Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight News

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: June 20, 2013 6:05:37 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - June 20, 2013 and JSC Today

________________________________________
Thursday, June 20, 2013

                    JSC TODAY CATEGORIES
1.            Headlines
- Today: JSC Tech Briefs Live Webinar on Robonaut 2
- New NASA@work Challenge
- JSC & WSTF Remote Access VPN/R2S Service Outage
- Back and Better Than Ever - Now Keep it Going!
- Neil Armstrong Memorial Service/Tree Dedication
- NASA TV to Air June 24 Space Station Spacewalk
2.            Organizations/Social
- RSVP for Former Astronaut Bonnie Dunbar's Talk
- Starport Summer Camp - Still Taking Registrations
- Prescription Drug Abuse
- AIAA Award Nomination Deadlines
- JSC Praise and Worship Club Meeting
- So Your Kid is Going Off to College
- Low-Cost Computing CoLAB
- Hispanic Employee Resource Group Monthly Meeting
3.            Jobs and Training
- June 27: Access More Scientific and Technical Info
- Don't Flex Your IT Security Training: Due Tomorrow
4.            Community
- Free Summer Camp

Rare Clear View of Alaska

   Headlines
1.            Today: JSC Tech Briefs Live Webinar on Robonaut 2
Today, June 20, 2013 (1PM) you are cordially invited! NASA Tech Briefs is partnering with the JSC Technology Transfer and Commercialization Office (TTO) to host a live webinar presentation with Dr. Ron Diftler, Robonaut Project Lead, and Astronaut Dave Leestma, TTO Manager. Discussions will include Robonaut 2 (R2), the commercial applications of the R2 technology suite, and highlights on some of the innovative work being done at this center.
Register for this event at: http://video.webcasts.com/events/abpi001/46113
Event Date: Thursday, June 20, 2013   Event Start Time:1:00 PM   Event End Time:2:00 PM
Event Location: Live Webinar

Add to Calendar

Sonia Hernandez-Moya 281-483-1752 http://technology.jsc.nasa.gov

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2.            New NASA@work Challenge
Check out our latest challenge - #1774: Packing Foam Alternatives Challenge (deadline: July 31). While you are on the platform, be sure to check out our other active challenge, Seeking Solutions on the Use of Thorium Instead of Uranium (deadline: Aug. 9), and the results from the "NASA@work Year in Review" survey.
Are you new to NASA@work? NASA@work is an agencywide, collaborative problem-solving platform that connects the collective knowledge of experts (like YOU) from all centers across NASA. Challenge owners post problems, and members of the NASA@work community participate by responding with their solutions to posted problems. Anyone can participate!
Kathryn Keeton 281-204-1519 http://nasa.innocentive.com

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3.            JSC & WSTF Remote Access VPN/R2S Service Outage
The JSC and White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) Remote Access Virtual Private Network (VPN) systems will be upgraded on Saturday, June 22, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CDT.
This outage will affect all JSC and WSTF team members and partners that use the JSC VPN, JSC R2S, WSTF VPN and WSTF R2S.
During this activity, access to these network resources will be unavailable or intermittently down while the Information Resources Directorate performs upgrades to remove VPN NDC password login requirements, add a PIV (smart card) authentication VPN option and replace the Juniper Network Connect client with Junos Pulse.
We apologize for the inconvenience and are working diligently to improve your VPN experience.
For questions regarding this activity, please contact Michael Patterson.
JSC IRD Outreach x41334

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4.            Back and Better Than Ever - Now Keep it Going!
JSC Today has undergone a facelift to meet our center's growing needs as we enter a new era with JSC 2.0. JSC Today 2.0 is mobile, nimble, clean and responsive to what's important to you now.
A NASA.gov photo of the day will give you a snapshot of the important events at our agency, as well as historical milestones. The email itself gets more organized, categorizing announcements so that you can quickly pick and choose what you'd like to read in depth. Titles are also shorter and easier to skim. Updated tabs at the left will bring you straight to the websites you need the most.
Is this the end? No, it's just the beginning! While we've started a culture shift, we still need your feedback so that the center can mold itself to embrace future spaceflight goals. Visit the JSC 2.0 website's interactive comment section at http://strategicplan.jsc.nasa.gov/questions.aspx to spark discussion between fellow JSC team members and leaders. Think of it as an Innovation Day rolling whiteboard, but permanent. The feature works similarly to blog comments, where a user can reply to other comments, and each comment has an upvote button to track popularity (similar to a Facebook "like"). Keep us moving forward--and let your voice be heard.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111 http://strategicplan.jsc.nasa.gov/questions.aspx

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5.            Neil Armstrong Memorial Service/Tree Dedication
This morning, from 10 to 10:30 a.m., JSC team members are invited to honor the memory of astronaut Neil Armstrong at a Memorial Service in Teague Auditorium. Doors to the auditorium will open at 9 a.m. At 10:40 a.m., immediately following the Memorial Service, employees are invited to the Astronaut Grove for the dedication of a tree in Armstrong's memory. Please keep in mind that temperatures will be hot, so bring water if you think you will need it.
JSC employees unable to attend in the Teague Auditorium can view the Memorial Service on RF Channel 4, digital channel 54-1 or Omni 44. JSC, Ellington Field, Sonny Carter Training Facility and White Sands Test Facility team members with wired computer network connections can view NASA TV using the JSC EZTV IP Network TV System on channel 402 (standard definition). Please note: EZTV currently requires using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC connected to the JSC computer network with a wired connection. Mobile devices, Wi-Fi connections and newer MAC computers are currently not supported by EZTV.
If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

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6.            NASA TV to Air June 24 Space Station Spacewalk
NASA TV will provide live coverage when two members of the Expedition 36 crew venture outside the International Space Station on Monday, June 24. The pair will conduct a six-hour spacewalk in preparation for the addition of a new Russian module later this year.
NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk by Russian flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin will begin at 8 a.m. CDT. Yurchikin and Misurkin will begin the spacewalk about 8:35 a.m. when they open the hatch to the space station's Pirs docking compartment and float outside.
They will replace a fluid flow control panel on the station's Zarya module and install clamps for future power cables as an early step toward swapping the Pirs airlock with a new multipurpose laboratory module. The Russian Federal Space Agency plans to launch a combination research facility, airlock and docking port late this year on a Proton rocket.
Yurchikhin and Misurkin also will retrieve several science experiments on the outside of the Zvezda service module.
The spacewalk will be the 169th in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the sixth for Yurchikhin and the first for Misurkin. Yurchikhin will wear an Orlan-MK spacesuit with red stripes while Misurkin will wear a suit with blue stripes. Both spacewalkers will be equipped with NASA helmet cameras to provide close-up views of their work.
This is the second of up to six Russian spacewalks planned for this year. Two U.S. spacewalks by NASA's Chris Cassidy and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency are scheduled in July.
JSC, Ellington Field, Sonny Carter Training Facility and White Sands Test Facility team members with wired computer network connections can view NASA TV using the JSC EZTV IP Network TV System on channels 404 (standard definition) or 4541 (HD). Please note: EZTV currently requires using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC connected to the JSC computer network with a wired connection. Mobile devices, Wi-Fi connections and newer MAC computers are currently not supported by EZTV.
If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111 http://www.nasa.gov/station

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   Organizations/Social
1.            RSVP for Former Astronaut Bonnie Dunbar's Talk
You're in luck! The deadline for RSVPs has been extended to close of business TOMORROW, June 21, if you want to hear former astronaut Bonnie J. Dunbar, Ph.D., speak at the June JSC National Management Association (NMA) chapter luncheon presentation. This luncheon will be held at the Hilton Discovery Ballroom on Thursday, June 27, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake
3000 NASA Pkwy.
Houston, Texas, 77058-4322

Cost for members: FREE
Cost for non-members: $25

There are three great menu options to choose from:
o             Chicken Alfredo
o             Grilled Tilapia
o             Vegetable Lasagna
Please RSVP NOW at http://www.jscnma.com/Events with your menu selection. For RSVP technical assistance, please contact Amy Kitchen at x35569.
Event Date: Thursday, June 27, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Hilton Discovery Ballroom

Add to Calendar

Catherine Williams x33317

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2.            Starport Summer Camp - Still Taking Registrations
Summer camp is off and running with a great start! There are a few spots left in the upcoming sessions, so register your child before it fills up. We have tons of fun activities planned, and weekly themes are listed on our website, as well as information regarding registration and all the necessary forms.
Ages: 6 to 12
Times: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Dates: Now through Aug. 16 in one-week sessions
Fee per session: $140 per child for dependents | $160 per child for non-dependents
NEW for this summer: Ask about our sibling discounts.
Shericka Phillips x35563 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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3.            Prescription Drug Abuse
Did you know that more than half of all prescription drugs are taken incorrectly? More people die and are injured by abusing prescription drugs than from using all other illegal drugs combined. Prescription drug abuse affects all age groups and backgrounds. We will be discussing the signs, risks and impact of abusing prescription medications. Come and learn prevention strategies for managing the potential of prescription abuse. Please join Anika Isaac, MS, LPC, LMFT, LCDC, CEAP, NCC, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program on June 26 at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium as she presents, "Prescription Drug Abuse."
Event Date: Wednesday, June 26, 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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4.            AIAA Award Nomination Deadlines
The following American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) awards have upcoming nomination deadlines:
o             June 30:
Career and Workforce Development Award
Communications Award
Harry Staubs STEM K-12 Outreach Award
Membership Award
Outstanding Section Award
Outstanding Activity Award
Public Policy Award
Young Professional Activity Award
o             July 1:
Ashley Award for Aeroelasticity
Children's Literature Award
Dr. John C. Ruth Digital Avionics Award
Durand Lectureship for Public Service
Excellence in Aerospace Standardization Award
Faculty Advisor Award
Gardner-Lasser Aerospace History Literature Award
History Manuscript Award
James A. Van Allen Space Environments Award
Lawrence Sperry Award
Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award
Missile Systems Award
Pendray Aerospace Literature Award
Space Processing Award
Summerfield Book Award
For more information on each award, click here or contact me with "AIAA 2013 Awards" in the subject line.
Jennifer Wells 281-336-6302

