Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - September 25, 2013 and JSC Today



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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: September 25, 2013 5:53:41 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - September 25, 2013  and JSC Today

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. Watch Expedition 37 Launch, Attend Viewing Party

You're invited to view the launch of Expedition 37 in the Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom or on NASA TV today, Sept. 25, at 3:58 p.m. CDT. Doors open at approximately 2:45 p.m., and NASA TV launch coverage begins at 3 p.m.

The gathering is open to the community and refreshments will be served on a first come, first served basis. The party will commemorate the launch of the Expedition 37/38 crew.

Astronaut Mike Hopkins, part of the Expedition 37/38 crew, will begin his first mission aboard the International Space Station. As part of each astronaut's training protocol, there is a physical fitness regimen that rivals some of today's best athletes' workouts. 

As part of the launch-viewing event, the Train Like an Astronaut (TLA) team will provide an overview of the TLA program for the community. The team will also share how you can become involved with the Mike Hopkins TLA fitness campaign and challenge during his mission.   

The TLA program focuses on increasing physical fitness among people of all ages, and the activities are modeled after the astronaut training protocols adapted for various fitness and age levels. In the meantime, follow TLA on Facebook or via Twitter: @trainastronaut 

JSC, Ellington Field, Sonny Carter Training Facility and White Sands Test Facility team members with wired computer network connections can also 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 32bit 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.

Event Date: Wednesday, September 25, 2013   Event Start Time:3:00 PM   Event End Time:4:30 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom, NASA TV

Add to Calendar

JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

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  1. 13 Days of Safety - Day 2: The Heat is Still On

Even though it's fall in Texas, "summer" temperatures extend into the fall in southeast Texas. When you must be outdoors in hot weather, take steps to stay cool and healthy. Cut down on exercise and other hard tasks. Drink two to four glasses of cool, non-alcoholic fluids every hour. Rest often in shady areas, wear light clothing and protect yourself from the sun with a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses and sunscreen (SPF 15 or higher). The Spaceflight Meteorological Group provides real-time heat index readings for JSC. The link is located on the JSC home page under Safety-Health-Environment. A quick link is provided here.

Supricia Franklin/Angel Plaza x37817/x37305 http://sthday.jsc.nasa.gov/

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  1. Recent JSC Announcement

Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcement:

JSCA 13-035: Communications with Industry Regarding the Procurement Solicitation for the Integrated Mission Operations Contract II (IMOC II)

Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page.

Linda Turnbough x36246 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/DocumentManagement/announcements/default.aspx

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   Organizations/Social

  1. AAERG Ice Cream Social

The African-American Employee Resource Group (AAERG) will host an Ice Cream Social and Officers Information Session tomorrow, Sept. 26, in the Building 30 Collaboration Center, Room 2085A (Neil Armstrong area) from 3 to 5 p.m. If you are interested in holding an officer's position in the AAERG, please come and network with the current officers (made up of the chair, co-chair, secretary and committee members).

Event Date: Thursday, September 26, 2013   Event Start Time:3:00 PM   Event End Time:5:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Collaboration Center - Room 2085A

Add to Calendar

M. Keith Combs x38217

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  1. Crosswalk Safety, Again

Recently, a pedestrian in the crosswalk was almost hit by an oncoming vehicle. The JSC Safety and Health Action Team reminds you that the best practice for drivers and pedestrians is to always be fully aware of your surroundings while on the move and pay close attention when approaching a crosswalk.

See the link below for more information on crosswalk safety at JSC.

Reese Squires x37776 http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/jscfeatures/articles/000000975.html

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  1. Tolerating Distress

Please join Takis Bogdanos, LPC-S, CGP, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program, on Oct. 3 at 12 noon in Building 30 Auditorium. He will discuss the negative impact of stress and the tools you can use to effectively cope with the inevitable stressors in life.

Event Date: Thursday, October 3, 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, Occupational Health Branch x36130

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  1. Beginners Ballroom Dance - October 2013 Discount

Do you feel like you have two left feet?

Well, Starport has the perfect spring program for you: Beginners Ballroom Dance!

This eight-week class introduces you to the various types of ballroom dance. Students will learn the secrets of a good lead and following, as well as the ability to identify the beat of the music. This class is easy, and we have fun as we learn.

JSC friends and family are welcome.

Discounted registration:

    • $90 per couple (ends Oct. 4)

Regular registration:

    • $110 per couple (Oct. 5 to 15)

Two class sessions available:

    • Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. -- Starting Oct. 15
    • Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. -- Starting Oct. 17

All classes are taught in the Gilruth Center's dance studio (Group Ex studio).

Shericka Phillips x30304 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/recreation-programs/ballroom-d...

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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.

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NASA TV: www.nasa.gov/ntv

·                     3 pm Central (4 EDT) – Soyuz TMA-10M Launch Coverage

·                     3:58 pm Central (4:58 EDT) – Liftoff of Soyuz delivering Expedition 37/38 to ISS

·                     6 pm Central (7 EDT) – File of Soyuz pre-launch, launch video & post-launch Interviews

·                     9 pm Central (10 EDT) – Expedition 37/38 Soyuz Docking Coverage

·                     9:48 pm Central (10:48 EDT) – Docking to ISS Russian segment Poisk module

·                     11 pm Central (Midnight EDT) – Hatch opening coverage

·                     ~11:25 pm Central (12:25 am EDT Thursday) – Hatch opening / welcome greetings

·                     1 am Central THURSDAY (2 am EDT) – Video File of E37/38 Soyuz docking & hatch opening

 

Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday – September 25, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Crew ready for trip to ISS this afternoon

American astronaut to focus on fitness once in space

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

NASA astronaut and fitness nut Mike Hopkins is set to lift off to the International Space Station today with a pair of cosmonauts who will help Russia celebrate its role as Winter Olympics host. The crew is scheduled to launch at 4:58 p.m. EDT aboard a Soyuz spacecraft and rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and arrive at the station less than six hours later. "As you can imagine, very excited, a little bit nervous but also very confident," Hopkins said during a news conference Tuesday of his feelings before launching into space for the first time.

 

New Crew Launching to Space Station Today

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

Three astronauts are set to blast off toward the International Space Station this afternoon (Sept. 25), and you can watch their out-of-this world journey live. Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut are slated to launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan at 4:58 p.m. EDT today (2058 GMT; 2:58 a.m. Thursday in Kazakhstan).

 

Soyuz TMA-10M and Next ISS Crew Ready for Wednesday Launch

 

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

 

Three new crewmembers are slated to rocket toward the International Space Station (ISS) late Wednesday, boosting the outpost's Expedition 37 population to its full six-member strength. Soyuz TMA-10M will ferry Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky and NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:58 p.m. EDT Wednesday (2:58 a.m. Kazakh time Thursday). Upon achieving orbit, the three crew members will execute a four-orbit, six-hour "fast rendezvous" profile to achieve a docking at the station's space-facing (or "zenith") Poisk module at about 10:47 p.m. EDT Wednesday (8:47 a.m. Kazakh time Thursday). Current plans call for the hatch opening to take place at about 12:25 a.m. EDT (10:25 a.m. Kazakh time) Thursday.

 

Padalka to replace Lonchakov in ISS mission

 

Interfax

 

Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka will replace Yuri Lonchakov, who has taken a job with Gazprom Space Systems, as part of the upcoming mission to the International Space Station (ISS), a space industry source told Interfax-AVN. "Another experienced cosmonaut, Gennady Padalka, will take Lonchakov's place in the crew to depart for the ISS in March 2015," he said. The mission will last 198 days, which means that Padalka may beat the world space flight duration record of his boss, Cosmonaut Training Center head Sergei Krikalyov, the source reported. "Krikalyov spent 803 days in space over the course of his six missions. Padalka has been on four space missions with a total duration of 710 days. He will beat the record by more than 100 days during his fifth mission and spend a total of 908 days in space," the source said.

(NO FURTHER TEXT)

 

A week until the new fiscal year—and the threat of a shutdown

 

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

 

A week from now is October 1, New Year's Day for those who live on the federal government fiscal year calendar. And, for many of them, it could become an unintended, and unwanted, holiday. With no appropriations bills for fiscal year 2014 passed to date, Congress needs to approve a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at 2013 levels. Essential government operations would continue, which would cover at least some NASA operations, for example. There certainly would be visible disruptions, though: an OMB memo last week about a potential shutdown states that government websites should remain operational only if "is necessary to avoid significant damage to the execution of authorized or excepted activities," which suggests that many of the NASA websites could go offline or not be updated during a shutdown. It's also unclear how a shutdown would affect NASA's Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop, scheduled to begin Monday the 30th and run through Wednesday the 2nd; while run by NASA, it is being held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, and not on the NASA JSC campus.

 

Send Your Own Science Experiment to the ISS

Infinity Aerospace just launched their program that will allow students or anyone who want to send experiments to the International Space Station

 

Will Dietrich-Egensteiner - Popular Mechanics

 

When aerospace engineer Manu Sharma was a college student, he dreamed of sending something to space. Sharma approached one of his professors about sending a cube-shaped project he was working on up into space, but was told that it would take four years to complete—time he didn't have. "There had to be a faster way for kids and students to send projects up to space," he tells PM. Frustrated, Sharma became determined to create a project that would give anyone the opportunity to send experiments into space. So he cofounded Infinity Aerospace, a project that came to fruition this month with the company's launch of ArduLab.

