Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - March 19, 2013 and JSC Today

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: March 19, 2013 6:51:28 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - March 19, 2013 and JSC Today

 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

 

JSC TODAY HEADLINES

1.            Interviewing Tips - Presented by ASIA ERG

2.            JSC NMA Chapter Luncheon March 28 Featuring CCISD Superintendent

3.            NEW at the Spring Fair -- Win a Personalized Parking Spot

4.            Wrapping up the IT Labs FY13 Project Call -- Q&A Today

5.            Engage With JSC Sustainability

6.            NASA Missions Inspire Online Video Games

7.            Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, March 20

8.            Register for Tomorrow's JSC Still Imagery and Mission Video Training

9.            AIAA Houston March Dinner Meeting

10.          AIAA Election Nominations Due April 5

11.          Registration Deadline - APPEL - Space System Verification and Validation

12.          System Safety Seminar ViTS: April 26, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. - Building 17, Room 2026

13.          RLLS Meeting Support, Cell Phone and Flight Arrival Departure WebEx Training

14.          10th Annual Yuri's Night Houston 5K

________________________________________     NASA FACT

" Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet."

________________________________________

1.            Interviewing Tips - Presented by ASIA ERG

The rodeo might be over, but we have some straight shooters lined up to talk about interviewing from the interviewer's perspective. Join us on for a lunch-and-learn session presented by the Asians Succeeding in Innovation and Aerospace (ASIA) Employee Resource Group (ERG). Panel members Nancy Miyamoto, Deborah Urbanski, Brad Mudgett and Steve Labbe will share their thoughts on interviewing perceptions and expectations from the other side of the table.

Event Date: Friday, March 22, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM

Event Location: B.1, R.602C

 

Add to Calendar

 

Krystine Bui x34186

 

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2.            JSC NMA Chapter Luncheon March 28 Featuring CCISD Superintendent

Please join us for a JSC National Management Association (NMA) chapter luncheon presentation with guest speaker Dr. Greg Smith, Clear Creek Independent School District (CCISD) superintendent. You don't want to miss Smith, who was recently awarded Texas Superintendent of the Year for 2012 despite facing many daunting challenges--including massive state legislative budget cuts that have inflicted a huge strain on school districts.

Smith, CCISD superintendent for the past four years, serves more than 40,000 students and has 27 years of administrative experience.

When: Thursday, March 28

Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom

o    Cost for members: $0

o    Cost for non-members: $20

There are three great menu options to choose from:

o             Cheese Manicotti with two sauces

o             London Broil with Chimichurri sauce

o             Flounder Piccata

Desserts: Red velvet cake or carrot cake

Please RSVP here by NOON this Thursday, March 21, with your menu selection. For RSVP technical assistance, please contact Amy Kitchen via email or at x35569.

Catherine Williams x33317 http://www.jscnma.com/Events/

 

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3.            NEW at the Spring Fair -- Win a Personalized Parking Spot

New this year! Everyone attending the "Safety, NASA Style" Spring Fair on April 3 will have the chance to win a month-long, personalized parking space on-site at JSC. Be sure to stop by the registration table in the Gilruth lobby for a ticket to enter in the random-chance drawing. Be sure to fill out the ticket and drop it off at the table across from registration. You could be the lucky person who gets the Hollywood treatment, JSC style!

Event Date: Wednesday, April 3, 2013   Event Start Time:10:00 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM

Event Location: JSC Gilruth Center

 

Add to Calendar

 

Rindy Carmichael x45078

 

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4.            Wrapping up the IT Labs FY13 Project Call -- Q&A Today

Have you submitted your proposal yet? Proposals are due Thursday at 5 p.m. The last question-and-answer session is today. Details for physical and virtual locations are on our blog site.

Event Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2013   Event Start Time:1:00 PM   Event End Time:2:00 PM

Event Location: B1 / 457A and WebEx

 

Add to Calendar

 

Kevin Rosenquist 281-204-1688 https://labs.nasa.gov/Blog

 

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5.            Engage With JSC Sustainability

You've probably heard of the JSC Sustainability efforts already. The foundation of our program is described in the JSC Sustainability Engagement Strategy. The latest document we've published to educate our JSC employees is the JSC Annual Sustainability Report. We promise that this is a fun, engaging overview for you to peruse through at your disposal. To see the difference we're making at JSC, check out our JSC Annual Sustainability Report.

Laurie Peterson will be giving an inspirational overview of the JSC Annual Sustainability Report. Please come hear the summary so that you can see how your efforts are making a difference, and help us spread the sustainability word! The presentation is today, March 19, in Building 45, Room 751, from noon to 1 p.m.

Event Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM

Event Location: B45 room 751

 

Add to Calendar

 

Michelle Fraser-Page x34237

 

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6.            NASA Missions Inspire Online Video Games

Goddard Space Flight Center and other NASA groups provided funding to develop an online video game to help inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers and explorers. The game has been downloaded nearly 300,000 times, and an expanded version is in the works.

The game was developed by Army Game Studio of Redstone Arsenal, Ala., and Virtual Heroes of Applied Research Associates in Raleigh, N.C. Read the full story from the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) here.

 More NASA documents on video gaming technologies are available in the NTRS. To learn more about the NASA Spinoff publication, click here.

NTRS is part of the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program, which JSC's Information Resources Directorate helps manage.

JSC IRD Outreach x45257 http://www.sti.nasa.gov/

 

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7.            Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, March 20

Do you need some hands-on, personal help with FedTraveler.com? Join the Business Systems and Process Improvement Office for an Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab tomorrow, March 20, 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 Extended TDY 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 FedTraveler. If you'd like to sign up for this Extended TDY 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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8.            Register for Tomorrow's JSC Still Imagery and Mission Video Training

Don't forget to register for tomorrow's training via WebEx from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Learn how to use JSC's Imagery Online (IO) and Digital Imagery Management System (DIMS), which house and manage JSC's still imagery and downlink videos from the human spaceflight programs. Click on the "Classroom/WebEx" schedule and then select the appropriate class to register.

