Monday, June 24, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - June 24, 2013 and JSC Today



Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: June 24, 2013 6:10:44 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - June 24, 2013 and JSC Today

Some of the links on the left side of JSC Today in dark blue are behind the JSC firewall  so access will be restricted.

 

 

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. Shuttle Knowledge Console (SKC) v5.0

The JSC Chief Knowledge Officer and the Engineering Directorate are pleased to announce the fifth release of SKC. This release includes:

    • The new image rotator that gets new images daily
    • An update to the SIRMA archive that includes 15 additional records
    • 75,000 new files in the Shuttle Document Archive (75 GB)
    • The Space Flight Operational Contract document archive, consisting of 192 documents
    • Shuttle Postflight Videos, consisting of 127 videos
    • Shuttle Flight Documents, consisting of 22 documents collected from the experiences of individuals within the Space Shuttle Program (SSP)

To date, 1.13TB of information, with 3.82 million documents of SSP knowledge, has been captured. If you are aware of data that still needs to be captured, contact Howard Wagner or Brent Fontenot. Click the "Submit Feedback" button located on the top of the site navigation and give us your comments and thoughts.

Brent J. Fontenot x36456 https://skc.jsc.nasa.gov/Home.aspx

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  1. NASA TV to Air Space Station Spacewalk Today

NASA TV will provide live coverage when two members of the Expedition 36 crew venture outside the International Space Station today, 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. 

For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111 http://www.nasa.gov/station

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  1. JSC & WSTF Remote Network Access VPN Updates

The JSC and White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) Remote Access Virtual Private Network (VPN) systems were upgraded Saturday, June 22.

During this activity, the Information Resources Directorate performed upgrades that removed VPN NDC password login requirements, added a PIV (smart card) authentication VPN option and replaced the Juniper Network Connect client with Junos Pulse.

For the latest information on JSC and WSTF Remote Network Access VPN services:

    • While on-site and/or connected to the JSC institutional network, click here 
    • While off-site and not connected to the JSC institutional network, click here

For assistance:

    • Contact the ESD Helpdesk at 1-877-677-2123 (option 2) for RSA PIN resets
    • For any other assistance, please contact the IRD Customer Support Center at 281-244-6367 (option 6)

For other questions regarding this service, please contact Michael Patterson.

JSC-IRD-Outreach x41334

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   Organizations/Social

  1. Free Tour of NASA Aircraft for Women in Aviation

NASA Aircraft Tour

Friday, July 12, at the Ellington Field - NASA Hanger - 3:30 to 6 p.m.

Please join WAISCC and NASA for a free tour of NASA aircraft at Ellington Field. You can't go wrong looking at some super-cool NASA planes. Come see the T-38 astronaut trainer jets, WB-57 high-altitude research plane, and C-9 (a.k.a., the Vomit Comet).

Space is limited to Women in Aviation members and interested members. U.S. citizens only.

Please RSVP by July 10. Send RSVPs or call 281-407-4AIR (4247).

Event Date: Friday, July 12, 2013   Event Start Time:3:30 PM   Event End Time:6:00 PM
Event Location: Ellington Field Airport

Add to Calendar

Shawna Brownhill 281-407-4247 http://www.wai-spacecity.org

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  1. SWE-TSC Brunch & Learn: Capsule Parachute Assembly

Join us this Saturday for a brunch and learn with Capsule Parachute Assembly System (CPAS) Analysis team members Leah M. Romero and Kristin Bledsoe! The CPAS for the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle Orion spacecraft is engaged in a multi-year design and test campaign to qualify a parachute recovery system for human use on the Orion Spacecraft. Test and simulation techniques have evolved concurrently to keep up with the demands of a complex system.

Event Date: Saturday, June 29, 2013   Event Start Time:10:00 AM   Event End Time:12:00 PM
Event Location: La Brisa 501 N. Wesley League City, TX 77573

Add to Calendar

Irene Chan x41378

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   Jobs and Training

  1. Job Opportunities

Where do I find job opportunities?

Both internal Competitive Placement Plan (CPP) and external JSC job announcements are posted on the Human Resources (HR) portal and USAJOBS website. Through the HR portal, civil servants can view summaries of all the agency jobs that are currently open at: https://hr.nasa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/employees_home/239/job_opportu...

To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies, please call your HR representative.

Lisa Pesak x30476

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  1. Financial Wellness: Topic-Specific Series

Financial Wellness offerings continue this week with estate planning, insurance and investments. Join us in a conference room near you!

FW108 and 208: Estate Planning and Being an Executor

Learn the basic legal jargon, planning concepts, estate settlement, preparing an estate and associated documents such as wills, health directives, family legacy and personal instructions.

FW203: Insurance - What If ... Protect Your Financial Assets

Few people understand the use of insurance in their investment portfolio. Learn what you need, how much, questions to ask when purchasing long-term care, disability, personal liability coverage and more.

FW204: Maximize your Investments

Learn about types of risk, your risk tolerance, how to construct your portfolio and monitor your investments.

Webinar series:

Webinars and webinar registration will start in July!

June details are available here.

July details are available here.

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

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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:

·         8 am Central (9 EDT) – Expedition 36 Russian Spacewalk Coverage

·         8:35 am Central (9:35 EDT) –EVA start time (Fyodor Yurchikhin & Alexander Misurkin)

 

Human Spaceflight News

Monday, June 24, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Russian Cosmonauts Prepare for Spacewalk

 

RIA Novosti

 

Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin will perform a planned six-hour spacewalk on Monday afternoon, a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center said. The two ISS flight engineers will open the hatch to the International Space Station's (ISS) Pirs docking compartment and float outside at 17:40 Moscow time [1:40 p.m. GMT] on Monday. The spacewalk will be broadcast live by NASA. "According to the schedule, the spacewalk will end at 23:40 Moscow time [7:40 p.m. GMT]," the spokesman said.

 

Russian ISS crewmembers to conduct maintenance spacewalk

 

Itar-Tass

 

Two International Space Station crew members - Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin - will make this year's second spacewalk under the programme of the ISS Russian segment. "Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin should open the exit hatch on the Pirs docking module and start conducting the spacewalk at 18:35 Moscow time. They will float outside the station for over 6 hours," the Mission Control Centre outside Moscow told Itar-Tass.

 

NASA Emphasizes Planetary Protection For Asteroid Capture

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

 

Faced with congressional recalcitrance over its plan to capture a small asteroid and nudge it into lunar orbit for hands-on study, NASA is emphasizing the link between finding a target and cataloging near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could devastate the planet if they hit. As a bonus, top agency managers say the mission could advance human-exploration capabilities even it does not catch a space rock. The first flight of the Orion capsule with a crew on board will be to the high retrograde lunar orbit planned for a captured asteroid, they say, because of the lessons it can teach or future missions deeper into the Solar System.

 

NASA officials debut a new machine in New Orleans

 

Kevin McGill - Associated Press

 

NASA officials in New Orleans publicly unveiled a new, three-story-tall cylindrical structure Friday that is a key component in constructing heavy-lift rockets for the nation's space program. It's called the "vertical weld center." The heavy metal framework holds state-of-the-art automated welding equipment, around which the Boeing Co. will build a major component of rockets for NASA's new Space Launch System: the "core stage of the SLS rockets."

 

Orbital Frustrated By Lack Of Antares Engine Options

 

Amy Butler - Aviation Week

 

Orbital Sciences is scrambling to find a liquid-propulsion rocket engine that is in production and available for export to the U.S. to pave the way for its new Antares rocket, the centerpiece of a bid to compete for commercial and government work for decades to come. But just as NASA is finally turning to commercial launch providers, the Virginia-based company is running into roadblocks that jeopardize the rocket's future after only one launch. Orbital hopes to sell Antares well beyond the 16 missions it has already won through NASA's first Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract. But, industry officials say the company must solidify a propulsion path by early next year in order to compete for the next batch of CRS missions for NASA. That contract is potentially worth billions and would help keep Antares in production as Orbital chases its ultimate goal of winning contracts to launch U.S. military and intelligence satellites.

 

Aerojet Rocketdyne To Support Competing Hydrocarbon Engines

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aerospace Daily

 

Aerojet Rocketdyne's merger leaves the company with two entries in the NASA competition for a propulsion system to power advanced strap-on boosters for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) in development, and the company apparently will keep both in play until the market makes a choice. Aerojet has been building on work with the U.S. Air Force to propose a 1-million-lb.-thrust, hydrocarbon-fuel engine designated the AJ-1E6 for the NASA application, which would use four of the staged ox-rich combustion cycle rocket engines to power each of the twin strap-on boosters needed to get the SLS to the 130-metric-ton capability mandated by Congress.

