Happy Friday everyone and have a great and safe weekend!
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Submit Announcements Before JSC Today's Hiatus - Organizations/Social
- Gilruth Gate Reopened - Construction Postponed
- Starport's T-Shirt Distribution Schedule - Jobs and Training
- Budget Basics for Technical: What You Need to Know - Community
- Volunteers Needed for HERA Study
- Geminid Meteor Shower Viewing Tonight |  |
| Headlines - Submit Announcements Before JSC Today's Hiatus
Just as many of you will be off for the holidays and centerwide services are being put on hold, JSC Today is also taking a brief hiatus from Dec. 20 through Jan 6. During that time, the regular edition of JSC Today will not be delivered to your inbox. If any special announcements are warranted, those will be sent out on an as-needed basis.
If you would like to submit something for the Dec. 19 edition (which is the last day before the hiatus begins), you must submit your announcement to the JSC Today Web-based system by noon Wednesday, Dec. 18.
If you would like to submit an announcement for the Jan. 6 edition of JSC Today, you must submit your announcement to the JSC Today Web-based system by noon Thursday, Dec. 19. All submissions received after noon on Dec. 19 will be bumped to Jan. 6.
To submit an announcement, click here. Organizations/Social - Gilruth Gate Reopened - Construction Postponed
The Gilruth on-site drive-through gate will be open the week of Dec. 16 to 20. Construction has been postponed until a later date. On-site roadways will be accessible to the Gilruth. - Starport's T-Shirt Distribution Schedule
Starport will be distributing the online orders of the NASA 55th Anniversary and Space Shuttle Commemorative T-Shirts per the following schedule: - Monday, Dec. 16, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Building 3
- Tuesday, Dec. 17, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Building 11
- Wednesday, Dec. 18, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Gilruth Fitness Center
Please bring your NASA badge to pick up your shirts. If you are picking up shirts for another employee, bring an email from that employee stating such. Your receipt may be helpful, but is not required. Thank you for choosing Starport! Jobs and Training - Budget Basics for Technical: What You Need to Know
Break through the common communications barriers between technical and budget-speak with helpful translations of common budget terminology and a straightforward discussion of basic budget concepts. Understand the overall structure and flow of funding within the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) and get tips for improving communication with your budget analyst. Your participation in this session will deliver the insight you need to plan and manage NASA financial resources. This session is recommended for anyone responsible for a project budget who would like to learn how government financial management differs from managing a personal bank account. As part of the OCFO Subject-Matter Expert course series, Kim Steele and Erica Ternes will lead this session on Thursday, Jan. 16, from 1 to 3 p.m. in Building 45, Room 251. Please register in SATERN via the link below or by searching the catalog for the course title. Community - Volunteers Needed for HERA Study
Test Subject Screenings (TSS) needs volunteers for a seven- to 9-day study with overnight stays in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) unit. Subjects will simulate a space exploration mission to evaluate impacts due to isolation, remoteness and confined habitation. Data collected will include evaluation of team cohesion, cognition, communication and affect, as well as sensorimotor assessments. Psychological, human factors and physiological impacts will be studied. Volunteers must pass a Category I physical; be 25 to 55 years old; have a BMI of 29 or less; be 74 inches or less; have no history of sleepwalking or use of sleep aids; and must have a high level of technical skills. Volunteers will be compensated. (Restrictions apply to NASA civil servants and NASA contractors. Please contact your Human Resources department to determine your company's policy). If interested, please email BOTH Linda Byrd, RN, x37284, and Rori Yager, RN, x37240, in the TSS. - Geminid Meteor Shower Viewing Tonight
Join us as we watch the dazzling Geminid Meteor Shower! With an average of 100 meteors per hour radiating from near the bright star Castor, this end-of-the-calendar shower is one of the year's best. Geminid Meteor Shower viewing is at the George Observatory TODAY, Dec. 13, until 1 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 14. Please come dressed for cold weather. Feel free to bring lawn chairs, blankets and snacks. Pricing: $5 tickets for the Gueymard Telescope go on sale at 5 p.m.! Discovery Dome tickets are $3 per person. ** Normal park entrance fees paid at park entrance. ** There is a $7 per person charge to enter the park; children ages 12 and younger are admitted for free. Visitors should plan to bring a lawn chair, mosquito repellant, snacks and a blanket. | |
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Friday – December 13, 2013
International Space Station:
News about the International Space Station's cooling system failure was extensive, with almost three minutes of national TV broadcasts and over 700 local TV broadcasts reaching more than 90 million people. All of the coverage stressed that while the issue is not trivial, the crew and the ISS itself is not in any immediate danger. Read more here: http://go.nasa.gov/1bzUB4E
HEADLINES AND LEADS
NASA suspects bad valve for space station trouble
Marcia Dunn – AP
The astronauts aboard the International Space Station dimmed the lights, turned off unnecessary equipment and put off science work Thursday as NASA scrambled to figure out what's wrong with a key cooling unit.
