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 16, 2013 6:08:06 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - May 16, 2013 and JSC Today

Thursday, May 16, 2013
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JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll
2.            Don't Miss Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting Tomorrow, May 17
3.            Today: When Coping Does More Harm Than Good
4.            Childhood Depression Awareness and Interventions
5.            ISS Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) User Forum
6.            Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Texas Space Center Section Social Hour
7.            NASA Nerdz Bowling -- Last Chance
8.            Reminder: The May 17 INCOSE Local Chapter Event is at the AIAA ATS
9.            Masquerade Jewelry Vendor Fair
10.          American Idol Live 2013 -- Pre-Sale Tickets Available at Starport
11.          Space Available - APPEL - Introduction to Green Engineering
________________________________________     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."
________________________________________
1.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll
Colleen Barrett thinks you should have fun at work, and so do you. That was last week's top vote getter. This week we celebrate the return of a few International Space Station crew members by asking you what they were working on while they were circling the globe. Can you spot the non-experiment in question one? Looks like I'll be going to Big Lots to get a gift card for Mama June. Thanks for helping me figure out an appropriate wedding gift. This week we've all seen the YouTube video of Chris Hadfield singing "Space Oddity" on the station. Now it's your turn. Which of these songs do you want to sing in orbit? Soundgarden? Smashmouth? Zappa?
David your Bowie on over to get this week's poll.
Joel Walker x30541 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/

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2.            Don't Miss Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting Tomorrow, May 17
Tomorrow, May 17, Professor Samuel Ting, principal investigator of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), will make a special visit to JSC. JSC Deputy Director Steve Altemus will introduce Professor Ting at an employee presentation in the Building 2 South Teague Auditorium from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Professor Ting, a Nobel Laureate, will discuss science results from the International Space Station at the open forum, concluding with a 30-minute question-and-answer session.
Event Date: Friday, May 17, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Teague Auditorium

Add to Calendar

JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

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3.            Today: When Coping Does More Harm Than Good
Have you ever found yourself wondering why you can't get back to feeling your normal self? You try the usual coping, and there are hardly any changes. Now imagine you're a teenager and you're feeling this way -- OMG! Tweens, teens and young adults often use coping techniques that only reduce symptoms while maintaining and strengthening the problem. Learn the maladaptive coping skills of this population, identify the signs of harmful coping and how to support those impacted. Please join Anika Isaac, MS, LPC, LMFT, LCDC, CEAP, NCC, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program today, May 16, in Building 17, Room 2026, at 12:30 p.m. If you can't make it in person, feel free to dial in to 888-370-7263 (pass code 8811760).
Event Date: Thursday, May 16, 2013   Event Start Time:12:30 PM   Event End Time:1:30 PM
Event Location: Building 17, Room 2026

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Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130

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4.            Childhood Depression Awareness and Interventions
In observance of the Childhood Depression Awareness Day, please join Takis Bogdanos, MA, LPC-S, CGP, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program on Thursday, May 23, in the Building 30 Auditorium at 12 noon. He will present an overview on childhood depression, signs to look for, prevalence, latest treatments and how you can support a child who is afflicted by depression.
Event Date: Thursday, May 23, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130

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5.            ISS Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) User Forum
The International Space Station EDMS team will hold the monthly EDMS General User Training Forum this Friday, May 17, at 9:30 a.m. in Building 1, Conference Room 860.
If you use EDMS to locate station documents, join us to learn about basic navigation and searching. Bring your questions, concerns and suggestions and meet the station EDMS Customer Support team. The agenda can be found here.
Event Date: Friday, May 17, 2013   Event Start Time:9:30 AM   Event End Time:10:30 AM
Event Location: JSC Bldg 1, Room 860

Add to Calendar

LaNell Cobarruvias x41306 https://iss-www.jsc.nasa.gov/nwo/apps/edms/web/UserForums.shtml

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6.            Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Texas Space Center Section Social Hour
It's that time again!
Join your fellow engineers and friends over some fine sweets (beverages), treats and SWE camaraderie.
If the weather permits, we'll be on the second floor deck. If it's looking gloomy, we'll still be on the second floor.
Hope to see you there!
Event Date: Tuesday, May 21, 2013   Event Start Time:5:30 PM   Event End Time:7:30 PM
Event Location: Chelsea Wine Bar 4106 Nasa Pkwy El Lago, TX 77586

Add to Calendar

Irene Chan x41378

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7.            NASA Nerdz Bowling -- Last Chance
I'm going to accept teams until Friday, May 17.
Currently we have 28 teams, but it would be awesome to get 12 more.
Teams of four! Doesn't have to be NASA employees. The league is 10 weeks long, starting May 30 and ending Aug. 8 (with July 4 off). It's $12 per person per week.
It's a ton of fun and a relaxing Thursday night with friends/co-workers/family and strangers! It's like Disney -- except instead of those fancy rides and people dressed up in costumes, you get to throw a ball down a lane wearing some pretty rad shoes. So just like it, basically. Hope to hear from you soon.
Russell Lala x47469

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8.            Reminder: The May 17 INCOSE Local Chapter Event is at the AIAA ATS
The next International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Texas Gulf Coast Chapter event is shared with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Annual Technical Symposium (ATS) at the Gilruth on May 17. The Systems Engineering track includes presentations on: Model-Based Systems Engineering with SysML: An Approach for Reducing Cost and Improving Quality; How to Fail at Model-Based Systems Engineering; MBSE Without a Process-Based Data Architecture is Just a Set of Random Characters; The NASA Integrated Model-Centric Architecture Team; and Technology Development Environment for Exploration.
You can register at the door. Click here for full abstracts. If you have questions, please contact Larry Spratlin at 281-461-5218 or via email.
Larry Spratlin 281-461-5218

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9.            Masquerade Jewelry Vendor Fair
Masquerade Jewelry will be out on May 23 to showcase $5 jewelry! Stop by Building 3 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and experience the frenzy of $5 jewelry and accessories. Cash, checks and credit cards accepted.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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10.          American Idol Live 2013 -- Pre-Sale Tickets Available at Starport
Starport is proud to bring you the opportunity to purchase tickets for this special engagement: American Idol Live 2013 at Reliant Arena on Sunday, July 28.
Pre-sale tickets are available in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops. Tickets are $57 for Section 204, Rows 17, 19 and 20 (regularly $66); and $37 for Section 109, Rows 6 to 8 (regularly $46). The last day to order is June 26, and the pick-up date is July 22. Limited number of seats available.
Cynthia Kibby x35352 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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11.          Space Available - APPEL - Introduction to Green Engineering
This three-day course provides an introduction to the topic of green engineering, a tool for reducing the environmental impact of products, processes and systems and making them more sustainable. From a NASA perspective, green engineering is an engineering best practice that considers environmental impacts as another design risk for mission success.
This course is designed as graduate-level seminar for engineers, scientists, project managers and others who design products, processes or systems and want to understand, quantify and reduce the associated environmental impacts.
Note: This course is not focused on green buildings and facilities, though examples from building systems will be used where relevant.
This course is available for self-registration in SATERN until Tuesday, June 4. Attendance is open to civil servants and contractors.
Dates: Tuesday to Thursday, July 16 to 18
Location: Building 12, Room 152
Zeeaa Quadri x39723 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...

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

NASA TV
9 am Central (10 EDT) – File of E36/37 Crew Departure for Baikonur from Star City
11:15 am Central (12:15 pm EDT) – E36 FE Chris Cassidy's Google+ Hangout Event

To join the Hangout, visit NASA's Google+ page: http://www.google.com/+NASA

Human Spaceflight News
Thursday, May 16, 2013

KEEP ON TRUCKIN': Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser arrives at Dryden for flight test preps

HEADLINES AND LEADS

'Dream Chaser' Spacecraft Arrives at NASA to Begin Flight Tests

Jason Paur - Wired.com

Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser spacecraft arrived at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, wrapped in plastic and looking a bit like an enormous swordfish, to be prepared for its first test flights. Dream Chaser is one of three vehicles being developed under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which will launch astronauts to the International Space Station and low-earth orbit later this decade. The lifting body vehicle will be reassembled at Dryden over the coming weeks, then begin flight testing next door on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. "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's Jim Voss said in a statement.

Dream Chaser completes major safety review

Charles Black - SEN.com (Space Exploration News)

A new spaceship called Dream Chaser, which is being designed to ferry astronauts to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station, has completed its first major safety review under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The vehicle arrived at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California on Wednesday May 15 for further tests. The spacecraft is being built by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), one of three beneficiaries under the latest round of funding from NASA's commercial crew outsourcing initiative called Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap). SNC was awarded a CCiCap agreement worth $212.5 million last year. The other beneficiaries were Boeing and SpaceX.

SpaceX To Refly Columbia Plant Growth Experiment

Irene Klotz – Space News

A plant growth experiment lost in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident is being revamped for reflight to the international space station aboard the next Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Dragon cargo ship. The experiment, called BioTube, is intended to test if a strong magnetic field can replace gravity in influencing the direction plant roots grow in space. "Right after the germination, the roots decide which way to grow. So the entire experiment is really interested in about the first 48 hours of how these roots grow when they are subjected to a magnetic field with no gravity," said Don Platt, president of Melbourne, Fla.-based Micro Aerospace Solutions, which is developing the revamped BioTube.

