Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - September 4, 2013 and JSC Today

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: September 4, 2013 6:06:51 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - September 4, 2013 and JSC Today

Looking forward to seeing some of you tomorrow at our Monthly NASA Retirees Luncheon at Hibachi Grill at 11:30.

 

Following fellowship and a great meal with your NASA retired coworkers,, you can opt  to attend the next NASA Alumni League special topic talk:

 

"Humans as a System; design challenges for long duration missions"

                                                – Dr. Jeff Davis, Director, Human Health & Performance

 

At the Gilruth Rec. Center Alamo Ballroom on Thursday, September 5, 2013, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM.   

 

Following the talk by Jeff Davis, you can join the Keg Of the Month crowd out at the Gilruth Pavillion hosted by Larry Ratcliff at 4pm for a beer and snacks or just more old timey fellowship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

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JSC TODAY CATEGORIES Headlines -  Watch Japanese Cargo Ship Leave ISS -  Join us for a Mini-Innovation Event -  Active Sync: Protect NASA Data When You BYOD -  Renovation in the Teague -  Latest International Space Station Research -  Don't Forget About The Greener Side Organizations/Social -  The JSC Safety and Health Action Team (JSAT) Says -  Environmental Brown Bag: Food Co-ops & Local Eco -  JSC Praise and Worship Club -  Starport Boot Camp - Registration Now Open Jobs and Training -  HTC University at JSC: Entrepreneurship Course -  How to Access E-books, Journals & More: Sept.10 -  RLLS Portal WebEx Training for September Community -  Lecture: Exploration of Mars and Search for Life

NASA Air Pollution Study to Fly Over Houston

 

Headlines Watch Japanese Cargo Ship Leave ISS NASA TV will air live the departure of a Japanese cargo ship from the International Space Station today, Sept. 4. Expedition 36 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA will use the station's robotic arm to detach the H-II Transport Vehicle (HTV)-4 from the space station's Harmony module. This will wrap up a month's stay at the orbiting laboratory, during which time more than 3.5 tons of supplies and spare parts were unloaded from the vehicle onto the space station. The departure frees up a space station docking port for the arrival of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Cygnus cargo vehicle in late September.  NASA TV coverage will begin at 10 a.m. CDT with an expanded edition of "Space Station Live," featuring activities surrounding the HTV-4 departure. The cargo craft will be released at around 11 a.m. CDT.  JSC, Ellington Field, Sonny Carter Training Facility and White Sands Test Facility team members with wired computer network connections can view NASA TV using the JSC EZTV IP Network TV System on channels 404 (standard definition) or 4541 (HD). Please note: EZTV currently requires using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC connected to the JSC computer network with a wired connection. Mobile devices, Wi-Fi connections and newer MAC computers are currently not supported by EZTV.    If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367.   HTV-4 launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan on a Japanese H-IIB rocket Aug. 3. It arrived at the space station Aug. 9 and was installed on Harmony several hours after being grappled by Nyberg.  For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111 http://www.nasa.gov/station [top] Join us for a Mini-Innovation Event Innovation 2013 takes it to the next level with three forums to get those creative energies flowing. C3 forums and presenters: Elena Buhay/DD and Doug Wong/SF: "Collaborative Laboratories (CoLabs)" Kathryn Keeton/Wyle: "NASA@Work - Training and Challenge Launch" David Meza/NA: "Operational Excellence - Reaching the Higher-Hanging Fruit" The forums will be held simultaneously in the Building 30 Collaboration Center (Room 2085), a new state-of-the-art multimedia setting designed to enhance team dynamics and facilitate communication. Innovation 2013 invites your cross-functional team to interact with those who have implemented their vision by challenging what can be done. Please register in SATERN under "Innovation 2013 PART I: JSC 2.0" and receive training credit. Event Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM Event Location: Building 30 Collaboration Center in Room 2085 Add to Calendar Suzan Thomas x48772 [top] Active Sync: Protect NASA Data When You BYOD To better protect data on mobile devices, NASA will apply Exchange ActiveSync Policy to NOMAD email accounts. This will enable NASA to better safeguard data for users who Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), connecting personal mobile devices to NASA email using NOMAD. Safeguards include: Setting a four-digit passcode to unlock mobile the device (this passcode cannot be reset) Changing the passcode every 365 days Clearing all data from mobile device after 10 failed attempts to enter passcode Enabling mobile device's native encryption to secure data Effective Sept. 10, users who BYOD will have the following options to receive email on a personal mobile device: Accept the ActiveSync Policy on your personal device to connect with NOMAD directly. Use Outlook Web Access (OWA - Webmail) to view email on your personal device. For more information, go to: • Mobile device FAQs • ActiveSync Policy fact sheet JSC-IRD-Outreach x41334 [top] Renovation in the Teague Please note that when you enter the Teague Auditorium on Sept. 5 for the All Hands, the exhibit items typically on display have been removed. This is all part of the renovation process. There are also items that are awaiting removal. We ask that you pardon our mess and watch your step as you enter the auditorium. Tammie Letroise-Brown x34942 [top] Latest International Space Station Research The Expedition 36 USOS crew members have been conducting several tests as part of the Ocular Health investigation to characterize the risk and define the visual changes and central nervous system changes observed during and after long-duration spaceflight. Learn more about the battery of test here. Liz Warren x35548 [top] Don't Forget About The Greener Side Still haven't made time for the JSC Environmental Office newsletter, The Greener Side? Here's your chance to catch up with what's going on. Find out about on-site environmental efforts, such as the JSC Green Team 2013 Energy Challenge. Curious to know how JSC is doing on the recycling front? Find out more in The Greener Side. Check it out today! JSC Environmental Office x36207 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/bbs/scripts/files/367/GreenerSide%20v6n3.pdf [top]    Organizations/Social The JSC Safety and Health Action Team (JSAT) Says "Stop accidents before they stop you." Congratulations to September 2013 "JSAT Says ..." winner Rebecca Bailey, REDE Critique NSS JV. Any JSAT member (all JSC contractor and civil servant employees) may submit a slogan for consideration to JSAT Secretary Reese Squires. Submissions for October are due by Wednesday, Sept. 11. Keep those great submissions coming - you may be the next "JSAT Says ..." winner! Reese Squires x37776 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/ja/apps/news/newsfiles/3323.pptx [top] Environmental Brown Bag: Food Co-ops & Local Eco Buying and eating locally grown foods makes a huge difference in your community, as well as your health and planet. Lisa Piper, owner and founder of the Natural Living Food Co-op in League City, will be discussing the impact of food travel, as well as the importance of supporting local small businesses. She will explain how Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) and food co-ops work in general and explain how the Natural Living Food Co-op works here in League City. As always, we invite you to bring your lunch and your questions to the session, which will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 10, from noon to 1 p.m. in Building 45, Room 754. Bonus points and bragging rights if your lunch contains local food! Event Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM Event Location: B45 room 751 Add to Calendar Michelle Fraser-Page x34237 [top] JSC Praise and Worship Club Join with the praise and worship band, Allied with the Lord, for a refreshing set of traditional and contemporary praise and worship songs today, Sept. 4, from 11:15 a.m. to noon in Building 29, Room 237 (also called Creative Sp.ace). Prayer partners will be available for anyone who would like it. All JSC civil servants and contractors are welcome. Event Date: Wednesday, September 4, 2013   Event Start Time:11:15 AM   Event End Time:12:00 PM Event Location: Building 29 Room 237 Add to Calendar Mike FitzPatrick x30758 [top] Starport Boot Camp - Registration Now Open Starport's phenomenal boot camp is back and registration is open and filling fast. Don't miss a chance to be part of Starport's incredibly popular program. The class will fill up, so register now! Early registration (ends Wednesday, Sept. 11) $90 per person (just $5 per class) Regular registration (Sept. 12 to 20): $110 per person The workout begins on Monday, Sept. 23. Are you ready for 18 hours of intense workouts with an amazing personal trainer to get you to your fitness goal? Don't wait! Sign up today and take advantage of this extreme discount before it's too late. Register now at the Gilruth Center information desk, or call 281-483-0304 for more information. Shericka Phillips x30304 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/recreation-programs/boot-camp [top]    Jobs and Training HTC University at JSC: Entrepreneurship Course Interested in learning how to turn your ideas and expertise into a company? Learn how by attending Houston Technology Center (HTC) University at JSC, Foundations of Entrepreneurship and Starting a Business Course. Friday, Sep. 27, from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. This one-day course will focus on the fundamentals of starting a business. You will leave HTC University with a better understanding of how to bring your company to fruition and take home materials to enact a plan to start your business.  Preparing a business plan Business structure and ownership Financial assumptions and projects Marketing Financing alternatives  Register now here. Event Date: Friday, September 27, 2013   Event Start Time:7:30 AM   Event End Time:3:30 PM Event Location: 2200 NASA Road 1, Houston, TX 77058 Add to Calendar Evelyn Boatman x48271 http://www.HoustonTech.org [top] How to Access E-books, Journals & More: Sept.10 The Scientific & Technical Information Center (STIC) provides access to hundreds of databases and thousands of e-books, abstracts and full-text journals. It is also the official repository for five-digit JSC documents. Make searching for these resources a lot easier by joining the library for a training session on Tuesday, Sept. 10, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. via WebEx. To register for the WebEx, click on to the following link. Provided by the Information Resources Directorate. Event Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2013   Event Start Time:2:30 PM   Event End Time:3:30 PM Event Location: WebEx Add to Calendar Ebony Fondren x32490 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov [top] RLLS Portal WebEx Training for September The September weekly RLLS Portal Education Series: Sept. 5 at 2 p.m. CDT, Transportation Request Training Sept. 12 at 2 p.m. CDT, Meeting Support Training Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. CDT, Physical Logical Access Training Sept. 26 at 2 p.m. CDT, Translation Support Training The 30-minute training sessions are computer-based WebEx sessions, offering individuals the convenience to join from their own workstation. The training will cover the following: System login Locating support modules Locating downloadable instructions Creating support requests Submittal requirements Submitting on behalf of another Adding attachments Selecting special requirements Submitting a request Status of a request Ending each session there will be opportunity for questions and answers. Please remember that TTI will no longer accept requests for U.S.-performed services unless they are submitted through the RLLS Portal. Email or call 281-335-8565 to sign up. James Welty 281-335-8565 https://www.tti-portal.com [top]    Community Lecture: Exploration of Mars and Search for Life Houston Astronomical Society meeting, 8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 6, University of Houston main campus, Sciences and Research Building  #1, Room 117. "Exploration of Mars and the Search for Life" by Dr. Everett Gibson, NASA senior scientist Discovery of life beyond the Earth would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries possible. Mars offers an excellent opportunity for life to have developed during its early evolution. Missions to Mars have had the goal of discovering the requirements for life: water, carbon, energy-transfer processes and a geologically active planet. Martian samples in the form of meteorites from Mars are available for study on Earth. These Martian samples have been delivered to the Earth as "poor man's space probes." The secrets hidden within the Martian meteorites, along with recent discoveries from automated rovers exploring the surface of Mars, will be presented. For directions and where to park, click here. Event Date: Friday, September 6, 2013   Event Start Time:8:00 PM   Event End Time:9:30 PM Event Location: University of Houston, Main Campus, Add to Calendar Everett K. Gibson x36224 http://www.astronomyhouston.org/events/meetings [top]

