Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight News

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: May 14, 2013 6:04:21 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - May 14, 2013 and JSC Today

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Submit Your Questions for the All Hands on May 16
2.            Check Your Backup: ACES Autonomy Backup - Intermittent Performance Issues
3.            Reminder to Help Influence Change! 2013 Employee Viewpoint Survey
4.            JSC: See the Space Station
5.            Environmental Brown Bag -- Building the Ideal Low-Energy Retirement Home
6.            Kinect Co-Lab Meeting
7.            NERD Monthly Meeting
8.            Space Serenity Al-Anon Meeting Today
9.            SPACE 'Live Labs' for Civil Servant Managers/Supervisors
10.          Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, May 15
11.          JSC Career Exploration Program -- 19th Annual and Final Awards Ceremony
12.          POWER of One: Nominate Your Peer Today
13.          June 13: Black Holes Inside and Out
14.          This Week at Starport
15.          JSC Health and Fitness Month is in Full Swing! Get Fit and Win Prizes
16.          Starport's Prediction Run/Walk Challenge This Thursday
17.          Free Week of Yoga and Pilates -- May 19 to 24
18.          Beginners Ballroom Dance -- Discount Ends May 17
19.          Fire Extinguisher Training
20.          RLLS Flight Arrival Departure, Meeting and Telecon Support WebEx Training
________________________________________     NASA FACT
" NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place-- the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs. These dead stars are located 150 light-years from Earth in a relatively young star cluster, Hyades, in the constellation Taurus."
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1.            Submit Your Questions for the All Hands on May 16
Join NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and JSC Director Dr. Ellen Ochoa this Thursday, May 16, from 9 to 10 a.m. for an all-hands meeting in the Building 2 South Teague Auditorium. Bolden and Ochoa will not be taking questions after the All Hands from the audience, so if you would like to submit a question for consideration in advance or during the All Hands, please email it to: JSC-Ask-The-Director@mail.nasa.gov
Those unable to attend in the Teague Auditorium can view the event on RF Channel 2 or Omni 45. JSC and White Sands Test Facility employees with wired computer network connections can view the All Hands using onsite IPTV on channel 402 (standard definition). Please note: IPTV works best with Internet Explorer. If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

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2.            Check Your Backup: ACES Autonomy Backup - Intermittent Performance Issues
The Autonomy Backup server at JSC has been having intermittent performance issues. Please verify you have a recent backup by following the instructions located at this link.
If you do not have a recent backup, please initiate a manual backup by following the Back Up Files Manually instructions (section 3.1.1) located at this link.
For assistance, contact the Enterprise Services Desk (ESC) at 1-877-677-2123 or x34800 (from on-site).
JSC IRD Outreach x31334

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3.            Reminder to Help Influence Change! 2013 Employee Viewpoint Survey
If you have not yet completed the 2013 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, please take a few minutes to do so. You will have already received an email from "Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey" with a link to the survey and will be receiving reminders during the survey period. The ultimate goal of the survey is to provide agencies with a true perspective of current strengths and challenge areas. We encourage your voluntary participation in this survey and hope you view this as an opportunity to influence positive change in our agency. Prior to taking the survey, we encourage you to visit the newly updated Employee Viewpoint and Resources Web page posted on the JSC Human Resources portal. This site provides information regarding 2012 survey results, how our center has used past results and quick reference links to other employee resources.
Jennifer Rodriguez x46386

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4.            JSC: See the Space Station
Viewers in the JSC area will be able to see the International Space Station this week.
Wednesday, May 15, 5:32 a.m. (Duration: 4 minutes)
Path: 16 degrees above SW to 36 degrees above NE
Maximum elevation: 87 degrees
The International Space Station Trajectory Operations Group provides updates via JSC Today for visible station passes at least two minutes in duration and 25 degrees in elevation. Other opportunities, including those with shorter durations and lower elevations or from other ground locations, are available at the website below.
Joe Pascucci x31695 http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/view.cgi?country=U...

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5.            Environmental Brown Bag -- Building the Ideal Low-Energy Retirement Home
Chances are, most of us have thought about retirement. Maybe you're thinking about downsizing now that your nest is empty. If you could design your dream home, what would it look like? Underneath all the personalization, however, there are some basics that everyone should be thinking about. Would you like a home with low to no monthly utility costs? One of JSC's own, Robert Taylor, is doing exactly that. He will share his experiences in planning, designing and building the ultimate dream retirement home that reduces the need for monthly utility payments and arduous upkeep in an interactive presentation today, May 14. Bring your lunch and your questions to Building 45, Room 751, from noon to 1 p.m.
Event Date: Tuesday, May 14, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B45 room 751

Add to Calendar

Michelle Fraser-Page x34237

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6.            Kinect Co-Lab Meeting
Interested in the Microsoft Kinect or gesture interfaces? Please attend our monthly Kinect Co-Lab meeting that will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Building 15, Room 267, tomorrow, May 15. Please visit our SharePoint site to become a member.
Shelby Thompson x48701 https://collaboration.ndc.nasa.gov/CoLab/kinect/SitePages/Home.aspx

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7.            NERD Monthly Meeting
Are you a full-time employee in the early stage of your employment and want more out of your career?
Join New Employee Resources and Development (NERD) tomorrow, May 15, from noon to 1 p.m. We will be giving an introduction to our group and updating everyone on what we've done so far in our four committees (social, professional development, public outreach, and on-boarding), but we hope to spend most of our time brainstorming ideas about JSC 2.0. Contractors and civil servants are welcome!
Event Date: Wednesday, May 15, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 1/ Rm 860

Add to Calendar

Elena Buhay 281-792-7976

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8.            Space Serenity Al-Anon Meeting Today
"Progress, Not Perfection" reminds Al-Anon members to look to the positive side of incremental improvements and change. Our 12-step meeting is for co-workers, families and friends of those who work or live with the family disease of alcoholism. We meet Tuesday, May 14, in Building 32, Room 146, from 11 to 11:45 a.m. Visitors are welcome.
Event Date: Tuesday, May 14, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:11:55 AM
Event Location: B. 32, room 146

Add to Calendar

Employee Assistance Program x36130 http://sashare.jsc.nasa.gov/EAP/Pages/default.aspx

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9.            SPACE 'Live Labs' for Civil Servant Managers/Supervisors
NASA's Standard Performance Appraisal Communication Environment (SPACE) system went live May 6. To help ensure a smooth transition to the SPACE system, we've scheduled several "live lab" sessions for civil servant (CS) managers/supervisors. Attendees will be able to work on performance plans (can drop into the "live labs" as schedules allow), and Human Resources (HR) support will be available to answer any system-related questions. Registration is not required. For additional questions, please talk with your HR representative.
Session dates/times:
Tuesday, May 14
o             Intended Audience: CS managers/supervisors
o             Building 12, Room 144, from 8 a.m. to noon
Wednesday, May 15
o             Intended Audience: CS managers/supervisors
o             Building 12, Room 144, from 8 a.m. to noon
Wednesday, May 22
o             Intended Audience: CS managers/supervisors
o             Building 12, Room 144, from 8 a.m. to noon
Thursday, May 23
o             Intended Audience: CS managers/supervisors
o             Building 12, Room 144, from 1 to 5 p.m.
Lisa Pesak x30476

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10.          Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, May 15
Do you need some hands-on, personal help with FedTraveler.com? Join the Business Systems and Process Improvement Office for an Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab tomorrow, May 15, any time between 9 a.m. and noon in Building 12, Room 142. Our help desk representatives will be available to help you work through Extended TDY travel processes and learn more about using FedTraveler during this informal workshop. Bring your current travel documents or specific questions that you have about the system and join us for some hands-on, in-person help with FedTraveler. If you'd like to sign up for this Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab, please log into SATERN and register. For additional information, please contact Judy Seier at x32771. To register in SATERN, please click on this SATERN direct link: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Gina Clenney x39851

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11.          JSC Career Exploration Program -- 19th Annual and Final Awards Ceremony
Please join us for the 19th annual and final Awards and Recognition Ceremony for JSC's year-long Career Exploration Program (CEP) interns. There will be a meet-and-greet at 1:30 p.m., and the program will begin promptly at 1:50 p.m. with guest speaker Dr. Ellen Ochoa. Interns and mentors will be recognized for their outstanding achievements. For 19 years, the CEP has strived to meet NASA's mission by developing a critical pool of talented and diverse individuals who will make up the future leaders of the nation's and NASA's workforce. By providing students with invaluable work experience and projects in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and business (STEM-B), CEP has served as a mechanism for students to complete their education and embark on a successful career in STEM-B fields. Current CEP student interns, CEP alumni, mentors, co-workers, teachers, family and friends are invited to attend this awards ceremony.
Event Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2013   Event Start Time:1:30 PM   Event End Time:3:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom

Add to Calendar

Carolyn Snyder x34719 http://www.cep.usra.edu

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12.          POWER of One: Nominate Your Peer Today
The POWER of One Award has been a great success, but we still need your nominations. We're looking for standouts with specific examples of exceptional or superior performance. Our award criteria below will help guide you in writing the short write-up needed for submittal.
Single Achievement: Explain how the person truly went above and beyond on a single project or initiative.
Affect and Impact: What was the significant impact? How many were impacted? Who was impacted?
Standout: What stands out? What extra effort? Did the effort exceed and accomplish the goal?
Category: Which category should nominee be in? Gold - agency impact award level; Silver - center impact award level; bronze - organization impact award level.
If chosen, the recipient can choose from a list of JSC experiences and have their name and recognition shared on Inside JSC. Get complete information on the JSC Awards Program.
Jessica Ocampo 281-792-7804 https://powerofone.jsc.nasa.gov/