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5.            JSC Praise and Worship Club Meeting
Join with the Praise and Worship band, "Allied with the Lord," for a refreshing set of traditional and contemporary praise and worship songs on Wednesday, June 26, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in Building 29, Room 237 (also called Creative Sp.ace). Prayer partners will be available for anyone who would like it. All JSC civil servants and contractors are welcome.
Event Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:15 PM
Event Location: Building 29 Room 237

Add to Calendar

Mike FitzPatrick x30758

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6.            So Your Kid is Going Off to College
The JSC Employee Assistance Program will present "So Your Kid is Going Off to College" on Thursday, June 27, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Building 30 Auditorium. Please join us for a presentation on tips and suggestions on how to navigate this time of transition. Presented by Jackie Reese, MALPC, director of the JSC Employee Assistance Program and parent of two college students.
Event Date: Thursday, June 27, 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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7.            Low-Cost Computing CoLAB
Are you currently working on or interested in starting a project involving Arduino, Raspberry Pi or other low-cost, small-scale computing hardware?
If so, you are invited to the second meeting of the Low-Cost Computing (LLC) CoLAB. CoLABs provide a casual forum to share lessons learned and generate innovative new ideas and uses of technologies. Come make cross-directorate contacts and learn more about what others are doing with these exciting technologies.
The LCC CoLAB will be held Tuesday, June 25, from noon to 1 p.m. in Building 30A, Room 2085A. Feel free to bring your lunch and your co-workers.
Event Date: Tuesday, June 25, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Bldg 30A/Rm 2085A (Armstrong Room)

Add to Calendar

Brian Schwing x36554

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8.            Hispanic Employee Resource Group Monthly Meeting
The Hispanic Employee Resource Group (HERG) will be having a monthly meeting on Wednesday, June 26, in Building 1, Room 360A, from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. ALL JSC employees are invited to attend and participate.
Event Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2013   Event Start Time:11:45 AM   Event End Time:12:45 PM
Event Location: B1 Rm 360A

Add to Calendar

Michael Ruiz x38169

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   Jobs and Training
1.            June 27: Access More Scientific and Technical Info
You may be familiar with the NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS), but did you know that the NASA Aeronautics & Space Database (NA&SD) connects NASA and federal civil servants, contractors and grantees with 70 percent more scientific and technical information than the public NTRS? Learn how you can benefit from using these databases by joining the Scientific & Technical Center and Scientific & Technical Information Program on June 27 from 10 to 11:45 a.m. CDT via WebEx. This training is open to the JSC and White Sands Test Facility community. To register, click here.
This training is provided by the Information Resources Directorate.
Event Date: Thursday, June 27, 2013   Event Start Time:10:00 AM   Event End Time:11:45 AM
Event Location: WebEx

Add to Calendar

Ebony Fondren x32490 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov

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2.            Don't Flex Your IT Security Training: Due Tomorrow
All JSC employees are required to take their IT Security training in SATERN by tomorrow, June 21. Since tomorrow's a flex Friday, don't forget to take your training before you leave today.
There are some compatibility issues with certain versions of Java software used by SATERN, so don't wait until the end of the day. Take your training now.
If you do experience issues with SATERN, contact the SATERN help desk at 1-877-677-2123 and listen to the prompts. If you have a non-ACES machine, also contact your IT point of contact.
All NASA federal employees, contractors and grantees at JSC and White Sands Test Facility must complete the Security Awareness Training (#ITS-013-001) assigned to your learning plan in SATERN.
New employees, contractors and grantees must complete the "Introduction to Information Security for New Employees" training (#ITS-013-002).
To access SATERN, go here.
For more information, contact your organization's Organizational Computer Security Official.
JSC IRD Outreach 281-792-7923 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/Home.aspx

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   Community
1.            Free Summer Camp
This camp offers kids ages 14 to 18 the opportunity to participate in a high-tech scavenger hunt using GPS and Geocaching. People all over the world are doing Geocaching. Come catch a glimpse and join the fun!
Dates:
July 8 to 10 and July 15 to 17
Angie Hughes x37252 http://cpd.sanjac.edu/node/9718

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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.
Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters.

NASA TV:
·         10 am Central (11 EDT) – JSC Memorial Ceremony for Astronaut Neil Armstrong
·         5-9 am Central FRIDAY (6-10 EDT) – Live interviews on the Supermoon phenomenon

Human Spaceflight News
Thursday, June 20, 2013

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Draft House bill threatens $1 billion in NASA funding cuts

William Harwood - CBS News

A draft NASA authorization bill floated by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee would eliminate funding for the Obama administration's proposed asteroid retrieval mission and cut overall agency spending by about $1 billion, lawmakers said Wednesday. The proposed $16.8 billion funding package would focus NASA's long-term efforts on Mars exploration, set pre-determined milestones for development of commercial manned spacecraft -- including a non-negotiable deadline for first flight -- and sharply cut funding for Earth sciences.

Congress still at odds on where astronauts should go next

Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel

Where should NASA astronauts go next? That's been the question for the past decade, when President George W. Bush ordered a since-canceled mission to return Americans to the moon. And disagreement over the answer continues to paralyze U.S. space policy, as shown by a new battle that pits U.S. House Republicans against the White House and Democrats such as U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. The latest controversy began this spring when the Obama administration unveiled plans to blast astronauts to an asteroid. Specifically, the program would send a robot to capture a 25-foot asteroid and drag it near the moon, so future astronauts could visit it as early as 2021. But top Republicans on the House science committee are opposed. They announced legislation Wednesday that denied funding for such a program — which has been estimated to cost about $2.6 billion — and instead backed plans for what the bill called a "sustained human presence on the Moon and the surface of Mars."

House plan cuts $1B from NASA's budget
Subcommittee bill bans funding for asteroid missions

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

A NASA spending plan rolled out Wednesday by a House subcommittee would cap the agency's budget in 2014 and 2015 at $1 billion less than it is receiving this year. NASA's development of heavy-lift rockets and next-generation crew capsules for deep space missions would get more than President Barack Obama is requesting. Investments in development of commercial U.S. spacecraft for round trips to the International Space Station would get less.

Garver: House Bill Only 'Beginning of the Debate' on Asteroid Mission

Dan Leone - Space News

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver defended a proposal to send astronauts to a captured asteroid and vowed that the agency would continue to make the case for mission in the House of Representatives, where lawmakers have targeted the project for termination. Congress is preparing to write a new NASA authorization bill and an early draft bill from the House Science space subcommittee forbids any funding for what NASA is now calling its Asteroid Redirect Mission.

For NASA, Mars Beyond Reach Without Budget Boost

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

If NASA continues to be funded at its current levels, a manned mission to Mars could be permanently beyond reach, space industry experts say. When asked how soon astronauts could potentially set foot on Mars under NASA's current budget constraints, Thomas Young, the former executive vice president of Lockheed Martin, says the outlook is bleak. "With the current budget, bear with me, I would probably say never," Young said during a meeting of the U.S. House of Representative's space subcommittee Wednesday.

NASA to honor first man on the moon

Bayan Raji - Houston Business Journal

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will honor the life and historic achievements of astronaut Neil Armstrong during a memorial service on June 20 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Armstrong in 1955 joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor to NASA. After transferring to astronaut status in 1962, Armstrong served as command pilot for the 1966 Gemini 8 mission, during which he performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space, according to his NASA biography.

Fungus among us? Mold concerns delay space station cargo ship opening

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

The robotic European cargo ship Albert Einstein was opened Tuesday morning at the International Space Station, a day late because of concerns that mold may have grown inside the vehicle, NASA officials said. The unmanned Einstein spacecraft docked at the space station Saturday, but it was not opened Monday as planned due to worries that the vehicle and its cargo had not been disinfected properly before launch. The opening of the spacecraft's hatch was moved back a day to allow the space station partner nations to discuss the situation; ultimately, the partners agreed to have the station crew disinfect 21 bags of cargo on the spaceship to ensure they were clean of mold.

