Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - November 14, 2013

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: November 14, 2013 6:54:55 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - November 14, 2013

Will send JSC Today when they wake up ….today is Safety and Health day at JSC …starting with flu shots in Building 30

 

NASA TV: www.nasa.gov/ntv

·      9 am Central (10 EST) – Replay of News Conf. on Commercial Crew & Cargo Pgm completion

·      11:45 am Central (12:45 EST) – Exp 38's Mike Hopkins & Rick Mastracchio talk to…

Ø  ESPN "SportsCenter"

Ø  WTIC-TV, Hartford, CT

 

Human Spaceflight News

Thursday – November 14, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Private flights to ISS slowed?

Commercial Crew Program could be delayed for years

 

Ledyard King - Florida Today

 

An already-delayed NASA program that will use private companies to transport astronauts to the International Space Station could be pushed back another three years due to budgetary and other issues, a new report from the agency's chief watchdog warns. NASA initially projected its Commercial Crew Program would begin trips to the space station in 2015, taking over for the space shuttles that were retired in 2011. But Congress hasn't come close to granting the agency's requests for money for the program. NASA received 38 percent of its requests for fiscal years 2011-2013, bringing its current aggregate budget shortfall to $1.1 billion, according to the report issued Wednesday by Inspector General Paul K. Martin. That gap is expected to grow if Congress doesn't agree on a way to avoid further rounds of sequestration budget cuts.

 

Drug to Reduce Risk of Space Radiation Cancers?

 

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

 

Mice fed an experimental anti-inflammatory drug three days before exposure to space-like radiation developed half as many carcinomas as mice that did not get the compound, a finding that has implications for astronauts on long-duration missions, as well as people on Earth receiving radiation treatments for therapeutic reasons, new research shows. The compound, which is derived from plant moss, belongs to a family of drugs called synthetic triterpenoids, which in addition to easing inflammation appear have powerful antioxidant properties. Synthetic triterpenoids already are in clinical trials and appear to be useful in treating kidney disease, diabetes, age-related macular degeneration, pulmonary diseases, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and various cancers.

 

Contractors Pitch SLS as Everybody's Rocket

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Major contractors for the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket NASA is building for astronaut missions beyond Earth orbit joined the agency's top human-spaceflight official here to pitch the multibillion-dollar launcher as a jack-of-all trades system suitable for everything from science missions to national security launches. Initial versions of the Space Launch System will be capable of sending 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit. Like the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets that loft most big national security and NASA science payloads today, the first SLS will feature a fairing five meters in diameter. Upgraded SLS variants would be capable of lifting as many as 130 metric tons to low Earth orbit and feature a 10-meter fairing.

 

Defense firms see space as the next commercial frontier

 

Leigh Munsil - Politico.com

 

For defense contractors looking for growth markets as Pentagon spending slows, the "final frontier" is looking more and more attractive. "People really don't understand how big a business space is. I mean, the commercial satellite market is enormous. It far dwarfs anything that's going on in exploration," said James Crocker, vice president of civil space at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. "There's a lot of money to be made." The aerospace industry is hungry for a piece of space exploration and commercial development. Not only does it want to continue building today's rockets and satellites — if humans were one day to go to Mars, the top firms want to be in on the mission.

 

NASA, partners celebrate success of COTS program

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

The NASA program that helped ready private vehicles to resupply the International Space Station offers a model for future projects as federal budgets tighten, space agency and industry officials said Wednesday. NASA and its two commercial resupply partners, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., gathered to celebrate the end of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, under which both companies developed new rockets and spacecraft.

 

ISS resupply missions to commence as COTS ends

 

Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press

 

When the Cygnus cargo spacecraft that launched out of Virginia to the International Space Station in September finally splashed down in the Pacific last month, it signaled more than the state's giant leap into the commercial space industry. It signaled a successful end to NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS, program — the space agency's ambitious partnership with two private companies to develop a cost-effective way to get payload to and from the space station and low-Earth orbit.

 

US must beat China back to the moon: Entrepreneur

 

Jane Wells - CNBC.com

 

NASA is in the middle of jettisoning its old business model. The U.S. space agency is trying to figure out what kinds of products and services it should buy "off the shelf" from companies like SpaceX, and how much should it invest in its own development in order to push American discovery to the next level. Robert Bigelow thinks a happy medium can be found. The founder of Bigelow Aerospace made a fortune in the hotel and real estate businesses, and he's pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into an enterprise that will create inflatable habitats designed for life beyond Earth. He entered into an agreement with NASA to provide a report on how ventures like his could help NASA get back to the moon, and even Mars, faster and cheaper. The catch? It needs to be worth his while.

 

To the moon? NASA passes the torch for space commercialization

 

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com

 

NASA's chief closed out the space agency's first campaign to commercialize spaceflight on Wednesday, marking a transition to more ambitious efforts to create new U.S. spaceships that could send astronauts into orbit — and perhaps back to the moon someday. "We just finished taking the Olympic torch up to space last week, and getting it back down," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said during a televised ceremony at the agency's Washington headquarters. "So in a way, this is passing another torch." The seven-year-long, $700 million-plus commercialization program — known as Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS — resulted in two new launch systems to replace the now-retired space shuttle fleet and transfer cargo to the International Space Station. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule made its first delivery in May 2012, and Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule followed suit with a demonstration flight this September.

 

Praise, emotions, mark end of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation services Program

 

Jason Rhian – Spaceflight Insider

 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden flanked by Space Exploration Technologies President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Gwynne Shotwell and Orbital Sciences Corporation's Executive Vice-President and General Manager Frank Culbertson along with several other NASA officials hosted a news conference on Wednesday Nov. 13 to discuss the closing of the space agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. "More than two years ago at the end of the space shuttle program two American companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation began work to restore the US' capabilities in terms of delivering and returning experiments and supplies to the International Space Station, and in so doing – decrease our reliance on foreign launch service providers," Bolden said during opening remarks at the conference. "Their successes mark the conclusion of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services or "COTS" program. They are now clear to begin providing regular transportation services to the ISS."

 

A torch in space

 

Shamil Zhumatov – Reuters

 

During more than a decade of covering Russia's space exploration program, I have seen pretty unusual missions. I have taken pictures of an investor heading for the International Space Station, as well as those of a clown and programmers flying into orbit. But the most recent space launch and landing have probably become the most unforgettable – the torch of the forthcoming 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia's Sochi reached space and then returned to Earth. Now, as I play back this hectic flurry of events, it is still hard to believe how closely these two things are entwined – the Olympics and space. The Olympic Games had been aimed by the authorities to strengthen Russia's image. Given this ambitious task set by Moscow, Russia's space program – a symbol of national pride, albeit marred by several botched unmanned launches – simply couldn't stand aloof. Space was doomed to become part of this bright political show.

