| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Wireless Network Outage and Upgrade March 28
- Do You Freecycle? - Organizations/Social
- Tomorrow: Hispanic ERG Second General Meeting
- Fun Science Shirts Available at Starport
- Admin Day Deliveries by Starport
- Starport's Spring Fest: Fun, Shopping, Crawfish
- Starport Book Fair - Building 3 Café - Jobs and Training
- Stress Management Wellness Webinar - Community
- Special Olympics Needs Space Center Volunteers |  |
| Headlines - Wireless Network Outage and Upgrade March 28
The JSC and White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) wireless networks will be upgraded on Friday, March 28, from 1 to 5 p.m. CDT. This outage will affect the corporate, guest, and Bring Your Own Device networks. During this activity, access to these resources will be unavailable or intermittently down while the Information Resources Directorate performs system software upgrades. For information on JSC wireless networks and assistance: - On-site - See JSC and WSTF Network Services Information
We apologize for the inconvenience and are working diligently to improve the center's wireless experience. For questions regarding outage/update activity, please contact Martin Rivera. - Do You Freecycle?
Did you accidentally double your order of pens or paper clips? Looking for post-it notes or a stapler? Consider participating in the Freecycle@Work (F@W) program at JSC. F@W is way for employees to swap office supplies across the center. Post something extra you have or that you no longer use, or ask for something you need. By finding new homes for these perfectly good items, we can reduce the amount of waste thrown into landfills and save JSC money from disposal costs and office supply purchases. Visit the F@W SharePoint for more information, and see if there is anything useful to you. Organizations/Social - Tomorrow: Hispanic ERG Second General Meeting
The Hispanic Employee Resource Group (HERG) will host a Second General Meeting where we will present the results from the Strategic Planning Retreat and discuss the committees that the HERG is planning to stand up. Now is your chance to lead and hear about the career growth opportunities available through the HERG! As part of Women's History Month, the HERG will also be hosting an interactive panel called "Space Age Latinas," featuring several members of the HERG. Snacks will be provided; feel free to bring your lunch and join us! - Fun Science Shirts Available at Starport
Science is fun with novelty T-shirts, which are on sale this week in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops. Choose "Hey, this is rocket science, what part don't you understand?" or "I have no idea where I am." Now just $15 each (regularly $16.50 to $17.50). - Admin Day Deliveries by Starport
The Starport Gift Shops will be making on-site deliveries of floral arrangements, plants, balloons and other gift items purchased at Starport for Administrative Professionals Day on Wednesday, April 23. Let your administrative assistant know that he/she is appreciated with a beautiful flower arrangement, balloons or other unique gift delivered right to his/her desk. Orders will be accepted through April 18. See floral and balloon options here. - Starport's Spring Fest: Fun, Shopping, Crawfish
On April 19, Starport will have one big spring event at the Gilruth Center! Bring the kiddos out for our Children's Spring Fling, complete with a bounce house, face painting, petting zoo, Easter egg hunt and hot dog lunch. Tickets are on sale in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops, Gilruth Center and online. Tickets are for children 18 months to 12 years old who will be participating in activities and having lunch. Adults do not need a ticket. Tickets are $8 each through April 11, or $10 the day of. Plus, be sure to do some shopping at our outdoor flea market for some hidden treasures and great finds! Then visit our indoor craft fair for homemade crafts and goodies. Plus, enjoy some tasty mudbugs at our crawfish boil. The cost is $7 per pound with corn and potatoes. Hot dogs, chips and drinks will also be available. More information is available here. - Starport Book Fair - Building 3 Café
Come and enjoy the Books are Fun Book Fair held in the Building 3 Starport Café on Tuesday, April 15, and Wednesday, April 16, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Search through more than 250 great titles in children's books, cookbooks, general-interest books, New York Times bestsellers, stationery and scrapbooking, music collections and more, all at unbelievable prices. These make great Easter gifts! Click here for more information. Jobs and Training - Stress Management Wellness Webinar
The next installment of NASA's Healthier You webinar series is tomorrow, March 26, at 1:30 p.m. Tune in to see My Balance: Busting the Myths of Stress. Click here to register. These webinars are designed to help employees raise their personal health awareness and develop a roadmap to wellness. They also serve as a way to satisfy the health education requirement for JSC's Wellness HERO Program. For more information about becoming a Wellness HERO, please visit this link. Community - Special Olympics Needs Space Center Volunteers
