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| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Tree-Planting Ceremony - Dr. Sam Pool
- MEP Continues - Organizations/Social
- Out & Allied @ JSC ERG Meeting
- What's New With Engineers Without Borders-JSC
- Johnson Space Center Astronomy Society Meeting
- Env. Brown Bag: Building a Great Houston by 2040
- Mental Health/Strategies: Bipolar Disorder
- Space Serenity Al-Anon Meeting Today at Noon - Community
- Join Your Sustainability Leads for a Nature Hike
- The Blood Drive Needs You! June 18 and 19
- JSC Child Care Center Has a Few Openings |  |
| Headlines - Tree-Planting Ceremony - Dr. Sam Pool
A tree-planting ceremony honoring the life of Dr. Sam Pool will be held Thursday, June 12, at 3 p.m. in the JSC Memorial Tree Grove. Pool served as the assistant director for Space Medicine in the Human Health and Performance Directorate (formerly Space Life Sciences Directorate). There will be limited parking available along the tree grove; employees are encouraged to walk or carpool. Event Date: Thursday, June 12, 2014 Event Start Time:3:00 PM Event End Time:4:00 PM
Event Location: JSC Memorial Tree Grove
Add to Calendar
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[top] - MEP Continues
On Tuesday, June 10th, Managed Elevated Privileges (MEP) continues with the EP- ER4. MEP controls admin rights (Elevated Privileges, or EP) on NASA computers and allows users to request EP when needed. Users must complete SATERN training before submitting any requests for EP. All users, especially those scheduled for MEP deployment, are strongly urged to complete the SATERN training for "Basic Users" (Elevated Privileges on NASA Information System - ITS-002-09). Users can coordinate with their supervisor, OCSO or organization IT point of contact to determine the level of EP they may need beyond "Basic User" and any additional training required. The next scheduled deployment date is June 17th, which will continue with the ER4-ER5 org codes. For more information, go to the MEP website or contact Heather Thomas at x30901. Organizations/Social - Out & Allied @ JSC ERG Meeting
All JSC team members (government, contractor, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender [LGBT] and non-LGBT allies) are invited to the Out & Allied @ JSC Employee Resource Group (ERG) monthly meeting tomorrow, June 11, from noon to 1 p.m. in Building 4S, Room 1200. The Out & Allied @ JSC team consists of LGBT employees and their allies (supporters). This month we will be putting the final touches on our plans for our ERG support of the Houston Pride parade and festival on June 28 as well as the Lynn Sherr book signing event in the Teague Aud. on June 27. - What's New With Engineers Without Borders-JSC
Engineers Without Borders (EWB)-JSC is starting a new project in Thailand. Come find out more about EWB and what the JSC chapter has been up to, as well as how to get involved with the new project. Come out to Building 7, Room 141, from noon to 1 p.m. tomorrow, June 11, to learn all about it. No RSVP is required. - Johnson Space Center Astronomy Society Meeting
Dr. David Talent will join us for the June meeting. His topic is "HII Regions and Planetary Nebulae - What they tell us about the making of the Elements". You've heard the saying that we're all made of stardust, come find out why that's absolutely true. We'll have other short talks like: the Novice Q & A session, observing the June sky with suggestions for beginners, the "Astro Oddities", and a few informative Member's Minutes. Have you considered buying yourself a telescope? Once you're a member you can borrow one of ours for FREE, prior to purchasing your own. Is there a topic in astronomy you want to learn more about? You can borrow an educational DVD from our library of 100's of DVDs. Membership to the JSCAS is open to anyone who wants to learn about astronomy. There are no dues, no by-laws; you just come to our meeting. - Env. Brown Bag: Building a Great Houston by 2040
"Our Great Region 2040" is a high-level plan with the aim for the Houston region to be one of the world's greatest places to live, work and succeed, as defined by measureable goals, by the year 2040. These strategies are organized around six major themes (economic development, environment, healthy communities, housing, transportation and resiliency). Jeff Taebel from the Houston-Galveston Area Council will be at JSC to talk about how the 13-county area developed this plan and what the recommendations are. To find out how this could affect and improve your home, please join us today, June 10, from noon to 1 p.m. in Building 45, Room 751. - Mental Health/Strategies: Bipolar Disorder
Today, please join Takis Bogdanos, LPC-S, CGP, with the JSC Employee Assistance Program, for a presentation about Bipolar Disorder as part of the psycho-educational series "Mental Health Disorders, Causes and Treatments." He will be discussing causes, prevalence, symptoms and impact in everyday life, as well as the latest treatments being implemented in the Building 30 Auditorium at 12 noon. - Space Serenity Al-Anon Meeting Today at Noon
"Progress, Not Perfection" reminds Al-Anon members to recognize positive, incremental improvements and change. Our 12-step meeting is for coworkers, families, and friends of those who work or live with the family disease of alcoholism. We meet Tuesday, June 10 in Building 32, room 146, from 12 noon to 12:45 p.m. Visitors are welcome. Community - Join Your Sustainability Leads for a Nature Hike
Courtesy of your JSC Green Team and your JSC Wellness Program, please join us for a nature hike of Armand Bayou Nature Center (ABNC). Our very own JSC wildlife biologist, Matt Strausser, will be guiding us through the flora and fauna. This hike is free for ABNC members or $4 due upon arrival for non-ABNC members. Click here for membership information. First option: June 19, 11 a.m. to noon, join us during your lunch break. Van transportation provided -- meet by the loading dock between Buildings 1 and 3. Second option: June 25, 4 to 4:45 p.m., meet after work at the ABNC. - The Blood Drive Needs You! June 18 and 19
Summertime typically brings a decrease in blood donations as donors become busy with activities and vacations. But the need for blood can increase due to these summer activities and the three major holidays—Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day. Please take an hour of your time to donate at our next blood drive, and bring a friend! You can donate at one of the following locations: - Teague Auditorium lobby - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Building 11 Starport Café donor coach - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Gilruth Center donor coach - Noon to 4 p.m. (Thursday only)
T-shirts, snacks and drinks are given to all donors. The criteria for donating can be found at the St. Luke's link on our website. - JSC Child Care Center Has a Few Openings
Space Family Education, Inc. (SFEI) has openings available to dependents of JSC civil servants and contractors. Immediate openings for the summer program are for: - Children currently 3 to 5 years old
Openings available the new school year, Aug. 25, are for a children who will be: - 12 to 32 months of age
- 3 and 4 year olds as of Sept. 1, 2014
Program Details: 1. Open 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Closed federal holidays, but open on Flex Fridays. 2. Competitive pricing with other comparable child cares, but SFEI includes more amenities. 3. Additional security. Badges are required to get on-site, and an additional security code is required to get in the school's front door. 4. Accelerated curriculum in all classes, with additional enrichment and extracurricular programs. 5. Convenience. Nearby and easy access for parents working on-site at JSC. 6. Breakfast, morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack are all included. 7. Video monitoring available from computers, androids and iPhones. Email if interested with the child's birthdate for a tour of the program. | |
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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 – June 10, 2014
International Space Station:
ISS Astronauts Discuss Science, Views From Space
CBS Evening News interviews ISS astronauts Steven Swanson and Reid Wiseman, "who may just have the best jobs in the universe." Swanson, when asked, said that the crew likes their "fun but our main mission is science up here. We perform over 170 experiments while we're up here, of course we have to maintain the station to keep it running efficiently and smoothly." Wiseman was specifically asked about the tweets and images he has sent back to Earth, especially one of a red die that was host Scott Pelley's favorite. Wiseman said that being up at the station and seeing the Earth from space was "way beyond what I ever dreamed it would be. ... It's better than you could ever think."
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Orbital postpones next space station mission
Jeff Clabaugh - Washington Business Journal
Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corporation has postponed its second cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station until at least July 1.
Test-stand Failure Further Delays Antares Launch
Dan Leone – Space News
The recent failure of an AJ-26 rocket engine during ground testing has now delayed Orbital Sciences Corp.'s second contracted cargo run to the international space station until at least July 1, about a one-month slip compared with the original launch date.
Eastern Shore sees new roles in aviation, aerospace, climate change
Tamara Dietrich - Newport News (VA) Daily Press
Wallops Island and Accomack County had a big day Monday with the launch of two initiatives intended to carve out new operational and research roles in aviation, aerospace and climate change.
Boeing showcases capsule that could become 'taxi' to space station
Richard Burnett - Orlando Sentinel
Aerospace giant Boeing Co. rolled out a model of its next-generation space capsule on Monday — one the company hopes will become NASA's "taxi" to take astronauts to the International Space Station.
Boeing shows off crew capsule at KSC
James Dean – Florida Today
Six months ago, Kennedy Space Center's former shuttle engine shop looked to Chris Ferguson like an abandoned New York City subway station.
Why Shelby's latest crusade is self-defeating
Sam Dinkin – Space Review
As reported by the Space Access Society last week, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has inserted language into the latest appropriations bill funding NASA to force that NASA require companies participating in the agency's commercial crew program to submit certified cost and pricing data. This is a tool that is designed to police cost-plus contracts under the Federal Acquisition Regulations, or FAR. Sen. Shelby is using the requirement in an innovative way apparently in an attempt to force commercial crew providers onto a level playing field with non-commercial providers.
House passes NASA reauthorization
Cristina Marcos – The Hill
The House on Monday passed a reauthorization of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) programs for fiscal 2014.
Seeing Obstacle-Filled Path to Mars
Kenneth Chang – New York Times
Since the triumph of the moon landings more than four decades ago, presidents have made grand pronouncements about the next adventure for NASA astronauts, one that would culminate with humans on Mars. But each time, those ambitions faded, unfulfilled.
