Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight News

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: April 16, 2013 6:19:45 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - April 16, 2013 and JSC Today

Please keep the families of our fellow Americans who lost their lives or were severely injured by the horrific bombing yesterday during the Boston Marathon in your thoughts and prayers to help them through this latest act of terrorism.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            JSC Ombudsman Office
2.            Postponed: Leadership Speaker Series With Center Director Dr. Ellen Ochoa
3.            Join Us for the April JSC NMA Chapter Luncheon Featuring Michael Hess
4.            Come See Houston's 'Museum of Green Building' on April 19
5.            Starport's Summer League Sports -- Registration Open
6.            This Week at Starport
7.            Winning the Challenge by Being Safe, Not Sorry
8.            Human Systems Academy: Human Research Program Overview
9.            Importance of Forgiveness
10.          Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, April 17
11.          Pre-Travel to Russia Live Class
12.          Leadership Enrichment and Development Program (LEaD) Application Reminder
13.          RLLS Flight Arrival Departure, Meeting, ISS Russia Travel WebEx Training
________________________________________     NASA FACT
" A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts a striking view of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009."
________________________________________
1.            JSC Ombudsman Office
The Ombudsman Office provides advice and counsel to individuals on a wide range of interpersonal and workplace-related issues. It is one of several resources at JSC that can help an individual with issue resolution, and offers many unique advantages. First, the Ombudsman is CONFIDENTIAL. Your privacy will be respected, and your issue will not be discussed with anyone else without your express permission. The Ombudsman is also INFORMAL, meaning that there is no official or unofficial record of your visit, and the visit does not initiate any process or action that you do not control. The Ombudsman Office is INDEPENDENT, reporting directly to the JSC director. More information on how to set up a visit with one of the two JSC Ombudsman, Donna Blackshear-Reynolds (281-792-9318) or John Casper (281-792-9364) can be found here.
Donna Blackshear-Reynolds 281-792-9318

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2.            Postponed: Leadership Speaker Series With Center Director Dr. Ellen Ochoa
The Leadership Speaker Series with JSC Director Dr. Ellen Ochoa has been postponed, and you will be notified when it is rescheduled.
Charlie Jones x42493

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3.            Join Us for the April JSC NMA Chapter Luncheon Featuring Michael Hess
Please join us for an exciting April JSC National Management Association (NMA) chapter luncheon presentation with JSC Associate Director of Engineering Michael Hess as he speaks about "Engineering and Beyond."
When: Tuesday, April 30
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             Pastrami-style Salmon
o             Tortellini and Roasted Portobello in a Blush Sauce
o             Herb-seared Chicken Breast with Tomato Chive Sauce
Desserts: Double Chocolate Mousse Cake and Italian Cream Cake
Please RSVP here by close of business Tuesday, April 23, 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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4.            Come See Houston's 'Museum of Green Building' on April 19
Friday, April 19, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in honor of Earth Day, the City of Houston has invited JSC team members to attend a tour of the Green Building Resource Center at 1002 Washington (77002). If you are interested in learning more about green building concepts and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), you should go on this tour. Two alternatively fueled government vans will depart/return from JSC (behind Building 419). Van 1 will leave JSC at about 10:15 a.m. and return at about 12:45p.m. Van 2 will leave JSC at about noon and return at about 2:45 p.m. There are limited seats available.
Sign up by emailing Laurie Peterson regarding which van you're interested in taking. Please make sure you can go, because there are a very limited number of seats available for this tour. You are also welcome to take your own vehicle, but sustainability (i.e., ride-sharing and HOV lane usage) is encouraged!
Laurie Peterson x39845 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/ja/ja13/index.cfm

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5.            Starport's Summer League Sports -- Registration Open
Registration is opening for all of Starport's popular league sports!
League registration now open:
- Dodgeball (coed) | Thursday evenings | Registration ends April 22
- Kickabll (coed) | Monday evenings | Registration ends April 24
- Softball (men's) | Tuesdays and Wednesdays | Registration ends May 9
- Softball (coed) | Wednesdays and Thursdays | Registration ends May 16
- Ultimate Frisbee (coed) | Monday evenings | Registration ends May 1
- Volleyball (Rev 4s) | Monday evenings | Registration ends April 24
- Volleyball (coed) | Tuesday evenings | Registration ends April 24
Registration opening soon:
- Soccer (coed) | Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays | Registration May 1 to 23
Free-agent registration now open.
All participants must register here.
For more information, please contact the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304.
Steve Schade x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/Sports/index.cfm#SUMMER

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6.            This Week at Starport
Discount tickets to the Houston Dynamo versus Sporting Kansas City game on May 12 are on sale for $20. Visit our website to order your tickets!
Sam's Club will be in the Starport Cafés Thursday and Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to discuss membership options. Receive a gift card on new memberships or renewals. Cash or check only for membership purchases.
Tickets for the JSC Annual Picnic at SplashTown on April 28 are on sale now through Friday for $33. Get your tickets before the price increases to $37!
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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7.            Winning the Challenge by Being Safe, Not Sorry
Rosie Alvarez of the JSC Technology Transfer Office was recently awarded a Safe, Not Sorry (SNS) pin. Alvarez meets challenges head on, so when her employer, Jacobs Technology, introduced a company-wide ESCG Safety Challenge, she took the bull by the horns. For her section to win, they had to really step up their safety activities. She diligently worked to coordinate and promote the contest, and along with her leadership, they won a trophy and pizza party. It wasn't about the prize, though. It was about improving safety awareness, and everyone benefited. That's the way to be Safe, Not Sorry. To obtain an SNS pin or a quantity of pins, contact the safety office at x45078.
Rindy Carmichael x45078

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8.            Human Systems Academy: Human Research Program Overview
Join the Human Systems Academy for a lecture covering the Human Research Program. The Human Research Program is a major part of the Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications Division within the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. It is instrumental in carrying out NASA's Strategic Plan by developing and delivering research findings, health countermeasures and human systems technologies for spacecraft that will support crews on missions to the moon, Mars or other destinations.
For registration, please go to: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsplinkId=SCHEDULED_O...
Event Date: Thursday, April 18, 2013   Event Start Time:2:00 PM   Event End Time:4:00 PM
Event Location: B9/113

Add to Calendar

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

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9.            Importance of Forgiveness
Please join Takis Bogdanos, LPC-S, today, April 16, at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium for a presentation addressing the importance of forgiveness and the damaging effects grudges and resentment have in our daily lives.
Event Date: Tuesday, April 16, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130

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10.          Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, April 17
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, April 17, 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. To register in SATERN, please click on this SATERN Direct Link: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Gina Clenney x39851

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11.          Pre-Travel to Russia Live Class
Will you be traveling to Russia on a NASA-sponsored trip soon? Do you know what information you will need to provide to obtain a Russian visa? What other types of clearances are required, and how one gets them? Need to familiarize yourself with the procedures for Russian passport and immigration control, obtaining transportation from the airport to your accommodations, as well as to and from your meetings? Would some tips on Russian etiquette and social or business customs be useful?
For answers to these and other questions, join us at the JSC Language Education Center for the Pre-Travel to Russia Live Class on Friday, April 19. This two-hour class runs from 1 to 3 p.m. in Building 12, Room 158Q. Please register through SATERN. The deadline for registration is April 17. If you have any questions, please submit them to: pretraveltorussia@tti-corp.com
We will respond in 24 hours.
Delila Rollins 281-335-8000

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12.          Leadership Enrichment and Development Program (LEaD) Application Reminder
Reminder: The applications for Leadership Enrichment and Development Program (LEaD)-Class 3 are due by close of business Friday, April 19.
LEaD is designed to provide GS-11 and GS-12 non-AST individual contributors and influence leaders with the opportunity to develop foundational leadership skills. Participants will participate in a year-long program consisting of four modules designed around the core competencies: leading change; leading people and coalitions; results driven; and business acumen. Elements include: online and classroom training; subject-matter expert events; book clubs with senior management; 360-feedback tool; and mentorship.
For additional information, click here or contact Jessica Feinstein at x40989 or Christine Eagleton at x27838.
Christine Eagleton 281-792-7838

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13.          RLLS Flight Arrival Departure, Meeting, ISS Russia Travel WebEx Training
TechTrans International will provide 30-minute WebEx training April 17, 18 and 19 for RLLS Portal modules. The following is a summary of the training dates:
Flight Arrival Departure - April 17 at 10 a.m. CDT
Meeting Support - April 18 at 10 a.m. CDT
ISS Russia Travel Request - April 19 at 10 a.m. CDT
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 an 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 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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________________________________________
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:
·         11:25 am Central (12:25 pm EDT) – E35 CDR C. Hadfield w/Lockview High in Fall River, NS
·         1 pm Central (2 EDT) –Wallops Flight Facility press briefing
·         2 pm Central (3 EDT) – Orbital Sciences' Antares test flight pre-launch press conference

Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday, April 16, 2013

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Astronauts Send Condolences to Boston After Marathon Blasts

Mike Wall - Space.com

The six astronauts aboard the International Space Station are among the many people sending condolences to the people of Boston after two bombs went off at the finish line of the city's famous marathon Monday. "Our crew just heard about the horrible events at the Boston Marathon. We all pass our condolences and thoughts to everyone affected," Expedition 35 commander Chris Hadfield said via Twitter, where he posts as @Cmdr_Hadfield. The cause of the explosions remains under investigation as of Monday evening. Boston police officials have confirmed that the blasts killed at least three people and wounded more than 100.
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Bad Valve Spoils Antares Launch Rehearsal Ahead of Maiden Flight

Dan Leone - Space News

Orbital Sciences Corp. is scrambling to keep the maiden launch of its Antares cargo rocket on track for April 17 after a malfunctioning engine valve forced the company to scrub a planned wet dress rehearsal test April 13. In a short note posted on its website after the test was aborted with just 16 seconds left in the countdown, the Dulles, Va.-based company said it planned to replace the valve in time to keep Antares' launch on track for April 17. Antares is launching from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport located at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia.