Russia to Send 'Stress-Relief' Software to Space Station

RIA Novosti

A flash drive with stress-relief software for crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) will be taken to space by Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin soon. The software was designed by the Russian Union of Nature Photographers, with the assistance of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament. According to Oleg Panteleyev, who along with other members of the upper chamber assisted the project, said the software is, in fact, a slideshow of thousands of photographs of nature, accompanied by relaxing music.

Senate committee to examine commercial space issues

Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel

Are "space taxis" about to become reality? Or is the commercial space world still years away from developing the technology needed to turn low-Earth orbit -- and beyond -- into the next economic hot zone? A U.S. Senate panel, led by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, is set to examine these issues and others at a hearing planned for 10 a.m. today. The success of companies such as SpaceX, which blasted a capsule to the International Space Station last year, has raised hopes, but promises of a new space economy have been around since before the first Star Trek movies came out. Among the witnesses are Wayne Hale, a former manager of the NASA shuttle program, and Patti Grace Smith, who once led the FAA's office in charge of regulating commercial space. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

Space not the final frontier for viewing movies

Seth Borenstein - Associated Press

The crew of the International Space Station is boldly going where no one has gone before — to see the new "Star Trek" film. The three astronauts were offered a sneak peak of "Star Trek Into Darkness" days before it opens Thursday on Earth, seeing it not in 3-D, but Zero-G. NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said the movie was beamed up to the outpost Monday and the two Russians and American on board had a day off Tuesday. That gave them a chance to view it on their laptops. It's unclear if they watched it. U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy is taking part Thursday in a Google+ hangout that's bringing together two Earth-bound astronauts, film stars Chris Pine, Alice Eve and John Cho, and its director and screenwriter. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

'Star Trek' fans in space get special viewing of new film

Dana Guthrie - Houston Chronicle

Astronauts at the International Space Station are getting the star treatment Wednesday, as NASA is beaming up a special viewing of the new film "Star Trek Into Darkness" directly to the ISS crew, Space.com reports. Earthbound fans won't see the movie until it opens Thursday, but the astronauts will get to weigh in on the film during a Google+ Hangout with the film's director, J.J. Abrams, screenwriter Damon Lindelof and stars Chris Pine, Alice Eve and John Cho. ISS crew member Chris Cassidy, who is currently living aboard the space station, and astronauts Michael Fincke and Kjell Lindgren in Houston will participate in the live online discussion of how work aboard the space station is turning science fiction into reality. The hangout starts at 11:45 a.m. and will also be shown live on NASA television and www.nasa.gov, the space agency said in a press release. To join the hangout, and for updates and opportunities to participate in upcoming hangouts, visit the NASA's Google+ page at: http://www.google.com/+NASA

Q&A: Buzz Aldrin Discusses His Vision for Mars
Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin wants humans to visit Mars—and stay there

Bill Douthitt - National Geographic News

After his July 1969 history-making role on Apollo 11—the first human expedition to the moon—Buzz Aldrin has continued to seek out new frontiers. Aldrin has written seven books, produced computer games, and even recorded a rap song with Snoop Dogg. A tireless advocate for human space travel, the former astronaut developed the Aldrin Cycler, a system that allows spacecraft to orbit continually between Mars and Earth, providing regular transportation between the two planets. In his newest book, "Mission to Mars," Aldrin lays out a comprehensive plan that would lead to permanent human settlements on Mars in the next 25 years. National Geographic magazine's Bill Douthitt spoke with Aldrin about the future of space travel…

Space Tourism's Black Carbon Problem

Andrew Rosenblum - Popular Science

Virgin Galactic proudly touts the fact that each of the passengers who will fly into sub-orbital space on its SpaceShip2 will emit less carbon dioxide than a typical air passenger on a flight from New York to London. But some scientists say carbon dioxide emissions are irrelevant to measuring the greenhouse gas footprint of the nascent space tourism industry. The big threat from the scaling-up of space travel, they say, comes from something called black carbon—a type of particulate matter that, when hurled into the stratosphere, builds up for years, absorbing visible light from the sun. According to one study, black carbon emitted into the stratosphere by rockets would absorb 100,000 times as much energy as the CO2 emitted by those rockets. "There's one issue and it's simple: you don't want to put black carbon in the stratosphere. Period," says Darin Toohey, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Industry insiders say otherwise. Who's right?

Why NASA doesn't have a Chris Hadfield

Ed O'Keefe - Washington Post (Opinion)

(O'Keefe covers Congress and politics for the Washington Post)

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield produced a stunning music video tribute to David Bowie's "Space Oddity" aboard the International Space Station before returning to Earth this week. It's a genuine Internet hit with an awesome backdrop to boot. Hadfield, 53, combined his social media popularity, the skills of his Web-savvy son, Evan, and the full support of the Canadian Space Agency to shoot and produce a video seen in recent days by more than 7 million people. I first watched the video Monday morning and a bad feeling set in almost immediately: The modern-day ways of Washington — its intense focus on budget cutting and no tolerance for the misbehavior or poor management of career civil servants — mean that a NASA astronaut wouldn't dare try something like this.

Apollo 13 Astronaut Jim Lovell Joins Private Moon Flight Company

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

Legendary Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell has signed on with a commercial lunar exploration firm to help make private trips to the moon a reality, the company Golden Spike announced Wednesday. Golden Spike aims to launch private citizens on round-trip visits to the moon starting in 2020 for a fee of $1.5 billion per flight. The firm, named after the final spike that joined the rails of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, is pitching these lunar voyages to corporations, countries without their own space programs, and even wealthy individuals.

Sally Ride's educational legacy lives on 30 years after spaceflight

Mary Beth Marklein - USA Today

Since her historic mission, 55 women have flown in space with NASA. And since 2001, Sally Ride Science has helped students step into careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Laurie Leshin had just graduated from high school in June 1983 when astronaut Sally Ride blasted into the sky and the history books as the first American woman to fly in space. "It was a big deal to see that barrier broken," says Leshin, a former NASA executive and a geochemist who studies water in the solar system. "She was a hero of mine and (her spaceflight) was one of the things that drew me to a career in space."

'How About Now?' The Faith in Gordon Cooper

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

Fifty years ago, on 15 May 1963, America launched astronaut Gordon Cooper on its longest manned space mission to date. In doing so, NASA began to take strides toward meeting President John Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. The humiliation of Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight had been met by two suborbital missions and three Earth-circling voyages. When Wally Schirra ended his nine-hour, six-orbit flight in October 1962, it was considered so successful that some voices within NASA advised ending Project Mercury immediately and pressing on with the two-man Project Gemini. Others countered that one of Mercury's goals was to fly an astronaut for more than a day and long-duration experience was highly desirable in the run-up to Gemini. By the end of the year, the space agency was thus hard at work preparing to close out Mercury in style with a "Manned One-Day Mission" (MODM). To history, it would be known as "Faith 7," and around the colourful man who flew it would grow a legend which endures to this very day.
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COMPLETE STORIES

'Dream Chaser' Spacecraft Arrives at NASA to Begin Flight Tests

Jason Paur - Wired.com

Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser spacecraft arrived at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, wrapped in plastic and looking a bit like an enormous swordfish, to be prepared for its first test flights.

Dream Chaser is one of three vehicles being developed under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which will launch astronauts to the International Space Station and low-earth orbit later this decade. The lifting body vehicle will be reassembled at Dryden over the coming weeks, then begin flight testing next door on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

"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's Jim Voss said in a statement. "Other flight tests will follow to validate the aerodynamic data used to control the vehicle in the atmosphere when it returns from space."

The Dream Chaser is the only orbital space vehicle currently in testing that will land like a glider after reentry from space. It is based on lifting body vehicles dating to the 1960s, including NASA's M2-F2 made famous in the opening sequence of the Six Million Dollar Man. It is a more direct descendent of NASA's HL-20, a newer lifting body design developed in the 1990s.

Since the retirement of the space shuttle, the United States has relied upon Russia's Soyuz vehicles to get people into orbit. NASA just extended its contract with the Russians, paying an additional $424 million to provide transportation to the International Space Station for six U.S. astronauts through 2017.

Sierra Nevada, Boeing and SpaceX are developing vehicles to fly astronauts to low earth orbit for NASA. Boeing and SpaceX are developing capsule spacecraft that will return to earth under parachute, while the Dream Chaser will return much like the space shuttle orbiters.

After several years of development, wind tunnel testing and refinement, the Dream Chaser team completed its first major safety review with NASA last month. On Sunday, the vehicle was loaded onto a truck at the company's facility in Colorado and driven west. The team will spend several weeks reassembling the spacecraft and begin a series of ground-based tests, including a tow down the runway to evaluate the landing gear and brakes and a resonance test.

Eventually the Dream Chaser will begin flight tests, starting with a "captive carry" flight suspended beneath a helicopter and autonomous free flights to test the approach and landing system. The flight test vehicle will be dropped from an Erickson Air-crane.