ISS managers mull coolant system repair options
William Harwood – CBS News
Engineers are running tests to figure out what is affecting the operation of a critical valve inside a coolant pump aboard the International Space Station that has forced flight controllers to shut down non-essential systems, curtailing science operations and disrupting the crew's schedule.
ISS coolant loop malfunction could delay Orbital launch
James Dean – Florida Today
Trouble with the International Space Station's cooling system could delay next week's planned launch of a cargo resupply mission and might require spacewalks to fix.
Space station cooling system shuts down, but no emergency, says NASA
Irene Klotz – Reuters
NASA is assessing a problem with one of two cooling systems aboard the International Space Station, a potentially serious but not life-threatening situation, officials said on Wednesday.
NASA seeks to repair space station valve without spacewalk
Alex Macon – Galveston County Daily News
Flight control personnel at Johnson Space Center were working Thursday to fix a cooling system malfunction on the International Space Station that might require crew members to conduct an emergency spacewalk.
NASA's Huntsville team works overnight protecting science on International Space Station after cooling system failure
Lee Roop – Huntsville Times
NASA payload operations specialists here worked through Wednesday night powering down and securing science experiments and results aboard the International Space Station after the loss of one of the station's two cooling systems earlier Wednesday. Science aboard the station is managed from the Payload Operations Center at Marshall Space Flight Center here.
Bill would spur NASA contractors to spend $500 million held in reserve
Ledyard King - Florida Today (Dec. 12)
Aerospace companies working on some of the space program's most ambitious missions have squirreled away $507 million in federal money in case Washington decides to reverse course and cancel their programs.
Putin Signs Legal Decree Consolidating Russian Industry
Space News
Russian President Vladimir Putin has formally ordered the creation of United Rocket and Space Corp. in a bid to reduce costs in the industry by rolling scores of space hardware developers and manufacturers into a single company.
First water plume seen firing from Jupiter moon Europa
Lisa Grossman – New Scientist
An icy moon of Jupiter has been caught spitting into space. For the first time, a towering plume of water vapour has been seen coming from Europa. The discovery strengthens the case that the moon has a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust, and may even offer a way to taste its seas and search for signs of life.
New Mandates Put the Squeeze on NASA Core Earth Science Missions
Debra Werner – Space News
In an era of flat budgets, the NASA Earth Science Division's growing role in offering sustained observations of various phenomena including ozone profiles and incoming solar energy is likely to diminish available funding for core missions, said Mike Freilich, head of NASA's Earth Science Division.
Blue Origin loses protest regarding lease of KSC pad 39A
James Dean – Florida Today
NASA can proceed with plans to lease a former Saturn V and shuttle launch pad at Kennedy Space Center after resolution of a bid protest today.
Arizona meteor totally unrelated to tonight's eye-popping Geminids
The Arizona fireball meteor rattled windows and lit up social media Tuesday night. In unrelated news, the 'best show of the year,' the Geminid meteor shower, has started and will peak Friday night.
Liz Fuller-Wright – Christian Science Monitor
Two things are true: (1) A "fireball" meteor lit up Arizona skies Tuesday night. (2) The most dramatic meteor shower of the year is expected to peak tomorrow night. But despite their coincidental timing, they have nothing to do with each other.
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COMPLETE STORIES
NASA suspects bad valve for space station trouble
Marcia Dunn – AP
The astronauts aboard the International Space Station dimmed the lights, turned off unnecessary equipment and put off science work Thursday as NASA scrambled to figure out what's wrong with a key cooling unit.
One of two identical cooling loops shut down Wednesday when the line got too cold because of a faulty valve. The system uses ammonia to dissipate heat from on-board equipment.
Mission Control ordered the six-man crew to turn off some science experiments and other non-critical equipment; the powerdown continued Thursday.
NASA officials stressed that the astronauts remained safe and comfortable.