New Private Rocket Launching from Virginia Coast Wednesday

Tariq Malik - Space.com

An untested commercial rocket is poised to launch into space from Virginia's Eastern Shore on Wednesday, and you can watch the test flight live online. The new private Antares rocket, built by the Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp., is slated to blast off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at the southern tip of this small island at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). If all goes well, the test flight will pave the way for the future unmanned cargo deliveries to the International Space Station.

Does Virginia's spaceport have the right stuff?
On Wednesday, NASA Wallops expects to launch its biggest rocket by far -- the 135-foot, medium-lift Antares, built to resupply the International Space Station.

Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press

All his life, 65-year-old Craig Purdy has had his eye on the sky. As a teenager in sleepy, rural Chincoteague in the early '60s, he watched "rocket shots" out of nearby Wallops, then a Naval air station on a marshy 6-square-mile slip of barrier island in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore. Small sounding rockets would soar into the upper atmosphere and beyond, hovering to study the winds, the sun, the moon or the elements before tumbling back to earth. Purdy's father was a retired Navy man and electronic technician at the station; while an engineering student at Virginia Tech, Purdy worked there, too. After college he was hired full-time, conducting satellite research for decades before retiring last summer as deputy director of NASA Wallops Flight Facility. "Until probably 10 years ago, I could tell you everybody's name that worked in Wallops," said Purdy. "Everybody knew each other. Everybody worked together. It was like a family atmosphere."

NASA Fiscal 2014 Budget Trims Workforce, Facilities, Consultants

Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily

NASA anticipates a slightly smaller civil servant workforce, facility consolidations and less spending on consultants as the agency begins to focus on an ambitious effort to identify, retrieve and corral a small asteroid into a stable lunar orbit for exploration by astronauts, according to the agency's proposed 2014 budget. The asteroid-capture strategy, subject to Congressional scrutiny, depends on an overall return to pre-sequester spending of $17.7 billion agency-wide for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, funding that would be distributed across 10 field centers in eight states and the District of Columbia. The agency's goal is a civil servant workforce of 17,700, a decline of about 275 and a target NASA plans to achieve with selective buyouts that will permit it to continue some hiring of young engineers, scientists and other specialists. NASA's flight-eligible astronaut corps, for instance, is expected to rise from 50 men and women with 9-12 new hires.

Russian Space Freighter Undocks from Orbital Station

RIA Novosti

Russian cargo spacecraft undocked on Monday from the International Space Station (ISS) to perform a series of scientific experiments in space before splashing in the Pacific on April 21, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said. "The Progress-17M space freighter undocked from the Zvezda module of the Russian segment on ISS at 04.02 pm Moscow time [12:02 GMT]," Roscosmos said in a statement.

Russia's 49 Progress Departs Space Station

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

A trash-laden Russian Progress supply craft departed the International Space Station early Monday, clearing the way for the arrival of a new cargo capsule later this month. The Progress 49 undocked from the station's Russian segment Zvezda service module module at 8:02 a.m., EDT, where it had been parked since Oct. 31. The aging supply capsule is scheduled to plummet back to Earth over the Pacific Ocean this Sunday, following a series of daily orbital maneuvers to assist the Russians with the calibration of ground-based radar systems. Progress 51 is scheduled to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 24 at 6:12 a.m., EDT, with just over three tons of fuel, food, clothing and others supplies for the six person orbiting science laboratory. Docking with the vacant Zvezda port is scheduled for April 26 at 8:27 a.m., EDT. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

Orion on track for 2021 asteroid mission, KSC chief says

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

President Barack Obama's push to accelerate a human expedition to an asteroid is a daunting gauntlet for NASA, but one that can be accomplished, agency officials said Monday. "This is not going to be easy," said Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana, who piloted two shuttle flights and served as mission commander on two others. NASA will have to develop a number of new or emerging technologies to get the job done.

Orion Update Event Held at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

Jason Rhian – AmericaSpace.com

The covers were pulled back on NASA's new crewed Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle today, providing a rare look at the spacecraft that will conduct its first test flight next year. The event was held on the third anniversary of President Obama's visit to Kennedy Space Center, where he laid out his plans for the space agency's future. The event was held at the Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) and included photo opportunities with many of the NASA officials involved in Orion's development.

NASA Asteroid Plan Divides Lawmakers

Mark Carreau & Frank Morring, Jr.

NASA's new ambitious plan to corral a distant asteroid into lunar orbit is touching off another debate over the space agency's future, as members of Congress greet the proposal with skepticism. Under President Barack Obama's proposed 2014 budget, NASA spending would return to $17.7 billion, a pre-sequester amount that provides a $105 million down payment on plans for a 2021 astronaut visit to the asteroid. Efforts to establish a long-term price tag for the asteroid mission that merges the human exploration goal handed to NASA by Obama three years ago with a global vulnerability to impacts from Near Earth Objects, awaits definition by the agency's Exploration, Science and Space Technology directorates later this year.

United Launch Alliance completes major human-rating milestones

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

United Launch Alliance (ULA) has completed major milestones for the Orion-capable Delta IV launch pad ahead of a planned launch in September 2014. The aerodynamic wind tunnel testing is now complete and critical design review (CDR) finished for needed launch pad modifications.

How Space Science Is Helping Fight Against Cancer

Charles Choi - Space.com

Advanced strategies to fight cancer are taking inspiration from experiments in the final frontier of outer space, researchers say. The gravity experienced in low-Earth orbit, which is 10,000 to 1 million times less powerful than that felt on Earth's surface, allows researchers to study cell behavior that's normally masked by responses to gravity. Learning more about these processes is shedding light on how cells usually work, and how they can malfunction in the case of cancer. "When you take away the force of gravity, you can unmask some things you can't readily see on Earth," said cell biologist Jeanne Becker of Nano3D Biosciences in Houston. "When gravitational force is reduced, cell shape changes, the way they grow changes, the genes they activate change, the proteins they make change."

First Manned Mars Mission Draws Flood of Applicants

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience (via Space.com)

They'll be crammed into a space the size of an RV for more than a year, breathing recycled air, subsisting on dehydrated food and drinking their purified urine. If they die, they'll be freeze-dried in a body bag. And if they survive, they'll have to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at a screaming 8.8 miles (14.2 kilometers) per second. But the applications are already rolling in for the first manned mission to Mars, the project team said Thursday. Speaking at the National Space Symposium here, members of the Inspiration Mars Foundation described the challenges inherent in launching two humans on a 501-day flyby journey to the Red Planet and back in January 2018, but remained optimistic that those challenges aren't insurmountable.

What is it like to live in space? These videos will show you.

Emi Kolawole - Washington Post

If you have ever wondered what it's like to live in space — particularly what it's like to sleep or cry on the International Space Station (ISS) — then you probably want to know the name Chris Hadfield. Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut and commander of Expedition 35 on the ISS, is known for taking high-resolution photographs in space of major geological features and cityscapes from his perch high above Earth. He has become a must-follow on Twitter for those interested in space exploration and, perhaps, geology. And, through a series of videos, Hadfield has also created a tour of life on the ISS, where he spends his days with five other crew members.

Mars Colony Project to Begin Astronaut Search in July

Rob Coppinger - Space.com

A nonprofit organization that aims to land four astronauts on Mars in 2023 will kick off its two-year, televised search for Red Planet explorers this summer. The Netherlands-based Mars One will begin accepting application videos in July, charging a fee to weed out folks who aren't serious about their candidacy. The group hopes to raise millions of dollars this way, with the proceeds paying for the ongoing selection process and technology studies. "We expect a million applications with 1-minute videos, and hopefully some of those videos will go viral," Mars One co-founder and chief executive officer Bas Lansdorp told SPACE.com on April 10. He was in London to speak to the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) that day. Mars One now has 45,000 people registered for its mailing list and has already received 10,000 emails from interested individuals, Lansdorp added.

Funding for NASA is not a gamble

Hampton Roads Daily Press (Editorial)

Perhaps in a century and a half or so, there really will be a James T. Kirk — and an Enterprise. Based on NASA's sky's-the-limit philosophy when considering the universe, it's certainly possible. NASA's administrator, former astronaut Charles F. Bolden, Jr. is confident when he says the agency leads the world in space exploration. He says NASA's mission is, in part, to better explore farther than we have ever gone before. Sound familiar?

Launches, nature can co-exist

Jim Cameron - Daytona Beach News-Journal (Opinion)

(Cameron is senior vice president of government relations for the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce)

When the shuttle program at Kennedy Space Center ended, some 8,000 NASA and civilian workers lost their jobs. Many of those jobs were held by workers from Volusia County. With the nation's economy as sluggish as it has been, the end of manned space flights has been extra hard on central Florida. But now, we have a new opportunity to provide good, well-paid jobs for years to come. Space Florida is seeking 150 acres at the northern tip of Kennedy Space Center, near the Brevard-Volusia county border, for a site where private sector launches could take place.

South Georgia needs space industry

Michael Mealling - Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Opinion)

I grew up in Tifton and Brunswick and have family in Waycross, Moultrie, and Savannah. I drive through that part of the state and see small towns dying. The proposed spaceport in Camden County is the best opportunity to help South Georgia's economy. We should do whatever it takes to make it a reality. When NASA was looking for a location to launch rockets in the early 1960s, a group of Georgia businessmen promoted southeast Georgia as a potential site. Their proposal ran a close second to sites in Florida. After a great deal of discussion, visits and evaluation, NASA decided to locate its facility at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Prior to that selection, eastern central Florida was very empty with only 17,000 people. Since then, the Kennedy Space Center has grown to become the world's leading space launch facility, a tourist attraction that helped spur the population's growth to 700,000. Imagine if NASA had chosen southeast Georgia instead.
(NO FURTHER TEXT)

Mayor Vincent Gray plans space station simulator for D.C. students

Rachel Baye - Washington Examiner

NASA has stopped sending shuttles into space, but D.C. students soon may get their chance to experience life among the stars. D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray plans to open a space education center, featuring a space station simulator, in the DC Public Schools system, he revealed in his fiscal 2014 budget. Though the so-called Challenger Center for Space Education does not have a designated location, it is expected to include "a two-room simulator that consists of a space station, complete with communications, medical, life and computer science equipment, and a mission control room patterned after NASA's Johnson Space Center and a space lab ready for exploration," according to the budget proposal.