The local Special Olympics Spring Games are approaching, and we need volunteers! Space Center Volunteers is the largest group that supports the spring games, so let's not disappoint. The spring games are the largest track-and-field day for the area's special needs athletes, so come out and volunteer with your co-workers, friends and family. The games will take place on Saturday, May 3, at the Clear Creek High School track and field. Volunteer shifts are throughout the day on May 3, and 10 to 15 volunteers are needed Friday, May 2, to help with the setup of the games. Please note that the Friday shift does occur during regular business hours, and no charge number will be provided. To volunteer, first visit V-CORPs and then visit the Space Center Volunteers website to sign up there. | |
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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 25, 2014
International Space Station:
- 3:15 p.m. CT - ISS Expedition 39/40 Soyuz TMA-12M Launch Coverage (Launch scheduled at 4:17 p.m. CT; includes video B-roll of the crew's pre-launch activities at 3:25 p.m. CT) - JSC via Baikonur, Kazakhstan (All Channels)
- 6 p.m. CT - Video File of ISS Expedition 39/40 Soyuz TMA-12M Pre-Launch, Launch Video B-Roll and Post-Launch Interviews - JSC (All Channels)
- 9:30 p.m. CT - ISS Expedition 39/40 Soyuz TMA-12M Docking Coverage (Docking scheduled at 10:04 p.m. CT) - JSC (All Channels)
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Making the most of the ISS
Jeff Foust - The Space Review
What facilities are critical to the future of the International Space Station (ISS) as a research platform? Ask that to someone in the space industry, and you'll get a range of answers: the mission control centers that run the station, the launch sites that send a steady stream of supplies and experiments to the station, and laboratories on Earth where scientists and engineers are developing experiments to send there and interpreting the results they get back from them.
Company hoping to carry NASA astronauts at Michoud
Associated Press
Companies hoping to shuttle NASA astronauts to the International Space Station are showing their work at the Michoud Assembly Facility in eastern New Orleans.
NASA Narrows Asteroid Targets for Mission to Lasso a Space Rock
NASA is making progress on one of the most challenging parts of its ambitious asteroid-retrieval mission — finding a suitable rock to shrink-wrap in space.
Early NASA diapers forced astronauts to disclose the size of their manhood
Craig Hlavaty - Houston Chronicle
When NASA astronauts were suiting up to go to space in the 1960s, they had to make a big decision before they explored the world above us: How large of a man are you?
US-Russia Quarrel Won't Delay Tuesday Space Station Launch
The tense political relationship between the United States and Russia will not affect the planned launch of a NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts to the International Space Station Tuesday (March 25), NASA officials reiterated last week.
NASA Counts on Congressional Assist To Save Lunar Orbiter
Dan Leone – Space News
NASA has a plan to keep the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) flying though this year and well into 2016, but the strategy hinges on a helping hand from Congress.
A Study of Twins, Separated by Orbit
John Schwartz – The New York Times
When Scott Kelly returns to space next year, he will be taking part in what may be the most far-flung twin study of all time.
NASA Authorizers Unite in Support of SLS, Orion, Ahead of Budget Hearings
Dan Leone – Space News
A bipartisan group of 32 House lawmakers is asking U.S. President Barack Obama to spell out long-term plans for crewed deep-space missions using the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion crew capsule NASA is spending about $3 billion a year to build.
COMPLETE STORIES
Making the most of the ISS
Jeff Foust - The Space Review
What facilities are critical to the future of the International Space Station (ISS) as a research platform? Ask that to someone in the space industry, and you'll get a range of answers: the mission control centers that run the station, the launch sites that send a steady stream of supplies and experiments to the station, and laboratories on Earth where scientists and engineers are developing experiments to send there and interpreting the results they get back from them.
What probably doesn't come to mind is a nondescript office building in Nassau Bay, Texas, a block south of the Johnson Space Center campus. In an office suite in that building that looks like it was once used by an attorney or an accountant, the staff of NanoRacks is hard at work managing its payloads on the ISS. During a visit to the office last month, a conference room was serving as a makeshift mission control, with employees sitting at laptops downloading data from experiments on the ISS, while others were making preparations for new payloads that would soon fly to the station.
The small company—it has only about two dozen employees—found a niche in being able to fly small experiments for a wide range of customers, from high schools to corporations, quickly and inexpensively. Rob Alexander, operations center manager at NanoRacks, said during last month's visit that they can get a NanoLab payload, about the size of a CubeSat, through the NASA safety approval process and launched in nine months and for about $65,000.
More recently, NanoRacks has expanded into launching small satellites from the ISS from the airlock on the Japanese lab module Kibo. NanoRacks initially used a Japanese deployer, but later developed its own using internal funding. Images showing CubeSats being ejected from the station have caused some to liken it to a cannon, but in fact, Alexander said, the satellites are deployed at a relatively modest speed of one meter per second.