3D Printer Passes Zero-Gravity Test for Space Station Trip

Mike Wall - Space.com

A 3D printer bound for the International Space Station in 2014 has passed a series of key microgravity flight tests, the device's builders say. Three prototype versions of space manufacturing startup Made in Space's 3D printer showed their stuff during four airplane flights that achieved brief periods of microgravity via parabolic maneuvers, company officials announced Wednesday. "Today, we demonstrated that our 3D printers can print in microgravity," Made in Space strategic officer Mike Chen said in a statement. "Next year, we will demonstrate that they can print on the International Space Station."

NASA unveils new Space Station science control center at Marshall

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

NASA unveiled a new, upgraded control center in Huntsville Wednesday for science experiments being done on the now-completed International Space Station. America and its partners spent up to $100 billion building the station for research, station manager Mike Suffredini said at the dedication, "and where research is managed is right here at Marshall Space Flight Center. "So, when you guys see everybody's eyes start to move away from Houston a little bit and start to focus on you," Suffredini said, "that's because this is where it's happening. Over one-third of the total crew hours on ISS are dedicated to research today."

Space start-ups launch crowdfunding efforts
Now's your chance to help fund science, other missions - with some perks

James Dean - Florida Today

Tapping popular interest in space exploration and science fiction, space startups are increasingly seeking funding from a new source: You. Through crowdfunding campaigns and other donations, companies and foundations are offering the public the chance to take pictures from space, develop a space elevator, even save the world from a cataclysmic asteroid strike. Each believes it is "democratizing" participation in space projects long dominated by big government programs — often inspiring, but mostly out of reach beyond kid dreams of becoming an astronaut.

In Space, No One Can Hear Your Takeout Order

Andy Isaacson - New Yorker

In April, six people entered a geodesic dome, just thirty-six feet in diameter, perched on the barren, reddish slopes of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa. They will be there until August, simulating that they are living on Mars. Their mission: to eat. While humans are decades away from potentially becoming an invasive species on Mars, it's not too soon for NASA to think about how astronauts will feed themselves when they arrive.

Space Launch System enters preliminary design review

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), the next-generation rocket built to launch crewed missions beyond Earth orbit, has formally entered the preliminary design review (PDR) phase. The review will assess the design to date, and is expected to last several weeks. Upon completing the PDR, the system will move into the critical design phase, after which construction will begin in earnest. The SLS design effort formally began in 2012, and a first flight is planned in 2017.

Morpheus Aborts, Then Recovers For a Second Go In Tether Test

Elizabeth Howell - Universe Today

This video should satisfy your daily need for rocket foom. Morpheus — a NASA testbed for vertical landing systems — did two firing tests this week that produced a fair amount of the usual fire and smoke, as you can see above. You'll actually see two separate firings in that video. In the first one, the lander strayed out of its safety zone and did a soft abort. The second test, NASA stated, "was a complete success." The first lander of the program crashed and burned in a test failure in August 2012, but officials recently praised the program for the progress it has made since then.

El Paso astronaut brings Columbia shuttle remains to UTEP
Danny Olivas to help form new research group in spacecraft safety

Elizabeth O'Hara - KFOX TV (El Paso)

If El Pasoan Danny Olivas did nothing else with his life, he would be known forever as the first El Pasoan to travel into space. But Olivas has bigger plans for his professional legacy. Those plans involve the University of Texas at El Paso. "It's my way of being able to give back," Olivas said following a lecture at UTEP Tuesday afternoon.

Shuttle Atlantis has a new home and new mission

John Zarrella - CNN

The Space Shuttle Atlantis will no longer be in orbit, but it will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition in Florida. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

Moon trip cooler than saving a city?
House leaders might actually ban asteroid mission

Matt Reed - Florida Today (Opinion)

Witness the genius that is our U.S. House of Representatives. On Tuesday, our space program pitched a surprisingly affordable plan to do something practical for Americans: Intercept an asteroid to spare millions some day from death by fireball or tsunami. On Wednesday, a House subcommittee responded with a bill to outlaw NASA from trying. Members of the so-called House Committee on Science, Space and Technology instead want to focus all the money on sending astronauts back to the moon.

We Asked Sally Ride All the Wrong Questions

Amanda Will - Mashable (Opinion)

When I set out to find the most profound things Sally Ride said throughout her career, I realized we missed a huge opportunity as journalists. Mush together the thousands of words and hours of video footage, and you'll get one really long, repetitive interview. That's because we often asked her the same questions: What's it like to be the only woman in a boys club? What advice can you give women? How can we get more girls to love science? Perhaps that's because we couldn't move past Sally the icon and get to know Sally the person. We fixated on the fact that a woman was going to space — a first for America, but old news to the Soviets. However, we couldn't see past our own noses and treated her as the first woman in space — period.

Is Commercial Space Virginia's next jobs frontier?

David Kerr - Stafford County (VA) Sun (Opinion)

When Virginia, working with NASA in 1998, wanted to have Wallops Island, on our Eastern Shore, designated a Space Port, I remember thinking that it sounded a bit silly. After all Wallop's Island was a test facility that for years was used to launch nothing larger than a few small suborbital missiles for test and meteorological purposes. The idea that it could launch rockets with large-scale payloads seemed outlandish. One of those grand economic development ideas that sound good in a press release but never comes to much. But, that's not what happened at Wallops. The Virginia Space Port, now called the Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Port, is in the forefront of private-sector space technology. In April, Orbital Dynamics, a well-known satellite and rocket manufacturer based near Dulles Airport, launched the largest-ever privately built spacecraft. The Antares rocket, carrying the Cygnus spacecraft, was 133 feet tall and weighed more than a half a million pounds. April's launch was a test to demonstrate the company's ability to place in orbit a vehicle capable of resupplying the International Space Station. It worked. But, that's just the test.
__________

COMPLETE STORIES

Draft House bill threatens $1 billion in NASA funding cuts

William Harwood - CBS News

A draft NASA authorization bill floated by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee would eliminate funding for the Obama administration's proposed asteroid retrieval mission and cut overall agency spending by about $1 billion, lawmakers said Wednesday.

The proposed $16.8 billion funding package would focus NASA's long-term efforts on Mars exploration, set pre-determined milestones for development of commercial manned spacecraft -- including a non-negotiable deadline for first flight -- and sharply cut funding for Earth sciences.

"This authorization bill reflects a sincere effort to maximize return to the taxpayer while working to protect America's role as the world leader in space exploration," Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, said in opening remarks.

"It is realistic and reflective of the hard choices we must make as a nation and provides support for agreed-upon priorities. The stark reality is that if we fail to reform mandatory spending, discretionary funding for space, science and research will continue to shrink."

He said the proposed "authorization discussion draft" was consistent with the 2011 Budget Control Act, mandating automatic spending cuts -- sequestration -- in the absence of legislation to trim $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit.

Given the current budget environment, Palazzo said the Obama administration must focus on NASA's core programs, including the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, needed for missions to a variety of deep space targets; the Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle that would carry astronauts beyond the moon; space science; and the International Space Station.

The draft budget would authorize $1.77 billion for ongoing development of the SLS rocket and ground systems, $1.12 billion for the Orion capsule, $2.9 billion for space station operations and $4.62 billion for space science, including the costly James Webb Space Telescope.

Space science also includes Earth and planetary science. While the latter would receive $1.5 billion under the draft authorization, Earth science would suffer a $650 million cut, dropping to $1.2 billion.

The Obama administration's commercial manned space initiative would receive about $700 million under the draft authorization, more than $100 million less than what NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said was the minimum needed to reach an initial space station launch date in 2017.

Despite the proposed funding reduction, the draft authorization gives NASA a firm Dec. 31, 2017, deadline that "is not negotiable," Palazzo said.

"NASA must do whatever is necessary in its acquisition model to meet this deadline, even if that means radically altering their current plans," he said.

As for the administration's proposed mission to robotically capture a small asteroid and tow it back to the moon's vicinity for eventual manned visits, Palazzo said NASA had failed to provide a credible justification for the program or enough details to warrant funding.

"Because the mission appears to be a costly and complex distraction, this bill prohibits NASA from doing any work on the project, and we will work with appropriators to ensure the agency complies with this directive," he said.

At an industry briefing Tuesday to outline the objectives of the asteroid retrieval mission, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said the project would help identify asteroids that might threaten Earth, help scientists understand the origins of the solar system and drive technology development.

"This is the beginning of the debate," she said. "I think that we really, truly are going to be able to show the value of this mission."

But two witnesses at Wednesday's hearing -- Steven Squyres, principal investigator with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover program, and Thomas Young, a widely respected space industry veteran -- expressed skepticism, at least in the context of long-range plans to visit Mars.

"I personally don't see a strong connection between the proposed asteroid retrieval mission and sending humans to Mars," Squyres said. "But I believe NASA should at least be given the opportunity to try to make that case. I haven't heard it yet."

Said Young: "My belief is, any technology that comes out of it, there are better ways to do it. ... In my judgment, this is not a highest-priority endeavor."

Both men said they believed a long-range roadmap focused on eventual manned flights to Mars was the best course for NASA, but they strongly urged Congress and the White House to resist the temptation to set milestones and technical objectives, leaving that to NASA's scientists and engineers.

And they both said Congress should not set goals that cannot be met in a realistic budget environment.

Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., asked both men how long it might take to mount a manned mission to Mars with NASA's current budget.

"With the current budget, bear with me, I would probably say never," Young said.

Squyres agreed.