Boeing spacecraft, jets and more: The rare talent of Bob Kiliz

Brier Dudley - Seattle Times

If he'd been born a generation later, Kiliz might have become rich and famous building computers or phones. Instead, his skills were put to use on the most incredible, awe-inspiring machines of his era — supersonic jets, intercontinental missiles, defense satellites, the lunar rover, the space shuttle, flying military command centers and the B-1 bomber. Wealth wasn't a priority. Kiliz was paid well but lived thrifty and still bought used cars and clothes from sale bins. Fame was unlikely because most of the projects Kiliz worked on were top secret, some hidden behind armed guards and thick doors at Boeing's "Black Box" research facility in Kent.
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COMPLETE STORIES

Bad Valve Spoils Antares Launch Rehearsal Ahead of Maiden Flight

Dan Leone - Space News

Orbital Sciences Corp. is scrambling to keep the maiden launch of its Antares cargo rocket on track for April 17 after a malfunctioning engine valve forced the company to scrub a planned wet dress rehearsal test April 13.

In a short note posted on its website after the test was aborted with just 16 seconds left in the countdown, the Dulles, Va.-based company said it planned to replace the valve in time to keep Antares' launch on track for April 17. Antares is launching from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport located at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia.

Antares is the rocket Orbital is developing to fly eight cargo delivery missions for NASA under a $1.8 billion contract it got in 2008. For the maiden flight, Antares will be sent to orbit without its companion cargo spacecraft, Cygnus.

The flight scheduled for this week is the first of two demonstration spaceflights Orbital has to complete before it can begin paid cargo runs to the international space station.

Orbital's Antares Wet Dress Rehearsal Test Identifies Engine Valve That Needs To Be Replaced

April 2013

On Saturday (April 13), Orbital conducted the wet dress rehearsal for the Antares rocket in preparation its Test Flight scheduled for later this week on April 17. Late in the countdown, at about T-16 minutes, the test was halted because the launch team had detected a technical anomaly in the process. Orbital has determined that a secondary pyro valve aboard one of the two first-stage engines used in the propellant chilldown process was not functioning properly. A replacement unit will be installed within 24 hours with the goal of maintaining the April 17 launch date. Orbital will issue additional updates as warranted.

New Private Rocket Launching from Virginia Coast Wednesday

Tariq Malik - Space.com

An untested commercial rocket is poised to launch into space from Virginia's Eastern Shore on Wednesday, and you can watch the test flight live online.

The new private Antares rocket, built by the Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp., is slated to blast off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at the southern tip of this small island at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). If all goes well, the test flight will pave the way for the future unmanned cargo deliveries to the International Space Station.

NASA will broadcast the launch live on NASA TV beginning at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) on Wednesday. You can watch the Antares rocket launch webcast on SPACE.com, courtesy of NASA. Visibility maps released by the Wallops facility and Orbital officials suggest that the rocket could be seen from as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as Charleston, S.C., weather permitting.

"The best chance to see the flight extends from about Cape May, NJ southward through the Outer Banks of North Carolina," Orbital officials explained in an update. "Also, if you happen to be in Bermuda, you will likely have a clear view of Antares as it rockets by."

More than 100 reporters are expected to descend upon the NASA Wallops visitor's center on Wednesday, as well as a huge crowd of launch fans, center officials said. More onlookers are advised to watch the launch from the nearby Assateague Beach, NASA Wallops spokesman Keith Koehler told SPACE.com.

"It's going to be a bright light in the sky," Koehler said.

The rocket will lift off from Pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a commercial spaceport at the Wallops Flight Facility. The Wallops facility, established in 1945, is NASA's lead center for small suborbital rocket launches and balloon science missions.

The two-stage Antares rocket is designed to launch Orbital's cylindrical unmanned cargo ship, called Cygnus, on at least eight delivery flights to the International Space Station under a $1.9 billion deal with NASA. Orbital is one of two companies with a NASA contract for space station cargo deliveries. The other is Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., which has launched one test flight and two cargo delivery missions to the station since 2012 under a separate $1.6 billion contract.

For Orbital Sciences, Wednesday's launch is the first major flight test for the Antares rocket. The two-stage rocket is 131 feet (40 meters) tall and about 12.7 feet (3.9 m) wide and will launch toward the southeast out over the Atlantic Ocean during the 10-minute flight.

The upcoming Antares test flight will not carry a Cygnus spacecraft. Instead, it will carry a mock payload, called a "mass simulator," to mimic a Cygnus vehicle, including three tiny satellites for NASA and one commercial nanosatellite.

Orbital engineers replaced a faulty valve on the Antares rocket after it halted an engine test on Saturday. With the fix in place, Orbital officials and NASA are now tracking the weather for Wednesday's test.

"There is a 45 percent chance of favorable weather at the time of launch," NASA officials said in a statement late Monday. "Low clouds are the primary concern for a weather violation."

Does Virginia's spaceport have the right stuff?
On Wednesday, NASA Wallops expects to launch its biggest rocket by far -- the 135-foot, medium-lift Antares, built to resupply the International Space Station.

Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press

All his life, 65-year-old Craig Purdy has had his eye on the sky.

As a teenager in sleepy, rural Chincoteague in the early '60s, he watched "rocket shots" out of nearby Wallops, then a Naval air station on a marshy 6-square-mile slip of barrier island in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore. Small sounding rockets would soar into the upper atmosphere and beyond, hovering to study the winds, the sun, the moon or the elements before tumbling back to earth.

Purdy's father was a retired Navy man and electronic technician at the station; while an engineering student at Virginia Tech, Purdy worked there, too. After college he was hired full-time, conducting satellite research for decades before retiring last summer as deputy director of NASA Wallops Flight Facility.

"Until probably 10 years ago, I could tell you everybody's name that worked in Wallops," said Purdy. "Everybody knew each other. Everybody worked together. It was like a family atmosphere."

The oldest continuous-use launch site in the country, NASA Wallops has undergone many incarnations since 1945, when it began as a pilotless aircraft research station.

Now it's poised for its biggest transformation yet.

On Wednesday, it expects to launch its biggest rocket by far — the 135-foot, medium-lift Antares, built to resupply the International Space Station. Until now, the biggest rocket ever launched out of Wallops was the 70-foot Minotaur.

The event will mark a turning point in the flight facility's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, or MARS, which state leaders hope to turn into nothing less than America's best spaceport, and a major hub for the emerging commercial space industry.

"We don't have pretensions that we will become Cape Canaveral," said Dale K. Nash, the new executive director of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority that owns and operates MARS. "But we want to grow more capability here and become a major player in the U.S. space program."

The right stuff

Many believe MARS has the right stuff to do it.

Its biggest commercial customer, the Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corporation, chose Wallops for the expertise of its NASA staff, its uncongested schedule that allows for more predictable launches and its geography, which offers an ideal inclination to launch to the space station.

Orbital developed and built the Antares, but has been building smaller launch systems for 30 years. Some 600 of its rockets have put about 150 satellites into orbit, helped test U.S. missile defense systems and furthered scientific research, said spokesman Barron Beneski. The company today employs more than 3,500 people and generates annual revenues approaching $1.5 billion.

In 2008, Orbital became one of only two commercial space transportation firms to land a NASA contract to resupply the space station. The other is SpaceX, started by PayPal founder Elon Musk, that made history last May by becoming the first private company to dock with the space station.

"They've done a very good job," Beneski said. "Now it's our turn."

Spaceports are chosen depending on the needs of the mission, and this year Orbital will be using Wallops much more than any other launch range, Beneski said.

After Wednesday's test launch — if it's successful — will come a launch as early as the summer so Orbital's Cygnus cargo spacecraft can prove it can dock with the space station. And after that, Beneski said, will come the first of eight resupply missions through 2016. Orbital plans to launch all of them out of MARS.

"We can be flexible and we can be responsive," said Nash. "And we are certainly working to be very cost-efficient. All of those things can make you very, very attractive to customers."

Nash joined the Authority last August after spending 14 years in Florida launching space shuttles, then nearly six years running Alaska's space program. Heading up Virginia's revved-up spaceport ambitions, he said, has been "like drinking through a fire hose — but it's also got a familiar taste."

According to the Authority's five-year strategic plan for MARS, released in December, the spaceport has other things going for it:

·         It's far enough from heavily populated areas to allow for safe launches and the ability to control the surrounding environment.

·         It's close to aerospace firms in Baltimore, D.C. and Hampton Roads, and already has relationships with top-ranked research institutions and universities, such as NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

·         Its main customer — Orbital — already secured a lucrative NASA contract.

·         Virginia offers tax and financial incentives to commercial space companies operating in the commonwealth.

·         And it's already licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for orbital launches. Only three other states — Florida, California and Alaska — have achieved licensing. More than a dozen other states have expressed interest in building spaceports, Nash said, but it's not as easy as it sounds.

"You can't just say, 'I'm going to put rockets out,'" said Nash. "You have to clear air space and clear sea space."

But the strategic plan also found competitive weaknesses at Wallops: Limited acreage on the small island should the Authority ever want to expand with a large-lift launch pad; a risky reliance on NASA for much of its contracts and on the state for funding; and aging infrastructure surrounding the facility.

Money and jobs

For state legislators and a succession of Virginia governors, luring commercial space business to Virginia has meant investment and jobs, much of which has been migrating overseas.

"The entire commercial satellite business that the United States used to own outright," said Nash, "that has gone to the European Space Agency. Russia, China and India all got a lot of that market, and that's a significant number of launches we'd like to see migrate back on shore."