 

SpaceX Changes Tune on Lease Terms for Shuttle Pad

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), which had been seeking exclusive use of an old space shuttle launch pad, now says it would make the pad available to NASA and other users if it is allowed to lease the facility. SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., and Blue Origin of Kent, Wash., both replied to NASA's May request for proposals to lease Shuttle Launch Complex 39A, which the agency says it no longer needs. Citing the technical complexity of maintaining a launch facility for more than one user, SpaceX proposed keeping the pad to itself over the course of a lease that would last at least four years, beginning in 2015. Blue Origin, which is quietly developing and testing orbital and suborbital spacecraft, offered to manage Pad 39A as a multiuser facility. Now, SpaceX is offering to also welcome other operators as part of a five-year lease it seeks.

 

NASA's Innovative Ion Space Thruster Sets Endurance World Record

 

Nola Taylor Redd - Space.com

 

A five-year test of NASA's latest ion drive for future spacecraft has set a new world record for the longest single space engine test. The space agency's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) project completed a continuous test the ion engine for more than 48,000 hours — over five and a half years — longer than any other space propulsion system ever tested. With low fuel weight and long-running efficiency, ion engines have become strong contenders for deep space missions.

 

CNSA chief says China would gladly join global space roadmapping group if asked

 

Peter de Selding - Space News

 

The head of China's space program on Sept. 23 said his government is willing to join an existing multilateral effort to chart future space exploration goals and awaits only an invitation to do so. Ma Xingrui, administrator of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said China has signed bilateral space accords with several dozen nations but has yet to join the multinational International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG). ISECG, whose members include most other spacefaring nations, is assembling a Global Exploration Roadmap whose goal is to reduce duplication in what most nations agree will be an endeavor too costly for any nation acting alone.

 

Will Sick Mars Astronauts Be Forbidden from Returning to Earth?

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

Landing astronauts on Mars is a tall order, but bringing them back to Earth promises to be even trickier — especially if Red Planet explorers get the sniffles on the long flight home. Sick astronauts could conceivably have been infected on Mars, some parts of which may be capable of supporting life as we know it. So the world may be reluctant to welcome such travelers home, leery of possibly unleashing an extraterrestrial superplague on Earth's 7 billion people. NASA is already thinking about how to deal with this concern as it works toward getting people to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s. The key is to monitor the health of astronauts meticulously during all phases of Red Planet missions and any other deep-space efforts, said Cassie Conley, NASA's planetary protection officer.

 

Bezos in space? 'I definitely want to go,' says billionaire

 

Wilson Rothman - NBC New

 

When Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos met with reporters to discuss the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets, NBC News took the opportunity to quiz him about his other venture, the space start-up Blue Origin. The company was recently in the news because it's fighting with another billionaire's space firm over a retired NASA shuttle launch pad. "Our proposal is to build (at the NASA facility) a multi-use launch pad so that we would share it," Bezos said. The purpose would be to launch orbital vehicles, for instance to send crews and supplies to the International Space Station, but allow other private space firms to schedule their own launches.

 

How Space Station Astronaut Chris Cassidy Is Readapting to Earth Life

 

Megan Gannon - Space.com

 

After more than five months aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy is getting used to life with gravity again. "I feel really good," Cassidy said Thursday (Sept. 19). "The exercise program that we have up there does a fantastic job because I was able to walk pretty much hours after getting out of the Soyuz and I started driving again today. I feel like I've got my balance."

 

Astronaut from Statesville returns after 5 months in space

 

Joe Marusak - Charlotte Observer

 

Rory McDonald wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. On Sunday night, the 6-year-old met one in person on the lawn of Mitchell Community College in downtown Statesville. Rory joined several hundred other residents who lined up to meet and greet Tom Marshburn, 53, a NASA astronaut who was born in Statesville and lived there until his family moved to Atlanta when Marshburn was 8.

 

Defying gravity: Tom Marshburn on an astronaut's life

 

Jim McNally - Statesville Record & Landmark

 

In his popular 1970s hit single, "Rocket Man," Elton John laments that "it's lonely out in space." But astronaut and Statesville native Tom Marshburn said the British pop legend got it wrong. "I think it used to be kind of lonely," he said Sunday evening during an event at Mitchell Community College. "But it's not any more." And Marshburn, who was born and lived in Statesville until shortly before his 9th birthday, ought to know.

 

NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn to return home for visit

 

Chris Dyches - WBTV.com

 

The city of Statesville is throwing a welcome home party for Dr. Thomas H. Marshburn, NASA astronaut and Statesville native, who explored space for five months. Marshburn was in orbit around the Earth, onboard the International Space Station, from December 2012 until May 2013. During this trip, Marshburn performed an unplanned 5 ½- hour spacewalk to fix an ammonia leak outside the space station. This last trip was not Marshburn's first time in space.

 

NASA Astronaut to Discuss 'Orbital Perspective' in Google+ Hangout

 

Meg Wagner - Mashable.com

 

Ron Garan knows a thing or two about orbital perspective. The NASA astronaut has traveled 71,075,867 miles in 2,842 orbits around the Earth and completed a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station. But now he wants all Earth-dwelling humans to start thinking orbitally, too. Garan will host a Google+ Hangout, titled "The #KeyIsWe," to discuss ways individuals can collaborate across cultures. It will take place Oct. 11 at 11 a.m. ET.

 

Sam Pool

 

Houston Chronicle

 

Friends and family will greatly miss Dr. Sam Lee Pool , 75, of Nassau Bay, Texas, who passed away on Sunday, September 22. Born in 1937 to Sam O. and Edith Pool, Sam completed high school and college each in three years, double majoring in math and physics at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. He then attended the University of Oklahoma Medical School. Upon graduating from medical school, Sam served as a flight surgeon in the United States Navy. Sam married the love of his life, Jane, in 1961. They, and their two young daughters, settled in Houston in 1968, when Sam joined NASA, Johnson Space Center, as a medical officer. He was a pioneer in space medicine and remained with NASA until his retirement.

 

The Eastern Shore's space-age opportunity

With the launch of two high-profile rocket missions from Wallops Island this month, Maryland's future as a gateway to space looks bright

 

Baltimore Sun (Editorial)

 

This week, a commercial "freighter" rocket that began its journey into space last Wednesday about 35 miles south of Ocean City is due to dock with the International Space Station, delivering 1,300 pounds of cargo. It will eventually be loaded up with trash and sent on its way to burn up on atmospheric re-entry over the South Pacific. Cygnus isn't the first unmanned rocket to be launched out of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., which has been in the research rocket business since World War II. But it may be among the most highly anticipated. It was built by a private company, Orbital Sciences Corp., and ushers in a new, big-time space travel era for Wallops.

 

Unlikely Fight over Launch Complex 39A

 

Space News (Editorial)

 

There should be nothing terribly complicated or remotely controversial about NASA's effort to lease a mothballed space shuttle launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to a commercial rocket operator. The universe of credible bidders is tiny to begin with, and the number that actually bid is smaller still — just two, by all accounts. Yet somehow, this seemingly straightforward activity has become the subject of dueling letter-writing campaigns from different corners of Capitol Hill, and a formal bidder protest has put the agency's selection of a winner on hold.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Crew ready for trip to ISS this afternoon

American astronaut to focus on fitness once in space

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

NASA astronaut and fitness nut Mike Hopkins is set to lift off to the International Space Station today with a pair of cosmonauts who will help Russia celebrate its role as Winter Olympics host.

 

The crew is scheduled to launch at 4:58 p.m. EDT aboard a Soyuz spacecraft and rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and arrive at the station less than six hours later.

 

"As you can imagine, very excited, a little bit nervous but also very confident," Hopkins said during a news conference Tuesday of his feelings before launching into space for the first time.

 

A 44-year-old Air Force colonel and flight test engineer, Hopkins will be the first member of NASA's 2009 astronaut class to fly in space.

 

The Missouri native plans to promote physical fitness during his roughly six-month expedition.

 

He was a defensive back and captain for the University of Illinois football team, and also enjoys backpacking, camping, snow skiing, weight lifting, running and hockey, according to his NASA biography.

 

On Facebook and Twitter, NASA will feature his exercise regimen — especially important in microgravity to counteract bone and muscle loss — through the "Train like an Astronaut" program.

 

The first-time flier will strap into the Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft with fellow rookie Sergey Ryazanskiy, 38, and Oleg Kotov, a 47-year-old veteran of two station expeditions totaling nearly a year.

 

Each will celebrate a birthday in orbit during the next three months.

 

Kotov and Ryazanskiy plan to carry an unlit Olympic torch on a spacewalk after another crew delivers it in November, as part of the relay leading up to the Sochi games in February.

 

"We would like to showcase our Olympic torch in space," Kotov said Tuesday, through a translator. "So we will try to do it in a beautiful manner, and I think millions of people will be able to see it live on TV."

 

November will also mark the 15th anniversary of the launch of the station's first module.

 

The new crew will join an American, Italian and Russian already aboard the station. They could welcome a new U.S. cargo spacecraft as early as this weekend.

 

New Crew Launching to Space Station Today

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

Three astronauts are set to blast off toward the International Space Station this afternoon (Sept. 25), and you can watch their out-of-this world journey live.

 

Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut are slated to launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan at 4:58 p.m. EDT today (2058 GMT; 2:58 a.m. Thursday in Kazakhstan).

 

The Soyuz is expected to arrive at the space station at 10:47 p.m. EDT tonight (0247 GMT Thursday), NASA officials said. Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy and NASA's Michael Hopkins should float through the hatch about 90 minutes later, bringing the orbiting lab's current Expedition 37 up to its full complement of six crewmembers.