 

Bigelow to press US government on lunar property rights

 

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

 

Tuesday afternoon, NASA and Bigelow Aerospace held an event at a downtown Washington hotel to discuss the delivery to NASA of a Bigelow report on commercial lunar exploration architectures. That report, as I summarized yesterday at NewSpace Journal, calls for the use of a COTS-like model to allow NASA to partner with industry (including Bigelow) to develop capabilities to enable human spaceflight activities beyond Earth orbit, including in orbit around and on the surface of the Moon.

 

George Clooney movie to film at Kennedy Space Center launch pad

 

Hal Boedeker - Orlando Sentinel

 

Will the George Clooney movie "Tomorrowland" be out of this world? Sure sounds like it. The Disney movie will shoot at a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone said Wednesday. The filming, mostly at night, is in a location that will not affect NASA operations, she said. The filmmakers are at the space center through next week, she added. "I don't think anybody's going to see anything," Malone said. "Tourists won't see anything because it's a closed set. Even employees won't be going out there." But the filmmakers will have a bonus: On Monday, they will see the launch of an Atlas V rocket that is carrying a Mars-bound spacecraft known as MAVEN. That stands for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution. "Tomorrowland" has been shooting in Altamonte Springs and New Smyrna Beach. The Disney film, co-starring Hugh Laurie, will be released in December 2014. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

 

Mary G. Waggoner, former NASA spokeswoman, dies at 86

 

Emily Langer - Washington Post

 

Mary G. Waggoner, a former public affairs officer and spokeswoman for NASA, died Nov. 4 at Capital Caring's Halquist Memorial Inpatient Center in Arlington County. She was 86. The cause was complications from diabetes, said her niece Anne Odland. Mrs. Waggoner was a longtime District resident and worked for NASA for more than 15 years before her retirement in the late 1980s.

 

MEANWHILE ON MARS…

 

Curiosity driving again after bungled software upgrade

 

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

 

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is hitting the road again Thursday, setting its sights on arriving at the base of a 3.4-mile-high Martian mountain next spring after recovering from a software fault that halted science observations for nearly a week. Officials expected the nuclear-powered robot to begin moving early Thursday, departing a rocky outcrop dubbed Cooperstown to head for another intermediate destination on the rover's cross-country trek to Mount Sharp, a towering peak in the middle of Gale Crater, the impact basin selected for Curiosity's landing in August 2012.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Private flights to ISS slowed?

Commercial Crew Program could be delayed for years

 

Ledyard King - Florida Today

 

An already-delayed NASA program that will use private companies to transport astronauts to the International Space Station could be pushed back another three years due to budgetary and other issues, a new report from the agency's chief watchdog warns.

 

NASA initially projected its Commercial Crew Program would begin trips to the space station in 2015, taking over for the space shuttles that were retired in 2011. But Congress hasn't come close to granting the agency's requests for money for the program.

 

NASA received 38 percent of its requests for fiscal years 2011-2013, bringing its current aggregate budget shortfall to $1.1 billion, according to the report issued Wednesday by Inspector General Paul K. Martin.

 

That gap is expected to grow if Congress doesn't agree on a way to avoid further rounds of sequestration budget cuts.

 

Private spacecraft won't be carrying astronauts to the space station until at least 2017 because of the funding shortfall. Further gaps threaten to push back the first crewed flights until 2020, the inspector general said.

 

Without a way to transport astronauts on its own, NASA relies on Russia to carry Americans to the orbiting lab — at more than $70 million a seat.

 

One reason lawmakers haven't fully funded the Commercial Crew Program is their fear the program is draining resources from NASA's more ambitious missions into deep space.

 

Martin says there are other threats to the program's schedule as well:

 

• Although NASA's Commercial Crew partners (Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada) have completed their preliminary spacecraft designs, NASA managers have yet to develop a "life cycle" cost estimate for the program. Such estimates are used to help avoid delays if there's not enough funding.

 

NASA officials said the flexible contracts known as Space Act Agreements that are being used for the program don't require such estimates. And they said such projections would be difficult due to a number of factors, including lack of historical cost data.

 

• Even though NASA set a goal of 90 days to respond to requests from its partner companies for requirement and certification guidance, the agency misses that benchmark two-thirds of the time. NASA officials said they expect to clear most requests within 120 days, though Martin noted the agency is having trouble meeting that goal as well.

 

"Cost increases and schedule overruns may result if NASA is unable to provide timely and accurate confirmation of requirements and certification guidance," Martin said in his report.

 

• While NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration have done well working together to facilitate commercial crew issues, more coordination is needed among other agencies, including the Air Force, to sort through "complex range safety, legal and insurance issues."

 

Until those issues are resolved, they "could adversely affect NASA's efforts to facilitate commercial human space travel," Martin wrote.

 

NASA officials agreed to take corrective actions, according to the report.

 

Drug to Reduce Risk of Space Radiation Cancers?

 

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

 

Mice fed an experimental anti-inflammatory drug three days before exposure to space-like radiation developed half as many carcinomas as mice that did not get the compound, a finding that has implications for astronauts on long-duration missions, as well as people on Earth receiving radiation treatments for therapeutic reasons, new research shows.

 

The compound, which is derived from plant moss, belongs to a family of drugs called synthetic triterpenoids, which in addition to easing inflammation appear have powerful antioxidant properties.

 

Synthetic triterpenoids already are in clinical trials and appear to be useful in treating kidney disease, diabetes, age-related macular degeneration, pulmonary diseases, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and various cancers.

 

The idea to give irradiated mice food laced with a dose of the synthetic triterpenoid CDDO-Me stemmed from a previous series of experiments.

 

Researchers discovered that mice irradiated over several days developed more cancerous tumors than mice receiving a single hit of radiation, even though the total dosages were identical, Jerry Shaw, with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas said at the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research conference in Orlando last week.

 

That got them wondering why.

 

The mice had been genetically modified to be susceptible to either lung cancer or colon cancer -- the first and second leading causes of cancer deaths in the United States.

 

Cells in the lungs tend to be replaced only when damaged, while colon cells turn over about every seven days, giving researchers two different processes to study.

 

Splitting up the radiation dose had similar effects on both groups. So did varying the type of radiation.

 

"This suggested that there was something about the fractioned dose of radiation that was leading to more invasive cancers," Shaw said.

 

Scientists followed up with genetic studies and found a group of genes associated with inflammatory responses, a finding that led to comparative studies of human lung cancer patients and treatment outcomes.

 

At that point, Shaw and colleagues turned to CDDO-Me to see what impact the drug might have on irradiated mice. They found that about mice fed food laced with CDDO-Me three days before being irradiated developed fewer tumors than those that did not receive the compound.

 

For the lung cancer mice, the rate fell from 35 percent to 17 percent with the drug. Another group of lung cancer-prone mice exposed to radiation similar to what is produced during a solar storm cut its tumor rate from 30 percent to 19 percent with the drug, Shaw said.