Much of the allure of the commercial space market is that it's been a growth industry even during hard economic times.

Nationally, total wages and salaries for the industry from 1999 to 2009 rocketed from $16.4 billion to $53.3 billion, according to FAA estimates. In 2009, the total economic activity generated was more than $208 billion.

In Virginia, the broader aerospace industry is a big part of the economy, with commercial space transportation a big part of that.

In 2009, the aerospace industry contributed a total of $7.6 billion to the state's economic output and supported 28,110 jobs, or nearly 1 percent of total employment.

Jobs in aerospace are also far more lucrative on average than other fields. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Virginia has more scientists and engineers as a percentage of the workforce than any other state except Massachusetts, and ranks third behind Massachusetts and New Mexico in the concentration of high-tech jobs.

While the average income in Virginia in 2009 was $48,334, the average income in the state's aerospace industry was $99,385, according to state Department of Transportation figures. And each of those higher-wage jobs supports 2.11 additional jobs elsewhere in Virginia.

Orbital has already contributed substantially to such job numbers, beefing up its employment in Virginia in recent years from six to more than 1,800.

From 2006 to 2015, the company estimates it will have contributed $18 billion to the state's gross domestic product and created more than 1,000 direct jobs and about 2,600 indirect jobs.

It estimates its Antares program alone over the next 15 years could mean overall economic activity in the state of $4.25 billion.

Ahead of the curve

Wallops launched its very first rocket on July 4, 1945, when it was part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA's predecessor.

Since then, it has launched more than 16,000. In 1960 came the Scout — the first capable of placing a satellite into orbit.

"The most spectacular was probably the one that didn't work," recalled Purdy, still a boy at the time. "It went up and got to a certain altitude and wasn't working right, and they had to destroy it. It was quite a scene. … Fireworks went off in different directions and little pieces here and there."

The failure demonstrated the practical advantages of having a rural launch site next to the Atlantic, far from heavily populated areas.

When NASA began manned space missions, Wallops' small launch pads just weren't capable of handling the heavy-lift rockets required, so the facility became overshadowed by Cape Canaveral in Florida.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Wallops' funding and workforce shrank, and it concentrated on its strengths: rockets and balloon launches to test aircraft models, study space and Earth science, shoot satellites and telescopes into orbit, and hone re-entry and life-support systems for the human space program.

Today, it serves as NASA's primary suborbital research facility.

The pivot toward the commercial space industry began as early as the Reagan Administration, which in the 1980s encouraged privatizing space transportation.

In the mid-90s, engineering professors at ODU suggested using Wallops as a hands-on "enterprise center" for their students. According to Oktay Baysal, dean of the school's Batten College of Engineering and Technology, they saw long-term potential in a commercial spaceport.

They even saw potential for civilians in space one day, he said, and suggested the state make space travel one of its transportation modes and place it under the Secretary of Transportation.

"So we were way ahead of the curve then," Baysal said.

At the university's suggestion, the General Assembly in 1995 formed the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority to operate the spaceport, with ODU engineering professor Billie Reed at its helm. It was headquartered at ODU, which began funding the effort, but placed under the authority of the state Secretary of Technology, rather than Transportation. A $3.6 million, small-class launch facility was built.

The state partnered with Maryland on the spaceport, since many Wallops workers lived across the state line just to the north. They named it the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport to make it more inclusive.

But a key reason to ally with Maryland, said Baysal, was to court its powerful senior senator, Barbara Mikulski.

"We were after her," he said with a chuckle. Not only does Mikulski love space and technology, he explained, but she heads the important Appropriations Committee, which funds NASA. It also didn't hurt that NASA Goddard is in her district.

Such connections helped the Authority secure the Air Force as a lucrative spaceport customer, he said, launching military payloads and easing the financial burden on ODU.

"Once we got the Air Force contracts, I was free and clear," Baysal said. "Because I was paying the salaries of everyone from ODU for years. I was sort of under pressure — 'Why are you doing this? It's been 10 years.' And I said, 'Hang on, hang on, the time shall come.' And it did. We did not give up."

By then, they had established a relationship with Orbital, so when the company won its NASA contract, the Authority promised to build a brand new liquid-fuel launch facility to handle medium-lift rockets if the company agreed to launch from MARS. The $145 million facility was finished last summer.

"Now it's becoming real," Baysal said.

Boldly go

With Orbital as a key client, many Virginia officials have begun to believe the sky's the limit for MARS.

In 2011, a state-funded study found MARS needed to remake itself to better compete with other spaceports, so the state shrank and restructured the Authority's board of directors to make it leaner and more broad-based. That's when Reed stepped down and Nash came aboard. And it realigned the Authority under the Department of Transportation, as ODU had first advised.

The study also cautioned that Virginia was at a crossroads in its commercial space ambitions and needed to decide how much it was willing to commit to — and risk on — the market for "new big commercial space."

In its subsequent five-year plan, the Authority devised three possible funding scenarios, and legislators chose the "opportunistic midcourse:" Invest just enough to nimbly service a rapidly growing industry, without risking significant public funds.

Last year, the General Assembly committed to spend $9.5 million a year through 2016 from the Transportation Trust Fund to develop the infrastructure at MARS, attract commercial customers, boost economic growth, establish partnerships for research and commerce, and explore space tourism.

Officials agree that MARS can expect to see an increase in launches over the next few years, including up to four medium lifts a year. Beneski said Orbital's goal is to get its NASA contract renewed to continue its resupply missions "as long as the station continues and they need cargo."

In 20 years, said Nash, he envisions MARS as "one of the busiest commercial spaceports in the U.S., if not the world."

The strategic plan also notes the potential for space tourism, and said the Authority will "actively monitor" the emerging market and "assess its viability at MARS."

NASA has an 8,750-foot horizontal runway at Wallops that could be used for suborbital reusable launch vehicles. The plan notes that billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic in New Mexico is making major investments in space tourism, including spacecraft designs that could launch from a horizontal runway.

"We have talked with them," said Purdy. "They're still working on getting the kinks out of their system. I know they talked to people at Wallops, and they said, 'Once we get it straight, we'd like to come to the East Coast and be able to launch out of the East Coast. We're one of — if not the — prime site they're looking at."

Want to watch?

The launch of the 135-foot Antares rocket should be visible throughout Hampton Roads, but NASA Wallops suggests two main viewing sites for those who want a closer look:

·         Wallops Visitors Center located along Virginia Highway 175 in Accomack County: http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/wvc/

·         The beach on the south-facing Assateague and Chincoteague islands, although the capacity is limited according to time of year and state of the beaches.

For mission updates, call the Wallops Information Line at 757-824-2050.

Television coverage

NASA-TV will have coverage of the launch, beginning at 4 p.m. Liftoff is scheduled for 5 p.m. with a daily launch window that runs until 8 p.m. For NASA-TV schedule and video streaming information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

*If necessary, back-up launch opportunities are April 18-21.

NASA Fiscal 2014 Budget Trims Workforce, Facilities, Consultants

Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily

NASA anticipates a slightly smaller civil servant workforce, facility consolidations and less spending on consultants as the agency begins to focus on an ambitious effort to identify, retrieve and corral a small asteroid into a stable lunar orbit for exploration by astronauts, according to the agency's proposed 2014 budget.

The asteroid-capture strategy, subject to Congressional scrutiny, depends on an overall return to pre-sequester spending of $17.7 billion agency-wide for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, funding that would be distributed across 10 field centers in eight states and the District of Columbia.

The agency's goal is a civil servant workforce of 17,700, a decline of about 275 and a target NASA plans to achieve with selective buyouts that will permit it to continue some hiring of young engineers, scientists and other specialists. NASA's flight-eligible astronaut corps, for instance, is expected to rise from 50 men and women with 9-12 new hires.

NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, which manages International Space Station operations and leads development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, would be the top recipient of 2014 funding among the centers with $4.5 billion. Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, which manages NASA's Earth observations and astrophysics programs, and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which is upgrading its launch complex for human deep-space missions, would follow with $3 billion and $2.3 billion, respectively. The Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, which hosts much of the agency's propulsion testing, would receive the least, $182 million.

Personnel declines would be distributed evenly. Goddard would continue to have the most NASA civil servants, 3,331, a decline of just five. Johnson, which has been in a post-shuttle decline, would fall by 53 to 3,098, second within the agency. Stennis, the center with the fewest civil servants, would fall by five to 313.

Despite protests from Houston-area lawmakers, NASA intends to complete the closing of Johnson's arc jet facility, a high-temperature lab for evaluating heat shielding under a range of atmospheric re-entry conditions. Consolidation of arc jet testing at Ames Research Center is already underway and expected to save an estimated $5 million annually.

The agency is taking the same approach with its thermal vacuum chamber test facilities. Johnson's big Chamber A has been upgraded for pre-launch testing of the James Webb Space Telescope. Four less-capable chambers at Kennedy, the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, will be closed, leaving active test chambers at the Glenn Research Center in Ohio, Goddard and Johnson. As with the arc jet, NASA's thermal vacuum chambers will be available to other federal agencies and commercial users.

One area in which NASA does not intend to resume pre-sequester spending levels is in the use of consultants. Spending on outside experts declined from $749 million in 2012 to an estimated $670 million this year, a level the agency plans to maintain in 2014.

Russian Space Freighter Undocks from Orbital Station

RIA Novosti

Russian cargo spacecraft undocked on Monday from the International Space Station (ISS) to perform a series of scientific experiments in space before splashing in the Pacific on April 21, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

"The Progress-17M space freighter undocked from the Zvezda module of the Russian segment on ISS at 04.02 pm Moscow time [12:02 GMT]," Roscosmos said in a statement.

"In the next six days, the spacecraft will conduct a series of scientific experiments under the Radar-Progress project," the statement said.

The project focuses on the study the physical characteristics of the ionosphere environment around the spacecraft caused by the work of its liquid-propellant engines.

