Sorry for the late news again. Got tied up with a lot of other commitments…Ha Ha…..my priorities are at least in the right place….
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Future of Exploration Series (Part 2)
- Spot the Orion June Challenge Winner
- Credit Card Charges in Building 11 Café
- JSC SWAT Training - Organizations/Social
- Today! Human Spaceflight Lessons w/ Wayne Hale
- Apollo 45th Anniversary Agencywide T-shirt Offer
- You're Invited!
- Out & Allied Person of the Week
- Circus Tickets Available at Starport
- Latin Dance Introduction: June 13 from 8 to 9 p.m. - Jobs and Training
- Last SPACE Live Lab for CS Supervisors - Today
- Become an Ally in the Workplace
- JSC Imagery Online Training - June 17
- Fire Extinguisher Training |  |
| Headlines - Future of Exploration Series (Part 2)
These are important times in our agency, and only every few generations are we able to define the future steps for human spaceflight. We at JSC have been, and continue to be, critical in helping seize this exciting opportunity to define the stepping stones that will ultimately set boots on the surface of Mars. As a continuation to last week's conversation with Bill Gerstenmaier, please join us today at noon in Studio B (Building 2S) to hear about the Asteroid Redirect Mission and its extensibility to Mars. For more information on this series and other Innovation 2014 events, please click here. - Spot the Orion June Challenge Winner
The winner of the Spot the Orion Challenge for June is: Gina Davenport! Gina spotted the fact titled "Crew Module" outside of Building 1. Congratulations, Gina, on being the first to spot the Orion fact for the month of June. Have you spotted the fact yet? Stop by Building 1 to read the fact and learn more about Orion. The next fact will be posted in July. Keep your eyes open on the way to your next meeting, and you could be the next winner! - Credit Card Charges in Building 11 Café
An error in the software that handles our credit card transactions turned off Amex, Discover and MasterCard transactions in the batch process. The error that began in early April was caught on Friday, June 6, and the charges were batched on that Friday. These are actual charged purchases that you made in the Building 11 café from early April through May. We apologize for any confusion this has caused. - JSC SWAT Training
The JSC SWAT team will conduct training exercises in Buildings 110/111 from 6 to 10 p.m. today, June 11. Organizations/Social - Today! Human Spaceflight Lessons w/ Wayne Hale
Don't miss today's JSC SAIC/Safety & Mission Assurance speaker forum featuring Wayne Hale, former Space Shuttle Program manager and flight director. The topic will be about "Lessons Learned in NASA Human Spaceflight." Join us from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Gilruth Alamo Ballroom as Hale shares lessons on NASA's organizational culture, the importance of dissent, the role of financial considerations in critical decisions and more. - Apollo 45th Anniversary Agencywide T-shirt Offer
Starport is offering an Apollo 45th Anniversary T-shirt to all NASA and contractor employees for just $7 (sizes youth medium to adult XL) and $8 (sizes 2X to 4X). Order your shirts online and select TX-JSC-Starport as your delivery option to pick up your shirts at Starport (distribution dates and locations to be announced), or have the them shipped to your home for an additional fee. Wear your shirt any Friday through Oct. 31 to receive a 10 percent discount on store merchandise (standard exclusions apply). Order yours today and save on the shirts, as well as your purchases, while showing your support for NASA and commemorating the legendary Apollo Program. - You're Invited!
Have lunch with NASA's future workforce and share: - YOUR NASA story
- YOUR college advice
- YOUR career suggestions
This summer, JSC will host nearly 270 students during the 15th anniversary of High School Aerospace Scholars. The brightest high school students in Texas want to learn from your experience. These informal lunch chats are a valuable opportunity to connect our workforce with the next generation of NASA employees. Wednesday Summer Schedule - Building 3 Café
- Noon to 1 p.m.
- June 18 and 25
- July 9, 16, 23 and 30
- Out & Allied Person of the Week
The Out & Allied Employee Resource Group is proud to recognize the accomplishments of Bonnie R. Strickland, Ph.D., who in 1973 chaired an American Psychological Association (APA) committee that sought to research discrimination in psychology. This research, and the consensus of psychiatrists and psychologist worldwide, led to the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual later that year. Strickland became president of the APA in 1987. For more about this person's contributions to the LGBT and scientific communities, click this link. - Circus Tickets Available at Starport
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey tickets are on sale now through June 18 at Starport. See seating and prices below: - Saturday, July 12, 7:30 p.m., Section 101, Rows AA-BB - $13
- Sunday, July 13, 3:30 p.m., Section 101, Rows AA-BB - $13
- Saturday, July 19, 3:30 p.m., Section 138, Rows N-Q - $28
- Sunday, July 20, 1:30 p.m., Section 136, Rows L-M - $28
- Saturday, July 26, 3:30 p.m., Section 102, Rows K-M - $22
- Sunday, July 27, 1:30 p.m., Section 102, Rows H-J - $22
Seating is not guaranteed. A limited number of seats for each section are available. Additional tickets sold will be in the next best available section/row. Take the family out for some old-fashioned fun and save at Starport! - Latin Dance Introduction: June 13 from 8 to 9 p.m.