A new pathway to Mars
Jeff Foust – The Space Review
NASA has never suffered from a lack of advice over the years about what it should be doing in space. Various panels, sometimes chartered by Congress, sometimes by the White House, and sometimes completely independent, have reviewed the state of NASA's programs, particularly its human spaceflight efforts, and offered recommendations on the where, when, how, and why of those programs' futures. Those reports typically make a big initial splash, but then sink from view, their recommendations enacted only in part, if it all.
Western sanctions unlikely to affect Russian space program — Roscosmos
ITAR-TASS
Russia is capable of further developing its national space program despite recently imposed Western sanctions over Moscow's stance on the situation in neighbouring Ukraine, the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) said on Monday.
A New Look at Cooperation on the Chinese Space Station
Jordan Foley – Space News
Within the past decade, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has experienced a steady progression of technology resulting in prestigious accomplishments for its manned space program. To reassure the world of its benign rise, China is seeking collaboration in the exploration and utilization of outer space. Its future space station, for example, is being advertised as an international collaborative project on an unprecedented scale for China.
NASA Official: A Landsat 8 Clone Would Cost More Than $650 Million
Dan Leone - Space News
Building a successor to Landsat 8, the latest in a long-running series of medium-resolution Earth observing satellites, will cost more than the $650 million target Congress asked NASA to hit as part of a 2014 spending bill, Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich told an agency-chartered advisory panel here May 28.
Too bad there's no AAA on Mars as the Curiosity rover faces equipment trouble
Marc Kaufman – The Washington Post
When the Curiosity rover set out last July on its much-anticipated drive to the Mars mission's ultimate destination — the three-mile-high science prize called Mount Sharp — everyone knew the going might get rough. The terrain ahead was more rugged than anything experienced before, and the winter nighttime temperatures regularly plunged to 120 degrees below zero.
Editorial | ISEE-3 Reboot Project Is Already a Winner
Space News Editor
Inspiration is a word that gets bandied about a lot in the space business, often as justification for multibillion-dollar programs that never come to fruition, let alone inspire.
Profile | Michael D. Griffin, Chairman and Chief Executive, Schafer Corp.
Warren Ferster – Space News
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had been tucked away in academia for some three years when he was called on to help reverse the fortunes of Schafer Corp., the Huntsville, Alabama, engineering and technical analysis firm whose sales had been declining following the loss of key contracts with NASA and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
'Unflappable' Science 'Warrior' Chosen to Lead Key NASA Climate Lab
Eli Kintisch – Science Magazine's Science Insider
NASA today named Gavin Schmidt, 46, to lead the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), one of the world's top climate research institutions. Schmidt, a climate modeler and current deputy director of the lab, follows in the footsteps of prominent climatologist James Hansen, who retired from the agency last year. Although Schmidt does not have quite the public name recognition of Hansen, he is known as one of the nation's most visible communicators of climate science.
COMPLETE STORIES
Orbital postpones next space station mission
Jeff Clabaugh - Washington Business Journal
Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corporation has postponed its second cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station until at least July 1.
Orbital says an engine planned for use in a space station mission in 2015 failed in routine testing. It is delaying mission two, planned for early June, until engineers determine why the engine failed.
The second mission was originally scheduled for early May, but was postponed by NASA because of space station scheduling.
Orbital's last cargo delivery to the space station was in January using its Cygnus spacecraft under a $1.9 billion NASA contract. It will deliver a total of 44,000 pounds of cargo during several missions to the space station through late 2016.
Orbital (NYSE: ORB) and Alliant Techsystems Inc. (NYSE: ATK) announced in April plans to merge their aerospace and defense operations.
Test-stand Failure Further Delays Antares Launch
Dan Leone – Space News
The recent failure of an AJ-26 rocket engine during ground testing has now delayed Orbital Sciences Corp.'s second contracted cargo run to the international space station until at least July 1, about a one-month slip compared with the original launch date.
The engine, which failed during a hot fire test at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi May 18, is not one of the two that will power the Antares rocket in the upcoming flight. But Orbital nonetheless must determine whether the cause of the failure was isolated to that particular engine.
The Soviet-vintage engine, upgraded and refurbished by Aerojet Rocetdyne of Sacramento, California, was intended for a 2015 Antares launch. Neither Orbital nor Aerojet have said what went wrong during the test, and depending on how long it takes the companies to figure that out, Antares' second contracted launch could slip even further.
"Once the investigation team reaches the point in their process that they can clear Antares to launch the Orb-2 mission, a targeted launch date will be established," Orbital wrote in a June 9 press release. "For now, [no earlier than] July 1 is simply a planning date."
Dulles, Virginia, Orbital and Aerojet have run into problems before with the engine, originally known as the NK-33 and built in the 1970s for the Soviet Union's aborted lunar exploration program. In 2012, an AJ-26 caught fire at Stennis' E-1 test stand. The malfunction, later blamed on a ruptured fuel line, raised questions about the long-term viability of the AJ-26, which was never intended to be stored on the ground for decades before being used.
Despite the hiccups with the AJ-26, Orbital has successfully launched Antares three times from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.
Each two-stage Antares rocket uses two AJ-26 engines in its core stage.
Eastern Shore sees new roles in aviation, aerospace, climate change
Tamara Dietrich - Newport News (VA) Daily Press
Wallops Island and Accomack County had a big day Monday with the launch of two initiatives intended to carve out new operational and research roles in aviation, aerospace and climate change.
In the morning, Gov. Terry McAuliffe helped break ground on Wallops Research Park, proposed as a base of operations for private enterprises involved in drone research and medium-lift rocket launches. Then, in the afternoon, government officials and scientists signed on to a multi-state partnership to form the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Resiliency Institute, or MACRI.
Both events took place at NASA Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore.
Offcials say they intend to make the research park a hub for aerospace and aviation operations, particularly for drones — or Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) — as well as larger rocket launches from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), located at the nearby flight facility.
DelmarvaNow reported that McAuliffe said he believes the region can become "the aerospace capital of the globe."
MARS has already seen three launches of the medium-lift Antares rocket — two last year as test launches, and a third earlier this year that was the first operational mission by Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to resupply the International Space Station. Orbital has a NASA commercial contract to make eight such resupply missions. The second, Orb-2, is tentatively set for July 1.
The groundbreaking over, officials said the research park is now ready for private development. Last year, the infrastructure work was funded through a $4 million county bond and a $4 million state grant. The county expects the infrastructure to be completed by the end of the year.
The coastal resiliency institute is a platform to integrate Earth science research to help localities adapt their coastal communities to a changing climate.
"To understand the impact of climate change elements such as sea level rise, extreme weather and degraded coastal ecosystems, you must go where the signal is strongest," Caroline Massey, assistant director for management operations at NASA Wallops, explained in a news release.
The region's broad and unique mix of developed and undeveloped coastline makes it a "perfect living laboratory" to study the effects of human and natural impacts, she said.
Along with NASA, partners in the endeavor include the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point, which is affiliated with the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the U.S. Geologic Survey; Chincoteague Bay Field Station of the Marine Science Consortium; the University of Virginia; the University of Maryland; the University of Delaware; and The Nature Conservancy.
Antares launch reset
The Antares launch from Wallops Island to the International Space Station is now set for no earlier than July 1, NASA said Monday.
This is the second of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s eight commercial resupply missions to the space station under a NASA contract. The launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on the Eastern Shore has been rescheduled several times, most recently to investigate the cause of an engine failure in late May.
According to Orbital, its Cygnus cargo spacecraft is fueled and packed with payload — except for late-load cargo — for the space station crew.
Orbital said July 1 is only a planning date. For more information and for launch updates, go to http://www.orbital.com.
Boeing showcases capsule that could become 'taxi' to space station
Richard Burnett - Orlando Sentinel
Aerospace giant Boeing Co. rolled out a model of its next-generation space capsule on Monday — one the company hopes will become NASA's "taxi" to take astronauts to the International Space Station.
Boeing showcased its new spacecraft design at the company's Kennedy Space Center operation, which would be home base for production of the spacecraft and hundreds of jobs if it is selected by NASA for the lucrative work. The capsule, which holds up to seven astronauts, is known as the CST-100, for "Crew Space Transportation."
The capsule's exterior looks much like those of the Apollo era, but inside, it couldn't be more different. Wireless touch screens and other digital systems replace gauges and wires. Gone is the cold military cockpit feel, replaced by cool mood lighting and ergonomic seats.
"This is just fantastic," said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who rode aboard a space shuttle in 1986. "It's the first time I've seen it, and I have to say it looks a lot more comfortable that what we used to sit in."
Boeing demonstrated the full-scale CST-100 mockup for the first time in Florida as its battle for the lucrative contract enters the final months of a two-year competition against SpaceX of the Los Angeles area and Sierra Nevada Corp., based in Las Vegas.
SpaceX showcased its Dragon V2 capsule in California about two weeks ago. Sierra Nevada has held a series of events detailing its DreamChaser "mini-shuttle."
In September, NASA is expected to name a winner of the new Commercial Crew Development program – the agency's first manned spaceflight program since retiring the shuttle in 2011. The first
launch using the new spacecraft is scheduled for 2017. Without the shuttle, NASA has been relying on the Russian space program to get U.S. astronauts to the station.
NASA's budget allocates nearly $700 million for the new commercial vehicle, though the entire program would be worth far more over the next decade or so. NASA awarded the competitors contracts worth more than $1.1 billion in 2012 to develop the new spacecraft.
The space agency also could buy more than one of the rival systems to carry astronauts and cargo to the ISS and commercial space stations, industry observers say.
"From NASA's point of view, maybe the dual approach would be the logical way to go," said Roger Handberg, an aerospace expert and political science professor at the University of Central Florida. "You would lower your risk and not get locked into something that may not work out."
Although all three companies have established operations at the Space Coast, a Boeing win appears to have the most local impact in new jobs.