In her opening remarks, Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Maryland, complained that the draft legislation would "slash NASA's budget by almost a billion dollars relative to both the president's proposal for fiscal year '14 and the pre-sequester funding approved by Congress in fiscal year '12."

"The severe cuts to NASA's top line are manifested through out the draft bill," she said. "Earth science would be cut by almost $650 million relative to the fiscal year 2014 request, meaning the Earth science account is cut by one third."

If implemented, she said, the cuts to NASA's Earth science program "would not only result in gaps in the data needed to understand our Earth system, it would also impact the data needed for water monitoring, forest and timber productivity forecasting, improving gas and electric utilities forecasting and assessing the impact of sea levels rising in coastal communities."

In the manned space arena, she said, imposing strict timetables for development of manned spacecraft could result in the same sort of "schedule pressure" blamed for the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

"The bill establishes aggressive milestones and activities that run contrary to proposed downsized levels without any real regard for safety and schedule," she said. "These are exactly the pressures, from the lessons we learned from both Challenger and Columbia. We can't afford to repeat those tragedies."

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, said the bill would put NASA on a "path to mediocrity."

"This is not a bill ready for markup," she said. "This is a flawed draft, starting from its funding assumptions, and I cannot support it in the present form. I also predict that if passed by the committee, this bill would be DOA in the Senate. DOA meaning 'dead on a arrival.'"

Congress still at odds on where astronauts should go next

Mark Matthews - Orlando Sentinel

Where should NASA astronauts go next?

That's been the question for the past decade, when President George W. Bush ordered a since-canceled mission to return Americans to the moon. And disagreement over the answer continues to paralyze U.S. space policy, as shown by a new battle that pits U.S. House Republicans against the White House and Democrats such as U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida.

The latest controversy began this spring when the Obama administration unveiled plans to blast astronauts to an asteroid. Specifically, the program would send a robot to capture a 25-foot asteroid and drag it near the moon, so future astronauts could visit it as early as 2021.

But top Republicans on the House science committee are opposed. They announced legislation Wednesday that denied funding for such a program — which has been estimated to cost about $2.6 billion — and instead backed plans for what the bill called a "sustained human presence on the Moon and the surface of Mars."

In explaining the decision, U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., who chairs the space subcommittee and helped write the bill, said the asteroid mission was a "costly and complex distraction" to NASA's long-range exploration goals.

But he offered little to no explanation as to what the committee meant by a "sustained human presence" on the moon and Mars — or how much those missions could cost.

"It's yet to be determined," Palazzo said. "We're going to leave that to the scientists and to NASA and to the experts to tell us what we can and cannot achieve."

For NASA, the answer to that question might well be "nothing."

As written, the House bill would give the space agency about $16.9 billion next year — roughly $800 million less than what President Barack Obama has proposed. Most of the cuts, about $650 million, would come from NASA's Earth Science Division, sponsor of climate-change studies that have drawn the ire of Republicans.

But broadly, there's little difference between the two budgets — and that angers space analysts, who say the manned-space program is paralyzed by lack of funding.

"The [space] program is more screwed up now than any time in the 40-plus years I've been observing" U.S. space policy, said John Logsdon, a space expert who served on the Columbia accident board. He said NASA has "muddled" along for decades with inadequate funding.

The House and administration budgets both fund the International Space Station at $3 billion annually, and each devotes about $3 billion toward building a big new rocket and space capsule, which could be ready to launch astronauts in 2021.

Neither, however, leaves room to do much else in human exploration.

A lack of money is a principal reason why the administration has argued for the $2.6 billion asteroid mission as a cost-effective way to prepare for an eventual mission to Mars. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said as much at a congressional hearing earlier this year when he estimated that going to the moon would be three times as expensive.

Nelson has made the same argument, labeling the plan by House Republicans to cut the asteroid mission as "ridiculous" while warning against further cuts to NASA's budget. If GOP lawmakers "want to play footsie with the tea party, you might as well say sayonara to our manned space program," he said Wednesday.

And Thomas Young — a veteran of NASA and Lockheed Martin who testified Wednesday before the House science committee — was blunt when he was asked to estimate the date in which the agency could mount a manned mission to the Red Planet.

"With the current budget … I would probably say never," Young said.

House plan cuts $1B from NASA's budget
Subcommittee bill bans funding for asteroid missions

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

A NASA spending plan rolled out Wednesday by a House subcommittee would cap the agency's budget in 2014 and 2015 at $1 billion less than it is receiving this year.

NASA's development of heavy-lift rockets and next-generation crew capsules for deep space missions would get more than President Barack Obama is requesting. Investments in development of commercial U.S. spacecraft for round trips to the International Space Station would get less.

Deep cuts in planetary science, robotic exploration of Mars, and Earth science would be made. The bill would prohibit funding the administration's proposed strategy to robotically retrieve an asteroid and then send astronauts on a sample-return mission. Instead, NASA would be directed to launch human expeditions to the moon as a steppingstone to Mars.

Witnesses at a House Space Subcommittee hearing on NASA's 2013 Authorization Bill said the agency is being asked to do too much with too little. The ranking member of the full House Committee on Science, Space and Technology agreed and said the proposed spending plan is a mess.

"This is a flawed draft, starting from its funding assumptions, and I cannot support it in its present form," said Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas. "I can also predict that if passed by our (full) committee, this bill would be DOA in the Senate."

Johnson suggested that the subcommittee should reconsider the draft authorization bill before bringing it forward to the full committee.

The spending plan called for NASA's budget to be capped at $16.87 billion during each of the next two years. The bill sticks with NASA spending levels established by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which assumes Congress and the White House will not end "sequestration," or automatic spending cuts that went into effect this year. No NASA appropriations bill was enacted for fiscal year 2013. The agency is operating under a continuing resolution that allows for an estimated $17.89 billion in expenditures during the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

A Senate version of the 2013 NASA Authorization Bill is expected by month's end.

Garver: House Bill Only 'Beginning of the Debate' on Asteroid Mission

Dan Leone - Space News

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver defended a proposal to send astronauts to a captured asteroid and vowed that the agency would continue to make the case for mission in the House of Representatives, where lawmakers have targeted the project for termination.

Congress is preparing to write a new NASA authorization bill and an early draft bill from the House Science space subcommittee forbids any funding for what NASA is now calling its Asteroid Redirect Mission. Announced in April as part of the White House's 2014 budget request, the mission would use a new robotic spacecraft with solar electric propulsion systems to nudge a nearby asteroid — one from 7 meters to 10 meters in diameter and weighing up to 500 tons — into a high lunar orbit. Early next decade, astronauts would visit the corralled space rock using the Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket NASA is building.

The bill's prohibition against such a mission "is certainly a disappointment," Garver said at NASA headquarters here June 18 during the agency's Asteroid Initiative Industry and Partner Day. "[W]e've seen in the draft authorization bill from the House leadership, a lack of a recognition ... of the importance of this mission."

Garver said NASA needed to do a better job of explaining to Congress how the Asteroid Redirect Mission ties into the agency's long-term goal of sending human explorers to Mars, and to the defense of the Earth and its population against potentially destructive collisions with asteroids — initiatives that enjoy support among NASA's congressional overseers in general, and in the draft House authorization bill in particular.

"We're going to tie that in with all the ideas in this room and on the Internet to make this the best mission possible," Garver said, adding that the House bill was only "the beginning of the debate" about the mission's fate.

The next step in that debate will take place June 19, when the House Science space subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing on its draft bill, the NASA Authorization Act of 2013.

While some question where the project fits into NASA's long-term strategy for sending astronauts to Mars and points beyond, the Asteroid Retrieval Mission's place in the political scheme of things is clear. In 2010, around the time when he canceled the Constellation Moon-exploration program, U.S. President Barack Obama called on NASA to send astronauts to explore an asteroid by 2025.

When it lifted the curtain on the Asteroid Redirect Mission in April, NASA said the mission would fulfill the Obama's challenge without burdening the agency with an expensive deep space cruise to some far-orbiting asteroid.

NASA's mission is rooted in a concept detailed in an April 2012 study by the Keck Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study, published by the Keck Institute for Space Studies, part of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. Cost estimates for the mission range from $1 billion to just over $2.5 billion. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has said the mission's actual final tab likely would be somewhere in between.

Despite the House Science space subcommittee's generally dim view of the effort, NASA is pressing on with planning for the Asteroid Redirect Mission. During the June 18 Asteroid Initiative Industry and Partner Day, which was attended by representatives of major aerospace companies, NASA released a request for information seeking input on concepts and hardware that could be used both for Asteroid Redirect Mission the agency has publicized since April, and an alternative mission in which a robotic retrieval craft would visit a larger asteroid and harvest a boulder-sized piece of it to return to the Earth-Moon system.

Responses are due by July 18, NASA said. A public workshop "to obtain input from the broad community on system concepts for the Asteroid Redirect Mission and innovative approaches for planetary defense" will follow sometime in September, according a copy of the request for information NASA posted on its website. A mission concept review for the mission would happen in early 2014, "around the first of the year," NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot said at the June 18 Industry and Partner Day.