This class is mostly an introduction to Salsa, but it also touches on other popular Latin dances found in social settings: Merengue, Bachata, and even a little bit of Cha-Cha-Cha. Emphasis is on Salsa and then Bachata. For the first-time student or those who want a refresher course. You will go over basic steps with variations and build them into sequences. Registration: - $50 per person
Salsa Intermediate: June 13 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. This class continues teaching Salsa beyond that taught in the introduction class. You should be comfortable and confident with the material from the introduction class before moving on to the intermediate class. This is a multi-level class where students may be broken up into groups based on class experience. Jobs and Training - Last SPACE Live Lab for CS Supervisors – Today
Civil servant supervisors have one remaining opportunity to attend a SPACE Live Lab. During the live lab, supervisors will be able to work on employee appraisals, and Human Resources support will be available to answer any system-related questions. No registration is required. SPACE Supervisor Live Lab (Building 12, Room 144): Today, June 11, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. - Become an Ally in the Workplace
Are you concerned with equality in the workplace? Are you interested in learning how, as a straight ally, to support your LGBT friends and colleagues? On June 18, as part of Pride Month activities, the Out & Allied Employee Resource Group invites you to an informative and empowering seminar led by Lowell Kane. The day-long class will explore the unique needs and concerns that LGBT people face in the workplace while also building your own knowledge, skills and abilities for creating a more inclusive and affirming community as a straight ally. Participants will develop an understanding of LGBT terminology and symbols; history; concepts of privilege and identity development; and learn how to maintain a work environment that doesn't tolerate oppression based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Sign up now in SATERN using ID 73854. - JSC Imagery Online Training - June 17
Need to find NASA mission pictures or videos? Learn how during a webinar on Tuesday, June 17, from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m. Mary Wilkerson, Still Imagery lead, will show users how to find NASA mission images in Imagery Online (IO) and the Digital Imagery Management System (DIMS). Leslie Richards, Video Imagery lead, will show users the video functionality in IO. This training is open to any JSC or White Sands Test Facility employee. Register here. For more information, go to: IO and DIMS - Fire Extinguisher Training
Fire safety, at its most basic, is based upon the principle of keeping fuel sources and ignition sources separate. The Safety Learning Center invites you to attend a one-hour Fire Extinguisher Course that provides instructor-led training on the proper way to safely use fire extinguishers. Students will learn: - Five classes of fires
- Types of fire extinguishers and how to match the right extinguisher to different types of fires
- How to inspect an extinguisher
- How to use a fire extinguisher - P.A.S.S.
- Understand the importance of knowing where extinguishers are at your location
- Rules for fighting fires and the steps to take if a fire occurs
- Hands-on (weather permitting)
Date/Time: June 17 from 9 to 10 a.m. Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Rooms 205-206 Registration via SATERN required: | |
| |
| 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
Wednesday – June 11, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
The House readies a new attack on scientific research
Michael Hiltzik – Los Angeles Times
There's something about science that makes politicians nervous. The scientific process is unruly. It takes longer to bear fruit than the two-year congressional election cycle. Its results almost always undermine political ideologies.
House approves NASA authorization bill
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
A NASA authorization bill that sailed through the House Science Committee in April passed the full House Monday by nearly a unanimous vote. After a brief floor debate where no members expressed opposition, the House passed HR 4412 on a 401-2 vote, far above the two-thirds threshold needed for passage under suspension of the rules. The two members voting against the bill were Reps. Paul Broun (R-GA) and Mark Sanford (R-SC); neither spoke against the bill on the House floor nor otherwise explained their votes.
U.S. Struggles to Draw Young, Savvy Staff
Percentage of Government Employees Under 30 Hit 8-Year Low in 2013
Rachel Feintzeig – Wall Street Journal
The federal workforce needs fresh blood.
Crew OK after detecting smoke on ISS
James Dean – Florida Today
NASA says the International Space Station's six-person crew is safe after a detecting smoke inside the outpost this afternoon.
Rookie astronaut takes to Twitter to share life in space
Irene Klotz - Reuters
First-time astronaut Reid Wiseman arrived at the International Space Station two weeks ago, but zero gravity still surprises him.
Astronauts' well-kept secret: 'Space has a smell'
Justin Moyer – The Washington Post
NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins punched a clock on the International Space Station (ISS) long enough for the Red Sox to win the World Series and the Seahawks to win the Superbowl. He returned to Earth on March 10 — and, yesterday, answered questions during an "Ask Me Anything" session on the Web site Reddit.com.
Space-station science ramps up
NASA pushes research agenda in face of Russian resistance.