 

Kotov is a spaceflight veteran with two six-month stays aboard the space station under his belt already, including a stint as commander of Expedition 23 in 2010. But this will be the first trip to orbit for Ryazanskiy and Hopkins, who was chosen as a NASA astronaut in 2009.

 

The three newcomers will stay aboard the International Space Station for nearly six months, eventually departing in mid-March.

 

The station's current occupants — cosmonaut and Expedition 37 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and Italian spaceflyer Luca Parmitano — are coming back to Earth on Nov. 11. When they leave, Kotov will become commander of the new Expedition 38.

 

Today's blastoff complicates things a bit for a private cargo vessel that launched toward the station on a demonstration mission on Sept. 18.

 

The unmanned Cygnus spacecraft, built by Virginia-based aerospace firm Orbital Sciences, was supposed to dock with the $100 billion orbiting lab on Sunday (Sept. 22). A software glitch scuttled that plan, however, and Cygnus is now slated to arrive at the station no earlier than Saturday (Sept. 28).

 

Orbital Sciences holds a $1.9 billion deal with NASA to make eight unmanned supply runs to the space station using Cygnus and the firm's Antares rocket. The current mission is a critical test flight, designed to show that the company is ready to start making its contracted cargo runs.

 

NASA also inked a $1.6 billion cargo deal with California-based SpaceX, which has already completed two of its planned 12 supply missions to the orbiting lab using its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket.

 

Soyuz TMA-10M and Next ISS Crew Ready for Wednesday Launch

 

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.com

 

Three new crewmembers are slated to rocket toward the International Space Station (ISS) late Wednesday, boosting the outpost's Expedition 37 population to its full six-member strength. Soyuz TMA-10M will ferry Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky and NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:58 p.m. EDT Wednesday (2:58 a.m. Kazakh time Thursday). Upon achieving orbit, the three crew members will execute a four-orbit, six-hour "fast rendezvous" profile to achieve a docking at the station's space-facing (or "zenith") Poisk module at about 10:47 p.m. EDT Wednesday (8:47 a.m. Kazakh time Thursday). Current plans call for the hatch opening to take place at about 12:25 a.m. EDT (10:25 a.m. Kazakh time) Thursday.

 

The new arrivals will be greeted by Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Russia and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg of NASA and Italy's Luca Parmitano. After checking the integrity of seals and connections between their craft, the hatches will open and the two halves of Expedition 37 will unite in orbit for the first time. Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano were launched on 28 May and spent the first half of their mission as part of Pavel Vinogradov's Expedition 36. Upon the safe return to Earth of Vinogradov, Aleksandr Misurkin, and Chris Cassidy on 11 September, Yurchikhin's team formed the "core" of the new Expedition 37, which Kotov, Ryazansky, and Hopkins will round out.

 

It has already been a truly "international" year aboard the ISS. In March, Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to command the multi-national outpost, whilst in July, Luca Parmitano became the first Italian spacewalker. In addition, the arrival of Soyuz TMA-09M on 28 May brought Karen Nyberg as one of only two women—the other being China's Wang Yaping aboard Shenzhou-10—to be in orbit on the 50th anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova's flight. Yet 2013 has also brought troubles to the ISS. In early May, astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn perform an unscheduled EVA to tend to an ammonia leak from the station's P-6 truss. Two months later, on 16 July, another EVA was curtailed due to water intrusion into Luca Parmitano's helmet.

 

Unpiloted visitors have shuttled backwards and forwards with cargo, equipment, and supplies for the crews. Russia's venerable Progress, Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), and Japan's H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) "Kounotori" have maintained a vigorous campaign of support throughout the summer months, and on 18 September Orbital Sciences Corp. triumphantly launched its first Cygnus cargo ship on the long-awaited Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Demonstration Mission. Cygnus' capture and berthing at the Earth-facing (or "nadir") port of the station's Harmony node was planned for early Sunday, 22 September, but was postponed until Tuesday, 24 September, due to a software glitch with its Global Positioning System (GPS) hardware. Yesterday (Monday), NASA and Orbital jointly announced their intention to delay the berthing until Saturday, 28 September, considering it more prudent to wait until after the Soyuz TMA-10M crew's arrival.

 

Cygnus completed three of its key demonstration objectives during its first two days on-orbit. It showcased its "Position and Control" capability to orient itself in space, it deactivated its thrusters and operated in "free drift," and it performed a simulated abort maneuver. By midday EDT Saturday, it was about 250 miles "behind" the ISS, tracking a rendezvous the following morning. However, at 1:30 a.m. EDT Sunday, Orbital Sciences announced that the capture and berthing had met with delay. "Cygnus … established direct data contact with the International Space Station and found that some of the data received had values that it did not expect, causing Cygnus to reject the data," Orbital reported. "This mandated an interruption of the approach sequence. Orbital has subsequently found the causes of this discrepancy and is developing a software fix. The minimum turnaround time to resume the approach to the ISS following an interruption such as this is approximately 48 hours due to orbital mechanics of the approach trajectory." The subsequent delay until Saturday means that 10 days will have elapsed between Cygnus' launch and its berthing at the ISS.

 

Consequently, one of the first tasks for the new Soyuz TMA-10M crew upon their arrival will be to participate in the unloading of more than 1,300 pounds of supplies from Cygnus. The cargo ship is expected to remain with the station for about a month, with unberthing and separation presently scheduled for 22 October, after which Cygnus will burn up in the atmosphere. If all goes well, Orbital intends to launch its first "dedicated" Cygnus mission (designated "ORB-1?) under the $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA on about 8 December. Working on this schedule, it has been reported that the ORB-1 Cygnus will depart the ISS on 10 January 2014, after which SpaceX's CRS-3 Dragon will fly from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., in mid-January. This craft will occupy Cygnus' former spot at the Harmony nadir port and is expected to remain attached to the station for a month. Unlike Cygnus, however, Dragon has the capacity to survive atmospheric re-entry and return to an ocean splashdown. Two Progress cargo vessels from Russia are also expected to deliver supplies and equipment to the space station in November and February.

 

For Oleg Kotov, this mission will be his third. The 48-year-old, Ukraine-born military physician has spent a cumulative 360 days in orbit during two ISS expeditions in April-October 2007 and December 2009-June 2010. Although the changes to the station between his first and second flights were profound—with the addition of the Harmony, Columbus, Kibo, Tranquility, and Cupola modules—he admitted in his pre-launch NASA interview that he does not expect to see many changes on this third mission. "The station has not changed much since my last flight," Kotov said. "A couple of small modules have been added. It will be interesting to see them, to explore them, but I am looking forward to seeing the station again to see how the life organization has changed. Every crew brings something new to the station, to its life—their own style—and it stays there. It's like a growing organism."

 

Kotov, Ryazansky, and Hopkins' early weeks aboard the ISS will be somewhat different from most, for they will be subject to an uncommon "direct handover" of crew members in early November. Soyuz TMA-11M is scheduled to launch on 7 November with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, and Japan's Koichi Wakata, which will make Fyodor Yurchikhin the first ISS Commander to lead an expedition crew of nine members. It will mark the first occasion since the end of the shuttle era back in July 2011 that the station's population has soared beyond six people.

 

"We have not had a direct handover for a pretty long period of time," Kotov explained in his pre-launch NASA interview, "so nine people will be working on-board the station at the same time. It requires a lot of co-ordination by the commander of the crew. We need to ensure the safety of the crew and of the station during docking, re-docking and during spacewalks. Imagine a situation when a lot of your relatives arrive at your house. Somebody is unpacking. Somebody is just arriving. Somebody is leaving. Somebody is in the back yard planting something. After this work, we will need a day or two to relax and to understand what happened!"

 

Normally, ISS crews follow "indirect" handover protocols, whereby a given crew departs the station, reducing the population to three, before a new crew arrives and restores it back up to six. The reason for the direct handover is tied to the fact that Russia plans an EVA by Kotov and Ryazansky on 9 November, as detailed by NASASpaceflight.com, whose primary objective is the installation of the UrtheCast high-resolution camera onto Zvezda. However, its most publicly visible objective will involve the spacewalkers carrying an Olympic torch as part of preparations for the Sochi Winter Olympics, which begin in February 2014. "The Olympic torch will be traveling all over Russia," explained Ryazansky. "They will also take it to the bottom of the deepest lake on Earth, Lake Baikal." The torch will launch with the Soyuz TMA-11M crew on 7 November and will then be returned to Earth with Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano aboard Soyuz TMA-09M on 11 November.

 

"The idea to take the Olympic torch to space and take it outer space during the spacewalk was an idea voiced by Roscosmos," said Kotov. "We will take a picture of it with the space station in the background, with the Earth in the background, and we will try to make sure that we see Russia and maybe Sochi, where the Olympic Games will take place. We want them to be in the background." For Ryazansky, it will be his first EVA and to photograph the Olympic torch with Russia itself forming the backdrop promises to be highly symbolic. He was only 6 years old when his homeland last held the Summer Games, back in 1980. Thirty-four years later, Sochi—on the Black Sea coastline of Russia's Krasnodar Krai—will host the Winter Games. "The most interesting part," said the 38-year-old biochemist, who participated in the 15-day first stage and 105-day second stage of the Mars-500 isolation experiment in 2007-2009, "is that our relatives will be participating in this relay as well. My wife and Oleg Kotov's daughter on Earth will be participating in the relay."