 

JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters.

 

 

 

 

NASA TV:

·         10 am Central (11 EDT) – ISS daily coverage includes HTV-4 release ops at ~Noon CDT

·         Noon Central (1 EDT) – File of Expedition 37/38 Qual Training Sim Runs at Star City

·         3 pm Central (4 EDT) – NASA/Orbital Sciences Mission Preview Briefing

 

Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday – September 4, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

HTV departure to test revised robot arm operations plan

 

Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com

 

Japan's fourth H-2 Transfer Vehicle will leave the International Space Station Wednesday, and the astronauts in charge of releasing the unmanned cargo carrier will use a new technique to keep the HTV steady and avoid the recurrence of a hair-trigger abort that expedited the departure of a previous mission. Filled with trash and other unneeded gear, the HTV will be released from the space station's 58-foot robotic arm at about 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT) Wednesday. Using a control panel inside the space station, astronauts will command the HTV to retreat from the complex a few minutes later, beginning a preprogrammed sequence of two separation burns with the ship's rocket thrusters. Space station flight engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano closed the HTV's hatches Tuesday to prepare for the departure.

 

Policy Experts: Choice Looming Between ISS, Deep-space Missions

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

The U.S. government must soon grapple with whether to keep operating the international space station (ISS), a $3 billion-a-year facility that will likely become less international the longer it flies, a pair of space policy experts said here Aug. 29. "This is kind of like a smoker's cough: Nobody wants to pay attention to it," John Logsdon, founder of the Space Policy Institute at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, said on an Aug. 29 conference call with the media.

 

Apollo legend on NASA: 'It's a tragedy. It really is.'

 

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

 

Chris Kraft did it all for NASA. He was the space agency's first flight director, overseeing the nation's first human spaceflight, first human orbital flight and first spacewalk. He was a senior manager and planner during the Apollo program. After the Apollo program he directed Johnson Space Center for a decade and oversaw development of the space shuttle. Mission Control at Johnson Space Center is named after him. In short, Kraft is a legend, and therefore not afraid to speak his mind. Last week I visited Kraft at his home for a long talk about the state of NASA, the agency for which he has devoted his life. He's deeply troubled about NASA's future…

 

NASA redesigns Mission Control for future spaceflights

 

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

 

 

NASA's Mission Control is gaining a new "look and feel," trading the "big blue consoles" that were iconic during the space shuttle program for upgraded "clean" workstations. The extensive improvements, which are now being tested in what was the flight control room (FCR) for the shuttles' final missions, are to prepare the Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC) at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for the space agency's next-generation spacecraft and missions. "The control center itself is in a big evolutionary process where we are moving from the current architecture, which everybody is familiar with...into what we are calling MCC-21 or 21st Century Control Center," William Foster, ground control officer in Mission Control, said in a recent NASA interview.

 

NASA Seeks Bidders To Demolish Shuttle Facilities, Storied Cape Hangar

 

Dan Leone – Space News

 

While NASA has made some progress finding outside money to maintain surplus space shuttle infrastructure at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the historic launch center will inevitably shrink in the post-shuttle era, as an Aug. 23 solicitation for demolition services shows. NASA wants to demolish 46 structures covering some 17,000 square meters of property at the Kennedy and nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Kennedy covers about 600 square kilometers of Florida coastline. The much smaller Cape, which is just southeast of the NASA center, covers about 5 square kilometers. NASA estimates the cost of the envisioned fixed-price contract — including four options that would stretch its performance period to 2.5 years — will be between $5 million and $10 million. Responses to the solicitation are due Sept. 20.

