| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- "LIVE FROM SPACE" on National Geographic Friday
- Morpheus Free Flight 9 Today at KSC
- Orion Monthly Trivia Question
- Physics in the Movie "Gravity," Part 1
- Think Before You Throw - Organizations/Social
- Env. Brown Bag: Raspberry Pi Can Save You Energy
- Lunarfins SCUBA Club Meeting
- HTC Innovation Advisors Meeting
- 7th NASA Golf Tourney - Last Chance to Register! - Community
- New Tickets Options Available at Starport
- Starport's Flea Market - Register Now
- Beginners Ballroom Dance: Beginning April 1 and 3 |  |
| Headlines - "LIVE FROM SPACE" on National Geographic Friday
"LIVE FROM SPACE", a live two-hour special program originating from JSC and including appearances by the ISS crew, is scheduled to air worldwide on the National Geographic Channel this Friday, March 14 at 7 p.m. CST. Hosted by former MSNBC and CNN anchor, Soledad O'Brien, this program will be broadcast live from the viewing room overlooking the ISS Flight Control Room in the Mission Control Center (MCC) at JSC. This exciting program will feature stories about the mission and science being conducted aboard the ISS plus include several live interviews with astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata. In addition, three other programs hosted by English TV presenter Dermot O'Leary are being produced for Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. A one-hour show, "ASTRONAUTS: LIVING IN SPACE" will air at 4 p.m. (9 PM in the U.K) on Wednesday, March 12 and another one-hour show, "HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM" will air at 4 p.m. on Thursday, March 13. The third program, a two-and-a-half hour show, "LIVE from SPACE: LAP OF THE PLANET" will air live from the MCC at 2:30 p.m. (7:30 PM in the U.K) on Sunday, March 16. JSC personnel will have the opportunity to watch all of these programs from onsite live and in high definition on channel 51-2 of the JSC Cable TV System and on channel 4512 of the JSC IP Network TV (EZTV) System. (Access of the EZTV system requires using a workstation with a wired JSC computer network connection. Mobile devices, Wi-Fi, VPN or connections from other centers are currently not supported by EZTV. EZTV currently requires using Internet Explorer on a PC or Safari on a MAC.) - Morpheus Free Flight 9 Today at KSC
Today, the Morpheus team plans its highest, fastest, and farthest free flight to date at Kennedy Space Center. The test will be streamed live on JSC's UStream Channel. View the live stream, along with progress updates sent via Twitter, on the website. Or, if you're on-site, watch live on JSC HDTV (channel 51-2) and IPTV (channel 4512). During this test, the autonomous untethered Morpheus "Bravo" vehicle will launch from the ground over the flame trench, ascend approximately 177 meters (580 ft), then translate approximately 255 meters (837 ft) downrange while performing a 13-meter (42.6 ft) divert to emulate a hazard avoidance maneuver before descending to land on a pad in the hazard field. Test firing is planned for approximately 1:45 p.m. CST. Streaming will begin approximately 20 minutes prior to ignition. This is the last free flight before the team begins ALHAT integration. *Note: Testing operations are very dynamic, and actual firing time may vary. Follow Morpheus on Twitter for the latest information @MorpheusLander. (Send "follow morpheuslander" to 40404 for text updates.) For more, check out: http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov - Orion Monthly Trivia Question
It's time to test your knowledge of the Orion spacecraft! Answer the trivia question correctly and you are automatically entered into the drawing for a prize. The prize winner will be announced in the JSC Today on Thursday, March 13. Email your answers to: JSC-Orion-Outreach@mail.nasa.gov March Trivia Question: How many different types of motors are there in Orion's Launch Abort System? (Name it/them if you can!) Join the monthly trivia and discover more about Orion! Visit NASA's Orion page to read and learn about the spacecraft. - Physics in the Movie "Gravity," Part 1
Yes, we have a few nits about the Academy Award winning movie "Gravity" because the physics or science wasn't quite right... One emotional scene included the tears of Sandra Bullock's character falling off of her face and forming spherical balls. Yes, it was striking and beautiful! However, the tears wouldn't have FALLEN from her face. The wetting of the surface of her cheeks would have required a FORCE to push the teardrop from her. - Think Before You Throw
In 2013, JSC diverted 2 million pounds of trash from landfills by recycling. With 2 million pounds of trash still being sent to landfills for disposal, JSC has a lot more recycling potential. Here's some ways you can help JSC meet Agency waste diversion goals: 1. Reuse items. Turn a cardboard box into a paper recycling receptacle. 2. Encourage others to recycle by hosting an office recycling contest. 3. Send excess property (even broken) to the Redistribution & Utilization (R&U) Office. They can find a new home for your goods or ensure that unusable property is recycled properly. 4. Recycle your cardboard at designated stations. Organizations/Social - Env. Brown Bag: Raspberry Pi Can Save You Energy
Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized single-board computer developed to teach basic computer science. University of Houston students have developed many of these tiny computers into an intelligent network designed to save energy by monitoring and regulating energy use in several university buildings near the central plant. The system they developed can be sized up or down for single buildings or homes. Professor Buriello and his students will be at JSC today, March 11, to explain the system and how it can be applied to individual homes for energy savings. Come hear more in Building 45, Room 751, from noon to 1 p.m. Event Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 Event Start Time:12:00 PM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B45 room 751
Add to Calendar
Kim Reppa x42798
[top] - Lunarfins SCUBA Club Meeting
Ever wonder about those small cameras that seem to catch all of the action up close and personal? Join the Lunarfins Wednesday evening for our guest speaker and GoPro expert, Josh Greenburg. He will be presenting the AMAZING GoPro Hero camera's capabilities, functions, and accessories. It will be a great opportunity to learn more about the GoPro as well as a great chance to ask specific camera questions. Join us at 7pm at Clear Lake Park or come a little early to meet fellow JSC divers! - HTC Innovation Advisors Meeting
Houston Technology Center is holding its Innovation Advisors Meeting today from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the Gilruth Center. For more information, please contact HTC at 4-8271. - 7th NASA Golf Tourney - Last Chance to Register!
This is the final week of registration for the 7th Annual NASA Golf Tournament! Team Spots are still open for the Thursday tournament (Friday is full) - Thursday, April 10 or Friday, April 11
- 8 a.m. shotgun start
- Registration ends March 14 - $125 per person
- Magnolia Creek Golf Club
The silent auction will be back for BOTH days. Registration fee includes green fees, driving range, 2014 NASA golf polo, breakfast bar, barbecue lunch, participant bag, silent auction entry, drink tickets, tournament awards, door prizes and more. Registration ENDS on Friday, March 14. There will be NO day of registration. Register your team today so you don't miss out on this great NASA tradition! Proceeds benefit the Starport Scholarship Program. Community - New Tickets Options Available at Starport
Starport Gift Shop is proud to offer new venues for ticket purchases. Jake Joint Comedy Showcase, AMC Gold Experience and Sea World's new water park, Aquatica have been added to this years' ticket options. And of course, we still offer Cinemark, Space Center Houston, Kemah Boardwalk, Schlitterbahn Galveston, Fiesta Texas, Six Flags Over Texas, Main Event, and Sea World single park two day tickets at the best prices in town. When you think fun, think Starport and save. - Starport's Flea Market – Register Now
Clean out those closets, attics, and garages and sell your unwanted items at one big event! On April 19, Starport will have our annual Spring Festival at the Gilruth Center. Not only will there be a Crawfish Boil, children's Spring Fling complete with Easter Bunny and egg hunt, and an indoor Craft Fair, but we will also host a Flea Market. If you are interested in selling your unwanted items in the Flea Market for one big "yard sale", please visit https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/special-events/spring-festival/ for more information and registration form. Spots are only $10 each! - Beginners Ballroom Dance: Beginning April 1 and 3
Do you feel like you have two left feet? Well, Starport has the perfect spring program for you: Beginners Ballroom Dance! This eight-week class introduces you to the various types of ballroom dance. Students will learn the secrets of a good lead and following, as well as the ability to identify the beat of the music. This class is easy, and we have fun as we learn. JSC friends and family are welcome. Discounted registration: $90 per couple (ends Mar. 21) Regular registration: $110 per couple (Mar.22 to Apr.3) Two class sessions available: - Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. - starting Apr.1
- Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. - starting Apr. 3
All classes are taught in the Gilruth Center's dance studio (Group Ex studio). | |
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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
Tuesday – March 11, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
U.S.-Russian space trio lands safely despite bad weather
Irene Klotz – Reuters
An American astronaut and two Russians who carried a Sochi Olympic torch into open space landed safely and on time on Tuesday in Kazakhstan, defying bad weather and ending their 166-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Soyuz TMA-10M lands in snowy Kazakhstan
William Harwood - CBS News
Despite strained relations over Russian actions in Ukraine, superpower cooperation in space continued unabated Monday with two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut departing the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft and plunging to a landing on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 166-day mission.
