| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Jogging Trail Closed During Environmental Work
- IT Labs presents: Paperless Contracting Initiative
- Updated Environmental Training in SATERN
- The ISS Conference Facility is Moving - Organizations/Social
- Out & Allied Tribute to Astronaut Sally Ride
- IEEE EMC Meeting on Signal Integrity
- Starport Financial Wellness: Income and Expenses
- Orion's Belt Glass Eye Presale
- Beginners Ballroom Dance: April 1 and 3
- Starport's Flea Market - Register Now - Jobs and Training
- Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab - March 19
- ISS EDMS User Forum
- JSC Imagery Online Training - March 20 - Community
- Monthly Meeting of PFLAG |  |
| Headlines - Jogging Trail Closed During Environmental Work
Portions of the jogging trail will be closed intermittently during the week of March 17 for safety purposes. Members will still have partial access to the trail, and the closed areas will be well marked. The Environmental Office will be using a drill rig to install groundwater-monitoring wells along the trail and cutting invasive tallow trees as a wetland-mitigation effort. The Gilruth staff will have the exact schedule of when the trail will be closed, so please check in with them prior to using the jogging trail. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. - IT Labs presents: Paperless Contracting Initiative
IT Labs continues to celebrate NASA's IT innovators in this edition of the IT Heroes Showcase, featuring a live presentation from Ames Research Center (ARC) for the Paperless Contracting Initiative (PCI) project. The PCI is a collaboration of efforts between the Offices of Procurement at ARC and Langley Research Center to benchmark and test methods of using digitized documents for procurement file management. Click to the NASA IT Labs YouTube channel on Thursday, March 20, at 12:30 p.m. CDT. Click on the live streaming link to join the Hangout on Air. (Log in with a personal Google account to ask questions during the event.) Send comments and questions to IT Labs. For more information or to follow IT Labs' activities, refer to the IT Labs Blog. - Updated Environmental Training in SATERN
Did you know that "sustainability" is one component of JSC's Environmental Excellence Policy? Understanding your environmental responsibilities is the first step in becoming a sustainable JSC employee. Required every two years for all civil servants and contractors, the newly updated SATERN course, "Environmental Responsibilities for All JSC Employees," reviews JSC's Environmental Management System and several environmental requirements and programs that may apply to you. With the Environmental and Energy Functional Review in April, be sure to login to SATERN and find out more about your environmental responsibilities here at JSC. - The ISS Conference Facility is Moving
Beginning April 28, meetings scheduled for the International Space Station (ISS) Conference Facility, currently at Regents Park III, will be held at 1800 Space Park Drive in Nassau Bay. During the facility transition period between April 5 and 27, meetings will be held in alternate locations. Please check with your meeting host or ISS Conference Facility staff to verify the location of your meeting prior to driving to Regents Park. Also, during the transition time, the ISS Conference Facility will have limited ability to accommodate non-ISS meeting requests. Organizations/Social - Out & Allied Tribute to Astronaut Sally Ride
Please join the Out & Allied Employee Resource Group as we pay tribute to astronaut Sally Ride this Wednesday at noon as part of the JSC 2014 Women's History Month's theme of "Women of Character, Courage and Commitment." As a special treat, Astronaut Anna Fisher will open with her personal reflections of working with Ride as a fellow astronaut from the Class of 1978 and a pioneer woman in space as well. There will be a several short videos reflecting on Ride's career in America's space program, as well as her efforts to promote science, technology, engineering and math. We will also highlighting other accomplished LGBT women scientists who have greatly contributed to our understanding of space. Following the presentation, there will be homemade refreshments. Feel free to bring your lunch. - IEEE EMC Meeting on Signal Integrity
Joseph C. (Jay) Diepenbrock, an IEEE EMC Distinguished Lecturer, will present "Signal Integrity Characterization, Parameters and Techniques". This presentation will focus on the key electrical parameters that are important to understand and measure for ensuring optimum performance in today's high-speed serial communications interfaces. These include fundamental quantities such as inductance, capacitance and propagation delay, as well as "derived" quantities of impedance, insertion and return loss, skew, crosstalk and more. Software tools for extracting these parameters will also be discussed. Diepenbrock is currently senior vice president of High Speed for the Lorom Group, leads the Lorom Signal Integrity team and supports its high-speed product development. He is a senior member of the IEEE and holds 12 patents. Lunch is available for $8. Please RSVP indicating lunch or no lunch. Event Date: Thursday, April 10, 2014 Event Start Time:11:30 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Discovery Room - Gilruth Recreation Center
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George May 281-226-8543
[top] - Starport Financial Wellness: Income and Expenses
Join us for a free seminar presented by the JSC Federal Credit Union on Managing Income and Expenses. You will learn how to: - Develop and use a spending plan
- Calculate your net worth
- Create a budget
- Monitor your progress
- Manage the continual flow of income and expenses
- Comparison shop
- Protect your assets
