Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight News

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: April 8, 2013 6:08:56 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - April 8, 2013 and JSC Today

Monday, April 8, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Knowledge Capture: Launch, Entry and Abort, Intravehicular Spacesuits
2.            NASA Nerdz Summer Bowling League
3.            JSC Annual Picnic at Splashtown -- Get Your Tickets Before It's Too Late
4.            Volunteer to Help the Special Olympics on May 4
5.            Receive AIAA-Houston Section News and Events
6.            Budget Basics for Technical: What You Need to Know if You Have a Budget
7.            Pre-Travel to Russia Live Class
8.            Job Opportunities
________________________________________     NASA FACT
" Thanks to the Tomatosphere Project aboard ISS, 600,000 tomato seeds have been orbiting the Earth since July 2012. When the seeds return in May, students in the U.S. and Canada will plant them and observe their germination rates."
________________________________________
1.            Knowledge Capture: Launch, Entry and Abort, Intravehicular Spacesuits
The EC5/Space Suit and Crew Survival Systems Branch is pleased to sponsor another talk for the U.S. Spacesuit Knowledge Capture, and we welcome you to attend!
Kenneth Thomas, senior spacesuit expert, will present information about Launch, Entry and Abort (LEA) spacesuits -- part of an overall vehicle crew escape and survival system. These LEA spacesuits are worn during the launch and re-entry to enhance crew survival. The United States has traditionally called these spacesuits Intravehicular Activity spacesuits. The Russians refer to this type of spacesuit as "rescue suits." Thomas will discuss the success of the LEA suits and the consequences of eliminating their use or providing inadequate systems.
Seats are available on a first come, first served basis. SATERN registration is available (ID# 68335 -- or keyword search "spacesuit").
For additional information, contact Cinda Chullen at 281-483-8384, Vladenka Oliva at 281-461-5681, or Rose Bitterly.
Event Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2013   Event Start Time:3:30 PM   Event End Time:5:00 PM
Event Location: JSC/Bldg 5-S/R-3102

Add to Calendar

Rose Bitterly 281-461-5795

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2.            NASA Nerdz Summer Bowling League
The league is at AMF Alpha and will begin on May 16 and run to Aug. 1. Thursday nights! (Eleven weeks, skipping the July 4 week.)
Bowling starts at 6:30 PM each day, with practice beginning at 6:15 PM. Typically, bowling ends anywhere from 9 to 9:30 PM.
Teams must consist of four people.
If you have four people in mind, perfect. If not, email me and I will try and match you up.
Team members do not have to work at NASA, for NASA, or even work at all, and your kids can be your team members if they are able to bowl without bumpers and on their own.
Pre-bowling and post bowling are allowed as individuals.
The fee for each week of bowling is $12. (Eleven weeks = $132 for 2.5 to 3 hours of fun each Thursday night through the summer.)
Please email me your team name/members by May 8.
Russell Lala x47469

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3.            JSC Annual Picnic at Splashtown -- Get Your Tickets Before It's Too Late
SplashTown is closed to the public to allow NASA family and friends to attend a private day at the water park!
Tickets are on sale now through April 19 in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops and at the Gilruth Center. Tickets are $33 each for ages 3 and up. After April 19, tickets will be $37.
A ticket includes: private-day admission at SplashTown on April 28 from noon to 6 PM, barbecue lunch, beverages, snow cones, kids' games, Bingo, face painting, moon bounce, balloon artist, DJ, horseshoes, volleyball, basketball and plenty of thrills!
Event Date: Sunday, April 28, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:6:00 PM
Event Location: Splashtown

Add to Calendar

Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/events

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4.            Volunteer to Help the Special Olympics on May 4
Want to be inspired? Then join the Space Center Volunteers and spend a few hours hosting the Special Olympics Area 22 Spring Games from May 3 to 4. The games are at Clear Creek High School, and volunteers are needed in a variety of areas. Please note that the minimum age for volunteers is 15 years old, and some shifts on Friday, May 3, take place during regular business hours. JSC employees who choose to volunteer on Friday must obtain prior approval from their immediate supervisor and may not charge work time while volunteering.
If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Barbara Lewis. The last day to volunteer is May 2.
Event Date: Saturday, May 4, 2013   Event Start Time:8:00 AM   Event End Time:5:00 PM
Event Location: Clear Creek High School

Add to Calendar

Jeannie Aquino x36270

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5.            Receive AIAA-Houston Section News and Events
If you would like to receive free American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)-Houston Section newsletters and event notifications, please send your name and preferred email address to Eryn Beisner. You don't have to be a member of AIAA to be on the distribution list (but we hope you'll join!).
Eryn Beisner x40212

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6.            Budget Basics for Technical: What You Need to Know if You Have a Budget
Break through the common communication barriers between technical and budget-speak with helpful translations of common budget terminology and a straightforward discussion of basic budget concepts. Understand the overall structure and flow of funding within the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) and get tips for improving communication with your budget analyst. Your participation in this session will deliver the insight you need to plan and manage NASA financial resources. This session is recommended for anyone responsible for a project budget who would like to learn how government financial management differs from managing a personal bank account.
As part of the OCFO Subject-Matter Expert course series, Kim Steele and Erica Ternes will lead this one-hour session (open to JSC civil service employees only) on Monday, April 22, from 1:30 to 2:30 PM in Building 12, Room 134. Please register in SATERN via the link below or by searching the catalog for the course title.
Donna Blackshear-Reynolds x32814 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...

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7.            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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8.            Job Opportunities
Where do I find job opportunities?
Both internal Competitive Placement Plan (CPPs) and external JSC job announcements are posted on the Human Resources (HR) portal and USAJOBS website. Through the HR portal, civil servants can view summaries of all the agency jobs that are currently open: https://hr.nasa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/employees_home/239/job_opportu...
To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies, please call your HR representative.
Lisa Pesak x30476

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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: 10:05 am Central (11:05 EDT) – E35 with Mary Marek Elementary School in Alvin, TX

Human Spaceflight News
Monday, April 8, 2013

Orbital's Antares rocket was transported to its sea-side launch pad at the
Wallops Island Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Saturday

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Antares rocket positioned on launch pad for test flight

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Rolling out on a crisp morning on Virginia's Eastern Shore, the first Orbital Sciences Antares rocket left its hangar Saturday and was positioned on a seaside launch pad for liftoff on a test flight set for April 17. The white two-stage rocket, emblazoned with an American flag on its nose, left its integration hangar before dawn riding horizontally on a specially-designed transporter. After pausing at the base of the launch pad, a hydraulic erector lifted the 133-foot Antares booster vertical at about 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT).

A new rocket rises: Orbital's Antares prepared for its first test launch

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

Orbital Sciences Corp. raised the first fully integrated Antares rocket on its Virginia launch pad on Saturday, setting the stage for its maiden flight to orbit later this month. A successful test launch would mark a giant leap toward using the Antares and Orbital's Cygnus cargo capsule to resupply the International Space Station. If the current schedule holds, Virginia-based Orbital would become the second commercial venture to send its spacecraft to the space station later this year, following in the footsteps of California-based SpaceX. The two companies have received more than hundreds of millions of dollars in development funding from NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS.

Rocket rolled out ahead of test flight for NASA cargo delivery project

Associated Press

A rocket headed to the International Space Station from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore is one step closer to its inaugural flight. Space technology company Orbital Sciences rolled out the first fully integrated Antares rocket to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad early Saturday. The Dulles, Va.-based company is getting ready for flight demonstrations of its Antares medium-class launch vehicle and Cygnus cargo logistics spacecraft as part of a 1.9 billion NASA contract to deliver essential cargo to the International Space Station. NASA says the launch window for the test flight is between April 17 and 19. In February, Orbital Sciences conducted a 29-second "hot fire" test of the rocket engine to demonstrate the readiness of the rocket's first stage and launch pad fueling systems. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

Antares rocket positioned on launch pad for test flight

Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com

Rolling out on a crisp morning on Virginia's Eastern Shore, the first Orbital Sciences Antares rocket left its hangar Saturday and was positioned on a seaside launch pad for liftoff on a test flight set for April 17. The white two-stage rocket, emblazoned with an American flag on its nose, left its integration hangar before dawn riding horizontally on a specially-designed transporter. After pausing at the base of the launch pad, a hydraulic erector lifted the 133-foot Antares booster vertical at about 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT). Now positioned on launch pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, the Antares rocket is set to undergo final testing and countdown exercises ahead of a test launch scheduled for April 17 at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the opening of a three-hour window.

Orbital's Antares rocket rolls to pad in preparation for first COTS mission

Mark Usciak - AmericaSpace.com

It was an early, cold morning, but with the sunrise came the ascension of Antares. NASA and Orbital Sciences Corporation rolled the first Antares rocket scheduled to fly into space out to the launch pad today. This morning's efforts were conducted to ensure that everything was ready for a planned April 17, 2013, 5 p.m. EDT. launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's (MARS) Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, located on Wallops Island, Va.

Rocket launch planned for Wallops Island on April 17th

Matt Knight - WTKR TV (Hampton Roads)

Orbital Sciences Corp. plans a test launch of its new Antares rocket at Wallops Island in 10 days. Orbital completed roll-out of the first fully-integrated Antares rocket to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Saturday. Orbital has confirmed an April 17 target launch date for the rocket test flight with a planned liftoff of 5 p.m. EDT.

Antares Rocket Erected at Virginia Pad for Inaugural April 17 Launch

Ken Kremer - Universe Today

For the first time ever, the new and fully integrated commercial Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences was rolled out to its oceanside launch pad on a rather chilly Saturday morning and erected at the very edge of the Eastern Virginia shoreline in anticipation of its maiden launch slated for April 17. The inaugural liftoff of the privately developed two stage rocket is set for 5 p.m. from the newly constructed launch pad 0-A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Boeing to launch from Space Coast?

Jerry Hume - Central Florida News 13

NASA recently announced The Boeing Company completed another milestone in its efforts to return Americans from Brevard County to space. Boeing has completed preliminary design review for the launch vehicle adapter, which is the component that will connect the company's crew capsule to the Atlas V rocket. Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada are all working with NASA to send astronauts to the International Space Station in the next few years. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

Boeing Completes PDR Milestone for CST-100 Commercial Spacecraft

Jason Rhian - AmericaSpace.com

According to a NASA news release, Boeing has completed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) that will allow the company's Crew Space Transportation, or "CST-100," space capsule to be mated with the top of the launch vehicle that will send it to orbit. The component in question is known as the Launch Vehicle Adapter. It is made by the same company that has been tapped to launch the CST-100—United Launch Alliance (ULA). ULA's venerable Atlas V rocket is the launch vehicle that has been selected to launch the CST-100. The CST-100 is a large part of NASA's plans to send astronauts to low-Earth-orbit on commercially-built spacecraft.

Spaceflight Is At A Crossroads

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

NASA's Chris Cassidy, newly arrived flight engineer on Expedition 35 to the International Space Station, is at the cutting edge of mankind's space endeavor as he uses the Minus Eighty-degree Freezer in Japan's Kibo lab module to store research samples. The work Cassidy and other station astronauts do in the coming decade is likely to shape how far and how fast humans will move into the Solar System. A lot of that work will involve learning how to keep the human body fit and healthy in a hostile environment vastly different from the one 200 mi. below the ISS. But some of it will be looking for the elusive pot of gold that will make space exploration attractive economically as well as scientifically.