 

Aerospace Merger Means Big Savings for U.S. Government, Company Says

 

Stephen Clark - Space.com

 

Executives with Aerojet Rocketdyne, in its first week since forming from the merger of two rocket propulsion companies, said Tuesday the new firm would save the U.S. government $1 billion over a decade and be responsive to the demands of customers, despite its dominance in the market for liquid-fueled rocket engines in the United States. Warren Boley, president and CEO of Aerojet Rocketdyne, said here at the 2013 Paris Air Show that the combined company promised the U.S. government $100 million in acquisitions savings per year in order to help achieve the endorsement of the Pentagon as officials sought approval for the merger, which was finalized on June 14.

 

Sochi 2014 Olympic Torch to Travel in Space

 

RIA Novosti

 

The torch carrying the Olympic flame will make an interstellar pit stop at the International Space Station as part of the Sochi 2014 torch relay, Russian Olympic officials confirmed on Monday. As part of the ambitious plan, which was signed by Sochi chief organizer Dmitry Chernyshenko and Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Russia's space agency, the torch will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakhstan on November 7, meaning the relay will take the unusual step of leaving the Olympic host country even before venturing hundreds of kilometers into space.

 

Home of space dreams

 

Zou Hong - China Daily

 

Shenzhou X manned spacecraft blasted off on June 12 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, which is also home to scientists, soldiers and their families. Zou Hong unveils daily life at the center in Gansu province. The "Cape Canaveral of China" - Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, also known as Dongfeng Space Center - is located at the depth of Badain Jaran Desert, 210 kilometers from the northeast of Jiuquan city, Gansu province.

 

Astronaut Karen Nyberg attended her high school class reunion from space

 

Becky Parker - WDAY TV - (Fargo)

 

It's always the big question at the class reunion, who traveled the farthest to be there? Several members of the Henning High School class of '88 came a long ways to get home this weekend, but Karen Nyberg takes the cake. She attended from a few hundred miles in the sky, straight from the International Space Station. Nyberg wasn't about to let a "little" obstacle, like being in outer space, keep her from the Henning High School class of '88 reunion this weekend.

 

Astronaut Attends High School Reunion From Space

 

Gillian Mohney - ABC News

 

When astronaut Karen Nyberg attended her 25th high school reunion, she didn't just bring photos of her husband or child — instead she was able to show her classmates a view of Earth from 200 miles above its surface. Nyberg, 42, is in the middle of a six-month stay on the International Space Station and managed to attend her reunion at Henning High School in Henning, Minn., via video link. Nyberg gave her former classmates and their families a tour of the space station and even a glimpse of the sun rising over the earth in space.

 

Meet one of NASA's newest astronauts now (before she heads to Mars)

 

Mary Quinn O'Connor - Fox News

 

Ever dreamed of being an astronaut? It wouldn't hurt, but you don't even have to be a rocket scientist to make that dream come true. Just ask Jessica Meir. NASA just announced its new 2013 Astronaut Candidate Class, selecting eight candidates from the second largest pool in NASA history -- more than 6,100 applicants, hoping against hope for one of the most elite jobs around. Only a handful of people have walked with the stars, after all. Being selected was unbelievable, explained newly minted astronaut candidate Jessica Meir. "I was shocked," Meir told FoxNews.com. "It's almost hard to believe. Because it's something you've been dreaming and thinking about for an incredibly long time."

 

The Real Housewives of Houston:

New book traces secrets, struggles & triumphs of first "astrowives"

 

Tarra Gaines - CultureMap.com

 

When did Houston become Space City? Was it when the Johnson Space Center opened? Or can the genesis be traced back to when Houston welcomed the Mercury Seven astronauts and their families to town and called them our own? Those men were heroes to a nation, which also held up their wives as the ideal American women. These "Astrowives" were seen as devoted mothers and helpmates who approved of their husband's dreams and efforts "a hundred percent," as John Glenn described of his wife Ann during the first Mercury Seven press conference in 1959.

 

Life for spouses of NASA pioneers wasn't always as it was portrayed

 

Margaret Quamme - Columbus Dispatch

 

In 1959, seven military test pilots were catapulted to fame when they were chosen to become the first U.S. astronauts. So were their wives, who until then had lived ordinary lives at military bases in Ohio, California, Maryland and Virginia. In the intriguing, pleasantly gossipy and often-touching The Astronaut Wives Club, Lily Koppel follows the wives and the dozens of others who followed them as the space program was expanded through the 1960s and early '70s. Her book is based largely on interviews with most of the surviving wives (or former wives) of astronauts, with the notable exception of John Glenn's wife, Annie, who declined to participate.

 

Secrets of Astronaut Wives: Q&A With Author Lily Koppel

 

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

 

Many of the untold stories of the space race reside with the women. Now, dozens of the wives of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts have shared their experiences in a new book, "The Astronaut Wives Club" (Grand Central Publishing, June 2013). SPACE.com caught up with author Lily Koppel to learn what life was like for an astronaut wife during the 1960s and '70s, from stress and sacrifice to glamour and glory…

 

Star Trek creator to become part of space archive

 

Associated Press

 

Remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife and the actor who played Scotty will get a final resting place in the "Final Frontier" under plans announced Thursday to launch a space archive. The project is being developed by the Houston company Celestis, which for years has offered a service that takes partial remains into space and then brings them back. Celestis announced the new project a day before a launch from Spaceport America takes its 1,000th capsule into space. Ashes from the Roddenberrys have been on previous flights. But this time they will stay in space. Plans call for the archive to be launched with a large experimental solar sail planned by NASA next year. The public can pay to have digital files, photos and DNA samples included. Also on the mission will be hair from science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

(NO FURTHER TEXT)

 

Astronaut Memorial Foundation stands to gain

Once-split license tag cash likely will soon head in total to AMF

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Last year's demise of the Technology Research and Development Authority could give a boost to the local foundation that honors fallen astronauts. Since 1989, the TRDA collected half the revenue from sales of Challenger-Columbia license plates. The rest went to the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, creator of the state's first specialty tag after the Challenger disaster in 1986.

 

Congressman disputes view on asteroid mission

 

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) - Florida Today

 

(Smith is chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee)

 

Public Interest Editor Matt Reed's recent column, "Moon trip cooler than saving a city?" incorrectly said the Obama administration's proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) is intended to "intercept an asteroid to spare millions some day from death by fireball or tsunami." This exaggerated statement ignores the facts. Congress directed NASA in 2005 to identify and track 90 percent of asteroids larger than 140 meters by 2020. Near Earth Objects (NEOs) of this size are ones that could cause significant damage, and NASA still has work to do to accomplish this goal.

 

Congress should give OK for asteroid research plan

 

Daytona Beach News-Journal (Editorial)

 

A U.S. House of Representatives science panel is making a mistake in not taking the idea of asteroid study more seriously. The House panel has dropped funding for NASA's asteroid-retrieval program proposed in President Barack Obama's 2014 budget. The House panel's proposed budget favors manned missions back to the moon, and then Mars. NASA wants to "lasso" a small asteroid and bring it into orbit around the moon. Later missions, at some point in the 2020s, would send astronauts to the small asteroid for study. It is unclear as to why the House doesn't like the idea. Perhaps it sounds far-fetched. But so did the moon mission in 1960. And the asteroid study would cost less than a manned moon mission, or a manned mission to Mars.

 

New astronauts step into plenty of unknowns

 

John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)

 

So, where are these eight new astronauts going? NASA introduced a new class of U.S. space explorers earlier this week. Eight super-achievers in life. Eight fascinating human beings. Eight of America's best and brightest. And, eight space explorers with no place to go explore. They're an incredible bunch, as every astronaut class is. They're diverse, four women and four men. There are five military officers. There's another former naval aviator who's become a tech-industry innovator. There's a Harvard assistant professor who's studied everything from medicine to space travel to oceanography. And, there's a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Station Chief based in American Samoa.

 

Is The Selection Of More Women Astronauts A Good Sign?

 

Liza Donnelly - Forbes (Opinion)

 

We just heard news that half of NASA's eight new astronaut recruits are women.  Great! Things are looking up for women, figuratively and literally. And then I got to wondering: is this because the pay for being an astronaut is now lower than previously? Is the prestige not as great as it once was? Is there another reason why men aren't dominating this field?  Is it less glamorous now that the shuttle program is no more?