 

In readiness for the temporary presence of three Soyuz craft at the ISS, it is expected that Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano will undock their Soyuz TMA-09M craft from the nadir-facing Rassvet module on or around 1 November and redock to the end of the Zvezda module. This latter port will have been vacated by Europe's ATV-4 "Albert Einstein" cargo craft a few days earlier on 28 October. This will allow Soyuz TMA-11M to dock at Rassvet, after a four-orbit, six-hour "fast rendezvous" on 7 November, whilst Soyuz TMA-10M remains at the zenith-facing Poisk module. This will also mean that Kotov, Ryazansky, and Hopkins will become part of the first ISS crew to remain at full six-person strength throughout its entire expedition.

 

And that expedition is shaping up to be an exciting one, as Kotov prepares to lead the space station into spring 2014. With the departure of Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano on 11 November, Kotov will command "Expedition 38," with Ryazansky, Hopkins, Tyurin, Mastracchio, and Wakata as Flight Engineers. On 20 November, the ISS will celebrate 15 years since the launch of its first segment, Russia's Zarya module. "It's truly incredible," said Mike Hopkins in his NASA interview, "when you think about when Zarya launched 15 years ago and then to where it is now, the size of a five-bedroom house. It is a testament to the work of people from all the participating countries, all the crews, all the flights from shuttles to Soyuz to resupply vehicles that have gone on before it." With spacewalks from the U.S. Segment currently on hold, pending the resolution of the issues which curtailed EVA-23 on 16 July, the Russian Segment is expected to be busy with spacewalks over the next few months. In the aftermath of Kotov and Ryazansky's "Olympic Torch" EVA on 9 November, the duo are expected to venture outside on two more occasions in December and February to begin steps to outfit the Russian Segment for the arrival of the long-delayed Nauka ("Science") Multi-Purpose Laboratory Module (MLM).

 

Original plans called for the MLM to arrive in December 2013, although that date has now slipped and its launch from Baikonur is not anticipated until at least late April 2014—after Kotov and his crew have returned home. "It is very unfortunate," Kotov acquiesced, "because this module will expand the technical capabilities of the station and of the Russian Segment in particular. We will have new scientific hardware there to monitor the Earth. We will have special ovens inside this module where new alloys and new materials will be produced. It will also improve the life-support system of the station. We will have a new water recovery system, an oxygen generation system, one Russian [toilet] will be added, and one of the crew quarters will be moved there. We have an airlock there from which materials will be delivered to the outside of the station. From the crew's standpoint, we will have a big window there and we will be able to take beautiful photographs of Earth."

 

With or without the MLM, Kotov said that the work of Expedition 38 will be overwhelmingly scientific in nature, as the ISS advances from its post-assembly phase to one of full utilization. Still, the difficulty of astronauts and cosmonauts in surviving for months at a time in a hazardous and isolated environment remains substantial. "We need to receive some information from Earth," he told the NASA interviewer. "Social networks can help. Talking to our friends can help. After my second flight, I concluded that the most important thing is to be loaded, snowed under with work. The worst for me was when I had some spare time. When people on Earth … think that they are doing a good thing by giving us some days off, when on Earth you can simply visit your friends … for us it's like a day off in the office. It is really difficult."

 

Although he has never flown into space before, Sergei Ryazansky can at least draw on the lengthy experience he gained from the Mars-500 isolation experiment. "We were simulating a Mars mission on Earth," he explained, "but it was more of a psychological experiment for us, because on board the station we can call … our friends or our families at any moment of time. During that experiment, we could receive one letter from our family, once a week, so we received very little news on board the station. There were six people during this experiment. They were great guys, but in a couple of months, when you see the same faces, smell the same odors, we could see some changes in how we approached our work. I was the commander, so I had to decide as commander how to keep a wonderful atmosphere and a good mood and yet complete the experiment and keep the crew together."

 

For Ryazansky and Hopkins, both first-time fliers on Soyuz TMA-10M, it will be an exciting time and a first taste of the new and strange microgravity environment. With science intended to be a major focus, Hopkins was overjoyed that physical exercise and conditioning takes central stage, with around 2.5 hours of daily workout scheduled. "Exercise has always been a huge part of my life," said the 44-year-old U.S. Air Force colonel, who becomes the first member of NASA's 2009 astronaut intake to draw a flight assignment. "I am trying to gear up a little bit with the Train Like An Astronaut program to highlight that. It is a program that tries to motivate kids to get out and exercise, because healthy kids are going to turn into healthy adults. Through avenues like Facebook, we are going to share some of the videos of my workouts on station, and we put out there some of our videos and also the types of workout that I am doing and maybe some motivational clips."

 

Barring any unforeseen problems, Soyuz TMA-10M will bring Kotov, Ryazansky, and Hopkins back to Earth on 12 March 2014, concluding a mission of 168 days in orbit. Their departure will herald the beginning of Expedition 39, which will make history when Wakata becomes the first Japanese astronaut to take command of the ISS. Other space travelers expected to fly to the outpost in 2014 include Germany's Alexander Gerst in May and Italy's first female astronaut, Sam Cristoforetti, in December. And with 2015 scheduled to see year-long crewmen Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko launching in March, followed by Japan's Kimiya Yui in May, Denmark's Andreas Mogensen and "space tourist" Sarah Brightman in September, and Britain's Tim Peake in November, it appears that the "International" Space Station is truly living up to its billing and laying the groundwork for our species' explorations beyond Earth orbit in the years ahead.

 

Kotov, Ryazansky, and Hopkins arrived at Baikonur in the desolate steppe of Kazakhstan on 13 September, together with their backup crew of Russian cosmonauts Aleksandr Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Steve Swanson. Yesterday morning (Monday, 23 September), the giant Soyuz booster was rolled horizontally from its assembly building and raised to a vertical position on the launch pad. All three Soyuz TMA-10M crewmen are ready to go Wednesday. And none of them hope that this will be their last flight. Before launch, all were asked if they would like to follow in the footsteps of Kelly and Kornienko and attempt a year-long mission.

 

The replies were predictably obvious.

 

Kotov: "Of course."

 

Ryazansky: "Yes."

 

Hopkins: "I would certainly relish the opportunities to fly in space again … but let us get through my first mission first!"

 

A week until the new fiscal year—and the threat of a shutdown

 

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

 

A week from now is October 1, New Year's Day for those who live on the federal government fiscal year calendar. And, for many of them, it could become an unintended, and unwanted, holiday. With no appropriations bills for fiscal year 2014 passed to date, Congress needs to approve a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at 2013 levels.

 

However, the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate are at loggerheads over a provision in the House CR, passed on Friday, that would defund provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), language that would not survive in the Senate. The Senate will debate its version of a CR this week and likely pass it by this weekend, POLITICO reports, without the Obamacare language but perhaps covering a shorter span: until November 15, instead of December 15 as in the House.

 

Unless the House changes course and agrees to the Senate version, or some other compromise between the two chambers is worked out, next Tuesday will arrive without a funding mechanism in place, precipitating a government "shutdown." That term is in quotes because, as the AP reported last week, less than half of the 2.1 million federal government employees would be out of work if there is a shutdown.

 

Essential government operations would continue, which would cover at least some NASA operations, for example. There certainly would be visible disruptions, though: an OMB memo last week about a potential shutdown states that government websites should remain operational only if "is necessary to avoid significant damage to the execution of authorized or excepted activities," which suggests that many of the NASA websites could go offline or not be updated during a shutdown.

 

It's also unclear how a shutdown would affect NASA's Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop, scheduled to begin Monday the 30th and run through Wednesday the 2nd; while run by NASA, it is being held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, and not on the NASA JSC campus.

 

Send Your Own Science Experiment to the ISS

Infinity Aerospace just launched their program that will allow students or anyone who want to send experiments to the International Space Station

 

Will Dietrich-Egensteiner - Popular Mechanics

 

When aerospace engineer Manu Sharma was a college student, he dreamed of sending something to space. Sharma approached one of his professors about sending a cube-shaped project he was working on up into space, but was told that it would take four years to complete—time he didn't have.

 

"There had to be a faster way for kids and students to send projects up to space," he tells PM. Frustrated, Sharma became determined to create a project that would give anyone the opportunity to send experiments into space. So he cofounded Infinity Aerospace, a project that came to fruition this month with the company's launch of ArduLab.

 

An ArduLab is an open-source science platform for experiments intended for the International Space Station or for suborbital trips on board a craft like the Virgin Galactic or XCOR shuttles for microgravity testing.

 

Made of pre-certified NASA hardware and measuring approximately 3.5 inches by 2.4 inches, an ArduLab is a rectangular, polycarbonate chassis with a microcontroller it uses to communicate with NASA computers and Infinity Aerospace's servers. The microcontroller contains an SD slot for storing onboard memory, and the whole thing is programmable using standard Arduino software.

 

This versatility allows the ArduLab to house different kinds of experiments, and Sharma hopes ArduLabs will be used for everything from fluid mixing tests to plant growth analysis. And because Sharma had students in mind when developing ArduLab, he wants high schools and universities to take advantage of ArduLab's adaptable programming.

 

"Our goal has been to tap into education, make people do space projects, or even art," Sharma said. Would-be space scientists can order an ArduLab, place their experiment inside of it, then ship it back to Infinity Aerospace. Infinity would place the experiment on a launch to the ISS, where the astronauts will install them. Once aboard the space station, the ArduLab will provide data and video output on the experiment so that designers on Earth can monitor their creations directly.

 

In about nine months, a class could design an experiment and have it up in time for finals. It wouldn't break the bank either—ArduLabs will cost no more than $5000, a drastically cheaper price than other cubesat programs.

 

The first ArduLab was launched on the Orbital Sciences Cygnus spacecraft on Wednesday, and should reach the ISS this week. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will send up two experiments on a later mission, and Stanford University and three high schools in Houston are already designing ArduLab projects that will launch in July.