While the Dream Chaser is being assembled in the Mojave desert, NASA astronauts in Hampton, Virginia will begin flying simulations of its approach and landing pattern to further evaluate the vehicle's handling. Using the simulator will allow the team at NASA's Langley Research Center to "fly" the Dream Chaser in a wide range of atmospheric conditions, as well as several different flight scenarios.

Dream Chaser completes major safety review

Charles Black - SEN.com (Space Exploration News)

A new spaceship called Dream Chaser, which is being designed to ferry astronauts to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station, has completed its first major safety review under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

The vehicle arrived at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California on Wednesday May 15 for further tests.

The spacecraft is being built by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), one of three beneficiaries under the latest round of funding from NASA's commercial crew outsourcing initiative called Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap). SNC was awarded a CCiCap agreement worth $212.5 million last year. The other beneficiaries were Boeing and SpaceX.

The safety review is one of the performance related milestones under SNC's CCiCap agreement. The review covered the safety and reliability plans for the major components of the Dream Chaser space system, including the vehicle itself, its launcher and flight and ground systems.

Ed Mango, who heads up NASA's commercial crew program, said: "Safety review milestones are critical to ensuring safety and reliability techniques and methods are incorporated into space systems design. NASA's participation in these reviews provides our partners with critical design experiences from past human spaceflight activities."

The Dream Chaser is being built to carry up to 7 astronauts. It will launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and land on a runway on its return from space, like the Space Shuttle. The concept is different from the other commercial crew capsules being developed by SpaceX and Boeing which are designed to splash down in the ocean.

"Dream Chaser is making substantial progress toward flight with the help of our NASA team" observed Mark Sirangelo, head of SNC's Space Systems. "As we begin our flight test program we have a better and stronger program due to our partnership with NASA."

A Dream Chaser vehicle has been transported from SNC in Louisville, Colorado to NASA's Dryden Flight Resarch Center at Edwards Air Force base in California for further testing, including its first autonomous free flight Approach and Landing Test (ALT) which is scheduled for later this year.

The Dream Chaser, which is the only shuttle-like vehicle being supported by NASA under its commercial crew program, will aim to follow in the footsteps of the Space Shuttle whose prototype named Enterprise also conducted an ALT at NASA Dryden in 1977.

SNC's Jim Voss commented: "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. 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."

Dream Chaser had its first captive-carry flight - suspended from a helicopter rather than flying on its own power - last year. It is expected that commercial flights will begin by 2016 or 2017.

NASA's commercial spaceflight strategy is to outsource the transportation of astronauts to and from the International Space Station to US businesses SNC, Boeing and SpaceX, whilst developing its own spacecraft for deep space exploration. NASA is building the Orion space vehicle to take humans to an asteroid, the Moon and Mars, to be launched by its next big rocket, the Space Launch System.

SpaceX To Refly Columbia Plant Growth Experiment

Irene Klotz – Space News

A plant growth experiment lost in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident is being revamped for reflight to the international space station aboard the next Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Dragon cargo ship.

The experiment, called BioTube, is intended to test if a strong magnetic field can replace gravity in influencing the direction plant roots grow in space.

"Right after the germination, the roots decide which way to grow. So the entire experiment is really interested in about the first 48 hours of how these roots grow when they are subjected to a magnetic field with no gravity," said Don Platt, president of Melbourne, Fla.-based Micro Aerospace Solutions, which is developing the revamped BioTube.

The experiment is a follow-on to one that flew on STS-107, the last flight of Columbia, which was destroyed during re-entry following a 16-day research mission. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.

"The experiment worked quite well but obviously the payload was lost," said Platt, who was previously employed by experiment developer Bionetics Corp. here.

Platt's company is now preparing the backup unit, which did not fly on Columbia, to be launched on SpaceX's third space station cargo run. NASA's launch schedule shows the mission is slated for liftoff in November.

"They've changed the seeds because of genetic mapping and what they have maps of now, so we've redone the experiment totally to fly to the international space station," Platt said.

BioTube, which is about the size of microwave oven, originally flew inside a Spacehab module in the shuttle's cargo bay. It was part of an overall research initiative to understand how gravity-sensing systems in plants and small organisms operate.

Russia to Send 'Stress-Relief' Software to Space Station

RIA Novosti

A flash drive with stress-relief software for crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) will be taken to space by Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin soon.

The software was designed by the Russian Union of Nature Photographers, with the assistance of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.

According to Oleg Panteleyev, who along with other members of the upper chamber assisted the project, said the software is, in fact, a slideshow of thousands of photographs of nature, accompanied by relaxing music.

"Most importantly, photographs will be synchronized with the current position of the ISS. If the space station flies, for example, above Canada, the software will display Canadian landscapes, as well as birds and animals native to the area. When the ISS is above the Far East, cosmonauts' personal monitors will show images of Far Eastern flora and fauna," Panteleyev told RIA Novosti on Thursday.

"We are convinced that such program will be very useful for astronauts, who are unable to see terrestrial landscapes for months, and of course, miss it," he added.

Yurchikhin, along with Karen Nyberg of the United States and Luca Parmitano of Italy, will fly to space onboard the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft on May 28.

'Star Trek' fans in space get special viewing of new film

Dana Guthrie - Houston Chronicle

Astronauts at the International Space Station are getting the star treatment Wednesday, as NASA is beaming up a special viewing of the new film "Star Trek Into Darkness" directly to the ISS crew, Space.com reports.

Earthbound fans won't see the movie until it opens Thursday, but the astronauts will get to weigh in on the film during a Google+ Hangout with the film's director, J.J. Abrams, screenwriter Damon Lindelof and stars Chris Pine, Alice Eve and John Cho.

ISS crew member Chris Cassidy, who is currently living aboard the space station, and astronauts Michael Fincke and Kjell Lindgren in Houston will participate in the live online discussion of how work aboard the space station is turning science fiction into reality.

The hangout starts at 11:45 a.m. and will also be shown live on NASA television and www.nasa.gov, the space agency said in a press release.

The participants will ask questions of each other and take questions from the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City (home of the space shuttle Enterprise), the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and social media followers.

Cassidy will provide insights about life aboard the station. Crews conduct a variety of science experiments and perform station maintenance during their six-month stay on the outpost. Their life in weightlessness requires different approaches to everyday activities such as eating, sleeping and exercising.

NASA's social media followers may submit video questions prior to the hangout. Several video questions will be selected and answered by astronauts and the movie cast. Unique and original questions are more likely to be selected.

The deadline to submit video questions is 3 a.m. Wednesday, May 15. To be considered, video clips must be no longer than 30 seconds and uploaded to YouTube and tagged with #askNASA. Submitters should introduce themselves and mention their location before asking their question.

NASA also will take questions submitted leading up to and during the event by fans on YouTube, Google+, Twitter and Facebook using #askNASA. On the morning of the event, NASA will open a thread on its Facebook page where questions may be posted.

To join the hangout, and for updates and opportunities to participate in upcoming hangouts, visit the NASA's Google+ page at: http://www.google.com/+NASA

Q&A: Buzz Aldrin Discusses His Vision for Mars
Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin wants humans to visit Mars—and stay there

Bill Douthitt - National Geographic News

After his July 1969 history-making role on Apollo 11—the first human expedition to the moon—Buzz Aldrin has continued to seek out new frontiers.

Aldrin has written seven books, produced computer games, and even recorded a rap song with Snoop Dogg. A tireless advocate for human space travel, the former astronaut developed the Aldrin Cycler, a system that allows spacecraft to orbit continually between Mars and Earth, providing regular transportation between the two planets.

In his newest book, "Mission to Mars," Aldrin lays out a comprehensive plan that would lead to permanent human settlements on Mars in the next 25 years. National Geographic magazine's Bill Douthitt spoke with Aldrin about the future of space travel.

You've done everything from walking on the moon to Dancing With the Stars and quite a few things in between. What interests you now?

It's the challenge to try and communicate thoughts that I believe have merit to them, that could make things easier for the nation to execute a good pathway to space in the future. Plus a little scuba diving.

There doesn't seem to be a strong public interest in space. Why is that?

Nobody is flying right now. If another shuttle launch took place, people probably wouldn't get all that fascinated with it. But if you were on the shuttle you would. Or if you were right there hearing the noise and the shock waves and sonic booms and seeing the flash of the engines lighting up. But not everyone can witness that. And we're not doing it anymore.

Your new book talks about the private sector in space-companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. Will they succeed?

We miscalculated when a replacement for the shuttle will be ready. I don't think we thought that we'd be sitting around with nothing in sight except maybe the commercial launchers. SpaceX might be able to take people up to the space station in a couple of years, maybe.

How can we develop the kind of long-term commitment needed for permanence in space?

There should be an international lunar base. That is certainly doable. Leading activities at the moon puts us in a leadership role to bring other nations together. Not so that we can show them how much better we are—not at all! We can help other nations do things that they want to do.

The way I see it, what is going to come out of the moon activities is a respect for U.S. leadership. The more joint activity at the moon we have, I think the more peaceful relations we'll have. Maybe that'll filter down through the atmosphere and motivate people to be less aggressive. Human rights problems will always exist for years to come, but maybe they'll lessen somewhat.

Robots are exploring Mars now. Why do we need humans?