The company plans to bring as many 600 jobs from across the country to its KSC operation, which is housed in a former NASA space shuttle processing hangar and leased from Space Florida, the state's public-private space advocacy agency.
"If we are selected, we have a transition plan that would take effect immediately to move workers from Houston, Huntington Beach [Calif.] and other places," said John Elbon, Boeing's vice president for space exploration. "We'll staff up significantly by early 2015, and that is going make for a really nice impact for the Space Coast."
Boeing shows off crew capsule at KSC
James Dean – Florida Today
Six months ago, Kennedy Space Center's former shuttle engine shop looked to Chris Ferguson like an abandoned New York City subway station.
Today, the floors and walls gleamed white and newly installed air conditioning pumped through the bays where shuttle main engines were serviced through the final mission, which Ferguson led three years ago next month.
He said his recent tweet of a photo of the refurbished site, where Boeing hopes to assemble CST-100 commercial crew capsules, received and enthusiastic and telling response.
"America wants their space program back," said Ferguson, director of crew and mission systems for Boeing's CST-100 program. "We're beginning to see the first vestiges of that, and it's good for the American public, it's good for the Florida economy."
Inside the production facility today, Boeing displayed a mockup of the capsule that the company hopes will end the gap in human spaceflight missions launched from Florida.
Coming less than two weeks after SpaceX unveiled a Dragon capsule designed to carry astronauts, the event was the latest building momentum towards NASA's selection of the companies that could fly astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017.
NASA's Commercial Crew Program plans to award one or more contracts in August or September.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday he expects NASA to select multiple winners if funding next year holds close to the $805 million the Senate has proposed.
"That's enough money for NASA to do the competition for at least two (companies), and maybe more," he said. "That of course is up to NASA as they evaluate all the proposals."
In addition to Boeing's CST-100 and SpaceX's Dragon, the competition includes Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.
NASA has contributed about $1.5 billion to the development of commercial crew vehicles since 2010. Boeing's roughly $600 million is the most received by any one company.
Nelson was the first to climb into one of the CST-100's five black, reclined seats, alongside two mock astronauts in orange pressure suits. Then a member of the House, Nelson flew on shuttle Columbia in January 1986.
The capsule featured an overhead panel of digital displays and switches and Samsung tablets for the crew, blue interior lighting and room to tuck small cargo bags.
"It's not going to be the space shuttle," said Ferguson. "It doesn't have the capability for 50,000 pounds of cargo. But what it brings to the table is a very safe ride to low Earth orbit for up to five American astronauts."
Boeing's formal presentation contrasted with the party-like atmosphere when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently unveiled Dragon Version 2 to a cheering crowd at the company's Southern California headquarters, shown via Webcast.
And unlike SpaceX, Boeing takes pride in the CST-100's use of proven rather than new technologies. Whereas the Dragon plans to use a futuristic precision powered landing system, the CST-100 will land on airbags.
Starting with an uncrewed test flight in January 2017, Boeing's CST-100 missions would launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets.
ULA officials on Monday showed off a model of the nearly 200-foot tall access tower that would support crewed missions from Launch Complex 41. Its completion is targeted for September 2016.
Although Boeing would only fly one or two missions a year for NASA, up to six CST-100 service modules could be processed simultaneously in the former engine shop. Crew modules would be assembled in an adjacent former shuttle hangar called Orbiter Processing Facility-3, where construction continued Monday.
The facilities, also including a nearby office building, are being renovated with the help of $20 million from the state of Florida.
Boeing has not decided how to proceed if it does not win a commercial crew contract, but Space Florida is confident another company would use the facilities if Boeing does not.
If it does, Boeing has said the program could create up to 550 local jobs that would start ramping up this fall as components for a test capsule arrived.
"I have a tremendous respect for the disciplined culture, the hard working people here at the Space Coast," said John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space Exploration.
NASA once hoped to launch commercial crew missions in 2015, but funding has pushed that goal to late 2017. Russia's Soyuz spacecraft will offer the only crew access to the station until then.
Nelson encouraged NASA to try for missions sooner, but few believe the program can be accelerated at this point.
"I wish you'd target to 2016, because there is a whole bunch of us here, everyone in this audience, that wants to see Americans on American rockets, rocketing back into orbit," he said. "That can't come soon enough."
Why Shelby's latest crusade is self-defeating
Sam Dinkin – Space Review
As reported by the Space Access Society last week, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has inserted language into the latest appropriations bill funding NASA to force that NASA require companies participating in the agency's commercial crew program to submit certified cost and pricing data. This is a tool that is designed to police cost-plus contracts under the Federal Acquisition Regulations, or FAR. Sen. Shelby is using the requirement in an innovative way apparently in an attempt to force commercial crew providers onto a level playing field with non-commercial providers.
Cost-plus contracting is inherently expensive. If a contract is awarded on the basis of cost, plus a fixed profit level, the supplier has an incentive to maximize costs. Various epicycles can be put in place to attempt to reign in this effect, such as requiring providing detailed documentation. As noted by the Space Access Society, these methods are not very effective at keeping costs in check—and are themselves a source of additional cost. Both the supplier and the contracting officer have an incentive for this documentation to be extremely detailed. The supplier is reimbursed for the cost of detailed documentation. The contracting officer is pilloried if it is subsequently revealed that costs were unjustified, especially when overruns ensue.
In contrast, if a commercial contract is awarded on a fixed-price basis for standardized goods and services, both supplier and the contracting officer at NASA have an incentive to minimize the paperwork associated with the award. The supplier obviously wants to minimize the cost of compliance due to the fixed revenue that must cover the cost. The contracting officer also has no incentive to force a rise in the cost of compliance because the fixed bid will include the cost of compliance and, given that the price is fixed, any risk associated with the certified price being wrong is borne by the supplier. Therefore, there are no overruns. NASA would only pay for goods and services it receives so it would not bear any monetary cost if the supplier fails to deliver.
Indeed, the FAR inherently takes this into account. Sen. Shelby is attempting to implement the FAR piecemeal, but the regulation generally requires only minimal documentation for components acquired commercially. If a part is available commercially and is either too insignificant a component of cost, is priced competitively by multiple suppliers, or has a long history of stable prices, then the FAR does not require certified cost and pricing data. (There are a set of exceptions to the requirement for certified cost and pricing data requirements in 15.403-1(b).)
The following example illustrates the way to take the cost and details out of certified cost accounting. The Space Access Society posed a hypothetical situation: "Imagine the response you'd get, handing [FAR Table 15.2IIA which requires detailed cost accounting of each part] to a car dealer while you're haggling over price". The dealer would hand the wag an invoice that shows one part, "the car", the factory price and the dealer's markup.
The way these dynamics might be operationalized for NASA is that a company bidding for a new commercial crew contract (The Commercial Crew Company), might have a single subcontractor (The Commercial Spaceship Company) and if necessary a third company that is a sub-subcontractor (The Commercial Spaceship Component Company) and NASA might receive a certification of a single number—the complete cost of the contract.
The preceding dynamics are, of course, an exaggeration. The contracting officer will seek adequate detail to assure that Sen. Shelby does not pillory NASA. Nevertheless, once this minimum level of detail is obtained, there is no further incentive for complexity.
The projection that requiring certified cost and pricing will raise costs 50 to 200% versus commercial costs is based on a data set that is populated likely exclusively by cost-plus contracts. The actual cost increase that would ensue if Sen. Shelby's language is adopted can be much lower than expected given that the incentives of both parties are to minimize complexity in a fixed-price contract.
Sen. Shelby's proposal is, in effect, pushing on a string. Requiring detailed accounting without also giving either the contracting officer or the supplier an incentive to make the accounting more detailed will defeat itself. This may, in turn, cause him to seek that contracts only be cost-plus, but that is a battle for the future.
House passes NASA reauthorization
Cristina Marcos – The Hill
The House on Monday passed a reauthorization of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) programs for fiscal 2014.
Passed 401-2, the measure would authorize $17.6 billion for space exploration, space operations, education and technology efforts.
The authorization would include $3 billion for the International Space Station and $658 million for the James Webb Space Telescope.
House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said the measure would boost U.S. space exploration efforts.
"This bill provides the necessary funds to push us into the Cosmos and beyond," Smith said.
A provision in the bill states that "reliance on foreign carriers for crew transfer is unacceptable." Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), the chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee on Space, said the reauthorization was necessary to keep the U.S. competitive.
"American leadership in space depends on our ability to put people and sound policy ahead of politics," Palazzo said.
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the Space subcommittee, agreed.
"This bill is foundational and it provides important policy direction that will strengthen our nation's space program," Edwards said.
Two weeks ago, the House passed a 2015 appropriations bill that would provide $17.9 billion in funding for NASA through the upcoming fiscal year.
Seeing Obstacle-Filled Path to Mars
Kenneth Chang – New York Times
Since the triumph of the moon landings more than four decades ago, presidents have made grand pronouncements about the next adventure for NASA astronauts, one that would culminate with humans on Mars. But each time, those ambitions faded, unfulfilled.
Now a panel of experts is warning that the same fate may be in store for President Obama's declaration that NASA astronauts would reach Mars in the 2030s.
"There is not a believable plan for getting there in a finite period of time," said Jonathan I. Lunine, a Cornell astronomer and a co-chairman of the committee.
The panel recommended that NASA set specific intermediate milestones — what it called "steppingstones" — on the way to Mars, which it said would help solidify public and political support.
But at the moment, there is little consensus about what NASA should do after it completes its current project to develop a heavy-lift rocket to carry equipment for deep-space missions, with a first, unmanned launching scheduled in 2017 and a second launching, with astronauts, in 2021.
The Obama administration has proposed a robotic mission that would capture a small asteroid and transport it to an orbit high above the moon, where it would be easier for astronauts to reach and study. The robotic spacecraft would also test technologies like electric propulsion systems that could be used for a Mars mission. Then a crew of astronauts would rendezvous with the asteroid to examine it.
