as US astronaut Christopher Cassidy, a former Navy SEAL who flew to the ISS on a Space Shuttle in 2009.

The mission is poised not just to test a new launch procedure, but also to break a record -- Vinogradov, expected to mark his 60th birthday Aug 31 in orbit, is on track to become the oldest Russian in space.

The record is currently held by Valery Ryumin, who flew in 1998 at the age of 58. Both he and Vinogradov still fall far short of the world record holder US astronaut John Glenn, who made his second and last trip to space in 1998 when he was 77 years old - 36 years after his first flight at the dawn of the space era.

Why Astronauts Need Good Teeth in Space

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

Brushing your teeth is not just a daily chore for people on Earth. Good teeth are vital for astronauts in space, but not for reasons you might think.

In new video about astronauts and their teeth, the European Space Agency took the streets to find out what people across Europe thought are the reasons spaceflyers need to keep their pearly whites in good shape.

While ESA officials revealed the surprising answer to space dental health in the video's end, some public answers ranged from the sensible to outright odd.

"I think in space the circumstances are different and that your bones lose calcium, and then your teeth become bad more quickly," responded one Dutch-speaking interviewee.

Astronauts do lose bone density while living in space, but that isn't the reason they need to take care of their teeth. Other interviewees came up with more creative reasons for astronaut dental care.

"Because it is weightlessness, there is no traction between the food and the teeth," said a person interviewed in Brussels, Belgium. "So I think it is very hard, very difficult to make the food digestible in the stomach."

Another respondent thought speed might be a factor.

"Because of the speed you are travelling with? I don't know," said one interviewee in Maastricht, Netherlands.

Though he seemed unsure, the Dutch respondent actually wasn't far off from the real answer. Astronauts are required to have good teeth because of the extreme conditions created by launch and landing, ESA officials said.

"In fact, astronauts need good teeth because the acceleration forces and vibrations during a flight into space can be very strong," an ESA narrator says in the video. "During the launch phase, an astronaut has to endure a force of up to four times their own body weight. Ill-fitting dental fillings could become loose or fall out, and the atmospheric pressure change may be painful when cavities are present."

Good dental hygiene does not stop on the ground. Spaceflyers need to continue taking care of their teeth while living on board the orbiting laboratory in preparation for their return to the surface of the Earth.

When space station residents are done with their time in orbit and return home, it's also a violent trip. The Russian Soyuz capsule responsible for taking spaceflyers to and from the $100 billion laboratory is still speeding at about 6.2 miles per hour (10 km/h) when it touches down.

So if you have hopes to be an astronaut, don't forget to brush your teeth each day. It's a good practice whether you live on Earth or not.

501 days in space with your spouse: Could you handle it?

Elizabeth Landau - CNN

One man. One woman. Five hundred and one days in an RV-size space capsule. Will they still be speaking when they return?

The Inspiration Mars Foundation is seeking to send two people -- potentially a middle-aged married couple -- to space in a capsule that would pass within 100 miles of Mars.

Although no formal application process has begun, the Mars mission masterminds are already receiving résumés and technology ideas from interested people, said Jane Poynter, president of Paragon Space Development Corp., which is developing technologies for the mission that's hoping to launch in 2018.

Whether the money to finance the Mars mission materializes remains to be seen, but if it does happen: Who would these space adventurers be, and how would they cope? It's never been tried before, so really, no one knows.

Who should go?

A rigorous process will be put in place for selecting the crew, Poynter said. A man and a woman are sought for the roles to "represent humanity," she said; a married couple is "preferred" but not required.

"You want to make sure that you start out with a relationship between the two people that go on this mission that is on really solid footing, that they know how to pick themselves up after a falling-out," Poynter said.

Poynter said she and husband Taber MacCallum, CEO of Paragon, are "intrigued" by the idea of being the pioneers to go on the mission. They have experience in close quarters, having spent two years with six other people sealed inside Biosphere 2, a research facility situated on a little over 3 acres in Arizona, in the early 1990s.

"It's always helpful to have somebody help buoy you in difficult times and problem-solve with and to share the marvelous moments with as well," she said of living there with her husband. "I think it really helped us be productive crew members."

Friends who have known each other for decades, or siblings who get along well and are comfortable spending long periods of time with one another, would also be suitable for this sort of situation, said Jason Kring, assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, who is not involved with the mission.

But there is some evidence from extreme environments on Earth to support the married couple idea, says Lawrence Palinkas of the University of Southern California, who has studied more than 1,000 Americans who have spent winters in Antarctica over a four-decade period.

Based on Palinkas' studies at the South Pole, the most stable individuals and those with the most stable relationships are middle-aged married couples.

That works out well for space travel, given that older people have less time left in their lives for space radiation to potentially cause cancer, Kring said. Radiation is also associated with infertility, so the couple should not be seeking to have children after the mission.

Prolonged separation from family and friends back home is a huge source of stress for people in isolated, confined environments, Palinkas said. Having a close confidant in space would allow them to share their day-to-day experiences with someone they love and trust.

NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, who has logged more than 4,330 hours in space, agreed: "Often, work that is as demanding as ours in terms of time away from family. think it might be great to be able to spend that kind of time with your sweetheart."

Will two people get along?

Of course, the behavioral quirks and annoyances that you might easily brush aside on Earth would be magnified in a confined space over 501 days. Even in a healthy marital relationship, there can be such a thing as too much contact, Palinkas said.

Nobody really knows the ideal size of a crew to travel this long, but Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, is skeptical about having just two people. If one of them is emotionally unavailable, the other is out of luck. (As for whether sex has ever been tried in space, "there are rumors but no official acknowledgment," Suedfeld said.)

"When both of you are under stress -- and these two people would be under the same level of stress, the same kind of stress -- each of them would want emotional support and be too focused on their own problems to give it to the other," Suedfeld said.

In his view, it's better to have a team with some amount of diversity, where no one background or nationality predominates. The International Space Station usually has a crew of six these days, and that's worked out well, he said.

There are other challenges: If one person were to get sick, the remaining crew member would need to take over all tasks to keep the vehicle operational, Kring said.

In Biosphere 2, which is much bigger than a space capsule, Poynter and MacCallum never got on each other's nerves, she said; it was others who irked them, so the couple could "rally together."

But whether any given couple who goes to Mars would still want to be together after 501 days is anyone's guess, experts say.

Psychological difficulties

Scientists do not have data from actual missions to Mars, but situations of isolation and confinement on Earth give us some clues as to how things might go.