Alexandra Witze – Nature
In January, when the United States proposed extending International Space Station (ISS) operations until 2024, the world was a very different place. That was before Russian military intervention in Ukraine, before US–Russian relations foundered and before Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin suggested that US astronauts use a trampoline to get themselves to orbit (see Nature http://doi.org/s4f; 2014).
Singer Sarah Brightman plans 2015 flight to space station
Irene Klotz – Reuters
British singer Sarah Brightman is scheduled to begin training this year for a 2015 flight to the International Space Station where she hopes to become the first professional musician to sing from space, the company arranging the trip said on Tuesday.
Space tourism on its way to KSC
James Dean – Florida Today
At a discussion about space tourism today, panelist Scott Henderson noted that the audience of nearly 400 wasn't much smaller than the number of people who have flown in space.
NASA to Embark on Two Undersea Missions
Taylor Smith – ExecutiveGov
NASA announced today that they will be sending aquanauts on two deep sea missions with NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations to provide information for future space missions.
NASA 'Aquanauts' to Test Space Exploration Tech on Ocean Floor
NASA is heading back to the ocean floor twice in the next three months to test out techniques and technologies that could improve astronauts' lives in orbit and help them explore an asteroid down the road.
Former astronaut Jeff Wisoff tapped as Livermore Lab associate director
Steven E.F. Brown Brown – San Francisco Business Times
Peter J.K. "Jeff" Wisoff, a former astronaut, has been named principal associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, overseeing the National Ignition Project and Photon Science.
NASA Heliophysics Director Fired
Dan Leone – Space News
The director of NASA's Heliophysics Division has been fired after just nine months on the job for what his supervisor characterized as leadership and management failures, according to internal agency memos obtained by SpaceNews.
Cosmic Explosion-Hunting Space Telescope Earns Top Rank at NASA
A NASA space telescope built to seek out the most powerful explosions in the universe has earned top billing on the space agency's list of nine astronomical observatory missions.
NASA postpones Mars 'flying saucer' test on Earth
Associated Press
NASA has postponed its plan to send a "flying saucer" into Earth's atmosphere to test technology that could be used to land on Mars.
New Private Spacecraft Will Be 1st US Space Lifeboat in 40 Years
The next U.S. spacecraft designed to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station also needs to act as a lifeboat if something goes wrong on the orbiting outpost.
COMPLETE STORIES
The House readies a new attack on scientific research
Michael Hiltzik – Los Angeles Times
There's something about science that makes politicians nervous. The scientific process is unruly. It takes longer to bear fruit than the two-year congressional election cycle. Its results almost always undermine political ideologies.
That must have a lot to do with the latest attempt by House Republicans to undermine scientific research in the United States. This was a subtle maneuver. The House voted to shift $15.3 million from the National Science Foundation's social sciences programs to "physical sciences and engineering," which our congressional experts deem to be more like the "science" they learned about in their picture books in kindergarten.
The foundation's total budget remains the same. So where's the harm?
What's insidious about this step is the injection of politics into research grant-making. Worse, it's the injection of ignorance into the grant-making process under the guise of being economically prudent.
"Taxpayers can't help but wonder why NSF spent $1.5 million of their money to study rangeland management in Mongolia rather than, say, in Texas," declared Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and sponsor of the measure.
It's shocking enough that the chairman of the House science committee can't imagine that scientists might learn something by examining practices outside the confines of his congressional district, but there's more to it than that.
"Some members of Congress simply will never be convinced that social science is a part of science," said Wendy Naus, executive director of the Consortium of Social Science Organizations. Politicians get especially exercised about social science because "it's the study of humans, so it flirts with peoples' personal belief systems."
Nor is Smith especially comfortable with where any independent scientific research might lead. He has upbraided the TV networks for "bias" for failing to air the opinions of climate-change skeptics, such as himself.
Smith and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, his partner in the current anti-science campaign, claim that they're only looking out for American competitiveness. "American pre-eminence in several science and technology fields is slipping," they wrote in a USA Today op-ed article last year, wringing their hands that NASA astronauts have to "hitch rides to the Space Station on board Russian spacecraft."
Here's what they didn't say: Only months before they penned their article, they voted to cut NASA's budget by more than $1 billion, to its lowest level in seven years.
The main weapon employed by Smith and Cantor is cherry-picking the titles of research grants to make the projects sound absurd. In Smith's hands, for instance, a $227,000 project at Michigan State University to examine the evolution of humans' understanding of animal behavior over the last century is caricatured as paying a researcher "to thumb through the pages of old National Geographic magazines to look at animal pictures."
This technique, sadly, has bipartisan roots. The pioneer of such cocksure philistinism was Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.), who started issuing his "Golden Fleece" awards in 1975.
Proxmire became addicted to the fawning press attention he got from portraying serious scientific research as ludicrous. His know-nothing rabble-rousing appalled progressives who otherwise admired him for his principled stands against the Vietnam War and in favor of campaign finance reform. But its more lasting and destructive effect was to render political attacks on scientific research broadly acceptable.