The Progress-M17 arrived at the orbital station on October 31 last year. During the mission, its engines were used several times to adjust the ISS orbit.

The departure of Progress M-17M clears a docking port on the Zvezda module for the next Russian resupply vehicle, Progress M-19M, which will blast off aboard a Soyuz-U carrier rocket from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on April 24.

Orion on track for 2021 asteroid mission, KSC chief says

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

President Barack Obama's push to accelerate a human expedition to an asteroid is a daunting gauntlet for NASA, but one that can be accomplished, agency officials said Monday.

"This is not going to be easy," said Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana, who piloted two shuttle flights and served as mission commander on two others.

NASA will have to develop a number of new or emerging technologies to get the job done.

"We have lots of work ahead of us on that challenging and complex mission," said Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration system development. "But NASA is up to the challenge, and the team you see here is ready to take it on."

Cabana, Dumbacher and others gathered in the same building where President Obama – three years ago Monday – challenged NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025.

President Obama's 2014 spending plan, which was delivered to Congress last week, includes a proposal that effectively would move that goal up to 2021.

A robotic spacecraft would be sent to snare a small asteroid and haul it to an orbit on the far side of the moon in 2019. Astronauts on the first piloted Orion flight then would rendezvous with the ancient space rock and return samples to Earth.

NASA's plan for that first Orion flight had been to send a crew on a loop around the moon. Now astronauts would also visit an asteroid – a first in terms of space exploration.

"I think it's really neat that the first time we fly (Orion) with crew, they've got some place to go with it, and something to accomplish with it," Cabana said. "We're excited about it. Absolutely."

Cabana, Dumbacher and others briefed reporters on progress being made with the Orion crew exploration vehicle, the heavy-lift rocket that will launch it, and associated ground systems at KSC.

The venue: Lockheed Martin's Orion production facility, a renovated operations and checkout building used during the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs.

When Obama laid down his 2025 asteroid challenge, the facility was a void bay. Now it's a fully operational factory where an Apollo-style Orion capsule is being assembled for flight.

The first unmanned test flight of an Orion spacecraft is scheduled to launch in September 2014 on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket at Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Now being assembled in the Orion production facility, the spacecraft will fly a loop around Earth at an altitude of 3,600 miles and then re-enter the atmosphere at a velocity that will simulate a return from an asteroid, the moon or Mars.

Orion Update Event Held at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

Jason Rhian – AmericaSpace.com

The covers were pulled back on NASA's new crewed Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle today, providing a rare look at the spacecraft that will conduct its first test flight next year. The event was held on the third anniversary of President Obama's visit to Kennedy Space Center, where he laid out his plans for the space agency's future.

The event was held at the Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) and included photo opportunities with many of the NASA officials involved in Orion's development. These included NASA Kennedy Space Center Director and four-time space shuttle veteran Robert Cabana, NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Dan Dumbacher, Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer, and the Planning and Control Manager for NASA's Space Launch System Keith Hefner.

The view of Orion was restricted as the spacecraft is currently encased in a test stand that will be used to validate the spacecraft prior to launch. This Orion will be tested in a variety of ways to ensure it is ready to conduct the Exploration Flight Test-1, currently slated to take place in September 2014.

"Many of the core systems that you need to conduct any crewed mission will be tested on EFT-1; we'll test the heat shield, the guidance and navigation, the parachutes, avionics; we're going to go 3,000 miles into space and achieve about 84 percent of lunar entry velocity to test the heat shield and again—that's happening in just a few months," said Geyer. "Behind us is the flight article for EFT-1; it's in a stand that we're going to do a static load test. We'll pressurize it and we have actuators that will push on the structure to simulate liftoff, parachute deploy, and the other loading tests to make sure that the structure behaves as we expect."

If all goes according to plan, the Orion spacecraft at today's event will be launched atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket in 2014. It will mark the first test flight of the craft.

Three years later, in 2017, another Orion will be launched on the first test flight of NASA's new heavy-lift booster, the Space Launch System, or "SLS." Like EFT-1, this mission, Exploration Mission 1, will also be an unmanned test flight. For some time NASA had stated its intent to launch the first manned mission is 2021 on a cislunar flight.

However, since that time NASA has been directed to first retrieve a 500 ton, 25-foot-wide asteroid into lunar orbit via an unmanned spacecraft—astronauts would then use both SLS and Orion to travel to the asteroid, collect samples, and then return to Earth. It is hoped that such a mission would not only increase our understanding of asteroids, but also help prepare astronauts for missions to Mars, currently planned to take place sometime in the 2030s.

"Three years ago today, the president was here, in an empty high-bay challenging us to go to an asteroid by 2025. Today, this is a world-class production facility with a flight article, a flight vehicle Orion, getting ready to fly next year We made tremendous progress in our transition to the future, and now, with the announcement during the budget rollout last week of our plans to retrieve an asteroid and send a crew to it, we're moving forward to meet the president's challenge," Cabana said.

NASA Asteroid Plan Divides Lawmakers

Mark Carreau & Frank Morring, Jr.

NASA's new ambitious plan to corral a distant asteroid into lunar orbit is touching off another debate over the space agency's future, as members of Congress greet the proposal with skepticism.

Under President Barack Obama's proposed 2014 budget, NASA spending would return to $17.7 billion, a pre-sequester amount that provides a $105 million down payment on plans for a 2021 astronaut visit to the asteroid.

Efforts to establish a long-term price tag for the asteroid mission that merges the human exploration goal handed to NASA by Obama three years ago with a global vulnerability to impacts from Near Earth Objects, awaits definition by the agency's Exploration, Science and Space Technology directorates later this year.

"There will be naysayers all over," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden acknowledged April 10.

"While [it is creative], a proposed NASA mission to 'lasso' an asteroid and drag it to the Moon's orbit will require serious deliberation," protested Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. The panel plans an April 17 hearing on budget requests for NASA and other science agencies.

Also, lawmakers, including Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the appropriations panel that funds NASA, are re-introducing legislation that died in the last Congress calling for a human return to the Moon.

Support, suggests Bolden, will likely come from multiple quarters, including those alarmed by the planet's vulnerability to the small undiscovered asteroids such as the one that exploded over Russia in mid-February and a larger cousin that skimmed close to the Earth later the same day. The asteroid mission also has backing from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.)—a proponent of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) that would transport the crew. He heads the Senate Commerce, Transportation and Science panel that handles NASA matters.

"This is a very interesting project, and as I already told Charlie Bolden, we are ready to see how ESA can contribute," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, the European Space Agency's general director, while attending the 29th annual National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

The asteroid scenario was developed initially by the California Institute of Technology's Keck Institute for Space Studies in 2011-12 and priced at $2.6 billion, the equivalent of a NASA planetary flagship mission. The Keck estimate includes mission work already well along at NASA, and applicable to the venture.

NASA's top line is sufficient to prepare Orion and SLS for unpiloted test flights in 2014 and 2017, with a crewed flight in 2021—just in time to greet the lunar orbiting asteroid with astronauts, says Bolden.

United Launch Alliance completes major human-rating milestones

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

United Launch Alliance (ULA) has completed major milestones for the Orion-capable Delta IV launch pad ahead of a planned launch in September 2014.

The aerodynamic wind tunnel testing is now complete and critical design review (CDR) finished for needed launch pad modifications.

"We just completed a wind tunnel test of that configuration last week, a very solid, very aerodynamically friendly configuration," says George Sowers, ULA's vice president of business development and advanced systems.

The Orion will be topped with an inert launch abort tower to test its aerodynamics and separation from the capsule. During a crewed launch, the armed tower would be ready to fire, rapidly ejecting the capsule away from the rocket in the event of an abort.

"We actually had the critical design review for the modifications we're doing at the launch site about three weeks ago," says Sowers.

The Delta IV Heavy is supposed to launch Lockheed Martin's Orion crewed interplanetary capsule on its first uncrewed test mission, putting the capsule into a highly elliptical orbit, from which it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere at 84% of the speed of a return from a lunar orbit.

Despite the lack of crew aboard, the launch pad will be modified to pump air into the capsule. "We have to provide certain air inside the capsule, certain data. There are some platform modifications to provide data we have to do," says Sowers.

"Essentially, the actual work on the pad is going to occur between two launches, right prior to the [Orion] launch. It will be in the summer of 2014." They will remove the umbilical cord between rocket and pad and "in parallel we'll have built a new one and we'll install that".

The flight will also qualify the Delta Cryogenic Second Stage for use with Orion; the stage will later be adapted to the Space Launch System for its first flight in 2017, launching the Orion on a cislunar orbit.

ULA is also developing its human-rated Atlas, intended to carry Boeing's CST-100 and Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser, which are crewed commercial spaceflight vehicles.

"We've got a waterfall of preliminary design reviews (PDR) in the spring leading to a system PDR in June," says Sowers. The emergency detection system (EDS) and launch site PDRs (including a crew tower and access arm design) must be completed beforehand. The company recently completed PDR for the Boeing launch vehicle adaptor.

"A lot of the stuff we're doing there is also common to the Sierra Nevada [adaptor] the crew access tower and EDS and other things," notes Sowers. "We're going a little bit slower on Sierra Nevada with the integration, the mission-unique stuff, but we have completed windtunnel testing for them, and we're going at a little bit slower pace regarding the other stuff."

CDR for the human-rated Atlas is planned for May 2014. Once that review is complete, construction can begin.

How Space Science Is Helping Fight Against Cancer

Charles Choi - Space.com

Advanced strategies to fight cancer are taking inspiration from experiments in the final frontier of outer space, researchers say.

The gravity experienced in low-Earth orbit, which is 10,000 to 1 million times less powerful than that felt on Earth's surface, allows researchers to study cell behavior that's normally masked by responses to gravity. Learning more about these processes is shedding light on how cells usually work, and how they can malfunction in the case of cancer.

"When you take away the force of gravity, you can unmask some things you can't readily see on Earth," said cell biologist Jeanne Becker of Nano3D Biosciences in Houston. "When gravitational force is reduced, cell shape changes, the way they grow changes, the genes they activate change, the proteins they make change."