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13.          June 13: Black Holes Inside and Out
Inquisitive adults are invited to attend the presentation Black Holes Inside and Out by Dr. Andrew Hamilton of the University of Colorado at Boulder. This free public presentation on June 13 is part of the Cosmic Explorations Speaker Series at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI). Hamilton's presentation is the final presentation in this year's series, "A User's Guide to the Universe: You Live Here. Here's What You Need to Know."
LPI's Cosmic Explorations presentation begins at 7:30 p.m. and will be followed by a light reception. No reservation is necessary. LPI is located in the USRA building at 3600 Bay Area Blvd. The entrance is located on Middlebrook Drive. For more information, please click here.
Andrew Shaner 281-486-2163

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14.          This Week at Starport
May is Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, and to celebrate we will be offering special selections in the cafés every Wednesday this month. Tomorrow's selection will be red curry chicken over jasmine rice.
Be sure to check out everything we have planned for Health and Fitness Month for opportunities to win great prizes while getting fit!
We are currently accepting PRE-SALE orders for Buzz Aldrin's new book, Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration, for just $26. Children's books Reaching for the Moon and Look to the Stars are $17.99 each. Order in the Buildings 3 or 11 Starport Gift Shops before May 24. The Buzz Aldrin book signing at Starport will be June 21.
Sam's Club will be in the Building 3 Starport Café on Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. to discuss membership options. Receive a gift card on new memberships or renewals. Cash or check only for membership purchases.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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15.          JSC Health and Fitness Month is in Full Swing! Get Fit and Win Prizes
It's now Week 3 of Health and Fitness Month. Earn more tickets this week for our random prize drawing on May 31.
On Tuesday, enjoy a "mindful" lunch menu item in the Buildings 3 or 11 cafés and receive a ticket. Stop by the Buildings 3 or 11 Starport Gift Shops to get your ticket.
Compete in the Prediction Run/Walk Challenge on Thursday and get a ticket. The top three winners receive prizes!
Bike to work on Friday for a ticket and a special prize. Stop by the Gilruth Center and let us know you biked to work.
Plus, enjoy a free week of Inner Space Yoga and Pilates next week!
You can earn tickets all month long for biking to work, attending group exercise and Inner Space classes, attending personal training sessions, liking us on Facebook, and if you are enrolled in boot camp, ballroom dancing or league sports. Additional details here.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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16.          Starport's Prediction Run/Walk Challenge This Thursday
As part of Health and Fitness Month at JSC, Starport will be holding a Prediction Run Challenge on May 16 at the Gilruth Center at 7 a.m. The objective of this race is not necessarily to be the fastest, but to be the closest to your predicted amount of time you will spend walking, jogging or running. The race course is approximately 5K (3.1 miles). The top three finishers will win prizes, and everyone who participates will receive a ticket to be entered into our random prize drawing at the end of the month. Registration is now open online. Don't miss out on this fun and challenging event!
Be sure to check out everything we have planned for Health and Fitness Month for opportunities to win more great prizes while getting fit! Click on our Health and Fitness Month calendar of events.
Event Date: Thursday, May 16, 2013   Event Start Time:7:00 AM   Event End Time:8:00 AM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

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

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17.          Free Week of Yoga and Pilates -- May 19 to 24
As part of Health and Fitness Month, Starport's amazing new Yoga and Pilates studio is offering a free week of classes!
The Inner Space Studio (located in the Gilruth Center)
Sunday, May 19, through Friday, May 24
Come try out a free class with one of our experienced Yoga or Pilates instructors!
For more information on the Inner Space Studio at the Gilruth, please click here.
For all of Starport's Health and Fitness Month events, go here.
Steve Schade x30304 http://www.innerspaceclearlake.com/schedule.php

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18.          Beginners Ballroom Dance -- Discount Ends May 17
Take advantage of a great discount on one of our most popular programs:
Beginners Ballroom Dance
This eight-week class introduces you to the various types of ballroom dance. Students will learn the secrets of a good lead and following, as well as the ability to identify the beat of the music. This class is easy, and we have fun as we learn. JSC friends and family are welcome.
Discounted registration:
o             $90 per couple (ends May 17)
Regular registration:
o             $110 per couple (May 18 to 28)
Two class sessions available:
o             Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. -- Starting April 2
o             Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. -- Starting April 4
All classes are taught in the Gilruth Center dance studio.
To register or for additional information, please contact the Gilruth Center.
Shericka Phillips x35563 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/RecreationClasses/RecreationProgram...

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19.          Fire Extinguisher Training
Fire safety, at its most basic, is based upon the principle of keeping fuel sources and ignition sources separate.
The Safety Learning Center invites you to attend a one-hour Fire Extinguisher course that provides instructor-led training on the proper way to safely use fire extinguishers.
Students will learn:
o             Five classes of fires
o             Types of fire extinguishers and how to match the right extinguisher to different types of fires
o             How to inspect an extinguisher
o             How to use a fire extinguisher - P.A.S.S.
o             Understand the importance of knowing where extinguishers are at your location
o             Rules for fighting fires and the steps to take if a fire occurs
o             Hands-on (weather permitting)
Date/Time: May 28 from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center, Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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20.          RLLS Flight Arrival Departure, Meeting and Telecon Support WebEx Training
TechTrans International will provide 30-minute WebEx training May 15, 16 and 17 for RLLS Portal modules. The following is a summary of the training dates:
Telecon Support - May 15 at 10 a.m. CDT
Flight Arrival Departure - May 16 at 2 p.m. CDT
Meeting Support - May 17 at 10 a.m. CDT
o             Locating desired support request module
o             Quick view summary page for support request
o             Create new support request
o             Submittal requirements
o             Submitting on behalf of another individual
o             Adding attachment (agenda, references)
o             Selecting special requirements (export control)
o             Submitting a request
o             Status of request records
o             View request records
o             Contacting RLLS support
Please send an email to James.E.Welty@nasa.gov or call 281-335-8565 to sign up for RLLS Support WebEx training courses. Classes are limited to the first 20 individuals registered.
James Welty 281-335-8565 https://www.tti-portal.com

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

NASA TV:
·         11 am Central (Noon EDT) – File of Soyuz TMA-07M landing & post landing
·         Noon Central (1 pm EDT) – Kevin Ford from Air & Space's Moving Beyond Earth Gallery

Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Soyuz TMA-07M touches down 90 miles southeast of Dzhezkazgan at 8:31 am local time Tuesday (AP)

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Soyuz TMA-07M lands safely in Kazakhstan

William Harwood - CBS News

A Russian cosmonaut, a NASA physician-astronaut and outgoing Canadian space station commander Chris Hadfield, whose deft use of social media turned him into an orbital superstar, undocked and plunged back to Earth Monday to close out a five-month stay in space. Two days after an impromptu spacewalk to fix a coolant leak -- and one day after a YouTube video of Hadfield singing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" went viral with more than 1.5 million views -- Hadfield, Thomas Marshburn and Roman Romanenko undocked from the station at 7:08 p.m. EDT (GMT-4).

3-man space crew returns safely to Earth

Vladimir Isachenkov - Associated Press

A Soyuz space capsule with a three-man crew returning from a five-month mission to the International Space Station landed safely Tuesday on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, American Thomas Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko landed as planned southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 8:31 a.m. local time Tuesday (0231 GMT; 10:31 p.m.?EDT Monday).

Space trio lands in Kazakhstan after five months in orbit

Dmitry Solovyov - Reuters

The first Canadian astronaut to command the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan with two crewmates on Tuesday, wrapping up a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station. A Soyuz capsule under an orange parachute raised clouds of dust as it ignited an engine to cushion its landing some 150 km (90 miles) southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan at 8:31 a.m. , Russian television showed in a live broadcast.

U.S., Canadian, Russian Space Station Crew Lands Safely in Kazakhstan

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

Canada's first command of the International Space Station drew to a close late Monday, as skipper Chris Hadfield, U. S. astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko boarded their Russian Soyuz TMA-07M capsule, undocked and descended safely under parachute onto the plains of southern Kazakhstan. The spacecraft touched down at 10:31 p.m., EST, or Tuesday at 8:31 a.m., local time, under a sunlit sky to end a 146 day mission for the three men and bring ISS Expedition 35 to a conclusion.

International Space Station crew returns to Earth safely

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

A Russian, an American and a Canadian are safely back on Earth today after a blazing atmospheric reentry that wrapped up a five-month expedition to the International Space Station. Superhot plasma gasses enveloped their Soyuz spacecraft as Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, U.S. astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency made a fiery plunge toward a landing zone on the central steppes of Kazakhstan. Russian search-and-rescue forces flew helicopters in racetrack ovals above the zone as the crew prepared to deploy parachutes at about an altitude of seven miles. The crew had just come through maximum aerodynamic forces, and Romanenko reported to Russian Mission Control in Moscow. "We feel good," he said. "Everything is normal. Proceeding with descent."

Soyuz Space Capsule Lands Safely with Crew of 3

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a crew of three space travelers successfully touched down on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan Monday night, wrapping up a five-month mission to the International Space Station. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko landed in their Soyuz capsule tonight (May 13) at about 10:31 p.m. EDT (0231 May 14 GMT), though it was early Tuesday local time at the landing site. "Boy, that was quite a ride home," Hadfield said once on the ground.