Proposed asteroid retrieval mission outlined

William Harwood - CBS News

NASA is working on plans to robotically capture and tow a small asteroid back to Earth's vicinity by the end of the decade, setting the stage for manned visits to learn more about the threat asteroids pose, the resources they represent and to help perfect the technology needed for eventual flights to Mars. "This is part of what will be a much broader program," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fl, said in a statement late Friday. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."

Senator: NASA to lasso asteroid, bring it closer

Seth Borenstein - Associated Press

NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator said Friday. The ship would capture the 500-ton, 25-foot asteroid in 2019. Then using an Orion space capsule, a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for spacewalking exploration, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth.

NASA goal: Capture asteroid and study it

Brian Vastag - Washington Post

The next giant leap in space exploration may be a short hop on a small space rock. This week, President Obama will request $105 million in NASA's 2014 budget for a mission that would capture a small asteroid, tug it near the moon, and later send astronauts to study it and grab samples. The asteroid-capturing robot could launch as soon as 2017, with astronauts flying to meet it near the moon by 2021, according to a NASA briefing presented to Congress recently. The president's request includes $78 million for NASA to develop technologies for the project and $27 million for beefing up the agency's asteroid-detection work. The mission would fulfill a goal Obama set three years ago to send astronauts to an asteroid.

Asteroid Wanted in NASA Project

John Schwartz – New York Times

The budget being readied by the Obama administration has one item that might sound outlandish: nabbing an asteroid. The $105 million proposal would begin planning on a two-stage program in which a robotic spacecraft would grab a small asteroid as early as 2019 and drag it back toward Earth, leaving it in a stable position "just beyond the moon," a NASA official said. As early as 2021, astronauts in a new NASA spacecraft would visit the space rock and take samples. The plan, announced Friday by Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, could help defend the planet from dangerous space rocks. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

Space Cowboys: NASA's newest project aims at corralling asteroid

Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel

It's been a while since NASA's been known as a place for space cowboys. But the nickname could make a comeback if the space agency can pull off a new mission that even supporters admit sounds buck-wild: corralling an asteroid with a spacecraft so future astronauts can go visit it. Obama administration officials said the operation has the potential to jump-start a human-exploration program that has floundered since the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle. The White House will include $105 million to begin work on the project in its 2014 budget to be unveiled this week. "This mission will send humans farther than they have ever been before, and [it would be the] first ever redirection of [an] asteroid for exploration and sampling," noted NASA officials in a mission outline presented to Congress and obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

NASA wants to lasso asteroid, tow it home
Orion crew would explore it beyond moon orbit

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

President Barack Obama next week will ask Congress to accelerate plans to send U.S. astronauts to an asteroid, moving up to 2021 the nation's next grand goal for human space exploration, officials said Friday. First, scientists would identify an asteroid, and in 2019, a robotic spacecraft would snare the space rock and tow it back to an orbit on the far side of the moon two years later. Then, on the first piloted flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft, astronauts would rendezvous with the asteroid and perform spacewalking investigations. The mission would take place four years ahead of a 2025 challenge Obama issued in April 2010.

Obama's budget includes funding for NASA to lasso an asteroid

Houston Chronicle's Texas on the Potomac

In the midst of the heated debate around President Obama's proposed budget changes, there may be some good news for Texas. According to chairman of the Senate Science and Space subcommittee, Bill Nelson of Florida, Obama's federal budget blueprint will include $100 million for NASA to build a spaceship capable of bringing an asteroid into the Moon's orbit. The plan will use the Space Launch System (SLS), a heavy lifting mechanism Nelson fought alongside former Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to fund. SLS will be able to life the Orion capsule, and astronauts will use the extra horsepower to capture an asteroid within eight years.

Administration confirms NASA plan: Grab an asteroid, then focus on Mars

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

NASA's accelerated vision for exploration calls for moving a near-Earth asteroid even nearer to Earth, sending out astronauts to bring back samples within a decade, and then shifting the focus to Mars, a senior Obama administration official told NBC News on Saturday. The official said the mission would "accomplish the president's challenge of sending humans to visit an asteroid by 2025 in a more cost-effective and potentially quicker time frame than under other scenarios." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the plan publicly. The source said more than $100 million would be sought for the mission and other asteroid-related activities in its budget request for the coming fiscal year, which is due to be sent to Congress on Wednesday.

NASA plans to lasso its own asteroid space station

Agence France Presse

NASA wants to grab a small asteroid and tow it into orbit around the moon, as part of a long-range plan to establish permanent manned outposts in space, a US senator said. Senator Bill Nelson said that to get the project off the ground President Barack Obama will propose funding for the US space agency of about $US100 million ($96 million) in his 2014 budget, which he submits to Congress on Wednesday. ''This is part of what will be a much broader program,'' the Florida Democrat said. ''It combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars.''

NASA to Hunt Down and Capture an Asteroid

Ian O'Neill - Discovery News

NASA is mandated with the task of flying humans to an asteroid by the mid-2020s. But such a mission would be fraught with technical challenges, danger and — you guessed it — expense. So, rather than blasting a team of astronauts into deep space to play a game of "catch" with a speeding lump of space rock, the US space agency will be given approval for a more slimline option — NASA will send a robot on an asteroid fishing expedition. A hooked asteroid will be tamed and delivered to a rendezvous point of our choosing (much closer to home) to allow a manned expedition easy access. This wouldn't only be great for science, it could also drive significant technologies intended for robotic asteroid deflection and, perhaps, mining techniques.

NASA to Get $100 Million for Asteroid-Capture Mission, Senator Says

Mike Wall - Space.com

NASA will likely get $100 million next year to jump-start an audacious program to drag an asteroid into orbit around the moon for research and exploration purposes, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson says. The $100 million will probably be part of President Barack Obama's federal budget request for 2014, which is expected to be released next week, Nelson (D-FL) said. The money is intended to get the ball rolling on the asteroid-retrieval project, which also aims to send astronauts out to the captured space rock in 2021. "This is part of what will be a much broader program," Nelson said Friday, during a visit to Orlando. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars." News of the potential $100 million allocation is not a complete surprise, as Aviation Week reported late last month that NASA was seeking that amount in 2014 for an asteroid-retrieval program.

Nelson confirms asteroid mission study to be in FY14 budget proposal

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

Details about the fiscal year 2014 budget are supposed to be embargoed until Wednesday, when the administration formally releases its budget proposal. When NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke before the joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington on Thursday, he said he knew some people there were hoping he might accidentally say something about the budget during his presentation. "Trust me, I purged it all from my mind before I came through the door," he said to laughter. Bolden was true to his word, and offered no details about the impending budget proposal. The same can't be said, though, for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who apparently didn't feel compelled to wait until Wednesday to spill the beans about one rumored element of the proposal. Nelson told reporters in Orlando on Friday that the budget proposal will include more than $100 million to begin work on a mission to retrieve a small asteroid and bring it back to cislunar space, where astronauts will visit it on a Space Launch System/Orion mission in 2021.

Back to the Moon? Not any time soon, says Bolden

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

A week from Monday marks the third anniversary of President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center where he formally announced the goal of a human mission to an asteroid by 2025. While that is an official goal of NASA's human space exploration program, there remains some opposition or, at the very least, lack of acceptance of the goal by many people, including some with NASA, as a report on NASA's strategic direction concluded last December.

Americans back on the moon?
NASA says not unless it's part of another nation's mission

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

As NASA goes forward with its plans to land humans on an asteroid and, eventually, Mars, it keeps running into a sales problem. Going to an asteroid -- the idea President Obama put forward three years ago -- is about as popular as going to the North Pole on summer vacation. The idea that does have broad interest in the space community -- going back to the moon -- isn't going anywhere with NASA. The National Research Council issued a report on NASA's overall strategy in December. "Despite isolated pockets of support for a human asteroid mission," the report said, "the committee did not detect broad support for an asteroid mission inside NASA, in the nation as a whole, or from the international community."

United Space Alliance cuts 68 jobs in final shuttle layoffs

James Dean - Florida Today

United Space Alliance let go 68 local employees in its last round of layoffs tied to retirement of the space shuttle program. After the cuts, the company that served as NASA's prime shuttle contractor since 1996 and once employed more than 6,500 people here will have just 154 employees left on the Space Coast. USA continues to support International Space Station operations with more than 800 employees in Texas.

Hadfield reaching out from space

Len Wagg - Chronicle Herald (Halifax)

Look up, way, way, way up, about 250 kilometres up, and you might find someone looking down. In fact, you may even be photographed while looking. Every hour and a half, the International Space Station orbits the Earth. And our very own Cmdr. Chris Hadfield, a Canadian, is in charge. Between running the space station, doing a few experiments, singing with rock bands and generally making science cool, Hadfield points his camera toward Earth and takes pictures.

Up-close look at shuttles provides unique experiences

John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)

I got my first chance to see Discovery on display in its retirement home this week, squeezing a visit to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in between some business in the Washington area. The spaceship is parked, as it would look upon landing, in the cavernous hangar at the museum's annex near Washington's Dulles airport. Just a couple years ago, I saw the test orbiter Enterprise parked in the exact same spot inside the museum. Enterprise was neat to look at, for its own unique role in space history, but Discovery was altogether different. I've seen four of the shuttle orbiters up close, including the lost Columbia, but every time is special and offers some new discovery. The visit did inspire some excitement about another shuttle display, opening soon right here at home. If the Kennedy Space Center's plans for Atlantis live up to the drawings and other preview material we've been treated to, the local display will far outdo what visitors can see in Washington. Atlantis, doors open, suspended as if in space, in a custom designed space exploration Mecca just down the road. This summer's opening of the Atlantis display can't come soon enough.

Historic NASA test chamber upgraded for James Webb Space Telescope

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

A giant NASA vacuum chamber originally built to test the spacecraft that astronauts used to fly to the moon is now ready to check the space agency's next-generation telescope before it launches into deep space. Chamber A located in the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will begin testing components for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2014, leading up to the tennis-court-size observatory's planned launch four years later. The largest high-vacuum, cryogenic-optical test chamber in the world, Chamber A has been retrofitted over the past several years to be able to reproduce the extremely-cold environment that the telescope will be exposed to once it enters orbit one million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

Science orders Morgan Freeman's 'New Race for Space'

James Hibberd - Entertainment Weekly

Science Channel announced Thursday a new series chronicling the modern-day space race among private entrepreneurs. Partnering with actor-producer Morgan Freeman, the network has greenlit New Race for Space. The three-part series will look at entrepreneurs seeking to embark on various ventures beyond Earth, from backyard dreamers to well-funded moguls like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson and sci-fi filmmaker James Cameron. New Race for Space will debut on Science next year.

Leto's band debuts single in space

Belfast Telegraph

Jared Leto's band Thirty Seconds To Mars has blasted their latest song into space. The rockers are due to unveil their new studio album and decided to beam the first single, Up In The Air, to the International Space Station. Singer and actor Jared, the band's frontman, said they were happy to do something different, despite the tremendous challenge to make it happen. The song was launched earlier this month. The band's fourth album, Love Lust Faith + Dreams, will be released in May. (NO FURTHER TEXT)
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COMPLETE STORIES

Antares rocket positioned on launch pad for test flight

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Rolling out on a crisp morning on Virginia's Eastern Shore, the first Orbital Sciences Antares rocket left its hangar Saturday and was positioned on a seaside launch pad for liftoff on a test flight set for April 17.

The white two-stage rocket, emblazoned with an American flag on its nose, left its integration hangar before dawn riding horizontally on a specially-designed transporter. After pausing at the base of the launch pad, a hydraulic erector lifted the 133-foot Antares booster vertical at about 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT).