Some in Congress have pushed for NASA to instead head back to the moon.
Even during the 1960s, as NASA was putting together the Apollo moon missions, the public viewed human spaceflight positively, but was not overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Only after the successful landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 did public approval swing very high.
Dr. Lunine said that with steppingstones, people would look back positively at what had already been accomplished and be more likely to continue supporting a Mars program.
The panel did not recommend a best path to Mars, but it evaluated three possibilities. One would follow the asteroid mission with astronauts visiting Phobos and Deimos, Mars's moons, before landing on Mars itself. A second approach would send astronauts for a stay on Earth's moon, providing a place to test humans' ability to live on a hostile surface. The third would in effect combine the two.
The panel said the moon path would provide more technologies that could be applied to Mars than the asteroid route.
Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for policy and plans in NASA's human exploration and operations mission directorate, said the agency would evaluate options over the summer and a more detailed strategy could begin to emerge by the end of the year.
The panel said that a clearer strategy would also be helpful in guiding NASA's investments in research and development. If some critical technologies are to be ready in two decades, it continued, work on them needed to begin right away.
Dr. Lunine was supportive of a NASA project in Hawaii to develop ways to land bigger spacecraft on Mars. A test, originally scheduled for last week, has been repeatedly postponed because of weather, but it could get off the ground this week.
For robotic probes like the Mars Curiosity rover, NASA has employed parachutes, rocket engines, air bags and an elaborate winch system. But Curiosity is only the size of a car; those methods would fail for something much larger and heavier.
In NASA's project, the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, a saucer-shaped vehicle, will be lifted by helium balloon to 120,000 feet, before a rocket engine propels it to nearly four times the speed of sound at 180,000 feet, the stratosphere providing conditions similar to those entering the Martian atmosphere.
It will then inflate like a puffer fish to a bigger disk 20 feet wide, providing a bigger atmospheric brake. "This is the kind of research that NASA should be doing more of," Dr. Lunine said.
But he questioned the value of a prototype lunar lander called Morpheus, currently being tested at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, because NASA currently has no plans to land on the moon.
"This is exactly the kind of problem that occurs without a pathway approach to human space exploration," Dr. Lunine said.
In addition, the panel said NASA's annual budget — $17.5 billion, a figure that is expected to remain roughly the same in coming years — was insufficient to pay for such an ambitious endeavor. The criticism echoes a common admonition of spaceflight advocates: "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." Just allowing spending to rise at 2.5 percent a year to offset inflation would open possibilities, the panel said.
The National Research Council report is unlikely to resolve disagreements over the direction of NASA, undercutting another of its conclusions: To succeed, NASA needs a consensus commitment from political leaders stretching over two or three decades.
But the impasse between the Obama administration's advocacy of the asteroid mission and those pushing for the moon in Congress could continue until the next president takes office in 2017.
"I think that is highly likely," said John M. Logsdon, a former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "Verging on certain."
A new pathway to Mars
Jeff Foust – The Space Review
NASA has never suffered from a lack of advice over the years about what it should be doing in space. Various panels, sometimes chartered by Congress, sometimes by the White House, and sometimes completely independent, have reviewed the state of NASA's programs, particularly its human spaceflight efforts, and offered recommendations on the where, when, how, and why of those programs' futures. Those reports typically make a big initial splash, but then sink from view, their recommendations enacted only in part, if it all.
The latest effort to advise NASA's human spaceflight program came last week, with a report by the Committee on Human Spaceflight of the National Research Council (NRC). Congress requested the report its the 2010 NASA authorization act, asking for "a review of the goals, core capabilities, and direction of human space flight." The committee's report, in broad terms, answers that request, offering insights into the hows and whys of human space exploration. But left hanging over the report is a central question: does the American public really support the human exploration of space to the degree necessary to enable sustained long-term programs?
From flexible path to pathways
The committee examined the various rationales for human spaceflight and, like so many others in the past, failed to single all-encompassing answer. "No single rationale alone seems to justify the value of pursuing human spaceflight," the report notes. Instead, the report endorses a mix of what it calls "pragmatic" reasons, such as economic benefits, national prestige, and scientific discovery, with "aspirational" reasons like survival of the species. (Human survival might sound like the ultimate pragmatic reason for human space exploration, but it has not been traditionally a driver of national policy in human spaceflight, and the report notes it's "not possible to say whether human off-Earth settlements could eventually be developed" to achieve that goal.)
"In essence here, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and it is the aggregate of the aspirational and the pragmatic that, in the committee's opinion, motivate human spaceflight and human space exploration," said committee co-chair Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University at a briefing unveiling the report in Washington on June 4.
The report, like others, endorsed international cooperation in space exploration, although the committee argued that future cooperation in space exploration would have to be at a greater scale than previously. That would also mean, the committee concluded, cooperation with China, something that federal law currently forbids NASA from doing. "Given the rapid development of China's capabilities in space, we concluded that it is in the best interest of the US to be open to China as a future partner," Lunine said.
The biggest deviation from past studies, and NASA's current plans, is in how to achieve that horizon goal of humans on Mars. It dismisses what it calls "capabilities-based" approaches, where technologies are developed "with no particular mission or set of missions in mind." The "Flexible Path" concept described in the Augustine Committee's 2009 report is considered a variant of that.
"Absent changes along the lines we are recommending, the goal of reaching Mars on any meaningful timeframe is itself unrealistic," said the committee's other co-chair, Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana.
"The program of record, we believe, will not be able to get us to the ultimate horizon goal in a foreseeable amount of time," added Lunine. "We recommend a change to what we call a 'pathways' approach to human space exploration. This is a specific sequence of intermediate accomplishments and destination that lead to the horizon goal, and for which there is technology feed-forward from one mission to subsequent missions."
The report included a set of "Pathway Principles" and "Decision Rules" that it argued NASA should follow when crafting that specific sequence of missions leading up to Mars. Those principles emphasize international cooperation and sustainability, among other aspects. The intermediate steps on the way to Mars should permit people "to see progress and develop confidence in NASA being able to execute the pathway" while remaining affordable and sustaining a suitable operational tempo of missions. The decision rules instruct NASA on when to start—or stop—specific pathways and how to choose what technologies to invest in given limited funds.
The report includes three sample pathways. One, "ARM-to-Mars," is perhaps the closest to NASA's current plans, featuring the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) followed by missions to Mars orbit and its moons, followed by a human landing on Mars. It is, perhaps, an oversimplification of NASA's plans, since the agency in recent months has talked about a role for human missions in cislunar space after the ARM and before Mars, albeit not to the surface of the Moon (see "The uncertain road to Mars", The Space Review, April 21, 2014).
A second pathway, called "Moon-to-Mars," skips the ARM in favor human missions to the surface of the Moon, including establishment of a surface outpost, before heading to the surface of Mars. A final pathway, "Enhanced Exploration," is more of an all-of-the-above approach, including missions to the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point, a near Earth asteroid in a "native" orbit (i.e., not captured by the ARM), missions to the surface of the Moon and to the moons of Mars before finally landing on Mars.
The committee emphasized in its report that is was not recommending one pathway over another. However, some may come away from the report with a feeling that the committee was leaning towards those that included the Moon. Those architectures, the report noted, rate higher on many of the "Pathway Principles" attributes, including the significance of the destinations, the pace of missions, the development of technology needed to carry out the missions, and development risk in general.
The committee stopped short, though, of putting a price tag on any of the mission pathways included in the report, citing the wide range of variables in the pace at which the programs are pursued and when they are started. Indeed, some of the charts in the report showing spending over time did not include a y-axis quantifying the amount of money being spent. "I think the best way that I can put it is that we're talking about a program that lasts decades and costs hundreds of billions of dollars," said John Sommerer, who chaired the committee's technical panel.
Reactions
The committee's report generated a bit of an unusual reaction from NASA and Congress, who have often been at loggerheads in recent yards regarding the direction of the agency's human spaceflight program. They treated the report as something of a Rorschach test, seeing very different things from the same document.
"After a preliminary review, we are pleased to find the NRC's assessment and identification of compelling themes for human exploration are consistent with the bipartisan plan agreed to by Congress and the Administration in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and that we have been implementing ever since," NASA said in a statement issued shortly after the report's release.
"There is a consensus that our horizon goal should be a human mission to Mars and the stepping stone and pathways thrust of the NRC report complements NASA's ongoing approach," the statement added. The NASA statement, though, made no mention of the report's criticism of NASA's current approach, including the rejection of the flexible path approach and a dim view the report took of the ARM's role in furthering human missions to Mars.
Those criticisms, though, did not escape the leadership of the House Science Committee. "The Obama Administration has failed to present a coherent plan to develop the capabilities and technologies required to support a human mission to Mars," the committee's chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), said in a statement. He noted that a NASA authorization bill the committee passed—and due to be considered by the full House as soon as Monday—would require NASA to lay out a sequence of missions like the pathways in the report.
Smith also used the report to criticize ARM, something he and other members of his committee have been skeptical of. "This is a mission without a realistic budget, without a destination and without a certain launch date," he said in the statement. "The Committee has heard a number of concerns about ARM, as well as promising alternatives such as a flyby mission to Mars and Venus in 2021." However, the NRC's report is silent on the concept of a Mars/Venus flyby mission in 2021, a variant of Dennis Tito's Inspiration Mars concept (see "Mars 2021 and the quest for direction in human spaceflight", The Space Review, March 3, 2014).
Democratic members of the committee also endorsed calls for the development of a roadmap of missions, as the authorization bill calls for. "Their report is clear—we are not going to have a human space exploration program worthy of this great nation if we continue down the current path of failing to provide the resources needed to make real progress and failing to embrace a clear goal and a pathway to achieving that goal," said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), ranking member of the House Science Committee, in a statement.