Space Station's Crewmembers Safely Land in Kazakhstan

RIA Novosti

The Soyuz TMA-07M landing capsule touched the ground on Tuesday morning in a designated area in Kazakhstan safely bringing back three crewmembers from the International Space Station (ISS), the Mission Control said. The landing of the spacecraft, which left the space station some three hours earlier, was ensured by three planes and 12 Mi-8 helicopters. The crew members, who returned back to Earth from the ISS, are Chris Hadfield of Canada, Roman Romanenko of Russia and Thomas Marshburn of the United States.

Hadfield, the 'coolest guy in outer space,' returns to Earth

Charlie Fidelman - Montreal Gazette

In the dramatic seconds before Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his fellow rocket scientists fell back to Earth, a hush fell over the Canadian Space Agency as their capsule streaked through the atmosphere Monday over the steppes of Kazakhstan. "I'll be feeling better once I see the hatch open and the astronauts climb out," astronaut David Saint-Jacques told The Gazette as hundreds gathered at the CSA landing party to celebrate another successful space mission. "It's no small feat, entering Earth's atmosphere at eight kilometres per second. There's so much energy - the capsule will be a giant fireball." But the Russian Soyuz capsule hurtled down to Earth and made a perfect landing.

Chris Hadfield safely returns to Earth
Hadfield, along with an American and a Russian, touched down in Kazakhstan

CBC News

Astronaut Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to command the International Space Station, has safely returned to Earth after almost five months in orbit. Hadfield, along with flight engineers American Tom Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko, returned aboard a Soyuz capsule. They landed under a large parachute in the flat steppes of Kazakhstan at 10:31 p.m. ET. Hadfield, 53, was the third to emerge from the tight confines of the capsule, assisted by ground crew. Once seated in a reclining chair, Hadfield gave a wave and a thumbs-up. Shortly after, he was seen making a call on a satellite phone to family and friends.

Starman Chris Hadfield falls to Earth as Soyuz returns from ISS

The Guardian (UK)

A Soyuz space capsule carrying a three-man crew returning from a five-month mission to the International Space Station landed safely Tuesday on the steppes of Kazakhstan. The Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, American Thomas Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko landed as planned south-east of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 8.31am local time on Tuesday. The Soyuz TMA-07M capsule slowly descended by parachute on to the steppes under clear, sunny skies. Russian search and rescue helicopters hovered over the landing site for a quick recovery effort.

Fourth ATV attached to Ariane 5 launcher

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Europe's next Automated Transfer Vehicle, set for launch in June to the International Space Station, was hoisted atop an Ariane 5 launcher in French Guiana on Friday. The robotic spacecraft's tanks are filled with propellant, water, air and pure oxygen. Technicians will load the ATV's cargo module with fresh food and other last-minute items over next week before the Ariane 5's 17.7-foot-diameter payload fairing is added to enshroud the resupply freighter. Christened Albert Einstein, the cargo craft is Europe's fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle. When it blasts off June 5, the freighter will be the heaviest spacecraft ever launched by Europe - weighing in at an estimated 44,610 pounds, according to the European Space Agency.

Jeff Bingham To Leave Senate Commerce Committee

SpacePolicyOnline

Jeff Bingham, a key staffer in congressional decisions about the future of NASA's program for the past eight years, has announced that he is leaving the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Bingham will continue to work with the committee over the next several weeks transitioning his responsibilities to a new team led by Bailey Edwards. He plans to remain deeply involved in space issues, but his specific plans were not announced.
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Dream Chaser spacecraft bound for California for flight testing

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

Sierra Nevada Corp. says it is shipping a completely assembled version of its Dream Chaser spacecraft from the company's headquarters in Colorado to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for testing. Ultimately, Dream Chaser will make its first autonomous free flight approach and landing. "This will be the first full scale flight test of the Dream Chaser lifting body and will demonstrate the unique capability of our spacecraft to land on a runway," Sierra Nevada Vice President Jim Voss said in a press release Monday, May 13. "Other flight tests will follow to validate the aerodynamic data used to control the vehicle in the atmosphere when it returns from space. This is a huge step forward for the SNC and NASA teams towards providing our nation with safe and reliable transportation to the International Space Station."

Sierra Nevada finishes Dream Chaser assembly; to ship to Cali for test

Kristen Leigh Painter - Denver Post

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems has finished assembly and testing of its Dream Chaser spacecraft and is getting ready to ship it from its Louisville headquarters to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The Dream Chaser will undergo a series of tests at Dryden, including runway tow, ground resonance and a captive carry flight. "We are one step closer to returning U.S. astronauts on a U.S. vehicle to the International Space Station and in doing so continuing the long standing and proud legacy that was the Space Shuttle program," Mark Sirangelo, head of SNC's Space Systems, said in a news release.

Dream Chaser shipped to NASA Dryden for glide tests

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

Sierra Nevada has shipped the Dream Chaser orbital spacecraft to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center near Palmdale, California, for glide tests. The Dream Chaser departed Sierra Nevada's factory near Denver, Colorado by truck, headed for NASA's Dryden centre, which is co-located with flight test facilities at Edwards AFB. The spacecraft will be reassembled, then undergo tests including suitability for towing, ground resonance and captive-carry tests slung beneath a helicopter, leading up to a series of autonomous glide tests. For the glide tests, the spacecraft will be brought to various altitudes by a Sikorsky CH-53 and released to glide back to the runway on its own.

Chris Hadfield first in-space viral music video star with 'Space Oddity'

Geoffrey Mohan - Los Angeles Times

The cover of "A Space Oddity" by Chris Hadfield, International Space Station commander, is going galactically viral Monday. But it was a decidedly terrestrial affair. And it centered on a Silver Lake producer and a Canadian singer who once did vocals for Bowie, say those who were involved. Hadfield, who already reset the bar for social media with his tweets from space, is a talented singer and guitarist. He sat in with many a Canadian musician, and joined singer-songwriter Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies last month for a rendition of "Is Somebody Singing," which the two co-wrote.

Skylab's Grave: Remains of 1st American Space Station in Australia

Ben Cooper - Space.com

NASA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launch of Skylab, America's first space station, on Tuesday, but you might be surprised where this icon of U.S. human spaceflight ended up. After hosting rotating astronaut crews from 1973-1974, the Skylab space station eventually fell back to Earth in pieces that landed in Australia. Now, decades later, many of those pieces are on display at Australian museums, offering a fascinating glimpse into America's first stab at living in space.

Asteroids: on the way to Mars, or just in the way?

Jeff Foust - The Space Review (Commentary)

(Foust is editor and publisher of The Space Review. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site and the Space Politics and NewSpace Journal weblogs.)

Advocates of human missions to Mars often embody an unusual combination of impatience and persistence. Impatience because they want to go to Mars now, or at least as close to now as possible: within a decade, if not earlier, usually. Persistence because, so far, they have yet to convince the powers that be to sign on to such a fast-paced human Mars program, but continue to seek to build support for that goal. Perhaps the best-known Mars advocate, Robert Zubrin, has been trying to build interest for variants of his Mars Direct concept for two decades, but is today only incrementally closer, at best, to that goal.
__________

COMPLETE STORIES

Soyuz TMA-07M lands safely in Kazakhstan

William Harwood - CBS News

A Russian cosmonaut, a NASA physician-astronaut and outgoing Canadian space station commander Chris Hadfield, whose deft use of social media turned him into an orbital superstar, undocked and plunged back to Earth Monday to close out a five-month stay in space.

Two days after an impromptu spacewalk to fix a coolant leak -- and one day after a YouTube video of Hadfield singing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" went viral with more than 1.5 million views -- Hadfield, Thomas Marshburn and Roman Romanenko undocked from the station at 7:08 p.m. EDT (GMT-4).

After moving a safe distance away from the sprawling lab complex, Romanenko monitored an automated four-minute 45-second rocket firing starting at 9:37 p.m., slowing the ship by 286 mph and putting it on course for a landing near Karaganda, Kazakhstan.

A half hour later, the three modules making up the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft separated and the crew's descent module, the only part of the ship equipped with a protective heat shield, fell into the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of about 62 miles.

Nine minutes after that, at an altitude of about 6.7 miles, a large braking parachute unfurled and long-range television cameras followed the craft as it descended to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown at 10:31 p.m. (8:31 a.m. Tuesday local time).

The weather was ideal and Russian recovery crews stationed nearby quickly rushed in to "safe" the descent module and help the returning station fliers out of the cramped cabin as they began their readjustment to gravity after 146 days in weightlessness.

Live television views from the Kazakh steppe showed the charred module resting on its side, surrounded by recovery personnel. As usual, recliners were set up near the spacecraft where the Soyuz crew members rested after they were pulled from the capsule.

All three looked healthy and in good spirits, smiling and chatting easily as they relaxed in their pressure suits.

"That was quite a ride home," Hadfield told someone on a phone.

After brief medical checks, Romanenko, Hadfield and Marshburn were expected to be flown to Karaganda where they will split up. Romanenko will board a Russian plane for a flight back to Star City near Moscow while Hadfield and Marshburn head back to Houston aboard a NASA jet.

Going into the mission, Hadfield, a shuttle veteran and Canada's first spacecraft commander, said he had three primary goals: to keep his crew healthy, to keep the space station in good shape and to accomplish a full slate of scientific research.

"I can very proudly say that all three have been accomplished in spades," he said Sunday. "The crew is healthy and happy and I think any of us would come back given the opportunity.