 

Spacecraft model stirs memories from childhood

 

Dave Miller - Killeen Daily Herald (Editorial)

 

Once a space geek, always a space geek. I realized that statement applies to me while I was surfing the Web a couple of weeks ago. I was looking at a site that sells diecast models of cars, planes and motorcycles, when I came across the section for spacecraft. I scrolled down, and there it was — a 1/72 scale model of the two-man Gemini spacecraft that NASA sent into space in the mid-'60s. I broke into a huge grin. I just had to buy it. Seeing that highly detailed model took me back to my childhood, when I first got hooked on all things space.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Russian Cosmonauts Prepare for Spacewalk

 

RIA Novosti

 

Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin will perform a planned six-hour spacewalk on Monday afternoon, a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center said.

 

The two ISS flight engineers will open the hatch to the International Space Station's (ISS) Pirs docking compartment and float outside at 17:40 Moscow time [1:40 p.m. GMT] on Monday. The spacewalk will be broadcast live by NASA.

 

"According to the schedule, the spacewalk will end at 23:40 Moscow time [7:40 p.m. GMT]," the spokesman said.

 

It will be the first spacewalk for Misurkin and sixth for Yurchikhin. Yurchikhin will wear an Orlan-MK spacesuit with red stripes while Misurkin will wear a suit with blue stripes. Both will be equipped with helmet cameras to provide close-up views of their work.

 

The Russian cosmonauts are to replace a second fluid flow control valve panel on the station's Zarya module (the first one was replaced in 2004) and dismantle the "Photon-Gamma" equipment installed outside the ISS in 2007.

 

"In addition, the cosmonauts will also test the Kurs automated docking system and install clamps to later hold power cables on the Zarya cargo module," the spokesman said.

 

These preparations are needed for the future arrival of a new Russian laboratory module later this year.

 

The spacewalkers are also scheduled to install handholds for future spacewalk activities and retrieve the results of scientific experiments from the space station's exterior.

 

It will be the 169th spacewalk in support of station assembly and maintenance and the third outside the station so far this year.

 

Russian ISS crewmembers to conduct maintenance spacewalk

 

Itar-Tass

 

Two International Space Station crew members - Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin - will make this year's second spacewalk under the programme of the ISS Russian segment.

 

"Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin should open the exit hatch on the Pirs docking module and start conducting the spacewalk at 18:35 Moscow time. They will float outside the station for over 6 hours," the Mission Control Centre outside Moscow told Itar-Tass.

 

Both cosmonauts will wear Orlan-MK computerized space suits with LCD displays that will direct what systems and in what sequence should be controlled before the spacewalk's start and what to do in an emergency situation.

 

This will be Misurkin's first spacewalk, while Yurchikhin has already made five spacewalks lasting a total of 31 hour and 54 minutes.

 

They will have to replace a panel of a liquid flow regulator at the Zarya cargo block, to install scientific equipment at the mini-research module Poisk, to dismantle a panel of space experiment Vynoslovost (Endurance) and to remove Foton-Gamma equipment from a multipurpose workstation of the service module Zvezda.

 

Other members of the crew - Pavel Vinogradov of Russia and NASA astronauts Karen Nyberg and Christopher Cassidy and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency - will safeguard spacewalkers.

 

NASA Emphasizes Planetary Protection For Asteroid Capture

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

 

Faced with congressional recalcitrance over its plan to capture a small asteroid and nudge it into lunar orbit for hands-on study, NASA is emphasizing the link between finding a target and cataloging near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could devastate the planet if they hit.

 

As a bonus, top agency managers say the mission could advance human-exploration capabilities even it does not catch a space rock. The first flight of the Orion capsule with a crew on board will be to the high retrograde lunar orbit planned for a captured asteroid, they say, because of the lessons it can teach or future missions deeper into the Solar System.

 

"Even if there isn't an asteroid there, there are certainly opportunities to test all the systems that we've got," says Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot. "There are all sorts of things that we are going to test for the first time."

 

Lightfoot, Deputy Administrator Lori Garver and the agency's top four mission directors briefed industry on the asteroid-capture plan June 18, announcing a broad-brush "grand challenge" to "find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them."

 

Central to that effort is a request for information (RFI) released during the industry workshop seeking ideas from any source in the U.S. and abroad that could help detect NEOs that might hit Earth some day, and help develop the asteroid-capture mission included in the agency's fiscal 2014 budget request (AW&ST April 29, p. 36) as a step toward avoiding a collision.

 

The RFI seeks suggestions in six areas—observing asteroids from the ground and space; concepts for "redirecting" asteroids weighing as much as 1,000 tons into translunar space; demonstrating ways to deflect asteroids large enough to do significant damage to Earth in a collision; systems for capturing a small asteroid; crew systems for exploring an asteroid, including suits and translation aids such as the Russian Strela boom used on the International Space Station (ISS) (see illustration); and partnerships for accomplishing the work.

 

"NASA is interested in ideas and concepts for potential partnerships to support both aspects of the Asteroid Initiative: enhancements to planetary defense activities and the Asteroid Redirect Mission," the RFI states.

 

Responses to that RFI, due July 18, will be factored into the agency's asteroid-capture mission formulation later that month, which ultimately will feed the fiscal 2015 NASA budget request, Lightfoot says. But that presumes Congress will fund the mission in the budget request currently under review, which carries a $105-million line item to get the asteroid-capture mission off the ground.

 

Included in that figure is an extra $20 million for the agency's ongoing effort to spot potentially dangerous asteroids. That account already was funded at $20 million, and doubling it could boost improvements to the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System for full-sky surveys, and perhaps allow a restart of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Wise) spacecraft, which ran out of hydrogen coolant in 2010 but has some residual capability to locate NEOs.

 

Increased emphasis on finding and cataloging threatening NEOs plays into the agenda advanced by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which has held two hearings on the asteroid threat. But in the first draft of its NASA reauthorization bill, the panel's Republican leadership included language forbidding NASA from spending any money to capture an asteroid and it vows to work with GOP appropriators to kill the mission. Instead, they call for a return to the lunar surface as part of a comprehensive plan to land humans on Mars.

 

William Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for human exploration and operations, says an asteroid-capture mission is probably the best NASA can afford at current funding levels to advance human space travel beyond the ISS. Like Lightfoot, he sees the deep retrograde lunar orbit as a place where systems on Orion and the heavy-lift Space Launch System can be flight-tested in the kind of environment they would face on trips to more distant destinations, including main-belt asteroids and Mars. High-power Hall thrusters and other advanced in-space propulsion systems already in development would also get a technology "pull" from an asteroid mission, and the scientific haul from a primordial piece of the Solar System would be invaluable. That synergy among existing NASA efforts, and with the congressional desire to protect Earth from asteroid impacts, may help boost the chances the program ultimately will win funding on Capitol Hill, says Garver.

 

"I think aligning the mission better with the protecting-the-planet aspects of it could be beneficial, but we understand that they have a difference of opinion on the next human destination," she says. "I think what will help us the most is being able to explain. . . how great the alignment of this is with what we are currently doing, and the very small investment it would take to have an asteroid be there at the same time that we would be going there anyway."

 

NASA officials debut a new machine in New Orleans

 

Kevin McGill - Associated Press

 

NASA officials in New Orleans publicly unveiled a new, three-story-tall cylindrical structure Friday that is a key component in constructing heavy-lift rockets for the nation's space program.

 

It's called the "vertical weld center." The heavy metal framework holds state-of-the-art automated welding equipment, around which the Boeing Co. will build a major component of rockets for NASA's new Space Launch System: the "core stage of the SLS rockets."

 

Each core stage will be more than 200 feet tall with a diameter of 27.5 feet. Each will be assembled in sections around the vertical weld center. Each stage will have nine sections made of eight individual curved aluminum panels welded together by the machinery that glides up and down within the cylinder — "a quarter mile's worth of welding," in the words of Boeing executive Rich Navarro, who spoke at Friday's ribbon cutting.

 

NASA and Boeing officials, joined by local government officials, held the event in a building that holds the new machinery at the Michoud Assembly Facility in eastern New Orleans.

 

The Michoud facility was chosen by NASA in 2011 to manufacture SLS components — a much-needed boost to the area's economy after the end of the space shuttle program. Michoud employed thousands in the 1980s constructing the huge external fuel tanks for the shuttles.

 

Currently about 250 people are working on the SLS program at Michoud. That is expected to grow to between 400 and 500 as the project progresses, said Kim Henry, a public affairs officer for the Space Launch System. She said the current contract calls for two core stages to be built at Michoud.

 

NASA unveiled plans for the Space Launch System in 2011, describing a rocket that could take people or cargo into deep space on long-duration missions. Diagrams show a rocket resembling those NASA relied on before the space shuttle program. But it is to be "the most powerful rocket in history," according to NASA.