Human Exploration Drives Space Launch System
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
NASA still wants to build the heavy-lift Space Launch System, and as long as Sen. Richard Shelby is alive, it will. The U.S. space agency needs the Alabama Republican, who is the ranking member of his party on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and he needs the SLS to keep his constituents at the Marshall Space Flight Center happy. So the fairly level funding of $1.3 billion for the big rocket, plus some extra advanced-technology money, in the agency's fiscal 2015 budget request is no surprise. SLS received $1.6 billion in fiscal 2014, with no serious challenges on Capitol Hill despite continued grumbling from other space constituencies—"New Space" and science for starters—that could use that kind of money for their own purposes.
NASA wants to look for signs of life on Europa — but you can't get there for $15 million
Joel Achenbach – The Washington Post
Europa, a moon of Jupiter first spotted by Galileo four centuries ago, has geysers spewing material from what appears to be a subsurface ocean. It's not inconceivable that there are fish down there in that cold, dark sea.
'The Food Is Not Bad!' Q&A With Former NASA Astronaut Sandy Magnus
Vi-An Nguyen – Parade Magazine
Only a select group of people know what it's really like to be in space. (And no, we're not talking about Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, or even Alfonso Cuaron.)
Film on young astronaut hopeful beamed to space station
Traci Watson – USA Today
A documentary about a young man's desire to be an astronaut has been beamed to the International Space Station.
There will be no red carpet, no paparazzi, no screaming fans. But the upcoming showing of a new film will have a certain cachet all the same: It will take place in space, in what may be the most expensive movie theater of all time.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Preparing drones for national airspace
Bill Wrobel – Delmarva (MD) Daily Times
The president's Fiscal Year 2015 budget, presented Mar. 4, provides key resources to ensure the great work at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility continues now and in the years to come — managing the agency's suborbital programs, providing cargo to our astronauts on the International Space Station and flying missions deeper into space.
COMPLETE STORIES
U.S.-Russian space trio lands safely despite bad weather
Irene Klotz – Reuters
An American astronaut and two Russians who carried a Sochi Olympic torch into open space landed safely and on time on Tuesday in Kazakhstan, defying bad weather and ending their 166-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
"We have a landing!" read a huge TV screen at Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow as the descent capsule hit the frozen ground at 0924 (0324 GMT) southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan.
"Safe arrival back on Earth," said a NASA TV announcer while all-terrain rescue and recovery vehicles were shown trundling across a snowy steppe to the Soyuz TMA-10M capsule. "The crew are reported to be in good health," NASA said.
Inside the capsule were former ISS commander Oleg Kotov and flight engineers Sergei Ryazansky and Michael Hopkins from NASA. The trio launched together into space on Sept. 25.
Shortly afterwards, the space travelers were seated in semi-reclined chairs in the deep snow and covered with blue blankets to protect them from strong gusts of wind.
Kotov, the most experienced astronaut in his crew, was shown waving his left hand with a palm black from the soot of the descent capsule, which was charred on re-entry.
Rookie Hopkins smiled as a doctor checked his pulse.
In addition to working on 35 science experiments, Kotov and Ryazansky carried the unlit Olympic torch for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games outside the station during a spacewalk on Nov. 9.
They left behind a small crew headed by Japan's Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese national to command the station. Three more crew members are due to arrive later this month.
Severe weather in Kazakhstan had threatened to delay the Soyuz's landing.
Before their undocking from the ISS, fog and low visibility had prevented airborne rescue and recovery teams from getting to Zhezkazgan, a town about 90 miles (150 km) from the remote landing site on the windswept flatlands, a Russian space industry source said.
But Russian officials decided to go ahead with the landing after reviewing weather forecasts and the status of recovery crews.
"There's a lot of snow on the ground and temperatures are hovering in the single-digits (Fahrenheit)," said NASA mission commentator Dan Huot.
Due to severe weather conditions, it was decided not to set up an inflatable tent for routine medical tests at the landing site. Instead, the crew underwent just quick tests before being flown by helicopters straight to the local Kazakh town of Karaganda, where a formal welcome ceremony would be held.
The U.S.-Russian space partnership so far has not been affected by tensions over Ukraine. The countries lead the 15-nation space station programme.
The $100 billion research complex, which flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth, has been permanently staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since November 2000.
Soyuz TMA-10M lands in snowy Kazakhstan
William Harwood - CBS News
Despite strained relations over Russian actions in Ukraine, superpower cooperation in space continued unabated Monday with two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut departing the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft and plunging to a landing on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 166-day mission.
Landing in arctic conditions, with low clouds, snow and temperatures near zero degrees Fahrenheit, the Soyuz TMA-10M crew module settled to a jarring parachute-and-rocket-assisted touchdown at 11:24 p.m. EDT (GMT-4; 9:24 a.m. Tuesday local time).