That smallsat launching business is turning into a big one for NanoRacks. The company recently completed the deployment of more than 30 smallsats from the ISS that were ferried there on a Cygnus cargo spacecraft in January. Those satellites included 28 for Planet Labs, the San Francisco-based company that uses CubeSat-sized spacecraft to provide frequently-updated imagery of the Earth (see "Smallsat constellations: the killer app?", The Space Review, July 1, 2013). Alexander said that while the company is still doing a larger number of internal experiments, smallsat deployment is now accounting for a greater share of revenues.
"The first commercial success for the station is small satellite deployment," said Jeffrey Manber, managing director of NanoRacks, during a Space Transportation Association (STA) panel session about ISS research on Capitol Hill earlier this month. NanoRacks has more than 50 smallsats under contract for launch, with memoranda of understanding for 100 more, including satellites weighing up to 53 kilograms. Using the ISS for deploying smallsats, he said, helped Planet Labs come to market about two years faster than previously planned. "It's a wonderful story."
Manber, at the STA event and a panel session at the American Astronautical Society's Goddard Memorial Symposium earlier this month outside Washington, emphasized that importance of the partnership it has with NASA, investing its own money to develop lab racks and smallsat deployers for the ISS while helping the agency make the most of the ISS.
"One of the things we're showing is that you can have a true partnership with NASA," he said at the Goddard panel. "We're taking the investment the American public has made in the space station and applying commercial practices to utilize it in a cost-efficient and timely manner."
"NASA is our landlord, NASA is our regulator, and at times NASA is a customer," he said at the STA panel, noting that the agency accounts for about a fifth of the company's revenues. "But they're not a competitor."
Other ISS research activities
Stories like those of NanoRacks may be essential to the long-term future of the ISS as a research platform, and as a stepping stone to later commercial stations in low Earth orbit, demonstrating the effectiveness of such stations for research and other applications.
The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the nonprofit established in 2011 to manage the portion of the ISS designated by law as a national laboratory, is working to ramp up its efforts to attract users to the station. "We're matching opportunities and ideas with money to basically improve life here on Earth and increase the return on investment to the US taxpayer," said Greg Johnson, a former astronaut who is now the president and executive director of CASIS, during a session on ISS research at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago last month.
The problem for CASIS, though, Johnson said at the STA event, is that CASIS itself doesn't have a lot of money: its annual budget is $15 million, of which only a fraction is available for research grants. "So what we're doing is trying to partner with commercial entities, NGOs, and academic institutions to leverage the amount of money that we have to maximize the science on the space station," he said.
CASIS also wants to raise awareness about what can be, and has already been done, on the ISS. "CASIS was formed partly because we can do things that NASA can't: we can market," Johnson said at the AAAS meeting. CASIS has developed a brand called "Space Is In It", with a seal that would be affixed to products derived from CASIS-supported ISS research. The first company to receive that product endorsement is Cobra Puma Golf, which is using the ISS to perform material sciences experiments.
NASA is also working to maximize its use of station facilities for research it performs or sponsors. "The majority of the crew time on the space station wasn't available [for research] until 2011," said Kirt Costello, assistant ISS program scientist at NASA, at the AAAS meeting. "Since that time, we have vastly increased the number of active investigations: on the order of 150 to 200 active investigations during any increment."
That research, ISS program scientist Julie Robinson said at the STA panel earlier this month, covers a wide range of topics, from the study of microbial virulence in microgravity and telemedicine to waste recycling technology and water quality monitoring.
Working outside the station
Most of this research is, so far, being performed within the space station. However, there is growing interest in making use of the ISS as a platform for external experiments for astrophysical and earth sciences research. The best known example of such an experiment is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), the billion-dollar experiment to measure cosmic rays mounted on the station's truss whose initial results may have detected evidence of dark matter
AMS, however, is not the only experiment mounted outside the ISS. The Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) camera was flown to the ISS on the first Japanese HTV cargo spacecraft mission to the station in 2009 and mounted on the exterior of the Kibo module. HICO is a version of airborne hyperspectral imagers that can measure conditions along coastlines ranging from vegetation to water clarity.
"Imaging the coastal ocean from space is an extremely difficult problem. It's probably the most difficult earth remote sensing problem that we have," said Curtiss Davis of Oregon State University at the AAAS meeting. The coastal ocean is a very dark target, he said, and the desire to look though the ocean surface to see features on the problem is particularly challenging.