 

"This certainly doesn't cure the progression to invasive cancers, but it certainly does reduce the number significantly," Shaw said.

 

Among the mice susceptible to colon cancer, 9 percent developed cancerous tumors after ingesting CDDO-Me, compared to 26 percent that developed cancerous tumors without the drug.

 

Cell cultures suggest the drug also is effective if taken within an hour after radiation exposure, Shaw added.

 

"We think there is going to be a good rationale for moving forward with developing biological mitigators and biological countermeasures that reduce localized inflammatory responses," he said.

 

The research also raises the prospect that some astronauts may be more genetically more resistant to developing cancers than others.

 

"The future is looking at individual sensitivity, but we can't do it today," said radiation scientist Francis Cucinotta, with the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

 

Contractors Pitch SLS as Everybody's Rocket

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Major contractors for the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket NASA is building for astronaut missions beyond Earth orbit joined the agency's top human-spaceflight official here to pitch the multibillion-dollar launcher as a jack-of-all trades system suitable for everything from science missions to national security launches.

 

Initial versions of the Space Launch System will be capable of sending 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit. Like the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets that loft most big national security and NASA science payloads today, the first SLS will feature a fairing five meters in diameter. Upgraded SLS variants would be capable of lifting as many as 130 metric tons to low Earth orbit and feature a 10-meter fairing.

 

"I think that the science community and even communities like the [National Reconnaissance Office] will start to think about what kind of payloads they could develop to leverage those kind of capabilities," John Elbon, vice president of Houston-based Boeing Space Exploration, said during a Nov. 12. press briefing sponsored by TechAmerica's Space Enterprise Council at the Newseum here. Boeing is prime contractor for the SLS core stage.

 

As an example, Elbon said that SLS could, in a 70-metric-ton configuration, send NASA's proposed Europa Clipper probe to the Jupiter system early next decade in two years, substantially shortening the seven-year cruise the Clipper planning team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., envision if the mission launches on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5.

 

However, NASA is not sure whether it could afford the estimated $2 billion Europa mission. In July, the agency's Outer Planets Advisory Group — which considered the merits of an SLS launch — said Clipper should shy away from new or untested hardware to avoid drawing negative attention from risk-averse NASA and White House budget officials.

 

Elbon was joined Nov. 12 by SLS propulsion contractors ATK Aerospace of Magna, Utah, and AerojetRocketdyne of Sacramento, Calif. The companies are respectively providing the side-mounted solid-fueled boosters that will provide most of SLS's thrust off the pad, and the surplus RS-25 space shuttle main engines that will power its core. Also at the press conference was Jim Crocker, the top executive for civil space at Lockheed Martin Space Systems , prime contractor for SLS's companion crew capsule, Orion.

 

The pitch the SLS contractors made was echoed in a booklet showing a series of proposed NASA science missions for which SLS might be a good fit. It was similar to, although much smaller than, a 2008 report from the National Academies called "Launching Science: Science Opportunities Provided by NASA's Constellation System." Constellation was the Moon-exploration program proposed by former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2004 and canceled by President Barack Obama in 2010. Many of SLS's subsystems were intended for Constellation's cargo-only Ares 5 rocket and its Ares 1 crew-carrying counterpart.

 

The booklet prepared by the SLS contractors for the Nov. 12 briefing also advertised SLS as the only launch vehicle capable of sending North Las Vegas, Nev.-based Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable BA 330 habitation module to the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 2 — the same orbit to which the agency is considering redirecting an asteroid later this decade.

 

At a separate press conference Nov. 12, Bigelow Aerospace founder Robert Bigelow said his company had indeed discussed two different kinds of Bigelow habitats that might fly on SLS, including one that involved a new design that will require a launch vehicle with at least an 8-meter fairing.

 

Bigelow, in a roundtable discussion with reporters, would not disclose details of the planned spacecraft. However, he did acknowledge that his company would like to involve one of the BA 330s that will be ready for launch by 2016 in NASA's proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission. For that mission NASA would develop a new robotic spacecraft, to be launched later this decade, to nudge an asteroid roughly 10 meters in diameter into a distant lunar orbit. Astronauts aboard SLS and Orion would then visit the asteroid early next decade.

 

SLS is slated to launch an uncrewed Orion on a 2017 test flight to a lunar retrograde orbit . The empty spacecraft will spend about a week there undergoing system checks some 75,000 kilometers from the Moon's surface before returning to Earth for a high-speed re-entry test of its heat shields. The second SLS test flight — the first to carry a crewed Orion — is tentatively set for 2021.

 

NASA is spending roughly $3 billion a year on the SLS and Orion, which Congress ordered NASA to build in 2010 from leftover space shuttle parts and hardware constructed for Constellation.

 

At the press briefing, William Gerstenmaier, the agency's associate administrator for human exploration and operations said SLS and Orion have had to learn how to operate without much hope of budget increases year to year. This reality, he said, prompted NASA to pursue a so-called capabilities-based approach, where hardware is built without a particular mission in mind.

 

One benefit of this approach, Gerstenmaier said, is that NASA can avoid the impression that it is embarking on a long, costly campaign — something that might prompt Congress or future presidential administrations to step in and cancel programs.

 

"If we laid out a path directly to Mars and we laid out all the vehicles and all the testing and all the work to get there, then you end up with a fairly long period of time with a lot of funding that goes into that activity," Gerstenmaier said. "That says 'this program is something that maybe we don't want to go do.'

 

"But if I put it in incremental pieces where we're making real objectives going forward, it makes sense," Gerstenmaier said. "Rather than pick a date and destination and have that get changed along the way, we're building, essentially, an infrastructure that supports us and allows us to move forward."

 

In the era of across-the-board sequestration cuts, that has become even more difficult, said Gerstenmaier, who said he could not even hazard a guess at the effect another round of sequestration cuts — which will take place in January unless Congress acts — would have on SLS and Orion.

 

"It's not clear to me exactly how [sequestration] gets calculated," Gerstenmaier said. For 2014, "under some scenarios, our budget may be essentially flat ... in the 2013 enacted budget levels for the agencies. In other scenarios it may be a cut of a couple hundred million off that. So to ask me specifically what it's going to mean in terms of impacts and to expect me to give you canned numbers and impacts, I can't do that, because I don't know what the budget side is."

 

Defense firms see space as the next commercial frontier

 

Leigh Munsil - Politico.com

 

For defense contractors looking for growth markets as Pentagon spending slows, the "final frontier" is looking more and more attractive.

 

"People really don't understand how big a business space is. I mean, the commercial satellite market is enormous. It far dwarfs anything that's going on in exploration," said James Crocker, vice president of civil space at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. "There's a lot of money to be made."

 

The aerospace industry is hungry for a piece of space exploration and commercial development. Not only does it want to continue building today's rockets and satellites — if humans were one day to go to Mars, the top firms want to be in on the mission.