"The spaceship is in good shape and on the science side ... we set a record for utilization, the amount of research done in our tenure on board."

During a brief change-of-command ceremony, Hadfield formally turned the station over to Expedition 36 commander Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy. They will have the station to themselves until three fresh crew members arrive at the end of the month.

Hadfield said he was particularly pleased with the outcome of a spacewalk Saturday by Marshburn and Cassidy to fix a potentially troublesome ammonia coolant leak. The spacewalk was executed just two days after the leak was observed on the station's solar power truss.

"The realtime execution of that was what just felt so good to me as commander of this crew," Hadfield said. "So for me, my initial objectives, my dreams for how this might go and the realization of what this crew can do together ... for me, this was just the personification of what the International Space Station is and what the people mean to it.

"This is a human research vessel. We've shared it with millions of people around the world, and we've done our absolute best to accomplish the work on board."

The trio was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 19, docking two days later. From the very beginning of their stay aboard the station, Hadfield utilized the lab's satellite internet connection to file a steady stream of Tweets, photos and movies.

By the time his mission entered its final stages, he could boast more than 830,000 followers on Twitter with more than 1.5 million views of his most recent video, an updated version of "Space Oddity," shot throughout the space station and mixed with other instruments during editing on Earth.

"With any new technology, it takes a while for people to get used to it and start using it," he told a Canadian interviewer shortly after reaching the station. "Look at telephones a little over a hundred years ago, or airbags in cars.

"Even though the technology exists, more and more people become aware of how useful it can be. And what we're doing on space station is fundamentally fascinating. I think the evidence shows through a measure like Twitter. ... With these new technologies and communications, we can directly give people the human side of that."

Judging by responses to his postings, he succeeded.

"You have consistently done more for my awareness of the space station than anyone ever has," one YouTube viewer commented. "Your approach makes it feel like we all have family in space. Thank you!!"

Said another: "Incredible....Space was already awesome, and you've made it even more so :D Thank you for that."

Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian astronaut in mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, closed out the change-of-command ceremony Sunday by thanking Hadfield for his service "on behalf of Canada."

"We are extremely proud of you and your efforts, you have fueled a new appreciation for what the challenges of space exploration have to offer our planet," Hansen said. "Your leadership has been an example to all of us, and your extraordinary efforts to share space with us has inspired us to look back upon our planet, spaceship Earth, with a new perspective and respect.

"Canada is most certainly indebted to you for your tireless efforts. To you and your crew, commander Hadfield, we thank you."

3-man space crew returns safely to Earth

Vladimir Isachenkov - Associated Press

A Soyuz space capsule with a three-man crew returning from a five-month mission to the International Space Station landed safely Tuesday on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, American Thomas Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko landed as planned southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 8:31 a.m. local time Tuesday (0231 GMT; 10:31 p.m.?EDT Monday).

Live footage on NASA TV showed the Soyuz TMA-07M capsule slowly descending by parachute onto the sun-drenched steppes under clear skies. Russian search and rescue helicopters hovered over the landing site for a quick recovery effort.

Rescue teams moved quickly to help the crew in their bulky spacesuits exit out of the capsule, charred by the fiery re-entry through the atmosphere. They were then put into reclining chairs to start adjusting to the Earth's gravity after 146 days in space.

The three astronauts smiled as they chatted with space agency officials and doctors who were checking their condition. Hadfield, who served as the space station's commander, gave a thumbs-up sign. They made quick phone calls to family members and friends before being carried to a medical tent for a routine medical check-up prior to being flown home.

NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said on NASA TV by telephone from the landing site that the three returning astronauts were fine. "They look like they are doing pretty well," he said.

Hadfield, 53, an engineer and former test pilot from Milton, Ontario, was Canada's first professional astronaut to live aboard the space station and became the first Canadian in charge of a spacecraft. He relinquished command of the space station on Sunday.

"It's just been an extremely fulfilling and amazing experience end to end," Hadfield told Mission Control on Monday. "From this Canadian to all the rest of them, I offer an enormous debt of thanks." He was referring to all those in the Canadian Space Agency who helped make his flight possible.

Hadfield bowed out of orbit by posting a music video on YouTube on Sunday - his own custom version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity." It's believed to be the first music video made in space, according to NASA.

"With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World," Hadfield said via Twitter.

Hadfield sang often in orbit, using a guitar already aboard the complex, and even took part in a live, Canadian coast-to-coast concert in February that included the Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson and a youth choir.

The five-minute video posted Sunday drew a salute from Bowie's official Facebook page: "It's possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created."

A three-man U.S.-Russian crew is staying on the space station and will be joined in two weeks by the next trio of astronauts.

The 2011 retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet has left Russia's Soyuz spacecraft as the sole means to ferry crews to and from the space outpost, and the unmanned cargo version of the Soyuz, the Progress, delivers the bulk of station supplies.

The latest Progress, launched last month, suffered a glitch when an antenna on its navigation system failed to deploy, but it docked successfully at the space outpost despite the flaw.

Russia's space agency chief Vladimir Popovkin told reporters Tuesday that the failure was caused by glue that got stuck in the moving parts of the antenna's unfolding mechanism. He said that Russian engineers conducted checks on the already assembled Soyuz and the Progress ships to prevent the glitch from reoccurring.

The U.S.-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, already is making cargo shipments to the space station. Its founder and chief designer, Elon Musk, has said the company could be ferrying astronauts aboard improved versions of its Dragon capsules by 2015.

Space trio lands in Kazakhstan after five months in orbit

Dmitry Solovyov - Reuters

The first Canadian astronaut to command the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan with two crewmates on Tuesday, wrapping up a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station.

A Soyuz capsule under an orange parachute raised clouds of dust as it ignited an engine to cushion its landing some 150 km (90 miles) southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan at 8:31 a.m. , Russian television showed in a live broadcast.

"The crew are feeling well," Mission Control outside Moscow said in a radio transmission, as several search and rescue helicopters hovered around the capsule on a bright morning.

The three astronauts were shown smiling, seated in semi-reclined chairs and covered with blue thermal blankets, waiting for medical tests after their landing.

About 3-1/2 hours earlier, space station commander Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko departed the $100-billion orbital outpost as it sailed 255 miles over eastern Mongolia.

"It's just been an extremely fulfilling and amazing experience," Hadfield radioed to flight controllers on Monday.

The mission included an impromptu spacewalk on Saturday to fix an ammonia coolant leak that had cropped up two days earlier. Without the repair, NASA likely would have had to cut back the station's science experiments to save power. The cooling system dissipates heat from electronics on the station's solar-powered wing panels.

During a 5-1/2-hour spacewalk, Marshburn and Chris Cassidy, who remains aboard the station, replaced a suspect ammonia coolant pump, apparently resolving the leak. Engineers will monitor the system for several weeks to make sure there are no additional problems.

Hadfield made history on Monday when he released the first music video shot in space, turning an astronaut into an overnight music sensation with his zero-gravity version of David Bowie's hit "Space Oddity.

The mission of Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko, who blasted off 146 days ago, was the 35th expedition aboard the space station, a permanently staffed laboratory for biomedical, materials science, technology demonstrations and other research.

Their replacements are due to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on May 28. Until then, a skeleton crew commanded by Pavel Vinogradov and including NASA astronaut Cassidy and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin will keep the station operating.

The crew's return to Earth comes on the 40th anniversary of the launch of the first U.S. space station, Skylab. Three crews lived and worked on the relatively short-lived Skylab between May 1973 and February 1974. The project helped NASA prepare for in-flight research aboard the space shuttles and the International Space Station, which was constructed in orbit beginning in 1998.

The outpost, which is scheduled to remain in orbit until at least 2020, has been permanently staffed since November 2000.

U.S., Canadian, Russian Space Station Crew Lands Safely in Kazakhstan

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

Canada's first command of the International Space Station drew to a close late Monday, as skipper Chris Hadfield, U. S. astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko boarded their Russian Soyuz TMA-07M capsule, undocked and descended safely under parachute onto the plains of southern Kazakhstan.

The spacecraft touched down at 10:31 p.m., EST, or Tuesday at 8:31 a.m., local time, under a sunlit sky to end a 146 day mission for the three men and bring ISS Expedition 35 to a conclusion.

Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko were greeted within minutes of their landing by helicopter born Russian landing and recovery forces that assisted the fliers from their spacecraft in the landing zone southeast of Dzhezkazgan.

If weary, all three fliers appeared to be in good health as they were checked by flight surgeons.

"We're doing well," Romanenko reported through a translator seconds before touchdown. "It's beautiful, it's morning here."

With the Soyuz undocking at 7:08 p.m., EST, command of the six person orbiting science lab transferred to Russian Pavel Vinogradov, a veteran cosmonaut. His Expedition 36 crew includes U. S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. They anticipate the May 28 arrival of U.S., Russian and European replacements, Karen Nyberg, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Luca Parmitano.

Hadfield, a retired Canadian Air Force officer and test pilot, assumed command of the ISS on March 15. The mission was his third to space since his selection to Canada's astronaut corps in 1992.

After field exams by flight surgeons, Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko were to be flown by helicopter to Karaganda in northern Kazakhstan. There, they were to part company, with Hadfield and Marshburn boarding a NASA transport jet for Houston, Tex., and NASA's Johnson Space Center. Romanenko was to fly to Star City, Russia to rejoin family and the cosmonaut corps.

International Space Station crew returns to Earth safely

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

A Russian, an American and a Canadian are safely back on Earth today after a blazing atmospheric reentry that wrapped up a five-month expedition to the International Space Station.