What we're doing on Mars is remarkable for the distance involved, in keeping track of what we tell [rovers like Curiosity] to do, in monitoring what it does. We've demonstrated we know how to do that quite well on Mars with the big disadvantage of slow action. Instead of five years to do what a couple of rovers did, it could be done in one week if we had intelligence there to make corrections.

You've talked about fostering a spirit of cooperation among nations on the moon. Is that cooperation the reason to go to Mars?

No, it's for the advancement of the human race. We went to the moon as a prestige challenge to ourselves and to the Soviet Union. It didn't result in anything permanent. We got information out of it. We got experience in exploration. But we didn't develop what we put there. There certainly wasn't any commercial benefit.

A leader on Earth who sets into motion the permanent occupancy of another planet—that is a major advance in human civilization. We should encourage him or her to do that. We ought to remind him or her how memorable his or her legacy will be, thousands of years from now.

Your book explores the idea that human trips to Mars would be permanent trips. People wouldn't just go and come back—they'd stay.

My concern was, if we went there and came back—a typical mission—we will have demonstrated the ability to go to Mars to the Congress. Period. They'll then say, "Let's cancel the program and spend the money elsewhere." And the whole effort would be fruitless in terms of an investment.

Two unchangeable things will limit the buildup of people on Mars. You can only send people there every 26 months [when the positions of Mars and Earth permit a shorter, more efficient trip]. And there's a limit to the size of the spacecraft that we can get there. I don't think we're going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft.

We'll send one crew to Mars, but then we'll keep them there, and send another crew. Otherwise, we're not building up to a critical mass to get the job done. You can't put the burden on just a few people. I think we have the ability [on Mars] to raise a civilization that will be very clear thinking and most logical.

So if you have humans staying on Mars, you're not going to abandon them?

That's a piece of insurance. If you build and put money into a cycling system [spacecraft on continuous orbits between Mars and Earth], why throw it away? Use it! It's a pathway to sustainability.

I read that Apollo 11 almost wasn't the first mission to land on the moon.

You must have read something that leaked out recently. There was a weight problem with the LM-5 [the lunar lander for Apollo 11], and it was originally not scheduled to be a lander. So the first landing would not have been in July 1969 but in October. That meant probably a different crew. I think it's fascinating. It certainly would have changed my life.

Space Tourism's Black Carbon Problem
The industry and the FAA say climate effects of flying civilians into space will be negligible, but some scientists fret about the accumulation of black carbon in the stratosphere

Andrew Rosenblum - Popular Science

Virgin Galactic proudly touts the fact that each of the passengers who will fly into sub-orbital space on its SpaceShip2 will emit less carbon dioxide than a typical air passenger on a flight from New York to London. But some scientists say carbon dioxide emissions are irrelevant to measuring the greenhouse gas footprint of the nascent space tourism industry. The big threat from the scaling-up of space travel, they say, comes from something called black carbon—a type of particulate matter that, when hurled into the stratosphere, builds up for years, absorbing visible light from the sun. According to one study, black carbon emitted into the stratosphere by rockets would absorb 100,000 times as much energy as the CO2 emitted by those rockets.

"There's one issue and it's simple: you don't want to put black carbon in the stratosphere. Period," says Darin Toohey, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Industry insiders say otherwise. Who's right?

***
Black carbon should be familiar to anyone who's ever idled behind a diesel truck or sat by a wood stove: it's what makes soot black. Formed from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuel, biofuel, and biomass, it is emitted directly into the atmosphere and absorbs about a million times more energy than CO2. According to one study, it is Earth's second largest contributor to climate change, after carbon dioxide. The reason black carbon doesn't wreak more havoc on the environment is that it has a short lifetime in the lower atmosphere—precipitation washes away black carbon emissions from planes and other sources within a matter of weeks.

Not so in the stratosphere, which begins as low as 5 miles above the Earth and rises up to about 31 miles. Rockets need to scream through the stratosphere to the point 62 miles above the sea level, where space is conventionally said to begin. They are also the only direct source of human-created compounds above 12 miles. Because there is no rain or other atmospheric factors to wash out the black carbon in the stratosphere, black carbon would linger for 5 to 10 years or more. Moreover, rockets produce over 1,000 times more black carbon per unit of fuel than standard aircraft.

So in 2010, Toohey and Martin Ross, the head of the Center for Launch Emissions Analysis and Research at Aerospace Corporation, and Michael Mills of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, crunched the numbers to estimate the black carbon effects of a hypothetical 1,000 flight-per-year industry. They measured the black carbon's "radiative forcing" – a metric for how much extra energy the Earth and its atmosphere absorb from a given manmade or natural phenomena. The radiative forcing from the black carbon that rockets placed in the stratosphere was up to 100,000 times greater than that of the CO2 released by the rockets. (In contrast, the radiative forcing of the black carbon placed for just a few weeks into the atmosphere by jets is less than 1/10 of that of its carbon dioxide).

How this extra heat in the stratosphere would effect climate is less clear, but it would definitely cause some climate change – both warming and cooling. The computer model showed a complicated pattern in which a ring-shaped cloud of black carbon would form at the latitude of the launch site, leading to shade that would cause cooling there, with corresponding warming in other places. Polar regions warmed or cooled by up to 5 degrees, depending on the season. The heating also caused ozone to radiate throughout the stratosphere, causing lower levels in some places and increases in others. The point of the study was not to say a warmer stratosphere is disastrous, but rather that 1,000 launches per year will have a significant climate change effect – and that the industry should have to study and explain the implications. After all, proposals to doctor the climate by deliberately injecting particles into the atmosphere have generated international outcry. Without meaning to, and without fully understanding the effects, Ross says, a growing space tourism industry will function like an experiment in engineering the climate. "At some point, the particles put into the stratosphere by rockets begin to look at little bit like geo-engineering," says Ross.

***
Here's where space tourism comes into play: The number of space launches annually around the world numbers around 70 today, but that figure could rise drastically, as private companies jockey to turn space tourism into routine adventure travel. The aerospace research firm Futron forecasts that by 2021 the space tourism market will consist of 13,000 potential customers, with possible revenues of roughly $650 million per year. Assuming the business is successful, commercial space travel might very well reach 1,000 launches per year some time in the next decade – XCOR alone plans to ramp up to four launches per day, as part of its "Southwest airlines" model. That creates 1,000 opportunities to shoot black carbon directly into the stratosphere. The amount of black carbon emitted during combustion on Earth, or in the trophosphere, where airlines fly, tends to be low, because of the relatively rich supply of oxygen. Once you get into the stratosphere, where low pressure leads to less oxygen, black carbon can amount to as much as 5% of the products of combustion.

The Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.), the organization responsible for assessing environmental impacts and deciding whether to grant licenses to launch vehicles into space, says the effects of black carbon in the stratosphere are unclear. "Although black carbon is known to be a short-term climate forcer, research on the potential climate change impacts of black carbon from rockets is in a very early stage, and any projections of impacts are speculative," writes George Nield, the F.A.A.'s associate administrator for commercial space transportation, in an email.

The space-tourism industry has downplayed black carbon's potential harm. Virgin Galactic declined repeated inquiries to comment. Andrew Nelson, the chief operating officer of XCOR Aerospace, which is currently selling $95,000 tickets for sub-orbital flights, says that the blend of kerosene and liquid oxygen in his XR-5K18 rocket engine powering its Lynx suborbital spaceplane will emit much less in the way of "aromatic" hydrocarbons than traditional kerosene-based rocket fuel. And he says the XR-5K18 will burn much more cleanly than the solid rocket boosters used in the Space Shuttle or "hybrid" rocket engines, which burn both solid and liquid propellant.

"XCOR will have di minimus impact on our environment," Nelson says. "Our fuels are almost completely free of particulate matter. [They have ] 20-40 times less aromatics than traditional rocket fuels, and hundreds, if not thousands of times less particulate matter than hybrids or solids. So the concern about carbon or other particles is moot for us."

Toohey still wants to see peer-reviewed studies of the actual interaction of XCOR and other engines with the stratosphere. "I have not seen any publications that confirm (or refute) the claims of particle-free emissions from combustion of any fuel in the upper atmosphere," Toohey says. "So I think it is fair to say that we need studies to benchmark the emissions of all rocket types in order to be able to assess their impacts."

Astronaut Chris Hadfield's space station music video is a first

Joel Achenbach - Washington Post

Houston, we have a superstar. He's Chris Hadfield, who crawled out of a space capsule on the plains of Kazakhstan early Tuesday (late Monday Eastern time), dealing with gravity for the first time in five months and sudden global celebrity from singing a gone-viral made-in-space music video.

By late Tuesday, more than 7 million people had viewed the astronaut's cover of David Bowie's ethereal 1969 song "Space Oddity" ("Ground control to Major Tom .?.?.?"), uploaded to YouTube just two days earlier.

In the meantime, Hadfield fell to Earth. He and two fellow astronauts squeezed themselves into a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, undocked from the international space station Monday night and returned to terra firma 255 miles below, their capsule landing as planned in Kazakhstan.