HICO started as an experiment run by the Office of Naval Research and is now supported by NASA. Since its installation on the ISS, the instrument has taken more than 9,000 "scenes" of data, Davis said.
HICO is also a pathfinder of sorts for other remote sensing experiments being planned for the ISS in the coming years. While the station is not in a sun-synchronous orbit traditionally used for remote sensing missions, its orbit is still useful for a wide range of applications, including observations of the tropics, ocean currents, and atmospheric properties, he said. The station also provides a platform with abundant power and cooling for experiments.
"It's a very economical, practical way to go," Davis said. "There's a very promising future for remote sensing on the International Space Station."
Challenges to station research
That promising future, though, for both external and internal experiments on the station is not without challenges. Some of those are endemic to almost any space-related program, like limited budgets and resources, but others are specific to the station itself.
One problem is the perception that ISS research is inferior in some way to either terrestrial research or space research by robotic missions. In an essay published in Slate last month, science writer Charles Seife criticized the quality of ISS research. "Look through the list of experiments run on Shuttle-Mir or on the ISS and you'll see that most of them are published in third- or fourth-tier journals, if they're published at all," he wrote, in sharp contrast to the "mountains of seminal publications" that have come from data generated by robotic probes.
While not directly addressing Seife's criticism, NASA's Robinson said that understanding the "pace of science" is key to interpreting the results that have come from ISS research so far. Getting something flown to the ISS can take up to several years she, said, plus several years to interpret and publish the results, and even longer for the broader scientific community to apply those results.
"Science, unfortunately, is not moving at the same pace as NASA as an agency likes to move," she said, "but this is the pace of science agencies, this is the pace of university laboratories and university research careers."
There's also the question of just how well the ISS is being utilized. At the AAAS meeting, Johnson said that the station wasn't yet being fully utilized. "It's hard to get mass, volume, and astronaut time to maximize all the possibilities," he said.
By some metrics, only about 70 to 75 percent of the station's total research capacity is being utilized. Robinson said those metrics are based on occupancy of racks on the station. "When you hear 70 percent utilization or 75 percent utilization, it's occupancy, not utilization," she said. "We're oversubscribed in crew time: we actually have more things people would like to do than the crew has time to help with."
There's also the question of access to the station. Right now, current cargo vehicles are providing enough transportation of supplies and experiments to the station so that research is limited by crew time instead, Robinson said. However, the fiscal year 2015 budget proposal states that NASA will eliminate one cargo mission to the station, and seeks $100 million in additional funding to "prevent additional Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) flight deletions."
That reduction in flights is not in the current CRS contracts with Orbital Sciences and SpaceX but would be in any follow-on contracts, likely in 2017 or 2018, said ISS director Sam Scimemi at the STA panel. If demand for ISS access materializes as NASA currently plans, he warned, there will be "conflicts in demand for resources" because of limited cargo capability. "We're going to be in a resource conflict environment."
A new issue that has emerged just in the last few weeks is the potential for disruption to ISS operations because of the crisis between Russia and Ukraine. Although NASA officials have stated that there's been no effect yet on ISS operations because of the crisis (see "A time of danger and opportunity for US-Russian space relations", The Space Review, March 10, 2014), many still worry that there could be effects on the station should the crisis worsen.
At the STA panel on March 14, though, Scimemi said there were no issues at that time. "I know the events in Ukraine have been a concern for many people, but things are very harmonious in the program," he said.
Extending the ISS to 2024 and beyond
The announcement by NASA in January that it intends to seek an extension of ISS operations to at least 2024 (see "Four more years", The Space Review, January 13, 2014) means that, should NASA's international partners go along, the ISS will be available for research for at least another decade. That four-year extension, said Robinson, would increase internal, crew-tended research time by 45 percent, and external research time by 90 percent.
At last month's AAAS meeting, CASIS's Johnson said it was still "too early to call" on whether the extension would attract more researchers. "But, logically, it makes sense" that an extended lifetime for the station would lure more researchers to the station, he said, adding that he'd like to see the ISS extended to 2028, the current maximum date based on technical analyses of the lifetime of the station.
"I think we have noticed a slight uptick since the announcement of extending to 2024," NASA's Costello said last month, said that interest has primarily come from external payload projects that could benefit the most from an extended lifetime since it will be several years before they fly to the station. "Since the announcement of the extension to 2024, we have seen renewed interest in that arena."
Johnson added that the extended ISS lifetime could benefit commercial research as well. "From six years to ten years, you get commercial partners really interested who wouldn't otherwise be interested in investing their money," he said.