This training is provided by the Information Resources Directorate.

Event Date: Wednesday, March 20, 2013   Event Start Time:2:30 PM   Event End Time:3:30 PM

Event Location: WebEx

 

Add to Calendar

 

Scientific and Technical Information Center x34245 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov

 

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9.            AIAA Houston March Dinner Meeting

Join American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston in welcoming Wayne Hale Jr. as our speaker for the next AIAA dinner meeting on the evening of March 28 at the Gilruth Center.

Deepwater offshore drilling rivals orbital space launch for engineering complexity, extreme environments and technological challenge. The major failure in the Gulf of Mexico mirrors the Challenger and Columbia accidents. Hale will discuss the April 2010 Macondo accident as a case study for all involved in a high-reliability organization looking to learn from past mistakes to prevent accidents in one's own field of endeavor.

Please join us for an enlightening evening by sending your RSVP and making your dinner selection.

Event Date: Thursday, March 21, 2013   Event Start Time:5:30 PM   Event End Time:9:00 PM

Event Location: Gilruth Center

 

Add to Calendar

 

Eryn Beisner x40212

 

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10.          AIAA Election Nominations Due April 5

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston section is soliciting nominations for executive council positions for this year's election. The following positions are up for election for the term from July 1, 2013, to June 30, 2014.

o             Chair

o             Chair-Elect

o             Vice Chair - Operations

o             Vice Chair - Technical

o             Secretary

o             Treasurer

o             Councilor (five positions open -- councilors serve a two-year term, from July 1, 2013, to June 30, 2015)

Position descriptions for each of these positions can be found here or by contacting the elections chair. All council members must be an AIAA member in good standing and are asked to attend council meetings once per month.

As a volunteer organization, the AIAA Houston Section is very much dependent upon the willingness of members to give their time and energy and in agreeing to serve in leadership roles. All interested parties should contact the elections chair by close of business Friday, April 5.

Eryn Beisner x40212

 

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11.          Registration Deadline - APPEL - Space System Verification and Validation

This three-day course demonstrates the processes, information and tools necessary to implement a credible verification, integration and test program. It provides exposure to NASA and Department of Defense standards, lessons learned, tools and experiences in validation and verification.

This course is designed for NASA's technical workforce, including engineers, systems engineers and project personnel involved in creating overall mission architectures, detailed designs and the operation of systems.

This course is available for self-registration in SATERN until 11:59 p.m. tonight, and attendance is open to civil servants and contractors.

Dates: Tuesday to Thursday, April 30 to May 2

Location: Building 12, Room 146

Zeeaa Quadri x39723 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...

 

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12.          System Safety Seminar ViTS: April 26, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. - Building 17, Room 2026

This seminar serves to provide an overview of system safety origins, definitions, principles and practices. It includes a discussion of NASA requirements for both the engineering and management aspects of system safety and answers the questions: Why do we do system safety? What is system safety? How do we do system safety? What does it mean to me?

Engineering aspects will include a brief discussion of three typically used analytical techniques: Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA); Fault Tree Analysis (FTA); and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). This course will not prepare attendees to manage or perform system safety, only to introduce them to the concepts. SATERN registration required. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...

Polly Caison x41279

 

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13.          RLLS Meeting Support, Cell Phone and Flight Arrival Departure WebEx Training

TechTrans International will provide 30-minute WebEx training classes on March 20 and 22 for the RLLS Portal modules. The following is a summary of the training dates offered:

Meeting Support - Wednesday, March 20, at 2 p.m.

Cell Phone - Friday, March 22, at 10 a.m.

Flight Arrival Departure Support - Friday, March 22, 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 a 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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14.          10th Annual Yuri's Night Houston 5K

The Expedition 34 crew recently arrived safely back on terra firma after spending almost five months in orbit. To help celebrate the successful completion of this mission, you can use the following promotion codes to receive a discount off your race registration until 11:59 p.m. today, March 19.

EXP34, TMA06M

Hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston Section, 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.

To register, go here.

Volunteers are also needed. Please contact Mana Vautier if interested. CURRITUR AD ASTRA.

Event Date: Saturday, April 20, 2013   Event Start Time:8:00 AM   Event End Time:10:00 AM

Event Location: 18300 Upper Bay Rd. Houston, TX

 

Add to Calendar

 

Mana Vautier 832-422-5494 http://www.yuris5khouston.com

 

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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:

·         9 am Central (10 EDT) – House Science Committee Hearing: Threats from Space: A Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors

·         12:30 pm Central (1:30 EDT) – Expedition 36/37 Video B-Roll Footage of Training

·         1 pm Central (2 EDT) – Expedition 36/37 Crew News Conference:

Ø  Fyodor Yurchikhin

Ø  Luca Parmitano

Ø  Karen Nyberg

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…

 

Tom Marshburn Talks to 30 Seconds to Mars

 

Expedition 35 Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn speaks with Jared Leto of the band 30 Seconds to Mars during a visit to the ISS Flight Control Room Monday.

 

Human Spaceflight News

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

FY2013 budget endgame in sight

 

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

 

With just over a week before the current continuing resolution (CR) funding the federal government is set to expire, it appears a plan is taking shape to pass a final FY13 appropriations bill this week. Monday evening the Senate approved a cloture motion for its version of HR 933, cutting off debate and setting the stage for a vote on the bill Tuesday. While the House passed its version of the bill earlier this month, POLITICO reports that House appropriators may take the Senate version to the House floor on Thursday for passage, although with the possibility of a few last-minute tweaks in a few programs. The current CR expires March 27, but Congress is planning to go on Passover and Easter break at the end of this week.