The suspect valve is inside an external pump that was replaced by spacewalking astronauts three years ago. Flight controllers are looking at ways to fix the valve. A software repair would be the easiest option, a spacewalk the most complicated. In fact, three spacewalks were needed back in 2010 for the pump replacement.
The valve can't be reached so the entire pump would have to be replaced with one of the spares at the space station.
Kenny Todd, a space station manager, said the orbiting outpost is left "somewhat vulnerable" with only one good cooling line. There's always the possibility of additional failures, he noted, which is why Mission Control wants the problem fixed soon.
Todd said it's possible that next week's launch of a commercial cargo ship, from Wallops Island, Va., may need to be delayed. Liftoff of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned Antares rocket, with a Cygnus capsule full of supplies and experiments, currently is scheduled for Wednesday.
Space station managers will reconvene Monday to decide whether to delay the delivery mission.
"At this point, for lack of a better term, we're going to kick the can for a little bit and go let the team work a little bit more," Todd said.
U.S. spacewalks have been on hold since July, when an Italian astronaut almost drowned because of a water leak in his helmet. The problem was traced to the cooling system for his suit, but NASA wants the entire outfit returned to Earth before closing the matter. That won't happen until a SpaceX Dragon capsule is launched in February; it's the only cargo ship capable of returning items to Earth.
"We're a lot smarter now" regarding the spacesuit trouble, Todd said. Safety procedures are in place to prevent a recurrence, he added
Two Americans currently are aboard the orbiting lab, as well as three Russians and a Japanese.
ISS managers mull coolant system repair options
William Harwood – CBS News
Engineers are running tests to figure out what is affecting the operation of a critical valve inside a coolant pump aboard the International Space Station that has forced flight controllers to shut down non-essential systems, curtailing science operations and disrupting the crew's schedule.
While the station's six-member crew is not in any danger, the loss of coolant loop A leaves the lab complex one failure away from a much more serious problem should coolant loop B, the lone operational system, run into difficulties of its own. Loop B is operating normally, but NASA managers want to restore the lost redundancy as soon as possible.
"Our best position to be in is to have both those loops up and running and available to us," said Kenny Todd, a senior space station manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "While we're sitting at one loop, I think we're somewhat vulnerable, and so clearly, from a program perspective, our intention would be to move sooner rather than later to recover that functionality."
The flow control valve in question is used to regulate the temperature of ammonia flowing through coolant loop A. Depending on the results of on-going tests and troubleshooting, it may be possible to restore loop A to normal, or near-normal, operation remotely, by changing the way the suspect flow control valve is operated or modifying its control software.
But the valve is located inside a pump module on the station's solar power truss and if flight controllers cannot coax it back to normal operation, the astronauts likely would have to install a replacement during two or more spacewalks.
"This a tough one, because this is not hardware you can get to, it's external to the station so we can't go open it up, look at the valve and say well, it's a seal that's shifted, or it's a sensor that's come off or something," Todd said.
"That's not going to be obvious to us, and so the team is trying to manipulate this valve and draw some conclusions just based on secondary cues, what the temperature is doing, what the flow rate's doing, as they move this valve. Without putting eyes on valve, it's going to be tough to get specifically right at it."
The 780-pound pump module in coolant loop A is mounted on the forward face of the starboard S1 segment of the space station's power truss. The loop B pump module is mounted on the left side of the truss in a corresponding position.
The S1 pump module was installed during three spacewalks in August 2010 after the original unit suffered a short circuit that knocked the pump out of action. In this case, the pump in the replacement module is working normally, but the flow control valve is not regulating the ammonia temperature as required.
Three spare pump modules, supplied by Boeing, the station's prime contractor, are mounted on cargo pallets attached to the lab's power truss. If a spacewalk is required, it likely would be carried out by Rick Mastracchio, a veteran spacewalker, and first-time flier Mike Hopkins, with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata operating the station's robot arm.
The pump module "is a difficult box to maneuver with, it's a big, unwieldy object," space station Flight Director Courtenay McMillan said before the 2010 pump replacement. "None of that part of it is technically difficult, but it's just very time consuming and takes a lot of focus."
Based on the 2010 repair work, spacewalkers would have to disconnect five power and data lines, three 1.5-inch ammonia lines and one half-inch coolant line. Two of those lines must be quickly connected to a "jumper box" to prevent pressure extremes in the ammonia supply as the station moves into and out of Earth's shadow.
But NASA managers will not order a spacewalk to resolve the current problem until all other repair options have been assessed.