April 2 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Building 29, Room 231 There is limited seating, and all attendees must RSVP (class may fill up and you may be put on a waiting list). A free lunch will be provided. RSVP by March 31 to Shelly Haralson via email or at x39168. More info on financial wellness classes can be found here. - Orion's Belt Glass Eye Presale
This beautiful piece made from hand-blown glass, containing ash from the 1980 Mt. St. Helens volcanic eruption, has been uniquely handcrafted to reveal the intricacies and mysteries of space, reflecting and transmitting light for a spectacular celestial show. This piece is presented in a blue velvet box with a story card. Start your collection today in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops. - Beginners Ballroom Dance: 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 March 21)
Regular registration: - $110 per couple (March 22 to April 3)
Two class sessions available: - Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. - starting April 1
- Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. - starting April 3
All classes are taught in the Gilruth Center's dance studio (Group Ex studio). - 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 click here for more information and the registration form. Spots are only $10 each! Jobs and Training - Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab - March 19
Do you need some hands-on, personal help with FedTraveler.com? Join the Business Systems and Process Improvement Office for an Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab tomorrow, March 19, any time between 9 a.m. and noon in Building 12, Room 142. Our help desk representatives will be available to help you work through Extended TDY travel processes and learn more about using FedTraveler during this informal workshop. Bring your current travel documents or specific questions that you have about the system and join us for some hands-on, in-person help with FedTraveler. If you'd like to sign up for this Extended TDY FedTraveler Live Lab, please log into SATERN and register. For additional information, contact Judy Seier at x32771. To register in SATERN, please click on this SATERN direct link: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... - ISS EDMS User Forum
The International Space Station (ISS) Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) team will hold the monthly General User Training Forum this Thursday, March 20, at 9:30 a.m. in Building 4S, Conference Room 5315. Lync meeting and Telecom will be provided. If you use EDMS to locate station documents, join us to learn about basic navigation and searching. Bring your questions, concerns and suggestions, and meet the EDMS Customer Service team. The agenda is located here. - JSC Imagery Online Training - March 20
Need to find NASA mission pictures or videos? Learn how during a webinar on Thursday, March 20, from 3 to 4 p.m. Mary Wilkerson, Still Imagery lead, will show users how to find NASA mission images in Imagery Online (IO) and the Digital Imagery Management System (DIMS). Leslie Richards, Video Imagery lead, will show employees the video functionality in IO. This training is open to any JSC/White Sands Test Facility employee. To register, go to this link. For more information, go to: IO or DIMS Community - Monthly Meeting of PFLAG
The Clear Lake chapter of PFLAG meets on the fourth Sunday of every month. This support group works to keep families together in loving relationships, helping them understand and affirm their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered family members. For more information, contact Barbara Larsen at 281-993-0669. Event Date: Sunday, March 23, 2014 Event Start Time:2:00 PM Event End Time:4:00 PM
Event Location: Clear Lake Area (Webster)
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Robert F. Blake
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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 18, 2014
International Space Station:
Today:
- 12:30 p.m. - Video B-Roll Feed of ISS Expedition 40/41 Crew Training (precedes the Crew News Conference) - JSC (All Channels)
- 1 p.m. - ISS Expedition 40/41 Crew News Conference (Suraev, Wiseman, Gerst) - JSC (All Channels)
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Astronomers discover echoes from expansion after Big Bang
Irene Klotz and Sharon Begley - Reuters
Astronomers announced on Monday that they had discovered what many consider the holy grail of their field: ripples in the fabric of space-time that are echoes of the massive expansion of the universe that took place just after the Big Bang.
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks says Obama White House 'seriously underfunded' Space Launch System in 2015 budget
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) says the Obama White House's 2015 budget request "seriously underfunded" the Space Launch System (SLS) NASA is developing in Alabama.
An Exemplary Trans-Atlantic Achievement
Charles Bolden, Jean-Yves Le Gall – Space News
Our recent meetings in Paris and Washington gave us significant opportunities to discuss how we will move forward together to achieve mutual goals for human spaceflight and scientific exploration and to build on the longstanding partnership between NASA and CNES. While discussing the future of space exploration, it was clear to us that our shared investments in space are helping to make a bright future possible for people across the planet.
Orion test launch slips to December
James Dean – Florida Today
NASA today showed off recently arrived boosters that will help launch its Orion crew exploration capsule into space for the first time, hopefully before the end of this year.
Space station moves away from space junk
Marcia Dunn - AP
The International Space Station had to sidestep a piece of space junk.