 

NASA helps entrepreneurs reach for stars

 

Laura Baverman - USA Today

 

With the end of the space shuttle program, NASA is re-inventing itself by forming partnerships with entrepreneurs. Chris Shiver's NASA-worthy business idea was born out of a near-disaster at his home in Austin. A flood came close to destroying his treasured scrapbooks and photos captured through 30 years of traveling the world. Though the crisis was averted, the threat set him on a years-long mission to design a storage container that could withstand any disaster. "The bigger the pain, the bigger the opportunity," he thought at the time. That wouldn't be far from the truth. Three years ago, Shiver found himself in the daunting process of licensing intellectual property from NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston.

 

UConn Alum Returning to Orbit for Fourth Space Mission

 

Colin Poitras - UConn Today

 

NASA astronaut and UConn alumnus Rick Mastracchio '82 (ENG) is making his fourth trip to the International Space Station in a few weeks. While the destination may be a familiar one, this mission marks the first time Mastracchio is flying aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get there. Mastracchio will serve as a flight engineer for space station Expedition 38, which launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 6. Unlike past trips, in which Mastracchio flew into orbit aboard one of the U.S. space shuttles and stayed in space for a just a few weeks, Expedition 38 is a prolonged space flight during which Mastracchio and the other astronauts will remain aboard the International Space Station from November to May 2014.

 

Space tourism will open up next space frontier

 

Pat Hynes - Las Cruces Sun-News

 

Traveling into space for recreational purposes is now the official definition for space tourism. On Aug. 28, NBC News reported The Oxford English Dictionary Online (ODO) added "space tourism" to the more than 350,000 entries it defines. The term "space tourism" is pretty familiar to us in Las Cruces. Related articles in collect Space.com suggest space tourism is a catalyst that will open up space as a frontier. The commercial space transportation industry will challenge more than dictionary definitions as we face a world that relies on space for national security. When the state of New Mexico, under the administration of Bruce King, determined we would actively pursue the establishment of a spaceport, space tourism was not in our language.

 

These People Want to Go to Mars (and Never Come Back)

 

Tanya Lewis - Space.com

 

Tens of thousands of people are prepared to leave their families, jobs and lives behind for a one-way trip to Mars. The Mars One mission aims to send humans on a one-way trip to the Red Planet. The mission aims to land the first Mars colonists on the planet by 2023. Applicants over the age of 18 from any country are eligible to apply, and Mars One has received more than 165,000 applications already. But what sort of person would go? A few dozen of the aspiring Martians convened in Washington, D.C., in August for the "Million Martian Meeting." A panel of four applicants answered questions from the audience about their reasons for wanting to go to Mars without a return ticket…

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

HTV departure to test revised robot arm operations plan

 

Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com

 

Japan's fourth H-2 Transfer Vehicle will leave the International Space Station Wednesday, and the astronauts in charge of releasing the unmanned cargo carrier will use a new technique to keep the HTV steady and avoid the recurrence of a hair-trigger abort that expedited the departure of a previous mission.

 

Filled with trash and other unneeded gear, the HTV will be released from the space station's 58-foot robotic arm at about 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT) Wednesday. Using a control panel inside the space station, astronauts will command the HTV to retreat from the complex a few minutes later, beginning a preprogrammed sequence of two separation burns with the ship's rocket thrusters.

 

Space station flight engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano closed the HTV's hatches Tuesday to prepare for the departure.

 

The robotic cargo freighter delivered 3.6 tons of supplies and experiments to the space station Aug. 9 after a five-day transit from a Japanese launch pad to the orbiting outpost.

 

The astronauts unpacked food, spare parts, experiments and other equipment from the HTV's pressurized compartment, while ground controllers put two robotic arms and a two-armed robotic handyman to work outside the space station to handle the spacecraft's cache of external cargo.

 

The Canadian-built Dextre robot stowed a main bus switching unit, utility transfer assembly, and an experiment package sponsored by the U.S. Defense Department on platforms mounted on the space station's truss.

 

Dextre retrieved an older U.S. military experiment - part of the Air Force's Space Test Program - and placed it on the HTV's exposed cargo pallet, then the platform was put back inside the cargo craft Aug. 30.

 

The trash and experiment box packed inside the HTV will be destroyed during re-entry over the Pacific Ocean on Saturday.

 

Perched on the end of the station's Canadian robot arm, the HTV will be removed from its berthing port on the Harmony module early Wednesday and maneuvered to a location about 30 feet below the complex.

 

When astronauts get the go to release the 33-foot-long spacecraft, they will follow a new plan devised after trouble encountered when the third HTV left the space station in September 2012.

 

After its release from the robot arm, the HTV 3 spacecraft began to drift outside of a predetermined box. Its on-board computers sensed the unplanned movement.

 

"When we released it with the arm, it imparted a moment on the spacecraft, which caused the spacecraft to translate a little bit," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager.

 

"The abort itself was required because of the moment put on it with the arm. The big thing about the abort was it used the main engines, which put a higher plume and heating load out there close to ISS. Both of those issues have been dealt with between then and now," Suffredini said.

 

The HTV 3 spacecraft went on to a normal re-entry after the abort, but managers wanted to understand what went wrong before the next mission.

 

Engineers suspect the HTV was nudged by the robot arm as it started to move soon after the arm let go of the cargo freighter. The arm grasps objects with snare wires, which latch on to a pin-like grapple fixture on modules and visiting vehicles. If the begin arm starts to move with the grapple fixture nearby, the arm's end effector can contact the grapple fixture, Suffredini said.

 

"When you start to move the arm, it sometimes moves a little bit as it starts to move because it's settling to its zero spot," Suffredini said. "While the arm is really close, if there's any movement, you can impart a moment on the lobes of the grapple fixture."

 

After an investigation by NASA, Canadian and Japanese officials, controllers established a new plan.

 

"The first thing we're going to do is release it and not pull back immediately," Suffredini said.

 

The extra time will ensure the robot arm's end effector is free of the grapple fixture on the HTV before the crew begins moving the arm. The HTV will naturally drift down away from the space station, and there is a slide-like device on the robot arm that will eventually force the HTV and the arm apart.

 

"All we're going to do is release the pin and let the spacecraft try to float out," Suffredini said. "If it doesn't float out, it will be pushed out."

 

According to Suffredini, engineers also upgraded the robot arm's control software to limit its unexpected movement when astronauts begin operating the arm.

 

The space station's other cargo supply vehicles which use the robot arm, such as SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and the Orbital Sciences Corp. Cygnus logistics vehicle, are not susceptible to the same problem.

 

Suffredini said the geometry of the grapple fixtures on the Dragon and Cygnus spacecraft make those vehicles less prone to contact between the robot arm and the fixture's pin.

 

Policy Experts: Choice Looming Between ISS, Deep-space Missions

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

The U.S. government must soon grapple with whether to keep operating the international space station (ISS), a $3 billion-a-year facility that will likely become less international the longer it flies, a pair of space policy experts said here Aug. 29.

 

"This is kind of like a smoker's cough: Nobody wants to pay attention to it," John Logsdon, founder of the Space Policy Institute at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, said on an Aug. 29 conference call with the media.

 

"There's clearly not enough money in the long-term outlook to do both a robust exploration program and continue to utilize and operate the space station at the $3 billion-a-year level," Logsdon said. On top of that, he said, "Europe and Japan are not enthusiastic about spending money on the space station post-2020. Their governments had to be dragged to commit funds for the extension to 2020."