Earlier in the day, the weather prompted concern the crew's return might be delayed. Russian recovery forces deployed in a fleet of MI-8 helicopters were unable to initially reach the landing site because of rotor icing and had to return to a staging area in nearby Karaganda.
But mission managers ultimately decided to press ahead and Soyuz commander Oleg Kotov, flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy and NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins were cleared to proceed with the entry, undocking from the International Space Station's upper Poisk module at 8:02 p.m.
"Bye, bye, station," one of the crew members radioed on the translated space-to-ground audio loop.
After moving a safe distance away from the space station, Kotov, strapped into the craft's center seat, monitored a four-minute 50-second rocket firing starting at 10:30 p.m. to slow the spacecraft by about 286 mph. That was just enough to lower the far side of the orbit into the atmosphere for a steep plunge to the steppe of Kazakhstan.
"Everything is fine on board. Pressure is stable, everything is (normal)," a crew member radioed.
Moments before falling into the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of 87 miles, the three modules making up the TMA-10M spacecraft split apart and the central 6,400-pound crew module oriented itself heat shield forward to endure the extreme temperatures of atmospheric entry.
The entry appeared to go smoothly and the spacecraft's main parachute unfurled at an altitude of about 6.5 miles, slowing the craft to about 16 mph for the final stages of the descent. Because of cloud cover, the landing was not seen in realtime video, but Russian flight controllers in radio contact with the spacecraft said the crew was in good condition.
Only four of 12 search-and-recovery helicopters made it to the landing site -- non-essential members of the team remained grounded 236 miles away in Karaganda -- but the crews that got there reached the spacecraft within a few minutes of touchdown to help the returning station fliers out of the cramped Soyuz command module.
Live video established after touchdown showed all three crew members bundled up in blankets, resting on recliners set up in the snow near their charred descent module. Feeling normal gravity for the first time in five-and-a-half months, Kotov, Ryazanskiy and Hopkins appeared in good spirits, smiling and chatting with ground crews while making brief satellite phone calls to friends and family.
"I feel great," Hopkins said, speaking from his recliner. "Thanks, Oleg. Thanks for getting me home."
In a departure from normal practice, recovery forces did not set up a medical tent for initial physical exams and instead opted to fly the trio straight away to Karaganda. Once there, the crew planned to split up. Kotov and Ryazanskiy were to continue on to Star City near Moscow while Hopkins planned to board a NASA jet for the long flight back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"One of the great things about leaving home is coming home," Hopkins, who left a wife and two sons behind on Earth last September, said in a NASA interview. "Being reunited with my family, I think, is going to be absolutely wonderful."
Left behind in orbit were Koichi Wakata, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, more than two months into a planned six-month stay in space. During a weekend change-of-command ceremony, Wakata took over from Kotov, becoming the first Japanese astronaut to command the station.
"I am humbled to assume command of the space station," Wakata told Kotov and his crewmates. "We will continue to keep station operations safe, efficient and fun as you guys led us to do. So have a safe return and we'll catch you back on the planet in a couple of months."
Wakata, Tyurin and Mastracchio will have the station to themselves until March 25 when the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft, carrying commander Alexander Skvortsov, flight engineer Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Steve Swanson, blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome for a six-hour flight to the lab complex.
Hopkins is the first of his 14-member 2009 astronaut class to win a flight assignment. Raised on a farm in Missouri, captain of his University of Illinois football team and an Air Force flight test engineer, Hopkins said his first spaceflight, including a pair of unscheduled spacewalks in December to replace a critical cooling system pump, met all of his expectations and then some.
"Discovering new things is exciting to us," he said in a recent interview. "That's probably the part that we love (the most). There are over 200 experiments that are going on during this increment, and they cover a wide range of areas, areas that we're not necessarily experts in but it's neat to see the results."
Asked what had surprised him the most during his stay in space, Hopkins said the experience of floating in the microgravity environment of orbit was a genuine thrill.
"Until you actually get up here and experience it, you can only imagine what it's like, and it truly is incredible," he said. "When you can float through a module in any kind of orientation, when you can work on tasks in any kind of orientation, it's truly exciting."
But it took some getting used to.
"When I first got into orbit, and of course this was my first trip into space, I felt like I was falling," he said. "I felt like I was sitting on the ceiling down on Earth and was wanting to fall down to the floor. And that feeling lasted probably 24 hours. And then slowly after that, I got beyond that and finally, I would say (it took) probably two weeks to a month before you finally realize you don't need up or down."
In another recent interview, Hopkins was asked which planet in the solar system he would most like to visit. He promptly said "Earth."