Superhot plasma gasses enveloped their Soyuz spacecraft as Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, U.S. astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency made a fiery plunge toward a landing zone on the central steppes of Kazakhstan.

Russian search-and-rescue forces flew helicopters in racetrack ovals above the zone as the crew prepared to deploy parachutes at about an altitude of seven miles.

The crew had just come through maximum aerodynamic forces, and Romanenko reported to Russian Mission Control in Moscow.

"We feel good," he said. "Everything is normal. Proceeding with descent."

Live camera views from the helicopters showed spacecraft dropping through clear blue skies. It was morning in Kazakhstan. Six soft-landing engines fired two seconds before the spacecraft hit ground to cushion the jarring 10:31 p.m. EDT touchdown today.

The atmospheric reentry began two-hours and 20 minutes after Romanenko, Marshburn and Hadfield departed the International Space Station. The Soyuz was 7.5 miles from the outpost at the time.

A four-minute 45-second retrograde engine firing slowed the Soyuz capsule by 420 feet per second, dropping it out of orbit.

Romanenko, Marshburn and Hadfield launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in December. The three men spent 146 days in space; 144 of them on the space station.

The departure from the station came two days after Marshburn and U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy performed an impromptu spacewalk to halt a leak of toxic ammonia coolant at the outpost. The two replaced a 260-pound coolant pump with a spare.

Vinogradov took the helm of the station during a change-of-command on Sunday. Cassidy and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin remain onboard the outpost. They launched in March.

A return to full staffing is scheduled later this month with the arrival of another three-member crew: Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, U.S. astronaut Karen Nyberg and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.

The space station has been continuously staffed since its first crew opened the outpost, still under construction, in November 2000. Assembly of the U.S. segment of the station was completed in 2011 and the outpost is expected to operate through at least 2020.

Soyuz Space Capsule Lands Safely with Crew of 3

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a crew of three space travelers successfully touched down on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan Monday night, wrapping up a five-month mission to the International Space Station.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko landed in their Soyuz capsule tonight (May 13) at about 10:31 p.m. EDT (0231 May 14 GMT), though it was early Tuesday local time at the landing site.

"Boy, that was quite a ride home," Hadfield said once on the ground.

Marshburn, Hadfield and Romanenko's Earth return marks the end of the station's Expedition 35, which Hadfield commanded, and the start of Expedition 36. The landing comes just two days after Marshburn and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy performed an unprecedented emergency spacewalk to fix a serious ammonia coolant leak on the outside of the station.

The trio orbited the Earth 2,300 times and logged 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) during the veteran crew's 144 days on the station. Romanenko, Hadfield and Marshburn also witnessed the arrival and departure of several unmanned cargo ships including SpaceX's Dragon capsule in March.

"It's beautiful," Romanenko radioed right before landing. "It's morning here."

Hadfield was the first Canadian commander of the space station and he shared his unique perspective on the planet with everyone back on Earth during his time on the orbiting outpost. The astronaut beamed back videos of his meals, views and other aspects of his life in space including a music video cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" sung as a goodbye to his space-based home.
Earlier today, Hadfield sent down his last photo from on board the $100 billion laboratory.
"Spaceflight finale: To some this may look like a sunset," wrote Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) on Twitter. "But it's a new dawn."

The returning station crew left behind three other astronauts to watch over the space station in their stead, but they won't be alone for long. Cassidy, Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin will be joined by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, NASA's Karen Nyberg and Russia's Fyodor Yurchikhin when they fly up to the station at the end of the month.

NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to shuttle the space agency's astronauts to and from the space station since the end of the shuttle program in 2011. NASA officials eventually hope to use private crewed spaceships to bring people to and from the orbiting laboratory.

The International Space Station is the size of a five-bedroom house and was constructed by five different space agencies representing 15 different countries. Construction began in 1998 and since 2000 the station has been occupied continuously by crews of cosmonauts and astronauts.

Space Station's Crewmembers Safely Land in Kazakhstan

RIA Novosti

The Soyuz TMA-07M landing capsule touched the ground on Tuesday morning in a designated area in Kazakhstan safely bringing back three crewmembers from the International Space Station (ISS), the Mission Control said.

The landing of the spacecraft, which left the space station some three hours earlier, was ensured by three planes and 12 Mi-8 helicopters.

The crew members, who returned back to Earth from the ISS, are Chris Hadfield of Canada, Roman Romanenko of Russia and Thomas Marshburn of the United States.

The ISS's orbit was raised by about 2.6 kilometers (1.6 miles) to 413.8 kilometers (257 miles) on May 8 to create the best conditions for the undocking of the Soyuz TMA-07M from the orbital station.

After the departure of Soyuz TMA-07M, the ISS will temporarily host a three-member crew: Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, and NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy.

The Soyuz TMA-09M, to be launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on May 29, will take new crew members to the station: Fyodor Yurchikhin of Russia, Karen Nyberg of the United States and Luca Parmitano of Italy.

Hadfield, the 'coolest guy in outer space,' returns to Earth

Charlie Fidelman - Montreal Gazette

In the dramatic seconds before Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his fellow rocket scientists fell back to Earth, a hush fell over the Canadian Space Agency as their capsule streaked through the atmosphere Monday over the steppes of Kazakhstan.

"I'll be feeling better once I see the hatch open and the astronauts climb out," astronaut David Saint-Jacques told The Gazette as hundreds gathered at the CSA landing party to celebrate another successful space mission. "It's no small feat, entering Earth's atmosphere at eight kilometres per second. There's so much energy - the capsule will be a giant fireball."

But the Russian Soyuz capsule hurtled down to Earth and made a perfect landing.

"Touchdown . . . " said the CSA twitter account: "144 days in space, 2,336 orbits around the planet and almost 62 million miles. What a ride!"

About 300 people at the CSA landing party, including 50 in an overflow room, broke into loud cheers and sustained applause.

Saint-Jacques and fellow astronaut Robert Thirsk, who were commenting on the landing - projected on giant screens at the CSA behind them - joked that the arrival should earn bonus points because it was vertical - the preferred position - rather than on its side.

More applause as two astronauts strapped inside were pulled out one by one, covered in blue blankets and placed on the grass under a Kazakhstan sun.

Cmdr Hadfield was the last to emerge from the burnt shell of the Soyuz.

Twitter erupted: "Ground Control to @Cmdr_Hadfield. You've redefined the word EPIC. Thanks for making noise in space! Happy landings!" tweeted one.

Indeed, since the start of the descent, most of the messages were directed at Hadfield, "the coolest guy in outer space" and "the most social-media savvy astronaut ever."

Hadfield has been both commander and entertainer during his five-month mission to the International Space Station, sending videos and stunning photographs daily, often with poetic tweets.

And that was on his own time between conducting hundreds of scientific experiments and coordinating an unexpected space-walk to fix a sudden ammonia leak.

His entertaining communications with Earthlings made him an intergalactic star with thousands of followers on Twitter and hundreds more on Facebook.

His educational videos were about daily life, usually mundane in on Earth but made fascinating in space - eating, sleeping, brushing one's teeth, wringing out a wet cloth (as suggested by 10th graders in Nova Scotia) and crying.

Tears, as Hadfield demonstrated after squirting water in his eyes, don't fall in space.

And perhaps in his most memorable video, a musical farewell from orbit that NASA called a first from space, Hadfield's version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."

Hadfield's greatest legacy was putting the Canadian space program front and centre in the public eye, Saint Jacques said.

"His secret? He was so keen, so shamelessly himself!"

Hadfield, 53, an engineer and former test pilot from Milton, Ont., became the first Canadian in charge of a spacecraft.

"It's just been an extremely fulfilling and amazing experience end to end," Hadfield told Mission Control.

What's next? On his first morning back on Earth, the pop astronaut will likely be looking forward to something missing from outer space - the delicious aroma of fresh brewed coffee.

Chris Hadfield safely returns to Earth
Hadfield, along with an American and a Russian, touched down in Kazakhstan

CBC News

Astronaut Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to command the International Space Station, has safely returned to Earth after almost five months in orbit.

Hadfield, along with flight engineers American Tom Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko, returned aboard a Soyuz capsule. They landed under a large parachute in the flat steppes of Kazakhstan at 10:31 p.m. ET.

Hadfield, 53, was the third to emerge from the tight confines of the capsule, assisted by ground crew. Once seated in a reclining chair, Hadfield gave a wave and a thumbs-up. Shortly after, he was seen making a call on a satellite phone to family and friends.

NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said by telephone from the landing site that the three returning astronauts were doing very well.

It was Hadfield's first return from space in the Russian capsule — during his previous space missions, in 1995 and 2001, he travelled aboard one of the now retired space shuttles.

Earlier Monday, while he was reviewing Soyuz procedures on board the space station, Hadfield tweeted that he wanted "to thank every person at the Cdn Space Agency."

"Your work takes Canada into orbit. Be proud," he said.

The trio undocked from the space station shortly after 7 p.m. ET for their journey home. When they were about 12 kilometres from the station, the crew on the Soyuz capsule performed a successful de-orbit burn, slowing the craft down for its descent.

'Like a stone hitting water'

Bob McDonald, the host of CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks, said the capsule and its crew go through a rapid deceleration as they hurtle back to Earth.

"When they hit the air, they're like a stone hitting water. They're travelling more than 20,000 kilometres an hour.…They have to get rid of all that speed, and they do that just with friction of the air and parachutes."