 

Congress has authorized funding for ISS through 2020, but NASA wants to keep the station flying until 2028 or later. Earlier in August, Sam Scimemi, ISS director at NASA headquarters here, said program managers would like the White House, NASA and Congress to reach an accord about a post-2020 extension soon, as supporting investments for such a mission would have to begin as soon as 2015.

 

Meanwhile, Congress has directed NASA to build a heavy-lift Space Launch System and Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle to send astronauts on missions beyond Earth orbit. Like ISS, NASA is spending roughly $3 billion on those programs — still insufficient to develop hardware such as landing and ascent vehicles needed for planetary surface expeditions.

 

On the Aug. 29 conference call with Logsdon, Scott Pace, the current head of the Space Policy Institute and a former senior NASA manager, predicted that serious scrutiny of the ISS program would not begin until 2018.

 

"I think ... you will see [then] the beginnings of a senior review to make a decision about what will be in the 2020 NASA budget," Pace said. "That review will be dependent on data that is being created now — or should be created now — on what is the scientific benefits, what are the technical benefits" of the space station.

 

Now that construction on the orbital outpost is complete, NASA has stepped up plans for station-based research. The agency has also chartered the nonprofit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space to promote and manage non-NASA science aboard the space station.  Nevertheless, opportunities for science are limited, as crews must spend the bulk of their time keeping themselves alive, and the station spaceworthy.

 

While ISS has undoubtedly been a diplomatic and technological success, "it's not clear that it's going to be a scientific success," Pace said.

 

An administration official privately acknowledged that a post-2020 ISS mission hinges entirely on whether it can demonstrate, during the rest of this decade, some sort of return on the substantial taxpayer investment required to build it.

 

As of 2012, at what could be called the beginning of the station's time as a dedicated science research facility, the United States has spent upward of $100 billion on ISS since the early 1990s, including the cost of the 36 space shuttle flights necessary to assemble and support the hulking structure in low Earth orbit.

 

Upkeep costs about $3 billion a year, the bulk of which has gone to ISS prime contractor Boeing. And there is still more upkeep, maintenance and heavy lifting to be done going forward, according to Brad Cothran, Boeing's ISS vehicle director. At NASA's behest, Boeing has been studying which ISS subsystems will have to be serviced or replaced in order to keep the station flying through 2020. A formal report to NASA is expected in September, Cothran said, but a few things are already known.

 

For example, sometime around the spring of 2015, the Italian-built Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module may have to be moved from its Earth-facing perch on the station's Unity module to a forward-facing position on the Tranquility module.

 

The are two reasons for relocating the Leonardo module, Cothran said. First, Russia is considering adding a second Multipurpose Laboratory Module and up to two 8-kilowatt Solar Power Modules to the station. Second, NASA has contracted with two commercial operators to take over the retired space shuttle's cargo delivery duties, and by late 2017 or so, the agency plans to add a third vehicle for crew transport. That means the station needs more berthing and docking ports — four, to be precise, Cothran said.

 

"Now you have a lot more different types of smaller vehicles that are coming up more often than one big bus, if you will, with the shuttle," Cothran said. "So we had to make room for more docking ports, and to do that, we needed to move some more modules around."

 

Whether the ISS can be pushed beyond 2020 is going to require another deep-dive study by Boeing — something Cothran does not expect will happen until at least the Oct. 1 start of the government's 2014 budget year.

 

In the meantime, while looking at what it takes to fly until the end of this decade, "we haven't uncovered anything that says we can't get to 2028," Cothran said.

 

Apollo legend on NASA: 'It's a tragedy. It really is.'

 

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

 

Chris Kraft did it all for NASA. He was the space agency's first flight director, overseeing the nation's first human spaceflight, first human orbital flight and first spacewalk. He was a senior manager and planner during the Apollo program. After the Apollo program he directed Johnson Space Center for a decade and oversaw development of the space shuttle. Mission Control at Johnson Space Center is named after him.

 

In short, Kraft is a legend, and therefore not afraid to speak his mind.

 

Last week I visited Kraft at his home for a long talk about the state of NASA, the agency for which he has devoted his life. He's deeply troubled about NASA's future. Among the topics we discuss:

 

·         Expense and sustainability of the Space Launch System

·         The popularity of NASA's proposed asteroid mission

·         Whether astronauts like flying to the International Space Station

·         Where humans should go in the solar system

 

I think it's safe to say these are viewpoints NASA officials aren't sharing with President Obama's administration nor the members of Congress. But having spoken to a number of current NASA officials and even astronauts, many of them will privately express these views as well. Here, then, is the interview:

 

I know you don't like NASA's approach with the Space Launch System. Why is this?

 

The necessity of having a big rocket is not justifiable. It's not justifiable from a cost point of view, and it's not justifiable from a mission plan point of view. It just doesn't make good sense.

 

Let's start with cost. I know it's expensive.

 

The problem with the SLS is that it's so big that makes it very expensive. It's very expensive to design, it's very expensive to develop. When they actually start to develop it, the budget is going to go haywire. They're going to have all kinds of technical and development issues crop up, which will drive the development costs up. Then there are the operating costs of that beast, which will eat NASA alive if they get there. They're not going to be able to fly it more than once a year, if that. Because they don't have the budget to do it. So what you've got is a beast of a rocket, that would give you all of this capability, which you can't build because you don't have the money to build it in the first place, and you can't operate it if you had it.

 

What is the alternative?

 

In the private sector we've got an Atlas and a Delta rocket, and the Europeans have an Ariane rocket. The Russians have lots of rockets which are very reliable, and they get reliable by using them. And that's something the SLS will never have. Never. Because you can't afford to launch it that many times.

 

This is the approach by which NASA would save a lot of money by using existing rockets, rather than developing its own?

 

What's so magic about this being able to lift 120 tons? Why can't you use what you've got and put your vehicles into space in pieces, like you did with the space station? That's the right way to do it. Eventually you'll get to the point where, even with a really big rocket, you get to the point where you can't put everything on there you need to go where you want to go. Whether you want to go to the moon or Mars, you're going to have to do something in Earth orbit, or maybe lunar orbit, with an assembly capability, a fuel depot capability and the capability to have people operating there sort of as a Cape Canaveral in the sky. Everybody that looks into this comes to the same conclusion. JSC, if you ask them how to do it, is going to tell you the way to do it is with an assembly point in orbit, with fuel depots, where you come together and then go.

 

In the glory days of NASA you had this huge rocket, the Saturn V. It flew astronauts to the surface of the moon seven times. And after that NASA could no longer afford it. Are we repeating history?

 

Yes. We're heading back to that model, only worse. That's the thing. We've got those smarts, we've learned that, we have that institutional knowledge, and yet we're ignoring it. It doesn't make sense. We've got this tremendous capability to put things into orbit, it already exists, and we're not going to use it. Studies all over the country say this is the right thing to do. It's a tragedy. It really is.

 

You're also not a fan of NASA's plan to lasso an asteroid, bring it near the moon, and then send humans to stand upon it. Why?

 

Congress is already saying what NASA is doing is wrong. They're saying they don't like the asteroid mission. Most in Congress want to see NASA go back to the moon. So do nearly all of the scientific and technical organizations in the world. China said last week they're going to go to the moon. They aren't going just because it's there, it's because it's a place where you want to be from all kinds of points of view, from science, from a resource point of view. There's no reason why you couldn't set up a factory on the moon to build solar panels. You could provide enough electrical power on the moon from solar cells, and eventually you could supply enough power for half the people on Earth with a solar cell farm on the moon. I just think the world is going to use the moon for practical purposes. And it makes sense that it should be a worldwide project.

 

You mean we should involve the Europeans in this?