Video footage showed Hadfield, a Canadian, looking rather pancaked by gravity, smiling as he talked on a cellphone to his wife, Helene, who was in Houston at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"Safely home — back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity. Wonderful to smell and feel Spring," he tweeted (he's @Cmdr_Hadfield on Twitter).

Space travel in the 21st century is still challenging, but it is rarely celebrated, with astronauts rocketing into orbit with hardly a second look from the general public. They circle Earth 16 times a day in total anonymity. With NASA having retired the space shuttle, many Americans may have forgotten that there are still astronauts in space 24 hours a day and that the space station has now been continuously occupied for more than a dozen years.

But now comes Hadfield, 53, with his folk-singer voice and easygoing Canadian manner, a kid from the cornfields of southern Ontario who has turned into one of the most popular astronauts in decades. He has leveraged social media and partnered with his Web-savvy son, Evan, to disperse his photographs, videos and commentary from space.

Even before his slight revision of Bowie's classic, Hadfield created a viral YouTube video when he demonstrated what it's like to wring out a washcloth in zero gravity, an experiment designed by a couple of 10th-graders ("It's becoming a tube of water!").

He's shown why you can't cry in space ("It just forms a ball on my eye"). He's explained why it's hard to smell anything in space, and how "eating in space is like eating with a head cold." From space, he's chatted with countless students as well as William Shatner (born in Montreal). And, yet, he's not a self-promoter, his son said Tuesday.

"It's about getting people to ask questions again," Evan Hadfield said.

Cmdr. Hadfield had been to space twice before. The first trip was a mission on the space shuttle Atlantis to Russia's Mir space station in 1995. In 2001 he rode the shuttle Endeavour to the partially built international space station, performing two spacewalks and helping to install a robotic arm made in Canada.

This third trip was a long-duration spaceflight, 146 days total, and he took full advantage of the social-media platforms that have arisen since his second trip to orbit. The Canadian Space Agency could brag mid-morning Tuesday on its Web site that its ace astronaut had 885,000 Twitter followers. By late afternoon the number had hit 929,000.

A fellow Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hansen, who accompanied Hadfield's family in Houston during the landing in Kazakhstan, said this kind of outreach is new ground for the space program.

"People are paying attention — perhaps sections of society that haven't paid attention before," Hansen said. Of Hadfield's musical performances and public outreach efforts, Hansen said, "he can do all these other things because he's really good at the important aspect of the astronaut job, which is taking care of the space station and doing the science."

It had been a busy weekend for everyone in space, with an unplanned spacewalk, supervised in part by Hadfield from the interior of the space station. Two astronauts switched out a coolant pump in an attempt to stop an ammonia leak that had gotten worse and had forced the shutdown of a power system on the orbital laboratory. NASA is still evaluating whether the repair job did the trick.

The unusual, rushed spacewalk didn't grab public attention like the music video.

"With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World," tweeted Hadfield, who during his time in space helped out on 130 science experiments.

In the music video, Hadfield sings and plays an acoustic guitar while floating in the space station. His son Evan pitched the idea last fall, and he and others on the ground helped mix the music and craft the video. Evan Hadfield said Bowie himself blessed the project. Bowie retweeted Hadfield's tweet announcing the video and posted a link to it from his official Facebook page, where the Hadfield version (which alters some of the original lines) is referred to as "possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created."

One of the collaborators on the new music video was Emm Gryner, a former backup singer for Bowie. On her blog, she wrote: "I was mostly blown away by how pure and earnest Chris' singing is on this track. Like weightlessness and his voice agreed to agree."

This was not Hadfield's first high-profile musical performance in orbit. In February, he and the Canadian group Barenaked Ladies performed with a youth choir on the first "space-Earth" premiere of a song, "I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)," with Hadfield floating in the cupola of the station, which has the best views in the house.

Hadfield was winging his way back to Houston on Tuesday and will give his first news conference Thursday morning. In past interviews he's made clear that he thinks human beings have a destiny in space.

"We will go to the moon, and we will go to Mars," he said in a BBC News interview. "But we're not going to do it tomorrow, and we're not going to do it because it titillates the nerve endings. We're going to do it because it's a natural human progression."

Why NASA doesn't have a Chris Hadfield

Ed O'Keefe - Washington Post (Opinion)

(O'Keefe covers Congress and politics for the Washington Post)

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield produced a stunning music video tribute to David Bowie's "Space Oddity" aboard the International Space Station before returning to Earth this week. It's a genuine Internet hit with an awesome backdrop to boot.

Hadfield, 53, combined his social media popularity, the skills of his Web-savvy son, Evan, and the full support of the Canadian Space Agency to shoot and produce a video seen in recent days by more than 7 million people.

I first watched the video Monday morning and a bad feeling set in almost immediately: The modern-day ways of Washington — its intense focus on budget cutting and no tolerance for the misbehavior or poor management of career civil servants — mean that a NASA astronaut wouldn't dare try something like this.

Let's game out how things might play out if an American astronaut had shot a music video in space.

The astronaut, with a knack for guitar playing, is preparing to leave the International Space Station and transfer command to another passenger. Inspired by his trip, he reaches out to agency officials back on Earth and pitches them the idea of shooting a musical tribute (that's what Hadfield did). Interested, his colleagues back on terra firma help him produce the film. NASA releases it shortly before his departure, it is seen by millions of viewers and initially earns the space agency plaudits for creativity and for reminding people of America's place in space.

But then a lawmaker — of either party — starts raising questions: Why did this astronaut waste his time shooting amateur video in space? Is this why we send Americans to the ISS? Shouldn't he be focused on more serious scientific experiments? What types of experiments is he conducting anyway — and do they really serve a benefit worthy of taxpayer expense?

Reporters eager to keep the story going pick up the lawmaker's concerns and start asking questions of NASA officials. Over the course of a few days, the story balloons into a bigger controversy and the agency eventually apologizes.

But it doesn't stop there: The lawmaker, enjoying all the attention he's earned for raising questions, calls for hearings or an inspector general investigation. Hearings are held, a report is issued and NASA suffers from an embarrassing distraction, all because an astronaut wanted to pay tribute to his time in space and hopefully inspire others to pursue his line of work.

Don't forget, NASA wakes up the astronauts most mornings by playing them a favorite song and a group of NASA employees produced a spoof of the song, "I'm Sexy and I Know It" last summer called, "We're NASA and We Know It." Several U.S. military units videotaped themselves lip-synching to Lady Gaga in amateur music videos shot on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan — while a soldier earned plaudits for posting video shot from his helmet cam that recorded him coming under fire.

But most government employees wouldn't dare try such a thing. On my former beat covering federal agencies, I heard often from career government employees distressed that brash partisanship in Congress and the government's mounting debt were stifling creativity, ambition and any hope of government lawyers, engineers, researchers — and yes, astronauts — remaining ahead of the curve or on the cutting edge. They also lamented that attempts to have a little fun promoting their work could be seen as going too far by bosses nervous of angry congressional reaction.

Could an American astronaut do what Hadfield did? Surely. But do you think they'd dare try? Considering how things are in Washington right now, probably not.

Apollo 13 Astronaut Jim Lovell Joins Private Moon Flight Company

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

Legendary Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell has signed on with a commercial lunar exploration firm to help make private trips to the moon a reality, the company Golden Spike announced Wednesday.

Golden Spike aims to launch private citizens on round-trip visits to the moon starting in 2020 for a fee of $1.5 billion per flight. The firm, named after the final spike that joined the rails of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, is pitching these lunar voyages to corporations, countries without their own space programs, and even wealthy individuals.

Lovell, who commanded the near-disastrous Apollo 13 mission in 1970, has signed on as a member of Golden Spike's board of advisors, and has already consulted on possible designs for Golden Spike's crew module and other issues.

"Finally there's a company, Golden Spike, that plans a purely commercial approach to returning to the moon" Lovell said in a statement. "I am pleased to be part of this enthusiastic group of engineers and scientists working together with the aerospace industry to design and build cost effective lunar flights."

Moon hero

During Apollo 13, Jim Lovell and his crewmates struggled to return home to Earth safely after an exposed wire in their spacecraft's oxygen tank sparked a fire that damaged the vehicle, threatening their lives and foiling their plan of landing on the moon. Ultimately, after a tense few days, the three landed safe and sound.

Before that mission, Lovell flew on the first mission to orbit the moon, Apollo 8, as well as two Gemini missions in the 1960s.

"Having flown to the moon twice, and trained for landing, and been a part of probably the most harrowing space mission anyone's ever come back from alive, Jim's a tremendous source of experience," Golden Spike president and CEO Alan Stern told SPACE.com.

Stern and other company leaders, including chairman of the board of directors Gerry Griffin, a former Apollo flight director and NASA Johnson Space Center director, began talking to Lovell about joining the team about a year ago, six months before Golden Spike's private moon mission venture was publicly announced last December.

Lovell ultimately decided to get involved a few weeks ago after a four-hour meeting at his home in Marble Falls, Texas with Stern and the others.

"At the end of the conversation Jim said something along the lines of, 'I'm convinced, how can I help?'" Stern recalled.