 

Senators press parochial hopes in spending debate

 

Andrew Taylor - Associated Press

 

Sometimes, it's the small stuff. As a government-wide spending bill nears the finish line in the Senate, chamber members are focusing on local concerns like keeping meat inspectors on the job and preventing furloughs at rural airports as well as re-opening the White House to tours. The massive spending bill is required to avert a government showdown at the end of the month when funding for the day-to-day operations of every Cabinet department expires. There had once been speculation that the measure could be a potential vehicle to turn off painful across-the-board spending cuts of 5 percent to domestic programs and 8 percent to the Pentagon but now much of the focus is on bread-and-butter issues as facilities back home begin to absorb the cuts.

 

Senate continuing resolution advances

 

David Rogers - Politico

 

A stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown next week and keep agencies operating through September advanced in the Senate Monday night — powered by a renewed bipartisan partnership in the Appropriations Committee leadership. On a 63-35 roll call, 10 Republicans joined Democrats to limit further debate on the 587-page package, which seeks to greatly expand on the House-passed version of the same continuing resolution or CR. As part of its political bargain with the House, the Senate made no attempt to overturn sequestration. Instead the focus has been to update the base from which the cuts are made by providing departments with more detailed full-year appropriations. The House did the same but for only Defense and Veterans Affairs. The Senate added Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and NASA. Taken all together, more than two-thirds of the discretionary funding for 2013 will now be subject to relatively detailed appropriations.

 

ISS Cosmonauts Model Manually Controlled Landing on Mars

 

RIA Novosti

 

For the first time, two Russian cosmonauts simulated a manually controlled landing from the orbit on Mars after they spent half a year in the space, a deputy head of the Russian Space Training Center said on Monday. Cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin, who returned from the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday after spending there 143 days, used a centrifuge at the Space Training Center in Moscow Region's Star City, to successfully imitate a manually controlled landing on Mars.

 

Thirty Seconds to Mars debuts single in space

 

John Carucci - Associated Press

 

Rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars wanted the announcement for their latest studio album to be out of this world. And that's where the album's first single debuted. "Up in the Air" was sent to the International Space Station for an exclusive listening Monday. It will be released Tuesday on Earth. The new album, "Love Lust Faith + Dreams," will be available May 21.

 

30 Seconds to Mars launches song with gravity-free spin on ISS

 

Amy Hubbard - Los Angeles Times

 

Rock band 30 Seconds to Mars has launched its new single, "Up in the Air," in a memorable way — they sent a CD to the International Space Station.  On Monday, they got to watch their CD spinning weightlessly through the air on the ISS. "That's a moment that we'll never forget right there," said front man Jared Leto. "Thank you so much for spinning that around." Leto and Mars bandmates Shannon Leto (Jared's brother) and Tomo Milicevic were at Mission Control in Houston on Monday, where they were piped in to the ISS and spoke with U.S. astronaut Tom Marshburn.  The band's single is released Tuesday, and their new album, "Love Lust Faith + Dreams," will be out May 21.

 

ISS commander Hadfield: Think about climate change

 

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

 

A Canadian in command of the International Space Station said Monday that from orbit he clearly sees the damage human actions are having on Earth's environment, and that people should think about climate change and the planet's future. The Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan "was a huge lake, a great body of water, it was almost like a small ocean" when Chris Hadfield first flew in space in November 1995, the astronaut told Canadian reporters in a space-to-ground news conference.

 

Astronaut Chris Hadfield gives interview from International Space Station

 

Canadian Press

 

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says just one thing gets him mad on the International Space Station — having to go to sleep. Hadfield says he's dreamed about going into space since he was a young Canadian and has worked hard to get there. The 53-year-old space veteran is resolved to make the most out of his current visit and to spend as little time sleeping as he can. Hadfield was speaking Monday in his first news conference since becoming commander of the giant space station last Wednesday.

 

Live from space with Chris Hadfield, Canada's first station commander

"Danny Boy" from space is just one of many Hadfield highlights

 

Rebecca Boyle - Popular Science

 

Lots of astronauts living on the International Space Station are prolific tweeters and photographers. But every few missions or so, someone comes along who really gets it, and shares the experience of life in space better than most. Like the station's newly minted commander, Chris Hadfield. He has been on the station since December, but took the helm late last week. Hadfield held his first press conference as commander on Monday morning. Half of his interview was in French--oh, Canada--but the parts in English were a reminder of why he's been so much fun to follow on Twitter and SoundCloud.

 

Lockheed wins $250M as part of Wyle's NASA team

Services include flight hardware prep, human factors engineering for the Space Station

 

Mark Hoover - Washington Technology

 

Lockheed Martin's piece of Wyle's huge NASA contracts could be worth $250 million to provide a variety of services to the International Space Station. Lockheed is part of Wyle's team on the $1.76 billion NASA Human Health and Performance Contract it won earlier this month. The contract is used to monitor astronaut health and enable bioastronautics research that benefits life on Earth, Lockheed said in a statement.

 

'I was in awe;' NASA doctor survives Baytown plane crash

 

Doug Miller - KHOU TV (Houston)

 

A private pilot suffered a nasty cut to her head, but state troopers say she's lucky to have survived a Saturday night plane crash in Baytown. Linda Shackelford, a 57-year-old orthopedic surgeon who manages the bone laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center, was flying alone in her Cessna when the engine stalled, troopers said. She repeatedly tried to restart the engine, authorities said, then tried to glide to a landing on a Baytown street. However, her plane came down over a thickly wooded area where Highway 146 intersects with J.B. Lefevre Road, clipping some trees and crashing into the brush. Even though the crash ripped the pilot's door off the plane's fuselage and bent the propeller, Shackelford survived and talked with emergency workers who carried her out of the woods and loaded her onto a Life Flight helicopter, troopers said.