Now positioned on launch pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, the Antares rocket is set to undergo final testing and countdown exercises ahead of a test launch scheduled for April 17 at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the opening of a three-hour window.

"With the completion of the Antares rollout today, we are on a clear path to a launch date of April 17, provided there are no significant weather disruptions or major vehicle check-out delays between now and then," said Michael Pinkston, Orbital's Antares program manager, in a company statement.

The launch pad is owned by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority and lies on the property of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

Delayed more than a year by setbacks in the launch pad's propellant handling system, the Antares test launch comes near the end of a five-year public-private partnership to develop Orbital's cargo transport system.

The mission's payload is an instrumented simulator mimicking the mass characteristics of Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft, a commercial vehicle designed to haul supplies and experiments to the International Space Station.

The demonstration launch is the first of two test flights planned under an agreement between Orbital Sciences and NASA. If this month's launch goes well, Orbital hopes to launch another Antares rocket with a functional Cygnus spacecraft this summer on a cargo delivery demo flight to the space station.

The test flights are the culmination of the agreement, in which NASA is paying Orbital up to $288 million to design, build and test the Antares booster and Cygnus freighter. Once NASA is satisfied the vehicles are safe, perhaps as soon as this fall, Orbital will begin a series of eight operational resupply flights under a $1.9 billion contract.

Orbital's Antares and Cygnus system joins SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft providing U.S. resupply services to the space station. NASA turned to the commercial providers to ferry cargo to the outpost after the retirement of the space shuttle.

SpaceX completed its required demo flight to the space station in May 2012, and the California-based company has accomplished the first two of a dozen operational missions since then.

Orbital's schedule is at least a year behind SpaceX, but SpaceX received more government funding and started working with NASA about 18 months earlier.

NASA signed the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services agreement with Orbital Sciences in early 2008. NASA's similar agreement with SpaceX, worth $396 million, was put in place in August 2006.

The space agency is also working with the private sector to develop human-rated spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the space station. NASA is eyeing 2017 as the target date for operational crew transportation services.

Orbital Sciences is not participating in NASA's commercial crew program but hopes to use the Antares rocket to launch scientific and commercial satellites. The company has a proven track record with smaller solid-fueled launchers, such as the air-launched Pegasus and missile-derived Minotaur rocket families, but the Antares program marks the first time Orbital has developed a rocket with liquid-fueled main engines.

Its most advanced version, scheduled to debut in 2014, will have the capacity to inject a six-ton satellite into low Earth orbit.

A new rocket rises: Orbital's Antares prepared for its first test launch

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

Orbital Sciences Corp. raised the first fully integrated Antares rocket on its Virginia launch pad on Saturday, setting the stage for its maiden flight to orbit later this month. A successful test launch would mark a giant leap toward using the Antares and Orbital's Cygnus cargo capsule to resupply the International Space Station.

If the current schedule holds, Virginia-based Orbital would become the second commercial venture to send its spacecraft to the space station later this year, following in the footsteps of California-based SpaceX. The two companies have received more than hundreds of millions of dollars in development funding from NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS.

SpaceX completed its COTS testing last year and has moved on to a series of 12 station resupply missions under the terms of a $1.6 billion contract. The second such mission, making use of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule, was successfully conducted last month.

This month's demonstration flight by the Antares will mark a major milestone in Orbital's COTS effort: Components of the rocket have been tested on the ground, but not yet in outer space. On Saturday, the two-stage rocket was rolled out from its integration facility at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and transported to Launch Pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a mile away. The Antares was then erected on the pad, where it will undergo a series of pre-launch tests.

Liftoff is scheduled for no earlier than April 17. The first flight won't go to the space station, but will merely test the rocket's ability to put a dummy payload in space. A demonstration flight of the Antares and Cygnus is slated to go to the space station later this year. If that unmanned demonstration mission is completed successfully, Orbital will begin conducting eight cargo resupply flights to the station in accordance with a $1.9 billion contract.

NASA selected SpaceX and Orbital to help fill the resupply gap left by the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011. The station is also being resupplied by robotic Russian cargo capsules as well as European and Japanese transports. A separate NASA program is providing $1.1 billion in support to SpaceX, the Boeing Co. and Sierra Nevada Corp. for the development of crew-capable spaceships.

Antares rocket positioned on launch pad for test flight

Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com

Rolling out on a crisp morning on Virginia's Eastern Shore, the first Orbital Sciences Antares rocket left its hangar Saturday and was positioned on a seaside launch pad for liftoff on a test flight set for April 17.

The white two-stage rocket, emblazoned with an American flag on its nose, left its integration hangar before dawn riding horizontally on a specially-designed transporter. After pausing at the base of the launch pad, a hydraulic erector lifted the 133-foot Antares booster vertical at about 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT).

Now positioned on launch pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, the Antares rocket is set to undergo final testing and countdown exercises ahead of a test launch scheduled for April 17 at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the opening of a three-hour window.

"With the completion of the Antares rollout today, we are on a clear path to a launch date of April 17, provided there are no significant weather disruptions or major vehicle check-out delays between now and then," said Michael Pinkston, Orbital's Antares program manager, in a company statement.

The launch pad is owned by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority and lies on the property of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

Delayed more than a year by setbacks in the launch pad's propellant handling system, the Antares test launch comes near the end of a five-year public-private partnership to develop Orbital's cargo transport system.

The mission's payload is an instrumented simulator mimicking the mass characteristics of Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft, a commercial vehicle designed to haul supplies and experiments to the International Space Station.

The demonstration launch is the first of two test flights planned under an agreement between Orbital Sciences and NASA. If this month's launch goes well, Orbital hopes to launch another Antares rocket with a functional Cygnus spacecraft this summer on a cargo delivery demo flight to the space station.

The test flights are the culmination of the agreement, in which NASA is paying Orbital up to $288 million to design, build and test the Antares booster and Cygnus freighter. Once NASA is satisfied the vehicles are safe, perhaps as soon as this fall, Orbital will begin a series of eight operational resupply flights under a $1.9 billion contract.

Orbital's Antares and Cygnus system joins SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft providing U.S. resupply services to the space station. NASA turned to the commercial providers to ferry cargo to the outpost after the retirement of the space shuttle.

SpaceX completed its required demo flight to the space station in May 2012, and the California-based company has accomplished the first two of a dozen operational missions since then.

Orbital's schedule is at least a year behind SpaceX, but SpaceX received more government funding and started working with NASA about 18 months earlier.

NASA signed the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services agreement with Orbital Sciences in early 2008. NASA's similar agreement with SpaceX, worth $396 million, was put in place in August 2006.

The space agency is also working with the private sector to develop human-rated spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the space station. NASA is eyeing 2017 as the target date for operational crew transportation services.

Orbital Sciences is not participating in NASA's commercial crew program but hopes to use the Antares rocket to launch scientific and commercial satellites. The company has a proven track record with smaller solid-fueled launchers, such as the air-launched Pegasus and missile-derived Minotaur rocket families, but the Antares program marks the first time Orbital has developed a rocket with liquid-fueled main engines.

Its most advanced version, scheduled to debut in 2014, will have the capacity to inject a six-ton satellite into low Earth orbit.

Orbital's Antares rocket rolls to pad in preparation for first COTS mission

Mark Usciak - AmericaSpace.com

It was an early, cold morning, but with the sunrise came the ascension of Antares. NASA and Orbital Sciences Corporation rolled the first Antares rocket scheduled to fly into space out to the launch pad today. This morning's efforts were conducted to ensure that everything was ready for a planned April 17, 2013, 5 p.m. EDT. launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's (MARS) Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, located on Wallops Island, Va.

Due to gusty winds that reached close to the 29 mph, which is the limit for safe pad operations, the lift operation was delayed shortly after Antares reached the pad this afternoon. Finally, the winds cooperated and the vehicle was raised starting at about 1 p.m.; the total lift took about an hour, and Antares is now secured to the pad. After all data is reviewed, a formal launch date should be announced later this coming week.

Although this Antares sported the Cygnus logo, this rocket's payload was essentially a mass simulator for the real Cygnus, which is planned to fly its first mission to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year. If all goes according to plan, after completing the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) requirements, Orbital will begin carrying out the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract and deliver supplies to the ISS.

Under the $171 million COTS contract that Orbital has with NASA, it is required to demonstrate the capabilities of both the Antares launch vehicle as well as the Cygnus cargo vessel. Orbital has stated that the company's investment in this effort will be approximately $150 million, with $130 million going toward Antares and the remaining $20 million tasked for the Cygnus spacecraft. To date, estimates on how much it has cost to develop the duo have been estimated at being more than $470 million.

Currently, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has already completed both the COTS requirements as well as two CRS missions to the orbiting laboratory. Unlike Cygnus, which burns up in the atmosphere upon re-entry, SpaceX's Dragon is recoverable.

During Saturday's operations, Antares was rolled out to Pad-0A and then lifted into the vertical position. The whole process took more than eight hours.

Antares has a two-day window in which to launch Antares; it stretches from April 17-19. NASA hopes that initiatives like COTS and CRS will enable private companies to handle sending cargo (and perhaps one day crew) to destinations in low-Earth orbit. If these companies can do so affordably, then NASA would be able to conduct operations beyond the orbit of Earth for the first time in more than four decades.

"All the data from the engine test-fire last month looked good; we're just being extra careful to make sure all pad work and fit checks are good before raising the vehicle to vertical position, and a firm launch date will be set hopefully next week once the vehicle is up and secured to the pad," said Orbital's Mike Brainard.

Antares is a relatively new name for the rocket—it used to be called the Taurus II. Orbital gave it its current moniker in 2011. The launch vehicle, like most, is comprised of components from a variety of aerospace companies. Aerojet provided the AJ-26 (formerly NK-33) engines in the booster's first stage, and Utah-based ATK provided the Castor 30 solid rocket motor that is used in Antares' second stage. Various other components were produced by a variety of manufacturers.

Saturday's rollout is the culmination of numerous milestones that Antares had to go through before making its way to the pad. The most crucial of these was the "hot-fire" test that was successfully completed this past February. During the hot-fire test, Antares' first stage engines were activated for 29 seconds while the rocket was bolted to the pad.

Orbital selected Wallops in June 2008 to launch from, as it was viewed as just as effective as Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Pad-0A has an interesting history in terms of commercial space ventures. It was previously used by the first privately-funded, commercial rocket—the Conestoga Rocket by Space Services Inc. The company eventually was shut down due to lack of business. In a way, Antares serves as a rebirth for Pad-0A, one which could reach fruition later this month.

Rocket launch planned for Wallops Island on April 17th

Matt Knight - WTKR TV (Hampton Roads)

Orbital Sciences Corp. plans a test launch of its new Antares rocket at Wallops Island in 10 days.

Orbital completed roll-out of the first fully-integrated Antares rocket to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Saturday.

Orbital has confirmed an April 17 target launch date for the rocket test flight with a planned liftoff of 5 p.m. EDT.

Orbital is testing the Antares rocket under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program,

Orbital is building and testing its new rocket and Cygnus cargo spacecraft under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which aims to develop safe, reliable and cost-effective transportation to and from the space station and low-Earth orbit.

A demonstration flight of Antares and Cygnus to the space station is planned for later this year.

Following the successful completion of the COTS demonstration mission to the station, Orbital will begin conducting eight planed cargo resupply flights to the orbiting laboratory through NASA's $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract with the company.