For 2014, NASA has requested $105 million in funding for early work on the Asteroid Redirect Mission. Of that $40 million is for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate to start studying the robotic asteroid retrieval craft, $45 million is for the Space Technology Mission Directorate to accelerate work on the retrieval craft's solar-electric thrusters, and $20 million is for the Science Mission Directorate to buy more viewing time on telescopes that could help NASA spot a target asteroid for the mission.

For NASA, Mars Beyond Reach Without Budget Boost

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

If NASA continues to be funded at its current levels, a manned mission to Mars could be permanently beyond reach, space industry experts say.

When asked how soon astronauts could potentially set foot on Mars under NASA's current budget constraints, Thomas Young, the former executive vice president of Lockheed Martin, says the outlook is bleak.

"With the current budget, bear with me, I would probably say never," Young said during a meeting of the U.S. House of Representative's space subcommittee Wednesday.

Steven Squyres, the principal investigator for NASA's Opportunity rover now exploring Mars, agreed. Squyres, an astronomy professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., also gave testimony before the House subcommittee.

Young said that if the public and government officials treat a mission to Mars with the importance of the first mission to the moon, it is possible to put boots on the Red Planet in a little more than a decade from now.

"Mars is harder; there are a lot of significant issues to resolve before going to Mars," Young said. "But I think that if we had the same national commitment to it [as we did to going to the moon], I would say by 2025, we could land on Mars."

The current draft of NASA's budget produced by the House asks the space agency to develop a roadmap that will define the technical capabilities needed to send humans to Mars sometime in the future.

"I think the roadmap requirements in the bill are overconstrained," Squyres said. "I think the idea of establishing a roadmap for human exploration of Mars is great. It's one of my favorite provisions in this bill, but I think it would be best to allow NASA to do that problem, to work out that roadmap in its technical details and find the best way to achieve that and then come back with a set of recommendations for what the intermediate milestones should be."

One of those intermediate steps could be another mission to the moon. However, Young doesn't think that a lunar mission is a necessary requirement for setting foot on Mars.

"I do not believe that landing on the moon or operations on the moon is a prerequisite to going to Mars," Young said. "Given Mars as the focus, it's not necessary. It's probably a significant resource consumer that will take away from the time and effort to go to Mars."

As it stands now, the budget draft expressly prohibits NASA from carrying out the asteroid-capture mission that would send a robotic spacecraft to redirect a near-Earth asteroid into lunar orbit. The mission was written into President Barack Obama's draft of the NASA budget released earlier this year.

"While the committee supports the administration's efforts to study near-Earth objects, this proposal lacks in detail a justification or support from NASA's own advisory bodies," Rep. Steven Palazzo said of the proposed mission. "Because the mission appears to be a costly and complex distraction, this bill prohibits NASA from doing any work on the project."

Under the newest draft, NASA's budget comes in at about $16.8 billion and authorizes the space agency to continue operations for another two years, Palazzo said. The bill also cuts almost $650 million in Earth sciences program funding and sets a Dec. 31, 2017, flight readiness deadline for NASA's commercial crew program.

"This authorization bill reflects a sincere effort to maximize return to the taxpayer while working to protect America's role as the world leader in space exploration," Palazzo said. "It is realistic and reflective of the hard choices we must make as a nation and provides support for agreed-upon priorities."

NASA to honor first man on the moon

Bayan Raji - Houston Business Journal

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will honor the life and historic achievements of astronaut Neil Armstrong during a memorial service on June 20 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Armstrong in 1955 joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor to NASA. After transferring to astronaut status in 1962, Armstrong served as command pilot for the 1966 Gemini 8 mission, during which he performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space, according to his NASA biography.

Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969, uttering the now-famous phrase: "That is one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

Armstrong was 82 when he died on Aug. 25, 2012, in Cincinnati due to complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, and was buried at sea in September.

Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa, fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, family members and longtime associates will pay tribute to Armstrong.

Ochoa, a California native, was the first Hispanic woman in space . She served as the center's deputy director since 2007 and became the Houston center's 11th director in November.

Fungus among us? Mold concerns delay space station cargo ship opening

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

The robotic European cargo ship Albert Einstein was opened Tuesday morning at the International Space Station, a day late because of concerns that mold may have grown inside the vehicle, NASA officials said.

The unmanned Einstein spacecraft docked at the space station Saturday, but it was not opened Monday as planned due to worries that the vehicle and its cargo had not been disinfected properly before launch. The opening of the spacecraft's hatch was moved back a day to allow the space station partner nations to discuss the situation; ultimately, the partners agreed to have the station crew disinfect 21 bags of cargo on the spaceship to ensure they were clean of mold.

Whether or not any mold actually grew on the robotic spacecraft is unclear. The concerns may have arisen because Russian space agency officials were dissatisfied with the decontamination procedures European engineers took to prepare the vehicle for flight, a European Space Agency official told NBC News.

Furthermore, the Russian concerns might have been focused on the documentation of the decontamination procedures rather than flaws in the procedures themselves, according to NBC News space analyst James Oberg.

"It's a well-established principle of spaceflight safety that, under uncertainty, you don't 'assume the best,' you make sure the worst cannot be true," Oberg said, according to NBC News. "And if you're not sure you decontaminated these items to rigorous standards, then you do it again, to make sure."

Tiny lifeforms aren't unheard of on the space station — in fact, they're often launched there on purpose for scientific experiments. One study on the International Space Station between 2006 and 2008, for instance, found that Salmonella bacteria grown there in microgravity were more virulent than their counterparts on Earth.

The Albert Einstein spacecraft, also known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)-4, is making the second-to-last of five unmanned cargo delivery flights to the station planned by the European Space Agency. The spaceship, about the size of a London double-decker bus, was packed with food for the crew, science equipment and spare parts for the orbiting laboratory. It lifted off from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana June 5.

Like the other ATV ships, Albert Einstein is disposable; it will burn up on purpose in Earth's atmosphere after leaving the station.

Six astronauts currently live and work on the International Space Station: three Russian cosmonauts, two NASA astronauts and one European astronaut from Italy, Luca Parmitano. Parmitano was especially looking forward to Albert Einstein's delivery of some Italian space food delicacies, such as tiramisu, that he's planning to share with his crewmates.

"Apart from the experiments, oxygen and water, ATV-4 also brings personal clothing and food, among which of course the culinary art of Italian cuisine will be a cherry on the cake," Parmitano wrote on his blog hosted by the European Space Agency."There is nothing like the promise of an Italian dinner that I will offer from my personal supply to entice my colleagues to work quickly and well!"

3D Printer Passes Zero-Gravity Test for Space Station Trip

Mike Wall - Space.com

A 3D printer bound for the International Space Station in 2014 has passed a series of key microgravity flight tests, the device's builders say.

Three prototype versions of space manufacturing startup Made in Space's 3D printer showed their stuff during four airplane flights that achieved brief periods of microgravity via parabolic maneuvers, company officials announced Wednesday.

"Today, we demonstrated that our 3D printers can print in microgravity," Made in Space strategic officer Mike Chen said in a statement. "Next year, we will demonstrate that they can print on the International Space Station."

3D printers use a technique called extrusion additive manufacturing to build objects layer by layer out of polymers, metals, composites and other materials. Made in Space's machine is slated to launch toward the orbiting lab in August 2014, in a collaboration with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center called the 3D Printing in Zero G Experiment (3D Print for short).

The main goal of 3D Print is to help jump-start an off-planet manufacturing capability, which proponents say could aid humanity's push out into the solar system by making living in space easier and cheaper.

"The 3D printer we're developing for the ISS is all about enabling astronauts today to be less dependent on Earth," Noah Paul-Gin, Made in Space's microgravity experiment lead, said in a statement. "The version that will arrive on the ISS next year has the capability of building an estimated 30 percent of the spare parts on the station, as well as various objects such as specialty tools and experiment upgrades."

In the recent tests, which were conducted as part of NASA's Flight Opportunity Program, the 3D printer prototypes flew aboard a modified Boeing 727 operated by the Zero-G Corp. Each two-hour flight featured 32 microgravity-inducing parabolas, Made in Space officials said.

Made in Space also conducted parabolic flight tests in 2011 to help guide the design of the current prototype, officials said.

NASA seems bullish on 3D printing's potential. For example, the space agency also recently funded the development of a prototype 3D printer designed to make space food products out of cheap raw materials that have a long shelf life.

This "3D pizza printer" could help feed astronauts on long space journeys, such as the 500-day trek to Mars and back, agency officials say.

NASA unveils new Space Station science control center at Marshall

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

NASA unveiled a new, upgraded control center in Huntsville Wednesday for science experiments being done on the now-completed International Space Station. America and its partners spent up to $100 billion building the station for research, station manager Mike Suffredini said at the dedication, "and where research is managed is right here at Marshall Space Flight Center.

"So, when you guys see everybody's eyes start to move away from Houston a little bit and start to focus on you," Suffredini said, "that's because this is where it's happening. Over one-third of the total crew hours on ISS are dedicated to research today."

The new Payload Operations Integration Center operates around the clock 365 days a year. Teams of between four and 14 controllers, depending on the hour, communicate with astronauts on the station and scientists around the world with experiments in space. Science has occupied a growing percentage of those astronauts' waking hours, NASA said, including a recent record week with 72 hours of experiments performed. More than 200 experiments are under way on the station at any time.