Today, congressional interference takes many forms. Last year, Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) teamed up on a measure that forbid the National Science Foundation to support political science research unless it would benefit "national security or economic interests." Uncertain how to define those categories, the foundation simply canceled all grants in political science for the year.
"That really was a jarring moment for the [research] community," Naus said, because it signaled that Congress didn't consider any interference in research policy to be out of bounds.
Last year, Smith proposed a bill requiring the foundation director to certify in writing that every project backed by the organization "is groundbreaking and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large."
Scientific inquiry by its nature can't be crammed into such pigeonholes. That's especially true of basic science, for which colleges and universities are heavily dependent on government because industry isn't interested in paying for research without evident commercial potential.
Around the same time, he demanded from acting director Cora Marrett access to scientific/technical reviews that led to approval of five specific grants, including projects on conservation practices in the Amazon basin, the operations of the International Criminal Court and China's dairy industry.
The peer-review process isn't infallible, but it depends to a large extent on reviewer anonymity, confidentiality and immunity from pressure from special interests, including political interests. To its credit, the foundation refused Smith's request. The committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, explained why, crisply informing Smith by letter that "interventions in grant awards by political figures with agendas, biases, and no expertise is the antithesis of the peer review processes. ... You are sending a chilling message to the entire scientific community that peer review may always be trumped by political review."
Smith's effort to shift funding away from the social sciences at the National Science Foundation is still subject to conference negotiations with the Senate, which could take place in the next few weeks. Even if it fails, it won't be the last attempt, because the crucial thing that politicians don't understand about America's competitiveness in science is that it can't survive unless they stay out of the scientists' way.
House approves NASA authorization bill
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
A NASA authorization bill that sailed through the House Science Committee in April passed the full House Monday by nearly a unanimous vote. After a brief floor debate where no members expressed opposition, the House passed HR 4412 on a 401-2 vote, far above the two-thirds threshold needed for passage under suspension of the rules. The two members voting against the bill were Reps. Paul Broun (R-GA) and Mark Sanford (R-SC); neither spoke against the bill on the House floor nor otherwise explained their votes.
During the half-hour floor debate, members of the House Science Committee praised both the bill and the bipartisan aspect of the bill, a far cry from the partisan debate over a previous version last summer. "This act has a come a long ways from its original state nearly a year ago, when the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, of which I serve as ranking member, passed a different version of the bill on a party-line vote, a departure from the committee's traditional bipartisan approach to NASA," said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX). "However, much has changed since that time," she added, thanking the committee leadership for work on the revised bill.
The bill authorizes funding for only the current fiscal year, but more importantly includes a number of policy provisions in the bill, from a clarification of termination liability for NASA programs to the requirement for the agency to develop an "exploration roadmap." Some members in the floor debate linked that latter provision to the National Research Council's report last week that recommended the development of a "pathways" approach to human space exploration.
The bill also blocks NASA from spending money on its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and searches for smaller asteroids that would be targets for the ARM, requiring instead NASA develop a report with detailed cost and schedule estimates for the mission and an explanation of the technologies developed for the ARM that would be suitable for future human missions to the Moon or Mars. "The bill reflects the skepticism that members of the Science Committee and the scientific community have about the Obama Administration's proposed asteroid retrieval mission," said committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). "Congress will be better equipped to consider the administration's proposed missions once we have all the proper information."
The Senate has yet to take up its version of a NASA authorization bill. At the 30th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs last month, a Senate Commerce Committee staff member said a number of topics were under consideration for their version of an authorization bill, including extending ISS operations beyond 2020 and maintaining competition in the commercial crew program, but gave no timeline for when a bill might be introduced.
U.S. Struggles to Draw Young, Savvy Staff
Percentage of Government Employees Under 30 Hit 8-Year Low in 2013
Rachel Feintzeig – Wall Street Journal
The federal workforce needs fresh blood.
The percentage of its employees under the age of 30 hit an eight-year low of 7% in 2013, government statistics show, compared with about 25% for the private-sector workforce. Back in 1975, more than 20% of the federal workforce was under 30.
Without a pipeline of young talent, the government risks falling behind in an increasingly digital world, current and former government officials say.
Meanwhile, critics say that government hiring is confusing, opaque and lengthy, deterring even those who want to devote their lives to public service. The process is "deeply broken," says Max Stier, chief executive of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, which aims to motivate a new generation of government workers.
Government officials acknowledge the current generational mix is a concern. About 45% of the federal workforce was more than 50 years old in 2013, and by September 2016, nearly a quarter of all federal employees will be eligible to retire, according to the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human-resources department. Overall employment at the federal, state and local level has fallen, shedding 928,000 employees between 2009 and 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Katherine Archuleta, OPM's director, says that increasing the share of young workers is a "challenge." Kimberly Holden, deputy associate director of recruitment and hiring at OPM, adds that the stakes are high and "the government will be lost" without technologically savvy staff able to carry agencies into a digital future.