Amid the troubleshooting, station planners also are considering what to do about the planned launch of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket next week carrying a Cygnus cargo capsule on the company's first operational space station resupply mission. Several flight rules require two operational coolant loops for the capsule's berthing and if the problem is not resolved soon, NASA may be forced to delay the mission.
Launch is targeted for Dec. 18, but NASA managers met Thursday and deferred making a go/no-go decision "until we get a little bit more information on this particular issue," Todd said.
The space station is equipped with two coolant loops that use water and ammonia circulating through a complex arrangement of heat exchangers, pumps, valves and radiators to carry away the heat generated by the lab's myriad electronic systems.
Inside the station's habitable modules, electrical components are mounted on so-called cold plates that use water flowing through internal lines to keep equipment cool. The warmed water in the "moderate temperature loop," or MTL, is pumped to heat exchangers that transfer the thermal load to the ammonia coolant that circulates through the station's external thermal control system, or ETCS.
Powerful pumps in each coolant loop push the ammonia through an intricate system of valves and lines to large radiators mounted on the back side of the lab's main solar power truss where the heat is radiated to space. The cooled ammonia then is returned to the heat exchangers for another cooling cycle.
A flow control valve in each pump module opens and closes as required on computer command, mixing in ammonia from a secondary supply to keep temperatures in the lines warm enough to prevent water in the heat exchangers from freezing.
The problem developed Wednesday when sensors noted lower-than-allowable ammonia temperatures in coolant loop A, prompting the station's computer system to shut the loop down. Flight controllers later reactivated the system and discovered the flow control valve was not working properly to keep ammonia temperatures above pre-set limits.
The coolant loop was still running, engineers said, but it could not be used to reject heat. As a result, flight controllers worked through a long checklist to switch critical equipment to loop B.
While one loop can keep the station's critical systems operational, along with some non-essential gear, both are needed for full operation. Because of the flow control valve issue, non-essential systems in the forward part of the U.S. segment had to be shut down, including equipment in the European Space Agency's Columbus lab module, the Japanese Kibo laboratory and NASA's Harmony module, also known as Node 2.
"This is a position we don't want to be in long term," Todd said. "The team is continuing to work through the fault tree of what might be going on with this particular flow control valve and that work is ongoing as we speak. In the meanwhile, we've got a good, stable configuration, the crew's in good shape, no issues there."
In a morning tag-up with the station crew, Josh Matthew, the communicator in mission control, told the crew to expect a light timeline Thursday "due to us having to delete payloads that can't be supported in our current vehicle configuration."
"The loop A pump is still running, but the ammonia is too cold for us to be able to integrate any of the interface heat exchangers attached to loop Alpha," he said. "Overnight, we completed the reconfig we discussed with you guys (last night) to power down half of Node 2, JEM (Japanese Experiment Module) and Columbus due to our inability to reject heat from the Node 2 MTL. The ground teams also overnight worked to get the systems on board in a stable configuration with our limitation of being able to reject heat to loop Alpha."
He said engineers planned a series of tests "to understand what is actually going wrong with the loop A flow control valve. This morning, we've got a plan to command the valve to various positions to see how it affects the temperature of the loop ... so we can get further data for troubleshooting."
ISS coolant loop malfunction could delay Orbital launch
James Dean – Florida Today
Trouble with the International Space Station's cooling system could delay next week's planned launch of a cargo resupply mission and might require spacewalks to fix.
The station on Thursday was operating with only one of its two ammonia coolant loops, after one automatically shut down Wednesday, apparently due to a valve problem.
That required non-essential systems to be powered down in several modules, limiting the amount of science research that could be performed.
The station's six-person crew was not in danger, but loss of the second coolant loop or other critical systems could present a crisis.
"While we're sitting at one loop, then I think we're somewhat vulnerable," said Kenny Todd, NASA's mission operations integration manager for the station program. "Our intention would be to try to move sooner rather than later to recover that functionality."
Station partners will meet Monday to review the timing of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s planned Wednesday launch from Virginia of an Antares rocket with an unmanned Cygnus cargo spacecraft, Orbital's first flight under a $1.9 billion resupply contract.
With some station systems now lacking backup, managers on Thursday could not give the launch a "go" as planned, and they do not want to distract attention from the coolant issue.
Two ammonia coolant loops running outside the station dissipate heat generated by all the station's electronic systems.
Loop "A" shut down when it got too cold and risked freezing water that flows through heat exchangers.
Early investigation focused on a flow control valve that Todd said acted as a "mixing valve" that helped regulate the ammonia's temperature.