In the Mars500 experiment, a collaboration between the Russian, European and Chinese space agencies, a crew of six men was locked in a chamber near Moscow for 520 days to simulate a Mars trip. The crew received no fresh food or fresh air and could not see the sun.

A recent study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that most crew members experienced sleep disturbances of some kind but found a trend toward increased sleep and rest as the mission went on. One crew member appeared to live on a 25-hour day instead of 24. Researchers also noted "behavioral aspects of torpor" in the crew, akin to hibernation of some birds and animals.

In his Antarctica studies, Palinkas and colleagues found that in a psychologically healthy group, about 5% of people experience clinically significant psychological symptoms. These include depression, anxiety, substance abuse problems, sleep disorders and adjustment disorders relating to not getting along with crewmates.

However, most people do well, he said, and see a lot of benefit from participating in the experience -- "definitely an increase in feelings of self-confidence, self-efficacy -- the belief that if they can handle this, they can pretty much handle anything."

In Biosphere 2, where Poynter's days involved pruning shears, plants and a two-way radio, the crew of eight didn't exactly live in psychological peace.

Poynter remembers standing in the sweet potato field one day, and "it was like a time portal opened." In her mind, she was a child again, having an argument with one of her brothers. Such vivid flashbacks have also occurred to people living in Antarctica, she said.

The Biosphere 2 group eventually sought and received psychological counseling via telephone.

Bored, bored and bored 40 minutes later?

"We've got to select for people that can maintain upbeat and happy attitude in the face of adversity and that are resilient," Poynter said.

Aboard the International Space Station, astronauts often enjoy just gazing out the window at Earth from afar. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has a popular Twitter account that he uses to post extraordinary photos of the planet.

But a couple en route to Mars would see Earth shrink until it's a dot among many others in the lonely sky.

"There's going to be, I'm quite sure, a feeling of separation that no one has experienced before," Suedfeld said.

Don't forget the communication delay. A message may take as long as 40 minutes to travel to Earth and back, and there may be times when communication with the ground is not possible at all.

If a crew member is having a breakdown and someone on Earth is trying to counsel him or her, Kring says, it will take 20 minutes for a message such as "try to think calming thoughts" to reach the spacefarer and another 20 minutes for an acknowledgment to get back to Earth.

One solution to the boredom question could be time-release entertainment packages, Suedfeld said. In other words, some movies or music will not become "unlocked" until a given amount of time has passed so that the couple doesn't blow through all of their entertainment at once.

Poynter said the Biosphere 2 crew created music using the sounds from the animals and machinery in the biosphere. Music-making or reading would be options on the Mars journey, too, she said.

Eventually, presumably, Mars would come into view.

"To look down on Mars and be the first people to see, potentially, our future home planet --" Poynter interrupted herself to let out a high-pitched "Oooo!" -- "gives me chills just thinking about it."

... And other health issues

Besides mental factors, gravity differences in space present a slew of physiological challenges that aren't easily simulated on Earth over long periods of time. There's evidence that the visual system can be impaired, and the weakening of bones and muscle may occur, Kring said.

How the two people aboard the space capsule would deal with these sorts of issues, on top of mental stress, remains to be seen -- as does whether the mission will actually launch as envisioned in January 2018.

"I'm all for supporting this, and I certainly am a big proponent of human spaceflight, but I wonder if all of this can be figured out in five years," Kring said.

Talking science with the House Committee Chair

Ira Flatow - National Public Radio's Science Friday

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, discusses the nation's top science priorities, including the importance of research on how to protect Earth from dangerous asteroids. But in a tight budgetary climate, who will pay?

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. Remember the meteor that exploded over Siberia and the asteroid that took a close swing by our planet? You also remember that these things happened on Friday, the same day. Congressman Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, called these two events a stark reminder of the need to invest in space science. He says we need to study and track near-Earth asteroids and invest in research on how to protect our planet from space rocks.

But with the nation collectively tightening its belt and with $85 billion in automatic spending cuts going into effect today, the sequester deadline, where's the money going to come from? Representative Lamar Smith is a Republican from the 21st District of Texas. He is chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He joins us by phone from San Antonio. A shout-out to Texas Public Radio, San Antonio and Austin, one of our two most powerful stations is your district, Congressman. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

REPRESENTATIVE LAMAR SMITH: I'm glad to hear it, Ira. Good to be with you and your listeners, as well.

FLATOW: Thank you. You're going to have a hearing soon, is that right, to discuss...?

SMITH: We have a hearing scheduled for next Wednesday, March 6. I suspect it will get a lot of attention. And the hearing is on incoming objects from space that might or might not be headed towards the United States - headed toward the Earth, and I worry about the United States I guess as much as anything else. But this is a hearing that is going to try to find out what more we can be doing so that we can detect these incoming objects that might do us harm and possibly even prevent them from hitting the Earth if that is where they are going.

The concern we have is that we are not able right now, we don't have the capability, of detecting these what are called near-Earth objects, and there are objects of such a size that if they're not civilization-ending, they could certainly be demolish a city or incapacitate an entire country. We just need to make sure that we know if they're headed our way, and if they are headed our way try to figure out what to do about it.

FLATOW: And what could we do to find out those things?

SMITH: Well, a couple of things. The best way to be able to observe, track and detect these near-Earth objects is by means of telescopes, either on the ground or out in space, perhaps in orbit around the sun, perhaps in orbit around the Earth - but get them out of the atmosphere that so distorts the images.

And right now we're going to having witnesses from the administration next Wednesday, including from NASA, telling us what they're doing right now, what their capability is and what more we need to do. And quite frankly I think we do need to spend more money on this particular - on this particular subject, but we need to prioritize our spending within NASA.

We're not going to be getting any more money. We might be getting less money. So we're going to have to re-prioritize and make sure that we give some more funds to this effort. When you have a situation where these near-Earth objects could actually threaten the lives of millions of people, I think we need to take more steps than we're taking now to be able to detect them.

FLATOW: Do you have any idea what this might cost?

SMITH: No I don't. You know, some of the telescope upgrades they were talking about might in the millions of dollars. There's a private effort underway. There is actually a half a billion dollars to put a telescope in orbit around the sun to try to detect these near-Earth objects that might be coming toward us, either asteroids or comets.

And so it's probably somewhere in between, not cheap, but if we start thinking about it now and planning for the future, then we're going to be able to I hope prevent a possible calamity from occurring in the future.