Scientists have been taking note of such effects for decades. For instance, experiments in the 1970s on Skylab, the first U.S. space station, discovered that red blood cells develop bumpy surfaces in space, a change that disappeared within hours once astronauts returned to Earth.

More recently, research investigating 10,000 genes found that the behavior of 1,632 of them — including genes linked with cell death and tumor suppression — was altered in microgravity.

Although microgravity can distort normal biology, conventional procedures for studying cells on Earth can introduce their own problems. For instance, experiments on Earth often grow cells as flat layers in dishes, obscuring how they behave in real life when they can interact with each other in three dimensions in complex ways.

"When you grow cancers in three dimensions as opposed to flat layers, their response to drugs is vastly different — they become more resistant to drugs," Becker told SPACE.com.

These discoveries spurred the creation of devices that could mimic the effects of microgravity on Earth so researchers could see how cells behave in three dimensions. For example, so-called rotating wall vessel bioreactors constantly spin cells, keeping them as close to the free fall seen in space as possible.

Other devices use magnetic fields to levitate cells and counteract the pull of gravity.

Such machines have supported analyses of a wide variety of cancers, such as those of the breast, cervix, kidney, colon, liver, skin, lung, bone, ovaries and prostate.

"The work we do can help address how cancer grows, reveal new ways of tackling drug resistance," Becker said.

Although devices that seek to mimic or induce microgravity are valuable to science, they cannot fully replace the effects seen in orbit. For instance, the crew of the final doomed flight of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 found that prostate cancer cells grown in space developed into golf-ball-size structures, while clumps grown in rotating wall vessel bioreactors only reached 3 to 5 millimeters (0.1 to 0.2 inches) in size.

"With the International Space Station, we have a lab that doesn't exist anywhere else," Becker said. "It's an exciting platform for discovery."

Space-based science has also improved microencapsulation technology that envelops molecules in capsules, helping develop new delivery systems for cancer drugs. In addition, research exploring how plants respond to light has also shown new ways to reduce pain associated with cancer treatments.

Although NASA's space shuttle program retired in 2011, "we have commercial access to the space station coming up the pipeline, and we still have access to it through vehicles like the Russians' Progress spacecraft," Becker said. "So the opportunities are really limitless."

Becker and her colleague Glauco Souza detailed this research online April 12 in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer.

First Manned Mars Mission Draws Flood of Applicants

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience (via Space.com)

They'll be crammed into a space the size of an RV for more than a year, breathing recycled air, subsisting on dehydrated food and drinking their purified urine. If they die, they'll be freeze-dried in a body bag. And if they survive, they'll have to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at a screaming 8.8 miles (14.2 kilometers) per second.

But the applications are already rolling in for the first manned mission to Mars, the project team said Thursday.

Speaking at the National Space Symposium here, members of the Inspiration Mars Foundation described the challenges inherent in launching two humans on a 501-day flyby journey to the Red Planet and back in January 2018, but remained optimistic that those challenges aren't insurmountable.

"So far, we haven't come up with any show-stoppers, so that's exciting," said Jane Poynter, president of the Paragon Space Development Corp., which has partnered with Inspiration Mars.

Making history

Millionaire Dennis Tito, who became the first space tourist in 2001, unveiled Inspiration Mars' "Mission for America" in February.

The goal is to send two people (a man and a woman, possibly a married couple) on a 501-day there-and-back flyby around Mars in January 2018. The positions of Earth and Mars are then ideal for such a quick trip; the next such opportunity won't come around until 2031.

The date also coincides with an 11-year solar minimum, meaning the Inspiration Mars crew will be exposed to less solar radiation than during other launch windows, officials said.

Tito plans to fund the Inspiration Mars Foundation for the first two years with his own money, with private donations covering the rest of the mission's costs.

The plan is to use a commercially available spacecraft, rockets and hardware to get the space-faring couple to the Red Planet. SpaceX's Dragon capsule is one possibility, but that vehicle has not yet been used to transport people, only cargo.]

"There are a lot of unknowns. We don't want to put all our eggs in one basket," Tito told SPACE.com in February.

A 'simple' mission

The goal of the mission is to inspire the public — and Congress — to recommit to long-distance space travel, Tito said at the National Space Symposium.

To prove that humans can explore deep space, Tito and his team are planning a stripped-down, austere mission: The spacecraft will pass within 100 miles (161 km) of Mars' surface, but won't enter orbit or touchdown, because that would require additional propulsion systems.

"It's like a boomerang," Tito said. "You throw it out there and it comes right back in 501 days."

As part of the keep-it-simple philosophy, the crew won't go on any spacewalks during the mission, and opportunities for science experiments to fly onboard will be limited.

But the whole mission will be its own experiment, said Jonathan Clark, Inspiration Mars' chief medical officer and a former space shuttle crew surgeon. The crew members will likely collect biological samples from their own bodies for analysis so that researchers can learn more about the effects of long-term space travel, particularly cosmic radiation exposure.

To deal with the threat of radiation, the team is working on ways to shield the spacecraft, monitor space weather and even develop antioxidant-rich diets that will help combat some of the effects of radiation exposure, Clark said. The crew members will be middle-aged to prevent any concerns about reproductive system effects.

The crew will also be pioneers of personalized medicine, Clark said. The researchers plan to study the individuals' proteins and genomes in order to deliver the best medical care possible with limited supplies, he said. Should a crew member die, he added, there will be a body bag on board that can be vacuum-sealed, essentially freeze-drying the corpse for return to Earth.

Life support

Keeping the crew members alive will be a major challenge, said Taber MacCallum, Inspiration Mars' chief technology officer.

The two Mars voyagers will have to be mechanically inclined in order to fix problems that arise during the mission. Everything will be fixable from the inside, MacCallum said, eliminating the need for spacewalks. Urine will be distilled and filtered to create new drinking water every two days or so, and oxygen will be derived onboard from water and carbon dioxide exhaled by the crew.

"All the work to date has shown that this is possible — just barely," MacCallum said.

Psychologically, the couple will be picked to be as stable as possible, Poynter said. There is precedent for such long-term isolation, she said, including Biosphere 2, a University of Arizona research facility where she and MacCallum spent two years along with four other people in the 1990s.

Issues can arise, Poynter said, including depression, mood swings and "flashbacks almost like hallucinations." But picking the right pair can make all the difference.

"You really can select people that will do well in this type of environment," she said.

In fact, applications are already pouring in, the team said, despite the fact that the official application process won't begin until next year.

"We've already had a ton of applications," Poynter said. "Some of them are kind of interesting, but please don't send your applications just yet. We're not announcing that we're taking applications!"

What is it like to live in space? These videos will show you.

Emi Kolawole - Washington Post

If you have ever wondered what it's like to live in space — particularly what it's like to sleep or cry on the International Space Station (ISS) — then you probably want to know the name Chris Hadfield.

Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut and commander of Expedition 35 on the ISS, is known for taking high-resolution photographs in space of major geological features and cityscapes from his perch high above Earth. He has become a must-follow on Twitter for those interested in space exploration and, perhaps, geology. And, through a series of videos, Hadfield has also created a tour of life on the ISS, where he spends his days with five other crew members.

In one of his more popular videos, Hadfield shows what happens when you cry in space. The video, posted earlier this month, has received more than 1 million views. It's fascinating to watch, as, in the absence of gravity, the tears float around the eye in a what looks like a gelatinous blob.

"Grab a hankie," recommends Hadfield after injecting water into his own eye to mimic the process.

Then, there's the question of how you brush your teeth.

"We just use standard toothpaste in space," says Hadfield, before he proceeds to give his choppers a brushing that could make even the most meticulous dentist proud. Then, he swallows the toothpaste. Because, think about it, where else would it go?

So, what about sleeping in space? The experience, as Hadfield shows, would put the mattress industry out of business if we could do it this way on Earth. Since there is no gravity, one can relax every muscle in the body and simply float bed-free off to dreamland.

Had field records many other typical daily activities on the space station, from shaving, to making a peanut butter sandwich, to making dried spinach for dinner. He also documents the effects that living in space have on astronauts' bodies, particularly the eyes. Experiments are underway to determine why some astronauts' vision deteriorates while in space.

Oh, and we can also learn how to get a haircut.

The videos thread the entertaining with the educational, engaging Hadfield's natural camera presence and have some fun with the edits. It's a pretty good way to spend a lunch break.

Mars Colony Project to Begin Astronaut Search in July

Rob Coppinger - Space.com

A nonprofit organization that aims to land four astronauts on Mars in 2023 will kick off its two-year, televised search for Red Planet explorers this summer.

The Netherlands-based Mars One will begin accepting application videos in July, charging a fee to weed out folks who aren't serious about their candidacy. The group hopes to raise millions of dollars this way, with the proceeds paying for the ongoing selection process and technology studies.

"We expect a million applications with 1-minute videos, and hopefully some of those videos will go viral," Mars One co-founder and chief executive officer Bas Lansdorp told SPACE.com on April 10. He was in London to speak to the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) that day.

Mars One now has 45,000 people registered for its mailing list and has already received 10,000 emails from interested individuals, Lansdorp added.

A one-way trip to Mars

Mars One is casting a wide net, seeking applicants from all over the world. Application fees will vary from country to country, with folks from poorer nations getting a price break, Lansdorp said. The maximum fee will apparently be $25.

Anyone who is at least 18 years old can apply by sending in a video explaining why he or she should be selected. But prospective colonists must be prepared to say goodbye to Earth forever; there are no plans at this point to bring Mars One astronauts home.

By July 2015, Mars One wants to have 24 astronauts, organized into six teams of four people. Those teams then face seven years of training that will include spending three months at a time in a replica of the Mars colony.

"We will give them all the most stressful situations," Lansdorp told the BIS audience on April 10, adding that the training base will have a 40-minute communications delay to replicate the time lag that would exist due to the vast distance between Earth and Mars.