Antares Rocket Erected at Virginia Pad for Inaugural April 17 Launch

Ken Kremer - Universe Today

For the first time ever, the new and fully integrated commercial Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences was rolled out to its oceanside launch pad on a rather chilly Saturday morning and erected at the very edge of the Eastern Virginia shoreline in anticipation of its maiden launch slated for April 17.

The inaugural liftoff of the privately developed two stage rocket is set for 5 p.m. from the newly constructed launch pad 0-A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Antares is the most powerful rocket ever to ascend near major American East Coast population centers, unlike anything before. The launch is open to the public and is generating buzz.

And this is one very cool looking rocket.

The maiden April 17 launch is actually a test flight dubbed the A-One Test Launch Mission.

The goal of the A-One mission is to validate that Antares is ready to launch Orbital's Cygnus capsule on a crucial docking demonstration and resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) as soon as this summer.

The 1 mile horizontal rollout trek of the gleaming white rocket from the NASA integration hanger to the pad on a specially designed trailer began in the dead of a frosty, windy night at 4:30 a.m. – and beneath a picturesque moon.

"We are all very happy and proud to get Antares to the pad today for the test flight," Orbital ground operations manager Mike Brainard told Universe Today in an interview at Launch Complex 0-A.

The rocket was beautifully decaled with a huge American flag as well as the Antares, Cygnus and Orbital logos.

Antares was transported aboard the Transporter/Erector/Launcher (TEL), a multifunctional, specialized vehicle that also slowly raised the rocket to a vertical position on the launch pad a few hours later, starting at about 1 p.m. under clear blue skies.

This first ever Antares erection took about 30 minutes. The lift was postponed for several hours after arriving at the pad as Orbital personal monitored the continually gusting winds approaching the 29 knot limit and checked all pad and rocket systems to insure safety.

The TEL vehicle also serves as a support interface between the 133-foot Antares and the range of launch complex systems.

Now that Antares stands vertical, "We are on a clear path to a launch date of April 17, provided there are no significant weather disruptions or major vehicle check-out delays between now and then," said Mr. Michael Pinkston, Orbitals Antares Program Manager.

Antares is a medium class rocket similar to the Delta II and SpaceX Falcon 9.

For this test flight Antares will boost a simulated version of the Cygnus carrier – known as a mass simulator – into a target orbit of 250 x 300 kilometers and inclined 51.6 degrees.

The Antares first stage is powered by dual liquid fueled AJ26 first stage rocket engines that generate a combined total thrust of some 680,000 lbs. The upper stage features a Castor 30 solid rocket motor with thrust vectoring. Antares can loft payloads weighing over 5000 kg to LEO.

The Antares/Cygnus system was developed by Orbital Sciences Corp under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to replace the ISS cargo resupply capability previously tasked to NASA's now retired Space Shuttle fleet.

Boeing Completes PDR Milestone for CST-100 Commercial Spacecraft

Jason Rhian - AmericaSpace.com

According to a NASA news release, Boeing has completed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) that will allow the company's Crew Space Transportation, or "CST-100," space capsule to be mated with the top of the launch vehicle that will send it to orbit. The component in question is known as the Launch Vehicle Adapter. It is made by the same company that has been tapped to launch the CST-100—United Launch Alliance (ULA). ULA's venerable Atlas V rocket is the launch vehicle that has been selected to launch the CST-100. The CST-100 is a large part of NASA's plans to send astronauts to low-Earth-orbit on commercially-built spacecraft.

Boeing is one of three companies selected to compete in NASA's Commercial Crew integrated Capability, or CCiCap, program. This effort is designed to provide lower-cost access to orbit. The other two companies that are competing in this initiative are Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Sparks, Nev.-based Sierra Nevada Corporation. According to NASA, CCiCap is designed to provide crewed commercial services to both private and government customers.

In the past few weeks, representatives at NASA, ULA, and Boeing met at ULA's headquarters, located in Denver, Colo., to review if the adapter was ready to move forward.

There are some 19 different milestones that Boeing must complete under CCiCap. Currently, Boeing remains on course to complete these milestones in the time required. According to NASA, Boeing has recently completed two other milestones—the Engineering Release (ER) 2.0 software release and the Landing and Recovery Ground Systems and Ground Communications design review.

"Solid systems engineering integration is critical to the design of a safe system," said Ed Mango, NASA's CCP manager. "Boeing and all of NASA's partner companies are working to build in proper systems integration into their designs. This review with Boeing and their partner, ULA, was a good review of the current state of these important design interfaces."

Currently, NASA lacks the capability to launch astronauts on their own. The space agency has to rely on its international partner, Russia, for access to the International Space Station. NASA hopes that one or more of the CCiCap competitors will be able to return this ability. Boeing has stated that the CST-100 can be operational by 2015.

"The PDR was an outstanding integrated effort by the Boeing, ULA, and NASA teams," said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of Boeing Commercial Programs. "The ULA design leverages the heritage hardware of the Atlas V to integrate with the CST-100, setting the baseline for us to proceed to wind tunnel testing and the Launch Segment-level PDR in June."

Spaceflight Is At A Crossroads

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

NASA's Chris Cassidy, newly arrived flight engineer on Expedition 35 to the International Space Station, is at the cutting edge of mankind's space endeavor as he uses the Minus Eighty-degree Freezer in Japan's Kibo lab module to store research samples. The work Cassidy and other station astronauts do in the coming decade is likely to shape how far and how fast humans will move into the Solar System. A lot of that work will involve learning how to keep the human body fit and healthy in a hostile environment vastly different from the one 200 mi. below the ISS. But some of it will be looking for the elusive pot of gold that will make space exploration attractive economically as well as scientifically.

Launch costs continue to be the main hurdle to be surmounted before the human economy moves off the planet. But launch is only the first hurdle; there must be other reasons to travel in space beyond the accomplishment itself. In its latest report on the worldwide space industry, the Space Foundation offers more evidence that spaceflight is moving away from a government-based activity driven largely by scientific and political objectives, toward a true, self-sustaining marketplace. It is not there yet, but it appears to be gaining momentum.

In 2012 what the Foundation's analysts call the "global space economy" grew by almost 7%, to a record $304 billion. "As in previous years, the vast majority of this growth was in the commercial sector, which now constitutes nearly three-quarters of the space economy, with government spending making up the rest," the 2013 Space Report states.

Almost all of that revenue growth comes from purely terrestrial services that use space to enhance delivery, rather than some extraterrestrial widget, material or drug grown in the space station's microgravity laboratories. Topping the list is direct-to-home television, which pulled down $89 billion last year, and satellite communications at $21 billion. Add satellite radio ($3.4 billion) and Earth observation ($2.3 billion) and you get to the $116 billion counted for "commercial space products and services" in 2012.

Another $110 billion went for the hardware needed to support that service sector – ground stations and equipment ($101 billion), commercial satellite manufacturing ($5.1 billion, and commercial satellite launch ($2.4 billion). Insurance premiums of $980 million and assorted other sources provided the remainder of what the Space Foundation analysts call commercial infrastructure and support industries. Significantly, deposits for suborbital commercial human spaceflight – space tourists and researchers awaiting travel with Virgin Galactic and XCOR – accounted for some of the remainder -- $10 million. So the private, paying spacefarers who will someday do business in space are beginning to move the revenue needle a little.

For now, though, the kind of "new space" economy that may some day pay for itself is heavily subsidized by the U.S. government, which is using Space Act agreements to let private companies – Boeing, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX – develop the next-generation U.S. human spacecraft with less oversight than in the past. Overall Uncle Sam spent $47.9 billion on space programs in 2012 – including $27.5 billion from the Defense Department and $17.8 billion from NASA for all of its programs. That exceeded the combined space budgets in the rest of the world, which totaled $30.5 billion and included $8.7 billion in "non-U.S. military space."

The record growth in space spending comes as most of the world experiences tight economic conditions that inhibit funding for government programs. Space Foundation analysts note that "making use of commercial markets and practices" was only one of the strategies used by spacefaring nations to deal with budget crunches, along with "improving mission cost management, engaging in more international partnerships [and] examining options for alternative platforms and flight formations."

But while governments scramble, the private sector continues to reach out in new directions for space profits. Hong Kong-based AsiaSat has just entered a strategic partnership with GeoMetWatch to host a commercial weather payload on a new geostationary communications satellite it plans to launch in 2016, which could mark another new commercial space app along the lines of Earth observation. Using a hyperspectral sensor under development at Utah State University's Advanced Weather Systems facility in Logan, Utah, the hosted payload will be designed to provide high-resolution visible and infrared weather imagery and data on temperature, water vapor, pressure, wind and aerosols for sale to forecasters. Ultimately, GeoMetWatch hopes to field a constellation of six of its Sounding & Tracking Observatory for Regional Meteorology (Storm) sensors as piggyback payloads on commercial satcoms around the planet.

Even if the ISS fails to produce a killer app in orbit, it appears that the search for space business continues to gather speed outside the station's pressurized modules.

Proposed asteroid retrieval mission outlined

William Harwood - CBS News

NASA is working on plans to robotically capture and tow a small asteroid back to Earth's vicinity by the end of the decade, setting the stage for manned visits to learn more about the threat asteroids pose, the resources they represent and to help perfect the technology needed for eventual flights to Mars.

"This is part of what will be a much broader program," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fl, said in a statement late Friday. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."

According to a NASA overview obtained by CBS News, the rationale for the proposed asteroid retrieval project is based on the agency's long-range goals of advancing technology development; providing opportunities for international cooperation; developing new industrial capabilities; and helping scientists better understand how to protect Earth if a large asteroid is ever found on a collision course.

The program also would help NASA develop the navigation, rendezvous and deep space operations experience needed for eventual manned flights to the red planet.

"I hope it goes forward," said Rusty Schweickart, a former Apollo astronaut who help found the B612 Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to building and launching a privately funded space telescope to search for threatening asteroids.

"Asteroids are a very, very interesting area," he told CBS News in a telephone interview. "They're a hell of a resource, and I think the potential for long-term resource development for use in space is going to be a very big thing. And this is sort of step one. It's a baby step in a way, but it should be very interesting."

As for the threat asteroids pose to Earth, Schweickart said "I don't want people to spend their nights worrying about getting hit by asteroids. But I do want them to encourage their political leaders to invest in the insurance, which will allow us to prevent it from happening."

Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine first reported the proposed asteroid retrieval mission, saying NASA's fiscal 2014 budget request would include $100 million to get the project underway.

"Suggested last year by the Keck Institute for Space Studies at the California Institute of Technology, the idea has attracted favor at NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy," Aviation Week reported. "President Obama's goal of sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 can't be done with foreseeable civil-space spending, the thinking goes.

"But by moving an asteroid to cislunar space -- a high lunar orbit or the second Earth-Moon Lagrangian Point (EML2), above the Moon's far side -- it is conceivable that technically the deadline could be met."

Louis Friedman, former director of the Planetary Society and a co-author of the original Keck study, said the proposed mission "is quite an exciting idea" that supports President Obama's 2010 call for sending astronauts to an asteroid.

"It turns out, a first mission to an asteroid is still a big step, too big a step, because you'd need a much larger launch vehicle than we're building, you'd need a crew support system that could last for at least nine months in space because of the round-trip time," Friedman said in a telephone interview. "If we have to wait for that, it would be a couple of decades.

"But the nice idea here is we can robotically move the asteroid closer to Earth and do the mission as soon as ... the 2020s, the goal is 2025. By moving the asteroid here, we have a much safer, earlier first step for humans going beyond the moon."