FLATOW: What parts of NASA, since you say that NASA's budget will have to decide where you take it from, where would you see in NASA's budget the money coming from?

SMITH: Well, I don't know that we have looked at all the, you know, all the components and all the agencies within NASA, and maybe we can just spend money smarter. I don't know what we're going to have to shortchange if we have to re-prioritize the spending. But I'm sure we'll be able to come up with several million dollars to help, at the very minimum, improve our optics and improve the telescopes that we have now.

And - but again, this is what the administration will be testifying about before the Science, Space and Technology Committee next Wednesday.

FLATOW: So are you going to ask them to come up with ideas of where they might cut in their own budgets?

SMITH: Well, where they might find the funding, how they would re-prioritize, what kind of a priority they would give a project like this. And I think now this has gotten everybody's attention, and so everybody realizes that it needs to get a higher priority. And NASA, to its credit, has been spending some more money. They've been under guidelines from Congress for the last two or three years to make this a priority, and I think it's just going to get increased emphasis this year.
FLATOW: One last question, and I'll let you go. You know, this being sequestration day, are you concerned about budgets that you control in your committee, science budgets, that they might be slashed?

SMITH: Of course - well, let's put this in perspective. We're talking about across-the-board cuts of about 2.3 percent, and while it may mean more in certain areas, nevertheless, you know, it's regrettable, I wish we weren't having these kinds of cuts, they could have been avoided. I still think we need to cut spending, but we need to do in a smart way, not across-the-board way. And we could have set our priorities up if there had been a little bit more cooperation from the White House and from the Senate.

The House of Representatives has actually twice passed offsets to the sequestration. The Senate has not passed anything. And the administration hasn't come up with any specific alternatives to the sequestration; only the House has. So if they can't come up with a better idea, let's go with the House idea, and we could have avoided it.

FLATOW: All right, well, I'm certainly not one to debate the politics of this with you because as you know we'll get nowhere. But I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today and wish you good luck in deciding - because I think, you know, maybe the public really does believe this is a national priority about finding that asteroid with our name on it.

SMITH: We haven't - we don't know that one has the Earth's name on it yet, but we need to find out if such an asteroid is out there, and I think the American people do consider this to be a priority.

FLATOW: Congressman Smith, thank you very much for joining us today. Lamar Smith, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, a Republican from Texas. He is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which he's also - he's based in San Antonio.

"We Were At War:" The Need for Apollo 9

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org

The year 1969 was pivotal in so many ways for humanity. At its dawn, American astronauts had newly returned from circling the Moon, and by July it had produced our first piloted landfall on another world. These astonishing achievements continue to resonate today—particularly following last year's untimely loss of Neil Armstrong—but there is one mission, flown in March 1969, which is a decidedly unsung hero of the effort to plant bootprints on the lunar surface. It rose no higher than a couple of hundred miles from Earth, it went nowhere near the Moon … and yet, without it, those historic steps at the Sea of Tranquility could not have been taken. The mission was Apollo 9, and for its astronauts it would be forever remembered as a mission of gumdrops and spiders, sickness and golden slippers … and the flight of "The Red Rover."

By the beginning of 1969, the Apollo command and service modules (CSM) which would transport men to the Moon had been extensively tested, but an "all-up" demonstration of the entire ship, including the lunar module (LM), remained untried. The first flight-ready LM had arrived at Cape Kennedy in June 1967, and, though not wholly complete, it was successfully launched on an unmanned test in January of the following year. Its TRW-built descent engine was fired, as was its ascent engine, and the spider-shaped vehicle proved its guidance system. However, all was far from well with the LM. The ascent engine—needed for astronauts to rise from the lunar surface—had fuel-injector problems and the craft's windows became fractured or blown out during high-temperature tests. Broken wiring, stress corrosion, and excessive weight added to the LM's headaches.

Still, confidence in the first unmanned mission (LM-1) convinced NASA managers that a repeat (LM-2) was not necessary and efforts accelerated to send LM-3 into orbit with a human crew. It was called "the D-Mission," and to understand where it "fitted" in the Apollo lunar landing framework, it is important to recap a number of fundamental changes to NASA's plan.

In September 1967, the agency defined seven steps—"A" through "G"—to land on the Moon. First came unmanned tests of the mammoth Saturn V booster with the Apollo CSM, flown as Apollo 4 in November 1967. The "B" mission, completed by Apollo 5 in January 1968, was the unmanned LM test. A piloted "C" flight involved the CSM in Earth orbit and took place in October 1968. The final steps to the Moon focused on four increasingly difficult missions: "D" (a manned demo of the whole Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit), "E" (a repeat of D, albeit in a high elliptical orbit), "F" (a full dress rehearsal in lunar orbit), and "G" (the landing itself).

During the course of 1966, astronauts Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott, and Rusty Schweickart were named to support the D mission. Their CSM would be launched atop a Saturn IB rocket, followed a few days later by the launch of another Saturn IB, carrying LM-3. McDivitt's crew would rendezvous, dock, and perform joint exercises with the lunar module, including a spacewalk by Schweickart to put the lunar EVA suit through its paces. Chomping hard at the heels of McDivitt's team was the E crew of Frank Borman, Mike Collins, and Bill Anders … but circumstances in early 1967 would complicate the relationship between these six men.

On 27 January, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed when a flash fire swept through their command module during a launch pad test. More than a year later, the McDivitt and Borman crews seemed in line to fly the D and E missions sometime in late 1968 or early 1969. However, when the Saturn V flew its enormously successful first flight, and worried by CIA reports that the Soviet Union was close to testing its own lunar rocket, NASA accelerated Borman's mission to a full-blown circumlunar expedition, thus eliminating one of the steps in the A-G plan and bringing the landing closer. Hopes that their E mission could be retasked as something called "E-prime," flying to the Moon with LM-3, fell to pieces when it became obvious that the lunar module would not be ready in time. In August 1968, it was decided that Borman's crew would fly first on Apollo 8 to circumnavigate the Moon, without an LM, after which McDivitt's men would fly Apollo 9 on the D mission to wring out the whole spacecraft in Earth orbit.