 

Sequester Takes Bite Out of NASA Employees' Travel

 

Brian Berger & Dan Leone - Space News

 

NASA is implementing strict new limits on employee travel and explicitly banning agency-funded participation in several prominent conferences this spring as the agency absorbs a 5 percent budget cut imposed March 1 under sequestration. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden issued new guidance March 13 that states that "NASA funded participation will not be allowed" at either the National Space Symposium being held April 8-11 in Colorado Springs, Colo., or the American Astronautical Society's Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium being held March 19-21 in Greenbelt, Md., and the Goddard Memorial Dinner being held March 22 at the Washington Hilton here. SpaceNews is a media sponsor of the National Space Symposium.

 

Young girl's love of flying leads to history-making missions in space

 

Desiree Palacios - Air Force News Service

 

As a young child, Eileen Collins loved to sit with her dad in the family car and watch airplanes take off and land. The roar of the powerful engines and the grace of the aircraft as they seemed to float in the air always held excitement and enchantment for the young daughter of Irish immigrants. That love of flying would lead the Air Force colonel to be honored as the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, STS-93, in July of 1999, and place the NASA astronaut into the history books.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

FY2013 budget endgame in sight

 

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

 

With just over a week before the current continuing resolution (CR) funding the federal government is set to expire, it appears a plan is taking shape to pass a final FY13 appropriations bill this week. Monday evening the Senate approved a cloture motion for its version of HR 933, cutting off debate and setting the stage for a vote on the bill Tuesday.

 

While the House passed its version of the bill earlier this month, POLITICO reports that House appropriators may take the Senate version to the House floor on Thursday for passage, although with the possibility of a few last-minute tweaks in a few programs. The current CR expires March 27, but Congress is planning to go on Passover and Easter break at the end of this week.

 

If Congress does pass the Senate version of the bill, it's not necessarily good news for NASA. The Senate version offers less money for NASA overall once a 1.877% rescission and 5% sequestration cuts take effect, even though it starts with more money than the House bill. The Senate version, though, does structure the funding differently than the House bill, which was a CR with several "anomalies" adjusting funding for exploration and a few other accounts.

 

While neither the House nor the Senate bills do anything about budget sequestration, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was campaigning to cancel sequestration in an appearance earlier Monday at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

 

"NASA Goddard is home to leaders in Maryland's space and innovation economies, making discoveries that not only win Nobel Prizes, but create new products and jobs," she said in a statement, adding that sequestration will have "a devastating impact on science, innovation and research at Goddard."

 

Senators press parochial hopes in spending debate

 

Andrew Taylor - Associated Press

 

Sometimes, it's the small stuff. As a government-wide spending bill nears the finish line in the Senate, chamber members are focusing on local concerns like keeping meat inspectors on the job and preventing furloughs at rural airports as well as re-opening the White House to tours.

 

The massive spending bill is required to avert a government showdown at the end of the month when funding for the day-to-day operations of every Cabinet department expires.

 

There had once been speculation that the measure could be a potential vehicle to turn off painful across-the-board spending cuts of 5 percent to domestic programs and 8 percent to the Pentagon but now much of the focus is on bread-and-butter issues as facilities back home begin to absorb the cuts.

 

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., is pressing to shore up accounts funding the salaries for contractors at Army facilities like the Tobyhanna Army Depot, which plans to lay off 418 civilian contract employees in the coming weeks, though the $60 million he's proposing to add would barely make a dent in the layoffs. Sens. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., want to shift $55 million from lower-priority Agriculture Department accounts to prevent furloughs of thousands of food inspectors.

 

"Without this funding, every meat, poultry, and egg processing facility in the country would be forced to shut down for up to two weeks," Blunt said in a statement. "That means high food prices and less work for the hardworking Americans who work in these facilities nationwide."

 

Both Democrats and Republicans are trying to reverse cuts that would close 138 air traffic control towers at smaller airports across the country, while supporters of military personnel want to restore funding for a Pentagon program that helps pay tuition so active military can attend college part time.

 

And Rob Portman, R-Ohio, has an amendment that would partially shield NASA facilities like the Glenn Research center in his state from cuts by taking money away from construction of new facilities in the South. He is not expected to succeed.

 

The Senate resumed debate on the huge spending bill Monday, with a key procedural vote slated for late afternoon. Negotiations continued behind the scenes on what amendments might be permitted to be offered.

 

The sweeping 587-page measure sets a path for government in the wake of across-the-board spending cuts that took effect March 1. It is necessary because of the collapse last year of the annual congressional appropriations process. None of the 12 annual spending bills setting agency budgets have advanced and the government has been running on autopilot since last October.

 

The legislation cobbles together the detailed, line-by-line budgets for the Pentagon and several domestic Cabinet agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security and Justice. Such agencies would still be subject to across-the-board spending cuts known as a sequester but having their full budget bills in place would help them cope with the cuts.

 

The measure reflects a lowest common denominator approach that gives the Pentagon much-sought relief for readiness accounts but adds money sought by Democrats like Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland for domestic programs such as the Head Start early education program, health research, and highway construction.

 

Senate continuing resolution advances

 

David Rogers - Politico

 

A stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown next week and keep agencies operating through September advanced in the Senate Monday night — powered by a renewed bipartisan partnership in the Appropriations Committee leadership.

 

On a 63-35 roll call, 10 Republicans joined Democrats to limit further debate on the 587-page package, which seeks to greatly expand on the House-passed version of the same continuing resolution or CR.