Manber, speaking at the Goddard symposium, had a similar view. "For perhaps the first time, there's extraordinary private capital interest in space," he said, noting that those investors want long-term projections of the market as part of their decision-making process. "The beauty of the space station being there for ten years is that you can plan, as a small company, for the long-term."
Manber said he doesn't necessarily plan that far out, but it's clear NanoRacks is very active in the near term. Manber said he estimates the company will deploy 60 to 80 satellites from the ISS this year. It's also looking at ways to accommodate satellites that want to fly in different orbits with propulsion systems, something that is more challenging from the NASA safety approval standpoint. The company is also developing an external research platform with Astrium (now Airbus Defence and Space) that will fly to the ISS later this year.
That makes for a busy, and successful, company. "I sometimes have to shake my head at how well we're doing," Manber said.
Company hoping to carry NASA astronauts at Michoud
Associated Press
Companies hoping to shuttle NASA astronauts to the International Space Station are showing their work at the Michoud Assembly Facility in eastern New Orleans.
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., has begun building the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle at Michoud for Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev.
Officials from both companies are at Michoud on Tuesday to update reporters.
Sierra Nevada is among three aerospace companies picked in 2012 to build small rocketships to take astronauts to the space station.
The Boeing Co. of Houston and Space Exploration Technologies, called SpaceX, of Hawthorne, Calif., are building capsules like those of the Apollo era.
Sierra Nevada's design is based on an old NASA test ship design. It looks like the retired shuttle but its stubby wings are steeply angled upward. It could be flown without a pilot.
The company plans its first orbital flight demonstration in 2016 and its first crewed orbital mission in 2017.
The capsules and mini-shuttle are all designed to hold seven people.
Private companies already are shipping cargo to the space station. NASA is paying Russia about $63 million per launch to fly its astronauts.
Lockheed Martin, which built more than 100 external tanks for the shuttle at Michoud, announced about a year ago that it would be building 88-foot-long tanks there for liquefied natural gas storage and transportation.
The end of the shuttle program cost Michoud thousands of jobs.
Work at the plant was investigated after the space shuttle Columbia broke apart in 2003. The investigation did not find fault with the workers in New Orleans. It blamed the culture inside NASA, including engineers who had come to accept the idea that insulating foam flying off the shuttle was not a danger.
NASA Narrows Asteroid Targets for Mission to Lasso a Space Rock
NASA is making progress on one of the most challenging parts of its ambitious asteroid-retrieval mission — finding a suitable rock to shrink-wrap in space.
Scientists have identified a dozen or so promising targets for NASA's asteroid-capture mission, which seeks to drag a small rock — or a piece of a larger one — into a stable orbit around the moon, where it would be visited by astronauts by 2025.
"For either concept that's being looked at right now — either the capture of a small asteroid less than 10 meters in size, or going after a boulder, large boulder, on a larger asteroid — we have a list of about six or so candidates each," Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program, told reporters Friday (March 21).
"We continue to look for additional candidates," Johnson said, adding that NEO program scientists "will continue to do that over the next two to three years, until the time comes to actually determine which will be the best object for the mission."
The NEO program's primary purpose is identifying and tracking potentially dangerous asteroids. But good capture candidates are a subset of this larger group, Johnson said, so assessment of their suitability for the redirect mission doesn't take NEO scientists too far afield.
The asteroid-redirect mission would use a robotic probe to move the targeted space rock into Earth-moon space. The asteroid would then be visited, perhaps multiple times, by astronauts using NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, which are slated to fly crews together for the first time in 2021.
NASA wants the first manned visit to the retrieved asteroid to come around 2025, which would mesh well with an exploration timeline laid out by the White House. In 2010, President Barack Obama directed NASA to get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.
The mission will serve as a stepping stone, NASA officials have said, demonstrating technologies that will allow humanity to reach Mars and other destinations in deep space. It will also advance scientists' understanding of the early solar system and help develop asteroid-mining technology and know-how, advocates say.
On Friday, NASA announced that it is seeking innovative ideas that could help take the asteroid-capture mission from concept to reality. The space agency will select up to 25 proposals and dole out a maximum of $6 million dollars, with the awards expected to be announced on July 1.
The space agency hopes to have a basic mission concept in place by around the end of the year, officials said Friday, though some components of the architecture may be changed, added or refined thereafter.
Early NASA diapers forced astronauts to disclose the size of their manhood
Craig Hlavaty - Houston Chronicle
When NASA astronauts were suiting up to go to space in the 1960s, they had to make a big decision before they explored the world above us: How large of a man are you?
Getting it wrong could damage the mission.