The public can see the new operations center, because it is one of the stops on the public tours of Marshall that depart from the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

NASA is using the space station do research in almost every scientific discipline, including medicine, biology, physics and robotics. Vaccines are being developed there, and new cancer treatment delivery systems are being tested. Headline-making findings have been sometimes frustratingly slow in coming, NASA officials acknowledge, because the scientific process of publication and peer review takes time. But they offered one example Wednesday of something new that could only be learned in space.

"About three weeks ago there was a really significant publication from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer," station chief scientist Julie Robinson said. "They've collected over 25 billion observations of galactic cosmic rays ... and, basically, what they've confirmed is that, when you look at the particles in those rays, there's a certain kind of particle there are too many of to have been created by all the processes we understand, which means there's some other process out there." Scientists are now looking at those findings for new understanding of dark matter in the universe.

The control center where these experiments are coordinated is a large, dimly lit room dominated by 22 55--inch LED wall monitors showing everything from the daily calendar to video of the station's interior and maps of its current location above Earth. Stationed at consoles are controllers whose jobs cover everything from experiments to stowage. It is someone's job in Huntsville to know where everything is on the station at any given moment. Colored light panels atop each console identify each position and allow controllers to see at a glance if each station has "gone green" on a procedure.

Marshall has housed the control center since 2001, and it is also the official hurricane season backup for station operations normally controlled in Houston. Work on the renovation started in February, and IT teams worked around the clock to lay nearly three miles of cable and create eight ultra-efficient Ethernet trunks for data transmission.

Space start-ups launch crowdfunding efforts
Now's your chance to help fund science, other missions - with some perks

James Dean - Florida Today

Tapping popular interest in space exploration and science fiction, space startups are increasingly seeking funding from a new source: You.

Through crowdfunding campaigns and other donations, companies and foundations are offering the public the chance to take pictures from space, develop a space elevator, even save the world from a cataclysmic asteroid strike.

Each believes it is "democratizing" participation in space projects long dominated by big government programs — often inspiring, but mostly out of reach beyond kid dreams of becoming an astronaut.

"Space is and should be accessible," said Tim DeBenedictis, founder of San Francisco-based Southern Stars, which raised money to launch a tiny satellite from Cape Canaveral. "It's no longer something that we just did in 1969. It shouldn't be something that only billionaires can afford. It should be something that really belongs to everybody."

The trend reached new heights recently when Planetary Resources Inc., a billionaire-backed asteroid mining venture, launched a $1 million campaign to fly the first publicly operated space telescope.

Through the online crowd-funding site Kickstarter, a $25 contribution gets you a space "selfie" — social media-speak for a self portrait —from the orbiting telescope. Upload an image to a screen on the small Arkyd 100 satellite, and a camera will take a digital picture of that image with Earth in the background.

Larger donations would enable schools or researchers to study celestial objects.

The campaign topped its initial $1 million goal late Wednesday, with contributions from more than 11,300 backers and had hopes of doubling that total with 11 days left to donate.

"People care about stuff they can actually participate in, and space for the last 50 years has been non-participatory," said Peter Diamandis, Planetary Resources co-founder, during a May 29 press conference. "This is making it cooler and more fun."

Planetary Resources' campaign echoed and magnified the one DeBenedictis launched last summer.

He hatched the idea for "SkyCube: The First Satellite Launched by You!" after witnessing the "mind-blowingly cool" final shuttle launch in 2011 and seeing a Saturn V rocket on display at Kennedy Space Center.

For the mobile app developer, the contrast was striking: These grand space programs seemed to be dying while his own industry, based on pocket-sized computers more powerful than the ones that sent men to the moon, was taking off.

How could success in one area help revitalize the other? His solution: Launch a cube satellite controlled by a smartphone, "to get across the idea that space should be as easy as your cell phone."

On Kickstarter, he offered contributors the opportunity to take pictures of Earth or send short, tweet-like messages from space for as little as $1.

The campaign raised nearly $117,000 from more than 2,700 backers, well above the original $82,500 goal.

Thanks to revenue from company apps including SkySafari and Satellite Safari, which show the locations of stars and spacecraft when you point your phone at the sky, DeBenedictis said crowdfunding wasn't necessary to pull off the estimated $250,000 mission.

But he thought it was important for supporters to share a sense of ownership in the project, beyond what they probably feel for the taxpayer-funded International Space Station.

"If you chipped in $5 or $10 to put your own satellite in orbit, it means something to you when you get a picture from that satellite or see it passing overhead," he said. "You don't own a piece of that space station in quite the same way."

SkyCube's 90-day mission is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral in November aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, and to be deployed from the ISS.

Others also have used crowdfunding to advance their space missions.

Uwingu, which seeks to fund research ("Tired of seeing space research and education always the victim of governmental budget cuts?"), beat its $75,000 goal.

LiftPort raised $110,000 from nearly 3,500 backers to help design a lunar space elevator.

NanoSatisfi raised $106,000, more than three times its goal, for a cube satellite that will enable people to perform their own experiments.

"A big part of it is they're doing something that people think is cool," said Jeff Foust, a Futron Corp. analyst and editor of The Space Review.

Crowdfunding can help startups secure early investment to develop technology that might attract funding from more traditional investors, Foust said.

It can also demonstrate broad interest and generate media buzz.

"It's not even about the money," said Planetary Resources co-founder Eric Anderson. "It proves that there is interest. That's what people need to see."

In addition to neat concepts, Foust said a key to successful crowdfunding is offering fun but affordable rewards: the chance to control a space telescope, take a unique picture, tweet from space, get a T-shirt.

Cocoa resident Charlie Prouse was among those who bought into Planetary Resources' campaign.

The game programmer contributed $99, enough for a high-definition digital picture of his family in space and to donate telescope time for educational use.

"I absolutely love the idea of people wanting to do more, to help each other to do more, for getting out into space," he said, noting that the project would also excite kids.

Not every campaign makes that connection.

The Golden Spike Co., which proposes to fly astronauts to the moon commercially, netted less than 10 percent of the $240,000 it sought ($1 for each mile to the moon) on Indiegogo, another crowd-funding site.

The rewards, like a certificate and chance to nominate mission names, apparently were not compelling enough, and people may not have understood how their money would be used.

"You have to really offer a strong case for what you're going to do with that money and what people are going to get in return for that money," Foust said.

DeBenedictis agreed that crowd-funding campaigns require dogged promotion on social and other media, and should reach outside "space people" for support.

No mission appeals to a bigger crowd than one proposing to save humanity.

"Our message to folks is that you can take part in literally saving the world," said Ed Lu, head of the B612 Foundation, which hopes to launch by 2018 an infrared telescope able to find a million asteroids big enough to wipe out a city.

The foundation is not crowdfunding, but welcomes tax-deductible contributions from $25 to $1,000 that offer admission to "Astronomer Clubs," with perks from e-mail updates to participation in technical briefings.

Lu, a former shuttle and space station astronaut, said those small contributions make an important difference, especially early on to spread word about the project and demonstrate public support.

But neither they nor a highly successful Kickstarter campaign like Planetary Resources' would come close to raising the $450 million B612 needs over 12 years — a scale more typical of a NASA mission.

"We're not trying to raise $1 million," said Lu. "To my knowledge, nobody has raised the kind of serious money that you need to do the type of thing that we're trying to do, which is 1,000 times more ambitious than what some of these other groups are trying to do."

Like other mid-sized philanthropic projects, he said, the foundation must secure large donations from wealthy individuals and corporations.

"We looked at it this way: How are we going to find a million asteroids?" he said. "It's not being done right now. And we decided that in this case, private citizens could lead the way."

In Space, No One Can Hear Your Takeout Order

Andy Isaacson - New Yorker

In April, six people entered a geodesic dome, just thirty-six feet in diameter, perched on the barren, reddish slopes of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa. They will be there until August, simulating that they are living on Mars. Their mission: to eat.

While humans are decades away from potentially becoming an invasive species on Mars, it's not too soon for NASA to think about how astronauts will feed themselves when they arrive. A question like "How much water is needed to make a beef tagine?" must be answered by engineers well in advance. Funded by NASA's Human Research Program, the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation's four-month mission is to compare classic astronaut fare of pre-made, prepackaged meals to a new system that allows for combining a limited number of shelf-stable ingredients.

The crew of six terranauts, selected from a pool of seven hundred applicants, alternate between two days of prepackaged meals and two days of dome home cooking; chef duties are executed in pairs. The pantry has been stocked with ingredients like flax seeds, sourdough starter, anchovies, egg-white crystals, dried hijiki seaweed, and canned Spam—a nod to local cuisine, as well as Pacific U.S. military history. While the crew completed cooking classes at Cornell prior to entering the habitat, no member has professional culinary experience. They are relying on a cookbook and a mission-support group, which is available for twelve hours a day to hunt down online recipes and answer operational questions. (There is, however, a twenty-minute time delay between the dome and the support group, to simulate the communication gap with Mars.)