Part of the problem is demand. An annual survey of undergraduates by employer-branding consultancy Universum indicates that student interest in working for the federal government has declined over the last four years. Of roughly 46,000 undergraduates polled in late 2013 and early 2014, just 2.4% of engineering students and .9% of business students listed only government employers as their ideal places to work.
The government's reputation for bureaucracy and hierarchy is driving away many workers, says Paul Light, a professor of public policy at New York University who studies youth career paths. Unlike their parents, today's young workers don't consider the government to be a haven of stability and long-term job security, he says, especially after last year's shutdown.
In addition, he notes, the baby boomers, once projected to retire in droves from federal work, are instead "hanging on," limiting job openings and mobility. "The federal government used to be an employer of choice," he says, "and now it's an employer of last resort."
Jeremy Warren spent seven years in government, starting at the age of 29. The former chief technology officer at the Justice Department left government work in 2011, he says, because he wanted to be "driving a speedboat rather than pulling an oar on an ocean liner."
He says he tackled plenty of challenging projects, but he also recalls spending years persuading various leaders in different offices to support a proposal, squeezing a project into a budget request and then worrying that funding would vanish. "It's a tough way to go to work each day," says Mr. Warren, now 40 years old and the vice president of innovation at home-automation company Vivint Inc.
OPM's Ms. Holden maintains that federal work is still an alluring choice for many students, especially those who desire meaningful work.
At agencies like NASA, where the mission has shifted from flying space shuttles to sending humans to Mars, a significant slowdown in hiring young workers—coupled with looming retirements—could delay "critical programs," such as a planned space telescope, says Jeri Buchholz, the agency's chief human capital officer.
And absent a youth injection, already risk-shy government agencies may grow even more averse to change, says Richard Boly, a retired director at the State Department.
Government agencies still depend too much on prior experience when judging even entry-level candidates and don't recruit as nimbly as private-sector concerns, says Mr. Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service.
For example, he says, agencies make college-recruiting visits in the spring, after many seniors have already accepted job offers, and they look for candidates only when they need them rather than maintaining relationships with university contacts and developing a pool of available talent.
But OPM's Ms. Holden says that the agencies do maintain relationships with university contacts, and she cites "tons of" entry-level positions that require only an academic degree or general experience, adding that she herself was an intern nearly 30 years ago.
Her department is also identifying barriers to recruiting top talent and working to make job descriptions—often laden with acronyms and complex jargon—clearer. In addition, some agencies are adopting recruiting tactics from the private sector, rolling out a mobile-careers app and taking to social media to attract applicants. According to OPM, nearly a quarter of full-time hires for the federal executive branch were less than 30 years old last year, a figure that has changed little in the past four years. "We are looking at untying those knots and making sure the public understands how they can apply for federal positions," Ms. Holden says.
Still, agencies intent on breathing new life into their hiring processes face constraints.
Budget battles "hamstring" agencies' ability to do proper workforce planning, Mr. Stier says. And while strict recruiting rules are meant to ensure fairness in hiring, they can frustrate managers.
Mr. Boly, who spent 20 years in State Department diplomatic roles before retiring, recalled hearing about a star candidate from Google Inc. who had applied in 2009 for a job running an online program connecting U.S. students with government workers abroad.
The candidate never made it to the list of acceptable potential hires because a lower-level employee screened the person out. "The process itself is this black box that is not efficient and a little slow and may not always surface the best candidates," Mr. Boly says.
A State Department spokeswoman responds that "the department adheres to governmentwide hiring regulations as established by the Office of Personnel Management."
Officials like Ms. Archuleta acknowledge that government needs to change the way it sells itself to young people. She recently traveled to Silicon Valley, collecting advice on recruiting and retaining young workers from leaders at LinkedIn Corp. and Facebook Inc.
Andrew McMahon, who is 31 and a senior adviser at the General Services Administration, helped start the Presidential Innovation Fellows, a three-year-old program that pairs private-sector software developers and technology workers with government employees for stints of six-to-12 months. The program's goal: to get talented people to focus their attention on government issues, even if only for a little while.
As for Mr. McMahon, he says he expects to head to the nonprofit world or the private sector eventually, maybe returning to government later.
At NASA's Johnson Space Center, about 89% of the interns it takes in through the Pathways program for young workers accept jobs after completing internship rotations, according to the center's intern coordinator. But the number of employees under the age of 30 has held steady at 7.7% agencywide over the last few years, Ms. Buchholz says, because NASA downsized after the space-shuttle program was shut down.
Younger NASA workers solve problems differently than their older counterparts, she adds, describing them as "shameless in a good way"—unafraid to ask to borrow a part, for example.
Allissa Battocletti, 26, who was hired at Johnson after five intern rotations, says her job teaching astronauts how to walk in space is "a dream," but she's had moments of doubt about her career path.
The cancellation of a NASA spaceflight program in 2010 made her realize that government work comes with uncertainty. She now views her career more flexibly. "I don't have to stay here forever," she says. "I can see what opportunities arise, see how I feel in 10 years."