 

Representatives for Lockheed and Boeing made their case in Washington on Tuesday for their involvement in NASA's planned Space Launch System-Heavy Launch Vehicle and Orion spacecraft, which are being planned and built now in anticipation of human travel to Mars, as well as future missions of similar magnitude.

 

These programs, which are being developed jointly by the U.S. government, the aerospace industry and international space agencies, are the next step toward getting Americans into space aboard American spacecraft. Astronauts have been riding aboard Russian spacecraft since the end of the space shuttle era. The new programs are also a big potential boon to defense firms, which want to stay on the forefront of innovation in new fields.

 

"From Boeing's perspective, it's what we do," said John Elbon, the company's vice president and general manager of space exploration. "There's just no way that Boeing's not going to be involved in cutting-edge programs like SLS."

 

Boeing doesn't just see itself as an airplane company, Elbon said, but it can apply lessons learned in the commercial space to actual space. For example, he said the company's design process for taking hardware from the drawing board to reality translated perfectly to space systems.

 

"That whole process was developed on commercial airplanes," he said. "Really efficient process saves a lot of money, so we imported that from the commercial airplane world. A lot of the things that we do come from other places across the company."

 

Company leaders say that having an active space program draws the best and brightest engineers and others to work at companies such as Boeing and Lockheed.

 

"There's a cool factor that attracts people to space across the industry," said Virginia Barnes, vice president at Boeing's Space Launch System program. "It's absolutely a recruitment tool."

 

Crocker, of Lockheed, agreed, calling recruitment the "secret reason" defense vendors are pushing into the space game and investing their own research and development money to do so.

 

"We have a million résumés of people in our system wanting to go to work for Lockheed Martin, and it's because of things like this that we do," Crocker said. "Space exploration is a small part of the Lockheed Martin business, but it's one of the most attractive to new students coming out of school. Yeah, they want to build F-22 Raptors and Joint Strike Fighters, but they also want to go to Mars."

 

There's no question, however, that if the U.S. moves into a new space age, it would be very different from the era that pitted the U.S. against the Soviets to put men into orbit, onto the Moon and aboard permanent stations around the Earth. In those days, national pride was on the line and money was no object. Times have changed.

 

"We have to recognize that there's a finite budget," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Directorate at NASA. "Our activities have to be executable within the budget that we have available to us. So if you think of something that's a grand plan, it works great but isn't compatible with the budget, that doesn't work."

 

That's why the government needs the aerospace industry to be a full partner on future space exploration missions, Gerstenmaier added: "We need to look at what industry's doing in some areas, where industry's picked up modern manufacturing, we can pull that back into our processes to again lower our costs. … We need to take the best things that are out there and look forward."

 

As for the big aerospace vendors, they know the potential commercial uses of technology developed for deep space exploration could be highly profitable.

 

Crocker compared the industry's work on space launch vehicles and the like to the advent of the GPS. When it was first developed, no one knew how many applications it would have one day.

 

With that lesson in mind, the industry is betting that the technology it could develop for spacefaring will someday be worth the effort.

 

"From the commercial perspective, who knows?" Crocker said. "You really can't predict what technology's going to do 20 years in the future."

 

NASA, partners celebrate success of COTS program

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

The NASA program that helped ready private vehicles to resupply the International Space Station offers a model for future projects as federal budgets tighten, space agency and industry officials said Wednesday.

 

NASA and its two commercial resupply partners, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., gathered to celebrate the end of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, under which both companies developed new rockets and spacecraft.

 

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell called the program "revolutionary" and a success for taxpayers.

 

"The model that COTS followed is one that should be leveraged as we continue to go forward, especially during these difficult budget environments," she said during a new conference at NASA headquarters.

 

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said the public-private partnership, started under the George W. Bush administration, inspired the Obama administration's decision to expand the model to crewed flights.

 

But Bolden warned that launches of those missions from Florida will slip beyond 2017 if Congress does not fully fund NASA's request for about $821 million for the Commercial Crew Program this year.

 

House and Senate appropriations committees so far have approved spending levels between $500 million and $775 million, respectively.

 

NASA spent $788 million on the entire COTS program, including $396 million paid to SpaceX and $288 million to Orbital. The last payment was made Nov. 5.

 

Each company says it invested more than NASA's contribution toward development of the new vehicles — SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, and Orbital's Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft.

 

Key to the program's success, all agreed, was its use of non-traditional contracts under which NASA provided advice but sacrificed control over designs.

 

In addition to requiring the partners to invest their own money, NASA paid fixed amounts only when they met technical milestones such as a design review or test flight.

 

"I'd say we made the right choice," said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program at Johnson Space Center. "It worked."

 

ISS resupply missions to commence as COTS ends

 

Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press

 

When the Cygnus cargo spacecraft that launched out of Virginia to the International Space Station in September finally splashed down in the Pacific last month, it signaled more than the state's giant leap into the commercial space industry.

 

It signaled a successful end to NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS, program — the space agency's ambitious partnership with two private companies to develop a cost-effective way to get payload to and from the space station and low-Earth orbit.

 

But as the COTS program ends, NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program kicks into high gear as both companies are now cleared to resupply the space station for the next several years. Eight of those missions are set to launch out of Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island through 2016. The first is set for Dec. 15.

 

"America's best days in space exploration are ahead of us, thanks to the grit and determination of those in government and the private sector who dare to dream big dreams and have the skills to turn them into reality," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a press briefing Wednesday that was streamed live on its website.

 

He appeared at NASA headquarters to recognize a "milestone moment" with representatives from those partners, including Orbital Sciences Corporation, the Dulles-based maker of the Cygnus and the medium-lift Antares that boosted the cargo craft into space from a new launch pad built at MARS to accommodate bigger rockets.

 

"Orbital was founded on the premise of commercial access to space," said Frank L. Culbertson Jr., Orbital's executive vice president. "We've been doing that for almost 30 years, so this was a great step in what we think is the right direction."

 

He offered kudos to the Orbital team, to MARS and to the Virginia Department of Transportation, which oversees the spaceport through the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority.

 

Also appearing was Gwynne Shotwell, head of Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, NASA's other COTS partner. SpaceX is set to make its next mission to deliver supplies to the space station in February.

 

Shotwell and others touted the partnership not only for getting the U.S. back in the space transport business in a safe and cost-effective way, but for bringing critical jobs and launch capabilities back to American soil.

 

It also allows NASA to concentrate on getting U.S. astronauts back into space. On Tuesday, Bolden said, the agency is issuing its final request for proposals for Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contracts to develop next-generation rockets and spacecraft to transport crews to and from the space station by 2017. For now, the U.S. relies on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry American astronauts.

 

Public-private partnerships won't be appropriate for all its endeavors, NASA officials said, but for when they are, COTS provides a template for success, especially as sequestration spending cuts and other cutbacks plunder NASA's ever-shrinking budget.

