Fwd: JSC Director News, March 2014

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From: JSC Director News <jsc-director-news@lists.nasa.gov>
Date: March 5, 2014 1:58:40 PM CST
To: null <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Subject: JSC Director News, March 2014

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March 5, 2014

Greetings:

The just-released President's fiscal year 2015 budget request for NASA proposes $4.5 billion in spending for JSC. This budget keeps us on the same, steady path we have been following, providing funding to continue our human space flight programs and supporting research and technology development that are needed to carry out long-duration deep space missions. The budget request also includes funds for JSC's proposed Human Health and Performance building, which supports everything from clinical tests associated with crew health, to monitoring of spacecraft environment, to peer-reviewed research that addresses human adaption to spaceflight and planetary environments.   The new building will allow us to demolish seven buildings with severe infrastructure problems.

The winter Olympics in Sochi are over but I wanted to share our contribution with you. From the historic Olympic torch relay to (and outside) the International Space Station to a special Go Team USA! video message, space and athletics were entwined like never before. Check out the Google+ hangout with astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio, along with four fitness professionals and athletes, including U.S. Olympic bobsledder Curt Tomasevicz participating from Sochi, held on Feb. 6.

NASA on C-SPAN? Michael Suffredini, ISS program manager, talked about the International Space Station as part of C-SPAN's "Your Money Series," covering the topics of cost, purpose and future of the station. Even more heartening during the show was the praise callers gave for NASA before posing their questions, illustrating again how the public is behind our research investigations.  One research investigation by our Human Research Program is studying the effects of spaceflight on vision in some astronauts. Watch this video and read on to see how the NASA is tackling increased intracranial pressure.

Have you been watching the weekly Web series "Space to Ground," available every Friday? Recently, we had Dan Rather take over the anchoring duties. However, no matter who is at the helm, it's always a great wrap-up of what's been happening aboard your orbiting laboratory. Bookmark it and tune in often!  

Even though NASA and the U.S. Navy suspended recovery procedure testing for Orion off the coast of California recently due to wave turbulence, the test provided important information as the program moves forward to the Exploration Flight Test-1 this fall. Two boosters for the first test flight left the United Launch Alliance (ULA) in Decatur, Ala., Feb. 21 headed to Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

Other milestones include the Cygnus cargo spacecraft completed its first "official" mission to space station on Feb. 18 clearing the way for SpaceX-3 on March 16;  on March 9 Expedition 39 begins when Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov hands the command of ISS to space veteran Koichi Wakata, marking the first time the station is under command of a Japanese astronaut; and Morpheus, tested initially at Johnson Space Center, completed another stellar free flight test at KSC's Shuttle Landing Facility, a simulated "alien" surface, on Feb. 10.  

JSC also released 26 Co-development and Partnering Opportunities that represent a broad spectrum of dual-use technologies that support future missions and enhance life on Earth.

Although the asteroid sample return mission OSIRIS Rex doesn't launch until 2016, our scientists are already hard at work determining how to return pristine samples: check out the blog by the principal investigator called CSI: OSIRIS-Rex.  JSC has a long history of curation and sample studies in its Astromaterials Research and Science Directorate.

If you prefer photos to the written word, you can follow JSC now on Instagram, where you'll find more than a thousand words (in picture form, of course), showing what we're up to each and every day.

Ellen Ochoa
JSC Director

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