The business model

The involvement of a bona fide moon hero certainly gives a boost to the company as it aims to choose a design for its moon lander and settle other technical questions, such as which rocket it will use to launch its missions and which capsule to transport its cargo and crew to the moon. Golden Spike recently announced that the Northrop Grumman company, which it had hired to study potential lunar lander designs, completed a study confirming the feasibility of its "Pumpkin Lander" concept.

"To my knowledge, this is the first Apollo astronaut to join a commercial human spaceflight company," Stern said. "And since we're a lunar company, obviously we are interested in lunar astronauts. There are only a few people that have that experience."

Golden Spike is one of a growing number of private companies aiming to send people to space. Some, such as suborbital space outfit Virgin Galactic, aren't aiming quite as far as the moon, while others like the non-profit Mars One foundation are reaching even farther, hoping to send humans on one-way trips to Mars by 2023.

Golden Spike stands in contrast to some commercial space companies with wealthy backers, such as Virgin's Sir Richard Branson, SpaceX's billionaire founder Elon Musk, and the Blue Origin company, which was founded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. Golden Spike doesn't need that kind of cash infusion, Stern said — the firm's business model is strong enough on its own, and sales alone should fund its operations once it gets up and running, he said.

It was this business model in part that finally sold Lovell on joining the project, Stern added.

"It's confirmatory," Stern said of Lovell's support. "I am really excited to have Jim join."

Sally Ride's educational legacy lives on 30 years after spaceflight

Mary Beth Marklein - USA Today

Since her historic mission, 55 women have flown in space with NASA. And since 2001, Sally Ride Science has helped students step into careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

Laurie Leshin had just graduated from high school in June 1983 when astronaut Sally Ride blasted into the sky and the history books as the first American woman to fly in space.

"It was a big deal to see that barrier broken," says Leshin, a former NASA executive and a geochemist who studies water in the solar system. "She was a hero of mine and (her spaceflight) was one of the things that drew me to a career in space."

Ride died last year of pancreatic cancer at age 61, but her legacy lives on. On Monday, her contributions to science and science education will be honored in a tribute at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Ride, who was part of the first U.S. class of female astronauts in 1978, flew into space twice, in 1983 and 1984, both times on board the space shuttle Challenger. She was the only person to serve on both panels investigating the failures of the 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia tragedies.

Since her historic mission, 55 women, including cosmonauts, astronauts, payload specialists and foreign nationals, have flown in space with NASA. And since 2001, Sally Ride Science, an organization she co-founded, has aimed to build a pipeline of students who can step into careers in the fast-growing fields of science, technology, engineering and math, often known as STEM.

Ride's vision was simple: Through books, festivals, teacher training and classroom activities, she sought to share with middle-school students the joys of scientific discovery. Along the way, she hoped more kids — especially girls and minorities — would find their passion.

A key component of Sally Ride Science is giving young girls an idea of what a successful scientist looks like. Sally Ride Science festivals alone have reached more than 52,000 girls.

"She opened up that pathway to many more women because she was a role model," says Karen Flammer, a space physicist at the University of California-San Diego and a co-founder of Sally Ride Science. "That gave her insight into what students, young people, really need."

A growing body of evidence suggests that Ride was onto something. A recent study by Wake Forest University economics professor Amanda Griffith found, for example, that male and female college students earned higher grades in classes where their gender is in the minority if they share their instructor's gender.

"The research is suggesting that there's something there in the role model," says Griffith, who concluded that female class performance could be improved by increasing the number of female faculty members in male-dominated departments.

While Flammer and others say the climate has improved for women, a gender disparity remains in most STEM fields. Although women fill 48% of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold just 24% of STEM jobs, a 2011 federal report shows.

Similarly, women represent 57% of the college undergraduate population yet are vastly underrepresented in most STEM fields and on many campuses where STEM education is the focus. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where Leshin is dean of science, women were 29% of undergraduates last year. Still, that was an improvement over 2003, when 25% of undergrads were female. This fall, women will make up 31% of the incoming freshman class. At MIT, the share of female undergrads also has inched upward, from 42% in 2003 to 45% last year.

On many campuses, efforts are underway to keep girls and women in the STEM pipeline. St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia this month graduated its first class of McNulty scholars, a program to help women in STEM fields develop leadership skills. At the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., a federally funded project offers programming to help young female STEM faculty through one of the roughest stages of an academic career — between getting a doctorate and becoming an established scientist.

June marks another important anniversary of woman in space. Fifty years ago, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she orbited the Earth 48 times as chief pilot of the USSR's Vostok 6.

Although that occasion is often overlooked in U.S. history books, "Sally was very aware that she was standing on another woman's shoulders," Leshin says, adding that Ride knew she had a "unique responsibility" to women and girls in the USA.

"Sally was a very private person and didn't relish being a celebrity, but she realized her place in history," says Maria Zuber, a professor at MIT. "So she really used her celebrity as a force for good."

'How About Now?' The Faith in Gordon Cooper

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

Fifty years ago, on 15 May 1963, America launched astronaut Gordon Cooper on its longest manned space mission to date. In doing so, NASA began to take strides toward meeting President John Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. The humiliation of Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight had been met by two suborbital missions and three Earth-circling voyages. When Wally Schirra ended his nine-hour, six-orbit flight in October 1962, it was considered so successful that some voices within NASA advised ending Project Mercury immediately and pressing on with the two-man Project Gemini. Others countered that one of Mercury's goals was to fly an astronaut for more than a day and long-duration experience was highly desirable in the run-up to Gemini. By the end of the year, the space agency was thus hard at work preparing to close out Mercury in style with a "Manned One-Day Mission" (MODM). To history, it would be known as "Faith 7," and around the colourful man who flew it would grow a legend which endures to this very day.

Originally planned for April 1963, the scope of the mission expanded in the wake of Schirra's success from 18 to 22 orbits … producing a flight time of around 34 hours in space. To be fair, the MODM would fly for barely a quarter of the Soviet Union's four-day Vostok 3 mission, but its preparations were stupendous. It would demand massive tracking support, including 28 ships, 171 aircraft, 18,000 military personnel, and around-the-clock control operations, headed by a pair of veteran flight directors: Chris Kraft and John Hodge. Finally, on 14 November 1962, NASA announced that astronaut Gordon Cooper would fly the MODM, with Alan Shepard as his backup.

Yet the months before the flight were marred with difficulty. The military "F-series" version of its Atlas rocket had suffered two inexplicable failures, and when Cooper's "D-series" booster rolled out of its factory in January 1963 it did not pass its initial inspection. After extensive rewiring of its flight controls, NASA reluctantly announced on 12 February that the launch would be delayed from mid-April until mid-May. To support the astronaut for more than a day in orbit, the Mercury capsule carried better batteries, additional oxygen, extra cooling and drinking water, more hydrogen peroxide fuel, a full load of life-support consumables, and an expansive scientific payload. One plan even called for the replacement of Cooper's fibreglass couch with a lightweight hammock, but fears that it might stretch and the astronaut might "bounce" meant that the proposal was never approved.

Speaking at a press conference on 8 February, Cooper described his mission as "practically a flying camera." Firstly, a slow-scan television had been installed into the capsule to monitor the astronaut and his instruments, and a battery of other cameras would be aboard: a 70 mm Hasselblad, a specially modified 35 mm device to observe the "zodiacal light," and a 16 mm all-purpose motion picture unit. Cooper himself would wear an upgraded space suit, with a mechanical seal for his helmet, together with new gloves and a more mobile torso. His boots were integrated to make them more comfortable and the whole ensemble was much less bulky than earlier suits.

By the middle of March, the mission—officially dubbed "Mercury-Atlas-9?—appeared to be back on track, when the Atlas booster passed its acceptance trials without a single minor discrepancy. Several weeks later, on 22 April, the capsule itself was attached to the top of the rocket. After much consideration, Cooper had named his spacecraft "Faith 7," to symbolise, he said, "my trust in God, my country, and my teammates." Within the higher echelons of NASA, concerns were raised about the name. (A mission failure, the Washington Post told its readers, could yield unfortunate headlines, such as "The United States today lost Faith.")

In tandem with Cooper's preparations, there was also consideration given to attempting a "Mercury-Atlas-10? mission, flown by Alan Shepard for up to three days, to slightly close the space-endurance gap with the Soviets. As part of NASA's Project Orbit in February 1963, tests had already demonstrated that the Mercury capsule could theoretically support a four-day mission, although the effects of freezing or sluggishness in its hydrogen peroxide thrusters remained unknown. Shepard, of course, was in favour of a three-day flight, and had already named his spacecraft "Freedom 7-II." Had it gone ahead, it would have launched sometime in October 1963, and Shepard even went so far as to lobby John Kennedy for support, although the president rightly deferred the issue to NASA Administrator Jim Webb. "After Cooper finished his mission," Shepard reflected in a February 1998 oral history, "there was another spacecraft, ready to go. My thought was to put me up there and just let me stay until something ran out—until the batteries ran down, until the oxygen ran out, or until we lost a control or something; just an open-ended kind of a mission."