"Being away from Earth, this is an absolutely incredible experience and it's something I'll never forget," he said. "But I'm getting ready to come home, and I'm looking forward to it.
"You see the views of Earth up here, and it is truly stunning, and it's something that never gets old. But at the same time, I'm really looking forward to feeling the Earth between my toes, feeling a breeze, maybe even standing out in a rain storm. Earth is truly incredible, and I think that's where I'd like to go."
Human Exploration Drives Space Launch System
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
NASA still wants to build the heavy-lift Space Launch System, and as long as Sen. Richard Shelby is alive, it will. The U.S. space agency needs the Alabama Republican, who is the ranking member of his party on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and he needs the SLS to keep his constituents at the Marshall Space Flight Center happy. So the fairly level funding of $1.3 billion for the big rocket, plus some extra advanced-technology money, in the agency's fiscal 2015 budget request is no surprise. SLS received $1.6 billion in fiscal 2014, with no serious challenges on Capitol Hill despite continued grumbling from other space constituencies—"New Space" and science for starters—that could use that kind of money for their own purposes.
The project is bending serious metal, such as this "confidence dome" friction stir-welded at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. In an effort to broaden their own constituent base, managers at Marshall have been seeking other payloads for the SLS, so far with no apparent good news. A U.S. Air Force/National Reconnaissance Office analysis is said to have turned up no requirement for a Saturn V-class launch vehicle except—being the military—the need to sustain the U.S. industrial base for big rockets.
The Science Mission Directorate certainly would be able to use a heavy-lifter for a robotic outer-planet mission, both to avoid time- and money-consuming gravity-assist routes to distant targets and to carry more radioisotope thermoelectric generators for more power to run its instruments. But those would be multibillion-dollar flagship-class missions, and the money is not there. The recent discovery of water over the South Pole of Europa, apparently spewing from the subsurface ocean on the Jovian moon, may add a compelling flyby science objective that could be more affordable and probably would not need a launch vehicle the size of the SLS.
Commercial satellites have been growing in both directions—larger and smaller. Crewmembers on the International Space Station have just finished deploying the first "flock" of 28 cubesat-size imaging satellites for San Francisco-based Planet Labs (AW&ST Jan. 20, p. 20), while commercial communications satellites weighing six or seven tons are fairly common. Neither would need a launcher the size of the SLS, since even the largest can be accommodated on existing launch vehicles. If there is a need for heavier satcom birds, they are unlikely to outgrow the 23 tons Elon Musk says he will be able to place in geostationary transfer orbit with his planned Falcon 9 Heavy.
That leaves human spaceflight, which has been the stated reason for developing the SLS since it was conceived as a compromise alternative to turning U.S. access to space over to the private sector entirely. The compromise has evolved into a policy of leaving low Earth orbit (LEO) to commercial carriers like the Falcon 9 flown by Musk's SpaceX, the Orbital Sciences Antares, and the older Atlas V and Delta IV fielded by United Launch Alliance, while using the government rocket to launch the high-risk missions beyond.
A private attempt to send a crew of two on a 2018 Mars flyby came to naught, in part because SpaceX did not want to participate. And while Musk hopes to use the planned Falcon 9 Heavy to take humans to Mars eventually, that vehicle remains a paper rocket for now. SpaceX is focused on fulfilling its commercial cargo contract with NASA, and on clearing the safety hurdles that will allow it to launch NASA's astronauts on the basic Falcon 9 under the agency's commercial crew program. It doesn't seem likely that NASA and its congressional backers will trust human lives anytime soon to a 27-engine vehicle that bears an unfortunate resemblance to the ill-fated Soviet N-1 Moon rocket, which had 30.
By comparison, the engineers working on the "Inspiration Mars" human flyby project for space-tourism pioneer Dennis Tito concluded that they would need an SLS for the mission, even with a slip to a 2021 opportunity that can get to Mars with a gravity assist from Venus (AW&ST March 3, p. 18). Taber MacCallum of Paragon Space Development Corp., which conducted a life-support bench test for Tito, says a deeper dive into the requirements for either Mars launch opportunity revealed a need for the SLS variant with the 105-ton-to-LEO capability, the second variant NASA plans to develop. That intermediate version would need a restartable cryogenic "dual-use" upper stage before the final 130-ton version with the J2X engine.
All three SLS variants are designed to be human-rated, using engines like the RD-25 developed for the space shuttle and the Saturn V vintage J2X. Of course, if the commercial economy begins to grow in LEO, as NASA managers hope it will, there probably will be a need for a big launcher like the SLS to orbit the space factories, hotels and who knows what else the dreamers foresee in the post-ISS era. But for missions beyond LEO, right now it appears the future of SLS will depend on whether we want to send humans out there.