Mars One officials expect some individuals and teams to fail these tests, so from 2015 on, the nonprofit will have an annual process to select 12 people (in three teams of four).

"We will always have about 10 groups [of four] in training, so if one group drops out, there will be replacement crews," Lansdorp told SPACE.com. This will continue even after 2023, because Mars One plans to send more colonists to the Red Planet every two years for as long as funding levels will allow.

The Netherlands-based Mars One will begin accepting application videos in July, charging a fee to weed out folks who aren't serious about their candidacy. The group hopes to raise millions of dollars this way, with the proceeds paying for the ongoing selection process and technology studies.

"We expect a million applications with 1-minute videos, and hopefully some of those videos will go viral," Mars One co-founder and chief executive officer Bas Lansdorp told SPACE.com on April 10. He was in London to speak to the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) that day.

Mars One now has 45,000 people registered for its mailing list and has already received 10,000 emails from interested individuals, Lansdorp added.

A one-way trip to Mars

Mars One is casting a wide net, seeking applicants from all over the world. Application fees will vary from country to country, with folks from poorer nations getting a price break, Lansdorp said. The maximum fee will apparently be $25.

Anyone who is at least 18 years old can apply by sending in a video explaining why he or she should be selected. But prospective colonists must be prepared to say goodbye to Earth forever; there are no plans at this point to bring Mars One astronauts home.

By July 2015, Mars One wants to have 24 astronauts, organized into six teams of four people. Those teams then face seven years of training that will include spending three months at a time in a replica of the Mars colony.

"We will give them all the most stressful situations," Lansdorp told the BIS audience on April 10, adding that the training base will have a 40-minute communications delay to replicate the time lag that would exist due to the vast distance between Earth and Mars.

Mars One officials expect some individuals and teams to fail these tests, so from 2015 on, the nonprofit will have an annual process to select 12 people (in three teams of four).

"We will always have about 10 groups [of four] in training, so if one group drops out, there will be replacement crews," Lansdorp told SPACE.com. This will continue even after 2023, because Mars One plans to send more colonists to the Red Planet every two years for as long as funding levels will allow.

Interplanetary 'Big Brother'

Mars One estimates that it needs $6 billion to send the first four astronauts to Mars. This money will cover developing the landing systems, habitats, Mars Transit Vehicle (MTV), rovers, solar arrays and other technologies associated with the colony, as well as pay for the crew's journey from Earth.

Every subsequent crew trip would cost $4 billion, Lansdorp told SPACE.com. Just sending a supply lander would cost $250 million.

Mars One plans to raise this money largely through a global reality television series that will follow the colonization effort from astronaut selection to the first landing and the settlement's expansion.

The audience will vote for who gets to go to Mars from a pool of candidates selected by Mars One's experts. Lansdorp points to the 2012 London Olympics and the $4 billion it generated from television revenues over its three weeks as evidence that such a funding plan can work.

Meanwhile, the application video revenue will finance early technology studies and prove there is demand for a television show. ['Big Brother' on Mars? (Video)]

"We can prove to the broadcasters that there is real demand and interest, and we will start negotiations after the [astronaut] selection procedure begins," Lansdorp told SPACE.com.

Beyond the applicant videos and television show, future revenues include crowdfunding, exploiting the technologies developed for Earth's markets and doing research on Mars for governments. For example, Mars One could eventually send samples of Martian soil to Earth, officials say.

Mission details taking shape

While the Mars spacecraft has yet to be designed, Lansdorp told the BIS audience that for the 210-day journey, the vehicle would have a hollow 660-gallon (2,500 liters) water tank with four compartments.

Astronauts would sleep in this area and use it as shelter from extreme solar radiation events. The water equates to a 9.84-inch (25 centimeters) column for radiation protection, which Lansdorp told the BIS is what NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) suggest for a return mission.

When the first team of four lands at the settlement's location on April 24, 2023, the settlers will find a colony whose habitats and solar arrays started working before they left Earth. Lansdorp told SPACE.com that the colony will be located between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude.

"We want to be as south as possible for sunlight and north enough for water," he said, adding that the colony would be at a location that is 1.55 miles (2.5 kilometers) lower than Mars' average ground level, to give the arriving spacecraft more time to land.

The colony will initially have rovers, two habitats, two life support landers and two supply landers. Mars One is designing five types of landers for life support, supplies, habitat and those that land the crew and rovers. The first equipment to be sent to Mars will be a communications satellite, a demonstration rover and a 5,500-pound (2,500 kilograms) supply lander, officials said.

"We have a conceptual rover right now. It is very likely there will be two rovers — one trailer rover and one intelligent rover that does all the advanced tasks," Lansdorp told SPACE.com. The trailer rover will move landers from their landing point to the settlement, a distance not expected to exceed about 1 mile (1.6 km).

The colony's habitats will be connected by fabric tunnels and covered in 6 feet (1.8 m) of Martian soil, to provide radiation protection. Lansdorp told the BIS audience that with the colony's expected outdoor activities, the colonists will get a radiation dose over 10 years equal to that of ESA's maximum allowed for its astronauts, which he described as "very safe."

At the same time the first team lands, the second crew's habitat lander will also arrive. As well as being ready for the second crew's 2025 arrival, this habitat can be used by the first crew if they encounter problems with their own equipment.

The colony will have inflatable greenhouses and use water from the Martian soil and nitrogen from the atmosphere to grow crops. The crew will cultivate rice, algae and insects for their high protein content and will also likely grow mushrooms, along with tomatoes and other plants.

Tapping private industry

Solar rather than nuclear power will be used for the base, Lansdorp said, and all the landers may be larger versions of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

"We've discussed upscaling of Dragon capsule with SpaceX," Lansdorp told the BIS audience.

In March, Mars One announced it had signed a contract with Paragon Space Development Corp. for a conceptual design study into life support and space suit systems.

Paragon has also been contracted by Dennis Tito for his Inspiration Mars project, which aims to launch two people on a Mars flyby mission in 2018 that will neither land on nor orbit the Red Planet. Lansdorp is slated to meet Tito in May in Washington, D.C.

As well as Paragon and SpaceX, Lansdorp is in discussions with Canada's MDA Robotics for the rovers; Italy's Thales Alenia Space for the MTV; ILC Dover, Astrobiotic and the U.K.'s Surrey Satellite Technology.

Lansdorp declined to answer questions about how much money Mars One has already raised, saying only that it's enough to start the selection process and to fund the Paragon contract. However, Mars One has named its first investors. Described as silver sponsors, they include Verkkokauppa.com, Finland's second largest consumer electronics retailer, and Byte Internet, a Web hosting service.

Funding for NASA is not a gamble

Hampton Roads Daily Press (Editorial)

Perhaps in a century and a half or so, there really will be a James T. Kirk — and an Enterprise.

Based on NASA's sky's-the-limit philosophy when considering the universe, it's certainly possible.

NASA's administrator, former astronaut Charles F. Bolden, Jr. is confident when he says the agency leads the world in space exploration. He says NASA's mission is, in part, to better explore farther than we have ever gone before. Sound familiar?

We're already exploring beyond the moon.

Fueled by our innate "Curiosity," a one-ton man-made device that landed on Mars less than a year ago is still exploring the planet's surface. Last year on these pages we suggested that funding such exploration a wise, big-picture investment.

The next question is: Should we go farther and spend more?

It's not as though we, as a nation or as individuals, have money to burn. After all, in earth money — sequester money — spending $2.5 billion to travel 352 million miles for a red planet excursion works out to a bit more than $7.10 a mile. Hardly a hybrid vehicle.

But space money is different; over time, the return on investment is much better than $7 per mile.

There are decades of examples.

Our nation's space exploration program has given us everything from adjustable smoke detectors to advanced satellite technology; our roads are safer, our weather patterns are more predictable and NASA continues to explore and implement projects directed at making aviation technology as safe as possible.

Airports as well as roads have safety grooving that help prevent accidents by increasing the friction between wheels and concrete.

The ongoing legacy of space exploration is about more than Tang and memory-foam mattresses. Portable X-ray devices, programmable pacemakers, voice-controlled wheelchairs, breast cancer detection and invisible braces are all spinoffs of NASA programs.

In large ways and small the agency has brought us closer together. Because of NASA projects we have GPS, satellite radio and satellite TV programming that offers rural communities where cable isn't available access to both expanded video programming and Internet.

The agency also plans to significantly expand its contribution and impact on STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — programs nationwide. Our future scientists, engineers and astronauts will need shoulders to stand on.

For those who can't yet see beyond the lowest clouds, there's potential for economic benefits right here in Virginia.

The scheduled Antares rocket departure from Wallops Island could help establish the Mid-Atlantic Regional Space (MARS) as a hub for commercial space enterprise.

Curiosity makes sense — and dollars.

This year, to fund its mission NASA is asking for $17.7 billion.

As a part of that request, the agency also plans to significantly expand its contribution and impact on STEM programs nationwide. It's a pittance. Our future scientists, engineers and astronauts will need shoulders to stand on.

As we noted last year, even a 12-year old knows why.

Kansan Clara Ma's winning essay suggesting "Curiosity" for the Mars exploration vehicle reproduced here, captures the essence of why we should be willing to fund efforts that go farther than we have ever gone before:

". … Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder. Sure, there are many risks and dangers, but despite that, we still continue to wonder and dream and create and hope. We have discovered so much about the world, but still so little. We will never know everything there is to know, but with our burning curiosity, we have learned so much."

For impact in Virginia, the Antares launch is a leap in the right direction. Dale K. Nash, executive of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority says he wants the facility " to become a major player in the U.S. space program."

Neil Armstrong said we went to the moon because it's human nature; " ... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream."

It's also in our nature to build on the heroic efforts of others. We reach greater heights by standing on the shoulders of giants; those with the "right stuff."

We can be giants, too.