As history has shown, Freedom 7-II would never fly. On 11 May 1963, Julian Scheer, NASA's newly appointed deputy assistant administrator for public affairs, emphatically declared this fact and Jim Webb endorsed it, arguing that Gemini was already primed for long-duration missions. His rationale was that it was pointless to demonstrate a capability, just once, with an obsolete system. Moreover, an accident on Shepard's flight could set Project Gemini back in its tracks. In mid-June, the flight officially vanished from consideration and its spacecraft was put into storage. By then, Gordon Cooper had flown his 34-orbit mission, marking an end of the beginning in America's conquest of space.

Cooper had almost missed out flying in Project Mercury entirely. Since his selection as one of the nation's first seven astronauts in April 1959, he had gained a reputation as something of a hotshot—a daredevil pilot with a passion for fast cars—balanced against criticisms that he was a complainer who pulled dangerous stunts. (On one occasion, his F-106 jet screamed right outside, and below, the office window of Mercury operations director Walt Williams.) Even fellow astronaut Deke Slayton wrote of his personal surprise that Cooper had even been picked as an astronaut. "My first reaction was, something's wrong," Slayton wrote in his autobiography. "Either he's on the wrong list, or I am." Cooper was an engineer at Edwards Air Force Base and was not even a test pilot.

Still, the man who would fly the final Mercury mission was all but born in a pilot's seat. His father, an Air Force lawyer and county court judge, frequently plopped his young son on his lap in the cockpit of an old Command-Aire biplane and Cooper took the controls for the first time … aged only six. By his teens, the boy was taking lessons in a J-3 Piper Cub and soloed, "officially," at 16. The story of Cooper's life was very much a story of his love affair with aviation. Even in his mid-seventies, he told an interviewer that "I get cranky if I don't fly at least three times a month!"

His love of fast cars was also legendary, as flight director Gene Kranz, arriving at Cape Canaveral for his first day at work, related. "After the plane rolled to a stop," Kranz wrote, "a shiny new Chevrolet convertible wheeled to a halt just beyond the wing tip. An Air Force enlisted man popped out, saluted, and held open the car's door for a curly-haired guy in civilian clothes, a fellow passenger who deplaned ahead of me." The curly-haired man offered Kranz a lift to the Cape. Quickly, he "peeled into a 180-degree turn and raced along the ramp for a hundred yards, my neck snapping back as he floored the Chevy. I had never driven this fast on a military base in my life!" For a few minutes, Kranz wondered if he had a madman behind the wheel, as the guy seemed to break every rule in the book and had no fear of being pulled over by the Air Police. Hitting the highway, he made a wide turn and took a hard left, burning rubber, and the needle quivered between 80 and 90 mph. After joyfully yelling Eeee-hah at the top of his lungs, he turned and offered his hand to Kranz.

"Hi, I'm Gordo Cooper."

Kranz had not only met his first Mercury astronaut, but perhaps the most controversial Mercury astronaut of them all.

With a background in the Marine Corps, the Army and the Air Force and a wife, Trudy, who was also a qualified pilot, Cooper flew F-84 and F-8 jets in West Germany and served as a project engineer for the F-102 and F-106. On one occasion, several years before they became astronauts, he and another Air Force pilot, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, were aboard a T-33 together when it crashed off the end of the runway at Lowry Air Force Base. Thankfully, neither man was hurt. In early 1959, both men received mysterious classified orders to attend a briefing in Washington, D.C. After completing a battery of punishing physical and psychological tests for Project Mercury, Cooper was so confident that he would be chosen that he told his boss to start looking for a replacement and requested two weeks' leave to move his family across country to Langley, Va. When NASA called him to ask how soon he could get to Langley, Cooper's response was "How about now?"

As an astronaut, though, his early days were somewhat less illustrious and led several senior managers to consider bypassing him for a space mission. They regarded him as an unpredictable complainer, with a seemingly indifferent stance toward the public image that NASA wanted its astronauts to extol. Cooper protested about the lengthy periods away from his family, about the lack of opportunity to fly fast jets and collect flight pay, and he even threatened to leave the programme when his comrade, Deke Slayton, was dropped from his own Mercury mission by a heart murmur. Flying a chase aircraft over the Cape during Gus Grissom's launch in July 1961, Cooper buzzed the launch site, momentarily disrupted communications traffic and earned himself a ticking-off from his boss. On another occasion, flying to Huntsville, he landed on a runway that was too short and asked to be refuelled. When the ground crews told him that it was too dangerous for him to take off again, Cooper shrugged, took off regardless, and made it to his destination … with fumes in his tanks!

Even in the weeks preceding Faith 7, there were persistent stories in the press that Cooper might be pushed aside in favour of his backup, Alan Shepard. So shaky was Walt Williams' "faith" in Cooper that he approached Shepard, several months earlier, and strongly hinted that he might be tipped to fly instead. Believing the mission to be his, Shepard trained feverishly, but Deke Slayton—removed from his own flight only months earlier—felt that Faith 7 belonged to Cooper. Others agreed that it would look bad for NASA if the astronauts were swapped so soon before launch. A timely intervention by Wally Schira (who threatened to raise the roof if Cooper was overlooked) certainly helped matters, but Walt Williams was convinced that Shepard could do a better job. As partial compensation, Williams half-promised Shepard a three-day Mercury mission … which ultimately never transpired. Shepard later gained his revenge on the operations director, by lending him the keys to his Corvette. As Williams drove away, Shepard phoned the base's security office to tell them that "someone" had just stolen his car. …

Despite having finally secured the mission as his own Cooper was possibly reacting to pent-up frustration when he took a flight in an F-106, two days before his scheduled 14 May liftoff. To the great surprise of Williams and Kraft, the astronaut made a very low pass over the Cape. "We were talking," Kraft recalled of that quiet Sunday afternoon in Williams' office, "and a sudden roar came upon us. The roar was a jet airplane diving onto the Cape at a very high rate of speed, which was forbidden." Glancing out of the window, they saw Cooper in the pilot's seat, as he flew beneath the second-floor office window. Since the Cape was restricted airspace, the switchboard quickly lit up with frantic emergency calls. Williams went berserk and threatened to have Cooper's "ass on a plate."

The furious operations director called Deke Slayton, who was by now in charge of the astronaut corps and Cooper's immediate boss, to demand action. He had to shout to be heard over the din of the F-106. (Williams even phoned Alan Shepard to ask if he was ready for launch.) For his part, Slayton harboured severe reservations about Cooper, but refused to yank him off the mission. Both he and Williams allowed the astronaut to sweat about his flight status for 24 hours, and not until the evening of the 13th did the operations director finally relent and agree to let him fly. Cooper's supporters regarded the incident as the action of a good, smart pilot and a man with a mission "to go a little bit higher and a little bit faster." On Faith 7, he would fly higher and faster than ever before.

'The Right Man': A Restoration of Faith

Early on 14 May 1963, a hotshot pilot lay on his back in a tiny capsule, atop a converted ballistic missile, and steeled himself to be blasted into space. On Project Mercury's final mission, Gordon Cooper would spend 34 hours in space, circle the globe 22 times, and establish NASA's first real baseline of long-duration experience as the space agency and the nation prepared to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. To be fair, the flight would last barely a quarter as long as the Soviet Union's four-day Vostok 3 mission, a year earlier, but for NASA it would mark an important step forward. Yet there were many senior managers who doubted that Cooper was the right man for the job. Two days earlier, he had buzzed the administration building at Cape Canaveral in his F-106 jet, sparking a flurry of frantic emergency calls and maddening Project Mercury's operations director, Walt Williams, to the extent that he almost grounded Cooper in favour of his backup, Alan Shepard. Cooper had much ground to make up in order to restore faith in his abilities.

On launch morning, Cooper breakfasted with Shepard. Only hours earlier, Shepard had convinced himself that the mission was his for the taking. He could not believe that Cooper could possibly be so rash as to buzz the very building in which his bosses were holding a meeting and was frustrated at the lost opportunity to fly himself … to the extent that he planned a somewhat mean-spirited joke. Press spokesman John "Shorty" Powers had arrived early that morning with two cameramen, who would shoot behind-the-scenes footage of Cooper as he prepared for launch. To their shock, they discovered that none of the overhead lights were working, nor were the electrical sockets. Someone had cut the wires, removed every light bulb, inserted thick tape into the sockets, and replaced the bulbs. No one pointed any fingers, but Powers recognised Shepard's grin. It was typical of him, said Powers, "when he has a mouse under his hat."

Another gift from Shepard awaited Cooper when he boarded the spacecraft he had named "Faith 7? at 6:36 a.m.: a small suction-cup pump on the seat, labelled Remove Before Flight, in honour of the new urine-collection device. (Cooper would become the first Mercury astronaut to urinate in a manner other than "in his suit.") At this stage, the only indication of doubt that the mission would fly came from meteorologist Ernest Amman, although the trouble increased when a radar at the secondary control centre in Bermuda malfunctioned. Next, at 8 a.m., with an hour remaining in the countdown, a diesel engine stubbornly refused to work. It was supposed to move the gantry away from the Atlas rocket, and two hours were wasted trying to fix a fouled fuel injector pump. The countdown resumed around midday and the gantry was successfully retracted, but a computer converter failed at the Bermuda station and the launch attempt had to be scrubbed.