Ground controllers on Thursday sent commands to manipulate the valve and see how it responded.
If no near-term fix materializes, teams will begin planning spacewalks to remove and replace the 780-pound pump module that houses the valve, which cannot be isolated.
The pump module was installed during emergency spacewalks three years ago after the previous module stopped pumping coolant.
"That was a failure to be able to move the ammonia," Todd explained. "What we're having here is a failure to be able to control the temperature of the ammonia."
Plans in 2010 called for two spacewalks — one to remove the pump module and another to install the spare — but three were ultimately required.
Before that repair, NASA said four spare pump modules were stowed outside the station.
If spacewalks are deemed necessary this time, they would look much the same.
Complicating the planning, however, will be lessons learned from the last U.S. spacewalk, which was aborted when a spacesuit malfunction caused Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet to fill with water.
Todd said additional steps would be taken "to ensure that we've got the crew member protected."
A replacement part for at least one spacesuit was set to launch on Orbital's upcoming flight, but NASA did not say it was essential to performing spacewalks.
The swapping out of an ammonia coolant pump is one of 14 major repairs for which all U.S. crew members train before launching on six-month expeditions.
The current Expedition 38 crew includes Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazanskiy and Mikhail Tyurin, Americans Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata of Japan.
Space station cooling system shuts down, but no emergency, says NASA
Irene Klotz – Reuters
NASA is assessing a problem with one of two cooling systems aboard the International Space Station, a potentially serious but not life-threatening situation, officials said on Wednesday.
The system automatically shut itself down after detecting abnormal temperatures, said NASA spokesman Josh Byerly at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The problem appears to be a faulty valve inside a pump located outside the station, a $100 billion research complex that flies about 250 miles above Earth.
Repairs may require a spacewalk, Byerly said.
"If it's a software problem, they could just do a software update or do a patch. If it's a hardware issue, that's something else," Byerly said. "We'll know more in the next day or so."
The six astronauts aboard the station are not in any danger and would not need to evacuate, he added.
"Some of the news reports that I've seen out there have been like 'catastrophic shutdown.' That's not at all what this is," Byerly said.
Equipment aboard the station affected by the shutdown has either been powered off or switched over to the station's second cooling loop, including three freezers that hold science samples for return to Earth.
The station has three spare pumps located outside the station if engineers determine the valve cannot be repaired and managers authorize a spacewalk, Byerly said.
U.S. spacewalks have been suspended since July after Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's spacesuit started leaking, causing his helmet to fill with water.
NASA seeks to repair space station valve without spacewalk
Alex Macon – Galveston County Daily News
Flight control personnel at Johnson Space Center were working Thursday to fix a cooling system malfunction on the International Space Station that might require crew members to conduct an emergency spacewalk.
A broken valve caused one of two cooling loops on the station to break down Wednesday. The cooling loops use ammonia to keep equipment on the station at the correct temperature.
The station powered down some noncritical equipment and halted work on several experiments.
Space station manager Kenny Todd said the crew was in no danger, and noted that a software repair might make a spacewalk unnecessary to repair the faulty valve.
NASA has not conducted a spacewalk since July 16, when a water leak in crew member Luca Parmitano's helmet briefly rendered the Italian astronaut unable to see or hear and forced the excursion's early cancellation.
If a spacewalk is necessary to fix the problem, Todd said extra precautions would be taken to guard against any potential leaks.
The malfunction could delay the launch of Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft, which was scheduled to dock with the space station next week. It will be the first full resupply mission for the private company, which successfully completed a demonstration mission last month.
NASA's Huntsville team works overnight protecting science on International Space Station after cooling system failure
Lee Roop – Huntsville Times
NASA payload operations specialists here worked through Wednesday night powering down and securing science experiments and results aboard the International Space Station after the loss of one of the station's two cooling systems earlier Wednesday. Science aboard the station is managed from the Payload Operations Center at Marshall Space Flight Center here.
"We're still not sure" what caused a pump on one of the cooling loops to fail Wednesday morning, Payload Operations Director Donna Simpson said Thursday morning. "But there was no loss of science."
The cooling loops are used to keep computer gear and other equipment from overheating in the station. When one loop failed, NASA switched some systems over to the second loop and closed the U.S. Harmony Node 2 module, European Columbus laboratory and Japanese Kibo laboratory. The astronauts are in no danger and crew quarters were not affected.