The mission has "both technical advantages and scientific advantages because we're actually exploring an object instead of going to empty space," he said. "It also has an excitement about it because we get the robotic mission, which is a very interesting idea, moving an asteroid close to Earth ... and then sending astronauts up to visit it."

The Keck study estimated a cost of about $2.65 billion to capture and return a carbonaceous asteroid roughly 20 feet across. NASA officials had no official comment Friday and the mission outline obtained by CBS News did not include cost estimates.

But the proposed NASA project closely follows the Keck scenario. The outline indicates a three-pronged approach, starting with enhanced efforts to identify suitable targets. The idea is to find a number of near-Earth asteroids roughly 20 to 30 feet in diameter in favorable orbits that would permit capture and transport to Earth's vicinity.

"The only real question when you come right down to it is the size, because obviously as you get smaller and smaller and smaller, it becomes more and more feasible to do it," Schweickart said. "As you get smaller, the biggest problem you have is knowing where the heck to find one. We don't have a lot of seven-meter objects in our database."

But multiple candidates are needed "because any kind of a schedule slip and that asteroid that you were going to go to may not be back for 15 or 20 years," Schweickart said. "So you need to have a whole set of these things."

Along with improving asteroid detection, NASA hopes to start work on developing a robotic spacecraft based on a 30-kilowatt to 50-kilowatt solar-electric propulsion system that could rendezvous with the asteroid, capture it in a bowl-like receptacle and maneuver it back to Earth's vicinity.

A "notional" timeline in the mission overview shows a test flight in the 2017 timeframe followed by a rendezvous and capture mission in 2019. The asteroid then would be hauled back to cislunar space by around 2021.

Asteroids roughly the size of the desired candidate hit Earth's atmosphere on a regular basis and typically break up harmlessly in the atmosphere. For comparison, the meteor that exploded over Russia in February -- the largest known body to strike the Earth in a century -- was roughly 50 feet across.

In any case, the proposed mission outline indicated any effort to move even a small asteroid back to Earth's vicinity would be built around a fail-safe trajectory that would result in a lunar impact, at worse, if anything went wrong.

The third element of the proposed program would utilize NASA's Orion crew capsule and a new heavy-lift booster to ferry astronauts to the asteroid for an up-close examination and sample return.

Two NASA teams currently are studying the proposed mission. One is focusing on identifying suitable asteroids and developing the unmanned systems needed to capture and return a candidate to Earth's vicinity. The other is studying manned rendezvous and sample-return scenarios.

"There is much forward work to do to better characterize the cost, schedule and mission requirements, and focus an observation campaign to find candidate asteroids," according to the mission outline. "The study work will be done in FY 2013. Many key out-year elements are already in the budget."

Friedman said the proposed mission would be reminiscent of the Apollo moon program, "of having humans go to a celestial object and make measurements that are of interest to various scientific communities."

In the wake of the Russian meteor and a larger asteroid that passed close to Earth the same day, Friedman joked, "if you're not interested in asteroids, what are you interested in?"

Senator: NASA to lasso asteroid, bring it closer

Seth Borenstein - Associated Press

NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator said Friday.

The ship would capture the 500-ton, 25-foot asteroid in 2019. Then using an Orion space capsule, a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for spacewalking exploration, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth.

Nelson, who is chairman of the Senate science and space subcommittee, said Friday that President Barack Obama is putting $100 million in planning money for the accelerated asteroid mission in the 2014 budget that comes out next week. The money would be used to find the right small asteroid.

"It really is a clever concept," Nelson said in a press conference in Orlando. "Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back."

This would be the first time ever humanity has manipulated a space object in such a grand scale, like what it does on Earth, said Robert Braun, a Georgia Institute of Technology aerospace engineering professor who used to be NASA's chief technology officer.

"It's a great combination of our robotic and human capabilities to do the kind of thing that NASA should be doing in this century," Braun said.

Last year, the Keck Institute for Space Studies proposed a similar mission for NASA with a price tag of $2.6 billion. There is no cost estimate for the space agency's version. NASA's plans were first reported by Aviation Week.

While there are thousands of asteroids around 25-feet, finding the right one that comes by Earth at just the right time to be captured will not be easy, said Donald Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near Earth Object program that monitors close-by asteroids. He said once a suitable rock is found it would be captured with the space equivalent of "a baggie with a drawstring. You bag it. You attach the solar propulsion module to de-spin it and bring it back to where you want it."

Yeomans said a 25-foot asteroid is no threat to Earth because it would burn up should it inadvertently enter Earth's atmosphere. These types of asteroids are closer to Earth - not in the main asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. They're less than 10 million miles away, Braun said.

"It's probably the right size asteroid to be practicing on," he said.

A 25-foot asteroid is smaller than the size rock that caused a giant fireball that streaked through the sky in Russia in February, said Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, head of the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit concerned about dangerous space rocks.

The robotic ship would require a high-tech solar engine to haul the rock through space, something that is both cutting-edge and doable, Braun said. Then NASA would use a new large rocket and the Orion capsule - both under development - to send astronauts to the asteroid.

There would be no gravity on the asteroid so the astronauts would have to hover over it in an extended spacewalk.

Exploring the asteroid "would be great fun," Schweickart said. "You'd have some interesting challenges in terms of operating in an environment like that."

Nelson said the mission would help NASA develop the capability to nudge away a dangerous asteroid if one headed to Earth in the future. It also would be training for a future mission to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, he said. But while it would be helpful for planetary defense, "that's not your primary mission," Schweickart said.

George Washington University Space Policy Institute Director Scott Pace, a top NASA official during the George W. Bush administration, was critical of the plan, saying it was a bad idea scientifically and for international cooperation.

Instead, NASA and other countries should first join forces for a comprehensive survey of all possible dangerous space rocks, Pace said.

The government document describing the mission said it would inspire because it "will send humans farther than they have ever been before."

NASA goal: Capture asteroid and study it

Brian Vastag - Washington Post

The next giant leap in space exploration may be a short hop on a small space rock.

This week, President Obama will request $105 million in NASA's 2014 budget for a mission that would capture a small asteroid, tug it near the moon, and later send astronauts to study it and grab samples.

The asteroid-capturing robot could launch as soon as 2017, with astronauts flying to meet it near the moon by 2021, according to a NASA briefing presented to Congress recently.

The president's request includes $78 million for NASA to develop technologies for the project and $27 million for beefing up the agency's asteroid-detection work. The mission would fulfill a goal Obama set three years ago to send astronauts to an asteroid.

The mission would marry ongoing NASA projects, including asteroid detection, robotic spacecraft development, the construction of a giant new rocket - the Space Launch System - and the building of a deep-space human exploration capsule called Orion. A non-crewed test launch of Orion is set for next year.

By this summer, NASA is to decide whether the project is feasible, according to agency documents.

The human portion of the mission would send people beyond Earth's orbit for the first time since the final Apollo moon landing, in 1972.

Crews visiting the captured asteroid could conduct experiments in extracting water, oxygen, metals, and silicon, all valuable materials that would help future astronauts "live off the land" during long missions.

On Friday, Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), a big NASA booster, championed the project, saying it "combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."

Under the plan, an Atlas V rocket would launch the robotic craft toward a 20- to 30-foot-wide asteroid. Upon arrival, the craft would deploy a big bag, stuff the asteroid into it, and start motoring toward the moon. The Space Launch System and Orion would later deliver the human crew.

A 2012 study estimated that moving an asteroid to the moon could take six to 10 years, pushing the timeline for a human asteroid landing beyond 2021. NASA would ultimately need $2.6 billion for the robotic capture phase, according to the study from the Keck Institute for Space Studies, and billions more for the human mission.

Space Cowboys: NASA's newest project aims at corralling asteroid

Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel

It's been a while since NASA's been known as a place for space cowboys.

But the nickname could make a comeback if the space agency can pull off a new mission that even supporters admit sounds buck-wild: corralling an asteroid with a spacecraft so future astronauts can go visit it.

Obama administration officials said the operation has the potential to jump-start a human-exploration program that has floundered since the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle. The White House will include $105 million to begin work on the project in its 2014 budget to be unveiled this week.

"This mission will send humans farther than they have ever been before, and [it would be the] first ever redirection of [an] asteroid for exploration and sampling," noted NASA officials in a mission outline presented to Congress and obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

If lawmakers approve, the plan calls on NASA to launch an unmanned spacecraft as soon as 2017 on a mission to "capture" a small asteroid and drag it near the moon, possibly to a point roughly 277,000 miles from Earth where competing gravitational forces would allow it to "sit" there.

Astronauts, riding a new NASA rocket and capsule, then would visit the asteroid as early as 2021.

"If the American people are excited about it, they [lawmakers] will be, too," said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. — adding that he thinks the public is "fascinated" with asteroids thanks to disaster movies such as "Armageddon" and recent near-misses that real space rocks have had with Earth.

But the plan faces several hurdles — and not just the rocket science.

Foremost is convincing Congress, and a skeptical public, that spending an estimated $2.6 billion on the mission is a worthwhile investment. That's in addition to the $3 billion annually that NASA already devotes to building its new Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule.

Then there's the more-basic question of why.

"You have to get over the first shock, and I'm worried editorial writers will be like: 'Huh? You lost your mind,'" acknowledged Lou Friedman, who co-authored a 2012 report that suggested the idea. "But if you get into it, [the mission] is audacious as sending humans to the moon. I think it will restore confidence in America's technological capability and NASA's can-do spirit."

As proposed, the asteroid mission would begin with research — $78 million in 2014 to begin design work on the robotic spacecraft that would capture the asteroid, and an additional $27 million to begin searching the cosmos for an asteroid to grab. The ideal rock would be 20 to 30 feet in diameter and weigh 500 tons.

A 2012 study done by the Keck Institute for Space Studies, a think tank based at the California Institute of Technology, envisioned a small probe that would launch aboard an Atlas V rocket. Once in space, it would use its solar-electric engines to cruise to an asteroid and then attempt to capture it in a cup-shaped container described as an "inflatable asteroid capture bag."

Even NASA admits this stage would be the "most technically challenging aspect of the mission," as the asteroid would be traveling at thousands of miles per hour and spinning rapidly. The probe would have to first match the asteroid's speed and spin. It would then position itself so that the asteroid drifts into its storage space — and pull it shut like a drawstring bag.

"Since the asteroid would be much more massive than the spacecraft, it is perhaps better to think of this as the asteroid capturing the spacecraft," noted the Keck study.

The probe would then tug the asteroid to an orbit near the moon to await a visit by NASA astronauts. The Keck study estimated the whole operation could take six to 10 years, although NASA officials insist they can do it sooner to meet their 2021 deadline of a human mission.

By any measure, it's an ambitious operation that would test a wide variety of NASA skills — from technology development to human spaceflight.

But there's still the question of why.

From NASA's perspective, the mission checks several boxes.

First, it gives purpose to the huge new SLS rocket and Orion capsule that are costing NASA about $3 billion a year to build, with a first test flight scheduled no earlier than 2017. The SLS has been criticized as a "rocket to nowhere" — as its mission has been defined only vaguely since the program's 2011 unveiling — and the asteroid operation would give it a specific goal.

It also would meet President Barack Obama's challenge to NASA to visit an asteroid by 2025.

Finally, its estimated cost of $2.6 billion, not including the SLS and Orion, fits within NASA's long-range-budget expectations. It would be much cheaper than a manned flight to the moon's surface or a longer-range mission to an asteroid that hasn't been tugged close to the moon.