NASA wants to look for signs of life on Europa — but you can't get there for $15 million
Joel Achenbach – The Washington Post
Europa, a moon of Jupiter first spotted by Galileo four centuries ago, has geysers spewing material from what appears to be a subsurface ocean. It's not inconceivable that there are fish down there in that cold, dark sea.
Scientists have long dreamed of sending a robotic probe to Europa, and they have put such a mission at the top of their wish list. But Europa is a hard target: It's very close to Jupiter, and a spacecraft and its instruments would need extra shielding to keep them from being fried in Jupiter's harsh radiation environment.
The initial estimate of the cost of putting a spacecraft into orbit around Europa was a wince-
inducing $4.7 billion. Engineers then came up with a cheaper alternative, in which the spacecraft would go into an orbit around Jupiter that would send it past Europa dozens of times. During these flybys it could sample the material ejected by the geysers, looking for signatures of life in the ocean below the moon's icy crust. That might cost on the order of $2 billion.
But budgets are tight at NASA. Officials have said there won't be any new "Flagship" missions costing north of $1 billion in the coming years, other than ones previously approved.
Now comes the Obama administration's 2015 budget request, which includes $15 million for studying a possible Europa mission. That's a tiny fraction of the $17.5 billion requested for the agency. It's less than what Congress has already allotted for Europa studies the last couple of years. But supporters of robotic exploration are grateful that, for the first time, the administration is signaling support for a Europa mission.
But will this mission really materialize? This is the dilemma for anyone writing about NASA these days: The agency sometimes starts programs that fail to survive the erosional forces of politics and constricting budgets.
It takes at least a decade to do anything significant in space, but our political cycle is faster than that. Even programs where the metal has already been cut can wind up canceled. That happened with the Constellation program of President George W. Bush, which would have returned astronauts to the moon. President Obama killed Constellation, and with it the Ares 1 rocket that had already burned through billions of dollars.
The administration last year proposed the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which would involve capturing a small asteroid, hauling it to an orbit around the moon and visiting it with astronauts. In the new budget request, the administration wants to boost funding for the ARM, to $133 million. But this is another mission that may never actually materialize. Technically, the ARM is hardly a slam-dunk, because scientists have yet to find a good target rocket. (It has to have just the right size, shape and composition, and it has to be spinning just so, etc.) Republicans have opposed funding for the ARM.
No one vocally opposes the Europa mission, and many people love the idea. But Europa's ocean and its hypothetical life-forms must compete against other NASA priorities that have entrenched support among powerful senators and the corporate aerospace community. NASA, for example, is building a new jumbo rocket, the Space Launch System, and a new crew capsule, Orion. They cost about $3 billion a year. The international space station requires a similar pile of money.
The administration is particularly focused these days on boosting the "commercial" side of space. Officials hope that by 2017 American astronauts can go into space once again on American rockets, rather than relying on the Russians — to whom the United States is paying $71 million per seat on Soyuz rockets to get to and from the space station. The political crisis in Ukraine makes this reliance on the Russians all the more awkward.
Science is important at NASA, but it typically is a secondary priority after human exploration of space. And science has had its own cost overruns, specifically with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Curiosity rover on Mars. The Europa mission and a proposed space telescope known as WFIRST are the kind of expensive, Flagship-class projects that are in disfavor these days among the frowny-faced people at the Office of Management and Budget.
NASA officials have indicated that they'd like to go to Europa for less than $1 billion. But science by definition operates on the edge of the known, and space science, out there on the farthest frontier, is never cheap. Sometimes it costs a Saganesque sum: Billions and billions.
'The Food Is Not Bad!' Q&A With Former NASA Astronaut Sandy Magnus
Vi-An Nguyen – Parade Magazine
Only a select group of people know what it's really like to be in space. (And no, we're not talking about Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, or even Alfonso Cuaron.)
On March 14, some of our curiosity about the final frontier will be satisfied when the National Geographic Channel airs its Live From Space special from the International Space Station (at 8 p.m. ET). During the broadcast, orbiting astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata will give viewers a tour of what happens on the ISS.
But before they do, we asked former NASA astronaut Sandy Magnus, who's visited the cosmos multiple times, including a four-and-a-half month stay on the International Space Station in 2008, to answer a few Parade reader questions about space travel.
We called for your space-related questions on Facebook—and Magnus, who was selected to the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1996 and now serves as the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (the world's biggest aerospace professional society), answered many of them below.
What is your favorite thing to eat or drink in space? Does any astronaut food actually taste good? —Kevin S.