Despite having spent six hours on his back, Gordon Cooper was upbeat and managed to summon a wry grin when he was extracted from Faith 7. "I was just getting to the real fun part," he said. "It was a very real simulation!" As the astronaut spent the afternoon fishing, technicians readied the Atlas and the spacecraft for another attempt, early on 15 May. Arriving at the capsule for the second time, he saluted McDonnell pad leader Guenter Wendt with mock formality, reporting in as "Private Fifth Class Cooper," to which the German pad "fuehrer" responded in kind. The roots of the joke came two years earlier, when Cooper stood in for Alan Shepard in a practice countdown session. His mock terror—begging Wendt not to make him climb aboard the primed rocket—had so annoyed a number of NASA managers that a couple even threatened to bust him to Private Fifth Class. Ironically, Cooper and Wendt liked the idea and ran with it.

Despite a problem with the Atlas' guidance equipment, which necessitated a brief hold, the countdown marched crisply on this second attempt … so crisply, in fact, that Cooper fell asleep. It took fellow astronaut Wally Schirra several efforts to bellow his name over the communications link to awaken him. Then, with just 19 seconds to go, another halt was called in order to allow launch controllers to ascertain that the rocket's systems had properly assumed their automatic sequence. Shortly after 8 a.m. on 15 May 1963, America's sixth man in space thundered off the pad in what Cooper would later describe as "a smooth, but definite push." Within minutes, Faith 7 was inserted into an orbit so good that its heading was 0.0002 degrees from perfect and its velocity "right on the money" at 28,240 km/h. "Smack-dab in the middle of the plot," an admiring Schirra told him.

So rapid was Cooper's passage across the Atlantic Ocean that he expressed astonishment when called by the tracking stations in the Canaries and Kano in Nigeria. The first day of the mission went extraordinarily well—at one stage, the astronaut's heart rate surged during a sleep period, suggesting that he was experiencing an exciting dream—and he moved swiftly through his many tasks. Earth observations, photography, collection of urine samples, and monitoring his ship's health occupied his time, although he did grab a few moments to chew some brownies, fruit cake, and bacon chunks. Cooper's use of the cabin's oxygen supply was so efficient that Alan Shepard jokingly asked him to "stop holding your breath." The astronaut responded that—as the only non-smoker amongst the Mercury Seven—his lungs were in better shape than those of his comrades. If his oxygen usage was minimal, so too was his fuel expenditure, to such an extent that controllers nicknamed him "The Miser."

One of Cooper's most important experiments was the deployment of a 15 cm sphere, instrumented with xenon strobe lights, part of an effort to track a flashing beacon in space. Three hours after launch, the astronaut clicked a squib switch and felt the experiment separate from Faith 7 … but he was only able to see it very occasionally, at orbital sunset, pulsing in the darkness. Another experiment involved the release of a 76 cm Mylar balloon, painted fluorescent orange. Nine hours into the mission, Cooper set cameras, attitude, and switches to deploy the balloon, but it refused to move. Another attempt was also fruitless. The intent was for the balloon to inflate with nitrogen and extend on a 30 meter tether, after which a strain gauge would measure differences in "pull" at Faith 7's 270 km apogee and 160 km perigee. Sadly, the cause of the balloon's failure was never ascertained.

Evaluating an astronaut's ability to make observations from space achieved more success when Cooper spotted a three-million-candlepower xenon light at Bloemfontein in South Africa. He also made detailed notes as he flew over cities, large oil refineries, roads, rivers, and small villages, and even saw smoke twirling from the chimneys of Himalayan houses. Lighting conditions had to be appropriate for such observations, but in the wake of the mission Cooper's claims were disputed … until two visibility researchers from the University of California at San Diego verified that in one instance the astronaut had seen a Border Patrol vehicle's dust cloud, kicked up on a dirt road near El Centro on the U.S.-Mexican border. The researchers argued that the vehicle and dust cloud were more visible, from Cooper's vantage point, than the road itself.

Ten hours after launch, the astronaut was advised that he had exceeded Wally Schirra's endurance record for the longest American manned mission and that his orbital parameters were good enough for at least 17 circuits of the globe. The phenomenal speed of his flight path was amply illustrated when he spoke to fellow astronaut John Glenn, based on the Coastal Sentry tracking ship, near Kyushu, Japan, then swept south-eastwards, over the empty Pacific Ocean, to speak to a controller near Pitcairn Island, more than 11,000 km distant … just ten minutes later.

Sleeping in space was virtually impossible, so spectacular was the view. As Cooper passed over South America, then Africa, northern India, and into Tibet, the photographic opportunities were priceless. Using the direction of chimney smoke from the Himalayan houses, he was even able to make a few rudimentary estimates about his velocity and the ground winds. Despite the difficulty, he pulled Faith 7's window shades around 13 hours after launch to catch some sleep. He dozed intermittently, but found himself having to anchor his thumbs into his helmet restraint strap to keep his arms from floating freely. Every so often, he would lift the shade to take photographs or make status reports … or curse quietly to himself when his body-heat exchanger crept too high or too low.

With the exception of niggling glitches, everything seemed to be going well. Cooper's oxygen supply was plentiful and his fuel gauges for both automatic and manual tanks looked good. During a brief spell of quiet time, he paused for a short prayer. He thanked God for the privileged opportunity to fly the mission, for being in space, and for seeing such wondrous sights. That prayer marked the beginning of Faith 7's troubles. Early on his 19th orbit, around 30 hours after launch, he was over the western Pacific Ocean and out of radio contact with the ground, when his attention was arrested by the eerie green glow of one of his instrument panel lights. It was the "0.05 G" indicator, and it should normally have illuminated after retrofire, as Faith 7 commenced its descent from orbit. Moreover, it should have been quickly followed by the autopilot placing the capsule into a slow roll.

Had Cooper inadvertently "slipped" out of orbit?

This suspicion was quickly refuted by orbital data from the ground, which suggested either that the indicator was at fault or that the autopilot's re-entry circuitry had been tripped out of its normal sequence. An orbit later, Cooper was advised to switch to autopilot and Faith 7 began a slow roll. This presented its own issues. For proper flight, the autopilot had to perform other functions before retrofire and, since each function was sequentially linked, Mission Control knew that several earlier steps had not been executed. This meant that the astronaut might be forced to control those steps by hand. Worse was to come. On his 20th orbit, Cooper lost all attitude readings and, a revolution later, one of three power inverters went dead. He tried to switch to a second inverter, but it would not respond. The third was needed to run cooling equipment during re-entry, so the astronaut was now left with an autopilot devoid of electrical power.

On the ground, the options centred on bringing Cooper home on batteries alone. The astronaut could not rely on his gyroscope or clock to properly position Faith 7 for re-entry, since both depended on electrical power, and he watched with dismay as carbon dioxide levels began to rise both in the cabin and within his space suit. In true Right Stuff fashion, his comment over the radio to fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter was nonchalant: "Things are beginning to stack up a little!"

At length, on his 22nd orbit, Cooper made his way smoothly through the pre-retrofire checklist, steadying Faith 7 with his hand controller and lining up a horizontal mark on his window with Earth's horizon; this dipped the capsule's nose to the desired 34-degree angle. Next, he lined up a vertical mark with pre-determined stars to acquire his correct heading and astronaut John Glenn counted him down to retrofire. Cooper hit the button once—receiving no light signals, of course, due to his electrical system problems—and verified that he could feel the punch of the three small engines igniting behind him. During the descent from orbit, he periodically damped out unwanted motions with his hand controller and manually deployed both his drogue and main parachutes. Faith 7 hit the waters of the Pacific, about 130 km south-east of Midway Island, within sight of the recovery ship USS Kearsarge.

The capsule floundered for an instant, then righted itself. Cooper's 34-hour mission had concluded just as each of the Mercury Seven would have wanted: with a pilot in full control of his craft. Two years later, in August 1965, Cooper would command Gemini V, which seized the space endurance record from the Soviets, and many have speculated that if circumstances played out differently he may have been the first member of the Mercury Seven to walk on the Moon. Certainly, as late as 1968, Cooper was in active training as backup commander for the Apollo 10 mission and, judging by Deke Slayton's crew rotation cycle, some have argued that this would have made him a contender to lead Apollo 13. Others have cast doubt on this assumption, noting Cooper's strap-it-on-and-go attitude, his aversion to the simulators, and his desire to pursue other interests, including a 24-hour road race. Slayton certainly felt sentimental towards his friend, but admitted that he "didn't feel any obligation, moral or otherwise" to stick to the rotation cycle. Ultimately, command of Apollo 13 went to another astronaut, and Cooper left NASA in 1970.

Yet all that was in the future on 16 May 1963, as Gordon Cooper basked in the success of his first mission. He had spent more time in space than all of the other members of the Mercury Seven, put together, and with his Gemini V flight would establish a new record for the world's most experienced spacefarer. As for Walt Williams, the disgruntled operations director for Project Mercury, who had tried to have Cooper removed from Faith 7, it was a case of having been proved wrong. When the pair met at Cape Canaveral, Williams warmly shook Cooper's hand. "Gordo," he said, "you were the right man for the mission!"

END

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Keep the shuttle flying

Thursday, May 16, 2013

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

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