 

Exactly. And I know for a fact that the Europeans have told NASA this, that they want to go to the moon, but they say they can't because NASA won't do it. We are captured by what NASA wants to do, they say. There are many in top NASA management who would prefer to make a return to the moon as the next step for the US and the rest of the nations involved in the ISS, but are reluctant to say so because of restrictions from the present administration.

 

It seems like a lot of former astronauts, and some current ones who talk to me off the record, feel the same way.

 

I talked to Neil Armstrong an awful lot near the end of this life. Too bad he's gone, because he was an important spokesman for being adverse to what the political part of NASA says we're going to do. Bolden, let's face it, he doesn't know what it takes to do a major project. He doesn't have experience with that. He's a flier, a Marine general. He's never known what it takes to do a massive program. He keeps talking about going to Mars in the 2030s, but that's pure, unadulterated, BS. And what have you got if you get there? Who wants to operate something that's 40 minutes, by voice, from the Earth. Why would you want to do that? As an operator, damned if I like that. If I'm on the moon, I've got a 3 second turnaround. Everything I go to do on Mars I've got to prepare to do in an automatic mode. That's not very smart. Pretty much everything we need to do on Mars can be done robotically. We've already got robots there. By the time we get the capability to send humans to Mars, it might be that robots are smarter than humans anyway. I'm serious.

 

We're already seeing the impressive capabilities with robots like Curiosity.

 

Yeah. Exactly. If you think about the practical aspects of going into space, there's no practical reason for going to Mars. But there is a practical reason for going to the moon. And furthermore, if you really want to go somewhere, get out of this solar system. Eventually that's what you're going to have to do. I don't know how to do that, but we'll figure out how to do it one day.

 

A couple of weeks ago I had a pleasant morning at Johnson Space Center where they introduced eight bright, talented and accomplished new astronaut candidates. I couldn't help but wonder where these men and women were going to fly to.

 

For the last 10 years they've had trouble getting astronauts to go to the space station. I don't know if you know that, but a lot of people don't want to go to the space station. They don't want to spend six months there. Three people have to take care of the station while three people do science. That's three people 24 hours a day to keep the station operating. It's not a very good job for an astronaut. Astronauts want to do something that has some excitement to it. The engineers that come to JSC want to do something. You go talk to the guys who were doing Constellation, and the reason they came to NASA was to go back to the moon. They're all leaving now. The leaders are leaving for a lot of other reasons also, but they're leaving because there's no future that they want to be involved in. And that's unfortunate. You've got to have a reason for people to give you their lives. Which is what I did. I gave NASA my life not because they asked me to, but because I wanted to. I had a reason. But I just don't think that's there now. The livelihood of the organization is not very good.

 

I heard that you recently spoke with the Johnson Space Center co-op students who made the wildly popular NASA Johnson Style-video. What did you say to them?

 

I gave 'em hell. When the group did the NASA Johnson Style video, when I saw that, I said I want to go and speak to those guys. And so I did. I said look, "You just spent all of this effort to make a movie, how about spending all of that effort in making a space program go? Give me your body and mind and work on those kinds of things. I thought the video was beautiful, but that's not why you're here." I was very honest with them. They are the future of the program. If you can't keep them interested, you've lost it.

 

Speaking of NASA's future, it seems like politically it's expedient to have centers all over the country. But is that the most efficient way to conduct a space program?

 

George Low (manager of the Apollo program and a NASA administrator) and myself got together in 1975, and he asked me how we could rebuild and reshape NASA to have a vibrant group of people. We knew we had five or six too many centers. We didn't need that many. Let the Jet Propulsion Laboratory do the unmanned stuff, and have two or three other centers do manned spaceflight. That's all NASA needed then, and needs now. But politics wouldn't let us do that. The centers are still going today, and some are getting bigger.

 

NASA redesigns Mission Control for future spaceflights

 

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

 

 

NASA's Mission Control is gaining a new "look and feel," trading the "big blue consoles" that were iconic during the space shuttle program for upgraded "clean" workstations.

 

The extensive improvements, which are now being tested in what was the flight control room (FCR) for the shuttles' final missions, are to prepare the Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC) at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for the space agency's next-generation spacecraft and missions.

 

"The control center itself is in a big evolutionary process where we are moving from the current architecture, which everybody is familiar with...into what we are calling MCC-21 or 21st Century Control Center," William Foster, ground control officer in Mission Control, said in a recent NASA interview.

 

The MCC-21 flight control room retains the general front-screen, rows-of-desks layout that the public has come to expect from Mission Control, but with a decidedly-different decor.

 

"It's a different look," described NASA public affairs officer Josh Byerly. "It has a different sort of feel to it."

 

"It takes some getting used to," said Foster.

 

Flight Control Rooms

 

NASA's Mission Control Center (MCC), housed in Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center, is comprised of several flight control rooms, including FCR-1, FCR-2 and the Red, White and Blue FCRs.

 

"When the building opened up, these were [referred to as] MOCRs — Mission Operations Control Rooms," explained Foster. "After the first four shuttle flights, the decision was made we're no longer running missions, these were more flights, which is why we changed the name to FCR."

 

FCR-1 (pronounced "ficker-one") is an Apollo-legacy room upgraded to support the International Space Station (ISS). FCR-2 was retired and has been preserved to display its historical Apollo configuration. Red FCR is a training room and Blue FCR was previously used for the space station before the program moved into FCR-1 in 2006.

 

White FCR first went into use for the shuttle in 1995. The following year, beginning with shuttle Endeavour's mission STS-77, all the remaining flights were supported from that room.

 

On July 21, 2011, hours after Atlantis landed, completing the 135th and final space shuttle mission, White FCR was shut down.

 

"The work done in this room and in this building will never again be duplicated," flight director Tony Ceccacci told his ground control team before signing off for the last time. "I believe the accomplishments of the shuttle program will become the next set of 'shoulder of giants' for the future programs to stand on."

 

Screen space

 

Work to transform the White FCR from its shuttle legacy configuration into the new MCC-21 began in January this year. By March, the room had been completely emptied of its blue consoles and the walls had been repainted.

 

"They took all the plaques down and then put them back up," Foster said, referring to the mission emblem plaques that symbolized the missions that were "flown" out of that room. The insignias are traditionally hung after each flight and line the upper walls in each of the FCRs.

 

"We do like to keep a history of what was supported out of the room," Foster said.

 

Unlike some of the other, older FCRs where rear projection screens are used for the large displays at the front of the room, the White FCR uses a single screen with three front projectors mounted from the ceiling.

 

The new MCC-21 screen is still projected from the front, but encompasses more of the wall, leaving less space for the room's prior adornments.

 

"The screen got wider," Foster said. "In the [shuttle] White FCR, we had room on either side of the screen for [U.S. and NASA] flags to go up. Now they are going back up on poles."

 

The widescreen at the front of the room is matched by the expanded use of flat panel displays at each of the wood-panel workstations.

 

"We have all the displays up," Foster said, "[though] most of the displays...are not functional yet. We're still starting to populate that with the new capabilities."

 

"On Tuesday (Aug. 27), we ran [the displays] for the first time with the upgraded training system simulator," Foster said. "That was very successful — able to command, able to get data in."

 

Moving Mission Controls

 

The MCC-21-upgraded White FCR is ultimately intended to serve as the mission control for future flights of NASA's Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle on missions beyond low Earth orbit. First though, it will serve as a temporary flight control room for the International Space Station (ISS).