Apollo 9 would be a tough mission, involving two separate manned spacecraft … and for Dave Scott, the command module pilot, it encapsulated rendezvous, docking, and an unspoken need to train for worst-case, what-if scenarios. If McDivitt and Schweickart, after undocking, were somehow unable to control the LM, Scott might be able to dock with them manually … but if not, the harrowing alternative was that he might have to abandon them and return home alone. "Bringing Apollo home as a one-man show," Scott wrote in his memoir, Two Sides of the Moon, "involved my mastering many aspects of all three jobs performed by the crew, Jim's as commander, Rusty's as systems engineer, my own as navigator. The sheer logistics of operating in all three positions, let alone learning the complex procedures this would require, was challenging, to say the least."

During training, Scott had devised a routine in the simulator to handle this daunting role. First, he would check Apollo's electrical, communications, and environmental systems from Schweickart's seat, then would move to the center couch to fulfil his own duties of setting up the relevant programs on the computer, before finally moving into McDivitt's couch to perform the re-entry manoeuvre itself. "It was pretty exacting," he wrote. Yet it was a dire eventuality for which all Apollo command module pilots would have to be prepared.

Equally exacting was the possibility that Scott might have to rescue McDivitt and Schweickart if the LM developed problems. For example, if it was unable to initiate its correct rendezvous maneuver within a minute of when it was planned, he would need to rescue them. If the two craft successfully redocked, but the pressurized tunnel was inaccessible, or if the hatches failed to open, McDivitt and Schweickart would need to leave the lunar module in their suits and spacewalk back over to the command module's side hatch. And this was hampered by the fact that McDivitt (who was not scheduled to make an EVA) would have been totally reliant upon Schweickart's emergency oxygen supply. "If he didn't make the EVA transfer within 45 minutes," Scott wrote, darkly, "he would die."

For months, the astronauts and their backups, Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Al Bean, methodically rehearsed the complicated steps; steps which were further compounded as technicians and engineers tested them by dreaming up failures, systems faults, and other emergencies. "Our launch was almost postponed," added Scott, "because we could not get enough training, especially for the rendezvous profile. After every sim was finished, we were debriefed and often had to explain why we had failed to deal with a particular situation. It was all pretty intense."

Apollo 9 was indeed postponed, but not through lack of training. Originally set to fly on the last day of February 1969, the crew arrived at Cape Kennedy three weeks prior to launch to finish their training and quarantine. Living conditions had changed quite markedly from the spartan crew quarters of Mercury and Gemini days: they each had individual bedrooms, a shared bathroom, a large and comfortable living area, a miniature gym in which they played handball at night, and a superb chef, Lew Hartzell. "He was great," Scott related, "a former cook on a tugboat, who served us with marvellous meals every time we sat down." But in the final days before launch, Jim McDivitt's white blood-cell count was found to be low, hinting that he might be coming down with a cold.

By this time, the giant Saturn V booster had been sitting on swamp-fringed Pad 39A for almost two months, and its 28-hour launch countdown had begun. Thirty minutes into a planned three-hour hold at T-16 hours, managers decided to recycle the clock to T-42 hours and give McDivitt time to recover his strength. Indeed, in his autobiography, Deke Slayton related that "all three of the crew came down with colds," a suggestion which Scott and Schweickart attempted to dismiss by donning jogging clothes and running around the perimeter of the launch complex. Flight International quoted a medical report from the astronauts' physician, Dr. Chuck Berry, which mentioned "sore throats and nose congestion." Whatever the truth, it certainly illustrated, in Slayton's mind, that the crews were being worked hard and were increasingly susceptible to "opportunistic infections."

The brief postponement did not detract from what promised to be a spectacular, though challenging, year for NASA: the year in which John Kennedy's very public promise to land a man on the Moon would be realised. Up to five missions were planned, each one building on—and dependent on—the success of its predecessor. If the D mission was a success, the stage would be set for Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan to ride Apollo 10 to the Moon in May for the F mission. Only if Stafford's flight verified the performance of the LM's engines and consolidated knowledge of the lunar gravitational field, could Apollo 11—the long-awaited G mission, with Neil Armstrong in command—stand any chance of touching down on the lunar soil sometime in July. Despite the confidence, the doubts remained. If Apollo 11 did not succeed, the task of making the first landing would pass to Apollo 12 in September, and if that failed there would be time for Apollo 13 in November to achieve Kennedy's deadline.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, it remains remarkable that such enormous steps were taken in such a short span of time. Four percent of the federal budget (during the mid-1960s) had much to do with the hectic pace of Apollo's journey to the Moon, but the ability of the United States to achieve a lunar landing on this timescale—barely eight years—certainly puts current projects to return humans to the lunar surface to shame. In an ironic twist, closer and more cordial working ties with the Soviet Union, cemented by the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks from 1969 onwards, eliminated the need for such a vigorous, all-or-nothing human space program. Apollo's race to the Moon was seen, quite literally, as "peaceful warfare" with the Soviets and the astronauts were its warriors. "We were at war," wrote Gene Cernan in his autobiography, The Last Man on the Moon. "If they reached the Moon first, it would be Sputnik and Gagarin all over again, but much worse, and we would be the losers." Unlike Sputnik and Gagarin, failure to achieve the lunar landing would not simply be embarrassing, it would represent an abject failure to deliver on Kennedy's promise. As February wore into March 1969, the Apollo 9 crew—colds or no colds—could not launch soon enough.

By 7:30 a.m., 1 March, when the clock resumed, the main concerns surrounded a low-pressure disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico, just southwest of Cape Kennedy, which was causing overcast weather conditions. As the countdown entered its final stretch, dull, storm-bringing stratocumulus clouds covered 70 percent of the sky, with darker blotches of altostratus high above them. Nonetheless, preparations continued. On the evening of 2 March, Scott and Schweickart drove out to the pad to watch as their Saturn V, lit up by searchlights, underwent its final checks. Next morning, clad in their pure white space suits, the three astronauts arrived at the pad to a very different scene. The scores of engineers and technicians were gone and it was an eerily silent place, the sense of stillness punctuated only by the hissing of the Saturn itself. As technicians helped Jim McDivitt into the left-hand seat of the command module and Rusty Schweickart into the seat on the right, Scott waited patiently outside on the gantry and had a few precious minutes to gaze out across the marshy expanse of the Cape and watch the Sun peek over the horizon.

Precisely on the stroke of 11:00 a.m., the five mighty F-1 engines in the Saturn V's first stage roared to life. From a height, weight, and payload-to-orbit standpoint, it remains the largest and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status. McDivitt, Scott, and Schweickart's ride to orbit was virtually trouble-free, although the experience was truly unforgettable. For Scott, who flew two Saturn Vs in his astronaut career, it was like being compressed and released, atop a giant spring, as the forces and vibrations alternately threw them against their restraining straps, then smashed them back into their seats.