 

Orbital Frustrated By Lack Of Antares Engine Options

 

Amy Butler - Aviation Week

 

Orbital Sciences is scrambling to find a liquid-propulsion rocket engine that is in production and available for export to the U.S. to pave the way for its new Antares rocket, the centerpiece of a bid to compete for commercial and government work for decades to come. But just as NASA is finally turning to commercial launch providers, the Virginia-based company is running into roadblocks that jeopardize the rocket's future after only one launch.

 

Orbital hopes to sell Antares well beyond the 16 missions it has already won through NASA's first Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract. But, industry officials say the company must solidify a propulsion path by early next year in order to compete for the next batch of CRS missions for NASA. That contract is potentially worth billions and would help keep Antares in production as Orbital chases its ultimate goal of winning contracts to launch U.S. military and intelligence satellites.

 

The NK-33 engine that powered Antares' first flight was built decades ago by Russia's Kuznetsov Design Bureau and is no longer in production. Further, Orbital is uncertain about the quality of Aerojet's remaining stockpile of 23 NK-33s, beyond those set aside for NASA's CRS-1. Aerojet Rocketdyne is Orbital's primary subcontractor and overhauls the old NK-33 engines into a configuration for Antares, dubbed AJ-26.

 

Orbital officials say its only current alternative is the RD-180 engine made in Russia by NPO Energomash. But the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which operates the U.S. Air Force's Atlas V and Delta IV fleets, holds exclusive rights in the U.S. to buy the RD-180.

 

Over the last four years, Orbital has inquired about purchasing the RD-180 from ULA, RD Amross and Energomash. "We could never get to first base on that," says Michael Hamel, the company's senior vice president of corporate strategy and development. Requests for support from the Air Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense and Congress were also met with silence, company officials say.

 

They suggest that these roadblocks amount to anticompetitive practices by ULA, which holds a monopoly for large government launches and uses the RD-180 to power the Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV).

 

Sparked by Orbital's concerns, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether ULA's exclusive arrangement with Russia's RD Amross violates antitrust laws.

 

But, the company is not waiting for the outcome of this review to move forward. Officials are already reviewing alternatives, though the only viable option is currently the RD-180, Hamel says. Orbital has also looked at the RD-181, RD-191 and RD-193. These are either still in development, or not yet approved for export. The RD-191 is the propulsion system being developed for Russia's Angara rocket.

 

Meanwhile, worried about losing its exclusive business with Antares, Aerojet Rocketdyne's president, William Boley, is offering to restart NK-33 production with Kuztnetsov. Boley says in order to start deliveries as soon as 2016, when NASA's CRS-2 contract moves forward, he would need to have a deal with Orbital by this fall.

 

The total production rate depends on the demand for Antares, but Boley says it is likely to be at least 4-6 engines annually. The strategy is to use the new engines for Antares as quickly as possible, and draw from the remaining 23 NK-33 engines requiring overhaul as a "buffer" if problems arise in restarting the production process, says Boley.

 

Hamel says that unlike upstart Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Orbital does not intend to compete against ULA in the large-payload market. Antares is designed to reopen a market once served by the workhorse Boeing Delta II, which was used to launch GPS and defense weather satellites in the 1990s.

 

If successful, Antares could impact more than just the business of other launch providers by opening the door for satellite manufacturers to take advantage of new technologies to build smaller, but equally or more capable spacecraft, Hamel says. Such a shift could also threaten traditional defense and satellite manufacturing by large primes, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who sized their spacecraft to utilize as much of the available volume and thrust of these rockets to maximize their return on investment in launch costs.

 

Aerojet Rocketdyne To Support Competing Hydrocarbon Engines

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aerospace Daily

 

Aerojet Rocketdyne's merger leaves the company with two entries in the NASA competition for a propulsion system to power advanced strap-on boosters for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) in development, and the company apparently will keep both in play until the market makes a choice.

 

Aerojet has been building on work with the U.S. Air Force to propose a 1-million-lb.-thrust, hydrocarbon-fuel engine designated the AJ-1E6 for the NASA application, which would use four of the staged ox-rich combustion cycle rocket engines to power each of the twin strap-on boosters needed to get the SLS to the 130-metric-ton capability mandated by Congress.

 

Meanwhile, Rocketdyne is teamed with Dynetics Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., on a $73.3 million study contract to demonstrate components of an Apollo-era F-1 kerosene main engine, updated with modern manufacturing techniques, to power the advanced boosters. At 1.8 million lb. of thrust, only two of the big old engines would be needed for each booster.

 

"We'll stay focused on what customers want," Warren Boley, Jr., president and CEO of the merged companies and former president of Aerojet, told reporters in a telephone press conference June 18.

 

The F-1 uses the gas-generator cycle, which burns some fuel to spin the turbomachinery and then vents it off the vehicle in what is also called an open cycle. Modern Russian engines use the staged combustion cycle, which burns some of the fuel in a preburner to turn the turbomachinery, and then injects the plume back into the combustion chamber to retain its energy as the rocket fires.

 

"In the launch business, the new American engine, what happens with staged, ox-rich combustion is a focus for both companies," Boley said. "The debate between gas generator cycle and staged ox-rich will get resolved."

 

Long-term, Boley said, he wants the new company to develop "a complete technology suite that satisfies all customers, affordably." Also in the works for the combined companies are a throttleable, restartable solid-fuel motor that will "look like a liquid" fuel engine, he said, and a Mach 4 test of its air-breathing hypersonic propulsion technology "this year."

 

The company is also interested in using its advanced solar-electric propulsion technology in NASA's planned effort to capture a small asteroid and nudge it into a high lunar orbit.

 

Aerospace Merger Means Big Savings for U.S. Government, Company Says

 

Stephen Clark - Space.com

 

Executives with Aerojet Rocketdyne, in its first week since forming from the merger of two rocket propulsion companies, said Tuesday the new firm would save the U.S. government $1 billion over a decade and be responsive to the demands of customers, despite its dominance in the market for liquid-fueled rocket engines in the United States.

 

Warren Boley, president and CEO of Aerojet Rocketdyne, said here at the 2013 Paris Air Show that the combined company promised the U.S. government $100 million in acquisitions savings per year in order to help achieve the endorsement of the Pentagon as officials sought approval for the merger, which was finalized on June 14.

 

GenCorp Inc., the parent company of Aerojet, purchased Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne from United Technologies Corp. in a deal valued at $550 million.

 

The savings are vital to the sustainment of U.S. military and NASA satellite programs, which have been hamstrung by rising launch costs over the last few years.

 

Boley said the company's commitment to $1 billion in cost savings over the next 10 years is being reviewed by two Defense Department contracting agencies.

 

"We're willing to stand up and be counted on that [promise]," Boley said.

 

Aerojet Rocketdyne officials also promised innovation and responsiveness to customer needs, despite concerns that competition would suffer with the merger of the two primary liquid-fueled rocket engine manufacturers in the United States.

 

"Going forward, I want to have the ability to have a complete technology suite that satisfies all customers affordably," Boley said. "There are immediate affordability opportunites in our launch business in future technology. That's what is very exciting when you look at the launch portion of the Aerojet Rocketdyne business."

 

Products competing with each other

 

One immediate test of Aerojet Rocketdyne's promise involves a dispute over the engines used on the first stage of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket, which successfully launched for the first time in April.

 

Once RD AMROSS — a joint venture of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and engine-builder NPO Energomash of Russia — is incorporated into Aerojet Rocketdyne, the propulsion firm will find its products in competition with each other in many markets, including for the first stage of Antares and advanced boosters for NASA's Space Launch System. [NASA's SLS Rocket for Deep-Space Flights (Images)]

 

Antares is under contract to NASA for eight commercial cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station, plus an additional test flight later this year. Orbital hopes to win additional Antares launch orders from NASA, military and commercial customers.

 

The Antares first stage is powered by two kerosene-fueled AJ26 engines supplied by Aerojet, which acquired the engines from Russia in the 1990s. The engines — known as NK-33s in Russia — were built in the 1960s and 1970s for the Soviet Union's N1 moon rocket.

 

Aerojet imported the engines to support the company's U.S. propulsion business and modified each unit to gimbal, allowing the engines to steer rockets ascending from the launch pad into orbit. The upgraded engines under Aerojet's control are renamed the AJ26.

 

But the NK-33 engine is not in production in Russia anymore. Aerojet Rocketdyne has an inventory of 43 AJ26 engines available for Orbital's Antares rocket — enough for 21 flights. Between 12 and 18 more NK-33 engines are stockpiled in Russia.