"It gives us a place to go but one we can reach with existing systems," Friedman said.

It's the kind of rationale that makes sense in the space community.

But NASA likely has some work to do in convincing the general public. Though the flight would make history, sending astronauts to a tiny asteroid lacks the punch of, say, a Mars landing.

Supporters said they understand that. But they argue that getting to Mars — or even doing more on the moon — would be impossible without intermediate steps such as this. Asteroids are "interesting objects in their own right, but the main purpose is as a stepping stone of exploration," Friedman said

Planning documents also make another case: The spacecraft developed by NASA could be a prototype of one that could defend the planet against a rogue asteroid. That's been a hot topic since a 55-foot asteroid exploded over Russia in February, injuring more than 1,000 people, and NASA acknowledged to Congress it would be helpless if a larger, more-deadly asteroid were reported on a collision course with Earth.

There's also the possibility of mining the asteroid for rare materials such as platinum. Though it's unknown whether visiting astronauts would set foot on the asteroid, it's certain any mission would recover rock samples. This could be a first step in developing techniques to mine asteroids in the future.

The rise of this program, however, likely means the death of another.

NASA chief Charlie Bolden pitched the White House last year on the idea of building a small space station near where NASA intends to drag the asteroid; administration officials said that pricey proposal has been shelved in favor of one viewed as more viable given NASA's annual budget of about $18 billion.

"We've had a succession of [human-spaceflight] missions that didn't pan out financially; it would be nice to have one that did," said Howard McCurdy, a space-policy expert at American University.

NASA wants to lasso asteroid, tow it home
Orion crew would explore it beyond moon orbit

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

President Barack Obama next week will ask Congress to accelerate plans to send U.S. astronauts to an asteroid, moving up to 2021 the nation's next grand goal for human space exploration, officials said Friday.

First, scientists would identify an asteroid, and in 2019, a robotic spacecraft would snare the space rock and tow it back to an orbit on the far side of the moon two years later.

Then, on the first piloted flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft, astronauts would rendezvous with the asteroid and perform spacewalking investigations. The mission would take place four years ahead of a 2025 challenge Obama issued in April 2010.

It would shed light on the origins of the solar system and, officials said, enable the U.S. to develop technologies required for future human expeditions to Mars.

And officials said it could help the U.S. develop capabilities to save the world – to divert any Earthbound, planet-killing asteroid in ways that only Hollywood can now.

"If we ever had the doomsday scenario . . . this would also give us the ability to develop the technologies of capturing or nudging (a threatening asteroid)," said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Orlando.

And that's important, Nelson said.

An asteroid slamming into Earth near the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk in February created an energetic release equal to 300,000 tons of TNT, rocking the entire region and injuring more than 1,200 people. It was the most devastating asteroid crash on Earth since the 1908 Tunguska Explosion, also in Siberia.

"You can see what kind of damage those things can do," said Nelson, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Science and Space. "You can imagine an asteroid that is three or four times that size, and if it were coming right down on a city, it would level the city."

The Obama administration is scheduled to deliver its proposed fiscal year 2014 budget to Congress on Wednesday. Buried deep within it will be a $100 million request that would start up the accelerated human expedition to an asteroid.

"NASA is in the planning stages of an innovative mission to accomplish the president's challenge of sending humans to visit an asteroid by 2025 in a more cost-efficient and potentially quicker timeframe than under other scenarios," said a senior government official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plan before the proposed 2014 budget is unveiled next week.

The official said the mission would use the heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule that have been under development for several years.

Government documents obtained by FLORIDA TODAY show the $100 million in start-up money would be invested in targeting a candidate asteroid for capture.

In a news conference with Nelson on Friday, a reporter termed the amount "measly." But NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which aims to develop private-sector means of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station, started with $50 million divvied up between five companies. Now it's one of NASA's highest-priority projects.

The total cost of the robotic asteroid retrieval and human expedition is unclear. But no landing spacecraft is required — astronauts would do spacewalking sorties from Orion capsules — so the price tag is expected to be in line with NASA flagship missions.

"Whether the cost is $1 billion or $1.5 billion, I don't know," said Louis Friedman, a co-leader of a privately funded asteroid retrieval feasibility study conducted at Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena, Calif. "It's certainly not $5 billion, and it's certainly not $500 million. I'm suspecting the answer is going to be in the range of $1 billion to $1.5 billion. That seems to be what people think at this point."

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover mission is costing $2.5 billion.

The prospect of establishing a solid goal for U.S. human spaceflight and advancing the timeline is invigorating people involved in mission planning, evoking memories of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.

"I got in on the ground floor on this, and it was all pretty fantastic when it started," said former NASA astronaut and veteran spacewalker Tom Jones, a feasibility study participant.

"Feels like the 1960s again. You know, here's an idea that two years ago didn't exist, and now it's a can-do, we-can-do-it kind of project," Friedman said. "I think it's very exciting."

Obama's budget includes funding for NASA to lasso an asteroid

Houston Chronicle's Texas on the Potomac

In the midst of the heated debate around President Obama's proposed budget changes, there may be some good news for Texas.

According to chairman of the Senate Science and Space subcommittee, Bill Nelson of Florida, Obama's federal budget blueprint will include $100 million for NASA to build a spaceship capable of bringing an asteroid into the Moon's orbit.

The plan will use the Space Launch System (SLS), a heavy lifting mechanism Nelson fought alongside former Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to fund. SLS will be able to life the Orion capsule, and astronauts will use the extra horsepower to capture an asteroid within eight years.

The accelerated asteroid mission would give astronauts a "unique, meaningful and affordable" destination to explore for years to come. This plan would also expedite President Obama's goal of sending an astronaut to an asteroid from 2025 to 2021.

"This is part of what will be a much broader program," Nelson said today, during a visit in Orlando. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."

Administration confirms NASA plan: Grab an asteroid, then focus on Mars

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

NASA's accelerated vision for exploration calls for moving a near-Earth asteroid even nearer to Earth, sending out astronauts to bring back samples within a decade, and then shifting the focus to Mars, a senior Obama administration official told NBC News on Saturday.

The official said the mission would "accomplish the president's challenge of sending humans to visit an asteroid by 2025 in a more cost-effective and potentially quicker time frame than under other scenarios." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the plan publicly.

The source said more than $100 million would be sought for the mission and other asteroid-related activities in its budget request for the coming fiscal year, which is due to be sent to Congress on Wednesday. That confirms comments made on Friday by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a one-time spaceflier who is now chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space. It also confirms a report about the mission that appeared last month in Aviation Week.

The asteroid retrieval mission is based on a scenario set out last year by a study group at the Keck Institute for Space Studies. NASA's revised scenario would launch a robotic probe toward a 500-ton, 7- to 10-meter-wide (25- to 33-foot-wide) asteroid in 2017 or so. The probe would capture the space rock in a bag in 2019, and then pull it to a stable orbit in the vicinity of the moon, using a next-generation solar electric propulsion system. That would reduce the travel time for asteroid-bound astronauts from a matter of months to just a few days.

The Keck study estimated the total mission cost at $2.6 billion — but the administration official said the price tag could be reduced to $1 billion, or roughly $100 million a year, if the mission took advantage of an already-planned test flight for NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew exploration vehicle. That flight would send astronauts around the moon and back in 2021.

"This mission would combine the best of NASA's asteroid identification, technology development, and human exploration efforts to capture and redirect a small asteroid to just beyond the moon to set up a human mission using existing resources and equipment, including the heavy-lift rocket and deep-space capsule that have been under development for several years," the official said in an email.

The 2014 budget would set aside $78 million for planning the asteroid retrieval mission, plus $27 million to accelerate NASA's efforts to detect and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids. The federal government currently spends $20 million annually on asteroid detection.

Meteor sparked action

The official said the plan had been under discussion for months, but coalesced after February's meteor blast over Russia. The meteor's breakup injured more than 1,000 people and sparked a worldwide sensation. It also sparked a series of congressional hearings about threats from space, during which Republicans as well as Democrats hinted that they would support more funding to counter asteroid threats.

"This plan would help us prove we're smarter than the dinosaurs," said the official, referring to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species 65 million years ago. An asteroid in the 7- to 10-meter range would be about half as wide as the one that broke up over Russia. That's far too small to pose any threat to Earth, even if the space rock was coming directly at our planet. But the captured asteroid could provide valuable insights for dealing with bigger ones in the future.

Initial preparations for the mission won't have to wait for a deal to end budget sequestration, or approval of the budget for the 2014 fiscal year. NASA would begin immediately to identify the asteroid for retrieval, and take advantage of existing efforts funded by the agency's science, technology and human exploration directorates. The most expensive element of the plan, the multibillion-dollar Orion/SLS launch system, is already being funded under the terms of an agreement with Congress.

Discussions with NASA's international and commercial partners will continue in the months and years ahead, the official said. The retrieved asteroid could conceivably become a target for other scientific missions or asteroid-mining operations. In the process, governments might have to address issues surrounding the ownership and exploitation of space resources.

"We're trying to force the question," the official said. "We're trying to push the envelope on this new frontier."

Questions raised

Some observers have already raised questions about the plan, based on the advance reports. Scott Pace, the director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told The Associated Press that it was a bad idea on scientific as well as diplomatic grounds. It would be better for the United States to join forces with other countries to conduct a comprehensive survey of all potentially dangerous asteroids, Pace said.

Rick Tumlinson, chairman of an asteroid-mining venture called Deep Space Industries, said he was concerned that NASA's asteroid mission might interfere with private-sector efforts — and he called on NASA to rely on private enterprise wherever possible. The administration official assured NBC News that cooperation with commercial ventures as well as other groups such as the B612 Foundation was part of the plan.

The official noted that the mission would provide a relatively low-cost route to satisfying President Barack Obama's goal of sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025. The lessons learned during the mission could be applied to future missions aimed at diverting other asteroids — perhaps to head off a potential threat, or conduct further scientific study, or exploit the potentially valuable resources that asteroids contain.

After the asteroid mission, NASA would turn its attention to a farther-out destination: Mars. The Obama administration has called for astronauts to travel to the Red Planet and its moons by the mid-2030s, and that would be the next major target for space exploration. The administration official told NBC News that other concepts, such as sending astronauts back to the moon or creating a deep-space platform beyond the far side of the moon, are not on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

NASA plans to lasso its own asteroid space station

Agence France Presse

NASA wants to grab a small asteroid and tow it into orbit around the moon, as part of a long-range plan to establish permanent manned outposts in space, a US senator said.

Senator Bill Nelson said that to get the project off the ground President Barack Obama will propose funding for the US space agency of about $US100 million ($96 million) in his 2014 budget, which he submits to Congress on Wednesday.

''This is part of what will be a much broader program,'' the Florida Democrat said.

''It combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars.''

Advertisement The plan calls for a robotic spacecraft to capture the asteroid and tow it back towards Earth, ultimately leaving it in a stable orbit around the moon, close enough that, within eight years, astronauts could go there.

A similar plan was initially proposed last year by experts at the California Institute of Technology, and the group, with other researchers in the field, have prepared a detailed study into the project's feasibility.

''It would be mankind's first attempt at modifying the heavens to enable the permanent settlement of humans in space,'' the scientists said.

Mr Obama's goal of sending a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 is impossible given NASA's present and projected funding levels, expert analysis has suggested.

But using an unmanned vehicle to bring a 500-tonne asteroid close to Earth could get humans to an asteroid as early as 2021, four years before the deadline.