When the capsule was about 10.7 kilometres high, its parachutes deployed, NASA mission control said. About one second prior to touchdown, two sets of three small engines on the bottom of the Soyuz capsule fired to slow its rate of descent and soften the landing.

After the touchdown, ground crew helped Hadfield and his colleagues out of the Soyuz and put them in chairs so they can begin to re-adapt to gravity.

"[Hadfield's] head is going to feel like a cannonball, his arms are going to feel like logs," McDonald said. "Every time he turns his head the world is going to seem to turn sideways, he's going to get dizzy."

Former Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk, who spent six months on the space station in 2009, described Hadfield's return to Earth as "a really dynamic event."

Thirsk, who watched the landing at the Canadian Space Agency near Montreal, said "the real icing on the cake is the landing."

"Sure it's bumpy, sure it's a little bit dynamic, sure you get tossed around," he told reporters. "But you can bet Chris and his two crewmates were laughing all the way down — they were having a good time."

A helicopter was to take the astronauts to Karaganda, Kazakhstan for medical checkups. Hadfield and Marshburn will then board a NASA flight back to Houston, arriving late Tuesday. Romanenko will board a Russian aircraft for a flight to Star City, Russia.

With their return to Earth, Hadfield and his colleagues will have spent 146 days in space on their mission. The Canadian Space Agency tweeted that they completed 2,336 orbits around the planet and clocked almost 62 million miles — or about 99.8 million kilometres.

"What a ride!" the CSA tweeted.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered his congratulations on Hadfield's return.

"It is with immense pride today that Canada welcomes our very own space pioneer Chris Hadfield back to earth," Harper said in a statement. "Chris has done an absolutely remarkable job as the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station."

Starman Chris Hadfield falls to Earth as Soyuz returns from ISS

The Guardian (UK)

A Soyuz space capsule carrying a three-man crew returning from a five-month mission to the International Space Station landed safely Tuesday on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

The Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, American Thomas Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko landed as planned south-east of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 8.31am local time on Tuesday. The Soyuz TMA-07M capsule slowly descended by parachute on to the steppes under clear, sunny skies. Russian search and rescue helicopters hovered over the landing site for a quick recovery effort.

Rescue teams moved quickly to help the crew in their bulky spacesuits exit through the narrow hatch of the capsule. They were then put into reclining chairs to start adjusting to Earth's gravity after 146 days in space.

The three astronauts smiled as they chatted with space agency officials and doctors who were checking their condition. Hadfield, who served as the space station's commander, gave a thumbs-up sign. They then made quick phone calls to family members and friends.

NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said by telephone from the landing site that the three returning astronauts were doing very well.

Hadfield, 53, an engineer and former test pilot from Milton, Ontario, was Canada's first professional astronaut to live aboard the space station and became the first Canadian in charge of a spacecraft. He relinquished command of the space station on Sunday.

Hadfield bowed out of orbit by posting a music video on YouTube on Sunday his own custom version of David Bowie's Space Oddity. "With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World," Hadfield said via Twitter. It is believed to be the first music video made in space.

Hadfield sang often in orbit, using a guitar already aboard the complex, and even took part in a live, Canadian coast-to-coast concert in February that included the Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson and a youth choir.

"It's just been an extremely fulfilling and amazing experience end to end," Hadfield told mission control on Monday. "From this Canadian to all the rest of them, I offer an enormous debt of thanks."

The five-minute video posted on Sunday drew a salute from Bowie's official Facebook page: "It's possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created."

A three-man US-Russian crew is staying on the space station and will be joined in two weeks by the next trio of astronauts.

Fourth ATV attached to Ariane 5 launcher

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Europe's next Automated Transfer Vehicle, set for launch in June to the International Space Station, was hoisted atop an Ariane 5 launcher in French Guiana on Friday.

The robotic spacecraft's tanks are filled with propellant, water, air and pure oxygen. Technicians will load the ATV's cargo module with fresh food and other last-minute items over next week before the Ariane 5's 17.7-foot-diameter payload fairing is added to enshroud the resupply freighter.

Christened Albert Einstein, the cargo craft is Europe's fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle. When it blasts off June 5, the freighter will be the heaviest spacecraft ever launched by Europe - weighing in at an estimated 44,610 pounds, according to the European Space Agency.

It is also the largest vehicle to visit the space station since the retirement of the space shuttle. The ATV measures 32 feet long and 15 feet wide, and its four solar panels, arranged in a distinctive X-shaped patten, stretch out 73 feet tip-to-tip when extended in space.

Each ATV can haul three times more cargo than Russian Progress resupply spacecraft, and twice as much mass as SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship.

The massive spacecraft does not return cargo. At the end of each mission, it falls back into the atmosphere and burns up, disposing of trash in a safety zone over the Pacific Ocean.

The Albert Einstein spacecraft arrived last year at the European-run spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Timed to the second in order to reach the space station, the launch is set for June 5 at 2136:59 GMT (5:36:59 p.m. EDT; 6:36:59 p.m. Kourou time). The launch time could change slightly based on further tracking of the space station's orbit, according to Alberto Novelli, ESA's ATV 4 mission manager.

Docking with the space station's Zvezda service module is scheduled for June 15.

Managers decided on May 8 to continue preparations for launch June 5, but engineers are analyzing a potential problem with a navigation aid attached to the space station's docking port.

Officials are concerned a stuck antenna on a Russian Progress resupply craft may have damaged a laser reflector mounted on the aft end of the Zvezda module. Reflectors are used in concert with the ATV's laser-guided navigation system to feed range, orientation and closing rate information to the ATV's computers, which control the spacecraft's automatic approach to the space station.

An array of 26 reflectors is positioned on the back end of the Zvezda module, beaming laser light back to sensors on the ATV, creating unique light patterns captured and recognized by the spacecraft's cameras.

The ATV carries a backup system using telegoniometers, similar to police radar guns, to emit laser light at a different wavelength up to 10,000 times per second.

Cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Roman Romanenko replaced one of the laser reflectors on a spacewalk April 19. Engineers suspected contamination may have damaged the old reflector.

Novelli said the reflector suspected of damage from the Progress docking is in a different location and has a different use than the unit replaced during the April 19 spacewalk.

Until the Progress leaves the space station, there is no way to inspect the reflector without another spacewalk.

The only firm plan now is to use a camera on the Progress cargo vessel to inspect the reflectors when it undocks June 11, according to Kelly Humphries, a spokesperson at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

While engineers develop backup plans in case there is damage to the reflector, workers in French Guiana were directed to press on with launch preparations.

Technicians loaded the first cache of cargo into the ATV's pressurized cabin earlier this year.

Officials planned to launch the Albert Einstein mission in April, but ESA decided to swap out a failed avionics component, requiring the spaceship to be disassembled and retested, setting back the launch nearly two months.

Filling of the spacecraft's tanks with fuel, water and gas began in early April.

Technicians completed the month-long procedure in phases, first with water, oxygen and air, then with 12,500 pounds of propellant to power the ATV's engines, raise the space station's orbit, and refuel the Russian segment's propulsion tanks.

The Albert Einstein mission is the fourth of five ATVs built by Astrium Space Transportation. Its cargo carriers are built by Thales Alenia Space in Italy, and the pressurized section meets the ATV service module at an Astrium plant in Bremen, Germany.

The fifth ATV mission is set for launch in April 2014. Astrium and ESA are developing a modified ATV service module for NASA's Orion crew module. The European service module and Orion will make an unmanned test flight together in 2017.

Each ATV mission costs about 450 million euros, or nearly $600 million, according to ESA.

The fourth ATV will haul more cargo than its three predecessors, thanks to upgrades in both the spacecraft and a performance improvement on its Ariane 5 ES launcher. The rocket upgrade adds about 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds, of lift capacity, Novelli said.

"ATVs are never carbon copies," Novelli said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. "Either we have anomalies we have to correct from one ATV to the next, or we have to implement an improvement. Therefore, every time we launch an ATV, it is slightly different, both on the cargo side and the ATV side."

During its four-month mission, the ATV will transfer about 1,900 pounds of propellant into the space station's fuel tanks. The rest of the ATV's fluid complement includes 1,256 pounds of water and 220 pounds of air and pure oxygen.

Another new feature for the Albert Einstein mission is the ability for workers to enter the spacecraft while it is mounted vertically on the rocket inside the final assembly building.

Officials have selected about 40 cargo bags, including fresh food, for installation into the ATV's Integrated Cargo Carrier beginning as soon as this week.

"We produced a new device that allows one person to go inside the ICC by opening the hatch," Novelli said. "Now we have a new kind of device that allows us to bring inside much heavier and bigger cargo to go into all the possible positions inside the ICC. We have improved our capability to respond to late requests for new cargo. We're doing both."

Workers will seal the ATV's hatch after the final cargo loading. The Ariane 5's payload fairing will be lowered over the spacecraft in the last week of May, and the launcher's upper stage will be filled with storable hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants.

Rollout of the 166-foot-tall rocket to the launch pad is set for June 4.

Dream Chaser spacecraft bound for California for flight testing

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

Sierra Nevada Corp. says it is shipping a completely assembled version of its Dream Chaser spacecraft from the company's headquarters in Colorado to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for testing. Ultimately, Dream Chaser will make its first autonomous free flight approach and landing.

"This will be the first full scale flight test of the Dream Chaser lifting body and will demonstrate the unique capability of our spacecraft to land on a runway," Sierra Nevada Vice President Jim Voss said in a press release Monday, May 13. "Other flight tests will follow to validate the aerodynamic data used to control the vehicle in the atmosphere when it returns from space. This is a huge step forward for the SNC and NASA teams towards providing our nation with safe and reliable transportation to the International Space Station."