 

Launch slots will be opened on a rolling basis, and the ISS can carry 40 ArduLabs, but Sharma predicts more space will be available as the project picks up steam and more schools utilize ArduLab in their curricula. He also expects that much more submissions will come rolling in once people's curiosity is piqued by the first successful launch.

 

SpaceX Changes Tune on Lease Terms for Shuttle Pad

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), which had been seeking exclusive use of an old space shuttle launch pad, now says it would make the pad available to NASA and other users if it is allowed to lease the facility.

 

SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., and Blue Origin of Kent, Wash., both replied to NASA's May request for proposals to lease Shuttle Launch Complex 39A, which the agency says it no longer needs. Citing the technical complexity of maintaining a launch facility for more than one user, SpaceX proposed keeping the pad to itself over the course of a lease that would last at least four years, beginning in 2015. Blue Origin, which is quietly developing and testing orbital and suborbital spacecraft, offered to manage Pad 39A as a multiuser facility.

 

Now, SpaceX is offering to also welcome other operators as part of a five-year lease it seeks.

 

"At the time we submitted the bid, SpaceX was unaware any other parties had interest in using the pad," SpaceX spokeswoman Emily Shankin wrote in a Sept. 20 email. "However, if awarded this limited duration lease on 39A, SpaceX would be more than happy to support other commercial space pioneers at the pad, and allow NASA to make use of the pad if need be."

 

SpaceX emailed the statement to members of the media following a Sept. 20 hearing of the House Science space subcommittee that focused on NASA's surplus infrastructure. The company thinks Pad 39A might make a good launch site for the Falcon Heavy rocket it is developing.

 

The fate of Pad 39A became an issue in Congress in July, when lawmakers from Washington and Alabama, among others, wrote NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to oppose an exclusive-use lease of Pad 39A. Blue Origin is headquartered in Washington state. One of its major vendors, launch services provider United Launch Alliance of Denver, has a rocket assembly facility in Decatur, Ala.

 

Alabama is also home to the Marshall Space Flight Center, which is managing construction of the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) NASA is building for deep-space missions that would launch from Pad 39B, the other space shuttle pad at Kennedy. Alabama lawmakers have expressed concern that an exclusive-use lease of Pad 39A would leave SLS without a backup launchpad. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) raised the issue in July when he began the letter-writing campaign over Pad 39A, and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), whose district includes Marshall, repeated the concern during the Sept. 20 hearing.

 

NASA has said that SLS needs no backup launchpad, and that Pad 39B could accommodate multiple users because SLS will not launch more than once every three or four years.

 

That explanation was good enough for every U.S. lawmaker from Florida. The state's entire congressional delegation signed a letter to Bolden praising the competition for Pad 39A as open and competitive, and urging the administrator not to yield to pressure from outside the agency when making decision about disposal of unneeded NASA infrastructure.

 

NASA has been searching for ways to preserve disused space shuttle infrastructure at the Kennedy Space Center since 2011, when it put out a broad request for ideas about using, among other things, space shuttle orbiter processing facilities, the two shuttle launch pads at Kennedy, and the former shuttle runway, the Shuttle Landing Facility.

 

NASA's Innovative Ion Space Thruster Sets Endurance World Record

 

Nola Taylor Redd - Space.com

 

A five-year test of NASA's latest ion drive for future spacecraft has set a new world record for the longest single space engine test.

 

The space agency's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) project completed a continuous test the ion engine for more than 48,000 hours — over five and a half years — longer than any other space propulsion system ever tested. With low fuel weight and long-running efficiency, ion engines have become strong contenders for deep space missions.

 

Spacecraft traveling through miles of space require energy to keep moving. Ion propulsion engines can help to minimize the bulkiness of fuel, allowing for increased scientific exploration in smaller packages. Over the course of nearly six years, NEXT consumed only 1,900 pounds (860 kilograms) of fuel, compared to the 22,000 pounds (10,000 kg) a conventional rocket would burn to create the same momentum.

 

Part of a class of solar electric propulsion (SEP) engines, NEXT bombards xenon with electrons, ionizing it. The ionized propellant is then focused out the back of the engine, creating a stream of ion jets known as an ion beam. The movement creates the thrust that moves the craft.

 

Ion engines win out over traditional engines much like the tortoise defeated the hare. Though it takes more time to speed up, it is able to run longer than its competition. Charged particles from NEXT reached speeds of up to 90,000 miles per hour (144,841 km/h), making it ideal for deep space missions in particular.

 

"SEP uses electricity, generated by solar panels, to power an electric thruster to propel spacecraft," principle investigator Michael Patterson of NASA's Glenn Research Center said in a statement. "Because it reduces the amount of propellant needed for a given mission, it greatly reduces the weight of the vehicle."

 

Less weight means less traditional propellant required to launch the craft into space — or more room for science. Ion engines on NASA's Dawn mission, which traveled to the asteroid Vesta and is now headed toward the dwarf planet Ceres, enabled its team to include more scientific equipment than they would have managed on a traditionally-powered craft.

 

Once the staple of science fiction, ion propulsion engines have made a slow influx in military, commercial, and civilian space programs. An ion engine propelled NASA's Deep Space 1 mission, launched in October 1998, demonstrating the engine's long duration.

 

"The bottom line in space is to maximize the payload we deliver including potential missions in support of human operations and scientific payload," Patterson said. "We don't want to spend all our resources pushing propellant around. NEXT can fly huge payloads deep into space with super fuel efficiency."

 

CNSA chief says China would gladly join global space roadmapping group if asked

 

Peter de Selding - Space News

 

The head of China's space program on Sept. 23 said his government is willing to join an existing multilateral effort to chart future space exploration goals and awaits only an invitation to do so.

 

Ma Xingrui, administrator of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said China has signed bilateral space accords with several dozen nations but has yet to join the multinational International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG).

 

ISECG, whose members include most other spacefaring nations, is assembling a Global Exploration Roadmap whose goal is to reduce duplication in what most nations agree will be an endeavor too costly for any nation acting alone.

 

China's spectacular leap forward in space technology in general, and manned space efforts in particular, was one of the principal topics here Sept. 23 during the 64th International Astronautical Congress (IAC).

 

As China has progressed on its strategy to develop independent expertise in manned flight and multiple other space technology domains, its leaders have sought to stress China's willingness to join international efforts and to welcome non-Chinese nations to the Chinese program.

 

Most recently, Chinese authorities said the manned space station they intend to build in low Earth orbit would be open to non-Chinese astronauts to perform research there.

 

Asked why China has not signed on as a member of ISECG, Ma said China would welcome full membership on receipt of an invitation.

 

"I don't see any problem if the organization is willing to invite us," Ma said here during a panel discussion featuring high-ranking officials from the U.S., European, Russian, Japanese, Canadian and Indian space agencies.

 

"Perhaps an invitation has not been issued, or perhaps it was issued not in the best of times," Ma said.

 

One non-Chinese government official said China is already an observer to the ISECG work and that it was China, not ISECG, which in the past had resisted China's joining as a full member.

 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who regularly fields questions about the apparent U.S. government policy of hostility to China's space efforts during annual conferences like IAC, said nothing in U.S. policy would prevent China's becoming a full ISECG member.

 

Bolden said that as far as he was concerned, China was already a part of the ISECG process.

 

All of the heads of agencies agreed that one of the major problems confronting them in the coming years is the accumulation of space debris in low Earth orbit.

 

But they also all agreed that an international effort to remove the larger, more dangerous pieces of debris — dead satellites and rocket stages — was not a high enough priority for any of them to push the idea forward.

 

"Regrettably, it does not rise to the level where we're organizing a mission to clean out low Earth orbit," Bolden said.

 

Asked what their biggest challenges were in the next 12 months, five of the agencies — China, Japan, Russia, India and Europe — mentioned new launch vehicles — and, in Russia's case, the new spaceport at Vostochny — as their biggest issues.

 

China is developing a Long March 5 rocket that will carry 25,000 kilograms of payload into low Earth orbit and 15,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, the destination of most communications satellites — "a daunting challenge we hope to overcome," Ma said.

 

Japan is developing a less-expensive successor to its H-2B rocket, and this will be a key development in the immediate future, said Naoki Okumura, president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

 

Russia's Angara series is one of that nation's highest space priorities, said Sergei Saveliev, deputy head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency.

 

India, which has developed its own medium-lift rocket, the successful Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, has struggled with the heavy-lift Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) designed be able to carry midsize telecommunications satellites to geostationary orbit. A successful GSLV launch is one of the nation's highest space priorities, said S. Ramakrishnan, director of the Indian Space Research Organisation's Vikram Sarabhai Space Center.

 

Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of the 20-nation European Space Agency (ESA), said his top priorities include presenting ESA's governments in 2014 with credible options for an upgrade to the current European heavy-lift rocket, and a new-generation Ariane 6 vehicle.

 

Bolden said his highest priority is convincing the American people, and the U.S. Congress, of the merits of the NASA budget proposed by U.S. President Barack Obama. Sufficient funding is the sine qua non of NASA's current program, he said.

 

Will Sick Mars Astronauts Be Forbidden from Returning to Earth?

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

Landing astronauts on Mars is a tall order, but bringing them back to Earth promises to be even trickier — especially if Red Planet explorers get the sniffles on the long flight home.

 

Sick astronauts could conceivably have been infected on Mars, some parts of which may be capable of supporting life as we know it. So the world may be reluctant to welcome such travelers home, leery of possibly unleashing an extraterrestrial superplague on Earth's 7 billion people.