In space, Scott's first task would make or break Apollo 9. Less than three hours after launch, he separated the CSM from the S-IVB final stage of the Saturn, whose adaptor panels were automatically jettisoned to expose LM-3. Using the thruster quads on the service module, Scott crisply turned his ship 180 degrees and prepared to dock with the spidery lander. At this point, the first problem arose when Scott found that his translational thrusters were not functioning properly. "If we couldn't pull the lunar module out from its storage pod," he wrote, "we didn't have a mission. We had this short moment when it seemed it wasn't going to work." As he held the ship's position steady, McDivitt and Schweickart scrambled to identify the cause of the problem. Eventually, it was traced to several of the attitude engine indicators, whose propellant valves were showing up as "closed."

"After all the pre-flight testing of the valves," Scott continued, "this was certainly not supposed to happen. At one point ground control thought one of us must have bumped several of the switches closed as we were jostled around during launch, but we were strapped into our seats so tightly this was impossible. Later analysis concluded that the valves had flicked shut as a result of the shock caused by staging." The problem was fairly straightforward to rectify: McDivitt recycled the switches to "open," and Scott was able to execute a perfect nose-to-nose docking, a little over three hours into the mission. The intricate procedure, known as "transposition and docking," was critical: on missions to the Moon, it would be done after the S-IVB had performed the translunar injection burn, "and that," wrote astronaut Mike Collins in his memoir, Carrying the Fire, "was no time to discover that the scheme didn't work for some reason."

In its Apollo 9 press kit, NASA identified no fewer than seven "alternate" flight plans which McDivitt, Scott, and Schweickart might pursue in the event of problems. Firstly, Alternate "A" presupposed a problem with the extraction of LM-3 from the S-IVB … and this would have enforced a full-duration, ten-day solo mission with just the CSM. The other alternates applied to problems with LM-3 itself—covering everything from life-support system failures to a troublesome engine, and from a faulty rendezvous radar to an unsafe descent stage—and in each case the crew would have performed as much as they could with the available set of options. Whatever happened, if possible they would attempt station-keeping with the lander, Schweickart's EVA, and a long burn of the descent and ascent engines.

In completing the first transposition and docking, the Apollo 9 crew had achieved the first American link-up between two pressurized, habitable spacecraft. The next order of business was to confirm that the docking probe and tunnel between the command and service modules and the lunar module was functional. Unlike the spacewalk by Soviet cosmonauts Yevgeni Khrunov and Alexei Yeliseyev in January 1969, McDivitt and Schweickart would transfer between ships internally, in shirtsleeves.

After pressurizing the 4-foot-long tunnel between the two craft, verifying the integrity of the 12 latches on the docking ring, connecting umbilicals to provide the lunar module with electrical power, and disassembling the probe and drogue, it was time to separate from the S-IVB for good. Four hours into the mission, Scott threw a switch which fired pyrotechnics to release the lunar module from the S-IVB, and again pulsed the thruster quads to draw the complete Apollo craft free. Forty minutes after separation, the S-IVB's restartable J-2 engine was lit again to enter an "intermediate coasting" orbit, preparatory for a third and final burn. The final firing, which began some six hours into the mission and burned until the propellant supply was all used up, allowed the S-IVB to escape Earth's gravitational influence and established it in a solar orbit. Major objectives of the repeat firings were to demonstrate the J-2's ability to restart and to test its performance under conditions beyond those for which it was designed.

In the meantime, McDivitt, Scott, and Schweickart were preoccupied for the remainder of their first day in orbit with checks to ensure that the combined command, service, and lunar modules were spaceworthy. Among their initial tasks was a series of firings of the Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine, one of whose primary roles on missions to the Moon would be to perform the lunar-orbit-insertion and transearth injection burns. The first SPS burn, conducted late on 3 March and lasting five seconds, verified that the combined spacecraft could withstand the stress and gauge their "oscillatory response."

With this work complete, the time finally came for what Slayton called the mission's "big deal"—the checkout of LM-3 by McDivitt and Schweickart. After Schweickart made a dramatic spacewalk, the lunar module was to undock for a series of joint rendezvous exercises. During his planned two-hour excursion, Schweickart was to put the EVA suit with its bulky backpack, designed to enable astronauts to work on the lunar surface, through its paces. He was to exit through the small, square hatch and onto the lunar module's front "porch." Scott had spent more than two years perfecting his knowledge of the CSM, so McDivitt and Schweickart had devoted themselves to understanding every inch of "their" ship. Each man had prepared exhaustively for his respective tasks.

What they had not prepared for, or bargained on, was Schweickart's adverse reaction to the space environment, which almost stalled the mission in its tracks.

Part 2 – "Does Anyone Read Me?" The Success of Apollo 9

Early on 5 March 1969, two men floated through a 4-foot-long tunnel from their command ship into a spider-shaped vehicle whose descendents would soon carry astronauts to the surface of the Moon. Apollo 9 was not destined to go to the Moon, or even depart Earth orbit, and yet its criticality to the goal of planting American bootprints in the lunar dust before the end of the 1960s cannot be underestimated. During their ten days circling Earth, the crew of Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott, and Rusty Schweickart would prove for the first time that Apollo—as a complete spacecraft, with its conical command module, its cylindrical service module, and its arachnid-like lunar module—was capable of performing as advertised. However, no sooner had they begun work, the first problem reared its head … for one of the astronauts was sick.

When McDivitt and Schweickart floated through the connecting tunnel into the lunar module early on the morning of 5 March, their actions to prepare it for its first manned flight were honed to perfection by hundreds of hours of training. At 6:15 a.m. EST, Schweickart entered its cramped cabin—about the size of a broom cupboard, dominated by the large, cylindrical ascent engine cover in the middle of its "floor"—and was followed by McDivitt less than an hour later. Both men agreed that the whirring systems, particularly the environmental control unit, were noisy. By 8:00 a.m., the first major step in preparing their lunar module for independent flight was completed when its four spidery legs were swung away from the body. Time, however, was not on their side, and shortly thereafter McDivitt was forced to admit to Mission Control that they were behind schedule. The reason: Schweickart, two days into his first space flight, was sick.