 

"Orbital is currently pursuing a long-term first stage propulsion system for its new medium-class Antares launch vehicle," Orbital spokesman Barry Beneski said in a statement. "Orbital currently uses the Aerojet AJ26, which is derived from the Russian NK-33, and has a sufficient supply of AJ26 engines available to meet commitments to NASA for commercial cargo supply to the International Space Station."

 

Finite engine supply

 

Aware of the finite supply of AJ26 engines, Orbital Sciences began inquiring about the purchase of RD-180 engines — then controlled by Aerojet rival Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne — to support the company's long-term strategy of expanding the Antares market into medium-lift satellite launches and further cargo missions to the space station.

 

RD AMROSS is responsible for U.S. sales of the RD-180 engine for United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket.

 

Lockheed Martin Corp., a ULA stakeholder along with Boeing Co., invested in the development of the RD-180 engine for the Atlas 5 rocket in the 1990s. ULA still maintains intellectual property rights to the engine, giving the Atlas 5 rocket exclusive access to RD-180 engines in the U.S. market.

 

The Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into the matter after complaints of "anti-competitive" practices made by Orbital against ULA and RD AMROSS.

 

"Today, the only engine in active production that is technically suitable for the Antares and available for use in the U.S. is the RD-180 engine from Russia," Beneski said. "Orbital continues to investigate all potentially available engine options, one of which is the continued use of AJ26 engines, based on new production NK-33 engines."

 

Aerojet Rocketdyne plans to close the acquisition of Pratt & Whitney subsidiary RD AMROSS later this year, after securing approvals from the Russian government.

 

Boley said Tuesday that Aerojet Rocketdyne has a written agreement with the NK-33 engine's manufacturer, the Kuznetsov Design Bureau in Russia, to start production of the engine. If Orbital places places an order for more AJ26 engines by the end of 2013, Boley said new NK-33s could arrive in the United States for Aerojet upgrades by late 2016.

 

Sochi 2014 Olympic Torch to Travel in Space

 

RIA Novosti

 

The torch carrying the Olympic flame will make an interstellar pit stop at the International Space Station as part of the Sochi 2014 torch relay, Russian Olympic officials confirmed on Monday.

 

As part of the ambitious plan, which was signed by Sochi chief organizer Dmitry Chernyshenko and Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Russia's space agency, the torch will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakhstan on November 7, meaning the relay will take the unusual step of leaving the Olympic host country even before venturing hundreds of kilometers into space.

 

"This is a demonstration of our successes and our achievements and Russians, they should be proud," Chernyshenko said at Star City, the site of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow.

 

"Today we have added a new page in the history of the Sochi Olympic Games project."

 

Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and American engineer Richard Mastracchio and Japanese engineer Koichi Wakata will accompany the torch in a Soviet-designed Soyuz spacecraft.

 

The station, which is currently commanded by Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, has an orbit height of 370 to 460 kilometers, according to NASA. On board, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazan will chaperone the torch on a spacewalk, Chernyshenko said.

 

The torch will remain unlit throughout the voyage because of safety regulations on board the Soyuz and at the ISS. "We've got a rocket fueled by oxygen and kerosene, so there are basic safety rules," Popovkin said. "There can't be any naked flames."

 

After the flame arrives from Greece in October, it begins a 123-day, 65,000-kilometer odyssey in Moscow, spiraling out from the capital before heading east and looping around the Kamchatka Peninsula, down to Vladivostok and back across southern Siberia via Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake.

 

On its way through more than 2,900 towns in Russia's 83 regions, the torch will make its way back into European Russia, eventually winding down to the Black Sea resort of Sochi for the Opening Ceremony on February 7, 2014.

 

More than 14,000 torchbearers and 30,000 volunteers will be involved in the journey as the torch travels by foot, car, train, plane and troika, a traditional Russian sleigh.

 

Home of space dreams

 

Zou Hong - China Daily

 

Shenzhou X manned spacecraft blasted off on June 12 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, which is also home to scientists, soldiers and their families. Zou Hong unveils daily life at the center in Gansu province.

 

The "Cape Canaveral of China" - Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, also known as Dongfeng Space Center - is located at the depth of Badain Jaran Desert, 210 kilometers from the northeast of Jiuquan city, Gansu province.

 

Built in 1958, the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is the earliest and largest satellite launch center in China. Since its establishment, it has achieved many firsts for the development of the space industry of China, including the launch of China's very first satellite in 1970.

 

It is also the breeding ground and launching pad of many vital space projects, including Shenzhou X manned spacecraft that blasted off on June 12, bringing the nation one step closer to setting up its own space station in 2020.

 

While the city is the cradle for space dreams, people in the city live a simple life, with no bars and night clubs. Most of the residents are scientists, members of the military and their family members, who dedicate their time to realizing the nation's space mission.

 

Astronaut Karen Nyberg attended her high school class reunion from space

 

Becky Parker - WDAY TV - (Fargo)

 

It's always the big question at the class reunion, who traveled the farthest to be there?

 

Several members of the Henning High School class of '88 came a long ways to get home this weekend, but Karen Nyberg takes the cake.

 

She attended from a few hundred miles in the sky, straight from the International Space Station.

 

Nyberg wasn't about to let a "little" obstacle, like being in outer space, keep her from the Henning High School class of '88 reunion this weekend.

 

Andrea Rogers- Classmate: "Hello Karen, this is Andrea. Welcome to your 25th high school class reunion!"

 

Nyberg is currently serving on the International Space Station, 220 miles above Earth.

 

 

But she made it to the reunion with some help from NASA.

 

Live over video chat, Karen showed her classmates around her new home, even giving them a stunning glimpse of the sun rising on Earth.

 

Karen Nyberg- Austronaut: "Can you see the blue of the Earth now, above that?" "We're just starting to see it!"

 

The class took turns asking Karen about life aboard the station.

 

They took advantage of the rare educational opportunity, encouraging their children to ask questions as well.

 

Karen: "A lot of our meats are packed in packages like this. Very similar to what you would get in meals-ready-to-eat in the military."

 

Despite the unusual, even surreal, circumstances, in many ways it was just like any other class reunion.

 

Classmates had a chance to catch up, and find out how each others' lives have changed since they last met.

 

Tracy: "Hi Karen, this is Tracy and my fiance, Jeff."

 

Karen: "Tracy and fiance? Congratulations, I guess I didn't know that."

 

Andrea Rogers- Classmate: "They kind of become your extended brothers and sisters, and in that respect Karen is like our family. So, for her to be able to join us sort of completes our family reunion as much as it is a class reunion."

 

Karen has a husband and 3-year-old son at home.

 

She says they send videos back and forth every day.

 

Astronaut Attends High School Reunion From Space

 

Gillian Mohney - ABC News

 

When astronaut Karen Nyberg attended her 25th high school reunion, she didn't just bring photos of her husband or child — instead she was able to show her classmates a view of Earth from 200 miles above its surface.

 

Nyberg, 42, is in the middle of a six-month stay on the International Space Station and managed to attend her reunion at Henning High School in Henning, Minn., via video link.

 

Nyberg gave her former classmates and their families a tour of the space station and even a glimpse of the sun rising over the earth in space.

 

"This is my favorite part of the job," Nyberg said as she flipped upside down and continued the interview.

 

However, even astronauts in zero gravity can be surprised and delighted by big news from a classmate during a reunion.

 

"Tracy and [her] fiancé? Congratulations, I guess I didn't know that," Nyberg said to a former classmate.

 

Her classmates said they were happy to see Nyberg again, even if she was going to be residing above the atmosphere for the next few months.

 

"They kind of become your extended brothers and sisters, and in that respect Karen is like our family," Andrea Rogers, a classmate, told ABCNews.com affiliate WDAY-TV in Fargo, N.D. "For her to be able to join us sort of completes our family reunion as much as it is a class reunion."

 

Nyberg started training with NASA in 2000 and went on her first space flight in 2008. She launched with the Soyuz TMA-09M for a mission to the International Space Station on May 28.

 

Meet one of NASA's newest astronauts now (before she heads to Mars)

 

Mary Quinn O'Connor - Fox News

 

Ever dreamed of being an astronaut?

 

It wouldn't hurt, but you don't even have to be a rocket scientist to make that dream come true. Just ask Jessica Meir.

 

NASA just announced its new 2013 Astronaut Candidate Class, selecting eight candidates from the second largest pool in NASA history -- more than 6,100 applicants, hoping against hope for one of the most elite jobs around. Only a handful of people have walked with the stars, after all.

 

Being selected was unbelievable, explained newly minted astronaut candidate Jessica Meir.

 

"I was shocked," Meir told FoxNews.com. "It's almost hard to believe. Because it's something you've been dreaming and thinking about for an incredibly long time."