Launches, nature can co-exist

Jim Cameron - Daytona Beach News-Journal (Opinion)

(Cameron is senior vice president of government relations for the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce)

When the shuttle program at Kennedy Space Center ended, some 8,000 NASA and civilian workers lost their jobs. Many of those jobs were held by workers from Volusia County.

With the nation's economy as sluggish as it has been, the end of manned space flights has been extra hard on central Florida. But now, we have a new opportunity to provide good, well-paid jobs for years to come.

Space Florida is seeking 150 acres at the northern tip of Kennedy Space Center, near the Brevard-Volusia county border, for a site where private sector launches could take place.

In the 1980s, Florida was the leader in commercial satellite launches, but we've lost that market to the Europeans, the Russians, the Chinese. And now the Brazilians and Indians are getting into the market, not to mention other states.

Commercial space launches are an emerging market and spaceports have been or are getting established in New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Georgia and other states. Why? Because they see the potential for new businesses and jobs and they're courting industry leaders like Elon Musk of SpaceX, Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin and Paul Allen of Stratolaunch.

These new spaceports are in direct competition with our own Space Florida, but there is one difference.

They don't have Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University — and we do.

How many times have we complained that so many of our ERAU students graduate and go elsewhere to follow their dream of an aerospace engineering career? In February, ERAU announced plans to begin the nation's first bachelor's degree in commercial space operations, which will supply the commercial spaceflight industry with skilled graduates in the areas of space policy, spaceflight safety, and space program training, management and planning.

Bottom line, we need a facility that could employ these individuals. A site on the Brevard-Volusia border could house such a facility and put Florida back on track as the leader of commercial satellite launches. So what has to take place?

The essential next step for all parties is to begin the formal Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process. Through the EIS, a transparent exercise with federally mandated forums where public input drives the outcome, the real facts can be made available upon which decisions may be made by informed elected officials.

There is too much at stake for this community to reject the future of the commercial space launch market, and all its potential, when the environmental impacts may indeed be limited and manageable. The dawning of the era of commercial exploitation of space is at hand, whether it's new medical or material discoveries on the International Space Station, or space-based solar power. Volusia County must be proactive in assuring its future workforce is at that table.

The continuing dialogue between NASA and Space Florida is an encouraging sign for the region's future success.

The aerospace industry has had more than 50 years of partnership in space exploration and environmental stewardship. Indeed, if not for the space program, the Cape would have long ago disappeared under a sea of condos and marinas. That legacy can and must be continued. I have no doubt Volusia County can do it best — because this opportunity is too important to our future economy.

Mayor Vincent Gray plans space station simulator for D.C. students

Rachel Baye - Washington Examiner

NASA has stopped sending shuttles into space, but D.C. students soon may get their chance to experience life among the stars.

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray plans to open a space education center, featuring a space station simulator, in the DC Public Schools system, he revealed in his fiscal 2014 budget. Though the so-called Challenger Center for Space Education does not have a designated location, it is expected to include "a two-room simulator that consists of a space station, complete with communications, medical, life and computer science equipment, and a mission control room patterned after NASA's Johnson Space Center and a space lab ready for exploration," according to the budget proposal.

It is expected to cost $1.5 million to design, $1 million of which has already been approved in a previous year's budget. Gray's fiscal 2014 budget proposal includes the remaining $500,000.

The facility would be part of the national Challenger Center for Space Science Education, which oversees a network of centers offering programs in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. There are 41 centers across the United States, as well as one each in Canada, South Korea and Britain.

Prince George's County Public Schools has operated one of the centers since 1989. The simulator, located at the Howard B. Owens Science Center in Lanham, caters largely to sixth-grade students.

Following the instructions of the teacher -- or "lead flight commander" -- students enter the S.S. Friendship through an airlock door. The students spend two hours performing a variety of experiments -- studying magnetism in rocks, for example, and body weight in zero gravity. While half the class spends an hour in the mock space station, the other half is in mission control, watching the action on Mars via two cameras.

"This is a very good simulation of what it would be like in real life, if they were really in space and really in mission control, which in this case happens to be on Mars," said Russell Waugh, the program's outreach teacher. "This is based on a futuristic style of spacecraft that we're imagining in the year 2076."

Unlike most of the existing centers, the District's "will not only serve D.C. students and teachers, but will also be a national flagship STEM education facility," said Challenger Center spokeswoman Lisa Vernal. "The center will include the next-generation Challenger Learning Center, a model for all of our centers around the globe, and an environment to support workforce development; a state-of-the-art STEM-focused research and development laboratory; and a professional development facility for educators."

Once implemented, DCPS will work to align the program's offerings with science curricula, said DCPS spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz, though she said Gray's office is leading the project.

Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said the mayor is excited about the program and directed additional questions to the national program office.

Boeing spacecraft, jets and more: The rare talent of Bob Kiliz

Brier Dudley - Seattle Times

If he'd been born a generation later, Kiliz might have become rich and famous building computers or phones.

Instead, his skills were put to use on the most incredible, awe-inspiring machines of his era — supersonic jets, intercontinental missiles, defense satellites, the lunar rover, the space shuttle, flying military command centers and the B-1 bomber.

Wealth wasn't a priority. Kiliz was paid well but lived thrifty and still bought used cars and clothes from sale bins.

Fame was unlikely because most of the projects Kiliz worked on were top secret, some hidden behind armed guards and thick doors at Boeing's "Black Box" research facility in Kent.

"Most of them, you or I will never find out what they were," said his brother, Jim Kiliz. "I know he was working on a photon generator at one point — a particle beam generator — that was to be on a satellite above Russia … It was to intercept these incoming missiles."

At retirement in 1994, Kiliz had the rare title of "spacecraft configuration designer."

Not many people at Boeing have had such a job, basically making sure all the pieces on a spacecraft come together properly. Even rarer was his ability to design such things at work, then go home and build parts and prototype models in his basement shop, alongside Lake Tapps in Pierce County.

Kiliz would blast music — mostly rock 'n' roll — from custom speakers and work for days to finish a project.

"He was just so driven by anything new that he was designing that he would forget to sleep or eat — he was just in another world," said Jim, a home designer and builder living in rural Mason County.

Four Kiliz boys and two girls grew up in a house built in the 1890s in Montesano, to a father who maintained a cemetery in the lumber town between Aberdeen and Olympia. The boys slept and worked on projects — chemistry sets, Erector sets and drawings — in an uninsulated attic that froze during the winter.

"If it was really dry powdery snow, it would blow underneath the shingles and we'd wake up with a little dusting of snow on us," Jim recalled.

The boys contributed by mowing lawns around town, coaxing ancient mowers along until they had no more compression.

Another brother, Ken, joined the Navy and then worked on ship-wiring systems at the shipyard in Bremerton. He died April 3, the day before Bob Kiliz, who died after going to the hospital for a burn injury. A third brother, Richie, died earlier in an accident at a NASA facility in California, where he had developed a process for applying insulating material to the nose cones of space capsules.

The family isn't sure where their technical gifts came from, but Bob had fixed things forever.

"He took everything apart and made it better," Jim Kiliz said. "He was constantly figuring out how things went together, and he'd go 'Jesus Christ, these guys don't know a damn thing.'?"

"He perpetually designed things — even if he was asleep, he would be fidgeting, moving his arms in the air, designing things while he was sleeping," said his son, Mike Kiliz, an inspector in Boeing engineering operations and technology.

Bob's crusty streak was offset with humor. At home, alongside plaques honoring his Boeing work, he hung joke versions made by his co-workers, including one naming him "Worst Dressed Man at Boeing, 1982," Jim Kiliz said.

After retirement, Kiliz kept tinkering. He did consulting, and he invented and patented a bow thruster for boats, and a variable fuel-injector timing system for diesel engines.

Coolest of all, though, is a model hydroplane he built and powered with a motor scavenged from a 20-inch chain saw. Kiliz also built a Gatling gun that fired paper pellets and mounted it on the boat. From his deck overlooking the lake, he'd use a remote control to guide the boat and harass ducks with its weapon system.

Every now and then his family would get a glimpse of his Boeing work, such as when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were discussing the "Star Wars" missile-defense system. (The image above is a Kiliz memento from the project, a photo of a LEAP satellite component.)

"He called up and said, 'Turn on Channel 7 — you'll see my model on there,'?" Jim recalled.

While cleaning up his dad's shop, Mike said, he found a box with a folding contraption inside. It turned out to be a model of solar panels designed to fold and stow into the Space Shuttle for transportation.

Co-worker John Barton, who designed solar panels and power systems for Boeing spacecraft, said Kiliz was "a joy to work with" and explained why it took unique abilities to be a spacecraft configurator.

Configurators have to visualize how hardware goes onto a spacecraft, taking into account things like the rotation of antennas or star and sun sensors that have to have a particular view.

"It's like working on a three-dimensional puzzle and you really don't know what the final picture's going to look like until it's done," Barton said. "Then when everything's stowed up for launch, the center of gravity has to be right on the z-axis that goes up through the rocket and spacecraft."

Kiliz came to Seattle after graduating from high school in 1956 , and he was hired at Boeing. His work as a draftsman caught someone's eye, and he was elevated to designer. Boeing sent him to the University of Washington to study mechanical engineering, but he didn't finish the program. It didn't slow his career.

"People are born with the gift of being able to visualize — some people have it, and some people don't," Barton said.

Mike said his dad had another trait — a drive to always make things work better.

"I guess it's a perpetual Boeing thing — continuous improvement, just make something better every day," he said. "I try to do that too."

I wonder if Bob Kiliz contributed to the missile-defense systems we're now counting on for protection from North Korea.

But I think his story resonates because of how Boeing has changed, moved headquarters to Chicago and started building its latest planes in South Carolina. Will it provide the same opportunities to engineering geniuses who emerge from the hinterlands, looking for work at the most exciting company in town?

Perhaps the next Bob Kiliz is now tinkering someplace in Appalachia, dreaming about building flying machines in North Charleston.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - April 16, 2013 and JSC Today

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