"NASA Dryden has always played a vital role in the testing of American flight vehicles," said Mark Sirangelo head of SNC's Space Systems "As the Dream Chaser program takes flight, this unique opportunity to conduct our tests at the same location as the Space Shuttle begin its flight brings great pride to our team. We are one step closer to returning U.S. astronauts on a U.S. vehicle to the International Space Station and in doing so continuing the long standing and proud legacy that was the Space Shuttle program."

Sierra Nevada plans to launch its Dream Chaser to the International Space Station atop an Atlas V rocket made by United Launch Alliance in Decatur, Al.

Sierra Nevada finishes Dream Chaser assembly; to ship to Cali for test

Kristen Leigh Painter - Denver Post

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems has finished assembly and testing of its Dream Chaser spacecraft and is getting ready to ship it from its Louisville headquarters to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The Dream Chaser will undergo a series of tests at Dryden, including runway tow, ground resonance and a captive carry flight.

"We are one step closer to returning U.S. astronauts on a U.S. vehicle to the International Space Station and in doing so continuing the long standing and proud legacy that was the Space Shuttle program," Mark Sirangelo, head of SNC's Space Systems, said in a news release.

The Dream Chaser is the only lifting body vehicle that NASA is funding in its Commercial Crew Program — a new private-based approach to developing technology for the next generation of space travel. The other two finalists are using a capsule design.

"This will be the first full scale flight test of the Dream Chaser lifting body and will demonstrate the unique capability of our spacecraft to land on a runway," Jim Voss, program manager on Dream Chaser at Sierra Nevada, said in a news release. "This is a huge step forward for the SNC and NASA teams towards providing our nation with safe and reliable transportation to the International Space Station."

Dream Chaser shipped to NASA Dryden for glide tests

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

Sierra Nevada has shipped the Dream Chaser orbital spacecraft to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center near Palmdale, California, for glide tests.

The Dream Chaser departed Sierra Nevada's factory near Denver, Colorado by truck, headed for NASA's Dryden centre, which is co-located with flight test facilities at Edwards AFB.

The spacecraft will be reassembled, then undergo tests including suitability for towing, ground resonance and captive-carry tests slung beneath a helicopter, leading up to a series of autonomous glide tests.

For the glide tests, the spacecraft will be brought to various altitudes by a Sikorsky CH-53 and released to glide back to the runway on its own.

A minimum of one flight test is required to satisfy contract provisions under NASA's fourth commercial crew integrated capability (CCiCap) programme milestone. Successful completion will earn Sierra Nevada $15 million. Completing all 10 milestones will earn the company $213 million.

Dream Chaser is one of three crew-capable vehicles funded by CCiCap, which is intended to replace the Russian Soyuz as a primary mode of transportation to the International Space Station. The competitors are Boeing with the CST-100 capsule and SpaceX with the Dragon capsule.

Sierra Nevada did not respond to immediate questions.

Chris Hadfield first in-space viral music video star with 'Space Oddity'

Geoffrey Mohan - Los Angeles Times

The cover of "A Space Oddity" by Chris Hadfield, International Space Station commander, is going galactically viral Monday.

But it was a decidedly terrestrial affair. And it centered on a Silver Lake producer and a Canadian singer who once did vocals for Bowie, say those who were involved.

Hadfield, who already reset the bar for social media with his tweets from space, is a talented singer and guitarist. He sat in with many a Canadian musician, and joined singer-songwriter Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies last month for a rendition of "Is Somebody Singing," which the two co-wrote.

Written as a tribute to the International Space Station, the song is a kind of "We Are the World" that is sweeping Canada of late. He and about a million fellow Canadians, mostly schoolchildren, sang it together last week. Hadfield is the first Canadian astronaut to command a mission on the station.

"I felt pretty lucky that I got included in this," said Joe Corcoran, a Toronto-born producer and musician who lives and works in Silver Lake. "It's a pretty unique thing to say, 'We did most of the production here on Earth.' "

By "here on Earth," Corcoran means his home in Silver Lake.

A few years ago, Hadfield approached longtime friend and fellow Ontario native Emm Gryner, a singer-songwriter and one-time background vocalist for Bowie, to work up a piano arrangement of "A Space Oddity." She tapped Corcoran, who had worked with her before, and the project took flight.

Only the vocals and guitar were recorded in space, and the video, produced by Hadfield's son, Evan, and Andrew Tidby, was synced with the audio tracks – just as it's done for music videos here on Earth.

Hadfield sent a rough track of just the vocals to Corcoran, who mapped the arrangement around it, adding Gryner's piano, and some ambient sounds that Hadfield recorded in the space station. They can be heard swelling through the trippy, expansive interludes of the Bowie classic.

"The funny thing about the process for me is it was really similar to making songs here," Corcoran said. "A lot of people work from home and they just send sound files back and forth."

These files took a bit longer, but only because they were routed through NASA channels, Corcoran said. It was glitch-free, otherwise. "I believe he did it on an iPad," Corcoran said. "It's really stable. You can get a program that's pretty simple to use."

Like any vocalist, Hadfield provided Corcoran with several rough tracks from which to choose. "He's really a talented musician and quite a guitar player," Corcoran said.

Gryner agreed. "Chris is a musician and a pretty damn good one at that," Gryner wrote in her blog. "Over the years we've dueted at my shows - everything from Lightfoot to Blue Rodeo. Hell, he even stole the show one night when I mistakenly allowed him to play his own song. Never, ever again. Like, ever."

After the video took off, she heard from her fellow Ontarian: "OMG just got off the phone w @Cmdr_Hadfield who signed off saying "see ya when I get back to Earth"...and I got chills" Gryner tweeted earlier Monday.

Corcoran, who had been a bit of an idler on Twitter, has been inundated with social media traffic in the past 24 hours.

Skylab's Grave: Remains of 1st American Space Station in Australia

Ben Cooper - Space.com

NASA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launch of Skylab, America's first space station, on Tuesday, but you might be surprised where this icon of U.S. human spaceflight ended up.

After hosting rotating astronaut crews from 1973-1974, the Skylab space station eventually fell back to Earth in pieces that landed in Australia. Now, decades later, many of those pieces are on display at Australian museums, offering a fascinating glimpse into America's first stab at living in space.

From May 1973 to February 1974, Skylabsaw a trio of three-man crews take up residence aboard the outpost, before it was abandoned with the plan of possibly using the space shuttle (then under development) to reactivate the laboratory. But with no way to reboost Skylab to a higher orbit to keep it aloft, and delays in getting the shuttle off the ground , the space station re-entered the Earth's atmosphere over the southern Indian Ocean in 1979, with pieces landing inland along the south coast of Western Australia.

The mostly uncontrolled re-entry was a media sensation at the time, with newspapers offering prizes for the first debris found and to persons impacted by falling pieces. NASA's attempt at sending Skylab into the Indian Ocean, out of harm's way, proved only somewhat successful, and the spacecraft entered several minutes earlier than predicted, slightly off course.

Several large chunks and dozens of smaller pieces of Skylab survived the fiery plunge through the atmosphere and impacted the ground in the Australian outback over a large swath centered around the community of Balladonia on the Nullarbor Plain. The largest pieces included the oxygen tanks designed to keep the crew alive during their stays.

Skylab on display

Visitors can almost miss Skylab. Tucked away in a large display case in a small city museum, the remains of what fell from the sky on July 11, 1979, can be found in Esperance, a port town with less than 10,000 inhabitants located 450 miles from Perth, which is the only major city in the western half of the sparsely populated country. Esperance was directly under the path of Skylab's re-entry.

On the outside, the corrugated metal walls and roof of the museum have the appearance of four long warehouses. That's because the Esperance Municipal Museum, founded in 1976 on the site of a former railroad yard, is composed of converted train equipment sheds.

From the main road along the waterfront in Esperance, a small blue and yellow sign hung on the side of the building is all that denotes it as a "museum," and a larger hanging billboard makes note of the main attraction inside: "In 1979, a spaceship crashed over Esperance. We fined them $400 for littering." A stamp next to it reads, "PAID IN FULL."

It's true. The local government slapped NASA with a comical $400 bill for the cleanup, though the U.S. space agency never officially paid up. However, on the 30th anniversary of the crash in 2009, a radio host for Highway Radio in California and Nevada used his program to raise the funds and put a formal end to the complaint. The paycheck now hangs above the remains.

Spacecraft remains

Around the front of the museum, a large model of the space station sits at a sharp angle atop a pedestal. A plaque on the side describes the space station and what happened along this lonely coastline a few decades ago.

Inside, most of what remains of Skylab can be found in a large Plexiglas-enclosed display case. The largest oxygen tank sits on the floor adjacent to it, wrapped in plastic. Inside the case, the largest intact pieces are displayed at center. These include the space station's storage freezer for food and other items, a water tank, nitrogen spheres for the station's attitude control system thrusters and a piece of what is identified as a portion of the hatch the astronauts would have crawled through during their visits. Many smaller pieces of debris are laid out around the larger chunks, each labeled and identified where possible.

Several news articles and photographs circle the case, including photos showing the actual re-entry taken by locals and one featured in a National Geographic story from October 1979. The oversized check created by the Nevada radio station, which was used to pay the litter fine, sits proudly above it, and a proclamation from Barstow proclaiming July 13, 2009, as "Shire of Esperance/Skylab Day" lies mounted on a plaque alongside a key to the city.