 

"If things go as planned, then sometime in June or July of next year, 2014, the ISS support will move out of [FCR-1] down the hall to the White FCR, the shuttle control room," Foster explained.

 

The move will make way for FCR-1 to get its own MCC-21 transformation.

 

"It will end up looking very much like [White FCR]," Foster said.

 

The space station's previous control room, Blue FCR, has already undergone the upgrade. It is being prepared for the Orion capsule's first mission, the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), scheduled to launch in September 2014.

 

"Orion will eventually fly off of the Space Launch System, NASA's new heavy-lifter," Foster explained. "But for this first mission, it is going to go off a Delta IV [Heavy] out of Cape Canaveral."

 

"It will not have humans onboard, but will do two orbits of the Earth, the second orbit going up to a high altitude of close to 4,000 miles [6440 kilometers] so when it re-enters [the Earth's atmosphere], it will re-enter close to the speed you would enter if you were coming back from the moon or way out there," he said.

 

Future missions of Orion are envisioned to fly astronauts to explore an asteroid and eventually visit Mars, hence the the needed upgrades to Mission Control.

 

"The story of this building has changed from the original days, through the mid-nineties to now — and this won't be the last one," Foster remarked. "The evolution [of Mission Control] will continue as technology improves."

 

NASA Seeks Bidders To Demolish Shuttle Facilities, Storied Cape Hangar

 

Dan Leone – Space News

 

While NASA has made some progress finding outside money to maintain surplus space shuttle infrastructure at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the historic launch center will inevitably shrink in the post-shuttle era, as an Aug. 23 solicitation for demolition services shows.

 

NASA wants to demolish 46 structures covering some 17,000 square meters of property at the Kennedy and nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Kennedy covers about 600 square kilometers of Florida coastline. The much smaller Cape, which is just southeast of the NASA center, covers about 5 square kilometers. NASA estimates the cost of the envisioned fixed-price contract — including four options that would stretch its performance period to 2.5 years — will be between $5 million and $10 million. Responses to the solicitation are due Sept. 20.

 

The base contract calls for a complete stripping down of office space in Towers D, E and F of Kennedy's Vertical Assembly Building, after which only bare concrete flooring would be left in those spaces, according to NASA's request for proposals. The Vertical Assembly Building itself will be maintained for the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket NASA is building and plans to launch from Kennedy's Launch Complex 39B.

 

The base period also includes demolition of one of the three buildings at Kennedy's Hypergolic Maintenance Facility, a three-building complex about 13 kilometers south of the Vertical Assembly Building. The Hypergolic Maintenance Facility is where the space shuttle orbiters' reaction control thrusters — which were used for fine maneuvering and deorbit burns — were processed and stored. A concession building and a waste water treatment facility are also slated for demolition, under the base contract.

 

Also up for demolition are Cape Canaveral's Hangar AF and Hangar S. In the early days of the U.S. crewed space program, the first U.S. astronauts were quartered at Hangar S. Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, both stayed at Hangar S before their historic flights.

 

In 2012, NASA decided it would not spare Hangar S from the wrecking ball by designating it as a historic place. The decision sparked local outcry in Florida, which has not prevented NASA from seeking proposals for tearing the building down.

 

The center's shrinking footprint is only beginning to reflect the radical drop-off in work done there. Today, the Kennedy Space Center employs 2,085 civil servants and 5,771 contractors and tenants, NASA spokeswoman Amber Philam wrote in an Aug. 29 email. At the end of 2008, when the shuttle program was still going strong and the international space station was still being built, Kennedy supported 2,194 civil servants and 12,710 contractors and tenants.

 

Rescued From Razing

 

Since January 2011, NASA has been looking for ways to avoid demolishing idle infrastructure at Kennedy by finding someone else to pay for its upkeep. One notable success includes turning one of three shuttle Orbiter Processing Facilities over to Space Florida, the state's aerospace economic development agency. In 2012, Space Florida sublet Orbiter Processing Facility-3 to Boeing Space Exploration of Houston, which plans to construct its CST-100 space capsule there. CST-100 is one of three NASA subsidized spacecraft competing to replace the shuttle as the agency's means of sending astronauts to the international space station.

 

The infrastructure preservation effort that began in 2011 also birthed the lately contentious plan to lease Pad 39A, one of two disused shuttle launch facilities at Kennedy, to a commercial user.

 

In May, NASA released a call for proposals to lease Pad 39A that was answered by both Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), Hawthorne, Calif., and Blue Origin, Kent, Wash.

 

SpaceX, which has flown two contracted cargo delivery missions to the space station for NASA and amassed a large backlog of commercial satellite launches with its Falcon 9 rocket, wants exclusive use of Pad 39A. The pad is a potential launch site for the Falcon Heavy launcher SpaceX is developing. Blue Origin, which is working on orbital rockets and spacecraft but has so far tested only suborbital craft, would turn 39A into a pay-to-play multiuser facility.

 

Under SpaceX's proposal, all but one commercial user wishing to launch from Kennedy would share Pad 39B with SLS. Under Blue Origin's proposal, SLS would get 39B to itself and commercial users would share Pad 39A — something SpaceX has said it would not do.

 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has said Pad 39B is better suited to be a multiuser facility, but that has not stopped Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) — whose district is nearby NASA's lead SLS center, the Marshall Space Flight Center — from questioning the wisdom of a one-customer lease at 39A.

 

Aderholt, along with House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee chairman Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), wrote Bolden in July to express their concerns. The lawmakers said SLS would need a backup launch pad if it did not have exclusive control of Pad 39B, and that Pad 39A would not be an option if SpaceX were awarded an exclusive lease.

 

An official response was delivered Aug. 2 in a letter from L. Seth Statler, NASA's associate administrator for intergovernmental affairs, who said SLS's prelaunch operations would be significantly streamlined, compared with the shuttle's, and that the big rocket required no backup pad.

 

"Unlike the Space Shuttle, Space Launch System payloads, including the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, will be integrated with the rocket before the rocket is rolled to the pad," Statler wrote in his letter. "Accordingly, even at launch rates considerably higher than forecasted for SLS, [Pad] 39B will have a considerable amount of availability for other uses, and a second pad for SLS is not needed."

 

Statler added that, one way or another, NASA would decide what to do with Pad 39A before Oct. 1, after which the agency will no longer pay to maintain the facility.

 

NASA helps entrepreneurs reach for stars

 

Laura Baverman - USA Today

 

With the end of the space shuttle program, NASA is re-inventing itself by forming partnerships with entrepreneurs.

 

Chris Shiver's NASA-worthy business idea was born out of a near-disaster at his home in Austin.

 

A flood came close to destroying his treasured scrapbooks and photos captured through 30 years of traveling the world. Though the crisis was averted, the threat set him on a years-long mission to design a storage container that could withstand any disaster.

 

"The bigger the pain, the bigger the opportunity," he thought at the time. That wouldn't be far from the truth. Three years ago, Shiver found himself in the daunting process of licensing intellectual property from NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston.

 

He hoped to test a theory: that the materials strong enough to protect the astronauts in a space shuttle could be fashioned into a box resistant to extreme heat and water. But bureaucracy slowed him down; NASA didn't have a great way of vetting entrepreneurial ideas or an easy process to co-develop innovative products with outside industry.

 

But then the stars began to align for Shiver.

 

Late in 2012, the Houston Technology Center, a popular Houston start-up incubator, opened a satellite campus at the JSC for entrepreneurs with hopes of partnering with NASA. Texas classified the JSC as a research institution, providing state funding to entrepreneurs who conduct research with NASA's engineers.