 

 

The strength of the vote all but assures passage, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it was his "sincere hope" that this will occur Tuesday. All indications are once the Senate acts, the House Appropriations Committee leadership is prepared to take the modified Senate CR directly to the House floor, possibly as early as Thursday.

 

"We've come very far on this bill," said Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) in a final appeal to her colleagues. "We have to decide: Do we want to make the perfect the enemy of the good?"

 

"We could actually show that we could govern. … We could actually pass a bill that I believe the House will accept as well. Hallelujah, this in [and] of itself would be a major accomplishment."

 

Critical to the win was her partnership with Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the new ranking Republican on the panel who brings old ties not only to Mikulski but also to Reid.

 

"Granted, not everything's ideal, but what is here?" Shelby asked. "If we do not move forward, I am afraid there may be no future appropriations bills which isn't good for anyone in this legislative process."

 

"We've lurched from crisis to crisis. …What we're asking to do is fund the government until September 30."

 

Indeed, since Oct. 1 the government has been operating under a CR due to expire March 27, a week from Wednesday. The resolution now ensures a smooth transition but also is pivotal for agencies trying to adapt to the across-the-board cuts ordered March 1 under sequestration.

 

As part of its political bargain with the House, the Senate made no attempt to overturn sequestration. Instead the focus has been to update the base from which the cuts are made by providing departments with more detailed full-year appropriations.

 

The House did the same but for only Defense and Veterans Affairs. The Senate added Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and NASA. Taken all together, more than two-thirds of the discretionary funding for 2013 will now be subject to relatively detailed appropriations.

 

That is no small accomplishment, and in addition, the bill includes scores of so-called anomalies for other departments, including provisions that would free up more than $720 million in highway and transit funds and open the door to up to $50 million in new U.S. aid to Syrian rebels.

 

Nonetheless, there remains considerable pressure for rifle-shot changes sought by a variety of home state interests impacted by sequestration.

 

Meat packers want to shift money in the Agriculture Department's budget to prevent furloughs of food safety inspectors whose presence is needed to operate been and poultry processing plants. Rural airports want to do the same inside the Federal Aviation Administration's budget so as to continue payments to private contractors who operate the flight control towers at some 189 small airfields.

 

Final decisions won't be made until Tuesday, and even with the cloture vote, it will still require some cooperation from all sides to finish. The meat industry is in a strong position to get its way. But if the rural airports or some other interest doesn't get its amendment heard, objections could be raised.

 

"Remember Easter recess is staring us in the face," Reid said. And before going home this weekend, the Senate must also complete action on its long term budget resolution.

 

ISS Cosmonauts Model Manually Controlled Landing on Mars

 

RIA Novosti

 

For the first time, two Russian cosmonauts simulated a manually controlled landing from the orbit on Mars after they spent half a year in the space, a deputy head of the Russian Space Training Center said on Monday.

 

Cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin, who returned from the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday after spending there 143 days, used a centrifuge at the Space Training Center in Moscow Region's Star City, to successfully imitate a manually controlled landing on Mars.

 

"Because it takes at least half a year to reach Mars, we had no data until yesterday, whether cosmonauts will be fit and capable of conducting a manually controlled landing on Mars in the future," said Boris Kryuchkov, a deputy head of the Space Training Center.

 

"We now know that it is real, because for the first time in history cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin, who returned from the ISS on March 16, have confirmed such possibility," he added.

 

Kryuchkov said that similar experiments will be further conducted involving cosmonauts from future ISS expeditions.

 

Last week Russia's space agency Roscosmos and the European Space Agency (ESA) signed a final agreement giving the green light to the ExoMars project to send unmanned probes to Mars.

 

The ExoMars project will launch an orbital probe to Mars, followed by the landing on the Martian surface of a lander module in 2016. A Martian "rover" probe will be launched in 2018 to explore the surface of the planet.

 

Thirty Seconds to Mars debuts single in space

 

John Carucci - Associated Press

 

Rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars wanted the announcement for their latest studio album to be out of this world. And that's where the album's first single debuted.

 

"Up in the Air" was sent to the International Space Station for an exclusive listening Monday. It will be released Tuesday on Earth.

 

The new album, "Love Lust Faith + Dreams," will be available May 21.

 

A compact disc containing the song was launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 1. The band got to watch the rocket blast into space.

 

"It was amazing to feel it take off," front man Jared Leto said in a recent interview. "The noise and the brightness was overwhelming, and you're still a mile away."

 

Leto said the challenge of sending a song into space paled in comparison to being sued for $30 million by EMI when the band was working on "This Is War," released in 2009, which sold over 500,000 copies. The band also launched an aggressive world tour to promote the CD.

 

"The last album was about closure. There was a battle and a war that we fought. This one is a new beginning," the 41-year-old singer-actor said.

 

The new single "has to do with getting to a point in your life where you're ready to let go of the past, embrace change and become more of who you really are," Leto said.

 

The lawsuit was eventually resolved, and the band has continued working with EMI. Leto said the out-of-this-world debut for the new album was fitting after the enormous weight of the lawsuit was lifted, although sending a CD into space was no easy task.

 

"Most worthy things are not easy to get done. I think a lot of great things have a tremendous amount of challenge, a tremendous amount of difficulty, and I think this was one of those things," he said.

 

Leto said he wrote and recorded more than 70 songs before determining the final 12 for the new album.

 

"My songs must feel like discarded lovers because I'm continuously abandoning time," he said. "But that feels better than being sued."

 

EMI sued the band in 2008 for breach of contract.

 

"That $30 million lawsuit in that battle was very real. It wasn't a headline. It was something we thought about every single moment of the day that was there, weighing on us. And not just the fact that we would lose and owe a corporation $30 million, but we would have our creative lives stamped out," Leto said.