A Conversation With Steve Jurvetson, Space Investor and Rocket Maker
Nick Bilton – The New York Times
Steve Jurvetson is a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm that has invested in SpaceX, Tesla Motors and Planet Labs, a satellite company we profiled in Monday's newspaper.
NASA shuttle veteran gives old parts new life for L.A. exhibit
Dennis Jenkins spent 30 years sending shuttles into space. Now he's helping the California Science Center build its Endeavour display.
Kate Mather - Los Angeles Times
It was the type of weather that would have scrubbed a space shuttle launch.
Lockheed to Continue NASA ISS Cargo Mission Support
Anna Forrester – ExecutiveBiz
Lockheed Martin's Integrated Systems division will continue providing analytical, physical and equipment processing services to support International Space Station activities at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as part of a $22 million, one-year contract option with NASA.
Ground, Space Station Tests Paving Way for Robotic Satellite Servicing
Irene Klotz – Space News
NASA is abandoning plans to robotically refuel a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellite in orbit, but is continuing ground-based technology development and in-flight testing aboard the international space station to prepare for future exploration initiatives and for partnerships with commercial satellite operators.
COMPLETE STORIES
Astronomers discover echoes from expansion after Big Bang
Irene Klotz and Sharon Begley - Reuters
Astronomers announced on Monday that they had discovered what many consider the holy grail of their field: ripples in the fabric of space-time that are echoes of the massive expansion of the universe that took place just after the Big Bang.
Predicted by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago, the discovery of the ripples, called gravitational waves, would be a crowning achievement in one of the greatest triumphs of the human intellect: an understanding of how the universe began and evolved into the cornucopia of galaxies and stars, nebulae and vast stretches of nearly empty space that constitute the known universe.
"This detection is cosmology's missing link," Marc Kamionkowski, a physicist of Johns Hopkins University and one of the researchers on the collaboration that made the finding, told reporters on Monday at a press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gravitational waves are feeble, primordial undulations that propagate across the cosmos at the speed of light. Astronomers have sought them for decades because they are the missing evidence for two theories.
One is Einstein's general theory of relativity, first published in 1915, which launched the modern era of research into the origins and evolution of the cosmos. The general theory explains gravity as the deformation of space by massive bodies. Einstein posited that space is like a flimsy blanket, with embedded stars and planets causing it to curve rather than remain flat.
Those curvatures of space are not stationary, Einstein said. Instead, they propagate like water in a lake or seismic waves in Earth's crust and so are "gravitational waves" that "alternately squeeze space in one direction and stretch it in the other direction," Jamie Bock, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and one of the lead scientists on the collaboration, told Reuters.
The other, much more recent theory that predicted gravitational waves is called cosmic inflation. Developed in the 1980s, it starts with the well-accepted idea that the universe began in a Big Bang, an explosion of space-time, 13.8 billion years ago.
An instant later, according to the theory, the infant cosmos expanded exponentially, inflating in size by 100 trillion times. That made the cosmos remarkably uniform across vast expanses of space and also super-sized tiny fluctuations in gravity, producing gravitational waves.
Although the theory of cosmic inflation received a great deal of experimental support, the failure to find the gravitational waves it predicted caused many cosmologists to hold off endorsing it.
That may change after the announcement on Monday.
"These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation, they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was," Harvard University physicist Avi Loeb said in a statement. The strength of the gravitational waves' signal is tied to how powerfully the universe expanded during the brief era of inflation.
The measurements announced by the astronomers on Monday are nearly twice as large as cosmologists predicted for gravitational waves, suggesting a great deal more could be learned about how inflation worked.
SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE
The gravitational waves were detected by a radio telescope called BICEP2 (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization). The instrument, which scans the sky from the South Pole, examines what is called the cosmic microwave background, the extremely weak radiation that pervades the universe. Its discovery in 1964 by astronomers at Bell Labs in New Jersey was hailed as the best evidence to date that the universe began in an immensely hot explosion.
The microwave background radiation, which has been bathing the universe since 380,000 years after the Big Bang, is a mere 3 degrees above absolute zero, having cooled to near non-existence from the immeasurably hot plasma that was the universe in the first fractions of a second of its existence.
The background radiation is not precisely uniform. And like light, the relic radiation is polarized as the result of interacting with electrons and atoms in space.
Computer models predicted a particular curl pattern in the background radiation that would match what would be expected with the universe's inflation after the Big Bang.
"It's mind-boggling to go looking for something like this and actually find it," Clem Pryke, a physicist at the University of Minnesota and another lead scientist on the collaboration, told reporters. "Theorists are forever sending the experimentalists on wild goose-chase missions. When we first saw hints of a signal we totally didn't believe it."
It will be up to other teams of scientists, working with an array of Earth-based, balloon-launched and space telescopes, to verify the findings.