At the time of Apollo 9, "Space Adaptation Syndrome" was virtually unknown, and the bulk of military fighter and test pilots in the astronaut corps, imbued as they were with seemingly limitless stores of testosterone and The Right Stuff, tended not to report it, lest their susceptibility impair their chances of being assigned another mission. "It had been accepted," wrote Gene Cernan in his autobiography, The Last Man on the Moon, "that everyone felt woozy on getting up there, and … maybe you might even toss your cookies a couple of times, but you sure as hell didn't tell anyone … and neither did your crewmates." Frank Borman only reluctantly admitted to throwing up on the way to the Moon during Apollo 8, swearing Jim Lovell and Bill Anders to secrecy. McDivitt's crew was determined to avoid such problems and, upon reaching orbit, tried not to make sudden head movements and took the anti-nausea drug Dramamine.

Still, issues of dizziness plagued them for the first couple of days of the mission. Things really got bad on the 5th, when Schweickart was preparing the LM for its first solo flight. He suffered a bout of nausea as soon as he awoke, and then felt increasingly queasy as he donned his space suit in the weightless cabin, finding a vomit bag just in time. As Lunar Module Pilot Schweickart performed his initial duties, flipping switches to begin powering up the lander's systems, his condition steadily worsened. As fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin explained in his book, Men from Earth: "Rusty … experienced brief vertigo as he floated up through the tunnel into the LM, and ended up staring down at the lander's flight deck." When McDivitt—who had also suffered from episodes of dizziness—joined his crewmate, Schweickart vomited again.

Unlike in Borman's case, it was impossible (and unsafe) to conceal Schweickart's condition from ground controllers. McDivitt knew that the timeline called for Schweickart to make his EVA on 6 March. "Throwing up inside a pressure suit," explained Deke Slayton, "would not only be unpleasant as hell, it might be fatal." And another problem lurked in the shadows. The very act of admitting that one of them was sick, in Gene Cernan's words, "was to admit a weakness, not only to the public and the other astros, but also to the doctors, which would give them reason to stick more pins in us." In the hyper-competitive fraternity of NASA's astronaut corps, racing against the decade to beat the Soviets to the Moon, weakness of any description was not tolerated. Although Cernan would later admit that Schweickart's sickness opened the door to closer medical exploration of the condition, ultimately he "paid the price for us all. Nothing was ever said in public against him, but he never flew another mission."

Apollo 9 marked the first time that two American manned craft would rendezvous, dock, and transfer crews, which demanded individual names for them. There were, admittedly, formal international designations—the main spacecraft was "1969-018A" after reaching orbit, the Saturn V rocket's S-IVB final stage became "1969-018B," crew-carrying ascent stage of the lunar module became "1969-018C," and its discarded descent stage became "1969-018D"—but those, surely, would not do. Names it seemed, for the two manned craft, were definitely needed.

Frivolous or "sensitive" names were frowned upon by NASA, but for Apollo 9, names were necessary. The ungainly appearance of the LM and the conical profile of the CSM made the choice of names an easy one for McDivitt, Scott, and Schweickart: the former would be called "Spider" and the latter "Gumdrop." Two possible reasons have come to light for the Gumdrop name: firstly, and quite obviously, the command module closely resembled the cone-shaped, sugar-encrusted candy, and secondly, it may have been on account of the blue-coloured cellophane wrapping in which that module was delivered to Cape Kennedy. Although introduced as nicknames, extensively use by the astronauts and their training teams led to their becoming official radio callsigns.

Aboard Spider, concern mounted about how to tackle Schweickart's forthcoming EVA. In a bid to preserve his comrade's privacy, McDivitt requested a closed-loop medical consultation with Mission Control, and it was decided that a planned spacewalk from Spider over to Gumdrop was too risky. The chances of Schweickart suffocating if he threw up again, inside his suit, did not bear thinking about. The plan called for him to spend two hours outside, exiting the lunar module and working his way by handrails over to the open hatch of Gumdrop, where a fully-suited Dave Scott would conduct a "stand-up" EVA to observe. Schweickart would then return to the lunar module. The purpose of this test, in addition to evaluating the suit, was to show that a returning lunar crew could spacewalk to the CSM in the event of their being unable to pass through the docking tunnel.

Instead, a comparatively straightforward opening of the hatch for 45 minutes, during orbital daylight, was advocated. By thus exposing themselves to vacuum, but remaining inside Spider, McDivitt and Schweickart could conduct at least some tests of the suits in the required conditions. As managers reprioritized the EVA, the lingering question of how much information to release to the media had worked its way to NASA Administrator Tom Paine. Many astronauts were furious and one even declared that he would "never tell the ground a goddamn thing from up there." Eventually, Paine concurred that the confidentiality of the Schweickart tape should be respected.

If the spacewalk happened—and early on 5 March it seemed unlikely—the astronauts' third day in space was far too busy for them to worry about it. Their packed schedule of engineering and other objectives got underway at 9:28 a.m., with a five-minute televised transmission from inside Spider, showing its instruments and displays, various internal features, and the faces of McDivitt and Schweickart. Managers were suitably impressed by the quality of the images, but not by the sound, which they considered less than satisfactory. Three hours later, McDivitt executed the first firing of the descent engine. In addition to evaluating the combined spacecraft's handling characteristics, the six-minute burn demonstrated the effectiveness of the lunar module's digital autopilot and how the descent engine behaved at full throttle. McDivitt was impressed by the descent engine's performance. Only seconds after starting the burn, he had yelled, "Look at that [attitude] ball; my God, we hardly have any errors." Twenty-six seconds into the firing, those errors remained virtually non-existent and the commander even took a few seconds for a bite to eat.

Schweickart awoke on 6 March, apparently much recovered, no longer nauseous or pale, and McDivitt, notwithstanding the reservations of ground controllers, decided to press ahead with his scheduled EVA onto the lunar module's porch. The cabin was depressurized, although McDivitt found that he had to exert more force than expected to turn the handle and swing the waist-high hatch inwards. Clad in a bulky suit virtually identical to that which crews would use on the Moon and anchored by means of a tether, Schweickart began moving onto the porch a little over 14 minutes later.