 

"With the budget challenges we are all facing, partnerships are going to be critical," said Phil McAlister, director of NASA's Commercial Spaceflight Development. "COTS has given us the confidence to do more of that."

 

Shotwell pushed for bigger allocations for NASA, which she says does "an extraordinary amount of work" with about $17 billion a year. By comparison, she said, each year Americans spend about $100 billion on beer.

 

US must beat China back to the moon: Entrepreneur

 

Jane Wells - CNBC.com

 

NASA is in the middle of jettisoning its old business model. The U.S. space agency is trying to figure out what kinds of products and services it should buy "off the shelf" from companies like SpaceX, and how much should it invest in its own development in order to push American discovery to the next level.

 

Robert Bigelow thinks a happy medium can be found. The founder of Bigelow Aerospace made a fortune in the hotel and real estate businesses, and he's pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into an enterprise that will create inflatable habitats designed for life beyond Earth. He entered into an agreement with NASA to provide a report on how ventures like his could help NASA get back to the moon, and even Mars, faster and cheaper.

 

The catch? It needs to be worth his while.

 

Bigelow is applying to the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation to amend a 1967 international agreement on the moon so that a system of private property rights can be established there. "When there isn't law and order," he said, "there's chaos."

 

Bigelow said he believes the right to own what one discovers on the moon is the incentive needed for private enterprise to commit massive amounts of capital and risk lives. "It provides a foundational security to investors," he said.

 

Bigelow does not feel that any one nation should own the moon.

 

"No one 'anything' should own the moon," he said. "But, yes, multiple entities, groups, individuals, yes, they should have the opportunity to own the moon."

 

The earth's natural satellite could hold vast amounts of valuable minerals, but mining isn't what Bigelow has in mind for himself. He wants to provide housing for those who go there. And he wants the United States to go there before China.

 

"The big danger here isn't a fear of private enterprise owning and maximizing profitable benefit from the moon," he said. "The big worry is America is asleep and does nothing, while China comes along, lands people on the Moon, and decides, 'We might as well start surveying and laying claim, because who is going to stop us?'"

 

China is planning to launch a lunar rover soon, and it could land a manned mission within a dozen years. "They aren't going there for footprints and flags," Bigelow said.

 

Does the possibility of China beating America back to the Moon worry him? "A lot. ... Tell me something that they don't have significant interest in," he replied. "Name something."

 

The 1967 international Outer Space Treaty forbids the use of the moon for military purposes, though the State Department indicates China did not sign off on the it until 1983.

 

Bigelow is concerned that if the Chinese get to the moon before the U.S. returns, China will have a leg up on getting to Mars.

 

"It's the psychological impact that has the value, of every soul looking at the moon and knowing that it belongs to China," he said. "I think that's something the United States would not recover from for hundreds of years."

 

While China may be working toward a manned mission to the Moon by 2025, Bigelow hopes he can help NASA establish a lunar base sooner, though he said that depends on a lot going right. He's delayed manufacturing and signing contracts with customers until he can be guaranteed transport.

 

Meanwhile, one Bigelow Aerospace habitat will be flown to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket in 2015 for testing. At a news conference Tuesday with Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's head of Human Exploration, both sides agreed they need each other: NASA needs the low-cost, fast moving expertise of private ventures, while companies like Bigelow Aerospace need a core customer to get these businesses off the ground, literally.

 

How confident is Robert Bigelow that he can eventually get his products to the moon and make money doing it?

 

"We may never do either," he said, "but we're going to try."

 

To the moon? NASA passes the torch for space commercialization

 

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com

 

NASA's chief closed out the space agency's first campaign to commercialize spaceflight on Wednesday, marking a transition to more ambitious efforts to create new U.S. spaceships that could send astronauts into orbit — and perhaps back to the moon someday.

 

"We just finished taking the Olympic torch up to space last week, and getting it back down," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said during a televised ceremony at the agency's Washington headquarters. "So in a way, this is passing another torch."

 

The seven-year-long, $700 million-plus commercialization program — known as Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS — resulted in two new launch systems to replace the now-retired space shuttle fleet and transfer cargo to the International Space Station. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule made its first delivery in May 2012, and Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule followed suit with a demonstration flight this September.

 

Both companies are moving ahead with resupply missions under the terms of contracts with NASA worth a total of $3.5 billion. Orbital Sciences' first launch covered by that contract is set for December, while SpaceX is due to send the Dragon on its next trip in February.

 

Bolden and other NASA officials said the lessons learned during COTS were being applied to the agency's Commercial Crew Program, which supports the development of commercial spaceships for carrying humans into orbit. More than a billion dollars has already been committed for work on three prototype spaceships offered by SpaceX, the Boeing Co. and Sierra Nevada Corp. On Wednesday, NASA said it would announce its requirements for the final phase of development on Nov. 19.

 

"It's now critically important to get full funding from Congress to keep us on track to begin these launches in 2017," Bolden said.

 

Coincidentally, NASA's inspector general released an audit on Wednesday saying that the Commercial Crew Program faced several obstacles that could keep it from meeting the 2017 goal — including a $1.1 billion budget gap between the agency's requests and the money it's received. Missing the target date would mean continued reliance on Russia for orbital crew transport, at a cost of more than $70 million per seat.

 

Keys to success

 

Alan Lindenmoyer, the manager of NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program, said COTS succeeded in part because of commercial competition and the fact that "NASA did not pay the full cost" of development.

 

SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, noted that her company received $396 million from NASA that went toward the $850 million total cost of creating the Falcon 9 and the Dragon. Without NASA's help, SpaceX could not have created those spaceships as quickly as it did, Shotwell said.

 

The idea is that NASA benefits from a transport service that can be used for non-NASA space missions as well. SpaceX already has a multibillion-dollar manifest for commercial Falcon launches, and Orbital Sciences says it's negotiating with several companies for future Antares missions.

 

"This is American ingenuity at its best, resulting in safe, reliable and cost-effective space transportation," Lindenmoyer said.

 

The program paid out money only after pre-set development milestones were reached. Orbital, for example, reportedly received the final chunk of its $288 million allocation just this month for achieving its final COTS milestones. One of the original participants in the COTS program, Rocketplane Kistler, received $32 million from NASA for meeting early milestones, but had to bow out in 2007 when it couldn't attract enough outside investment to satisfy the agency's requirements. The company later filed for bankruptcy.

 

Commercialize the moon?

 

On Tuesday, Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace publicized a NASA-commissioned report that called for extending the COTS model to lunar exploration and settlement. More than 40 years after the Apollo moonshots, NASA's efforts to send astronauts back to the lunar surface have been stymied by the high price tag — but commercial ventures such as the Golden Spike Co. say they can turn a profit from low-cost trips to the moon.