 

NASA is already thinking about how to deal with this concern as it works toward getting people to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s. The key is to monitor the health of astronauts meticulously during all phases of Red Planet missions and any other deep-space efforts, said Cassie Conley, NASA's planetary protection officer.

 

"The ability to have documentation to justify to the rest of the Earth why this really isn't some nasty disease from Mars, it's actually something totally normal and we expected it — we saw it when we went to the moon, we saw it when we went to asteroids, we know this is a result of nonliving exposure, it has nothing to do with some potentially Martian disease — that, I think, is going to be the most important aspect of doing planetary protection on human missions [to Mars]," Conley said last month during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group.

 

Of course, NASA will also be doing its best to minimize the chances that astronauts could pick up a potentially pathogenic Martian organism while roaming the surface. For example, human explorers will steer clear of "special regions" — defined as areas where Earth microbes could likely survive and reproduce — and they won't set foot in a Martian locale that hasn't been visited and vetted by a robot first.

 

These and other guidelines are laid out in a rough planetary protection protocol drawn up in 2008 by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), which is part of the International Council for Science. NASA and the European Space Agency have committed to follow this protocol, whose top priority is to protect Earth from any possible "back contamination" from Mars. (The policy seeks to safeguard the Red Planet against "forward contamination" from Earth as well.)

 

But astronauts on the surface will inevitably come into contact with some Martian material no matter what precautions mission planners devise, Conley and other experts say, potentially lending a sinister edge to the slightest sneeze or cough.

 

And Red Planet explorers are highly likely to get sick.

 

"They're going to have runny noses, they're going to have some skin rash," Conley said. "People who are in a small, contained environment for hundreds of days — that happens to them."

 

Astronauts should assiduously track the nature and severity of these various illnesses as part of their concerted health-monitoring efforts, she added, with one crewmember assuming primary responsibility for implementing planetary protection protocols throughout the entire mission.

 

NASA's working plan also calls for quarantine capabilities and appropriate medical testing to be provided to crews returning from Mars — and for everyone associated with any manned Red Planet mission to keep things in the proper perspective.

 

"Six people going on a mission to Mars — if something happens to them, that's a really bad tragedy and we want to prevent that as much as possible," Conley said. "But six people bringing some horribly infectious, horribly damaging organisms back from Mars to Earth is a global tragedy, and there is a difference in scale there that has to be recognized."

 

Bezos in space? 'I definitely want to go,' says billionaire

 

Wilson Rothman - NBC New

 

When Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos met with reporters to discuss the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets, NBC News took the opportunity to quiz him about his other venture, the space start-up Blue Origin.

 

The company was recently in the news because it's fighting with another billionaire's space firm over a retired NASA shuttle launch pad.

 

"Our proposal is to build (at the NASA facility) a multi-use launch pad so that we would share it," Bezos said. The purpose would be to launch orbital vehicles, for instance to send crews and supplies to the International Space Station, but allow other private space firms to schedule their own launches.

 

"We would launch our vehicle there in 2018," he said. The alternate proposal is for Elon Musk's SpaceX to take control of it and — according to the most recent reports — not share it with other companies.

 

Blue Origin, Bezos' firm, is also building spaceships capable of vertical takeoff and vertical landing that would travel only as far as suborbital space. The purpose would be space tourism, the sort that Virgin Galactic has promised.

 

Since Virgin founder Richard Branson has declared his intention to travel into space, we asked Bezos, in a separate session, if he'd ever join the tourists in one of his rockets. (And if so, would he bring a Kindle Fire tablet along?)

 

"Absolutely. I definitely want to go," he said, "and now that you've suggested it, it sounds like a terrific idea to take a Kindle Fire with me."

 

The trouble might be finding some reading time. "There's no boring part of going into suborbital space, I have a feeling," he told NBC News.

 

How Space Station Astronaut Chris Cassidy Is Readapting to Earth Life

 

Megan Gannon - Space.com

 

After more than five months aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy is getting used to life with gravity again.

 

"I feel really good," Cassidy said Thursday (Sept. 19). "The exercise program that we have up there does a fantastic job because I was able to walk pretty much hours after getting out of the Soyuz and I started driving again today. I feel like I've got my balance."

 

Cassidy and two Russian cosmonauts returned to Earth on Sept. 11 when Russian Soyuz spacecraft landed safely on the flat steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia on the morning of Sept. 11. Now back in the United States, Cassidy caught up with SPACE.com over Skype from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. He reflected on his stay, a harrowing spacewalk with Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and the prospect of longer space missions.

 

NASA regularly monitors the health of its astronauts when they return from orbit, but Cassidy has been participating in some extra tests to serve as a baseline for his fellow astronaut Scott Kelly, who is set to launch on a one-year mission to the space station— twice as long as the average trip. Kelly's 2015 voyage will help NASA study how the human body might handle even longer space missions, such as trips to an asteroid or Mars.

 

"A year is a long time," Cassidy said. "I talked to Scott just the other day about it. And I thought to myself, too, as I was leaving the space station last week, what would it be like if I was only halfway done right now? How would I feel?"

 

Cassidy thinks that psychologically, the long mission would be just fine.

 

"Mentally, you prepare yourself for what you think the duration is going to be, and he knows it's going to be a year going into it, so he'll be fine from that respect," said Cassidy, a 43-year-old former U.S. Navy SEAL.

 

But fatigue can settle in for the crew sustaining the $100-billion International Space Station, where there are hundreds of science experiments and maintenance tasks to complete. There are constant worries about the schedule and what to do if an alarm sounds, Cassidy said, and though the astronauts do get weekends, they spend a good chunk of their Saturdays cleaning.

 

"My personal opinion is that you'd want to have in second half of the year ... a three or four day weekend every month," Cassidy said of Kelly's year-long trip. "I think that would go a long ways to keeping him fresh."

 

Life aboard the the biggest manmade structure in space can indeed be stressful. Cassidy took part in an unplanned spacewalk to hunt for an ammonia leak in the space station's cooling system in May. Then in July, his last spacewalk had to be aborted after Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet began filling with water.

 

"I saw the water growing bigger and bigger inside his helmet," Cassidy recalled. "Luca and I both knew that it wasn't normal and it was time to go back to the airlock right about the time the ground came to same conclusion."

 

Cassidy told SPACE.com that the crew on board the space station took apart Parmitano's suit a few weeks ago and has narrowed the problem down to one or two components that will need to be tested on Earth.

 

"The suit will probably come back on the next SpaceX vehicle that returns I think early next year," Cassidy said. "And then we'll really, no kidding, know what the problem is."

 

A SPACE.com reader wanted to know if readjusting to life on Earth is difficult for an astronaut socially, but Cassidy said being on board the space station was itself very social — "kind of like if you've ever been camping." Though instead of gathering around a campfire, astronauts flock to the windows of the space station's cupola to talk and swap stories.

 

"When you have people sitting around the window looking at our planet and just marveling at its beauty … people tend to be less guarded," Cassidy said. "That's what I felt with my crewmates. We had some really fun and open conversations just sitting around the window."

 

From their privileged perch at an average of 240 miles (386 kilometers) above the planet, the space station crew is treated to spectacular views. Cassidy said one of his favorite places to spot on Earth was the Nile River and its delta in Egypt, which, during the day, looks like a winding stretch of green set starkly against a vast desert. Then at night, the bright lights of development outline shape of the world's longest river.

 

"That's one of the most pretty places in the day and at night," Cassidy said.

 

Another reader had a curious question about whether astronauts can lose weight while working out in microgravity.

 

"You absolutely can, and it's very common to come back weighing less," Cassidy said.

 

But losing weight in space isn't usually a good thing; it can be a sign that the body is losing its bone and muscle density. The space station crewmembers typically exercise two hours each day on special gym equipment to combat those effects.

 

"I like dessert a little too much apparently," Cassidy said. "I was one of the few people who came back with more body fat."

 

Astronaut from Statesville returns after 5 months in space

 

Joe Marusak - Charlotte Observer

 

Rory McDonald wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.

 

On Sunday night, the 6-year-old met one in person on the lawn of Mitchell Community College in downtown Statesville.

 

Rory joined several hundred other residents who lined up to meet and greet Tom Marshburn, 53, a NASA astronaut who was born in Statesville and lived there until his family moved to Atlanta when Marshburn was 8.

 

Rory told Marshburn he'd seen the launch of the final space shuttle flight from Cape Canaveral, Fla., when he and his family lived in Jacksonville. He wants nothing more than to be on a flight to space someday, he said

 

"You've got to study hard, work hard," Marshburn told Rory, who lives in Winston-Salem and showed up with his mom, Helen, who teaches biology and earth sciences at Statesville High School. He also got an autographed photo of Marshburn to take home.

 

Statesville threw a two-hour "evening under the stars" welcome-home party for Marshburn, who wore his blue, fire-retardant NASA suit and told the crowd about his recent five-month trip aboard the International Space Station. He planned the visit to his hometown while still aboard the space station, he said, communicating with Statesville Mayor Costi Kutteh.

 

Marshburn told the crowd how the six astronauts aboard the station worked 13-hour days conducting 130 experiments at any one time, from studies of metals to research on osteoporosis, he said. The astronauts had to exercise 2?1/2 hours a day because in space "you turn into a jellyfish."

 

They handled two emergencies: a coolant leak near the end of their stay and an earlier temporary loss of communication with Mission Control in Houston.

 

Marshburn also performed an unplanned 5?1/2-hour spacewalk to fix an ammonia leak outside the space station.

 

He told the crowd how beautiful Earth looked, most especially his native Piedmont, of which he caught 15-second glimpses while encircling the Earth.