According to a former NASA life support system expert who helped construct space diapers, otherwise known as Maximum Absorbency Garment systems, each astronaut in the Gemini and Apollo programs had to wear a condom-type sheath with a hole at the end for urination inside their suits.
In an interview on the Science Channel's Moon Machines documentary series about early space travel, engineer Donald Rethke, known in space history circles as "Dr. Flush", describes how these condoms came in specific sizes to accommodate each astronaut's anatomical size.
Astronauts had to estimate their size correctly. If they claimed to be bigger than they were, the sheath would be loose and liquid leakage could damage the suits and lead to bigger problems for mission astronauts.
The condom initially came in only three sizes: small, medium, and large. Of course every astronaut fancied himself a large, and why not? He was riding on the top of a powerful and potentially dangerous rocket, exploring parts of the outer world that men had not yet touched. No one wants to called "small" when they are planting an American flag on lunar soil.
In the Moon Machines interview, Rethke said that the sizes were changed to large, gigantic, and humongous to better cope with the astronaut's sense of humor.
The need for space diapers arose on May 5, 1961, when Freedom 7 astronaut Alan Shepard had to ask permission to wet his space suit on the launch pad. NASA scientists didn't think the need for bladder evac would be an issue in what was to be a 15-minute excursion. The incident made for a pretty humorous scene in 1983's space epic The Right Stuff.
Shepard was inside the Freedom capsule much longer than anticipated, nearly four hours, before finally being shot into near-Earth orbit.
These days, the MAG systems are only needed for missions outside space vehicles, as restroom facilities are a major part of space station outposts.
US-Russia Quarrel Won't Delay Tuesday Space Station Launch
The tense political relationship between the United States and Russia will not affect the planned launch of a NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts to the International Space Station Tuesday (March 25), NASA officials reiterated last week.
The situation in the Ukraine has led to heightened tensions between Russia and the United States recently. Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, a region of the Ukraine, making the peninsula a part of Russia on Friday (March 21). President Barack Obama and other world leaders have condemned Putin's decision, bringing sanctions against Russia in response.
NASA's Steve Swanson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev are set to launch atop a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station Tuesday, and the political climate will not disturb this event, NASA officials have said. The political situation has not affected the relationship between the Russian and U.S. space programs, NASA spokesman Josh Byerly wrote in an email to Space.com Friday (March 21). "We have a great relationship with all of our international partners, and the crew is focused on launch," Byerly told Space.com. Since the end of NASA's space shuttle program, the agency has relied on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the space station. By 2017, NASA officials hope to start using private spacecraft now under development in the United States to deliver astronauts to orbit.
International cooperation plays a huge role in the space station program, Mike Fossum, deputy director of flight crew operations for the International Space Station, said during an interview on March 23.
"I think the international cooperation of the 15 nations we have participating in the International Space Station program is really important," Fossum said. "It's great as we share our resources from the different countries, our skills and our teamwork, our experience come together to make these kinds of things happen. It's important to us now to have the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as our way of getting people to and from the International Space Station."
The space station program has weathered international conflicts before, NASA chief Charlie Bolden has said.
"I think people lose track of the fact that we have occupied the International Space Station now for 13 consecutive years uninterrupted, and that has been through multiple international crises," Bolden said during a news conference on March 4.
"I don't think it's an insignificant fact that we're starting to see a number of people with the idea that the International Space Station be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize," he added. "It's not trivial. It has continued to exist and continued to function with people from a variety of cultures and beliefs, but we all are focused on the mission of the International Space Station."
Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev are scheduled to launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan at 5:17 p.m. EDT (2117 GMT) on March 25.
NASA Counts on Congressional Assist To Save Lunar Orbiter
Dan Leone – Space News
NASA has a plan to keep the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) flying though this year and well into 2016, but the strategy hinges on a helping hand from Congress.
The Moon-mapping orbiter is one of seven planetary science missions NASA is reviewing this spring to determine whether their remaining scientific potential justifies their continued operations. The $17.5 billion budget proposal NASA sent to Congress earlier this month for 2015 includes continued funding for all of the missions except two: the 10-year-old Mars Opportunity rover and LRO, a seven-instrument spacecraft launched in 2009 to reconnoiter the Moon in advance of human lunar expeditions the Obama administration took off the table.
NASA says it wants to keep both LRO and Opportunity in service a while longer assuming their mission-extension proposals win approval during the biannual Senior Review of Operating Missions, which is set to conclude in June. But funding for LRO and Opportunity was deliberately excluded from NASA's core 2015 budget proposal. Instead, the agency is counting on congressional approval of a $35 million "Planetary Science Extended Mission Funding" line the White House included in President Barack Obama's Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative, a $52 billion spending wish list that received a chilly reception from the House of Representatives' Republican majority, dimming prospects for passage.