In the Senate, though, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee's space subcommittee offered a different assessment of the report. "This is affirmation that a mission to Mars is a go," said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), in a statement. "But as the report points out, we'll have to give NASA sufficient resources to get this done."
One outside expert was critical of the lack of details regarding international cooperation. In a talk June 5 at the Stimson Center in Washington, James Clay Moltz of the Naval Postgraduate School noted that while the report talked about importance of international cooperation in human space exploration, it didn't go into details about how to achieve it.
"It talked about the importance of international cooperation in the beginning, it talked about the importance of international cooperation at the end, but all of the analysis that it did in the middle about the budget and about the operational tempo and about the activities and the capabilities, it was all only the US program," he said. "It didn't consider the possibility of any sort of joint program in the human spaceflight area."
At the briefing announcing the report, Lunine said the committee didn't try to "constrain" what those international contributions could be, including whether any such contribitions should be on the critical path of the overall program. "We just pointed out that, because of the magnitude of the program overall, they will have to be themselves of a substantial magnitude."
Fiscal fantasies
Another criticism that Moltz levied on the report had to do with budgets. "I was very surprised that the answer they came up with was, 'Spend more money on NASA. Raise the NASA budget,'" he said. He felt that the guidelines of the report would have warned the committee to avoid what he considered a simplistic conclusion.
The report argued that budgets that only keep pace with inflation are insufficient to carry out the pathways included in the report. "With current flat or even inflation-adjusted budget projections for human spaceflight, there are no viable pathways to Mars," the report stated. Such a projection "limits human spaceflight to LEO until after the end of the ISS program."
Budget increases for NASA—or, at least, for its human spaceflight programs—at about double the rate of inflation would improve the situation. "Increasing NASA's budget to allow increasing the human spaceflight budget by 5 percent per year would enable pathways with potentially viable mission rates, greatly reducing technical, cost, and schedule risk."
The committee considered what it calls "operationally viable" pathways, a compromise between "schedule driven" concepts that the committee deemed unaffordable and "budget driven" scenarios that had too slow of an operational tempo. Those operationally viable pathways would land humans on Mars as early as 2037 in the ARM-to-Mars case where the International Space Station is retired in 2020; in the Enhanced Exploration pathway where the ISS operates to 2028, humans would make it to the Martian surface no sooner than 2050.
Those operationally viable pathways all fit into budget projections where the human spaceflight budget increases at no more than twice the rate of inflation, or five percent a year (the report assumes an inflation rate of 2.5 percent a year throughout the timeframe of the study.) The catch, though, is that the budgets would have to increase at five percent a year every year, for perhaps decades, a rate of growth that NASA has never sustained over the long term.
That conclusion appears to clash with another finding of the report. The committee examined the long history of public opinion polls about space exploration. (The committee did not perform a new poll itself, although it did survey "stakeholders" in the space community.) The committee found that while polls showed general interest in space exploration, that interest did not translate into support for increased budgets.
"However, despite positive attitudes toward NASA, there is relatively little public support for increased spending for space exploration," the report concluded. While the percentage of people who believe that the nation is spending too much on space has declined somewhat over the years, it remains higher than the percentage who believes the US is spending too little, a fraction that has remained relatively unchanged since the 1970s.
So how does the committee reconcile the requirement for long-term spending increases with a lack of public support for such increases? "We do not find that to be a stopper," Daniels said, arguing that while there's limited public support for increased spending, there's also little in the way of strong opposition to such increased spending should policymakers decide to pursue them.
"Given reasonable progress, we'll see what we've seen in the past, which is retrospective public support," Daniels said. That was a reference to the support that the Apollo program had long after the end of the program, even though the program rarely had the support of the majority of the American public during the 1960s.
"The record from the '60s suggests that, during the Apollo program, there wasn't tremendous demand for the program, but there wasn't tremendous opposition to it, and after it happened, the public felt good about it," said Roger Tourangeau, who chaired the committee's public and stakeholder opinions panel.
Daniel's message was that there was a need for "strong and sustained national leadership" to move forward on a plan along one of the pathways laid out in the report, on the assumption that the public will follow.
"Our committee concluded that any human exploration program will only succeed if it is appropriately funded and receives a sustained commitment on the part of those who govern our nation," Daniels elaborated in the statement accompanying the report. "That commitment cannot change direction election after election. Our elected leaders are the critical enablers of the nation's investment in human spaceflight, and only they can assure that the leadership, personnel, governance, and resources are in place in our human exploration program."
The report, though, is silent on how to create and maintain that commitment, a critical issue given the record of the last several decades of shifting direction from administration to administration in space policy. With the requirement to maintain steady budget increases over decades, and the tepid public support for space exploration, it becomes difficult to imagine multiple successive Administrations and Congresses staying on the same course given the short-term perturbations those policies will doubtless experience from now through the 2040s or 2050s.
"Asking future presidents to preserve rather than tinker with previously chosen pathways, or asking congresses present and future to aggressively fund human spaceflight with budgets that increase by more than the rate of inflation every year for decades, may seem fanciful," the report acknowledges. "But it is no less so than imagining a magic rationale that ignites and then sustains a public demand that has never existed in the first place."
But if the report rightly disabuses the reader of the existence of such "magic rationales," it's also hard for the reader to imagine the nation committed, technically and fiscally, to any of the report's pathways over the next several decades. Unless the space community, along with political leadership on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, can come up with ways to develop and sustain that long-term political support, the recommendations of this committee, as thorough and well-intentioned as they may be, will end up atop the stack of other reports that have tried, and failed, to chart a long-term future for NASA's human space exploration program.
Western sanctions unlikely to affect Russian space program — Roscosmos
ITAR-TASS
Russia is capable of further developing its national space program despite recently imposed Western sanctions over Moscow's stance on the situation in neighbouring Ukraine, the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) said on Monday.
"Sanctions would leave an impact but not a critical one for us," Oleg Ostapenko said adding that Russia currently boasts a significant potential for the independent development in the sphere of the space exploration.
"We are capable of creating everything needed for the further development, we have worked out such program and are actively working on it," Ostapenko said. "We are not afraid of the sanctions."
Two months ago NASA announced its decision on pulling out from joint projects with Moscow. The American space agency announced, however, that it intended to continue cooperation with Russia on the maintenance of the International Space Station (ISS).
The Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, a city with a special status on the Crimean Peninsula, where most residents are Russians, signed agreements with Russia to become its constituent members on March 18 after a referendum two days earlier in which most Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. Crimea's merger with Russia drew an angry response from the West. The European Union jointly with the United States declared a set of sanctions against Russia.
The European Space Agency (ESA), however, repeatedly stated that it had no plans of severing cooperation with Russia in the sphere of space exploration.
NASA's decision to suspend the majority of space cooperation projects with Russia was accepted not only with bewilderment among Russian space experts, but also drew criticism inside the US space agency as well.
A number of Russian space experts remarked that the suspension of cooperation would be to the detriment of NASA itself.
A New Look at Cooperation on the Chinese Space Station
Jordan Foley – Space News
Within the past decade, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has experienced a steady progression of technology resulting in prestigious accomplishments for its manned space program. To reassure the world of its benign rise, China is seeking collaboration in the exploration and utilization of outer space. Its future space station, for example, is being advertised as an international collaborative project on an unprecedented scale for China.
If the Chinese Space Station (CSS) endeavor can be effectively managed by China's leadership as a platform for international cooperation and global leadership, then CSS can achieve subsidiary benefits for the PRC in domestic and foreign policy. However, inviting international partners in the process of constructing and operating a space station presents an expansively demanding policy problem. China must determine if there are tangible benefits associated with different scales and scopes of space station cooperation.
The key policy problem is finding a model that is effective for fair and rational cooperation, which is defined in Chinese white papers as mutually beneficial, transparent, reciprocal and sharing the costs, while striking a balance with partners over ownership, intellectual property and utilization rights.
Officially, the Chinese government holds that each and every country enjoys equal rights to freely explore, develop and utilize outer space. The open invitation to join in CSS changed the political climate for nations contemplating space activities, such as Pakistan. Calls for cooperation allow other countries and experts to envision research projects through Chinese guidance that otherwise were not possible.
However, before assuming a utilitarian image of cooperation on CSS, it is important to determine the feasible model of cooperation based on the Chinese condition while considering what China means by its four-tiered definition of meaningful cooperation. By assessing terrestrial examples of cooperation and positing China's grand strategic goals, it is possible to determine the framework on which CSS cooperation will most likely be based in the 2020s.
"Mutual benefit" is echoed in several documents pertaining to cooperation in outer space. The 2006 U.S. National Space Policy "encourage[s] international cooperation with foreign nations and/or consortia on space activities that are of mutual benefit and that further exploration and use of space." The 1996 U.N. Declaration on International Cooperation says that in all aspects of international cooperation states must cooperate on an equitable and mutually acceptable basis. Understanding what China believes is a "mutually acceptable basis" requires further examination of current practices of international cooperation.
Chinese intentions become more apparent when viewed through the theory of international modernization, which suggests an interaction between national transformation and the international environment resulting in a dynamic process that involves multinational activities. For Chinese space activities, this includes fostering multilateral bodies such as the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO), bilateral cooperation with several Latin American and African countries, and increased participation in U.N. space-related organizations.
Mutual benefit also suggests an element of reciprocity, which means "an interchange of privileges." In the context of cooperation, reciprocity differs from mutual benefit because it suggests an exchange of services rather than a transaction of goods. Reciprocity also has to do with recognizing sovereign rights. China holds that states, while free to determine all aspects of their participation in space cooperation, should adhere to the legitimate rights and interests of the parties concerned. In a Chinese-led space station, this would presumably mean guests would adhere to their host's rules.