The systems are also used to keep completed science experiments frozen until they can be transported back to Earth, Simpson said. NASA has several freezers of different kinds aboard the station, she said, and one of the priorities Wednesday was making sure science already done was protected.
The Payload Operations Center in Huntsville is normally staffed 24 hours and day and seven days a week, so working overnight is typical. But nights like Wednesday have a lot more work to do.
If the problem turns out to be a hardware failure, astronauts could go outside on a spacewalk to replace the failed module with a spare on board. Astronauts had to do that in 2010 when a similar problem happened to a cooling system pump.
As of Wednesday night, NASA and its commercial crew partner Orbital Sciences were proceeding with plans to launch an unscrewed Orbital Cygnus space capsule to the station Dec. 18. That launch could be delayed if the cooling problem persists.
Bill would spur NASA contractors to spend $500 million held in reserve
Ledyard King - Florida Today (Dec. 12)
Aerospace companies working on some of the space program's most ambitious missions have squirreled away $507 million in federal money in case Washington decides to reverse course and cancel their programs.
Closing a program in the works for years isn't cheap. It's also unusual. Lawmakers fear that putting federal money aside for unlikely possible emergencies threatens missions that need money now to remain on schedule and within budget.
On Wednesday, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee approved a bill making clear that Washington will cover the cost of terminating four specific big-ticket items if the decision to cancel is one of "convenience," such as shifting policy or budgetary reasons, and not contractor performance.
Those four programs are the International Space Station, the Space Launch System that will propel astronauts into deep space, the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle that will take astronauts to Mars, and the James Webb Space Telescope.
The bill "helps accelerate progress on these vital space programs by allowing these programs to spend dollars that have already been appropriated on actual work rather than withholding these funds on the unlikely chance of program termination," GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said before the committee voted to send the measure to the full House.
"Unlikely" doesn't mean unheard of.
In 2010, President Barack Obama canceled NASA's Constellation program that would have returned astronauts to the moon after independent experts described the program as financially unsustainable. There also were questions about whether it was worth spending billions to travel to a place where Americans already have been.
Under pressure from lawmakers, Obama pivoted towards Mars. NASA has since come up with the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket that is the centerpiece (along with the Orion vehicle) of the government's plan to send astronauts to the Red Planet.
Scrapping Constellation angered some lawmakers who felt blindsided by the decision, and it's been expensive. NASA estimates that closing the program could cost close to $1 billion, according to a 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office.
Issues also arose between NASA and companies about who was liable for those costs, leading to "disruptions in work activities" by some contractors, GAO found.
Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland, who helped craft the bipartisan bill the committee approved Wednesday, said that if the government nixes any of the four specified missions, the measure would shield other NASA programs from being raided to cover those expenses.
"Instead, the agency needs to come back to the Congress and have an appropriation designated to pay for those costs," she said. "That's our intent."
NASA is declining to take a position on the bill. But spokesman David Weaver said the agency remains "fully committed" to funding both components of its crewed mission to Mars.
"Since fiscal year 2011, NASA has allocated more than $12 billion for these two programs, and we're preparing to test-fly Orion next year and are on track to test-fly SLS (the Space Launch System ) in 2017," he said. "In addition, the agency has allocated the resources necessary to launch, in 2018, the most sophisticated space telescope ever developed, the James Webb Space Telescope."
The House bill also would bar the administration from canceling any of the four programs "for convenience" without congressional approval.
Currently, the administration can effectively cancel a program by zeroing out its proposed budget for the coming year. Lawmakers can always try to revive it by adding back the money.
Putin Signs Legal Decree Consolidating Russian Industry
Space News
Russian President Vladimir Putin has formally ordered the creation of United Rocket and Space Corp. in a bid to reduce costs in the industry by rolling scores of space hardware developers and manufacturers into a single company.
The corporation will include 43 currently separate companies, including the country's major prime contractors Khrunichev Space Center, RSC Energia, TsSKB Progress and Lavochkin, according to a Dec. 2 decree signed by Putin and posted on a government website.
The decree said one of the priorities for the corporation would be to consolidate and streamline the purchasing of foreign electronic components. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said earlier that the larger company would have the purchasing power to negotiate better volume-based discounts than the companies could get on their own.
The enlargement will also allow the industry to eliminate excess manufacturing capacity at a time when some of the firms to come under the United Rocket and Space Corp. umbrella are operating at 40 percent of capacity and thus find it hard to make payroll, Rogozin said.