 

Becoming an astronaut is just like applying for any other job -- you must meet the basic requirements and from there the pool is narrowed down. But it was during that selection process that she realized just how stiff her competition would be.

 

"I thought 'Wow, this is an incredible, elite group of people and there's probably no way I'm going to be picked," Meir said.

 

Meir, a 35-year old assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, believes her private pilot's license set her apart from other candidates. After making it to the final round of NASA interviews in 2009, she was not picked. But she didn't let that rejection stop her from trying again.

 

"I've been saying I wanted to be an astronaut since I was 5," Meir told FoxNews.com. "So it's a really humbling experience."

 

 

Meir is one of eight trainees selected by NASA on Monday to receive an array of technical training at space centers and remote locations around the globe to prepare for missions to low-Earth orbit, an asteroid and even a trip to Mars.

 

The requirements to apply to join NASA's crew are surprisingly few: Applicants must be U.S. citizens with a bachelors degree from an accredited institution in a hard science (engineering, biological science, physical science, or mathematics). Applicants must also have at least 1,000 hours as pilot-in-command in a jet aircraft, and be able to pass a NASA space physical.

 

But to be selected as one of the eight new astronauts that could potentially travel to Mars, you might need a little more than the basic requirements to stand out.

 

"These new space explorers asked to join NASA because they know we're doing big, bold things here – developing missions to go farther into space than every before," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "They're excited about the science we're doing on the International Space Station and our plan to launch from U.S. soil to there on spacecraft built by American companies. And they're ready to help lead the first human mission to an asteroid and then on to Mars."

 

Meir and the other seven candidates begin their training on August 12 in Houston. "It will be very intensive and involve a lot of travel," Meir told FoxNews.com. The two-year training will include stops in Europe, Japan and Russia, where they must be proficient in Russian before they step foot on the International Space Station.

 

It will be years before they know what their missions will be, but Meir is excited to finally learn how to be an astronaut, and hopefully go to Mars. "There's a little bit of nervous excitement, but it's nothing I can't get past," said Meir.

 

The Real Housewives of Houston:

New book traces secrets, struggles & triumphs of first "astrowives"

 

Tarra Gaines - CultureMap.com

 

When did Houston become Space City? Was it when the Johnson Space Center opened? Or can the genesis be traced back to when Houston welcomed the Mercury Seven astronauts and their families to town and called them our own?

 

Those men were heroes to a nation, which also held up their wives as the ideal American women. These "Astrowives" were seen as devoted mothers and helpmates who approved of their husband's dreams and efforts "a hundred percent," as John Glenn described of his wife Ann during the first Mercury Seven press conference in 1959.

 

Fifty years after coming to Houston, the real stories of those amazing women are being revealed with the launch of author Lily Koppel's book The Astronaut Wives Club in the city where some of the wives lived their happiest days and others found great tragedy.

 

At an Astronaut Wives Club tea at Ouisie's Table attended by astronaut wives Sue Bean, Barbara (Cernan) Butler, Harriet Eisele, Jeannie Bassett and Beth Williams, Koppel explained she became interested in these women's lives while looking through photos in Norman Mailer's MoonFire.

 

Struck by a picture of Apollo 11 wives, Koppel began to wonder about the real stories behind the Life magazine pictures that at best only illuminated the surface of these women's lives. Koppel set out to find those real stories and three years and many new friendships later, she's ready to present these no-longer-untold stories to her readers.

 

Joining the Club

 

The Astronaut Wives Club begins with that Mercury Seven press conference in Washington in 1959 but immediately moves to the seven wives who, having lived many years as military wives and sometimes struggled to make ends meet, suddently had to instantly adapt to celebrityhood. The book follows the Mercury wives to Houston and introduces the Gemini and Apollo wives as they arrive into the story.

 

With their husbands gone for long stretches of work and training, all these women raised their families, kept their homes, and dealt with the press with little support from the men and NASA itself.

 

Perhaps even before the term "rock star" was coined, these women overnight became the wives of rocket stars. NASA demanded their marriages at least appear rock solid, even as some wives forced themselves to ignore their husbands' infidelity with space groupies. Meanwhile, individually they prayed never to hear that dreaded knock on the door that would change their NASA status from wife to widow.

 

The Astronaut Wives Club doesn't skip the women's personality clashes and rivalries, but readers will also begin to understand how the decade-long reach to the moon forged such life-long bonds between these women waiting back on Earth.

 

An astronaut's thanks

 

The day after the Astro Tea, the official Astronaut Wives book launch at the Sam Houston Hotel added Jane Conrad, Betty Grissom and Joan Glancy to the roster of wives coming out to celebrate the book. The event was hosted by Joanne King Herring, who became friends with some of wives during the 1960s and ushered several into Houston society.

 

Among the crowd was Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. After Koppel thanked and introduced all the wives present, Cernan took the mike to add his own thanks. Though he first joked he was disappointed there was no "former husbands club" for him to join, his voice cracked with emotion as he told the crowd: "If it weren't for the wives who committed their lives to what we were doing, I don't think we would have ever gotten to the moon."

 

Cernan's words and his brief mention of his book made me think back to a conversation I had with Beth Williams at the Wives tea.

 

The wife of Astronaut Clifton 'C. C.' Williams, Beth had been a professional water-skier and AquaMaid at Cypress Gardens before marrying. She even was an extra in a movie starring her hero Esther Williams. In just three years, she went from being the woman who married the first astronaut bachelor, to a pregnant, astronaut widow when the T-38 Williams was flying crashed due to mechanical failure.

 

After Clifton's death, Beth Williams stayed in Clear Lake to raise her children and eventually started her own company, TechTrans International, to provide Russian translation and language instruction to NASA for the U.S-Russian space program. She now has 200 employees and was awarded Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011.

 

I asked Williams with so many of the astronauts writing books and memoirs why didn't she or any of the wives?

 

"It wasn't my story to tell," Williams explained, adding that she thought most of the wives probably felt the same. The women just didn't think their individual stories could be told apart from the others.

 

These days an astronaut's wife could very well be an astronaut herself, but now these first astronaut wives contribution to the race into space can no longer be ignored.

 

Life for spouses of NASA pioneers wasn't always as it was portrayed

 

Margaret Quamme - Columbus Dispatch

 

In 1959, seven military test pilots were catapulted to fame when they were chosen to become the first U.S. astronauts. So were their wives, who until then had lived ordinary lives at military bases in Ohio, California, Maryland and Virginia.

 

In the intriguing, pleasantly gossipy and often-touching The Astronaut Wives Club, Lily Koppel follows the wives and the dozens of others who followed them as the space program was expanded through the 1960s and early '70s. Her book is based largely on interviews with most of the surviving wives (or former wives) of astronauts, with the notable exception of John Glenn's wife, Annie, who declined to participate.

 

Koppel views the women as "America's first reality stars." Life magazine — a force to be reckoned with in the 1950s and '60s — offered them a welcome collective $500,000 for access to their lives and embedded reporters inside their homes to document their everyday actions and their reactions to what "was known to the public as the launch report but which one of the wives renamed the Death Watch."

 

Dozens of photos from Life are included in the book. They show a whitewashed version of the domestic lives of the families of the astronauts: wives toasting and clapping for their husbands, couples reading the newspaper at the breakfast table, wives serving cocktails and canapes to each other, and kids splashing in a swimming pool.

 

The reality was more complicated and more interesting. Marriages on the brink of divorce were held together because of the unofficial NASA rule that, "If you don't have a happy marriage, you won't have a spaceflight." It was accepted that the astronauts lived one life on the infrequent occasions that they were home and another with the "Cape (Canaveral) Cookies" who pursued them at work.

 

Many of the women chain-smoked ("an occupational hazard of the Astrowives"), and some took tranquilizers to deal with the stress of their lives. They saw far more of one another than of their husbands. Once the space program ended, so did many of the marriages.

 

The death rate among astronauts was high, not just in space, but in the planes they flew for fun and the fast cars they drove. Some of the most poignant moments in The Astronaut Wives Club deal with the wives reacting in their own ways to death.

 

The number of women who flit in and out of these pages can be confusing, and they tend to blur together. A few stand out: Scott Carpenter's glamorous wife, Rene, who later became a journalist and TV broadcaster; Annie Glenn, who "was what NASA wanted the wives of its seven astronauts to be"; and Gordo Cooper's feisty wife, Trudy, herself a pilot. Koppel might have been better off focusing on them more thoroughly.

 

But this is not primarily a biography of the women. In its light and engaging way, The Astronaut Wives Club is a reflection on the gap between image and reality, and a glimpse of an unstable time when "good wives" were reckoning the cost of that role.