A 700-page budget justification NASA sent to Congress March 11 says the $35 million included in the Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative "would allow robust funding for all extended missions that are highly ranked by the 2014 Senior Review ... instead of terminating up to two missions or reducing science across many or all of them."
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a senior member of the House Appropriations panel that funds NASA, told SpaceNews that planetary science missions should not have to rely on the president's supplemental spending request for funding if the Senior Review deems them worthy of continuation. Schiff's Pasadena-area congressional district is home to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's lead center for robotic planetary exploration.
"While I appreciate that NASA may be looking to backfill some of the extended mission funding from another source, the Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative, that is not acceptable," Schiff said March 21 via email. "We need extended mission funding for all of our healthy spacecraft still producing valuable science, and I will be pushing to have it included in the baseline budget where it belongs."
NASA budget hearings get underway March 27, when NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is set to testify before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. The House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee — Schiff's venue for influencing NASA's budget — has not announced a date for its hearing.
Further complicating LRO's budget outlook, the mission technically lacks the funding it requires to continue operations through Sept. 30. The budget line where the mission had been book-kept, Lunar Quest, was eliminated by Congress in 2014 as part of the omnibus spending bill signed back in January.
NASA plans to restore LRO's funding via a reprogramming request included in a 2014 operating plan that was to be delivered to lawmakers the week of March 10, Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science division, told the NASA Advisory Council's planetary science subcommittee March 12. NASA operating plans do not require formal congressional approval, but they do need buy-in from the House and Senate appropriations and authorization committees that oversee NASA.
If LRO gets the funds Green is seeking for 2014, the orbiter's science mission would become part of NASA's Discovery line of small planetary science programs beginning in 2015 if the mission passes its senior review and Congress follows suit with the necessary funding — roughly $8 million, assuming mission costs have not changed much since 2013.
Launched aboard a United Launce Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in 2009 as part of a since-canceled plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface, the $500 million orbiter was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to map the Moon in detail, study its radiation environment and ultimately help NASA pick a location for a crewed lunar base. That part of the mission ended in 2010, after which LRO was handed over to the Science Mission Directorate. In 2012, when its primary science mission ended, the orbiter's science mission earned a two-year extension as part of a senior review in which it garnered high praise from scientists.
A Study of Twins, Separated by Orbit
John Schwartz – The New York Times
When Scott Kelly returns to space next year, he will be taking part in what may be the most far-flung twin study of all time.
While circling the earth aboard the International Space Station for a full year — the longest single space adventure for any American astronaut — and after his return, scientists will closely monitor Commander Kelly to see what changes space has wrought. NASA has been studying the effects of long stays in space on astronauts for years, but this set of 10 investigations will be different: The scientists will be doing the same poking, prodding and analyzing on Commander Kelly's identical twin brother, Mark, a retired astronaut.
Those in-depth studies could lead to a deeper understanding of the effects of living in space, which will become increasingly important as NASA plans missions to Mars or other destinations that could take years to complete.
"They have a very long-term vision," said Dr. Andrew Feinberg, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who is one of the investigators involved with the project. "It's kind of amazing."
Studies of twins are a favorite tool of scientists to understand environmental influences, and having the only identical twins to have flown in space as human guinea pigs opens physiological and psychological research opportunities for NASA. The space agency has budgeted $1.5 million for the 10 three-year studies, which were first proposed by the Kellys.
Dr. Feinberg said he would perform a full genome analysis of both men to study any epigenetic effects — that is, how the environment changes the genes and their function. Mark Kelly, who like his brother is a retired United States Navy captain, has been to space four times, as a shuttle pilot and commander, ending his last mission in 2011. He is married to former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords; after an attempt on her life in 2011 and her resignation from Congress the next year, they formed Americans for Responsible Solutions, an advocacy organization working to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, criminals and terrorists.
On a recent visit to The New York Times, the Kelly brothers, who are 50, showed that whatever your accomplishments in this world or off it, you're still kind of a knucklehead when your brother is around. When the question of primacy was raised, Mark Kelly noted that he was six minutes older than his brother. But Scott Kelly was quick to point out that he was the first to space, "and I'll be the last." When a photographer asked one of them to stand slightly in front of the other for a portrait, they jokingly elbowed each other to be the one out front.