Crew OK after detecting smoke on ISS
James Dean – Florida Today
NASA says the International Space Station's six-person crew is safe after a detecting smoke inside the outpost this afternoon.
The crew reported seeing a small amount of smoke coming from a vent in the Russian-made Zvezda Service Module around 2:40 p.m. EDT, NASA said.
Mission controllers in Houston followed an emergency procedure to isolate the ventilation system on the station's Russian segment.
Expedition 40 commander Steve Swanson radioed that the smoke subsiding quickly, and NASA said the crew was not in danger.
"We believe it's under control at this time," Swanson said in an audio clip NASA posted online.
He described having seen "a very small amount" of smoke.
A heater in a water reclamation unit on the station's Russian segment, used for dining purposes, is considered the smoke's most likely source.
NASA said the crew deactivated the unit, set up a fan and filter to clear the smoke and assessed air quality throughout the station.
NASA and Russian engineers are studying any next steps.
Rookie astronaut takes to Twitter to share life in space
Irene Klotz - Reuters
First-time astronaut Reid Wiseman arrived at the International Space Station two weeks ago, but zero gravity still surprises him.
"Laughed so hard, I cried yesterday during dinner. Tears don't run down your cheeks in space," wrote Wiseman, who is sharing his observations and pictures with a growing following on Twitter.
"Still adjusting to zero g. Just flipped a bag upside down to dump out its contents. #doesntworkhere," Wiseman tweeted last week.
His favorite picture so far is a view of the northern Australian coast. "The way the clouds and the red desert met the ocean, it's burned in my mind," Wiseman said during an inflight interview with CBS News broadcast on Monday.
"This will go in my living room," he tweeted along with the picture.
Wiseman is one of six men living aboard the station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.
So far, the rookie astronaut has about 74,000 Twitter followers. More than 40 current astronauts from the United States, Europe, Japan, Russia and Canada use the social media service, sharing perspectives 140 characters at a time.
Tweeting astronauts include two-time shuttle veteran and Hubble Space Telescope repairman Mike Massimino, who has 1.3 million followers, and former station commander Chris Hadfield of Canada, with nearly 1.1 million followers.
Wiseman has the distinction of posting the first looping Vine video from space. The time-lapse clip shows the sun circling over Earth, never setting.
"The view out the window is way beyond whatever I dreamed it would be," Wiseman said in the CBS interview.
Wiseman's Twitter account is @astro_reid.
Astronauts' well-kept secret: 'Space has a smell'
Justin Moyer – The Washington Post
NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins punched a clock on the International Space Station (ISS) long enough for the Red Sox to win the World Series and the Seahawks to win the Superbowl. He returned to Earth on March 10 — and, yesterday, answered questions during an "Ask Me Anything" session on the Web site Reddit.com.
Here are the highlights:
Space stinks: "Space has a smell," Hopkins wrote. "And I don't mean inside the space station. When a visiting vehicle docks with the space station, there is 'space' between the two vehicles. Once the pressure is equalized and the hatch is opened, you have this metallic ionization-type smell. It's quite unique and very distinct."
Astronauts get stressed — before they leave the ground: Hopkins wasn't worried about a Challenger-like disaster but feared he wouldn't be able to fly at all. "You spend 2 and a half years building up to this point," Hopkins wrote. "There's always a chance you might not get to go. You might get injured, you might get sick, you may not do well on a phase of the training and be replaced. So when we finally launch, it's a sense of relief to finally be going."
Space food isn't horrible: Those with a dim view of NASA fare should banish memories of Dippin Dots. "Beef enchiladas," Hopkins wrote when asked about his favorite in-flight cuisine. "I was also a fan of apricot cobbler."
Pumping iron in zero gravity is tough — if you're a wimp: "The weights you use for things like squats actually goes up, since you aren't lifting your body weight," Hopkins wrote. "So you have to add that to your lifts in space." Hopkins, however, didn't have a problem keeping up: "Interestingly, in testing before and after spending time in space, I squat roughly the same."
Astronauts sweat: "The sweat actually sticks to you," Hopkins wrote. "It pools on your arms and head. It can pool and get in your eyes, too. If you are running, it does fling off onto the walls and stuff, and then you are cleaning the walls around you. So you have to towel off often to keep it under control. The interesting part is that the sweat does go into the condensate system that gets recycled. Eventually after the towels dry off and the water is recycled, it becomes drinking water."
The Cold War is over: "I'm still not comfortable with the Russian language, but my Russian skills are strong enough that I could safely launch, land and communicate with my Russian colleagues," Hopkins wrote. "I spent about 35 weeks training in Russia. That training is integrated with the US, Japanese, and European training which is integrated into a single plan that gets you to launch day and life on the ISS."