 

Their documentary, "Artifact," chronicles the production of the band's third album.

 

"The film is highly critical of the record business, but I'm not anti-record label, at all. I'm anti-greed. I'm anti-corruption," Leto said. "I'm pro-artist. I believe that everybody can win. You don't have to steal from one another to do it, or to treat one another unfairly."

 

"Artifact" won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and was recently shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

 

While things are back to normal, Leto feels the "cuts are still fresh."

 

"I think they're healing. But they're definitely not healed yet. It takes some time. The good news is that there's an entirely new group that's running things. It's essentially a new record company," Leto said.

 

The band, which also includes Shannon Leto and Tomo Milicivic, will begin a world tour in June to support the new album.

 

Meanwhile, Leto will return to the big screen this year, starring opposite Matthew McConaughey in the AIDS drama, "Dallas Buyers Club."

 

"I hadn't made a film for five years, and this role came along to play a transsexual in a film about the birth of this horrible plague. I wasn't looking to make a film, or to take five years off, either," Leto said.

 

A conversation between astronaut Tom Marshburn from the International Space Station and Leto is available on both the band's and NASA's websites.

 

30 Seconds to Mars launches song with gravity-free spin on ISS

 

Amy Hubbard - Los Angeles Times

 

Rock band 30 Seconds to Mars has launched its new single, "Up in the Air," in a memorable way — they sent a CD to the International Space Station.  On Monday, they got to watch their CD spinning weightlessly through the air on the ISS.

 

"That's a moment that we'll never forget right there," said frontman Jared Leto. "Thank you so much for spinning that around."

 

Leto and Mars bandmates Shannon Leto (Jared's brother) and Tomo Milicevic were at Mission Control in Houston on Monday, where they were piped in to the ISS and spoke with U.S. astronaut Tom Marshburn.  The band's single is released Tuesday, and their new album, "Love Lust Faith + Dreams," will be out May 21.

 

"Do you ever listen to music up there?" Jared Leto asked Marshburn.

 

"I do, during workouts," he said and noted that the space station's Canadian commander, Chris Hadfield, is a musician and had been playing and recording music at the station. "Music is a very much a part of our lives up here."

 

Besides Hadfield and Marshburn, the space station's Expedition 35 crew includes Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko. The three men began their space station duty in December and are set to return home in May.  In the video above Marshburn describes a typical day at the space station.

 

Leto asked Marshburn about his most memorable moments in space and aboard the ISS.

 

"There are two … 20 years from now I'll still be thinking about," Marshburn said. "One was my last few seconds on my spacewalk." Marshburn had been on his way to the space station, he said, when he went on the space walk. "Looking down between my feet at Earth," he said, "that was a spectacularly beautiful moment. I didn't know if it would be the last spacewalk I'd ever do and as it turns out it probably was." He said he'd also remember looking down on a lightning storm from above.  He and colleagues watched "the greens and blues and yellow and oranges in the lightning…. It was just breathtaking."

 

He said he'd also remember the beauty from his perch in space of the aurora borealis and a shooting star.

 

Leto passed on a question from a Twitter user: If you could live in space or on Earth, which would it be?

 

"I spent my whole life being curious about space," he said, "but as wonderful as it is up here … we look back at the Earth and we fall in love with the Earth again."

 

ISS commander Hadfield: Think about climate change

 

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

 

A Canadian in command of the International Space Station said Monday that from orbit he clearly sees the damage human actions are having on Earth's environment, and that people should think about climate change and the planet's future.

 

The Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan "was a huge lake, a great body of water, it was almost like a small ocean" when Chris Hadfield first flew in space in November 1995, the astronaut told Canadian reporters in a space-to-ground news conference.

 

"And now, there is almost nothing – it's just sand. And that is a result of our decisions, of what we have done," Hadfield said.

 

"It's far from Canada, and you may say, 'This is not our problem,' but that's not true. Big lakes are not unlimited. There is a limit of how much water there is in the rivers, in the lakes," the veteran space explorer, speaking in French, said through a NASA interpreter. "It's very important for us to think of what we are doing."

 

Once one of the four largest lakes in the world, the Aral Sea since the 1960s has been shrinking. The former Soviet Union tapped the rivers that fed it for irrigation projects, and the lake now is just 10 percent of its original size.

 

"During my life and my experience, over the last 20 years, the changes there have been amazing. And that was human change – change that has occurred thanks to what humans have done," Hadfield said.

 

Hadfield, who last week became the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station, is flying in space for the third time. He also flew on a mission to deliver the station's Canadian-built robotic arm in April 2001.

 

"Climate is changing naturally, and perhaps as a result of what we have done, our influence," he said.

 

"And so maybe we just need to be more responsible in the decisions we make and think of the longer term, more than five years, more than the upcoming elections, more than just one lifespan, and think about our grandchildren and even further."

 

Hadfield is onboard the outpost with U.S. astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko. U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and two Russians – Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin – are scheduled to launch to the station later this month. Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko launched in December and are scheduled to return to Earth in May.

 

Astronaut Chris Hadfield gives interview from International Space Station

 

Canadian Press

 

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says just one thing gets him mad on the International Space Station — having to go to sleep.

 

Hadfield says he's dreamed about going into space since he was a young Canadian and has worked hard to get there.

 

The 53-year-old space veteran is resolved to make the most out of his current visit and to spend as little time sleeping as he can.

 

Hadfield was speaking Monday in his first news conference since becoming commander of the giant space station last Wednesday.

 

He is the first Canadian to hold the position.

 

The news conference was broadcast down to the Montreal-area Canadian Space Agency.

 

Hadfield was asked about the experiments on board, cuts in research spending and his massive following of more than 500,000 Twitter followers.