"This is the smoking gun for inflation," Kamionkowski said. But even if the results hold up, "we've learned only that inflation has sent us a telegram, encoded on gravitational waves and transcribed on the cosmic microwave background sky."
It will be essential, he added, "to follow through with more detailed and precise measurements to infer fully what this telegram is telling us."
QUANTUM HINTS
The detection of gravitational waves may help physicists realize a dream of Einstein's that he died before achieving: unifying all the forces of nature.
Three of the four forces have been unified, which means that physicists have shown that they are facets of the same basic force. But the fourth, Einstein's beloved gravity, remains the odd man out: it seems to be a property of space rather than a consequence of subatomic, or quantum, particles as the other forces are.
The three quantum-based forces are electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force (responsible for radioactivity) and the strong nuclear force (which glues together the protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei).
Because cosmic inflation was powered by quantum effects, with the universe springing from a volume smaller than a subatomic particle, primordial gravitational waves were also created by quantum processes, cosmologists believe. If so, then by scrutinizing the gravitational waves that pervade today's cosmos, scientists might finally show that all four forces of nature arise from a single uber-force, achieving Einstein's dream.
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks says Obama White House 'seriously underfunded' Space Launch System in 2015 budget
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) says the Obama White House's 2015 budget request "seriously underfunded" the Space Launch System (SLS) NASA is developing in Alabama.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden disagreed in Huntsville last week. "If you don't need it, you don't ask for it," Bolden said. The budget request "keeps us on track," Bolden said, adding, "I don't see anything we said we were going to do that we're not planning to do."
The White House budget request for fiscal year 2015 seeks $1.38 billion to develop SLS. The program got $1.6 billion this year - a difference of about $200 million.
Brooks is vice chairman of the House science subcommittee that oversees NASA and represents North Alabama where the Marshall Space Flight Center is located. That center is leading development of the new rocket and is where Bolden toured its progress Friday.
"I would like to see SLS receive a minimum of $1.6 billion for vehicle development in FY 2015," Brooks told AL.com in an email Thursday. "Anything less than $1.6 billion delays SLS availability."
Bolden said he discussed the funding with Huntsville leaders Friday. He told them Todd May, who is leading SLS development at Marshall, has a plan. "There are certain components that we need to develop and we need this much money for that," he said. "Our request to the president was we need this amount of money in order to carry out this plan."
It's always good to get more thank you ask for, Bolden said, "but if we don't need it, we don't ask for it. So, I'm very satisfied with the budget we got."
SLS funding often seems to square off in Congress against funding for the commercial space taxis NASA wants to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The space taxi issue has gotten hotter because NASA relies on Russia now for astronaut rides, and relations are tense because of Ukraine and Crimea. Some in Washington even want SLS canceled.
NASA and the White House want $848 million for commercial space in 2015 compared to the $696 million received this year. The difference - $150 million - is a good chunk of the cut in the SLS request.
"We are really working hard to get commercial crew capability so we can start launching our astronauts from American soil again," Bolden said in Huntsville. "If you want to talk to me about the budget and, 'Am I unhappy with anything?' I'm not unhappy but would love to have the Congress ... fully fund commercial crew. We've been asking for a certain amount for five years and we've not gotten it. Everybody now, based on what's going on in the world, recognizes we really ought to have our own capability to launch our crews to space."
America would have that capability, Brooks said, if NASA under President Obama hadn't canceled the Constellation program under way when Obama first took office and "mothballed the space shuttle fleet."
Brooks said Russia's actions in the Ukraine put America's access to the space station at risk. If Russia stops selling America rides, he said, America's investment in the station is "worthless."
Asked last week, the office of U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) said that, while the Russia situation is "troubling," Shelby believes Congress has provided sufficient funds to "support the existing so-called, public-private partnership" in commercial crew. Shelby is vice chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
"As always, the president's budget is a starting point," Shelby's office said in a statement. "Congress will make the final decision, and Vice Chairman Shelby will continue to fight for SLS because it's the only viable option for America to maintain its leadership role in human space flight."
Brooks agrees. Commercial crew is one way to get Americans in space, he said, but SLS is more important for long-term access and national security.
An Exemplary Trans-Atlantic Achievement
Charles Bolden, Jean-Yves Le Gall – Space News
Our recent meetings in Paris and Washington gave us significant opportunities to discuss how we will move forward together to achieve mutual goals for human spaceflight and scientific exploration and to build on the longstanding partnership between NASA and CNES. While discussing the future of space exploration, it was clear to us that our shared investments in space are helping to make a bright future possible for people across the planet.