 

Mandates came down from the White House and NASA leadership to fulfill the agency's mission of benefiting all humankind by getting its innovations and data out in the world for others to use.

 

Much of this was prompted by the end of NASA's space shuttle program in August 2011, a decision that cost nearly 7,000 jobs and forced the JSC to reinvent itself.

 

"It changed our perspective," said Jack James, the JSC's lead for tech transfer and intellectual property management. "Operating the shuttle took a lot of energy and focus, and as that ended, we started looking at the fact that NASA wants to explore beyond lower Earth orbit and commercial space will take over that access to the lowest orbit. We saw that we're part of a bigger system, a bigger economy and environment."

 

For those involved in NASA's open innovation efforts, the decision has been freeing. NASA has been willing to try new things, said Chris Gerty of its Open Innovation Program, such as opening a co-working space next to the technology incubator, so engineers and entrepreneurs can interact. It moved old tooling and prototyping equipment from the space shuttle program to a new Innovation Design Center, open for anyone on the campus to use.

 

Pumps & Pipes events bring together NASA researchers with medical and energy executives to brainstorm how technology could solve problems in all three sectors.

 

Robotics research in partnership with General Motors has since created the Robonaut, a full-body robot that can sense what is around it. It could be used to man a factory where parts are assembled (or to prevent an explosion, such as the one at the Japanese nuclear plant in 2011). Fifty patents have been secured for different elements of the robot, and NASA hopes outside inventors will license the technology and explore commercial applications in logistics and distribution, medical or other industries.

 

That's where the technology center partnership comes in. Its mission is to create 10,000 jobs in the next 10 years at the space center. It promises to help entrepreneurs such as Shiver license existing technology from NASA, to introduce the agency to start-ups with new ideas and technologies that might be relevant to space exploration, and to find opportunities for NASA to collaborate and co-develop with outside industry.

 

So far, 18 teams are building businesses in the incubator, and they'll spend anywhere from six months to five years in development. A company called Carbon Technologies holds 74 patents for unique technologies such as DiamondDown, a material that traps heat radiating from the body.

 

The inventor, a former Dow Chemical engineer named Frank McCullough, believes the material can be used to make space suits that keep astronauts warm. But it also has commercial applications, such as for winter weather apparel or running gear.

 

But Shiver is the first to sign an agreement with NASA to license its technology for the boxes and to conduct further research to find commercial applications for the material.

 

He has since launched a business called DreamSaver, hired five-time astronaut Scott Parazynski as chairman and recruited the NASA thermal material engineers who developed a goo to repair the heat shield on shuttles after the Columbia exploded in 2003. They'll soon meet with the largest fireproof safe manufacturer in the world to discuss a partnership.

 

"It's had some hiccups," Shiver said. "NASA doesn't change very quickly. But they have done a great job to make it easier."

 

UConn Alum Returning to Orbit for Fourth Space Mission

 

Colin Poitras - UConn Today

 

NASA astronaut and UConn alumnus Rick Mastracchio '82 (ENG) is making his fourth trip to the International Space Station in a few weeks. While the destination may be a familiar one, this mission marks the first time Mastracchio is flying aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get there.

 

Mastracchio will serve as a flight engineer for space station Expedition 38, which launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 6. Unlike past trips, in which Mastracchio flew into orbit aboard one of the U.S. space shuttles and stayed in space for a just a few weeks, Expedition 38 is a prolonged space flight during which Mastracchio and the other astronauts will remain aboard the International Space Station from November to May 2014.

 

It's a familiar homecoming for one of UConn's most popular alums. Mastracchio helped prepare the International Space Station for its first human inhabitants when he first ventured into space in September 2000. Each time he returned (2007, 2010), he said the station seemed to get both bigger and more crowded. Once a small, cramped orbital docking station, the International Space Station is now a full-fledged flying laboratory the length and width of an American football field, including the end zones. It has the same living area as a five-bedroom house, two bathrooms, a gymnasium, and a 360-degree bay window. It weighs almost one million pounds or the equivalent of 320 automobiles.

 

"Every time I go to the International Space Station, it seems to get bigger and bigger and has more and more people," Mastracchio said during a press conference this week at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "This time, I look forward to living there and actually using the space station to do some of the work that was intended to be done there."

 

As a mission flight engineer, Mastracchio's primary role will be helping to guide the Soyuz spacecraft into space and back home at the end of the mission. While onboard the station, he will assist with various research projects, including one involving the burning and suppression of solids in microgravity to see how different materials combust in space and how such combustion can be prevented. Fire, obviously, is something astronauts hope to avoid in space. Expedition 38 also will be launching four satellites and conducting research into how zero gravity impacts the growth of protein crystals.

 

A specialist in operating the station's 55-foot robotic arm, Mastracchio will be called upon to "capture" any visiting spacecraft. Arriving spacecraft no longer directly dock at the station but pull up alongside it, where they are "grabbed" by the station's robotic arm and gently pulled into a holding place – a feat that takes a lot of skill when you're flying at 17,500 mph about 240 miles above Earth.

 

A proud UConn alum and graduate of the UConn School of Engineering, Mastracchio credits his UConn experience with helping prepare him for his future endeavors in space.

 

"UConn had a lot to do with me getting where I am today," Mastracchio said in a recent phone interview from Houston. "Very simply, the professors and classes I took at UConn taught me how to be an engineer. They worked me pretty hard there, I have to admit it; but I think I developed a lot of good skills at the University of Connecticut. I learned how to solve problems and overcome difficult tasks. It was not just the education but the training I received at the University of Connecticut in trying to become an engineer that helped me quite a bit early on in my career, and it all kind of built upon that."

 

A native of Waterbury, Conn., Mastracchio graduated from UConn in 1982 with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science. He went on to earn a master's degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1987, and a master's degree in physical science from the University of Houston-Clear Lake in 1991. Mastracchio worked for Hamilton Standard in Connecticut during his graduate years, before joining the Rockwell Shuttle Operations Co. at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1987. He first applied to be an astronaut in 1987, and kept re-applying each year for the next nine years. He was finally selected by NASA in 1996.

 

When asked what advice he would give others who wish to follow in his footsteps, Mastracchio said: "Find something you really enjoy and become really good at it. Obtain a master's degree or a doctorate in that field, and then throw your name in a hat. It took me nine years to become an astronaut. But even if you don't become an astronaut, you will still have a wonderful career to fall back on."

 

A veteran of six spacewalks totaling more than 38 hours in space, Mastracchio says he'll be bringing a UCONN baseball cap with him on his latest mission. On a prior mission, he brought a UConn banner on to the space shuttle and selected the UConn Husky fight song "Hail, Hail, UConn" as one of his pieces of "wake-up" music to be played by mission control. The space-bound banner was later returned to Storrs and remains on display in the Lodewick Visitors Center.

 

This time, there will be another unique item tagging along with the Expedition 38 crew – the Olympic torch. As part of the symbolic torch relay prior to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the Russian city of Sochi, Russian cosmonauts will carry the torch and simulated flame during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station during the mission. The torch will then be returned to Earth in time to continue the relay to Sochi before the games' opening ceremonies on Feb. 7.

Mastracchio is very active on social media. You can follow his pre-flight training preparations – including a fascinating array of behind-the-scenes photos and video clips – through his Twitter account @AstroRM

 

NASA is also offering followers a chance to become "virtual crewmembers" of Expedition 38 by participating in a monthly trivia contest through Mastracchio's Twitter account. Each month, Mastracchio will ask a trivia question about his training for followers to answer. Questions will range from science research and on-orbit medical operations to spacewalk procedures and robotics. The first person to reply with the correct answer wins. Participants should use the hashtag #ISSFE7 after their reply. Winners will have their photos uplinked to the International Space Station, where Mastracchio will take a photograph of the picture with the Earth in the background. A complete list of the contest rules can be found here.