 

His five-month visit, which began in late December, ends in mid-May.

 

Live from space with Chris Hadfield, Canada's first station commander

"Danny Boy" from space is just one of many Hadfield highlights

 

Rebecca Boyle - Popular Science

 

Lots of astronauts living on the International Space Station are prolific tweeters and photographers. But every few missions or so, someone comes along who really gets it, and shares the experience of life in space better than most. Like the station's newly minted commander, Chris Hadfield.

 

He has been on the station since December, but took the helm late last week. Hadfield held his first press conference as commander on Monday morning. Half of his interview was in French--oh, Canada--but the parts in English were a reminder of why he's been so much fun to follow on Twitter and SoundCloud. He played a stirring rendition of "Danny Boy" on St. Patrick's Day, for instance.

 

If he were to take someone on a tour, he would bring them first to the ISS cupola, the big window on the world, "so they could truly see our Earth," he said, "the power of it ... the size of it, the beauty of it, and the inherent fragility of it. When you see the blackness and emptiness of space... and the one layer of onion skin atmosphere that surrounds our planet, it becomes so vivid in your mind. It permanently changes your thinking."

 

Hadfield is the first Canadian commander of the ISS, a source of enormous pride for our neighbor to the north. His leadership marks only the second time ever that the 12-year-old station has not been helmed by someone either American or Russian.

 

"It's a huge honor and a privilege for me, but also for all the people at the Canadian Space Agency and for my entire country," he said.

 

Hadfield took over before past commander Kevin Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin departed for Earth last Friday. He'll lead a three-man crew until NASA's Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin arrive later in March. Hadfield, astronaut Thomas Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko have been on station since Dec. 21 and will come home in May.

 

Lockheed wins $250M as part of Wyle's NASA team

Services include flight hardware prep, human factors engineering for the Space Station

 

Mark Hoover - Washington Technology

 

Lockheed Martin's piece of Wyle's huge NASA contracts could be worth $250 million to provide a variety of services to the International Space Station.

 

Lockheed is part of Wyle's team on the $1.76 billion NASA Human Health and Performance Contract it won earlier this month.

 

The contract is used to monitor astronaut health and enable bioastronautics research that benefits life on Earth, Lockheed said in a statement.

 

Lockheed Martin will provide flight hardware development, facilitation of life sciences research conducted on the International Space Station and human factors engineering to optimize tools and experiments for astronauts in zero gravity.

 

The company will also provide radiation analysis, space food development, flight/ground crew training, and life sciences data archival services, the company said.

 

"Lockheed Martin has provided life sciences support at Johnson Space Center for more than 30 years and has supported America's human spaceflight program for more than 50 years," said Rick Hieb, vice president of exploration and mission support for Lockheed Martin's Information Systems & Global Solutions.

 

"Together with Wyle, we apply that experience to ensure the high quality of science on human space missions and leverage the knowledge gained in space to enhance life here on Earth," Hieb said.

 

'I was in awe;' NASA doctor survives Baytown plane crash

 

Doug Miller - KHOU TV (Houston)

 

A private pilot suffered a nasty cut to her head, but state troopers say she's lucky to have survived a Saturday night plane crash in Baytown.

 

Linda Shackelford, a 57-year-old orthopedic surgeon who manages the bone laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center, was flying alone in her Cessna when the engine stalled, troopers said. She repeatedly tried to restart the engine, authorities said, then tried to glide to a landing on a Baytown street.

 

However, her plane came down over a thickly wooded area where Highway 146 intersects with J.B. Lefevre Road, clipping some trees and crashing into the brush.

 

Even though the crash ripped the pilot's door off the plane's fuselage and bent the propeller, Shackelford survived and talked with emergency workers who carried her out of the woods and loaded her onto a Life Flight helicopter, troopers said.

 

"To boot, this is at night time," said Richard Standifer, a trooper with the Texas Department of Public Safety. "This is a non-lit area. She probably had no idea where she was going to try to land the thing. But she probably tried to keep the nose up."

 

Ambulance workers working their way to the crash site made a winding path through the heavy brush. Even after the sun rose the Sunday morning, only a small section of the plane was visible from the street.

 

"I was at awe while we were walking back there..." Standifer said. "She did a really good job of making sure that thing didn't end up upside down or a flat nose dive."

 

After an FAA investigator inspected the crash site Sunday morning, state troopers pulled Shackelford's bags out of the downed plane and took them to her at a nearby hospital. The injured pilot suffered what Standifer described as "an ugly cut," but otherwise she was reportedly in good spirits.

 

Now workers will have to figure out how to haul the plane out of the forest, a job law enforcement authorities at the scene speculated could take days.

 

Sequester Takes Bite Out of NASA Employees' Travel

 

Brian Berger & Dan Leone - Space News

 

NASA is implementing strict new limits on employee travel and explicitly banning agency-funded participation in several prominent conferences this spring as the agency absorbs a 5 percent budget cut imposed March 1 under sequestration.

 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden issued new guidance March 13 that states that "NASA funded participation will not be allowed" at either the National Space Symposium being held April 8-11 in Colorado Springs, Colo., or the American Astronautical Society's Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium being held March 19-21 in Greenbelt, Md., and the Goddard Memorial Dinner being held March 22 at the Washington Hilton here. SpaceNews is a media sponsor of the National Space Symposium.

 

Restrictions are even tighter for travel outside the United States. Currently, no foreign conferences are approved for NASA participation. Meetings now off limits to NASA employees and their contractors include: the International Astronautical Federation's Spring Meeting in Paris, March 18-20; the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2013 in Vienna, April 7-12; the Sixth European Conference on Space Debris in Darmstadt, Germany, April 22-25; and the Rotary International Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, June 23-26.