The international space station is one such investment for the United States and Europe. The contributions of France and other member states of the European Space Agency have been crucial to the ISS's remarkable achievements over the past 15 years. French astronauts have been among the international ISS crew members, Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle that resupplies the station is operated from the CNES Toulouse Space Centre, and France is providing critical parts of the service module for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the first vehicle able to take humans beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo program.
The success of our space programs will be judged, in part, on how well we continue to make space exploration about global partnership. This is true at the institutional level, but also true at the industrial one.
NASA and CNES have also developed a longstanding partnership and unique expertise in altimetry with the NASA-CNES Topex-Poseidon mission launched in 1992 and the more recent Jason missions. This expertise will be key for our very ambitious next joint mission, SWOT (Surface Water Ocean Topography), scheduled to be launched in 2020. The data collected by these instruments from these missions help us to better understand our environment.
With respect to Mars exploration, NASA and CNES have partnered on nearly every mission to Mars in the past 15 years, including Mars Global Surveyor, Odyssey, Mars Express and the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, as well as MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), which will arrive in orbit around the red planet in September. When French President Francois Hollande met recently with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, we signed an agreement that will allow CNES to provide NASA with the primary instrument — a seismometer — for the next NASA mission to Mars, InSight, that is scheduled to launch in 2016. We also hope to be partners again on the Mars 2020 mission.
In all these fields of cooperation, our main objective is to exploit and share our agencies' expertise to transition scientific invention to technological innovation in order to spark inspiration and create jobs for highly qualified workers. The scientific and human spaceflight achievements of the past half-century would not have been possible without partnerships like those NASA and CNES have formed. Building on this exemplary trans-Atlantic achievement, we look forward to even greater global cooperation in the future.
Orion test launch slips to December
James Dean – Florida Today
NASA today showed off recently arrived boosters that will help launch its Orion crew exploration capsule into space for the first time, hopefully before the end of this year.
The planned launch of an uncrewed Orion atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy has slipped from September to December, allowing an Air Force satellite to precede the Orion mission, also on a Delta IV rocket.
"I assure you that Orion is going to be ready to go on time," said KSC Director Bob Cabana in the horizontal integration facility near Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Behind Cabana were the first two of the Delta IV Heavy's three core boosters that will be used for the mission called Exploration Flight Test-1, or EFT-1.
The mission will send Orion on two orbits reaching as far as 3,600 miles above Earth to set up a high-speed reentry through the atmosphere — about 85 percent of a lunar return's velocity -- and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Space station moves away from space junk
Marcia Dunn - AP
The International Space Station had to sidestep a piece of space junk.
NASA said Monday the space station had to dodge part of an old satellite. Sunday night's firing of on-board thrusters pushed the orbiting lab up a half-mile.
Experts aren't sure how big the junk is. It's from a Russian weather satellite launched in 1979.
After the maneuver, it was determined the debris would have posed no threat. NASA says it preferred playing it safe.
Mission Control says the change in space station altitude will not affect next week's launch of a new three-man crew from Kazakhstan.
A SpaceX resupply mission from Cape Canaveral, meanwhile, has been delayed until the end of the month. The unmanned Falcon rocket was supposed to blast off Sunday.
A Conversation With Steve Jurvetson, Space Investor and Rocket Maker
Nick Bilton – The New York Times
Steve Jurvetson is a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm that has invested in SpaceX, Tesla Motors and Planet Labs, a satellite company we profiled in Monday's newspaper.
Mr. Jurvetson sees space exploration as the next big business in Silicon Valley.
He even dabbles in his own supersonic experiments, building rockets that he deploys from Nevada's Black Rock Desert.
The following is an edited interview about the future and potential business of space:
Q. Why did you start investing in space-related start-ups?
A. My interest in space started early, but for many years I could not find any space-related investments that really penciled-out for venture. That changed in 2009 when Elon Musk came to us with a big vision to explore Mars, while producing rockets at a fraction of a price and making space accessible.
Q. Isn't there enough to do on Earth?
A. Development of space will improve life on Earth. Access to space is important for agriculture, humanitarian efforts, communications and navigation. Rapid cadence imagery, like Planet Labs is developing, helps us become better, more sustainable stewards of Earth. New opportunities are emerging in space that would not have been possible before. When you lower the cost of access to space, a boom of innovation follows, just as low-cost fiber optics paved the way for the Internet and the cloud services that followed.
Q. How did your whole space fascination begin?
A. When I was 11, I went to space camp at the Space Center in Texas, near where I grew up. There, I met video-game-industry pioneer Richard Garriott, better known to gamers everywhere as Ultima creator Lord British.
Q. Have you ever been to space? If not, do you hope to one day?
A. Not yet, but now the dream is believable. I want to orbit the moon in a very low orbit. These missions will not require the training, career dedication or luck of catching the right mission assignment before Apollo ends; rather, the longer we wait, the cheaper and safer it should be, hopefully falling into the comfort zone for many of us.