Once in place, ''there could be mining activities, research into ways of deflecting an asteroid from striking Earth, and testing to develop technology for a trip to deep space and Mars'', Senator Nelson said.

NASA to Hunt Down and Capture an Asteroid

Ian O'Neill - Discovery News

NASA is mandated with the task of flying humans to an asteroid by the mid-2020s. But such a mission would be fraught with technical challenges, danger and — you guessed it — expense. So, rather than blasting a team of astronauts into deep space to play a game of "catch" with a speeding lump of space rock, the US space agency will be given approval for a more slimline option — NASA will send a robot on an asteroid fishing expedition.

A hooked asteroid will be tamed and delivered to a rendezvous point of our choosing (much closer to home) to allow a manned expedition easy access. This wouldn't only be great for science, it could also drive significant technologies intended for robotic asteroid deflection and, perhaps, mining techniques.

The asteroid capture concept has won over the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which has given it approval for the 2014 fiscal year to begin work. The mission could launch as early as 2017. Discovery News received confirmation from a White House official that the plan, revealed by comments made by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) on Friday, will receive a $100 million allocation of NASA's budget. Presented to Congress on Wednesday, the funds will go toward identifying asteroid candidates for capture. The news was first leaked last month by Aviation Week.

"It really is a clever concept," Nelson said during Friday's press conference in Orlando, Fla. "Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back."

So, how will this asteroid retrieval plan work?

The feasibility of identifying an asteroid with the exact orbital characteristics for a manned mission has been under much scrutiny since Obama laid out NASA's asteroid challenge. Not only would the asteroid need to be of the near-Earth category, it would need to come close enough to allow a manned expedition a decent rendezvous window to carry out useful science and get home safely. Naturally, such a deep-space chase would be wrought with danger for the crew.

In 2011, the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) assembled a team of planetary scientists, astronauts and asteroid experts in an effort to minimize the costs and risks associated with an asteroid mission, while maximizing scientific gains. The study's solution was to identify a small space rock for robotic capture and study by a manned expedition.

The study's asteroid, ideally measuring 7 meters across with a mass of 500,000 kilograms (550 tons), would be captured by a spacecraft using a deployable capture bag (pictured top). Once secured, the spacecraft would steer the mass toward a region of gravitational stability known as the Earth-moon liberation (EML2) point. This gravitational "island" has also been eyed as the potential location for a lunar farside space station — if you can park an asteroid there, a manned outpost could even use resources on a captured asteroid to sustain a station or act as a mining staging post, theoretically.

With the asteroid locked in its gravitational parking lot, NASA will launch a manned expedition to the tamed asteroid, allowing unlimited access to a scientifically bountiful objective.

Before the Keck plan, it was estimated that a 2025 asteroid rendezvous mission could take up to a year to complete; the Keck proposal would slash the human mission duration to weeks or even days. It would also be safer for the human crew and much cheaper — coming in at an estimated total cost of $2.65 billion. The Orion crew vehicle, that is currently undergoing development, launched atop NASA's next-generation Space Launch System (SLS), would provide the astronaut "shuttle service" to the asteroid. (The cost of developing Orion and SLS are a part of a separate allocation of NASA funds.)

The official confirmation of funds being allocated for this plan comes shortly after NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden went on the record to say that the US space agency wouldn't lead a manned mission to the moon in his lifetime.

"NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime. And the reason is, we can only do so many things." Bolden said at the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington on Thursday. Bolden emphasized that, under his watch, NASA would pursue the human-asteroid mission as a stepping stone to the far grander objective of spearheading a mission to Mars. The moon, he says, doesn't work into that equation — although NASA would be happy to "be involved" in a lunar mission should another nation take the lead.

To many, capturing a small asteroid and bringing it back to the Earth-moon system may seem like a "soft option," but it would fulfill NASA's mid-term aim of sending astronauts to an asteroid. However, in this case, I believe the most exciting component will actually be the robotic "capture" of a small asteroid.

In light of the Feb. 15 fireball over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, there have been increased calls for improved asteroid detection methods. Although the vast majority of extinction-level near-Earth asteroids have been identified and are not thought to pose a danger to Earth for the foreseeable future, smaller asteroid hazards are out there, hiding below the resolution limit of our space hazard observatories. The Chelyabinsk meteor exploded in the atmosphere, pummeling the ground with powerful shock waves that injured over 1,500 people. That particular asteroid measured only 17 to 20 meters across and had a mass of 11,000 tons before it hit the atmosphere.

The Keck study target is half the size of the Chelyabinsk asteroid, but the unmanned capture and control technique required to make the mission possible could be an invaluable prototype ahead of a larger scale asteroid impact mitigation system. Also, learning about the composition of a small asteroid will inevitably help us characterize its larger cousins. Sending astronauts to the Earth-moon L2 point to study the captured space rock would be the proof of concept that humans can indeed deflect small asteroids and use them for followup studies. The embryonic asteroid mining industry will no doubt be watching these technological developments with great interest.

Sadly, it looks as if the human component of the "asteroid mission" has been relegated to second fiddle. Although this manned asteroid mission will still send humans further away from the Earth than ever before (well beyond lunar orbit) and will inevitably push developments in spacecraft design, contributing to the long-term NASA goal of getting astronaut boots onto Mars, this plan lacks the "wow" factor of a big-budget big-asteroid deep space rendezvous mission. In this risk-adverse, low-budget manned spaceflight arena, it might be the only realistic option on the table for NASA.

NASA to Get $100 Million for Asteroid-Capture Mission, Senator Says

Mike Wall - Space.com

NASA will likely get $100 million next year to jump-start an audacious program to drag an asteroid into orbit around the moon for research and exploration purposes, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson says.

The $100 million will probably be part of President Barack Obama's federal budget request for 2014, which is expected to be released next week, Nelson (D-FL) said. The money is intended to get the ball rolling on the asteroid-retrieval project, which also aims to send astronauts out to the captured space rock in 2021.

"This is part of what will be a much broader program," Nelson said Friday, during a visit to Orlando. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."

NASA's plan involves catching a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) with a robotic spacecraft, then towing the space rock to a stable lunar orbit, Nelson said. Astronauts would then be sent to the asteroid in 2021 using NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, both of which are in development.

The idea is similar to one proposed last year by researchers based at Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena.

"Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond the Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, [the Mars moons] Phobos and Deimos, Mars and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt," the Keck team wrote in a feasibility study of their plan.

NASA will need much more than this initial $100 million to make the asteroid-retrieval mission happen. The Keck study estimated that it would cost about $2.6 billion to drag a 500-ton space rock back near the moon.

Nelson said he thinks the Obama Administration is in favor of the asteroid-retrieval plan. In 2010, the president directed NASA to work to get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.

News of the potential $100 million allocation is not a complete surprise, as Aviation Week reported late last month that NASA was seeking that amount in 2014 for an asteroid-retrieval program.

Nelson confirms asteroid mission study to be in FY14 budget proposal

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

Details about the fiscal year 2014 budget are supposed to be embargoed until Wednesday, when the administration formally releases its budget proposal. When NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke before the joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington on Thursday, he said he knew some people there were hoping he might accidentally say something about the budget during his presentation. "Trust me, I purged it all from my mind before I came through the door," he said to laughter.

Bolden was true to his word, and offered no details about the impending budget proposal. The same can't be said, though, for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who apparently didn't feel compelled to wait until Wednesday to spill the beans about one rumored element of the proposal. Nelson told reporters in Orlando on Friday that the budget proposal will include more than $100 million to begin work on a mission to retrieve a small asteroid and bring it back to cislunar space, where astronauts will visit it on a Space Launch System/Orion mission in 2021.

The proposal, Nelson said in a statement, was a little of something for everyone. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars," he said. And the release also emphasized the use of the SLS, which Nelson's statement refers to on more than one occasion as a "monster rocket," as the senator has done in the past.

Rumors that some kind of asteroid capture mission, like the concept previously studied by Caltech's Keck Institute of Space Studies, had been floating around for weeks, and the $100-million figure was reported last week by Aviation Week. Nelson's comments confirm those statements, as do leaked NASA documents reported late Friday by Space News and the AP. The requested funding of $105 million, as reported by Space News, includes $20 million for asteroid searches, $40 million to begin work on the spacecraft to capture the asteroid, and $45 million for solar electric propulsion system technology that the spacecraft would use.

Back to the Moon? Not any time soon, says Bolden

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

A week from Monday marks the third anniversary of President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center where he formally announced the goal of a human mission to an asteroid by 2025. While that is an official goal of NASA's human space exploration program, there remains some opposition or, at the very least, lack of acceptance of the goal by many people, including some with NASA, as a report on NASA's strategic direction concluded last December.

At a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington on Thursday, the head of that study, Al Carnesale of UCLA, reiterated those concerns. "Since it was announced, there was less enthusiasm for it among the community broadly," he said of the asteroid mission goal. "The more we learn about it, the more we hear about it, people seem less enthusiastic about it."

Carnesale suggested that, in his opinion, it might be better to shelve the asteroid mission goal in favor of a human return to the Moon. "There's a great deal of enthusiasm, almost everywhere, for the Moon," he said. "I think there might be, if no one has to swallow their pride and swallow their words, and you can change the asteroid mission a little bit… it might be possible to move towards something that might be more of a consensus."

Carnesale was followed at the meeting by NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who showed no sign of accepting Carnesale's advice. He noted that a number of nations have expressed interest, to varying degrees, in human lunar exploration. "They all have dreams of putting human on the Moon," he said. "I have told every head of agency of every partner agency that if you assume the lead in a human lunar mission, NASA will be a part of that. NASA wants to be a participant."

However, he made it clear NASA has no plans to lead its own human return to the Moon under his watch. "NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission," he said. "NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime. And the reason is, we can only do so many things." Instead, he said the focus would remain on human missions to asteroids and to Mars. "We intend to do that, and we think it can be done."

"I don't know how to say it any more plainly," he concluded. "NASA does not have a human lunar mission in its portfolio and we are not planning for one." He warned that if the next administration tries to change course again back to the Moon, "it means we are probably, in our lifetime, in the lifetime of everybody sitting in this room, we are probably never again going to see Americans on the Moon, on Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere. We cannot continue to change the course of human exploration."

Americans back on the moon?
NASA says not unless it's part of another nation's mission

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

As NASA goes forward with its plans to land humans on an asteroid and, eventually, Mars, it keeps running into a sales problem. Going to an asteroid -- the idea President Obama put forward three years ago -- is about as popular as going to the North Pole on summer vacation. The idea that does have broad interest in the space community -- going back to the moon -- isn't going anywhere with NASA.

The National Research Council issued a report on NASA's overall strategy in December. "Despite isolated pockets of support for a human asteroid mission," the report said, "the committee did not detect broad support for an asteroid mission inside NASA, in the nation as a whole, or from the international community."

That view was amplified this week at a Washington conference reported on by the website spacepoliltics.com. "The more we learn about it, the more we hear about it, people seem less enthusiastic about it," one scientist said of the asteroid mission.

But NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. told the same conference the U.S. would be willing to join a moon mission led by -- and presumably paid for mostly by -- some other nation. "NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission," the website quotes Bolden saying. "NASA is not going to the moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime. And the reason is, we can only do so many things."

Bolden lists the asteroid and Mars missions as things NASA can -- and will -- do. Reports say NASA will propose in its 2014 budget proposal next week a plan to go grab an asteroid and drag it closer to the moon to make that mission easier.