His mission isn't over: "Right now, I'm in my post-flight phase," Hopkins wrote. "It lasts 6 months. During that time, we go through rehabilitation, medical exams, and debriefs. And then we spend some time sharing the story and experience of being in space. In September, I will start working a job that supports the astronauts on the space station or those in training. I may also support the new vehicles that will launch from US soil starting in 2017."
Astronauts read in space: "I was able to read while on the station," Hopkins wrote. "I read the Horatio Hornblower series and the Divergent series. I also read Inferno by Dan Brown."
Space-station science ramps up
NASA pushes research agenda in face of Russian resistance.
Alexandra Witze – Nature
In January, when the United States proposed extending International Space Station (ISS) operations until 2024, the world was a very different place. That was before Russian military intervention in Ukraine, before US–Russian relations foundered and before Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin suggested that US astronauts use a trampoline to get themselves to orbit (see Nature http://doi.org/s4f; 2014). Rogozin also suggested last month that Russia would stop participating in the space-station programme after its scheduled end date of 2020. That statement did not set official government policy, but given Russia's key role in the orbiting outpost it cast a shadow over hopes for the four-year extension.
With the clock ticking, the race is on to conduct as much science as possible in whatever time the space station has left. At a conference next week in Chicago, Illinois, NASA scientists will try to lure researchers who have not worked with near-zero-gravity conditions before. The goal is to get them to propose anything from the usual research agenda — such as protein crystallization and human physiology experiments — to basic biomedical research and Earth-science observations that can take advantage of the high-flying platform before its mission ends (see 'Research push'). "There's never been anything like it," says Julie Robinson, NASA's space-station research chief at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "It's like a university, all together with all the disciplines — I don't know if we'll see that again." More than 1,600 scientists from 69 countries have contributed to experiments carried out on the space station since its first module was launched in 1998. The United States is the largest science user. But over the years, many have questioned the value of the science done in orbit. One main goal is to help humans to endure long-duration spaceflight, but early experiments often failed. For instance, NASA astronauts would spend hours a day exercising on treadmills to slow down muscle wasting and bone loss — to little avail. Force measurements revealed that they were subjecting their bodies to stresses that were not even close to the pull of gravity on Earth.
Another goal has been to conduct basic scientific observations to see how physical and biological processes change in a near-weightless environment. But these studies have often been limited to growing relatively unimportant proteins or running student experiments, and have often not made fundamental breakthroughs. In a sharply critical 2011 report, a US National Research Council panel argued that NASA was "poorly positioned to take full advantage of the scientific opportunities offered by the now fully equipped and staffed ISS laboratory".
Space-station research suffered further after NASA halted the space-shuttle programme in 2011, eliminating the only option for both delivering experiments to orbit and returning them to Earth.
But in late 2012, the debut of two-way cargo ships made by private company SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, again allowed samples to be returned to Earth. That development enabled experiments such as those of David Klaus, an aerospace engineer and gravitational biology researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, who is exploring why antibiotics seem to work less well in space than on the ground. The answers might help in making the drugs perform better on Earth, he says — and running operations to 2024 would allow him more generations of experiments, with the results of each guiding the design of the next.
"Extending the station out that long helps us align a bit better with research portfolios here on the ground," says Duane Ratliff, chief operating officer at the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, an organization in Melbourne, Florida, that manages US space-station research for NASA.
Another strategy is to mount Earth-science experiments on the space station as a cheaper alternative to putting them on a free-flying satellite. Some time in August or later, an instrument that monitors ocean winds will be flown to the station to replace a satellite-borne one that failed in 2009. And a supply run in September is slated to deliver a laser system to measure clouds, dust and pollution in the Earth's atmosphere.
The agency is also adding what it hopes will be versatile facilities that produce data for a broad range of research. The August supply run will carry a rodent habitat — the largest ever launched for long-duration spaceflight, says Robinson, with a capacity of 40 mice. And a series of experiments called geneLAB will send a range of model organisms, including fruit flies and nematodes, into space for months at a time, performing basic biomedical assays on them both in orbit and after returning them to Earth. The accumulated information will go into a database that any ground-based researcher will be able to draw on.
"People will come and do one to two experiments in space," says Robinson, "and continue to do work in their lab for another 30 years to understand that insight."
Singer Sarah Brightman plans 2015 flight to space station
Irene Klotz – Reuters
British singer Sarah Brightman is scheduled to begin training this year for a 2015 flight to the International Space Station where she hopes to become the first professional musician to sing from space, the company arranging the trip said on Tuesday.
Brightman, a famed soprano who starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera," will pay about $52 million for a 10-day stay aboard the orbital outpost, Tom Shelley, president of privately owned Space Adventures, said.
"She's absolutely 100 percent committed," Shelley said during a National Space Club Florida Committee meeting. "She's putting together her mission plan now."
Brightman, who would become the eighth privately funded space tourist, is slated to fly in September 2015. Her training to fly on a Russian Soyuz capsule is scheduled to begin as early as this fall, Shelley said.
He said she planned to be the first professional musician to sing from space.