 

Secrets of Astronaut Wives: Q&A With Author Lily Koppel

 

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

 

Many of the untold stories of the space race reside with the women. Now, dozens of the wives of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts have shared their experiences in a new book, "The Astronaut Wives Club" (Grand Central Publishing, June 2013).

 

SPACE.com caught up with author Lily Koppel to learn what life was like for an astronaut wife during the 1960s and '70s, from stress and sacrifice to glamour and glory.

 

SPACE.com: Why do you think the stories of astronaut wives were largely ignored as part of the history of space race for so long?

 

Lily Koppel: They just saw this as part of their duty. They weren't outspoken, they weren't being heroes. We can now have the perspective to look back and say it's not just about the guys in the silver suits, but there's this whole community of engineers, and there was this whole story at home.

These wives were basically single mothers during the week who were mowing the lawn, keeping the checkbook balanced, making sure their husbands aren't overly stressed at home, per NASA's recommendations.

 

Why I was so excited about writing it was because it really was sort of the heart of the endeavor, the emotional story of the space race.

 

SPACE.com: Do you think people at the time had a really false idea of what these women's lives were like?

 

Koppel: I think so. When a journalist would ask how they felt, it was like, 'God, if I told you how I really felt, my husband would never get another spaceflight!' So it was just, 'Happy, proud and thrilled.' That was really their motto throughout the program, that's how everything was.

 

Even the wives say now, looking back at those pictures, 'Don't we look like Stepford wives? But we were so much more than Stepford wives.' They were like supermoms.

 

SPACE.com: Was it hard for the people you interviewed now to be honest with you about what it was really like?

 

Koppel: Yeah, I had to coax some of them. They're still very protective of NASA and even if they were divorced from their astronaut, they still had a strong sense of loyalty to him or to the program. I just had to tell them that this wasn't going to be like a National Enquirer piece — it was going to look at their stories with a great deal of dignity, but we really did have to push beyond the vanilla ice cream. But I think that was good and I think they enjoyed being provoked a little.

 

I think that honestly they feel that they have been shut out of a lot of history. Whenever there are these NASA anniversaries and everyone gathers, a lot of the times it's the astronauts and their second or third or fourth wife. These women are like, 'They didn't live through it — we did.'

 

And they really went through so much in that decade that they really deserve to be recognized as playing this incredibly important role. It was a huge sacrifice for them. In a way, they gave up a lot of their future, because sometimes it was just impossible, there was no way the marriage was going to survive because they were just living under extraordinary circumstances.

 

SPACE.com: Why do you think it was so many of these marriages failed?

 

Koppel: The husbands were like rock stars being followed around by space groupies, the "Cape Cookies," you know. When you go back and look at things and talk to the astronauts, it was very much condoned, the kind of behavior of, 'OK, the Cape is where you're going to be training, you can definitely unwind on the side and questions aren't necessarily going to be asked. Just make sure it doesn't affect things at home and it doesn't make it into the press.'

 

So NASA knew these wives were being gung ho and giving their all back at home, and it was basically higher ups like Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton bringing new boys in and giving them a little pep talk. It was very much of the times, very 'Mad Men'-esque. Like, 'Listen, we're hot pilots, do your thing, but make sure it doesn't make it into the papers.' So I think a lot of the wives were sort of innocent, and they were also in a bit of denial as well.

 

SPACE.com: Did you get the sense that the wives enjoyed their lives, or was mostly a hardship?

 

Koppel: No, they definitely enjoyed it.

 

What I want to convey is they were almost in their own crazy NASA space program — that they had this equally hard role of keeping the home fires burning bright and projecting this perfect American family image to the world, but I think they certainly enjoyed it. It was the most exciting time of their lives.

 

As Marilyn Lovell [wife of Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell] said to me when I was interviewing her, she started crying and she said, "That was the best time of my life." Or Jane Conrad [wife of Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad] looks back and says "It just feels like a dream."

 

Because everything was moving so fast and everyone was trying to get to the moon, and the wives were sort of in it as much as their husbands. If he couldn't make it home for two or three weekends in a row because he was training, it was just part of the sacrifice. But then there were incredible things like round-the-world tours after your husband came back, and meeting heads of state, and feeling like you were higher-than-high society and royalty. Your husband had gone where none of these international jet set could even dream of going.

 

SPACE.com: Among the few rare couples that survived, were there any great love stories?

 

Koppel: Oh yeah. The Lovells are incredible. They've been together since high school. They have such a cute story. They met because Jim Lovell's prom date dumped him, and he asked Marilyn to fill in for him and they've been together ever since.

 

Of course after Apollo 13, Marilyn was terrified. She thought, every time he even went to go to the drug store, that he wasn't going to come home, and she was just absolutely paralyzed by fear. And she finally said, 'I have to see a psychiatrist,' which was really taboo at the time. Even within NASA, they only used outside doctors if they had a problem because they were so scared of not getting a flight. But Marilyn finally told Jim after Apollo 13, 'You're not flying again.'

 

Astronaut Memorial Foundation stands to gain

Once-split license tag cash likely will soon head in total to AMF

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Last year's demise of the Technology Research and Development Authority could give a boost to the local foundation that honors fallen astronauts.

 

Since 1989, the TRDA collected half the revenue from sales of Challenger-Columbia license plates.

 

The rest went to the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, creator of the state's first specialty tag after the Challenger disaster in 1986.

 

After alleged misuse of federal grants led to the TRDA's dissolution, state legislation passed this year restored the foundation as sole recipient of tag revenue that totaled about $560,000 in 2011-12, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

 

"That's why the tag was created at the onset, was to honor our fallen astronauts through memorial scholarships and educational programs," said Jon McBride, a former shuttle astronaut who chairs the foundation's board. "I think it's rightful that it be re-instituted and given to the proper source."

 

The foundation expects Gov. Rick Scott to sign into law soon the bill that would make that change.

 

State Sen. Thad Altman, who was named the foundation's president last August, abstained from votes on the issue and declined to discuss it before the governor took action.

 

The foundation has been hit hard by cuts to NASA education programs and the loss of tenants, including Space Florida and the University of Central Florida, at its 47,000-square-foot Center for Space Education at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

 

The center represents a "living memorial" while the foundation's Space Mirror Memorial at the visitor complex pays tribute to 24 astronauts lost during missions or training.

 

This year, the foundation led 10th-anniversary remembrances of Columbia's seven crew members.

 

McBride estimated the roughly $250,000 the foundation stands to gain in additional tag revenue would almost exactly fill the expected hole in its $1.1 million operating budget.

 

"It's not like it's going to bump us up any, it's going to just maintain the status quo," he said.

 

The revenue only may be used to support educational and technology training programs, which would otherwise face cuts.

 

In a letter sent to Gov. Scott this week, McBride said more than 20,000 students visited the NASA Educator Resource Center housed at the foundation, and about 400,000 guests visited the memorial each year.

 

"Now that NASA is cutting spending on its education programs, the tag revenue is even more important to our mission," he wrote.

 

The Challenger-Columbia license plate, featuring a launching shuttle and the names of the two lost orbiters, has waned in popularity over time but still ranked 17th out of 120 specialty tags in 2011, with more than 23,000 sold, state records show.

 

This month, Brevard leads all counties with 2,863 of more than 20,000 active registrations.

 

Congressman disputes view on asteroid mission

 

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) - Florida Today

 

(Smith is chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee)

 

Public Interest Editor Matt Reed's recent column, "Moon trip cooler than saving a city?" incorrectly said the Obama administration's proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) is intended to "intercept an asteroid to spare millions some day from death by fireball or tsunami." This exaggerated statement ignores the facts.

 

Congress directed NASA in 2005 to identify and track 90 percent of asteroids larger than 140 meters by 2020. Near Earth Objects (NEOs) of this size are ones that could cause significant damage, and NASA still has work to do to accomplish this goal.

 

The administration's ARM proposal focuses on much smaller NEOs, from 7 to 10 meters, that are so small they would burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Further, any techniques to influence the trajectory of small NEOs would be considerably different than those used to deflect an actual threat to the planet.

 

The column criticizes a NASA bill that would reject ARM and instead focus on deep space exploration. There is longstanding bipartisan support for a long-term human mission to Mars. Experts have testified that a stepping-stone approach, including a lunar mission, is the most strategic pathway.

 

The column further claims the ARM proposal is "surprisingly affordable." But experts at the Keck Institute for Space Studies have estimated such a mission would actually cost around $2.6 billion, significantly more than the administration claims. NASA still has not even conducted a mission formulation review, or developed an independent cost estimate.

 

The Obama administration's complete lack of justification for its asteroid retrieval mission is a distraction from NASA's important mission.