Q. You've built rockets before, right? How far do they go, what do they do and how much do they cost?
A. Building and launching rockets has been a lifelong hobby that my son and I share. We regularly travel to Nevada's Black Rock Desert to launch rockets. At first, we started with small ones. More than a decade ago, I picked up a rocket kit at a hobby store, assembled it and launched it. Over time, the rockets have gotten bigger and we're now assembling custom designs with esoteric materials, plus on-board video cameras, computers and GPS to measure performance. My carbon-fiber rocket broke Mach 2 several times.
Q. As so much of this is experimental, how do you get a return on your investment with these space start-ups?
A. Oh, these have been fantastic businesses. SpaceX has over $4 billion in contracted revenue and has been profitable for six years in a row. Planet Labs has already booked more revenue than they have raised in investment, and they have just deployed the largest satellite constellation ever launched.
Q. Do you think we're at the beginning of a new genre of space start-ups, or will it be a few more years before they grow rapidly?
A. We're focused on how we can make investments that build entirely new sectors. We're on the brink of a tremendous opportunity in re-engineering satellites and subsequent services for Earth observation and ubiquitous broadband.
Q. What are some examples of space start-ups that haven't been invented yet but could be in the future?
A. So far, we have seen venture capital funding of Earth observation at various scales and we would expect it to extend to the data integrator and applications layer. Next, we'll see ubiquitous broadband connectivity for the planet, providing a new channel to compete with the incumbent telcos and mobile carriers. We have seen angel funding of novel launch vehicles, asteroid mining and space tourism and transportation.
Q. Do you think we'll ever see a start-up that builds a hotel on the moon, space tourism or something crazy like that?
A. Well, it's already been done, but the business economics have not gone mainstream. Numerous tourists have purchased and flown into orbit and spent days on the space station. Bigelow has two inflatable space hotels undergoing long-term testing in orbit as we speak.
Q. You're on the board of SpaceX; what can we expect from the company in the future?
A. While I'm not in the position to comment on SpaceX's future plans given my role on the board, the company has launches coming soon and is focused on developing reusable rockets, which could lower the cost of access another 10 times. Ultimately, the company intends to colonize Mars. Not just visit Mars. But make humanity a multiplanetary species. We live in fascinating times.
NASA shuttle veteran gives old parts new life for L.A. exhibit
Dennis Jenkins spent 30 years sending shuttles into space. Now he's helping the California Science Center build its Endeavour display.
Kate Mather - Los Angeles Times
It was the type of weather that would have scrubbed a space shuttle launch.
The rain was relentless. Water streamed down Dennis Jenkins' glasses, dripping off the tip of his nose, as he surveyed the scrap yard not far from where the shuttles once blasted into orbit.
A box overflowing with keyboards and wires. Nearly a dozen file cabinets tipped on their sides. A small mountain of cardboard boxes, falling apart in the downpour.
Each box bore a sticker emblazoned with the blue NASA logo. "CRITICAL SPACE ITEM," they read. "HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE."
Jenkins directed his team to a pair of 7-foot-tall contraptions next to a chain-link fence — escape baskets that once sat near the top of the shuttle, ready to slide astronauts to safety should something go wrong before launch.
We were setting out to change the world."
— Dennis Jenkins, retired NASA engineer
Share this quoteIt took all four men to carefully move the baskets, using a forklift to hoist each up and set it into a trailer. Once they were settled, Jenkins circled the trailer, pausing to tuck a canvas flap back into place.
He turned and gave his crew a thumbs up. "Perfect," he said.
Jenkins spent 30-plus years — his entire career — sending the shuttles into space. Now, with the program part of a bygone era of exploration, the 57-year-old works for the California Science Center, helping officials figure out how to display their own orbiter, Endeavour.
The Exposition Park museum wants to showcase its crown jewel as if it's on the launch pad, a display that will take thousands of pieces to pull off — parts that are scattered at NASA facilities, museums and other places across the U.S. Most are one of a kind and impossible to replicate.
So for the past year, Jenkins has crisscrossed the country, scouring NASA scrap yards and asking old colleagues if they have what he needs to rebuild the shuttle launch stack, piece by piece.
Even before the shuttles flew their final missions in 2011, institutions across the country began jockeying to get one of the four orbiters NASA would give away. Dozens of museums and aerospace centers submitted proposals to the agency in what became a fierce competition.
But it wasn't just the orbiters that NASA no longer needed. With no space shuttle program, there would be no need for more than a million space shuttle parts — the massive engines that propelled the orbiters above Earth, the machinery used to safely move them, the specialized nuts and bolts that attached them to the external tank.