 

"I fell in love with Earth again," he told the crowd.

 

On Sunday, Marshburn said how good it was "to be back under the trees" for which Statesville is noted, "how good it is to be back in my hometown."

 

He'd last visited in 2009, when the city held a similar celebration after his first space flight.

 

On Monday, Marshburn will visit N.B. Mills Elementary School and Statesville High School before speaking at a noon luncheon hosted by the Statesville Chamber of Commerce at the Statesville Civic Center.

 

He will visit Davidson College, his alma mater, on Tuesday and Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte on Wednesday. He also plans to visit Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem this week.

 

Marshburn, the youngest of seven children, graduated from Davidson College in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in physics and from Wake Forest University in 1989 with a doctorate in medicine. His brother Paul lives in Davidson and is a reproductive endocrinologist at Carolinas Medical Center.

 

Marshburn joined NASA in 1994 as a flight surgeon assigned to Space Shuttle Medical Operations and to the joint U.S./Russian Space Program.

 

He made his first space walk on July 20, 2009, when he stepped out of the International Space Station's hatch and stayed out most of the afternoon.

 

"He's the most important Statesvillian in the history of the city," Kutteh said.

 

Defying gravity: Tom Marshburn on an astronaut's life

 

Jim McNally - Statesville Record & Landmark

 

In his popular 1970s hit single, "Rocket Man," Elton John laments that "it's lonely out in space."

 

But astronaut and Statesville native Tom Marshburn said the British pop legend got it wrong.

 

"I think it used to be kind of lonely," he said Sunday evening during an event at Mitchell Community College. "But it's not any more."

 

And Marshburn, who was born and lived in Statesville until shortly before his 9th birthday, ought to know.

 

He returned to earth earlier this year after spending nearly five months on the International Space Station as part of crew composed of people from four different countries.

 

"Most of the time while you're up there, it's a beehive of activity," he added. "We're almost constantly in contact with people from all over the world: different parts of Europe, Russia, Canada, Kazakhstan, and, of course, the U.S."

 

But one of the more profound things Marshburn gleaned from the experience is that the true nature of the planet on which we all reside is a place free of things that segregate its seemingly most intelligent inhabitants.

 

"When you see the earth as an alien might see it, you see a place that is without borders, without politics," he said. "We become human beings. And that perspective allowed me to fall in love with the earth all over again."

 

Marshburn easily finds a poetic voice as he explains such a view.

 

"I discovered the incredible and unique beauty of the Carolina Piedmont," he said. "The deciduous forest we have here is something you can't find anywhere else and I always recognized it when we passed over it."

 

He said the distinct properties in places like the Sahara Desert and Indian subcontinent and the South American rain forests  and the vast Australian mainland also became very easy to discern: even at a distance of about 250 miles from earth and a speed of more than 17,000 miles per hour, which is nearly eight times faster than a bullet fired from an M-16 rifle.

 

But at night, Marshburn said, the planet wears an entirely different mask; one that is largely an invention of the past century or so.

 

"That's when the spider webs and jewels of the lights come out," he said.

 

Marshburn said a new perspective of life itself – and its vulnerability – can be gained from space. He asked the audience of several hundred gathered on the lawn at MCC to hold out their hand and separate their thumb and forefinger by a few inches.

 

"That is the thickness of what allows us to live," he said. "That thin skin of air, is our atmosphere. It makes you realize that life is very fragile."

 

Adjustments are required both coming and going from earth, Marshburn said.

 

"It takes about six weeks to adjust to zero-gravity," he said and then explained that there "is some gravity" at the level of the Space Station's orbit but it is negligible. In that kind of environment, Marshburn said, the body's muscles would eventually reach a point of almost complete atrophy if efforts were not made to exercise.

 

"We had a stationary bike and a treadmill that you had to be bungee-corded to or you wouldn't be able to stay on it," he said and added that there were special machines for strengthening other muscles.

 

"I actually came back with more muscle mass than when I left with," he said.

 

But coming back is tricky business.

 

"There is this kind of magnetic pull when you are back on earth and it takes about an hour and half just to make the first adjustment to gravity," he said. "The first thing you notice is the weight of your head. It weighs about eight pounds and in space, you don't need to do anything to hold it up, but back on earth your neck suddenly has to remember it has a job to do."

 

Marshburn said he could feel the weight of virtually ounce of his body.

 

"You could feel the weight of the muscle against the bone," he said. "You could even feel the weight of your lips."

 

There was a celebrity-sighting atmosphere on the campus as many people could be heard saying things to the effect of, "How many chances do you get to meet a real astronaut?"

 

The answer is, not many. Only 482 people have ever gone past the 100-kilometer (62 miles) mark.

 

And Statesville could not be more boastful than to have one of the select club be a native son.

 

"As you can tell from listening, Dr. Marshburn is a very intelligent man," said Statesville Mayor Costi Kutteh. "But he is also a very compassionate and caring man. He's as fine a man as I've ever met. And he makes me proud to not only that he is from Statesville but proud to be an American and proud to support the space program."

 

Marshburn said he hopes to return to space but for now he is back to more mundane duties within the space program, such as, among other things, serving as a physician.

 

"Now I move to the back of the line," he said. "But I would love to go back again."

 

Marshburn will make more appearances in the area today, including stops at some Iredell schools and a luncheon, at 12 p.m., at the Statesville Civic Center.

 

NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn to return home for visit

 

Chris Dyches - WBTV.com

 

The city of Statesville is throwing a welcome home party for Dr. Thomas H. Marshburn, NASA astronaut and Statesville native, who explored space for five months.

 

Marshburn was in orbit around the Earth, onboard the International Space Station, from December 2012 until May 2013.

 

During this trip, Marshburn performed an unplanned 5 ½- hour spacewalk to fix an ammonia leak outside the space station.

 

This last trip was not Marshburn's first time in space.

 

Marshburn was born in Statesville in 1960 and is a graduate of Davidson College and Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He also holds a master's degree in engineering physics from the University of Virginia and is a certified commercial pilot.

 

Dr. Marshburn joined NASA in 1994 as a flight surgeon and worked with the joint US/Russian space program. He was selected as an astronaut in 2004 and completed astronaut training in 2006.

 

His first space flight was aboard STS-127 from July 15 to July 31, 2009 as a Mission Specialist.

 

He made three spacewalks during the mission to transfer scientific experiments from the shuttle's cargo bay to the International Space Station.

 

Mitchell Community College and the City of Statesville are hosting an "evening under the stars" with Marshburn on Sunday, Sept. 22, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on the front lawn of Mitchell's main campus in Downtown Statesville. 

 

This free event will give the community an opportunity to speak with Marshburn personally and hear about his recent trip aboard the ISS.

 

The Mitchell Jazz Band will perform and activities involving rockets, telescopes and other space-related themes will be set up around the College's Circle. 

 

Mitchell's student clubs will have refreshments for sale.  The public is invited to bring their lawn chairs or blankets and celebrate Marshburn's return home.

 

On Monday, Sept. 23, Marshburn will visit N.B. Mills Elementary and Statesville High Schools before making his way to the Statesville Civic Center, where he will be the featured speaker at a special luncheon at noon, hosted by the Statesville Chamber of Commerce. 

 

The luncheon is open to the public.

 

Marshburn will also show a video from his trip in space and talk about the various experiments he and his crew members conducted. 

 

Reservations for the $15 lunch should be made before Sept. 20 by calling 704-818-3311 or online at www.statesvillechamber.org

 

Marshburn returned to his home town in 2009 to celebrate and talk about his first shuttle mission that included 3 spacewalks.  While he was here, Statesville enthusiastically titled their City as the official "Hometown of NASA Astronaut Dr. Thomas H. Marshburn". 

 

Many welcome signs around Statesville now include that slogan.

 

NASA Astronaut to Discuss 'Orbital Perspective' in Google+ Hangout

 

Meg Wagner - Mashable.com

 

Ron Garan knows a thing or two about orbital perspective. The NASA astronaut has traveled 71,075,867 miles in 2,842 orbits around the Earth and completed a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station.

 

But now he wants all Earth-dwelling humans to start thinking orbitally, too.

 

Garan will host a Google+ Hangout, titled "The #KeyIsWe," to discuss ways individuals can collaborate across cultures. It will take place Oct. 11 at 11 a.m. ET.

 

Garan explained the importance of collaboration at the 2013 Social Good Summit. He calls it the "orbital perspective" — viewing the world as one whole piece instead of a lot of little parts, segmented by geographical and cultural borders.

 

The idea that people need to embrace collaboration dawned on him when he was in orbit and noticed the manmade India-Pakistan border, he said. And while he knew the border existed, he still saw Earth as "beautiful, tranquil and peaceful."

 

"These are not clichés that astronauts say because it feels good," he said. Seeing the planet in that serene state made Garan realize that back on Earth, we need to start breaking down barriers.

 

He wants to brainstorm ways that people from all cultures can work together, and hopes the first #KeyIsWe Hangout will start the conversation. It starts with collaboration, he explained, and communication "fosters accountability that fosters trust."

 

"We don't have to accept the status quo," he said. "You don't have to be in orbit to have the orbital perspective."

 

Sam Pool

 

Houston Chronicle

 

Friends and family will greatly miss Dr. Sam Lee Pool , 75, of Nassau Bay, Texas, who passed away on Sunday, September 22. Born in 1937 to Sam O. and Edith Pool, Sam completed high school and college each in three years, double majoring in math and physics at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. He then attended the University of Oklahoma Medical School. Upon graduating from medical school, Sam served as a flight surgeon in the United States Navy. Sam married the love of his life, Jane, in 1961. They, and their two young daughters, settled in Houston in 1968, when Sam joined NASA, Johnson Space Center, as a medical officer. He was a pioneer in space medicine and remained with NASA until his retirement.