Defining theses terms in their literal context is important, but so is grounding this argument in reality. China will not simply collaborate for the sake of collaboration. China will also not reject any goodwill offer from another developing country to join CSS. The PRC's strategic allies in the developing world are interested in the Chinese space program. Hence, the political gesture of training astronauts for missions could have significant benefits for China's international image. In the event that another country lags far behind in science and technology, China must figure out what can be exchanged for training and cooperation — perhaps unfettered access to natural resource rights, business contract preferences and related agreements, or port calls for the People's Liberation Army navy from developing coastal countries like Venezuela. The model for cooperation on CSS should not be limited to the framework of the international space station, in which in-kind transfers are through transportation agreements and laboratory utilization rights. CSS presents the opportunity for a more explicit quid pro quo model.
Military control of China's space program and related transparency issues make Sino-U.S. cooperation difficult. Other factors play into the lack of bilateral exchanges, but China could take steps to appear to improve its image internationally while not sacrificing much in terms of revealing sensitive information. In fact, cooperating with the United States on CSS might do more harm than good for China. There is no precedent for high-technology space cooperation between the two countries and the mere act of cooperating would cause significant backlash in both. In the near future, China would be better off pursuing agreements with the United Nations.
China should include the U.N. in selecting astronauts from non-spacefaring states. Also, an agreement with the U.N. should coincide with Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty ratification to symbolize China's commitment to become more in line with the international system. The U.S. and China have yet to ratify the treaty. China has stated that it is waiting for U.S. ratification before it considers; however, getting out in front of the U.S. on this issue, carried out simultaneously with a space cooperation agreement, would gain the Chinese a higher level of influence in the U.N. system. As a result, China would appear more transparent and benign without compromising national security, thus facilitating its rise and expanding its global influence.
The Chinese government's incentive policies and stated goals reflect a concerted effort to capture the benefits of space as an enabling, high-tech industry. Domestic policies and incentives, however, may not be sufficient to overcome the high costs associated with advanced space operations; therefore China sees international cooperation as a form of cost sharing as well. CSS has great strategic significance, high scientific value and broad business prospects, but the project is risky. The development cycle is long and requires a great investment that does not necessarily materialize in short-term benefits. Domestic stability is a great concern for Chinese leaders, and many in China believe the large sums of money used on the space program could be better spent elsewhere. As the cost of operating CSS grows, China will be more inclined to cooperate for fiscal reasons rather than its touted motive: "for the benefit of mankind."
The model for cooperation on CSS has not yet been determined. There are several suggestions, but it is unlikely that any substantial agreements will be made in the near future. China is advertising openness and inclusion in the space station effort, but in reality the PRC will be much less blithe regarding the legal framework. As a model for cooperation, China should pursue a hub-and-spoke model similar to the international space station. China should control the majority share, establish a chain of command and be in a position similar to the U.S. on ISS. An important thing to note is that ISS likely will remain in orbit when CSS is operating. China should vigorously pursue technical and operational interfaces with ISS while both are in orbit. Cooperation may not be on the level of the shuttle-Mir or even Apollo-Soyuz, but any increased interaction with the ISS partners, even just multilateral meetings, will make later cooperation on CSS more possible.
In the meantime, cooperation on CSS will most likely be limited to regional, non-ISS nations. It is important to note that if CSS is not truly an international platform but rather an Asia-centered space station, the benefits for China are still significant. In fact, this model would be similar to the Soviet Union accommodating visitors from the Interkosmos organization on Salyut. Interkosmos was a research organization founded by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1976, a number of socialist countries signed an accord with the Soviet Union to cooperate in outer space. The international space research organization was run by the Soviets in partnership with fraternal socialist states. Shortly after its formation, the Soviet Union introduced the idea of having a guest visit the Salyut station from one of the Interkosmos nations. After several record-breaking flights on Salyut, it was decided to begin the first of the Interkosmos missions. In 1978, a Czechoslovak became the first non-American or Soviet to fly into space. The public relations value of having an operational facility accommodating a succession of foreign researchers was tremendous.
The Soviet Interkosmos missions of the 1970s and 1980s should serve as an effective model for CSS missions. The visitors could come from APSCO, a Chinese-determined consortium of strategically important nations, and possibly a U.N. selection. The development of space resource services for other countries would further enhance China's soft power in those regions. In this model, CSS participants would be expected to provide their own experiments and focus research on their home countries.
Chinese experiments would remain separate from the guests'. If China defines sovereignty more like on ISS, where supreme authority rests in the hands of the owner of a given element, and independent nations operate their given areas but exercise jurisdiction with partners in mind, then cooperation will be much more open. These levels of openness, however, will not further Chinese strategic goals. Chinese rule over major elements should only be yielded to a nation that is commensurate to the partners' technical contributions on ISS. The ISS framework, however, is a useful model, and those studying space social sciences in China agree.
The formative events in China's space development — the launch of the first satellite in 1970, the launch of the first geostationary orbiting communications satellite in 1984, and the first human spaceflight in 2003 — qualified China for inclusion among the major spacefaring countries. In the context of China's space history, equity appears central to the principal concern of its political leadership. It is therefore thought that China seeks inclusion, not isolation, from the international community. A China-centered space station allowing APSCO and U.N. selection of member states to send their astronauts to CSS would present the image of a responsible international actor. Meaningful technical cooperation would be limited, as it was with Interkosmos, but the diplomatic advantages would be well worth the investment. In the near-future, the Chinese Space Station will be an effective regional foreign policy tool that serves a greater strategic purpose.
As for Sino-U.S. cooperation on CSS, it is not that the United States will receive the same exclusionary treatment it gave to China, but rather U.S. inclusion at this time might not be worth the effort for either side. Of course, China would be open and willing to cooperate with the United States, but the most realistic depiction of a cooperative framework on CSS in the 2020s does not include the major space powers on the same space station. CSS will remain a China-led regional platform for cooperation during its time in orbit.
Incremental steps toward cooperating bilaterally can be made between the two spacefaring nations in the meantime, but China has no dire need to include the United States on this specific project. There are many forms of cooperation, and CSS remains flexible enough to accommodate the United States if there is a change of heart in the next decade. However, China can achieve its strategic goals of operating an international space research platform without U.S. involvement. When the time finally comes for the decommissioning of ISS, China will own the only operating space station, so the question becomes: Why would it include the U.S. on anything but Chinese terms?
NASA Official: A Landsat 8 Clone Would Cost More Than $650 Million
Dan Leone - Space News
Building a successor to Landsat 8, the latest in a long-running series of medium-resolution Earth observing satellites, will cost more than the $650 million target Congress asked NASA to hit as part of a 2014 spending bill, Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich told an agency-chartered advisory panel here May 28.
In responding to Congress, NASA is mulling three possible Landsat 9 architectures, but none fit the constraints lawmakers laid out in the spending bill signed in September, Freilich said.
The legislation calls for NASA to design a Landsat 9 that could "ensure data continuity in an era of increasingly scarce resources with an overall mission cap of approximately $650 million." Landsat 8, which was turned over to the U.S. Geological Survey in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in May 2013 to begin service, cost the government about $850 million to build and launch. Five years of operations is expected to push the total to nearly $1 billion.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, ran Landsat 8 development, tapping Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Virginia, for the spacecraft and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, to build Landsat 8's Operational Land Imager camera and a cryocooler for the Goddard-built Thermal Infrared Sensor.
Figuring out how to drive down the collection cost of future Landsat data is one of the key issues the White House has asked NASA to report on by Aug. 15, when the agency will present its imaging strategy for the 20-year period that begins when Landsat 8's primary mission ends in 2018.
Other than mentioning how high launch costs have diminished the appeal of continuously launching a series of single-instrument spacecraft, Freilich did not provide many hints the strategy NASA intends to propose.
"Flying multiple spacecraft with one instrument only is probably not the right way," Freilich said in his May 28 talk to a roomful of senior Earth scientists. When it comes to cost, that approach is "not scoring well right now."
NASA has been studying ways to ensure the long-term collection of Landsat-grade multispectral and thermal imagery.
NASA is looking for solutions that can be accomplished for an average annual expenditure of $120 million — the cap the White House set in 2013 when it directed the agency to design what Freilich called a "sustainable and sustained" system of spacecraft to continue the Landsat record after Landsat 8.
"The problem would be a whole lot easier if we had a lot more money," Freilich said, adding that the NASA-led team has come up with several "more or less viable architectures, but none of them are perfect."
One approach NASA could take, and which Freilich has mentioned in interviews before, is to order a block of essentially identical satellites, banking on savings from locking down parts and personnel in a long-term deal. But it is too late to order a copy of Landsat 8 and expect it to cost much less than the one Orbital Sciences shipped out of its Arizona satellite factory in late 2012.
"[U]nless you design basically a block buy system ... the second copy that wasn't planned for costs pretty much the same as the first one," Freilich said.
For the study the White House ordered, NASA was instructed to keep all options on the table for a Landsat 8 successor, including procuring Landsat-caliber imagery from commercial or international sources. Europe's soon-to-launch Sentinel 2 series of satellites — which are being designed to carry an optical payload with visible, near-infrared and shortwave infrared sensors to collect images at a 60-meter spatial resolution — might fit the bill, Freilich said.
Those satellites are designed for just more than seven years of observations from an orbit of 768 kilometers, a bit more than 50 kilometers higher than Landsat 8's orbit. The first Sentinel 2 would launch in 2015, the second no sooner than two years later, according to the European Space Agency's website. A single satellite would canvas its observable latitudes once every 10 days. Two satellites would accomplish the feat in five. That compares with one sweep every 16 days from Landsat 8.
However, the Sentinel 2 spacecraft, part of Europe's planned Copernicus constellation of 15 satellites, lacks Landsat-8's thermal infrared imaging capability, Freilich said. If NASA decided to rely on the Sentinel 2s for multispectral, medium-resolution images, the agency would have to find some other way to get thermal images, possibly by "doing a U.S. thermal infrared formation flying [spacecraft] with those Sentinels."