NASA stashed about half the parts for potential use on future programs. But with the federal government facing a slew of budgetary concerns, the agency didn't want to spend the money to store the rest.
"As we're trying to minimize costs to the agency, we're trying to give up facilities, we're trying to empty out facilities," said Bob Sherouse, who is overseeing the distribution of NASA's shuttle leftovers. "We would rather find someone that wanted something than sell it off for scrap."
When the California Science Center finalized plans to display its shuttle upright, officials there realized they would need many of those same parts. The problem: There were few records of where the pieces were.
Jenkins was only 24 when he helped launch America's first shuttle into space.
Employed by NASA contractor Martin Marietta, he helped write the software used in loading and controlling the liquid oxygen needed to push the 2,250-ton shuttle assembly hundreds of miles above Earth. When Columbia soared into orbit on April 12, 1981, he watched from a 9-inch black-and-white TV in the firing room.
"Everybody involved on the program knew we were making history," Jenkins said. "We were setting out to change the world."
By 26, Jenkins was a senior lead engineer on the project, troubleshooting and finding ways to improve the shuttle system. He spent years developing a launch site at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base — scrapped after Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986. It was the first launch Jenkins had missed.
The loss of Columbia 17 years later was the beginning of the end of the shuttle program. After the orbiter disintegrated while re-entering Earth's atmosphere, federal officials decided it was time for a new approach to space exploration. The shuttles were retired in 2011.
When it came time to transfer the orbiters from Kennedy Space Center to the museums that would become their permanent homes, Jenkins took what he thought would be his final job before retiring. One by one, he helped move the orbiters across the country — including Endeavour's 12-mile journey through the streets of L.A.
But then the California Science Center hired Jenkins for one more gig: overseeing the creation of its shuttle display.
Of the tens of thousands of people who once contributed to the shuttle program, Jenkins is one of only a handful still working with the spacecraft.
"Dennis has such phenomenal knowledge … we haven't found anything yet where he couldn't find the answer," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center. "He's not in this for his own fame and fortune. He's in this for the love of what we're doing."
At the top of Jenkins' to-do list is tracking down the pieces he needs for Endeavour's display. Many are the last ones that exist — only six space shuttles were ever built, meaning there weren't many spare parts.
Jenkins has spent months calling old co-workers, asking if they've seen any of the pieces he needs — or know someone who has.
Sometimes, he said, he has to resort to finding the people who personally packed the parts away.
"Fortunately, these guys have great memories," he said. "They packed millions of parts, probably, but frequently they could tell you what box they put something in."
He's found pieces in Utah, New Orleans, Alabama and Washington, D.C. A few ended up at other museums, which required some negotiating by Jenkins and the California Science Center.
Some are so massive — like the 60-foot steel sides of the sling that will ultimately lift the shuttle — they had to be trucked across the country on the back of a flatbed semi. Others were smaller — like an arrowhead-shaped piece of metal used to attach the shuttle to the external tank — and buried in the bottom of a box.
The pieces themselves are free, but the Science Center must cover the costs of processing any necessary paperwork and getting the items to California. The state-run museum is paying shuttle-related expenditures — including construction of the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, which will house Endeavour — through a $250-million fundraising campaign.
One of the most critical items, the 30-pound bolt that attaches the nose of the shuttle to the external tank, was one of the most difficult to track down. Jenkins couldn't find any in Florida; they had either been scrapped or sent back to Texas, where they were made.
Creating a replacement would have been a "major undertaking," Jenkins said. The bolt was manufactured with specialized metals and equipment. Extra bolts would have been needed for engineering and seismic testing. All in all, he guessed, it probably would have been a six-figure project.
Jenkins traveled to Texas a few times to look for the bolt but had no luck. About a year after he began his search, he got a call. Someone in Houston had found a spare. It was sitting in a desk.
Not all of the items come to California right away. The escape baskets Jenkins collected at Kennedy Space Center first went to a small Florida shop tasked with restoring them before they go on display.
The California Science Center hired Tom Wilkes' 12-man crew at Guard-Lee Inc. for some of the work needed to complete the Endeavour exhibit. For decades, the Orlando-area business has built replica aerospace pieces for museums and companies across the globe.
Working with Jenkins, Wilkes said, is like working with "Mr. Space Shuttle." The two had never met before, but Wilkes said his team had known of Jenkins' work for years. He pointed to a book sitting on a table at his shop, one his team had used as a reference in several projects.
"This is Dennis' book," he said, laughing. "He wrote the book on the space shuttle."
As the rain fell harder at Kennedy Space Center, Jenkins ducked into one of the storage sheds that dotted the scrap yard. Inside, even more boxes and bins, coiled wires and crates were stacked. "HOLD FOR CALIFORNIA SCIENCE CENTER," they read.