 

When his daughters were young, Sam began a tradition of taking his family on extended summer road trips, visiting most of the continental United States and Alaska along the way. He continued this tradition with his grandchildren, sharing tales of his early travel experiences as he guided them through some of our country's natural wonders. Sam and his wife, Jane, also traveled internationally, visiting much of Europe, Asia and Australia.

 

Sam had a lifelong love of learning, taking time later in his career to attend Harvard Business School. He shared this passion with his grandchildren, teaching them to play chess, helping them conduct science experiments, and discussing history, mathematical and scientific principles with them. He was also a private pilot, who enjoyed taking his grandchildren flying with him and teaching them about the plane and the mechanics of flight.

 

Among his other interests, Sam enjoyed going to the Bonneville Salt Flats every year to participate in the land speed trials as the official videographer for a record breaking motorcycle team. He also regularly attended his grandchildren's many sporting events; he enjoyed operating his ham radio; and he spent countless hours with friends and family rebuilding engines and restoring old cars.

 

Sam was preceded in death by his beloved wife of 48 years, Jane Pool. He is survived by his daughter Keli Roper, her husband, Jeff and their two sons, Evan and Ryan; and daughter Elizabeth Stevens, her husband, Bill and their two children, Bryan and Claire.

 

Visitation will be held at Jeter Memorial Funeral Home, 311 N. Friendswood Dr., Friendswood, TX 77546 on Thursday, September 26 from 7:00 P.M. to 8:30 P.M.

 

The funeral service will be held on Friday, September 27 at 10:00 A.M. at the Friendswood United Methodist Church, 110 N. Friendswood Dr., Friendswood, TX 77546 with Rev. Jim Bass officiating.

 

Sam will be laid to rest at the Ozan Cemetery in Nashville, AR at a later date.

 

Condolences may be sent to the Pool family in care of Jeter Memorial Funeral Home at www.jeterfuneralhome.com

 

The Eastern Shore's space-age opportunity

With the launch of two high-profile rocket missions from Wallops Island this month, Maryland's future as a gateway to space looks bright

 

Baltimore Sun (Editorial)

 

This week, a commercial "freighter" rocket that began its journey into space last Wednesday about 35 miles south of Ocean City is due to dock with the International Space Station, delivering 1,300 pounds of cargo. It will eventually be loaded up with trash and sent on its way to burn up on atmospheric re-entry over the South Pacific.

 

Cygnus isn't the first unmanned rocket to be launched out of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., which has been in the research rocket business since World War II. But it may be among the most highly anticipated. It was built by a private company, Orbital Sciences Corp., and ushers in a new, big-time space travel era for Wallops.

 

Earlier this month, Wallops reached another milestone. It launched its first mission to the moon, sending a robotic explorer known as LADEE — Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer — into an eventual lunar orbit where it will study the moon's atmosphere. To witness two such high-profile missions staged back-to-back from Wallops was unthinkable back in the 1990s when NASA was considering shuttering the facility.

 

No longer will the barrier island be considered an obscure outpost of science. Instead, it has the potential to become a major launching pad for the U.S. space program. Certainly, it will never be on the scale of Cape Canaveral or Johnson Space Center in Houston, but it could become the equivalent of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport — a smaller, less traffic-congested, ideally-located and more affordable starting point for travel.

 

That distinct possibility represents an economic coup not just for Virginia but for Maryland as well. A stone's throw from Chincoteague and Assateague islands, Wallops has long been closely linked to Maryland's Eastern Shore, drawing workers from nearby Worcester, Wicomico and Somerset counties. The benefit to the region is significant — more than 1,600 jobs and nearly $400 million in economic impact, according to a 2011 Salisbury University study.

 

Such jobs are a prize worth pursuing. From entry-level technician to lead scientist, they are held by highly paid, highly skilled and highly educated individuals. Should Cygnus succeed and land a long-term NASA contract, the sky may literally be the only limit. The Wallops spaceport could support many more such public-private partnerships in space exploration and science.

 

Nor is this benefit wholly limited to the Lower Shore. Orbital Sciences employees hundreds of people in Greenbelt where the Cygnus craft was developed. The goal is to serve not only government but commercial spaceflight customers. Even the impact on tourism could prove significant as space-junkies travel to the Shore to witness major launches.

 

Is Maryland doing everything possible to support this venture? Certainly, its elected officials have been helpful, particularly U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who has long championed NASA generally and Wallops and other local facilities specifically. But Maryland and the Shore counties must also take steps to attract aerospace professionals and their families by investing in the kinds of lifestyle amenities they seek — good roads and transportation, safe and attractive communities with public assets like museums and parks, quality health care and child care and first-class public schools, colleges and universities.

 

Rock-bottom tax rates? Lax environmental laws? "Anything goes" development policies? Not usually high on the list for highly-educated white collar professionals or their ilk.

 

If Maryland is to maximize this opportunity, state officials should heed a soon-to-be-released report prepared by consultants LJT & Associates of Columbia for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development. The recommendations include cultivating partnerships with University of Maryland Eastern Shore and Salisbury University, wooing space transport company SpaceX to Wallops, and investing in an air/space museum to boost tourism.

 

Earlier this month, UMES broke ground for a new $91.5 million science building that William Wrobel, Wallops' director, heralded as a sign of big things to come for the region. "We need your engineering students to be part of that exciting future," he said. To which we would only add, we'll take you up on that offer.

 

Unlikely Fight over Launch Complex 39A

 

Space News (Editorial)

 

There should be nothing terribly complicated or remotely controversial about NASA's effort to lease a mothballed space shuttle launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to a commercial rocket operator. The universe of credible bidders is tiny to begin with, and the number that actually bid is smaller still — just two, by all accounts.

 

Yet somehow, this seemingly straightforward activity has become the subject of dueling letter-writing campaigns from different corners of Capitol Hill, and a formal bidder protest has put the agency's selection of a winner on hold.

 

NASA currently spends $1.2 million a year to maintain the unused Launch Complex 39A, a sum that would be nice to get off the cash-strapped agency's books. The lease might even generate revenue for NASA while enabling a commercial space enterprise to fill at least a small part of the jobs void left by the 2011 retirement of the orbiter fleet.

 

The two publicly known bidders for the pad are Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), builder and operator of the Falcon 9 rocket, and Blue Origin, the tight-lipped outfit bankrolled by Jeff Bezos that has a number of vehicle concepts in development and testing. A key differentiator between the competing bids is that SpaceX seeks exclusive use of the launch pad while Blue Origin wants to make it a multiuser facility.

 

Enter Congress. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee with NASA oversight, and Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) in July wrote NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to express concern about a possible exclusive-use arrangement. "[W]e question the seeming desire by NASA to lease LC-39A to a single user for sole use rather than to an entity that would ensure that the pad was re-developed as a multi-user pad," the lawmakers wrote.

 

An aide to Mr. Aderholt said the congressman is interested in Launch Complex 39A as a backup pad for the Space Launch System (SLS), the congressionally mandated heavy lifter being developed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Current plans call for the SLS to operate from Launch Complex 39B, another former shuttle pad adjacent to 39A at Kennedy.

 

Mr. Aderholt's district includes Decatur, Ala., where SpaceX rival United Launch Alliance (ULA) has a major rocket assembly facility. ULA has publicly placed its support behind Blue Origin's plan for a multiuser pad.

 

Since that initial letter, other lawmakers have taken up the cause, specifically members of the Senate delegations from Washington — Blue Origin is headquartered near Seattle — Utah, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

 

Meanwhile, Blue Origin filed a complaint with the U.S. Government Accountability Office about some part of the NASA solicitation Sept. 3 — after submitting its bid. The congressional watchdog agency, which adjudicates government contracting disputes, has until Dec. 12 to rule on the protest, and until that happens it is unlikely that NASA will be able to select a winner.

 

All the predecisional kibitzing has drawn in the entire Florida House and Senate delegations, which wrote Mr. Bolden to express confidence in NASA's judgment to do the right thing. The space agency, these lawmakers said, is best positioned to determine what's best for the nation's space program and should not yield to "outside influence" in determining who is most qualified to take over Launch Complex 39A.

 

Florida's interest in getting this matter resolved quickly is understandable — the state's economy has been hit hard by the shuttle's retirement. What's puzzling is the keen interest among lawmakers — seemingly limited to those from other states — in a multiuser launch facility. While the concept sounds appealing enough, the reality is that different rockets have different servicing requirements and often competing launch schedules — that's why multiuser launch pads are virtually nonexistent.

 

SpaceX is candid about its reasons for wanting exclusive access to Launch Complex 39A: The company already has a large backlog of NASA and commercial launches and stands a reasonable chance of winning a contract to transport astronauts to and from the international space station. SpaceX also is gunning for Pentagon business, which ULA currently has all to itself. 

 

Blue Origin's multiuse argument is less clear, aside from the fact that it has a business relationship with ULA, which professes an interest in Launch Complex 39A but didn't bid for the right to use it.

 

The argument that a multiuser arrangement would preserve 39A as a backup pad for the SLS, meanwhile, is less than compelling. After all, this is a rocket that would launch only once every three or four years — if that often.

 

What truly matters, of course, is what NASA thinks: The Florida delegation is correct in asking that the space agency be left alone to make a choice that best serves the interests of the space program and its stakeholders. The sooner Launch Complex 39A is back in action, the better.

 

END

 

 

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