United Space Alliance cuts 68 jobs in final shuttle layoffs

James Dean - Florida Today

United Space Alliance let go 68 local employees in its last round of layoffs tied to retirement of the space shuttle program.

After the cuts, the company that served as NASA's prime shuttle contractor since 1996 and once employed more than 6,500 people here will have just 154 employees left on the Space Coast.

"A small number of USA employees will remain in Florida to close out the Florida-based contracts/operations," a company spokesperson said in an e-mail.

NASA closed its Shuttle Transition and Retirement office at the end of March.

USA continues to support International Space Station operations with more than 800 employees in Texas.

The joint venture owned by The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. says its parent companies continue to discuss its future.

Hadfield reaching out from space

Len Wagg - Chronicle Herald (Halifax)

Look up, way, way, way up, about 250 kilometres up, and you might find someone looking down.

In fact, you may even be photographed while looking.

Every hour and a half, the International Space Station orbits the Earth. And our very own Cmdr. Chris Hadfield, a Canadian, is in charge.

Between running the space station, doing a few experiments, singing with rock bands and generally making science cool, Hadfield points his camera toward Earth and takes pictures.

That's not the best part though. These pictures are not just filed on large hard drives or kept on memory cards or even sent to a large computer on earth. These pictures are shared and tweeted and posted on various social networking sites.

People are watching.

Tens of thousands of people are seeing the images and commenting, and more are sharing every day. The photos are tumbled and tweeted and people are getting to see the world from a view they have never seen before.

People are learning geography and science, and they are reading comments from people around the world as they reach out to this Canadian orbiting our plant.

This one person is single-handedly bringing people together from all over the world through photography.

Just over 100 years ago, a small magazine started to use photos to tell the story of the volcanic eruption of Mount Pelee on the island of Martinique. This small magazine outlives many others and became very popular; the name of it is National Geographic.

A gentleman by the name of Alexander Graham Bell, with his son-in law Gilbert Grosvenor, the father of modern photojournalism, thought that pictures might add a component to the magazine that words couldn't.

They were right.

What resonates with people and what both of them knew, or found out, was that bringing people to a place where they can't go and telling the story through pictures is a powerful tool.

It's called photojournalism, and it is being done every day when we pick up our cameras.

You don't need to work for a newspaper or magazine or even be an astronaut. In fact, you don't need to be any of the above to be a photojournalist.

You just need to take the camera and tell the story of your life around you.

The story doesn't need to be of important dates like birthdays or holidays. The story should be everyday things that make life wonderful.

The early morning sunrise, the light glinting off puddles, the dew in the backyard, the kids sleeping in the window light, the funny faces made when the camera gets picked up. All the images are pages in the story of your life.

Like anything, the more you work on it, the better you get. And the better you get, the more you want to do.

You may not get tens of thousands of fans and followers like Hadfield does, but follow his lead and tell one hell of a story.

Up-close look at shuttles provides unique experiences

John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)

In 2011, the space shuttle Discovery returned from space for the last time. In 2012, the spaceship flew out of its longtime Brevard County home base for the last time. In 2013, not even two years after visiting the space station, Discovery rests in a museum.

I got my first chance to see Discovery on display in its retirement home this week, squeezing a visit to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in between some business in the Washington area. The spaceship is parked, as it would look upon landing, in the cavernous hangar at the museum's annex near Washington's Dulles airport.

Just a couple years ago, I saw the test orbiter Enterprise parked in the exact same spot inside the museum. Enterprise was neat to look at, for its own unique role in space history, but Discovery was altogether different.

I've seen four of the shuttle orbiters up close, including the lost Columbia, but every time is special and offers some new discovery.

NASA and the Smithsonian have done a great job of leaving the orbiter as it was on its final return.

The heat-shielding tiles on the orbiter's belly and thermal blankets covering most of the air frame bear the scars of space flight and atmospheric re-entry.

In the Smithsonian display, visitors can walk up to almost within arm's reach of the orbiter.

They can study the intricate pattern of the heat shielding, the gigantic landing gear and tires, and the windows through which astronauts looked to see the black of space, the Earth below, the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Catwalks around the perimeter give some unique views from just above the wings and at even height to the massive space shuttle main engines. While the trained eye can spot the pieces that had to be replaced for safety and other reasons with replicas, it takes some study and the minor modifications don't hurt the encounter.

The orbiter is surrounded by other excellent human space exploration relics, from Apollo and Gemini capsules to scale models of America's rocket fleets to flown mementos.

Visitors milled around. Some took seats and just absorbed the aura of the spaceship. It would be easy to spend an hour or more just with the space shuttle orbiter, though the museum offers so many more incredible pieces to explore.

Among them, an SR71 Blackbird flown by test pilot (and later astronaut) James Halsell and an Air France Concorde. Planes, copters and others line the floors and dangle from the ceiling in an awe-inspiring tribute to flight. I'd highly recommend it for anyone who's making a trip to the Washington area. And the price can't be beat. It's free.

The visit did inspire some excitement about another shuttle display, opening soon right here at home. If the Kennedy Space Center's plans for Atlantis live up to the drawings and other preview material we've been treated to, the local display will far outdo what visitors can see in Washington. Atlantis, doors open, suspended as if in space, in a custom designed space exploration Mecca just down the road.

This summer's opening of the Atlantis display can't come soon enough.

Historic NASA test chamber upgraded for James Webb Space Telescope

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

A giant NASA vacuum chamber originally built to test the spacecraft that astronauts used to fly to the moon is now ready to check the space agency's next-generation telescope before it launches into deep space.

Chamber A located in the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will begin testing components for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2014, leading up to the tennis-court-size observatory's planned launch four years later.

The largest high-vacuum, cryogenic-optical test chamber in the world, Chamber A has been retrofitted over the past several years to be able to reproduce the extremely-cold environment that the telescope will be exposed to once it enters orbit one million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

"We are merging the past with the future," Mary Cerimele, NASA's laboratory manager for Chamber A, told reporters during a media tour of the facility Thursday (April 4). "The past is encapsulated in all of the technology and structure surrounding Chamber A and the future, the improvements for James Webb."

Designed in 1965 to fit the Apollo command and service modules mated together, Chamber A stands 120 feet tall (36.6 meters) and has an exterior diameter of 65 feet (19.8 meters). Inside is a volume of 400,000 cubic feet (11,327 cubic meters), which means when its 40-foot (12.2 meter), 40 ton door — the largest single-hinged door in the world — is open, there are 50,000 pounds (22,680 kilograms) of air inside.

When at vacuum, Chamber A has, at the most, 0.000033 pounds (15 milligrams) of air remaining.

"The air in the chamber weighs 25 tons, about twelve and a half Volkswagen Beetles," project engineer Ryan Grogan said. "When all the air is removed, the mass left inside will be the equivalent of half of a staple."

Getting colder

If all that was needed to test the James Webb was a near-perfect vacuum, then the years spent modifying Chamber A may have been unnecessary. But to accurately test the observatory's optics, the simulation facility needed to get colder.

The JWST will make observations primarily in the infrared spectrum, but all objects — including telescopes — also emit infrared light. To avoid the telescope's own radiation interfering with it detecting its distant astronomical targets, the observatory and its instruments must be made very, very cold.

To achieve this, the James Webb is equipped with a large shield to block the heating light from the Sun, Earth and moon, and will be positioned at Lagrange Point 2 (L2), the second of five stable orbits in the Sun-Earth system.

The extremely-low temperatures that the telescope will be exposed to in deep space exceeded what Chamber A was able to support — until now. With its upgraded cryogenics and air flow systems in place, the facility can now achieve a steady internal temperature of 11 Kelvin — 11 degrees above absolute zero — or -440 degrees Fahrenheit (-262 degrees Celsius).

"It'll be the largest, coldest place on Earth, even in August in Houston," Cerimele said.

One chance to get it right

Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which because it is in low Earth orbit was able to be repaired and upgraded by astronauts, the James Webb once launched will be far out of reach.

"We can't service it, so we have to be sure it will work like it is supposed to when it gets to space," Amber Straughn, a deputy project scientist for the Webb Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told collectSPACE.

Hence the thermal vacuum testing. After working with the telescope's ground support equipment (GSE) over the next couple of years, the JWST's Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science, or OTIS, will arrive in Houston in 2017 to be installed in Chamber A. The large segment — essentially everything but the tennis-court size sun shield and the engines that will boost the James Webb to L2 — will just clear the chamber's opening by about six inches.

The thermal-vacuum testing, which at its longest duration will last about 90 days, will ensure the space telescope's systems operate as expected in the harsh environment of space.

"We need to test something as complicated as the James Webb, with all its different parts and instrumentation, to make sure it works before we launch it, because after we launch it, we're not getting it back," Cerimele said. "It will be four times farther away from us than the moon. We are not going to be able to service it, we are not going to be able to repair it. It has to work when it gets up there, so we do a lot of ground testing."

The $8.8 billion dollar telescope, which will observe distant galaxies to probe for hints and signals left behind from the Big Bang, is slated to launch atop an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Space Agency spaceport in French Guiana. Once its testing is completed in Houston, the OTIS will be flown to California to be integrated with the observatory's other components and then will ship to South America via the Panama Canal.

A clean start

To be ready to receive the James Webb Space Telescope and its components, a clean room is being erected outside Chamber A's entrance, making Thursday's media tour one of the last times that visitors to the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory will have a view of the chamber, a National Historic Landmark since 1985.

In addition to its test of the Apollo spacecraft — including staging the 1968 2TV-1 manned "mission" with astronauts Joseph Kerwin, Joe Engle and Vance Brand inside — the chamber has also tested a number of other space vehicle components.

"Since the 60's, it has been in continuous use for anything that needed to be tested that wasn't really large, such as a space shuttle payload bay door radiator or the radiators for the [International] Space Station, or the Beagle lander for instance, [which] was a European Space Agency project," said Cerimele.

Chamber A was also used to test the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project's docking module, the Skylab station's telescope mount and antennas for the Department of Defense.

Science orders Morgan Freeman's 'New Race for Space'

James Hibberd - Entertainment Weekly

Science Channel announced Thursday a new series chronicling the modern-day space race among private entrepreneurs.

Partnering with actor-producer Morgan Freeman, the network has greenlit New Race for Space. The three-part series will look at entrepreneurs seeking to embark on various ventures beyond Earth, from backyard dreamers to well-funded moguls like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson and sci-fi filmmaker James Cameron.

"It's been almost 45 years since we landed on the moon, since we were really excited about going out into space, and I've always thought it was a mistake not to continue that exploration," executive producer Freeman told EW. "I'm personally excited that we now have entrepreneurs who are interested in doing this."

New Race For Space, from Revelations Entertainment, follows up on the previous Science Channel series Though the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.

"We sat down awhile ago and had a discussion about how to make the universe entertaining and bring a wider audience into Science and they did that with Through the Wormhole — and Morgan knocked it out of the park," said Debbie Adler Myers, general manager and executive vp of Science Channel. "We are witnessing the dawn of the next generation in the space race – one that resembles the Wild West more than the Right Stuff."

And if given the opportunity from one of these private companies, would Freeman ride the rocket?

"Me, go out into deep space? Yeah. Given the opportunity I would," Freeman said. "One of the major moments during the moon landing was being able to see the Earth rise. Imagine being able to see that for real? I'm looking down on Central Park right now in New York. It's like a moving painting. Imagine seeing the planet itself — 'Wow, that's where we live, that's all there is.'"

New Race for Space will debut on Science next year.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Monday, April 8, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - April 8, 2013 and JSC Today

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