 

Congress should give OK for asteroid research plan

 

Daytona Beach News-Journal (Editorial)

 

A U.S. House of Representatives science panel is making a mistake in not taking the idea of asteroid study more seriously.

 

The House panel has dropped funding for NASA's asteroid-retrieval program proposed in President Barack Obama's 2014 budget. The House panel's proposed budget favors manned missions back to the moon, and then Mars.

 

NASA wants to "lasso" a small asteroid and bring it into orbit around the moon. Later missions, at some point in the 2020s, would send astronauts to the small asteroid for study.

 

It is unclear as to why the House doesn't like the idea. Perhaps it sounds far-fetched. But so did the moon mission in 1960. And the asteroid study would cost less than a manned moon mission, or a manned mission to Mars.

 

NASA could do all three over the next decade or two. And given the small initial costs of the asteroid program — about $40 million in the White House's 2014 proposal — there's no reason to cut the proposal.

 

But the House Science, Space and Technology Committee rejected the proposal, even though it's a minute part of the $16.9 billion budget plan for NASA.

 

Perhaps the panel should revisit the benefits of asteroid research.

 

An asteroid that hit Earth about 65 million years ago is believed to have killed off the dinosaurs. Asteroids still hit the Earth every day, but the atmospheric shield destroys most of them.

 

But some have gotten through recently. In February, a meteor only 55 feet in diameter exploded over a part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. The explosion in the sky and the resulting sonic boom injured more than 1,000 people. Many buildings were damaged.

 

Asteroids in the solar system are a threat to Earth, and NASA needs to ramp up its studies of the zooming rocks. Astronomers believe 13,000 asteroids exist that could destroy a city if just one hit Earth in the right spot. As many as 100 such big space rocks exist that could end life on Earth, according to some experts.

 

It's possible future asteroid threats can be resolved by moving the asteroids out of the way of Earth. But this will take further study.

 

Asteroids represent an opportunity. Most won't come near Earth. They are believed to contain millions of tons of valuable materials, like gold and platinum. The private-sector space industry is eager to get robotic vehicles to these asteroids to study and possibly mine for ore.

 

NASA's more scientific vision of asteroid study could have benefits for the Space Coast. The program would create new high-tech jobs in the space industry.

 

Manned missions to the moon and Mars are great — but very costly — ideas. Asteroid research may offer more bang for the buck.

 

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee is trying to micromanage NASA's missions. The panel's proposed budget would also limit the terms of NASA's chief administrator, even though that person serves at the will of the president.

 

Reasonable NASA requests for asteroid research should be approved by Congress. Lassoing an asteroid may sound like something from a summer science-fiction movie, but the fate of the planet may depend on it one day.

 

New astronauts step into plenty of unknowns

 

John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)

 

So, where are these eight new astronauts going?

 

NASA introduced a new class of U.S. space explorers earlier this week. Eight super-achievers in life. Eight fascinating human beings. Eight of America's best and brightest. And, eight space explorers with no place to go explore.

 

They're an incredible bunch, as every astronaut class is. They're diverse, four women and four men. There are five military officers. There's another former naval aviator who's become a tech-industry innovator. There's a Harvard assistant professor who's studied everything from medicine to space travel to oceanography. And, there's a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Station Chief based in American Samoa.

 

Their new home base: Houston. But their big mission: for now, it's being the potential future crew of NASA's planned, but not ready to fly Orion spacecraft. It's a spaceship envisioned to ultimately take astronauts beyond Earth orbit and deeper into the solar system. But, many years will pass before humans fly aboard it, and many more will pass before it carries humans anywhere beyond where we've been before.

 

NASA's most immediate solar system target — an asteroid — is a project threatened by political disinterest. Members of Congress are just not enchanted with the idea, so much so that the U.S. House of Representatives' early draft of the bill authorizing NASA's activities leaves out a human flight to an asteroid.

 

A mission to Mars, while intriguing to elected leaders, scientists and the public, is decades off, even if everyone with the power to make it happen were to suddenly commit to it. The latter is unlikely in austere times. In addition, technical hurdles abound: NASA is a decade from regular flights of a new rocket and spacecraft and that's if the best-case scenarios unfold. Technology to protect astronauts from the rigors of the trip remain in development, with no firm target date for even test flight readiness.

 

It's possible that this new crew of astronauts, joining those who haven't left since the shutdown of the space shuttle program, could be the ones who blaze a trail for deep-space explorers by serving as the test fliers for the new rocket and spacecraft or maybe serving an extended term aboard the International Space Station, though the line is long and competition fierce for the few spots available on those crews.

 

Still, this new batch of explorers deserves applause for their achievements so far, for being picked from among thousands of other qualified applicants, and for being willing to step into the unknown — the uncertainty of both spaceflight and space politics. Good luck to them.

 

Is The Selection Of More Women Astronauts A Good Sign?

 

Liza Donnelly - Forbes (Opinion)

 

 

We just heard news that half of NASA's eight new astronaut recruits are women.  Great! Things are looking up for women, figuratively and literally. And then I got to wondering: is this because the pay for being an astronaut is now lower than previously? Is the prestige not as great as it once was? Is there another reason why men aren't dominating this field?  Is it less glamorous now that the shuttle program is no more?

 

But even though this may sometimes be the case–that when a profession begins to decline in status or in pay, men vacate it and women fill the void– it is exciting to have more women in science and technology.  These selected astronauts are a new breed, coming to the job with diverse backgrounds in science, which may also explain the increase in women.

 

Whatever the reason, it's good news. And like the girls in this cartoon, I have hope that it will continue to change.

 

Spacecraft model stirs memories from childhood

 

Dave Miller - Killeen Daily Herald (Editorial)

 

Once a space geek, always a space geek.

 

I realized that statement applies to me while I was surfing the Web a couple of weeks ago.

 

I was looking at a site that sells diecast models of cars, planes and motorcycles, when I came across the section for spacecraft.

 

I scrolled down, and there it was — a 1/72 scale model of the two-man Gemini spacecraft that NASA sent into space in the mid-'60s. I broke into a huge grin. I just had to buy it.

 

Seeing that highly detailed model took me back to my childhood, when I first got hooked on all things space.

 

I was 10 years old when the first Gemini mission was launched. On the second manned mission, astronaut Ed White took America's first spacewalk. Later missions perfected docking maneuvers, both with an unmanned Agena rocket and with a second Gemini capsule.

 

For a fifth-grader, these were heady days. It was the height of the space race, and every launch was big news. During those early days of the space program, all three TV networks (yes, that's right) went on the air several hours before each launch and provided live coverage of the countdown. They often stayed on the air for more than hour after liftoff, as well.

 

I remember getting up at 7 a.m. to watch Walter Cronkite count down the time until launch. When the countdown reached T-minus 5 minutes (I still remember the lingo), I would lean in toward the TV and start getting excited. No matter how many times I watched a launch, it never got old.

 

From the time I watched my first liftoff on TV until the last Apollo astronaut returned from the moon in 1972, I was a serious space junkie. I had several plastic spacecraft models, including a huge model of the upper portion of the Saturn V rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon. I still remember the distinctive smell of the modelers glue and the look of the high-gloss paint.

 

Nearly 15 years after the last moon landing, I visited the Johnson Space Center facility near Houston. The 10-year-old in me came back to life as I took in all the great exhibits and displays — and of course, the visit to Mission Control was a treat. But nothing excited me as much as peering into the Gemini 5 capsule on display at the Visitors Center. I had watched on TV as this capsule was launched into space so many years earlier, and here it was, just a few feet away.

 

As the years went by and the Space Shuttle program took center stage, I still followed each flight, although I didn't always get up early in the morning to watch a liftoff. Like so many other Americans, I became a bit jaded by manned space travel — until the Challenger explosion in 1986. That tragic event, along with the Columbia disaster in 2003, made me realize that no matter how routine space travel may seem, it still involves tremendous risk and potential danger.

 

The early astronauts — the original Mercury 7 and those who flew the Gemini missions — were among the biggest risk-takers. The spacecraft in which they flew were primitive by today's standards. The rockets that propelled them into orbit were largely military-issue boosters that were adapted to carry the capsules. Most of the astronauts were test pilots — ready for a new challenge and willing to take risks. And millions of school-age kids, like myself, admired them as the true heroes they were.

 

Sadly, times have changed. The shuttle is in mothballs, and no new manned space projects are on the horizon anytime soon. It's a difficult time for space junkies like me.

 

But sometimes, all it takes is a little reminder of the glory days of our childhood — like that shiny Gemini model — to make us smile like a kid once again.

 

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"

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