Igor Komarov, the former chief executive of Russia's largest car maker, AvtoVAZ, is expected to take the helm at the corporation when it takes shape. Komarov left his position at the automobile producer in November to become a deputy director-general at Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.
First water plume seen firing from Jupiter moon Europa
Lisa Grossman – New Scientist
An icy moon of Jupiter has been caught spitting into space. For the first time, a towering plume of water vapour has been seen coming from Europa. The discovery strengthens the case that the moon has a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust, and may even offer a way to taste its seas and search for signs of life.
Images from the Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, revealed a cracked and chaotic surface dominated by dark ridges and faults. This hinted that Europa has a relatively thin crust in which fissures sometimes open up and let water escape from a subsurface ocean. Similar rifts on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus shoot spectacular water geysers. But the Galileo probe did not spot any plumes in action on Europa, and later efforts also came up empty.
Now images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed a large cloud of hydrogen and oxygen – most likely in the form of water vapour – extending from the moon's south pole. A model suggests that it is a plume 200 kilometres high that is spouting 3000 kilograms of water per second.
"This is a big discovery," says Cynthia Phillips at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who was not involved in the find but had looked for plumes with Galileo. "If there are plumes erupting, there's got to be liquid water, and it's got to be pretty close to the surface."
Shy geyser
Previous search efforts might have missed the plumes in part because they are intermittent, says Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. The gravitational pull of mighty Jupiter squashes and stretches the small moon, and it is possible that the cracks only open when Europa is furthest from the planet. Even then, the sizes of any plumes may vary drastically.
"If there had been a plume of this magnitude erupting during Galileo, we would have seen it," says Phillips. "This points to serious variability."
Another issue may be that previous scans were done in visible light, says Roth. "If the plumes only contain vapour, but not ice or dust grains that scatter sunlight, you can hardly detect them in normal, visible-light images," he says.
Scoop of life?
Roth and his colleagues instead went looking in Hubble's ultraviolet images, which can capture the light emitted when hydrogen and oxygen molecules collide with stray electrons. The team used UV images of Europa taken in November and December 2012, as well as images from 1999. The more recent December image showed the plume, which remained visible for all 7 hours of Hubble's observations.
It's possible that Europa's ocean sustains life, making it a tempting target for future space missions. Two spacecraft currently en route to the Jupiter system – the European Space Agency's JUICE mission and NASA's Juno mission – may be able to observe the plumes at close range. And if NASA's Europa Clipper probe concept gets off the ground, that craft could one day get even closer.
If a future orbiter could collect some material from a plume, that would allow us to sample the seas without the difficult task of landing and drilling into the ice, says Phillips: "If there are life forms, they would be in the liquid layer. If the liquid is being thrown out into orbit, maybe you could catch something. How cool would that be?"
New Mandates Put the Squeeze on NASA Core Earth Science Missions
Debra Werner – Space News
In an era of flat budgets, the NASA Earth Science Division's growing role in offering sustained observations of various phenomena including ozone profiles and incoming solar energy is likely to diminish available funding for core missions, said Mike Freilich, head of NASA's Earth Science Division.
"We were given a $40 million plus-up to begin this job in 2014 and no additional funds beyond that," Freilich said Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union conference here. "So this responsibility will be coming out of the core." NASA's 2013 Earth Science budget totaled $1.65 billion.
In its 2014 budget blueprint sent to Congress in April, the White House assigned NASA the task of providing sustained observations of solar irradiance, ozone profiles and Earth's radiation budget, which previously were the responsibility of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In addition, the White House directed NASA to work with the U.S. Geological Survey to develop plans for the next two decades of sustained land imaging, carrying on work performed by the Landsat Earth-imaging constellation.
The handoff of those responsibilities was a vote of confidence in NASA and its capabilities, Freilich said, but it will be difficult to carry out "in a budget that is not growing."
Blue Origin loses protest regarding lease of KSC pad 39A
James Dean – Florida Today
NASA can proceed with plans to lease a former Saturn V and shuttle launch pad at Kennedy Space Center after resolution of a bid protest today.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office ruled against Blue Origin, one of two companies that submitted proposals to lease launch pad 39A, along with SpaceX.
Blue Origin argued that NASA's announcement for proposals favored the company's multiuser approach to operating the mothballed pad over an exclusive lease to one company.
NASA said its announcement did not favor either approach, and GAO agreed.
GAO said NASA was evaluating proposals from both companies and had made no decision.
The space agency wants a partner to take over the operations and maintenance costs for a pad it no longer needs, estimated at more than $1 million a year.