Although Europe has already started launching Sentinel satellites, one of which launched April 3 from Kourou, French Guiana, "they don't have the 40-year experience that we have, and there are small but not negligible details that have to be worked out on data exchange," Freilich said, adding that the U.S. scientists "justifiably ... trust NASA. And perhaps they trust the European community a little bit less at this stage."
However, Freilich hastened to add, "the record shows that when ESA is leading the development, [the mission] pretty much overperforms."
Too bad there's no AAA on Mars as the Curiosity rover faces equipment trouble
Marc Kaufman – The Washington Post
When the Curiosity rover set out last July on its much-anticipated drive to the Mars mission's ultimate destination — the three-mile-high science prize called Mount Sharp — everyone knew the going might get rough. The terrain ahead was more rugged than anything experienced before, and the winter nighttime temperatures regularly plunged to 120 degrees below zero.
Keeping all the sophisticated instruments onboard safe while guiding the one-ton rover over rises and through sand dunes would be an unprecedented challenge. Though it was only a six-mile road trip, team leaders predicted it might take as long as a year to finish.
Mars, however, had other plans for the rover, and they weren't cordial. The allotted year is almost over, and Curiosity is but halfway to Mount Sharp.
Mount Sharp is unlike anything extraterrestrial ever explored. The rocks and minerals there "will tell us so much about the geological history of the region, and maybe more of the globe," says Curiosity geologist Ralph Milliken of Brown University. Given the scientific treasures known to be present, the base of Mount Sharp is often described by the Curiosity team as "the Promised Land."
The delay in getting to Mount Sharp is largely the result of one big, worrisome and time-consuming problem: damage to the rover's wheels from their contact with sharp Martian rocks embedded in unyielding sandstone. Some gradual deterioration had been anticipated, but not the punctures and tears that began showing up late last year.
"What was happening to the wheels was a really big surprise to the team, and not a good one," said Curiosity project manager James Erickson. "We had done extensive testing on those wheels, but we didn't do testing on extremely sharp and pointy rocks embedded into the ground. But it turns out that Mars has many, many of them."
Project scientist John Grotzinger said the wheel issue "quickly became an epic-scale problem for the mission. . . . It's a little like being told you're critically ill. You don't know how much longer you have, but you know it will be a rough road."
A rapid deterioration
The rover had been on Mars for roughly 400 "sols" (that's 411 Earth days) when images of the wheels began to reveal some wear, according to deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada. That was some five months after Curiosity left Yellowknife Bay, where a low-lying area in Gale Crater yielded the mission's greatest findings so far: that long-ago conditions at the once-watery site had been conducive to the existence of life.
Made of milled aluminum, each wheel has raised and reinforced treads that support a tire, which is only 0.03 inches thick. These are the first wheels of their kind to be used on Mars, designed to be light, to be flexible enough for the vehicle to land on them, and to have the traction needed to climb Mount Sharp.
"As the days went on, what we saw was alarming," Vasavada said. "Not alarming in the sense that the wheels were in serious danger, but alarming in that the rate of deterioration appeared to be picking up."
The first priority was to stop the damage, and that meant parking the rover. It sat for two weeks in the dead of Martian winter as the team worked feverishly to understand two problems: Which terrains were tearing up the wheels, and how could those damaging areas be avoided?
Finding answers required long hours of matching landscape pictures taken earlier by Curiosity with images of the wheels taken around the same time. Images from the orbiting HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera were also blown up to their maximum to identify rocks along the path and to get overviews to help identify areas that appeared problematic.
At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the six wheels of a Curiosity double were given similar damage, and it was put through its paces in the Mars Yard, a simulated Martian landscape at the lab. Gradually, the team leaders became convinced it was safe to resume driving.
The drives were short: 10 to 30 meters. That began to change only when permission was granted to drive the vehicle backward, a maneuver that limits wear and tear on the most damaged middle and front wheels.
But it was an awkward way to travel. Most of the cameras that Curiosity's drivers had used to plot their paths are on the front of the rover, so there was only limited camera coverage to show what lay ahead when driving backward.
Only recently has the wheel problem been deemed manageable, though with a significant change in how the traverse — and the upcoming climb of Mount Sharp — would proceed.
"We'll be driving on sand whenever we can, and avoiding the bedrock," Grotzinger said. "The wheels will no doubt continue to take on some damage, but we know much better now how to limit that."
Making progress
As a welcome sign of that return to near normal, the rover used its autonomous navigation in late May for the first time since the wheel problem arose. The "autonav" program – with its ability to independently identify risks and avoid them — allows the rover to drive farther than rover drivers initially program for the day. But the rover is still generally being driven in reverse, and the autonav works only when the rover is going forward. That means a day's drive now usually includes a U-turn after the driver-controlled part of the trek is finished and the autonav takes over.
Despite the progress, the wheel drama was a sobering reminder that, as NASA officials often put it, "Mars is hard." An expedition that had been highly productive and relatively problem-free for more than a year suddenly had a threatening, and seemingly worsening, problem.
All during that Yellowknife campaign, there had been voices calling for a speedier wrap-up so the traverse to Mount Sharp could begin.
The scientists didn't dispute the value of what was being investigated and discovered, but they did worry that the rigors of working on Mars could have unexpected consequences on the rover and so it would be better to head for the main target as soon as possible. On Mars, time always equals risk.
But the discoveries kept coming, so the planned short detour to the Yellowknife area lasted for more than eight months. Top scientists and many others advocated staying. Studying Mount Sharp is a key goal of the expedition, but Curiosity is also officially on a "mission of discovery" that allows for detours.
While the wheel drama has dominated the traverse, Curiosity has continued to return some exciting results. The team, for instance, found evidence of the long-ago presence of water across the now parched landscape. And Curiosity team science papers presented in the spring reported the strongest evidence yet that the Martian surface holds simple carbon-based organic compounds — the building blocks of life that have so far eluded clear detection.
Curiosity is now in full drive mode again, Grotzinger said. He was unable to predict when the rover might reach Mount Sharp, but he did say that the nuclear generator powering the rover will probably wear out before the wheels do — and that neither would happen for quite a few years.
"This was a huge bonding experience for [the] mission," Grotzinger said. "Success is always great, but there's nothing like impending doom to bring people together. Now we can say, 'We licked that one.' "
Kaufman's book "Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission" will be published in August.
Editorial | ISEE-3 Reboot Project Is Already a Winner
Space News Editor
Inspiration is a word that gets bandied about a lot in the space business, often as justification for multibillion-dollar programs that never come to fruition, let alone inspire.
But one enterprising volunteer group is demonstrating that inspiration need not be driven by piles of government cash. Using donated funds and equipment, the team recently reawakened and took control of a long-dormant NASA astronomy satellite.
The International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE)-3 was launched in 1978 as part of a three-satellite mission to study the interaction between solar wind and Earth's magnetic field. NASA later modified the spacecraft's orbit for follow-on missions, including comet encounters, before putting it out to pasture in 1997.
The ISEE-3 Reboot Project, led by entrepreneur Dennis Wingo and gadfly blogger Keith Cowing — both fixtures in the space community — aims to divert the satellite back into a near-Earth orbit to resume its original astronomy mission. The group secured NASA's formal blessing and assistance in the form of a Space Act Agreement and assembled a team that includes Morehead State University in Kentucky, a German-based amateur satellite radio group and the SETI Institute. To finance the operation, the group raised nearly $160,000 in donations through RocketHub.com, a crowdfunding website.
In late May, the team took command of the spacecraft using a transmitter provided by a German company and attached to the Arecibo radio astronomy antenna in Puerto Rico. Telemetry from the spacecraft indicates that its science instruments are powered on, Mr. Cowing reported in a June 5 update.
Technicians are now racing to maneuver the spacecraft, which currently appears to be on a collision course with the Moon. It is unclear at this point whether they will be able to redirect the spacecraft in time.
Whatever the final outcome, the ISEE-3 Reboot Project has already succeeded in attracting an audience that the space community often has a hard time reaching.
Credit the team, for having the vision and gumption to pull this off, and NASA, which hasn't always embraced these types of nontraditional endeavors. Together they have shown how prolific a little inspiration can be.
Profile | Michael D. Griffin, Chairman and Chief Executive, Schafer Corp.
Warren Ferster – Space News
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had been tucked away in academia for some three years when he was called on to help reverse the fortunes of Schafer Corp., the Huntsville, Alabama, engineering and technical analysis firm whose sales had been declining following the loss of key contracts with NASA and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
Griffin, who departed NASA in 2009 with the change in presidential administrations, was ready for a switch. While serving as an eminent scholar and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, he was tapped frequently by U.S. government agencies for consulting work including the recently completed study for the Air Force on mitigating a loss of access to the Russian-built RD-180 rocket engine.
"So I realized after about three years that I really wasn't occupied with university stuff — I was just sitting in a university still in this arena," Griffin said. "It was hard to find time to teach class. I didn't want to do it that way so I decided that it wasn't the right spot for me."
The move seems to be working out, particularly for Schafer, where Griffin took over in August 2012. The company is expected to increase its revenue by about 12 percent, to $120 million, this year, and Griffin says there's no reason it cannot maintain that growth rate for the next five years.
The privately held company has some 600 employees, which is up a bit from a year ago, Griffin says.
Schafer's most promising growth areas likely are outside the aerospace sector — in information technology (IT), for example — but Griffin also sees potential new revenue streams in space and missile defense. Currently aerospace, much of it classified, represents about 30 percent of the company's total business.