 

For many NASA employees and contractors, the National Space Symposium is the year's must-attend space conference. NASA officials usually participate as exhibitors, speakers and attendees.

 

A NASA spokesman said agency employees and contractors may attend the National Space Symposium at their own expense but NASA will have no official presence at the conference. Bolden and his deputy, Lori Garver, were among NASA officials scheduled to speak at the annual meeting, which draws thousands of government and corporate space officials from around the world.

 

"[W]e won't have a booth there and NASA personnel aren't attending," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel wrote in a March 15 email.

 

"The show will go on," said Space Foundation spokeswoman Janet Stevens. "It will be awesome as usual. We will miss our NASA partners if they ultimately are not able to attend."

 

The Space Foundation still expects a large U.S. military presence, thanks to the symposium's proximity to Air Force Space Command, and the usual assortment of aerospace contractors, commercial companies and international space officials.

 

"It's a shame that at a U.S.-based space symposium our own space agency won't be represented when we have representation from all over the world," Stevens said.

 

NASA bought a large booth across from Boeing Co. at the front of the otherwise sold-out main exhibit hall. Stevens said booth fees are no longer refundable. She did not say how much NASA's booth cost. The smallest booths cost roughly $10,000.

 

Beutel did not have a figure for how much NASA spent preparing for the National Space Symposium or how much the agency now expects to save by not participating. He said all the travel NASA booked for the symposium is refundable. Belt-tightening efforts shaved $21 million off NASA's 2012 travel bill, Beutel said.

 

A key difference between revised travel rules NASA issued last year and the guidelines issued March 13 is that the new directives ban official participation in several conferences by name.

 

"What I think we didn't quite anticipate is that specific events would be singled out, with no travel expenses allowed for these because they didn't meet certain criteria," James Kirkpatrick, executive director of the American Astronautical Society, said in a March 14 phone interview.

 

Each year, the society hosts its annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium the same week as the National Space Club's Goddard Memorial Dinner — an invite-only event known informally as Space Prom.

 

"People come to town for one or the other, and go to both," Kirkpatrick said.

 

The Goddard symposium will still feature a NASA-heavy roster, including Bolden. Chris Scolese, director of the nearby Goddard Space Flight Center, will also attend. This, Kirkpatrick said, is because employees based at either Goddard or NASA headquarters work close enough to the Greenbelt Marriott that a trip there would not count as travel.

 

But because of the new travel restrictions, NASA center directors from out of town who were scheduled to speak at the conference, including the heads of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., have pulled out of the conference.

 

For as long as the current travel guidelines remain in effect, Kirkpatrick expects this pattern to repeat at conferences around the country: Local NASA employees will attend, but those from out of town will not.

 

Young girl's love of flying leads to history-making missions in space

 

Desiree Palacios - Air Force News Service

 

As a young child, Eileen Collins loved to sit with her dad in the family car and watch airplanes take off and land. The roar of the powerful engines and the grace of the aircraft as they seemed to float in the air always held excitement and enchantment for the young daughter of Irish immigrants.

 

That love of flying would lead the Air Force colonel to be honored as the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, STS-93, in July of 1999, and place the NASA astronaut into the history books.

 

After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and economics from Syracuse University in 1978, she began her Air Force career in 1979. Collins graduated from the Air Force undergraduate pilot training at Vance Air Force Base, Okla., where she was a T-38 instructor pilot until 1982. In 1983, she moved to Travis AFB, Calif., and became a C-141 aircraft commander and instructor pilot until 1985.

 

She earned a Master of Science degree in operations research at Stanford University in 1986 and a Master of Arts degree in space systems management from Webster University in 1989.

 

After a stint as an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., she was selected as only the second female to attend Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, Calif. It was on Jan. 16, 1990, at 10:20 a.m., that she recalled the moment that she was first notified that she would be the first female shuttle pilot select.

 

"I was very excited and happy," said Collins, who applied for both a pilot and mission specialist slot. "But even though I'll remember that day for the rest of my life, it really didn't sink in until I graduated. I knew that there had never been a woman shuttle pilot before. Now, I'd be the first."

 

Collins had a total of four space shuttle missions during her 15 years as a NASA astronaut, logging in more than 872 hours in space.

 

Her first shuttle mission in February 1995 was on the shuttle Discovery and was made historic by becoming the first flight of the new joint U.S. and Russia space program. During the flight, the shuttle rendezvoused with the Russian Space Station Mir, and included satellite deployment and retrieval and a space walk. During that flight, Collins became the first woman to pilot a space shuttle.

 

Her second mission in May of 1997 was on the space shuttle Atlantis and again took her to the Space Station Mir. That mission transferred more than four tons of equipment and supplies to the Mir.

 

It was her third mission that sent her into the history books, in July of 1999, when she became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission. The space shuttle Columbia deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory, designed to conduct comprehensive studies of the universe such as exploding stars, quasars and black holes.

 

Her final mission, aboard the Discovery, during late July and early August of 2005, was the "return to flight" mission following the disaster in February of 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia exploded prior to re-entry. That Discovery mission docked with the international space station and tested and evaluated new procedures for flight safety and inspection and repair techniques.

 

In May of 2006, Collins announced her retirement.

 

"I do miss being in space... but I flew four times, and all four missions were very busy because you're constantly working and under stress. You have a mission; your boss is the people of the country and you don't want to disappoint the people. Usually toward the end of the mission, you can let your hair down a little bit because the primary mission's done and everything is put away. That was when you could put your face against the glass, stretch out your arms, and you don't even see the ship around you, just the Earth below, and you feel like you're flying over the planet."

 

She currently serves on the board of the NASA Advisory Council Space Operations Committee and stays busy consulting and speaking circuit.

 

END