In essence, he was now a miniature spacecraft in his own right. "What was important about this EVA," wrote Deke Slayton, "was that the lunar pressure suit was completely self-contained. All the suits used on the Gemini EVAs had relied on the spacecraft to provide oxygen and communications. The consumables and communication equipment for the lunar suit … were all in [the] backpack." With the satisfying gurgle of water coolant and a stable pressure indicator, Schweickart lost no time. As soon as he was outside, he secured his feet in a pair of so-called "golden slippers"—boot restraints attached to Spider's porch, painted gold for thermal reasons—and gained his bearings before embarking on his first task: to observe, photograph, and retrieve thermal samples from the exterior of the LM. By now, Dave Scott, clad in a slightly different suit that was dependent on Gumdrop's systems for life support, had opened his hatch for a "stand-up" EVA.

Next, Schweickart—joking at his own sandy hair colour by aptly nicknaming himself "The Red Rover"—began his first abbreviated attempt to evaluate his ability to move and control his body in the lunar suit. His planned transfer to Gumdrop and back had been cancelled, but he was able to obtain photography of Scott's activities and imagery of the exteriors of both spacecraft. At length, he returned inside Spider and Scott retreated to Gumdrop.

One sound that the astronauts apparently did not hear was the repeated calling from Mission Control; indeed, they were so preoccupied and talkative that the duty capcom was forced to radio ten times—"Red Rover, do you read? Gumdrop, do you read? Hey, does anyone up there read me?"—before he received a response. The four-way radio chatter between Schweickart, Spider, Gumdrop, and Houston was all loud and clear. The main discovery was that leaving the lander in a pressurised suit was more straightforward than expected and the depressurisation and repressurisation of the lunar module's cabin ran without incident.

Another key hurdle on the road to the Moon had been overcome. Said NASA's public affairs officer Jack Riley: "You heard it here, live, first-hand—the adventures of Red Rover and his friends, Spider and Gumdrop!"

Still to be tested were Spider's systems when flying independently of the CSM, including the rendezvous radar, descent and ascent engines, guidance computers, and the docking mechanism. Early on 7 March, keen to get an early start and get ahead on their timeline, McDivitt and Schweickart shimmied down the tunnel into the lander and sealed the hatches between themselves and Gumdrop. At the appointed time, Scott flipped a switch to release Spider … and nothing happened. The latches, it seemed, had "hung-up." After several more tries, in which he repeatedly flipped the switch back and forth, Scott was successful and the two craft separated cleanly. After performing a brief fly-around to ensure that all was well, Scott pulsed his thrusters to back away.

From his station on the left-hand side of the lunar module, McDivitt performed a pitch manoeuvre, then yawed, to enable Scott to verify that Spider's four legs were properly extended. Forty-five minutes later, McDivitt fired the descent engine to insert Spider into a circular orbit some 12 miles "higher" than Gumdrop. As he throttled the engine for the first time, it ran smoothly until it achieved 10 percent thrust, but when advanced to 20 percent both astronauts noted a peculiar chugging noise. McDivitt paused and resumed and was delighted that the strange groaning did not recur, even when he throttled up to 40 percent.

Next, the pyrotechnics were fired to jettison the descent stage and the ascent engine blazed silently to life to place Spider into an orbit "beneath" and "behind" Gumdrop. The kick affected more than just the crew: as the two sections of the vehicle separated, a small cloud of debris hit the ascent stage and knocked out its strobe tracking beacon. In accordance with the laws of celestial mechanics, the lander, being in a lower orbit, began to gain on its quarry. Despite the apparent grace of this orbital ballet, the dangers were still present. Spider had no heat shield, so could not return the crew safely to Earth, which meant that if McDivitt and Schweickart encountered insurmountable difficulties, Scott would have to rescue them. A few hours later, the first all-up demonstration of the lunar module in flight was completed in spectacular fashion, with Scott lining up and McDivitt executing an almost-perfect docking.

Almost perfect, that is, because lighting conditions were less than ideal: the Sun was shining directly through the small rendezvous window directly above McDivitt's head. "Using my alignment device," Scott wrote, "I talked him through the manoeuvres and he was right on target, though there were more than a few tense moments." Retracting the docking probe produced the welcoming "ripple-bang" of the capture latches engaging. McDivitt quipped that "that wasn't a docking … that was an eye test!" During their six-and-a-half-hour independent flight, the two men aboard Spider had ventured around a hundred miles from Gumdrop and had cleared another obstacle on the road to the Moon.

Two hours after docking, McDivitt and Schweickart rejoined Scott inside Gumdrop for what would be a fairly relaxed final few days in orbit. The now-unneeded ascent stage was jettisoned and one of the astronauts wistfully remarked that they hoped they had not left anything important behind. When the capcom asked if they had left the LMP—Schweickart—aboard by mistake, McDivitt replied that, no, "I didn't forget him … I left him there on purpose!" A hairy start to Apollo 9 had given way to a huge success … and an opportunity for humor.

The two parts of Spider would ultimately meet the same fiery fate, burning up in the dense layers of Earth's atmosphere, although at very different times. The descent stage lasted barely a couple of weeks, re-entering on 23 March 1969, with its remnants showering into the Indian Ocean, just off the coast of eastern Africa. For the ascent stage, on the other hand, more than a decade would pass before it finally took its destructive plunge. Shortly after being jettisoned by McDivitt's crew, its engine was fired for just over six minutes to put it into an eccentric orbit with an apogee more than a thousand miles high. Trajectory specialists predicted that it might burn up in the atmosphere sometime in the mid-1970s, but not until 23 October 1981—this author's 5th birthday—did the last relic of what had been the Spider finally return to Earth in a firestorm of glowing debris.

As for the Apollo 9 crew, with the jettisoning of the ascent stage more than 97 percent of the mission was over and the final days were devoted to catching up on scientific and navigation experiments, Earth observations … and some well-earned rest. In his autobiography, Two Sides of the Moon, Dave Scott recalled McDivitt turning to him on their final night and telling him that Apollo 9 would be his last mission. The exhaustion caused by the tremendous responsibility and the burden of command had taken its toll. "It was easy to burn out on missions," Scott wrote, "get permanently tired and not want to fly again. The great NASA team made them look too easy. They were really, really hard."

Splashing down on 13 March 1969, the achievement of Apollo 9 and its intrepid crew brought the lunar landing inexorably closer. Publicly, and within NASA, an enormous groundswell of support rose and it was even muttered that the next flight, Apollo 10, should be retasked with the landing, rather than its mandate of a full dress rehearsal in lunar orbit. This was both unwise and impractical, but highlighted the "Go Fever" prevalent at the time.

"Whatever the decision," wrote Time magazine in late March, "there is now more confidence than ever that U.S. astronauts will be walking on the surface of the Moon this summer."