"The food is not bad! We have a ten-day rotating menu on the ISS, so you do tend to see the same food over and over again. I really liked the creamed spinach, the black beans, the cherry-blueberry cobbler, and the Russian potatoes with onions. The Japanese had a very tasty mackerel in miso sauce too."
When you come home from a mission, what's the first thing you want to do that you couldn't in space? —Jessica W.
"Take a hot shower! We take sponge baths on orbit; without gravity showers are not possible. That is the one area where I really appreciate gravity—the idea of hot water falling on your head. Other than that, it is wonderful living in zero-G."
What was it like, emotionally, the first time you went into space? —Peter S.
"I was incredibly excited. I had first dreamed of being an astronaut when I was in middle school and here I was 20 years or so later and finally getting to achieve that dream. I was also focused on doing my job because I knew my crew mates and everyone on the shuttle team was counting on me."
What can/should we be doing, as a society, to get more girls into STEM fields? Was there someone who encouraged you as a child in school? —Jennifer R.M.
"I think it is really important for all young people, and not only girls, to have opportunities to expand their horizons so that they can see the possibilities for their future. It is hard to imagine a future as a young person without some exposure to the possibilities. They don't know what they don't know. Also they need to be encouraged to believe in themselves and dream."
How can you stay fit on a mission? Since weightlifting exercises are out of the question, what do you do? —Daphne R.
"On ISS we exercise two hours a day. We can bungee ourselves to a treadmill using a harness and some very strong bungees or we can attach ourselves to a bicycle ergometer for cardio. We have a piece of equipment called the "Advanced Resistive Exercise Device" that allows us, by pulling against two evacuated cylinders, to simulate weight lifting."
What's the biggest misconception about space travel? —Vi-An N.
"People tend to believe that our country spends a huge amount of money on our space program and this is not true. NASA gets about 0.5 percent of the federal budget. So for every dollar you pay in taxes only half of a penny goes to the space program. In general the average American probably spends more money on fast food every year than on space activities. We need to be investing more!"
What has been your scariest experience while in space? —Mari K.
"Well, space was not scary to me—it was fun—so I don't have any scary moments."
Where would you go if you could go anywhere in space? —Maggie M.
"The consensus seems to be that Mars is the place we should be going. I think this is ultimately the goal. But, more importantly, it is time to expand human exploration beyond low Earth orbit."
What's your favorite fictional depiction of an astronaut in a movie or TV show? —Mari K.
"I like Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation."
Given funding and the future of space exploration, where would you encourage youth to focus their career? Would you encourage them to become an astronaut or do something else? —Erin M.
"I would encourage any young person to follow their dreams, first and foremost, whatever they are. When you find your 'passion,' the thing that excites you, you are going to excel. And you are going to enjoy your life and feel fulfilled. I found that in studying science and engineering and becoming an astronaut. I think science and engineering are very creative fields and with that kind of background you can do almost anything."
Do you generally get a better or worse night sleep in space than on earth? —Andy A.
"Sleeping seems to be one of the more difficult things to adjust to. I ended up using a bungee cord to hold my sleeping bag to the wall in my sleep station to help hold me down while I slept. I also found that I needed about one to one and a half fewer hours of sleep per night in space."
What is one piece of information (i.e., daily routines, etc.) that you feel non-astronauts just don't "get"? —Celeste M.
"Living in microgravity means that you are not restricted to a 'floor.' It is hard for people who have never been in that environment to understand how much freedom of motion and volume is available when you can navigate all three dimensions. The other thing that non-astronauts don't get is how amazingly horrible gravity is and how much it really affects everything that we do on Earth."
What unsung astronaut do you admire most? —Maggie M.
"Dr. Shannon Lucid, who was one of the first six women selected to join the astronaut corps. I had an opportunity to share an office with her when I started at NASA and I really admire her. She was one of the people who blazed the path that led me to the astronaut corps."
Film on young astronaut hopeful beamed to space station
Traci Watson – USA Today
A documentary about a young man's desire to be an astronaut has been beamed to the International Space Station.
There will be no red carpet, no paparazzi, no screaming fans. But the upcoming showing of a new film will have a certain cachet all the same: It will take place in space, in what may be the most expensive movie theater of all time.
The high-altitude screening will take place aboard the International Space Station, the $100 billion-plus orbiting laboratory where astronauts from around the world live and conduct scientific research. The film, a documentary about the space program and one determined young man's dream of becoming an astronaut, was sent to the station last week.