Scott Kelly said that an extended expedition aboard the space station is easier now than in the past, with decent access to email and telephone communications as well as entertainment programming, exercise equipment and good air quality. (The old Russian space station Mir apparently was smelly, humid and moldy.) Scott Kelly said that on his previous mission to the station, "I had a little bit of degradation" physically, "which is good."
Knowing that his body is likely to change during this longer stay is promising, he said.
Their enthusiasm for the experiment has startled NASA scientists. "I volunteered to have them put a pressure probe in my skull," Scott Kelly said. "I thought it would be kind of cool to have a little bolt," he said, tapping a spot on his head. The scientists decided that it might cause problems, and demurred.
When he returns to earth, he said, he will have spent 540 days in space.
"I've had 55," Mark said.
"Fifty-four," Scott corrected him. "But who's counting?"
Scott Kelly said he was often asked the difference between a long flight and a short flight.
"The length," Mark deadpanned. Deadpanning is a family trait.
Mark Kelly said that during his shorter flights, he felt that it was not possible to really adapt to the changes the body experienced in conditions of microgravity.
"After a 17-day shuttle flight, you don't feel 100 percent of anything."
Scott Kelly said that during his previous trip to the International Space Station, which began in 2010 and lasted six months, he felt he had fully adapted after the second month.
Mark Kelly predicted that this time, his brother would tire of life in space after a few months. "Halfway through, you're going to say, 'O.K., where's my ride?' "
NASA Authorizers Unite in Support of SLS, Orion, Ahead of Budget Hearings
Dan Leone – Space News
A bipartisan group of 32 House lawmakers is asking U.S. President Barack Obama to spell out long-term plans for crewed deep-space missions using the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion crew capsule NASA is spending about $3 billion a year to build.
"Congress has done its part in helping to codify a future deep space exploration architecture in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 (PL 111-267), and has followed with a robust funding commitment, as most recently expressed in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014," the lawmakers wrote in a March 21 letter to Obama. "We are concerned, however, about the impact of shifting priorities for NASA and the resulting mixed signals this sends relative to the United States' dedication and commitment to its leadership role in human deep spaceflight exploration."
The lawmakers cited "the expansion of human spaceflight programs in countries such as China and Russia over the past decade" in urging the White House to make space exploration a top priority.
An electronic copy of the letter — signed by 15 Republicans and 17 Democrats — was sent to media March 24 from the office of Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss), chairman of the House Science space subcommittee that produces policy-setting NASA authorization bills.
"The next few years provide a crucial window in which we must redouble our efforts to once more launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," Palazzo said in a statement accompanying the letter's release.
Palazzo and the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland, were the first two signatures on the letter, which was also signed by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the full Science Committee.
"Funding for NASA's exploration programs is an investment, not an expenditure, and history has proven that the economic returns from these investments are significant," Edwards said in a statement accompanying the letter's release.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the full committee, did not sign the letter, which was delivered just days before lawmakers were scheduled to hear explanations of the White House's 2015 federal budget request from Obama's top science advisor, John Holdren, and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. Holdren will testify in a House Science Committee hearing March 26; Bolden will appear in a space subcommittee hearing scheduled for March 27.
Congress directed NASA to build SLS and Orion, which were not part of the Obama administration's original plans for NASA.
NASA has so far identified the funding required for two SLS-Orion missions: an uncrewed test flight in 2017, and a crewed mission in 2021. The vehicles also are integral to NASA's plan to send astronauts to a small asteroid that the agency hopes to divert to lunar space.
In a March 18 letter to Smith and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), NASA's chief appropriator in the House, Bolden defended these plans as both affordable and "consistent with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010." NASA spokesman Allard Beutel provided a copy of Bolden's letter March 24 in response to a SpaceNews inquiry about the letter spearheaded by Palazzo and Edwards.
Though apparently united on SLS and Orion, Palazzo and Edwards remain divided over the so-called Asteroid Redirect Mission. Palazzo, who favors returning astronauts to the lunar surface, has characterized the asteroid mission as "a complex and costly distraction." A previously skeptical Edwards recently threw her support behind the mission, however.
The House Science Committee passed NASA authorization legislation last year barring the agency from spending funds on the Asteroid Redirect Mission, but the bill never made it to the House floor for a vote. House aides working on similar legislation this year say the new version also might include language that would ban NASA from unilaterally canceling either SLS, Orion or the James Webb Space Telescope.
Most of the lawmakers who signed the March 21 letter, including Edwards, Palazzo, and Smith, have a NASA field center in their home states. SLS propulsion systems are tested at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Palazzo's Mississippi district, for example, while Orion is managed by the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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