"It's always hard for me personally to come out here to do this because I'd much rather be coming out here to launch space shuttles. But we don't do that anymore," Jenkins said. "I'm one of the few fortunate ones who gets to still play with the space shuttles, so I'm happy about that."
A crane operator flagged Jenkins down, and he abandoned the shed for the truck that would haul giant metal beams to California. It was time to load more parts.
Lockheed to Continue NASA ISS Cargo Mission Support
Anna Forrester - ExecutiveBiz
Lockheed Martin's Integrated Systems division will continue providing analytical, physical and equipment processing services to support International Space Station activities at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as part of a $22 million, one-year contract option with NASA.
Lockheed will extend its cargo mission planning, coordination and processing, and other services for pressurized and unpressurized cargo transportation of vehicle flights visiting ISS, NASA said Friday.
The cost-plus-award-fee option, running from April 1 through March 31, 2015, also covers flight and training hardware processing.
Subcontractors include Bastion Technologies, TechTrans International and University of Texas El Paso, among others.
Ground, Space Station Tests Paving Way for Robotic Satellite Servicing
Irene Klotz – Space News
NASA is abandoning plans to robotically refuel a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellite in orbit, but is continuing ground-based technology development and in-flight testing aboard the international space station to prepare for future exploration initiatives and for partnerships with commercial satellite operators.
A second set of Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) tests is scheduled to begin this year following the arrival of new tools for the station's Canadian-built Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator robot this summer.
Last month, the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland guided a robotic arm 1,300 kilometers away at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida through a series of demonstrations to transfer nitrogen tetroxide — a highly toxic, corrosive and explosive oxidizer typically used in satellite propellant — through a standard satellite fuel valve.
"On RRM, we tackled the hard things early on, like cutting of tape, cutting of little tiny lock wires, removing two different size caps and then connecting up a refueling tool and transferring simulated propellant," project manager Benjamin Reed said.
The first set of RRM tests on the station, conducted between March 2012 and January 2013, used ethanol, which has a similar viscosity and density to nitrogen tetroxide and monomethylhydrazine fuel but is much safer to work with. The equipment was operated at a much lower pressure, roughly 50 psi rather than the 250 to 300 psi that would be needed to refuel satellites in orbit.
The Remote Robotic Oxidizer Transfer Test at Kennedy tackled both of those elements and demonstrated three different ways to move fuel — via pump, pressure and bellows.
"In particular, the pump was really difficult. No one had an oxidizer pump that we could use in our test, so we had to work with a small company to develop this new technology," Reed said. "That added difficulty to the test but was absolutely necessary to prepare for ordinary refueling."
The ground-based refueling test, which spanned about two weeks in February, was intended to replicate the on-orbit refueling process as closely as possible.
"We don't want to practice transferring 7 grams [of fuel] on the ground when on orbit we'd be transferring 700 kilograms. That wouldn't be a very realistic test. So we tried to think of all the operational details one would need on orbit and fold those in the test," Reed said.
The next phase of RRM aboard the station will focus on other satellite repair and servicing technologies, not necessarily refueling. Equipment to be tested includes a snake-like visual inspection tool called Vipir.
The device, which is about the size of a toaster, is tipped with an extendable, articulating teleoperated video camera that can be bent up and down and turned left and right for 360-degree visual imaging.
"If you needed to look around a corner or insert under a spacecraft blanket to see if maybe a micrometeoroid or orbital debris strike put a hole in structure, or if you were looking for a loose wire or a bent pin, or FOD [debris] inside a connector or a screw hole, it has the ability to do very detailed, close-up inspection work," Reed said.
NASA had hoped to demonstrate its satellite servicing technology by refueling NOAA's GOES-12 weather satellite, but the spacecraft was decommissioned in August 2013.
"There just wasn't time to get everything in order," Reed said, adding that NASA is not looking for another government satellite to refuel although it is investigating potential future joint missions with commercial satellite operators.
"The charge that the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office has been given is to develop as a robust a suite of on-orbit capabilities as possible to give the agency — and by extension the larger domestic aerospace industry — options in orbit," Reed said.
In addition to servicing satellites, the technologies being developed would give future astronauts traveling to and from Mars options for robotic inspection, maintenance and repair of their spacecraft. NASA also is studying if the technology could be used to snare a boulder from a rubble pile-type of asteroid and relocate it into high lunar orbit for a planned human precursor mission around 2025.
"I think there are flight missions that are tantalizingly close," Reed said.
Whether the first robotic in-space servicing call is to a satellite in geostationary orbit, a satellite in low Earth orbit, an asteroid or somewhere else, "my job," Reed said, "is to make sure the agency is prepared for any or all of those possible outcomes."
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