"To have this be seen in space — I still don't know how to find words to describe how awesome that is," says filmmaker David Ruck. "I hope (the crew) can see this kid and say, 'Yep, that was me once.' "
Station crew members often decompress from their heavy workloads by watching movies, among them numerous celluloid versions of space travel. Station residents watched Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013 before American audiences could buy tickets, and station astronaut Rick Mastracchio took time off from his duties last month to watch the space film Gravity. "Let's call it training," Mastracchio jokingly tweeted.
The film that will premiere on the station is about as far removed from a Hollywood blockbuster as the station is from Earth. Requested by Mastracchio after Ruck sent him a Facebook message, the movie, I Want to Be an Astronaut, began as Ruck's master's thesis and was financed in part by crowd-funding website Kickstarter. An earnest plea for support of America's space program, the film focuses on Blair Mason, an intense and charismatic teenager from Chantilly, Va., as he pursues the ambition he's held since age 3 of flying in space.
The camera shadows Mason as he shepherds his high-school robotics team through a competition, watches intently as space shuttle Discovery is ferried to an aerospace museum near his house and begins his studies at the U.S. Naval Academy, which, he notes, has graduated more astronauts than any other U.S. institution.
Becoming an astronaut is "a long and complicated process," Mason, now 19 and earning academic honors at the Naval Academy, acknowledges in the movie. "I don't know what I'm going to encounter along the way, but I don't think I'll ever lose that dream."
Mason could not be reached Monday, but his parents say their self-effacing son might shrug off his appearance on the space station. They, on the other hand, hope the zero-g screening will benefit the space program and the crew alike.
"I'm thrilled that the astronauts on the space station want to watch it," says Robert Mason, Blair's father. The film could get "word out that … the space station's still up there, our astronauts are still up there, and it's still relevant."
"It's a good message to the astronauts … that there are still kids who want to be just like them, that they're still seen as role models," says Joanna Mason, Blair's mother.
At the moment, there's no U.S. vehicle her son could pilot into space. The shuttles were retired in 2011, forcing astronauts to travel to the space station on Russian spaceships. The rocket NASA is developing now is controversial and prone to cancellation. Ruck hopes the space program can stay the course.
"We clearly have it within us to do these things, and we need to decide we're going to do them," he says. He wants audiences to "feel (Blair Mason's) hopes, his dreams, his excitement. And I want them to feel responsible for whether or not he accomplishes his dream."
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Preparing drones for national airspace
Bill Wrobel – Delmarva (MD) Daily Times
The president's Fiscal Year 2015 budget, presented Mar. 4, provides key resources to ensure the great work at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility continues now and in the years to come — managing the agency's suborbital programs, providing cargo to our astronauts on the International Space Station and flying missions deeper into space.
As budding programs mature and as mature programs continue to innovate and evolve, I see a body of work truly making a difference.
Perhaps the most notable activities at Wallops of late are Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket launches, which carry supplies and experiments to our astronauts on the ISS as part of NASA's $1.9 billion contract with the company.
These launches, in partnership with NASA and Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, directly contribute to new discoveries aboard the ISS that are having a positive impact on our quality of life right here on Earth.
At least seven more Antares flights are planned through 2016, and with ISS operations planned to continue through 2024, there will be an ongoing need to provide cargo and experiments to the orbiting laboratory.
At Wallops we are very excited that the Federal Aviation Administration named Virginia Tech one of six test sites charged with developing the processes and procedures to safely and efficiently integrate unmanned aerial systems into the national airspace system.
These systems are a largely untapped resource with a wide array of potential civil and commercial applications, such as search-and-rescue, cargo delivery, agriculture, forestry, telecommunications, pollution control and air sampling.
Furthermore, some have put the estimated economic impact of unmanned aerial systems at more than $82 million nationwide, creating more than 100,000 jobs during the next decade. That's huge. At Wallops, with our past experience flying unmanned aerial systems, established safety program, location and instrumentation capabilities, we look forward to playing a key role in supporting the Virginia Tech-led team in this evolving, game-changing endeavor.
Along with delivering cargo, this past November a launch from Wallops known as Operationally Responsive Space-3 delivered a grand total of 29 satellites to orbit, the most ever deployed by a single rocket launched from U.S. soil. One of the payloads carried was the Firefly cubesat, which is studying lightning and its possible connection to powerful bursts called terrestrial gamma ray flashes.
From budding concepts, such as the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Research Institute — a partnership with academia and nonprofit organizations in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to study coastal environmental impacts — to mature programs, such as our sounding rockets, scientific balloon and airborne research programs, we can expect more good things from Wallops.
The entire Delmarva community has been a terrific supporter, contributing immeasurably to the growing momentum here.
Wallops' successes are your successes and they are truly making a difference.
Bill Wrobel is director of the Wallops Flight Facility.
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