 

Read more about the mission at www.nasa.gov/station and watch the mission at www.nasa.gov/ntv

 

Mastracchio is the second UConn alumnus to travel into space. Franklin Chang-Diaz, a 1973 UConn graduate, is a veteran astronaut with six successful flights to his credit. Chang-Diaz retired from NASA in 2005.

 

Space tourism will open up next space frontier

 

Pat Hynes - Las Cruces Sun-News

 

Traveling into space for recreational purposes is now the official definition for space tourism. On Aug. 28, NBC News reported The Oxford English Dictionary Online (ODO) added "space tourism" to the more than 350,000 entries it defines. The term "space tourism" is pretty familiar to us in Las Cruces. Related articles in collect Space.com suggest space tourism is a catalyst that will open up space as a frontier. The commercial space transportation industry will challenge more than dictionary definitions as we face a world that relies on space for national security.

 

When the state of New Mexico, under the administration of Bruce King, determined we would actively pursue the establishment of a spaceport, space tourism was not in our language. The state pursued a non-classified test range to recruit high paying jobs and use our expertise and capabilities in testing rocket propulsion systems, including guidance and control systems for those rockets. Rockets and launch systems were strictly controlled by governments and their related technologies were restricted from export under the International Traffic and Arms Regulation rules, ITAR for short.

 

Just last month, a guided missile was used to deliver deadly nerve gas to the citizens in Damascus, Syria. Guidance, navigation and control systems for rockets are now sold in the open market by France, Russia, Iran, India and China, and also by North Korea. These countries, non-ITAR countries, flaunt their non-ITAR capabilities, and frankly the U.S. has been very slow to address this problem. Remember Wen Ho Lee? He was convicted of taking home unclassified documents from Los Alamos. He was not found guilty of transferring ITAR restricted secrets to China. During his trial it was revealed, the "secrets" were available in the open literature, and the technologies, in this case for nuclear reactors, were available for sale in the open market, in some cases from our allies.

 

The United States has superior satellite and analysis capability to track weapons once launched. We know where the missile launched in Syria was launched from, when it was launched, and can generally figure out what type of rocket was used, and therefore determine who made the rocket. What the heck does have to do with space tourism? The U.S. government's Export Control Regime, ITAR, considers manned space vehicles, including space tourism vehicles like the XCOR Lynx, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, as guided missiles. They cannot be exported from our country. The companies working to grow peaceful use of space, including access to space for recreational purposed are limited by a set of ITAR government restrictions written in the 1980's.

 

While work is being done to update which technologies belong on the U.S. munitions list, right now, space tourism vehicles remain on this list. As we know, aircraft were used as weapons in the attack on the World Trade Center. Yet, we still travel by air. Exports of air craft are a bright spot in our manufacturing economy and it positively impacts our balance of trade. Reasonable people can see, the ITAR regime has not limited access by the bad guys to missile technologies. We have lost billions of dollars in trade because the US imposes ITAR export regulations on US companies.

 

Gen. Koehler, commander of the U.S. Strategic Space Command, said at a conference I attended in Nebraska, an economically secure nation is a secure nation. He understands the balance between regulation and security. His speeches are worth reading; go to the website, strat.com.mil to read them. I have heard the general speak on cyber and national security. We know through satellite observation, what the Syrian government is doing. This knowledge becomes the power that will create informed response. Our president is now willing to ask Congress to examine the evidence. This knowledge and our capabilities will be more powerful against our enemies than bombing. Economic security is linked with power for all people. Growing new industries, in this case the manufacturing industry that will build human commercial space transportation, can bring economic security to us and to other countries.

 

We have capabilities we want to protect, and there are technologies we should not be regulating. Keeping our country secure includes allowing free market competition. To keep our country strong, updates ITAR in order to keep our manufacturing industry strong is a positive step for the future. Space tourism and vehicles taking humans to space will come under intense scrutiny once we start flying. Knowledge is power. New Mexicans will have to stay informed as this new space transportation industry unfolds.

 

These People Want to Go to Mars (and Never Come Back)

 

Tanya Lewis - Space.com

 

Tens of thousands of people are prepared to leave their families, jobs and lives behind for a one-way trip to Mars.

 

The Mars One mission aims to send humans on a one-way trip to the Red Planet. The mission aims to land the first Mars colonists on the planet by 2023. Applicants over the age of 18 from any country are eligible to apply, and Mars One has received more than 165,000 applications already. But what sort of person would go?

 

A few dozen of the aspiring Martians convened in Washington, D.C., in August for the "Million Martian Meeting." A panel of four applicants answered questions from the audience about their reasons for wanting to go to Mars without a return ticket.

 

Who wants to go to Mars?

 

Despite different backgrounds and experiences, the panelists shared a lifelong interest in space exploration.

 

Aaron Hamm, 29, is a hotel manager, but going to Mars is "literally something I've wanted forever," he said at the meeting. After hearing about the call for applications, "I couldn't not jump at the chance," he said.

 

Leila Zucker, 45, is a married emergency room doctor. "Since I was a little kid, all I wanted was to be a doctor and travel in space," Zucker said in her application video. She even composed a song about her goal: "We're about to take off for the Red Planet Mars because Mars One leads the way to the stars," she sang at the meeting.

 

Austin Bradley, 32, is a physics student and former imagery analyst and paratrooper for the U.S. army. Bradley was hard to miss at the meeting, sporting green hair and wearing alien antennae, but his ambition was serious. "I always wanted to apply for NASA," he said, but now he sees Mars One as his ticket to space.

 

Joseph Sweeney, 24, is a graduate student in applied intelligence. "I feel like you're born knowing you want to travel," said Sweeney, who started the Facebook Aspiring Martians Group, which now has 1,844 members.

 

Is it worth the risk?

 

The Mars One colony mission poses many risks. There's the launch, the six-month journey, the landing — and that doesn't even include surviving once the astronauts get there.

 

At the Million Martian Meeting, applicants on the panel were asked what level of risk they would accept. Specifically, what chances of making it to Mars and lasting two years would make the trip worth it?

 

Zucker said she would take a 50-50 chance of surviving two years, or a 1-in-100 chance for surviving 20 years. "None of us are planning to die," she said, "but we all recognize we could."

 

Sweeney, a self-described optimist, said he would go even if the odds were 99-to-1 against surviving. "As long as there's a small possibility to do something great, I think it's worth the risk," he said.

 

What about a mission that would keep them alive only a year?

 

Bradley and Hamm said they would still apply. "It was always a one-way trip," Bradley said. Hamm said he would use the year to build his own survival system. "Just get me boots on the ground," he said. Zucker added that it would depend how much she could accomplish in that year.

 

"That year has to count — you don't get my life for nothing," she said.

 

Leaving a legacy

 

Just as Neil Armstrong's "giant leap" speech is forever enshrined in history, the words of the first humans to set foot on Mars will likely be historic.

 

At the meeting, the four panelists were given a chance to preview what their first utterance on the Red Planet would be.

 

Sweeney paraphrased a quote from Robert Zubrin's sci-fi story "First Landing," saying, "I take this step for all mankind, so we may walk among stars."

 

For Hamm, the answer was simple: "For decades we have left tracks on Mars, and now we are leaving footprints."

 

END