 

Bigelow Aerospace's billionaire founder, Robert Bigelow, said the U.S. government should add further incentives for commercial moon missions by recognizing lunar property rights.

 

He emphasized that no nation — whether it's the United States or China — should assert sovereignty over lunar territory. That's ruled out by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. However, the treaty's language on private property rights is more ambiguous. Bigelow is asking the U.S. government to work on a system for recognizing such rights.

 

"No one 'anything' should own the moon," Bigelow told CNBC. "But yes, multiple entities, groups, individuals, yes, they should have the opportunity to own the moon."

 

The property rights question didn't come up during Wednesday's ceremony, but the idea of applying COTS' principles to more ambitious space programs did. "It's well-suited for supporting the International Space Station and, we think, for exploration," said former NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson, executive vice president and general manager of Orbital Sciences' Advanced Programs Group.

 

Lindenmoyer agreed that the COTS model for space commercialization could eventually go to the moon and beyond. In July, NASA sent its industry partners a request for ideas about how the model could be extended to meet the agency's exploration goals.

 

"There were great responses — systems to go back and explore the moon, communication systems, propellant systems, launch systems," Lindenmoyer said. "There's all kinds of potential out there where the model can be used. And I think it can be used in a complementary manner: NASA develops the high-technology systems, and then the systems that are less complex can be turned over to industry."

 

Extra credit: Orbital Sciences' Culbertson announced that the next Cygnus craft heading for the space station would be named after C. Gordon Fullerton. Fullerton, who passed away in August, was an Apollo-era astronaut who was involved in the first air launches of Orbital Sciences' Pegasus rocket. The C. Gordon Fullerton spaceship is due for launch atop an Antares rocket in December.

 

Praise, emotions, mark end of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation services Program

 

Jason Rhian – Spaceflight Insider

 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden flanked by Space Exploration Technologies President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Gwynne Shotwell and Orbital Sciences Corporation's Executive Vice-President and General Manager Frank Culbertson along with several other NASA officials hosted a news conference on Wednesday Nov. 13 to discuss the closing of the space agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

 

With opening comments starting at 11:30 a.m. EST, the trio were joined by Alan Lindenmoyer, the head of NASA's Commercial Program, Phil McAlister, the director of Commercial Spaceflight Development with NASA and Frank Slazer the vice-president of Space Systems, Aerospace Industries Association.

 

"More than two years ago at the end of the space shuttle program two American companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation began work to restore the US' capabilities in terms of delivering and returning experiments and supplies to the International Space Station, and in so doing – decrease our reliance on foreign launch service providers," Bolden said during opening remarks at the conference. "Their successes mark the conclusion of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services or "COTS" program. They are now clear to begin providing regular transportation services to the ISS."

 

Those watching NASA Television were probably a little confused as the space agency had listed the news conference as "Completion of the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program." Given that commercial crew has yet to launch an astronaut and that commercial cargo is still ongoing under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract – it was unclear why the announcement was labeled as such.

 

COTS was incredibly successful with two separate launch vehicles and spacecraft being developed under this initiative. It also served to return the capability of launching cargo from U.S. soil, something which has been lacking since the last space shuttle mission, STS-135 on space shuttle Atlantis, concluded in 2011. COTS was never planned to be a program in which new technologies were to be tested. Rather, it was one designed to validate designs that could replace a portion of the shuttles' up mass (the amount of cargo delivered to orbit) capabilities.

 

"We weren't looking at developing new technology under this program, rather we were looking at utilizing existing technology and I think that COTS has shown that this model works very well," Lindenmoyer said. "What we've shown with COTS is that, while this isn't the right model to do everything we do at NASA, it certainly is a model that works. I think we made the right choice!'

 

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft have already completed two missions under the follow-on program to COTS – the Commercial Resupply Services contract. The Hawthorne, California-based company completed its COTS objectives in 2012 and has already completed two CRS missions to the International Space Station (ISS). Orbital successfully concluded its demonstration flight last month by launching the company's Cygnus 1 spacecraft (also known as the David G. Low spacecraft) on the Orb D1 mission to the ISS.

 

Today's conference also served as an awards ceremony of sorts with Lindenmoyer, Shotwell and Culbertson each receiving NASA Group Achievement Awards on behalf of the teams/companies that they represent. They were presented with these awards from for their efforts on NASA's commercial programs.

 

Orbital's Frank Culbertson also revealed the name of the next Cygnus spacecraft which will fly to the International Space Station – the C. Gordon Fullerton. That mission is currently slated to launch on Dec. 8, 2013. Fullerton, like Low, was a shuttle astronaut, he piloted the B-52 Stratofortress which deployed a Pegasus rocket in 1991. Fullerton passed away in August of this year.

 

Culbertson's announcement was just one expression that highlighted the emotions tied to COTS.

 

"As an engineer I normally talk about the technical aspects a program, with the close of COTS, I'd like to go outside that and talk about the pride that I feel with the combined team and what they've produced," McAlister said. "I'm also proud of NASA, we haven't always been a good partner in the past, but with COTS we have been. Both companies have different cultures, different ways of doing things. We normally wouldn't be flexible, but here we were, here we allowed them to do things their way and to succeed."

 

Bolden highlighted that COTS was a program which had received support from both sides of the political spectrum, mentioning that both the Bush and Obama administrations had sponsored the effort.

 

COTS was announced on January 18, 2006. The two initial competitors were SpaceX and the failed aerospace firm Rocketplane Kistler (RpK, as it was known, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2010). Shortly after RpK's termination and departure in 2008 – NASA signed an agreement with Orbital to compete in COTS. These companies were the elite, as more than 20 aerospace firms submitted proposals under the COTS initiative.

 

The first COTS mission was conducted by SpaceX in a fashion that surprised some within the space community. Initially, there were supposed to be two flights to the ISS, with the first only rendezvousing with the station and the second being grappled by the station's Canadarm 2 and berthed to the orbiting laboratory. However, SpaceX petitioned and received approval from NASA to combine these two missions. This allowed SpaceX to complete the objectives under COTS 2 and 3 in a single mission.

 

"The COTS program was a great success — not only for NASA and the commercial space industry, but also the American taxpayer," Shotwell stated in a NASA release issued during the conference. "Together, NASA and SpaceX restored cargo transport capabilities to the United States and also laid the foundation for the future transport of American astronauts. SpaceX appreciates NASA's ongoing support and is honored to partner with them in these efforts."

 

For its part, Orbital began working under COTS later than SpaceX and flew the first demonstration flight of its Antares launch vehicle in 2012. Just this past September, the Dulles, Virginia-based company completed its first COTS mission to the ISS, thus closing out the program.