Portions of the debris were sent elsewhere to be displayed, such as in the United States and Sydney. And it is possible that other pieces of debris remain in the remote outback, still waiting to be found.

If you visit Skylab

If you are visiting Western Australia, the Esperance Municipal Museum is located on James Street, between the waterfront Esplanade and Dempster Street. There is a $4 admission fee. Allow 30 minutes if your goal is to see Skylab only.

Another of the large oxygen tanks that survived Skylab's fall to Earth is on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney also a portion of a titanium sphere in its collection, but it is not believed to be on display right now.

Asteroids: on the way to Mars, or just in the way?

Jeff Foust - The Space Review (Commentary)

(Foust is editor and publisher of The Space Review. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site and the Space Politics and NewSpace Journal weblogs.)

Advocates of human missions to Mars often embody an unusual combination of impatience and persistence. Impatience because they want to go to Mars now, or at least as close to now as possible: within a decade, if not earlier, usually. Persistence because, so far, they have yet to convince the powers that be to sign on to such a fast-paced human Mars program, but continue to seek to build support for that goal. Perhaps the best-known Mars advocate, Robert Zubrin, has been trying to build interest for variants of his Mars Direct concept for two decades, but is today only incrementally closer, at best, to that goal.

Those characteristics were on display last week at the Humans to Mars, or H2M, Summit last week in Washington, DC. The three-day conference was designed to, in the words of Explore Mars, the organization putting on the event, "address the major technical, scientific, and policy-related challenges that need to be overcome to send humans to Mars by 2030." By the standards of many Mars advocates, that 2030 deadline sounds relatively sedate; however, it is no less challenging given the magnitude of those challenges discussed at the conference.

The conference also took place just a month after NASA unveiled its fiscal year 2014 budget proposal, whose centerpiece is a new asteroid initiative that has the goal of redirecting an asteroid into lunar orbit to be visited by astronauts, perhaps in 2021 (see "To catch a planetoid", The Space Review, April 22, 2013). NASA has pitched this effort as a necessary stepping-stone towards human missions to Mars, but some Mars advocates see the program as little more than an unwelcome distraction to their ultimate aim.

The case for asteroids and Mars

NASA had a major presence at the conference literally from beginning to end, starting with a keynote address by NASA administrator Charles Bolden on the morning of May 6. He argued that all of NASA's human spaceflight efforts, from the development of commercial crew transportation systems to the asteroid retrieval mission, were key steps towards the "ultimate" goal of landing humans on Mars.

"Interest in sending humans to Mars I think has never been higher," said Bolden. "A human mission to Mars is today the ultimate destination in our solar system for humanity, and a priority for NASA. Our entire exploration program is aligned to support this goal."

That includes, he said later in his speech, the asteroid retrieval mission. "It takes advantage of the hardware on our deep space technologies that will provide valuable experience in mission planning and operations that are needed for future crewed deep space missions, including our planned visit to Mars," he said.

In a panel following Bolden, three NASA associate administrators went into more detail about the potential benefits that an asteroid capture mission would have for future human Mars missions. Bill Gerstenmaier, the NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, noted in particular the operational experience a human mission to a captured asteroid would provide.

"We get a chance to experience a different risk environment," he said, without the ability to quickly return to Earth if something goes wrong. "I think that's what we're going to have to do if we go to Mars. We have to break the mentality that we can get back to the Earth, because once you begin a journey to Mars, everything had better be right, everything better be in place."

"We've been very clear that this is not a science-driven mission," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for science, arguing that the asteroid retrieval concept is instead focused primarily on technology development.

Among those technologies that would be demonstrated on the asteroid mission is solar electric propulsion; the 2014 budget request includes $40 million to start work on such systems that would be used by the robotic spacecraft that captures and redirects the asteroid into lunar orbit. That same propulsion technology could also be used for Mars missions, particularly for cargo spacecraft. "One of the highest priority items we need, and one we have been working on for years, is high-power solar electric propulsion," said Michael Gazarik, NASA associate administrator for space technology.

"If you look at what we're doing today, I think you can make a good argument—at least I'm convinced—that doing this operation, this mission, pushes us forward in the direction we need to go," he added.

Captured versus "free range" asteroids

Others at the H2M Summit, though, were less convinced about the utility of NASA's asteroid mission as a stepping-stone to human missions to Mars. While not opposed to doing deep space missions, including to near Earth objects, some saw the idea of moving an asteroid into cislunar space as one that had little relevance to Mars exploration.

"Bringing an asteroid back to Earth? What does that have to do with exploration?" asked Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin in a speech at the conference May 8. "Not very much, in my way of thinking."

Aldrin said he was not opposed to human missions to asteroids, and included them into what he calls his "Unified Space Vision": a schedule of missions that result in sending humans to Mars by the early 2030s, with precursor missions to the Earth-Moon L-1 and L-2 points, comets and near Earth asteroids, and the Martian moon of Phobos.

Aldrin said he interpreted the original asteroid mission goal—a visit to a near Earth asteroid by 2025, as laid out by President Obama in 2010—as "a good stopping point" in an extension outward of NASA's human spaceflight program. "Now it's turned into a whole planetary defense exercise at the cost of extending our exploration capabilities," he concluded.

Others argued that missions to near Earth asteroids would provide useful spaceflight experience building up to Mars missions that a mission to an asteroid in lunar orbit, just a few days away, would not. Josh Hopkins of Lockheed Martin drew parallels to the experience built up by European sailors in the 15th century, gradually expanding their reach down the African coast before sailing to India. Going to asteroids beyond the Moon, he said, would provide similar experience.

"When I'm talking about going to asteroids, I'm not talking necessarily about visiting one that's been brought back to lunar orbit," he said. "I'm talking about visiting an asteroid in its natural habitat: a 'free range' asteroid, if you will."

And some Mars advocates thought that sending humans to any asteroid, including a captured one, simply wouldn't be as interesting to the public as human missions to Mars. Artemis Westerberg, the president of Explore Mars, noted that a poll conducted for the organization earlier this year found that only 14 percent of Americans considered human missions to near Earth asteroids the "most valuable" mission NASA could perform; a human mission to Mars ranked much higher. "Why stand on a rock," she said, "when you can walk on a world?"

Other challenges

Even if NASA carries out a human asteroid mission, there are other technical challenges that the space agency will need to be address that an asteroid mission will need to address. One of the biggest is also one of the most basic: landing on the surface of the Red Planet.

"We're all very attuned to the success of the Curiosity mission," said Bobby Braun, a professor of space technology at Georgia Tech and former NASA chief technologist. However, Curiosity weighed about one metric ton, while concepts for human Mars landers weigh up to 40 metric tons. "While that was an amazing accomplishment, it's really a baby step that we need to take on the way to one day walking on Mars."

The problem, Braun and others noted during a session at the H2M Summit on May 7, is that the technologies used to land Curiosity and smaller spacecraft on Mars don't scale up to the much larger, heavier landers needed for human missions. "When we go to think about very big objects—the size of houses—parachutes don't come along for the ride," said Adam Steltzner, the lead engineer for the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) system for Curiosity. "A parachute the size of the Rose Bowl, which is what it would need to be for human exploration, is something we already know from our experience on Earth is not practically manageable."

One solution is to eschew parachutes in favor of greater use of rocket engines, including at higher speeds, something known as supersonic retropropulsion. But while rocket engines have been used for Mars landings in the past, it's been in the terminal phases of landing, at much lower speeds. "If we're going to initiate retropropulsion at Mach 2 or Mach 3 on Mars, there are some really significant issues that we have to confront," said Charles Campbell of NASA's Johnson Space Center. That includes the performance of the rocket motor and the ability to control the vehicle, particularly if, as expected, precise landing is required.

There are also the various physical and mental health issues involved with keeping humans alive, and functioning at a high level, over a mission that could last years, depending on the particular architecture selected. Among the biggest medical issues is radiation exposure, and how to handle those risks to the crews going to and from, and living on, Mars.

"We will almost certainly exceed some of those exposure standards when we start doing longer-duration exploration-class missions, particularly to Mars," said Richard Williams, NASA chief health and medical officer, referring to national standards for lifetime exposure to radiation. "We need to start figuring out how we're going to deal with this in an ethically acceptable fashion." That could involve changing those exposure limits or waiving them entirely, or "we create some formula where, administratively, risk is accepted by a higher authority."

While examining those challenges, most thought that, with enough effort, the technical and physiological issues with human Mars missions could be successfully overcome. "The question shouldn't be, 'Can we do this?'" Braun said. "We can do this. The question really should be, 'Will we do this?'"

In order to do this—landing humans on Mars—some warn against efforts like NASA's asteroid mission that they see as a distraction. "We need to keep the momentum of going to Mars," said Westerberg in her remarks at the conclusion of the conference. "Don't go off to do other things, however great and worthy. If we want to be a multi-planet species… we need to focus: pick a vehicle, pick a target, stick with it."

That message was, ironically, not that different from what Bolden said at the beginning of the conference. However, he sees potential distractions not from the asteroid mission his agency is advocating, but instead from those who want to return to the Moon before going to Mars. "If we starting straying from our path and going to an alternative plan, where we decide we're going to go back to the Moon and spend a little time developing the technologies and the systems we need, we're doomed," he warned. "We will not get to Mars in the 2030s, if ever, to be quite honest."

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - May 14, 2013 and JSC Today

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