Being back in the private sector hasn't stopped Griffin from voicing opinions about NASA's human spaceflight program. A vocal critic of the decision to scrap the Constellation lunar exploration program for which he was architect in chief, Griffin recently co-wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle endorsing an outside proposal to send astronauts on a Mars flyby mission in 2020.
That mission, the brainchild of pioneering space tourist Dennis Tito, would leverage hardware NASA is already working on, namely the heavy-lift Space Launch System and Orion deep-space capsule. The catch is that the mission would have to launch in 2021 to minimize the transit time to Mars.
Griffin spoke recently with SpaceNews Editor Warren Ferster.
What are Schafer's aerospace programs to the extent that you can discuss them?
In general terms I can say we do directed energy work for the Air Force, space situational awareness for the Air Force, atmospheric corrections for optical systems.
Are Schafer's contracts typically program specific?
Exactly. Directed energy is an example. If you want to propagate laser beams in the atmosphere, we're your people. We're part of the contractor team that runs the Maui optical site in Hawaii, which the Air Force uses to take pictures of things. If you want to take a picture clearly then you have to have atmospheric correction. It's a fairly small group of people who know how to do that kind of thing. We're in that community.
Is your space situational awareness business growing?
No. It's stable; I certainly wouldn't say it's growing. Our growth has been in IT, systems engineering and technical analysis work is doing well, DARPA and Homeland Security.
Is any of your work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency work space-related?
Some of it is but I can't go into what we do for DARPA.
Are you looking to get back into doing work for NASA and the Missile Defense Agency?
Yes, absolutely. In fact the Missile Defense Agency Engineering and Support services contract comes up next year. We'll be going after that for sure. And then we did win a spot on the KLXS-2 team — the Kennedy Launch Services support contract. Millennium Engineering is the prime. So we're trying to regrow the company back into the aerospace sector, both national security and civil.
Is NASA's Space Launch System an opportunity?
Absolutely. Boeing has the prime contract on that but there are places for professional services contractors such as us. Boeing hires a lot of those people. Teledyne has got the engineering services and prototyping contract—we're a Teledyne team member on that. That's an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract.
What has been Schafer's revenue curve since it was acquired in 2008 by Metalmark, the private-equity company?
It's been down until this year. So it's a bit of a turnaround. We're looking to grow at least 12 percent a year for the next five years — that's our target.
Do you think that's realistic in this environment?
I do. We're looking for more than that in the IT sector — I think that's entirely reasonable — and in the government services sector that kind of growth might not be achievable but when you average it all out I think 12 percent is very reasonable.
Is Schafer interested in corporate acquisitions?
If it's a good deal, yeah. Two years ago we acquired a small outfit that does highly classified stuff. We added them to the Schafer portfolio.
Can you name the company?
No. They do work for the National Security Agency. We're always on the lookout for a good financial deal. If you're in the private-equity business this is a good time to be a buyer. We have an offer in right now for a small acquisition that I cannot name. I've been here about 18 months we've put in offers on three or four things in that time.
You recently helped write a report that laid out some pretty serious consequences for losing access to the RD-180, which serves as the main engine on United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket. What message were you trying to send?
I'd rather not comment on the RD-180 — I'd really rather have the Air Force do the commenting on that.
OK, aside from the study, has the United States neglected development work in propulsion?
It's very clearly true that it has been a long time since the United States has developed a liquid rocket engine in the 500,000-pound thrust class or larger. The last one was the RS-68 for the Delta 4 and the last time before that was the Space Shuttle Main Engine.
Do you think liquid-oxygen (LOX)-hydrocarbon is the way to go, as Gen. William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, has suggested?
I don't want to get into what our committee recommended. As Gen. Shelton said, certainly we were urging that people look at LOX-hydrocarbon. Whether the hydrocarbon is kerosene or methane remains to be determined. But there is a clear lack today of independent U.S. capability in that arena, and we've been buying it from Russia for 20 years. Policymakers are going to have to decide whether that situation should continue.
You've voiced support for the 2021 Mars flyby mission proposed by Dennis Tito's Inspiration Mars group. What about that mission do you find so attractive?
It certainly is within the realm of possibility. It's a good opportunity from an astrodynamics point of view — it's in the right place and we can get there with not a lot of energy. We have talked for three decades about how Mars is the long-term goal. Here's an opportunity to do a number of things you're going to have to learn to do when you're going to put people on Mars. You're going to have to learn to fly in space for a long period of time — hundreds of days. You need to know about the radiation environment — we don't know enough about that now. There's the challenge of the life-support equipment — it has to work for hundreds of days. There's the challenge of bringing together a re-entry vehicle that has to come in at a higher speed than we've ever done before. These are things like when we did Apollo 8, which went around the Moon. Apollo 8 wasn't a lunar landing but it helped people answer a lot of questions about going to the Moon. If the United States were to step up and do [a Mars landing mission], a Mars flyby at an early opportunity would answer a lot of questions for us. Things that whenever you go you're going to have to answer them sometime.
Wouldn't it be difficult to make the 2021 launch window, even if NASA started working in earnest on such a mission at the start the 2015 fiscal year?
Yes, of course it would be challenging. That is one of the reasons it would be worth doing. If we are ever to land on Mars, the challenges imposed by the proposed flyby will have to be faced. The sooner we do so, the better.
Would that require a reordering of NASA's priorities?
Probably so, but that is not for me to say.
Suppose the White House elects to do this but NASA is unable to pull the mission together by 2021. Are there worthwhile near-term backup mission options available — to any destination — or would NASA be forced to stand down until the next opportunity for the Mars flyby, which as I understand it comes in the 2030s?
I don't know. That sounds like a great study question for the astrodynamicists.
If given the opportunity, would you consider going back to NASA?
I'm always available for government service at the right level if somebody wants me to consider coming back. Most people, if asked, will agree to serve. It's a duty.
'Unflappable' Science 'Warrior' Chosen to Lead Key NASA Climate Lab
Eli Kintisch – Science Magazine's Science Insider
NASA today named Gavin Schmidt, 46, to lead the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), one of the world's top climate research institutions. Schmidt, a climate modeler and current deputy director of the lab, follows in the footsteps of prominent climatologist James Hansen, who retired from the agency last year. Although Schmidt does not have quite the public name recognition of Hansen, he is known as one of the nation's most visible communicators of climate science.
With more than 120 scientific publications to his name, Schmidt has earned the respect of his peers for his work as a climate modeler at GISS, with particular interests in paleoclimate and various drivers of modern climate. But he's developed a much broader audience as an energetic spokesman for climate science, a role that seems destined to grow as he assumes his new job. He has been a voluminous contributor to RealClimate, for instance, a climate science blog that has garnered more than 15 million views since Schmidt and several colleagues founded it in 2004.
"Schmidt has readily embraced the role of brash culture warrior, not only mixing it up with 'deniers' in the blogosphere and on Twitter, but also with other scientists and experts with whom he disagrees," says communications expert Matthew Nisbet of American University in Washington, D.C. "What will be interesting to watch as he assumes the role of GISS director will be how he balances or merges his media persona with his role as institutional leader and spokesperson."
On RealClimate, Schmidt has not only sought to debunk papers or news stories he found problematic—like this attack on a report by an Argentinian nonprofit on food production—but also to publish primers on complex science topics, like this post on the role of water vapor. He's also found regularly in the comments on the blog, where he answers technical questions from readers or battles commenters whose points he disagrees with or finds misleading.
"He has transformed the climate science dialogue on the Web and thereby elevated communication of this science among scientists, within the research community, and to the broader public," said colleagues in a 2011 citation honoring Schmidt's receipt of the inaugural Climate Communication Prize presented by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Schmidt has also sought to reach broader audiences, with appearances on David Letterman's show, the comedy program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and myriad television news programs. In 2009, he collaborated with photographers to publish Climate Change: Picturing the Science and has met with composers to brainstorm creating a symphony devoted to the planet's climate history, though funding for that has yet to materialize.
"What is most impressive about him is that he can see the forest for the trees, and he seems to communicate effortlessly with either the public or scientific experts," Hansen writes in an e-mail to ScienceInsider.
A big question around Schmidt's ascendance at NASA will be how he views the role of scientists on policy questions. His former boss famously tussled repeatedly with NASA headquarters and the White House on questions of how climate science was presented and also became a staunch public advocate for political action on climate. In a well-attended lecture called "What should a climate scientist advocate for?" that Schmidt delivered last year at AGU, he argued that scientists should differentiate between statements that say what "is" versus statements that say what "ought" to be. "I don't advocate for political solutions or technical solutions" on greenhouse gas emissions, Schmidt told ScienceInsider. "My expertise does not lie in that [area]. But I also see a lot of nonsense talked about in terms of the science, and that is certainly somewhere where my expertise allows for some greater context."
Hansen, for his part, hopes Schmidt continues to tussle with those who attack mainstream climate science. "He is unflappable as demonstrated by his handling of the attacks from the climate change deniers. They attacked him after he established Real Climate because they saw just how effective he could be in communicating a complex scientific story to the public. However, in doing so they did him a favor, as the need to defend his actions schooled him for the job he needs to carry out," Hansen says. Schmidt says public outreach will be part of his new job, though he hasn't determined how much time he will spend on that role.
With a staff of about 140 and a yearly budget of about $12 million, GISS is one of NASA's smallest institutions. But the institute regularly punches above its weight; many of the world's top climate models are based on code written at GISS decades ago, and its models provide key insights into the way the planet's climate system works. Schmidt says he wants to continue that work, as well as expand its work on climate impacts and astrobiology. He also hopes the institute can win funding to launch a new polarimeter sensor to help quantify the role of aerosol particles in maintaining Earth's radiation balance. Schmidt's "challenge will be how to maintain high productivity in a time of constrained resources," Hansen says.
Schmidt received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oxford University in 1988 and a doctorate in applied mathematics from University College London in 1994. He came to New York as a 1996 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change Research.
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