The HI-SEAS crew documents every meal meticulously, like a group of neurotic nutritionists. They record the ingredients that comprise every meal and the weight of each dish; they take photos of every plate and note any leftovers; and they fill out surveys before and after every meal, recording hunger levels, mood, productivity, and health. Sian Proctor, a geology professor who previously lived in a simulated desolate environment as one of the stars of the reality-television series "The Colony," proclaimed that lunch on April 21st was "amazing." It was a "Martian" sweet-and-sour-chicken-and-cabbage soup, made with dehydrated veggies and freeze-dried pineapples, and coconut bread. Other favorites have included a Thai red curry with tofu, jasmine rice, and homemade raisin bread ("so good that the crew is looking forward to testing out the green curry paste") and Tibetan tsampa porridge.

In May, to celebrate the one-month anniversary of living in "the Hab," as the crew calls the habitat, Yajaira Sierra-Sastre, a materials scientist, made Spam musubi. This kind of cooking has a genuine, if intangible, value, by boosting morale. The explorer "[Ernest] Shackleton, in Antarctica, went out of his way for celebratory meals," said Kim Binsted, a project leader for HI-SEAS. "We expect that celebratory meals will be very important," she said, recalling her own experience cooking poutine for a homesick Canadian crewmate when she lived at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, another simulated Mars habitat, on Devon Island, Canada, for four months in 2007.

Yet, prepackaged meals hold an obvious appeal in space, for largely the same reason a housebound crew on Earth stocks a freezer with Hot Pockets: convenience. "Packaged foods are going to be around forever," said Michele Perchonok, who leads NASA's Advanced Food System team, at the Johnson Space Center, in Houston. "We're never giving that up completely." One of NASA's challenges for Mars, she explained, is to come up with pouched foods that can last for up to five years. Currently, the agency has around seven meat items with that kind of shelf life; it is striving to develop new ways of processing, packaging, and storing these foods.

The downside of relying primarily on prepackaged foods for a long-term surface mission is that they can cause a syndrome known as "menu fatigue," a common affliction at the International Space Station. "If you have a pre-prepared lasagna, it may be very nice lasagna, but it's only ever going to be lasagna for the rest of time," said Binsted. The gastronomically bored astronauts end up consuming fewer calories, and, ultimately, lose weight.

The general phenomenon of astronauts losing weight in space has been well documented, but researchers are still investigating its precise causes. It is clear that something about living in space mutes the sense of taste, dulling appetites. One unproven theory, based on anecdotal evidence, is that, simply, the I.S.S. is smelly: the odor dampens astronauts' sense of smell, which then affects their taste buds. To examine this theory, the HI-SEAS crew members on Mauna Loa are testing their sense of smell two different ways: they take scratch-and-sniff tests, which gauge the performance of their sense of smell, and odorant-I.D. tests, in which they try to identify a piece of food that is placed in a small, opaque tub by sniffing through a straw.

Another hypothesis points to microgravity, which causes fluid in the body to shift, leading to congestion. At NASA's Flight Analog Research Unit, in Galveston, Texas, another group of volunteers is undergoing a bed-rest study while eating the same diet as the HI-SEAS crew. To simulate microgravity conditions and its fluid-shifting, muscle-atrophying effects on Earth, these less fortunate subjects will lie horizontally, with their feet slightly elevated and their heads angled down, for weeks. During the study, which will observe any changes that occur in their nasal cavities while staring at the ceiling for so long, the volunteers will be evaluated on their ability to identify odors, and they will have the flow of air through their nostrils measured.

Ultimately, the food for any future long-term surface mission, like on Mars, will most likely be supplied by a combination of the standard prepackaged-food system and a "bio-regenerative" system based on a formula that accounts for the food's weight, volume, prep time, nutrition, and the satisfaction it delivers. A trade-off study by NASA's Advanced Food System group tested a hundred recipes and found that having some combination of the two food systems would also be most efficient in terms of the cargo load. "When you're talking about a Mars mission that goes two and a half years, and if you've got to feed a crew of six, you're looking at around twenty-two thousand pounds of food," said Perchonok. "About three thousand of that is packaging." NASA could cut down on that amount if it were to send bulk ingredients, like soybeans or wheat berries, to Mars, which could then be milled into flour to make bread or pasta. But that could require bulky equipment, like an extruder—another trade-off. "This whole mix and match, we have to figure it all out," Perchonok said.

While the HI-SEAS study will, ideally, give NASA insight into the importance of food variety and "acceptability" for the long-term goal of habitation on Mars, the results could be helpful for more immediate missions as well. "If you tell me I'm going to have meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans that are prepackaged, and all I have to is hydrate it—which takes three minutes," said Perchonok, "or I have the choice of taking some fresh vegetables out of the garden, mixing them with some tofu that I've made, and some packaged chicken and sauces, to make a meal—and that can take me an hour—is the time worth my effort for the quality of the food?" In some ways, these are just basic questions the fortunate among us deal with on Earth every day. But in space, takeout is not an option.

Space Launch System enters preliminary design review

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), the next-generation rocket built to launch crewed missions beyond Earth orbit, has formally entered the preliminary design review (PDR) phase.

The review will assess the design to date, and is expected to last several weeks. Upon completing the PDR, the system will move into the critical design phase, after which construction will begin in earnest. The SLS design effort formally began in 2012, and a first flight is planned in 2017.

"The preliminary design review is incredibly important, as it demonstrates the SLS design meets all system requirements within acceptable risk constraints, giving us the green light for proceeding

with the detailed design," says Todd May, SLS programme manager. "We are on track and meeting all the milestones necessary to fly in 2017."

The first launch vehicle will be capable of lifting 75mt into low Earth orbit (LEO), while planned modifications will allow subsequent vehicles to fly up to 130mt.

The SLS is intended to launch Lockheed Martin's Orion crew capsule, which is currently undergoing final assembly for a 2014 test flight aboard a different rocket. While the SLS/Orion pair have no defined mission as yet, likely targets include the moon, an asteroid, and ultimately Mars.

Morpheus Aborts, Then Recovers For a Second Go In Tether Test

Elizabeth Howell - Universe Today

This video should satisfy your daily need for rocket foom. Morpheus — a NASA testbed for vertical landing systems — did two firing tests this week that produced a fair amount of the usual fire and smoke, as you can see above.

You'll actually see two separate firings in that video. In the first one, the lander strayed out of its safety zone and did a soft abort. The second test, NASA stated, "was a complete success."

The first lander of the program crashed and burned in a test failure in August 2012, but officials recently praised the program for the progress it has made since then.

"Although a hardware failure led to the loss of the original vehicle last August, the failure and our internal investigation gave us valuable insight into areas that needed improvement," a Project Morpheus blog post from May stated.

"The vehicle may look largely the same as the previous version, but there are numerous changes that have been incorporated. We have now implemented 70 different upgrades to the vehicle and ground systems to both address potential contributors to the test failure, and also to improve operability and maintainability."

El Paso astronaut brings Columbia shuttle remains to UTEP
Danny Olivas to help form new research group in spacecraft safety

Elizabeth O'Hara - KFOX TV (El Paso)

If El Pasoan Danny Olivas did nothing else with his life, he would be known forever as the first El Pasoan to travel into space. But Olivas has bigger plans for his professional legacy. Those plans involve the University of Texas at El Paso.

"It's my way of being able to give back," Olivas said following a lecture at UTEP Tuesday afternoon.

A small mix of students and professors attended Olivas' talk. His father, Juan, and his wife, Marie, were also in attendance. They already knew the importance of Olivas' visit even if the other attendees did not. Olivas was on campus to announce a first-of-its-kind research institute at UTEP. Named "The Center for the Advancement of Space Safety and Mission Assurance Research" or CASSMAR, the mission of the group will allow UTEP students to develop safer and more reliable materials used in human space flight by working hands-on with pieces of debris recovered from the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

"For us to say the accident simply happened and walk away and say it will never happen again and not do something about it would be the opposite of what the crew would want us to do," Olivas said.

Olivas, working with UTEP's Dr. Steve Stafford and others from the College of Engineering, secured more than 500 pounds of Columbia's remains and had them sent to the campus in early June 2013. Olivas himself worked on the NASA team that analyzed the shuttle's pieces following the 2003 catastrophe that killed all seven crew members.

It was later determined a piece of foam struck a wing on Columbia during liftoff, causing a hole that allowed hot space gas to get inside during reentry. Olivas said the legacy left behind by Columbia is determining if better spacecraft materials would have made a difference. He believes as commercial space flight becomes more affordable and commonplace, it will be important for the average flyer to know they're safe.

"First you have to get to space in order to realize you've got a problem in space, right?" he said. "What we're trying to do for the university is to get in front of that."

Olivas said El Paso is poised to be a leader in the space industry. Its proximity to the New Mexico Spaceport, its long history with NASA, and the attractiveness of commercial space flight could launch a lucrative business here. But Olivas believes in safety first. He wants UTEP to lead the way.

"The legacy of the (Columbia) crew resides in these boxes and they are here at UTEP."

Olivas said CASSMAR is not yet funded but talks are already underway with the National Science Foundation, Virgin Galactic, Boeing and other businesses.

Moon trip cooler than saving a city?
House leaders might actually ban asteroid mission

Matt Reed - Florida Today (Opinion)

Witness the genius that is our U.S. House of Representatives.