 

"Orbital's successful completion of the COTS program, including two launches of the new Antares rocket and the first mission to the International Space Station by the Cygnus cargo logistics spacecraft, was the direct result of the outstanding collaboration between the NASA and Orbital engineering and program management teams," said Frank Culbertson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Orbital's Advanced Programs Group. "The unique structure of the COTS initiative, under which NASA's technical expertise, experienced human spaceflight workforce, and well-honed safety operations standards provided the overall framework, enabled Orbital to bring the energy, innovation and discipline of the commercial sector to the program, resulting in a reliable and cost-effective resupply service."

 

Both of these two companies will deliver various forms of cargo to the ISS under CRS. Orbital has signed a $1.9 billion contract for these services with SpaceX receiving $1.6 billion.

 

"America's best days in space exploration are ahead of us thanks to the grit and determination of those in government, and the private sector, who dare to dream big dreams and have the skills to turn them into reality," Bolden said. "We've ended the outsourcing of space station resupply work and brought those jobs back home to America. The commercial space industry will be an engine of 21st century American economic growth and will help us carry out even more ambitious deep space exploration missions."

 

A torch in space

 

Shamil Zhumatov – Reuters

 

PART ONE: LAUNCH

During more than a decade of covering Russia's space exploration program, I have seen pretty unusual missions. I have taken pictures of an investor heading for the International Space Station, as well as those of a clown and programmers flying into orbit. But the most recent space launch and landing have probably become the most unforgettable – the torch of the forthcoming 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia's Sochi reached space and then returned to Earth.

 

Now, as I play back this hectic flurry of events, it is still hard to believe how closely these two things are entwined – the Olympics and space. The Olympic Games had been aimed by the authorities to strengthen Russia's image. Given this ambitious task set by Moscow, Russia's space program – a symbol of national pride, albeit marred by several botched unmanned launches – simply couldn't stand aloof. Space was doomed to become part of this bright political show.

A few months earlier, when I learnt about the future mission of the torch, the only question that haunted my friends was – how will it burn in space? Their avid interest was heated by the torch itself, whose flame had gone out several times since the Olympic relay across Russia began last month. One of my colleagues even joked that while in space the torch would need "a man with a lighter", recalling the image of a resourceful plainclothes security agent who saved the day, reigniting the torch with a cigarette lighter when the flame went out right at the start of the relay in the Kremlin on October 6. But as the launch date of November 7 drew nearer, there was a general sigh of relief – the torch would not be lit aboard the space station for safety reasons, and it simply would not be able to burn in outer space due to the laws of nature.

The show began on November 5 at 0700 sharp. The gates of a giant hangar at Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan opened, and at the sound of a whistle a locomotive slowly rolled out a Soyuz rocket, whose normally white-and-grey body was now decorated with Sochi Olympics trademark snowflake patterns. A quick glance at a large number of armed policemen, their armor and helicopters hovering overhead left no one in doubt that the upcoming launch was of paramount importance to Moscow.

Nowadays Russia's space program is no longer in the limelight as was the case during the heyday of its glory, but there was an unusually large number of journalists at that pre-flight news conference. The torch, placed on a smaller table between the main and backup crews, was in dissonance with the routine picture and created an impression of a third person being present. U.S. astronaut Rick Mastracchio often looked at it during the news conference.

Photographic equipment plays a crucial role in covering space launches at Baikonur. I use the entire arsenal at my disposal – three cameras, the same number of tripods and a monopod, an array of lenses and a myriad of minor contraptions, including a miniature ladder and bags for gravel to support tripods of remotes cameras. Unfortunately, Russia's space gate lacks broadband connection which would allow us to send pictures straight from the launch-pad. So, I had to add a Bgan satellite modem on top of the above-mentioned equipment, and my personal "Olympic relay" turned into a weightlifting exercise.

My shoot started six hours before the launch, when the main crew left their hotel. To the tune of the same 1980s song, the space crew boarded a bus. Lit by cameras and photo flashes, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin was carrying the torch. Relatives, friends and space program workers hailed the crew.

This time, it was my turn to take pictures of the crew boarding the rocket. The spaceship was already fueled, so access was limited. News agencies of the space pool take turns to cover space launches during the year. At this launch, everyone was haunted by one intriguing question – how will Mikhail Tyurin wave his hand to bid good-bye, if he was carrying a conditioner ventilating his space-suit in one hand and his other hand was busy holding the torch? But he elegantly put the box with the conditioner on the stairs before entering the space lift, and joyously raised both hands in a final salute.

Two-and-a-half hours later, the quiet Kazakh steppe was disturbed by the roar of the Soyuz rocket as it blasted off into the morning sky, taking the Olympic torch to orbit. As they say, it was "all nominal" amid a sea of fire. I sent my pictures and flew off to Karaganda in central Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Air Force plane kindly offered to me, to cover the landing of the torch a few days later.

PART TWO: LANDING

Three days later, I was lying on the floor of a Russian Mi-8 helicopter, with my nose pressed against a closed hatch. I was firmly fixed by a safety tether, a stool above me and my colleagues sitting on this stool. The helicopter was hovering at a height of about 3 km (1.8 miles) in the area designated for the landing of a space capsule carrying the outgoing space station crew and the Olympic torch.

NASA photographer Carla Cioffi was at the ready next to me. We could not spot the parachute of the descent capsule through portholes, but our position gave us a strong advantage in covering the very moment of touchdown. All of a sudden, the hatch was flung open, as if the curtain was raised in a theater, and what we saw immediately was the space capsule hanging under a bright orange parachute in the rays of a rising sun. What a fantastic view! I had taken similar pictures so many times, but this view continues to mesmerize me. The rattle of the engines created a strange cacophony with squalls of the wintry air which rocked my camera. I couldn't hear the clicks of the shutter, and I took pictures as if I were making a silent film. The main thing here was not to get carried away by the process and avoid taking too many pictures, which would later complicate the selection of the best ones.

Engines cushioning the landing worked well, raising clouds of dust, and five minutes later we were running to the capsule lying on one side in an endless steppe. It was business as usual for the search and recovery team – until they finally got the torch from the capsule. A thrilled and bashful Russian space worker handed the torch over to Fyodor Yurchikhin, commander of the landing crew. By that time, the crew members were already resting nearby in semi-reclined chairs, protected with blankets from the chilly steppe wind.

Near the capsule, helicopter pilots were holding a large poster featuring the flame of the future Sochi Olympics. After a short filming session, the crew was carefully taken to a nearby inflatable tent for medical checks, while I found my helicopter No. 15 and rushed to transmit my pictures. When all others had boarded, I only had a few seconds to run off and pick up my satellite modem. The helicopter took off, headed for Karaganda where the crew's news conference would begin shortly. And, invariably, one of the journalists asks the hackneyed question: "How was the torch lit in space?"

For me, that was the end of my personal week-long, some 4500 kilometers (2796 miles), relay with the Olympic torch.