Arizona meteor totally unrelated to tonight's eye-popping Geminids
The Arizona fireball meteor rattled windows and lit up social media Tuesday night. In unrelated news, the 'best show of the year,' the Geminid meteor shower, has started and will peak Friday night.
Liz Fuller-Wright – Christian Science Monitor
Two things are true: (1) A "fireball" meteor lit up Arizona skies Tuesday night. (2) The most dramatic meteor shower of the year is expected to peak tomorrow night. But despite their coincidental timing, they have nothing to do with each other.
By all accounts, the Arizona fireball meteor was impressive, flaming orange-red and delivering a sonic boom or two that rattled windows and prompted more than one "What was that?!"
The fireball was unrelated to the Geminid meteor shower, a large and impressive meteor shower that has been known to include fireballs and other dazzling light displays. Think of it like this: Not all the drivers on the road at 6 p.m. are commuters. Some are long-haul truckers, some are unemployed people running errands, and some are lost tourists.
How can scientists be so sure that the fireball isn't related? "It's pretty easy," says Bill Cooke, a meteor scientist with NASA. "We rule it out on speed and direction."
Tuesday night's fireball passed by two meteor cameras, says Dr. Cooke, enabling scientists to measure the speed and the direction of its motion. "A Geminid would appear to be coming from the constellation of Gemini – hence the name, Geminid – and it would also be moving 35 kilometers per second (78,000 miles per hour). The Arizona fireball, when it hit the top of the atmosphere, was not coming from the constellation of Gemini. It was coming from a radiant north of that constellation, and it was moving only 20 kilometers per second (45,000 m.p.h.), so that automatically meant it was not a Geminid."
On any given night, you can expect to see five to eight meteors per hour, says Cooke, who leads NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. Those make up the "sporadic background," unrelated to any meteor shower. Arizona's fireball was one of those, he says.
Meteor showers deliver a much busier sky. At its peak Friday night and Saturday morning, the Geminids will average 100 to 120 meteors per hour, though the nearly-full moon will hide the fainter ones this year.
"It'll still be a very good show," says Cooke. "Our meteor cameras depicted at least 15 bright meteors – almost fireballs – last night, and we're still a night away from the peak." He recommends heading out after 4 a.m., when the moon sets, for the best observing.
Meteor showers occur when Earth's orbit passes through the breadcrumb trail left behind a by comet. (Well, most meteor showers. Maybe not the Geminids. We'll get back to that in a second.) The glowing tail that gives comets their distinctive look is full of gases and bits of dust and rock splintering off from the comet's central nucleus.
Meteor showers start with only a few extra meteors per hour, as Earth passes through the outer edge of the debris trail, then ramp up to the "peak" observation time, when we're in the thickest part of the trail, and then taper off again. This year, the peak will happen overnight Dec. 13-14. During the peak, Cooke and a team of NASA astronomers will host an overnight web chat from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. EDT.
When Earth passes through these cometary leftovers, they burn a path through our atmosphere. Most completely vaporize before they hit the ground, but those few that do reach the surface leave meteorites, brown or black rocks as old as the solar system itself.
"Most meteor shower events, we don't expect to see material fall all the way to the ground," says Meenakshi Wadhwa, who directs the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University. Of the 50-100 tons of space debris that Earth encounters each day, she says, only a tiny percentage will make it to the surface.
But she still loves to watch them fall, she says. "These are materials from outer space, leaving a trail through the atmosphere, so that's a spectacular thing to watch."
So, do the Geminids fit the cometary origin story for meteor showers? It's not entirely clear. The Geminids are fragments from an object named "3200 Phaethon," which has some cometary characteristics but has the composition of an asteroid.
"We don't think of asteroids as objects that shed off materials like this," says Dr. Wadhwa.
Cooke says, "3200 Phaethon is an interesting object. It seems to show comet-like activity when it's close to the sun, but dynamically it appears to be an asteroid. It's kind of funny."
Wadhwa describe 3200 Phaethon as a "transitional object ... that you can't put cleanly into the box marked 'asteroids' or 'comets.' It's something in between."
Cooke says, "It's possible that the Geminids are the result of the breakup of Phaethon some time in the past, or a collision between Phaethon and another object, and what we call the Geminids are the debris of that collision that the earth encounters every year."
But whatever their origin, he adds, "The Geminids are the generally best show of the year. If you can, go out – bundle up! – and take a look at them."
END
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