On Tuesday, our space program pitched a surprisingly affordable plan to do something practical for Americans: Intercept an asteroid to spare millions some day from death by fireball or tsunami.

On Wednesday, a House subcommittee responded with a bill to outlaw NASA from trying.

Members of the so-called House Committee on Science, Space and Technology instead want to focus all the money on sending astronauts back to the moon.

It's a nifty mission, with a mega-rocket, space capsule and launch tower already absorbing billions of dollars at Kennedy Space Center. On the moon, astronauts could monkey-wrench any Chinese landers before possibly hopscotching to Mars in 2033.

"To me, there is no better way for our astronauts to learn how to live and work on another planet than to use the moon as a training ground," said committee chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

Divert an asteroid, too? No one wants that, Smith said.

What Americans really want, polls show, is video of astronauts planting a flag on the Red Planet and squeezing water from specially chosen rocks our rovers and geeks at CalTech are working so hard to analyze today.

Now that's worth taxpayers' dollars.

NASA chief: 'Pray'

But just to be sure his House committee had all the facts, Smith hastily called a meeting in March after a small asteroid sailed into the atmosphere at 50 times the speed of sound and blew up over a Russian town, wrecking buildings and injuring about 1,500 people.

A White House science adviser told House members, including Space Coast Congressman Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, that NASA has identified only about 10 percent of an estimated 10,000 city-killer-sized asteroids. And there's nothing we can do about any threats we'll find.

"We don't know of an asteroid that will threaten the population of the United States," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the members. "But if it's coming in three weeks, pray."

Hours after that meeting, an unrelated asteroid discovered last year passed within 17,200 miles of Earth, closer than some orbiting weather and TV satellites.

Which, of course, gave rise to legislation to ban NASA from diverting one to come much closer.

Practical prioritiesGiven the options, my priorities for the U.S. space program look like this:

Save the planet.
Explore Mars in case humankind has to abandon ship someday.
Get the most out of the International Space Station, given the lives and dollars sacrificed to build and serve it.
Send U.S. scientists tons of great new telescope images from outer space.
Visit the moon again, if necessary. I'd enjoy video from the moon as much as anyone.

Posey, however, prefers a different order. A son of the Apollo age, he introduced a bill with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, to put the moon first. Posey calls it the ultimate "military high ground," which is critical to staying ahead of the Chi-Comms.

Sequester rules

At least he can explain himself. The rest of Congress seems to betray its own bills and talking points on space every week.

You see, all this talk of priorities — going to Mars, taking the lead in human spaceflight, yadda yadda — presumes the House and Senate will pass a budget that enacts them. That's nowhere in sight.

So the law of the land today remains the "sequestration" spending plan that will shrink NASA's budget by $600 million next year — no big whoop to conservatives, but roughly four times the amount needed to start the asteroid project.

Under that law, NASA will keep plugging away on these priorities:

Launch a space telescope that has blown budget so badly it has slowed everything else.
Keep building the Space Launch System rocket ordered by the U.S. Senate to blast off from KSC some day to the moon or Mars.
Pay private companies such as SpaceX to fly boxes to the space station.
Produce neat online animation of a robotic probe lasso-ing a "city- killer" asteroid — a mission that hasn't begun and might even be banned by Congress.

We Asked Sally Ride All the Wrong Questions

Amanda Will - Mashable (Opinion)

When I set out to find the most profound things Sally Ride said throughout her career, I realized we missed a huge opportunity as journalists. Mush together the thousands of words and hours of video footage, and you'll get one really long, repetitive interview. That's because we often asked her the same questions: What's it like to be the only woman in a boys club? What advice can you give women? How can we get more girls to love science?

Perhaps that's because we couldn't move past Sally the icon and get to know Sally the person. We fixated on the fact that a woman was going to space — a first for America, but old news to the Soviets. However, we couldn't see past our own noses and treated her as the first woman in space — period.

To be fair, those questions were OK to ask in the 1980s. The problem is that we were still asking Sally those questions in 2012. We turned her into a mascot for feminism, even though she never asked for that. With a Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford, Sally was first and foremost a scientist. That was how she saw herself, and the fact that we didn't was our mistake.

Before writing this column, I took a step back and asked myself if my cynicism stemmed from my own narrow viewpoint as a writer. Then an email hit my inbox with an opportunity to interview Ashley Stroupe, a NASA engineer working on the Mars rover team. IEEE's PR hook was something to the tune of "talk to a NASA scientist who was inspired by Sally Ride."

When I got on the phone with Ashley, I had no agenda, no planned questions. I was unprepared, having dedicated so much time to watching and reading Sally Ride interviews. So that's probably why, within the first 15 seconds, I blurted, "Why did people always ask Sally about being the first American woman in space? That annoys me. Why did no one care about the science?"

I heard an exasperated sigh on the other end of the line.

"I still get a lot of that, too," Ashley said. She was the first woman to drive a rover on Mars, a fact she didn't realize until the media pointed it out.

"I inevitably get questions about women working at NASA, 'How hard is it to be a girl at NASA?' [...] The truth of the matter is I'm not the only woman — far from it — but there's still that perspective out here."

Ashley added that this notion is especially prevalent in schools.

"[Students] form their ideas of NASA from movies and TV, and the reputation there is still not very prevalent, so I try to be very patient," she said.

So, what questions should we have asked Sally?

"We should have been talking about the science. I would have asked her what drew her to physics and what part of that compelled her to go out into space," Ashley said.

Granted, some reporters asked Sally why she wanted to go to space. (To which she bluntly replied, "If someone doesn't know why, I can't explain it.") But that basic question proves those reporters didn't get it. What they should have been asking: As a physicist, what personal scientific question did you seek to answer?

It is this deep connection to something as vast as space that makes science tangible for the layman — and, more importantly, for young students, a platform Sally championed later in life. We missed an opportunity to extract this passion from Sally. We missed the chance to ask a brilliant scientist a question about the higher meaning of it all. Instead, we asked about getting her period in orbit. (Of course, there were some outliers. Some journalists balanced questions both mainstream and scientific.)

This week, the space industry celebrates two milestones: the 50-year anniversary of women in space (Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first female in space) and the 30-year mark of Sally Ride's first trip into orbit.

But why do we still recognize these dates? Because, despite all our progress in other realms of gender equality, we can't get past the division in science. More so, the public perception of women in stereotypical male roles remains narrow. (Just ask Elise Andrews of 'I Fucking Love Science'.)

When equality is truly engrained into our DNA, no one will pay attention to the gender of the person behind the science. It will just be incredible work — and we won't need anniversaries to recognize that.

Is Commercial Space Virginia's next jobs frontier?

David Kerr - Stafford County (VA) Sun (Opinion)

When Virginia, working with NASA in 1998, wanted to have Wallops Island, on our Eastern Shore, designated a Space Port, I remember thinking that it sounded a bit silly. After all Wallop's Island was a test facility that for years was used to launch nothing larger than a few small suborbital missiles for test and meteorological purposes. The idea that it could launch rockets with large-scale payloads seemed outlandish. One of those grand economic development ideas that sound good in a press release but never comes to much.

But, that's not what happened at Wallops. The Virginia Space Port, now called the Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Port, is in the forefront of private-sector space technology. In April, Orbital Dynamics, a well-known satellite and rocket manufacturer based near Dulles Airport, launched the largest-ever privately built spacecraft. The Antares rocket, carrying the Cygnus spacecraft, was 133 feet tall and weighed more than a half a million pounds. April's launch was a test to demonstrate the company's ability to place in orbit a vehicle capable of resupplying the International Space Station. It worked. But, that's just the test.

Later this summer Orbital Dynamics will launch another resupply vehicle, this time stocked with 1,600 pounds of provisions and supplies that will automatically dock with the space station. And with that Virginia will be playing an active part in our manned spaceflight program. Just like Cape Canaveral, Fla., Edwards Air Force Base in California and Houston, Texas. The company has a contract for eight more missions to supply the station. That should keep the Wallops operation in business for some time to come. However, there are bigger plans in the works. Virginia has an aggressive plan to keep investing in Wallops and expanding its offerings to other spaceflight companies.

There is, however, more to this than the drama and excitement of launching a spacecraft. That's already gotten a lot of attention. There is, however, more to the story. Space exploration takes in a wide range of specialties and industries. There are the propulsion systems, the advanced materials used in constructing the spacecraft, the communications and navigation systems, the advanced computers and automation systems, and the logistics of organizing and managing a launch.

While much of Orbital's work is based at its headquarters, its manufacturing sites and at the launch facility, it still contracts with a wide range of companies. There are a number of subcontractors and consultants in Northern Virginia and at least one here in Stafford. That, however, is probably just the beginning. Private-sector space represents the beginning of an entirely new industry for the commonwealth. And the timing, with cuts in defense spending, couldn't be better. Our workforce is technical, with skills in aerospace, communications and information technology.

That's just the kind of expertise an emerging commercial space industry is going to need.

END

More detailed space news can be found at:

http://spacetoday.net/
http://www.bulletinnews.com/nasa/

-KjH
Kyle Herring
NASA Public Affairs
"Well I'm just a lonely acrobat, the live wire is my trade"

Keep the shuttle flying

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - June 20, 2013 and JSC Today

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