 

Bigelow to press US government on lunar property rights

 

Jeff Foust - SpacePolitics.com

 

Tuesday afternoon, NASA and Bigelow Aerospace held an event at a downtown Washington hotel to discuss the delivery to NASA of a Bigelow report on commercial lunar exploration architectures. That report, as I summarized yesterday at NewSpace Journal, calls for the use of a COTS-like model to allow NASA to partner with industry (including Bigelow) to develop capabilities to enable human spaceflight activities beyond Earth orbit, including in orbit around and on the surface of the Moon.

 

The report also emphasized the need for a lunar property rights regime. Companies "must know they will be able to (1) enjoy the fruits of their labor relative to activities conducted on the Moon or other celestial bodies, and (2) own the property that they have surveyed, developed, and are realistically able to utilize," the report states. And, in a point emphasized in the report in bold, italic, and underlined type: "Without property rights, any plan to engage the private sector in long-term beyond LEO activities will ultimately fail."

 

At yesterday afternoon's event, Bigelow Aerospace founder and president Robert Bigelow indicated that the company plans to press their case for lunar property rights in the near future. "Bigelow Aerospace will be making an application to the FAA/AST [Office of Commercial Space Transportation] for a policy review pertaining to lunar property rights before the end of this year," Bigelow said.

 

That policy review would take advantage of the FAA's ability to perform a policy review of a license application, which involves interagency consultation. "I think it's abundantly clear that, in terms of establishing lunar property rights or even making that request, that the FAA/AST is the proper gateway to begin that process," said Mike Gold, Bigelow Aerospace's chief counsel and head of the company's Washington office, citing that interagency review process. "I know it sounds like a lot for one company or one request, but that is actually the way the process goes from a legal perspective."

 

Bigelow Aerospace doesn't have immediate plans for a lunar base, although it is a long-term goal for the company; it's focused for now on developing orbital habitats and awaiting the developing of commercial crew transportation systems before launching those modules and lining up customers for them. So why press for it now? "We think that, first of all, this is not an overnight process, and that is probably the main reason why we are starting on this," Robert Bigelow said. "We want to galvanize support where we can, and find out where the most significant support is derived from."

 

"I have a more pessimistic view of the need for property rights," he added. He cited an unnamed foreign country that has "significant ambition" in space and "significant financial resources"—a not-so-veiled reference to China. "It's very possible that, in another dozen years, America could have quite a surprise." Bigelow has previously stated his concerns that China could claim the Moon as its territory, although that view is not shared by those that closely follow Chinese space efforts.

 

Mary G. Waggoner, former NASA spokeswoman, dies at 86

 

Emily Langer - Washington Post

 

Mary G. Waggoner, a former public affairs officer and spokeswoman for NASA, died Nov. 4 at Capital Caring's Halquist Memorial Inpatient Center in Arlington County. She was 86.

 

The cause was complications from diabetes, said her niece Anne Odland.

 

Mrs. Waggoner was a longtime District resident and worked for NASA for more than 15 years before her retirement in the late 1980s.

 

Mary Anita Griffin was born in Boston and received a bachelor's degree in journalism from Boston University in 1948. Before settling in Washington, she worked for nearly two decades in New York as a reporter and writer with the Condé Nast publishing company.

 

In retirement, Mrs. Waggoner was a docent at the National Gallery of Art and volunteered with Meals on Wheels and the Capital Caring hospice organization.

 

Her first marriage, to Joseph Fitzpatrick, ended in divorce.

 

Her second husband, Miles Waggoner, died in 1998 after 12 years of marriage.

 

She had no immediate survivors.

 

MEANWHILE ON MARS…

 

Curiosity driving again after bungled software upgrade

 

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

 

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is hitting the road again Thursday, setting its sights on arriving at the base of a 3.4-mile-high Martian mountain next spring after recovering from a software fault that halted science observations for nearly a week.

 

Officials expected the nuclear-powered robot to begin moving early Thursday, departing a rocky outcrop dubbed Cooperstown to head for another intermediate destination on the rover's cross-country trek to Mount Sharp, a towering peak in the middle of Gale Crater, the impact basin selected for Curiosity's landing in August 2012.

 

Thursday's drive is the first since Curiosity went into safe mode Nov. 7 when the rover's computer froze up as ground controllers tried to switch over to new upgraded software.

 

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California radioed the fresh software to the rover last week when it was parked at the Cooperstown outcrop.

 

But there was a discrepancy between a data file and a catalog file inside the rover's computer. Running on the new R11 software, Curiosity's catalog file, which functions like a folder on a personal computer, showed one particular piece of data was still written in the computer's memory, according to Jim Erickson, Curiosity's project manager at JPL.

 

When the rover's computer tried to access the data, it was not there. The rover's older R10 software handled data differently.

 

"[The rover] basically said, 'OK, I'm trying to pull this one data product to send it because it says it's ready, but since it's an old software-generated product, it had the file cleared out but not the catalog pointing to the file,'" Erickson said. "So R11 believed the product was there, opened up that memory space, and said, 'Oh, this doesn't look right at all. We obviously have some kind of a memory corruption,' and asked for a reset."

 

The rover did a warm reset, a less invasive type of reboot than a cold reset.

 

"It is sort of like the difference between turning your computer off and unplugging it and telling the Mac OS to just do a reset," Erickson said.

 

Erickson said the rover will stay on the old software for now while engineers amend the R11 software. Officials aim to uplink the new R11 version to the rover in early December.

 

"Unfortunately, the handover didn't work well," Erickson said. "It was a transition problem. We can easily fix this now that we know what the issue is by clearing out the ready-to-send catalog before we switch to R11."

 

The R11 software is the 11th incarnation of software developed for the rover since the program began. It is the third software upgrade to be uplinked to Curiosity since landing and expands the rover's autonomy and extends capabilities for using the robot arm while parked on slopes, an improvement scientists expect will come in handy once the rover arrives at Mount Sharp, according to a NASA press release.

 

Ground teams restored the rover to normal operations Sunday, according to a NASA press release.

 

Curiosity's departure from the Cooperstown outcrop Thursday begins the next phase of the rover's journey to Mount Sharp.

 

The rover spent much of the first year of its mission on Mars investigating a region named Yellowknife Bay. Believed to the part of an ancient river system, Yellowknife Bay once held all the ingredients required to support microbial life, according to data collected by Curiosity's soil-analyzing instruments.

 

Mount Sharp may hold even stronger clues of a former habitable environment on Mars, and layered terrain in the mountain's foothills may contain organic signatures of ancient life.

 

Erickson said Curiosity should reach the edge of Mount Sharp some time between May and July 2014.

 

Cooperstown was the second of four "waypoints" identified on the route to Mount Sharp. Officials selected the waypoints from orbital imagery, providing opportunities to do science on the way to the rover's next big destination.

 

According to Erickson, Curiosity has completed more than one-third of its approximately 5.6-mile drive to Mount Sharp. The rover's next way point should be reached by January.

 

END