Never were truer words written.

MEANWHILE ON MARS...

Curiosity computer swap continues; more troubleshooting on tap

William Harwood - CBS News

Work to carry out what amounts to an electronic brain transplant aboard the Curiosity Mars rover -- a complex sequence of steps to switch operations to a backup flight computer -- is continuing this week amid ongoing analysis to figure out how to resolve memory corruption discovered last week in the rover's active computer.

The memory glitch interrupted science operations, forcing flight controllers to put the craft in a low-activity "safe mode" while the computer switch was implemented.

Richard Cook, the Mars Science Laboratory project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told CBS News Monday the computer swap was going well and that limited science operations should resume shortly.

"We spent the weekend kind of getting back, not totally to regular operations, but at least out of the immediate safe mode kind of a thing," he said. "We got it out of safe mode, got back to using the high-gain antenna, so we're well along the way to restoring things."

The problem cropped up last Wednesday when Curiosity failed to send back science data as expected and then failed to put itself to sleep during scheduled downtime. Reviewing telemetry, engineers discovered data corruption in the solid-state memory used by the rover's active flight computer.

Curiosity is equipped with two redundant computer systems, known as "side A" and "side B." Either one is capable of carrying out the rover's mission and only one operates at a time with the other on standby as a backup. The B-side computer was checked out during the cruise from Earth to Mars while the A-side computer has been running operations since before landing last August.

Cook said the switchover to side B is a complex procedure and that engineers are taking their time to make absolutely sure the process is carried out correctly.

"We have some more work to do to upload configuration files and parameters, things like that, so it's going to be another few days or so to kind of get things totally recovered," he said. "But basically, it's going well."

Once the B-side computer is fully up and running, limited science operations should resume. But Cook said the engineering team wants to have a better idea of what went wrong with the A-side memory before going "full throttle" on the B-side computer.

Engineers suspect the memory glitch might have been caused by space radiation, a "single-event upset" in which an energetic particle made it through radiation-hardened components and changed the state of one or more memory addresses. As luck would have it, the corruption was found in the memory's directory, which tracks where data is stored.

If that theory is correct, booting the A-side computer and its software would be expected to re-write the memory blocks, presumably flushing the corrupted data. In that case, assuming no other problems, the A-side computer would be deemed healthy and cleared to serve as backup to the B-side computer.

But before attempting a full re-boot, Cook said, engineers plan to power-up the A-side machine Wednesday, without loading software, to check the status of the non-volatile memory.

"The first thing you can do is just turn it on without software running and just treat it like it's an extended memory bank," he said. "That's actually what we're going to do first, we're just going to read the memory. If it comes back saying it's got a bit error, then that means it's still corrupted."

Because the memory retains data when it is powered down, engineers expect the corruption will still be present when they power the system back up. The real question is whether data can be successfully stored in the affected locations.

"If you then turned around and wrote to it, and it said, hey, I still can't write to this memory cell without getting an error, then it would tell you there's something more systemic going on, or more permanent," Cook said.

It's a bit of a "catch-22" for the computer experts at JPL, he added. Letting the computer's software boot up and write data to the suspect memory locations would destroy evidence that might help pin down what went wrong in the first place.

"So the first thing we're going to do is just bring it up, read the memory, dump memory from the areas where we think we had a problem and take a look at that and then decide what to do next, whether or not to write it," Cook said. "If it looks like it's all better, we may just bring software up and then software will essentially do the same thing, but for all the memory at once."

If the memory problem cannot be corrected, programmers could attempt to bypass the corrupted locations with a software patch.

"There are multiple banks of memory, it's not a single monolithic thing," Cook said. "So if you had an uncorrectable error in one place, then you could effectively map it out, you would tell software when it's booting up don't try to use this area of memory. That's an example of something you could do."

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on Aug. 6. The $2.5 billion mission is devoted to searching for signs of past or present habitability and for evidence of organic compounds like those necessary for life as it is known on Earth.

Curiosity switched to backup computer after memory glitch

Jason Rhian – AmericaSpace.org

Flight controllers operating NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity have switched over to the one-ton, nuclear-powered robot's redundant computer. This was caused after a memory issue arose in Curiosity's primary computer.

On Thursday, Feb. 28, at approximately 11:30 a.m. EST, the rover was placed into safe mode. This is a precautionary mode that reduces the rover's activities to the bare minimum. In the following days the rover will be brought back up to its normal operating level.

Like its predecessor, the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, the problem appears to have originated in the rover's flash memory within the affected computer.

"We switched computers to get to a standard state from which to begin restoring routine operations," said Richard Cook, Curiosity's project manager.

NASA's spacecraft and robotic explorers are built to be extremely resilient and have redundancies built into their various systems. Each of Curiosity's computers, known as A-side and B-side, also has redundant subsystems. This philosophy has proven itself out during many of NASA's more famous missions.

So as it stands, Curiosity is operating on its B-side computer. This is the same computer that was used during the rover's transit phase from Earth to the Red Planet. After Curiosity touched down on the surface of Mars in August 2012, it was switched over to its primary A-side computer, which was used up until Wednesday of last week.

"While we are resuming operations on the B-side, we are also working to determine the best way to restore the A-side as a viable backup," said JPL engineer Magdy Bareh, who leads the mission's anomaly resolution team.

The team noted the issue when it was seen that, while the rover was communicating with its handlers back on Earth, it was not sending recorded data. Reviewing the current status information, Curiosity's controllers saw that she had not switched over to her daily "sleep" mode. The problem is somewhat (although, obviously, far more complex in this case) familiar to those of us dealing with computer files here on Earth. It was described by NASA as such:

Diagnostic work in a testing simulation at JPL indicates the situation involved corrupted memory at an A-side memory location used for addressing memory files.

Curiosity was sent to Mars to conduct scientific research to determine whether or not Mars—more specifically the area around the rover's landing site at Gale Crater—was ever suitable for life. Curiosity, unlike her cousins Spirit and Opportunity and their ancestor Sojourner, is nuclear powered (previous Martian rovers were and are powered by solar arrays). Her mission is scheduled to last two years.

END

More detailed space news can be found at:

http://spacetoday.net/
http://www.bulletinnews.com/nasa/

-KjH
Kyle Herring
NASA Public Affairs
"Your world keeps turning
'round and 'round
but everything is upside down"

Keep the shuttle flying

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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Mars) News - March 5, 2013 and JSC Today

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