But she faces competition from Lady Gaga, who according to media reports late last year intends to be the first when she performs one song in space in early 2015 on a Virgin Galactic flight. Virgin Galactic, part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, plans to offer suborbital space flights.
Brightman said in 2012 that she would travel to the space station, but her plans were not confirmed until now.
So far, Space Adventures has arranged for nine private missions to the space station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about that flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth. Microsoft co-founder Charles Simonyi made two trips.
Brightman will be the first private citizen to visit the station since Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Lalibarte paid about $35 million for an 11-day stay in September 2009.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has an option to fly on the next available Soyuz seat after Brightman, which most likely will be in 2017, Shelley told Reuters.
"He paid us a deposit and whenever we have a seat available, he has the right of first refusal," Shelley said.
Space tourism on its way to KSC
James Dean – Florida Today
At a discussion about space tourism today, panelist Scott Henderson noted that the audience of nearly 400 wasn't much smaller than the number of people who have flown in space.
"How do we make that number bigger?" said Henderson, orbital launch site director for Blue Origin, at the National Space Club Florida Committee's monthly meeting in Cape Canaveral. "Really, that's kind of what it's all about."
After decades of hopes and hype, several ventures are close to fulfilling promises to fly private citizens — very wealthy ones, at first — in space, on journeys ranging from a few minutes of weightlessness to an excursion around the moon.
XCOR Aerospace showed an artist's rendering of its two-seat Lynx space plane soaring high over the Florida peninsula, an experience it hopes to make a reality by early 2016 with launches and landings at Kennedy Space Center's shuttle runway.
"That's going to be pretty exciting," said Andrew Nelson, XCOR's chief operating officer and vice president of business development.
Those early $95,000 flights by a prototype Lynx will climb about 38 miles to approach the edge of space, short of the internationally recognized threshold of 62 miles — reached by 536 people as of November, according to Wikipedia — that a next-generation Lynx will cross.
It's part of a stepping stone approach that reflects XCOR's unique position, Nelson joked, as an emerging commercial space company "not backed by a friendly neighborhood billionaire."
He looked to Henderson of Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos with the goal of increasing access to space.
Among others, entrepreneur Elon Musk is known as the founder of the now relatively established SpaceX, and Sir Richard Branson started Virgin Galactic, which hopes to start flying paying customers this year or next on suborbital flights from New Mexico's Spaceport America.
Nelson said the Space Coast's geography and history offer some advantages as a draw for space tourism operations.
"Flying near a coastline is a lot more interesting than flying over a brown desert, let's be honest," he said. "Also, when you're flying from truly the home of manned spaceflight, you're going to feel part of that history."
Blue Origin is testing a suborbital vehicle from its privately owned spaceport in West Texas, but remains tight-lipped about the timing and costs of future flights.
The suborbital flights are precursors to reusable orbital systems, and Henderson said the company has "lots of good options" as it looks for an orbital launch site on the East Coast or Gulf Coast.
He said "operational flexibility and commercial friendliness" would be critical to the company's decision, issues at the core of the debate over the state's proposed Shiloh commercial launch complex and a possible NASA alternative at KSC.
Florida offers useful infrastructure and a talented work force, Henderson said, "but face it: it's not as commercially friendly, it's not as flexible."
In contrast to XCOR and Blue Origin, Space Adventures books flights for clients rather than developing vehicles.
The company has flown seven people to the International Space Station since 2001 on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, with a seat now priced at $52 million. Singer Sarah Brightman is expected to fly next year.
Space Adventures has a partnership with Boeing that could lead to rides on its CST-100 commercial crew capsule, which is competing for a contract to launch NASA crews.
"We're looking forward to the results of the NASA decision later this summer, and ultimately being able to send our private citizens on U.S.-built vehicles flying out of here," said Space Adventures President Tom Shelley.
The company also is working on a mission that would send two tourists on a trip around the moon on a modified Soyuz craft within three or four years. Shelley called the per-seat price of $150 million a "good value" compared to historical mission costs.
Panel moderator Jim Banke, president of MILA Solutions, remembered hearing the term "space tourism" for the first time at a conference in the late 80s, and the crowd's highly skeptical reaction then.
"Here we are many years later, and we are on the cusp of something very interesting and great and different in the way we go about doing spaceflight as a nation and as a world," he said.
NASA to Embark on Two Undersea Missions
Taylor Smith – ExecutiveGov
NASA announced today that they will be sending aquanauts on two deep sea missions with NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations to provide information for future space missions.
NEEMO will conduct activities on the ocean floor that will advise future International Space Station and exploration activities, NASA said.
"It is both challenging and exciting for our astronaut crews to participate in these undersea missions in preparation for spaceflight," NEEMO project manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Bill Todd said.
NEEMO 18 will be a nine-day mission set to begin on July 21, while NEEMO 19 will last for seven days beginning on Sept. 7.
Both missions will focus on specific studies. NEEMO 18 will focus on behavioral health and performance, human health issues and habitability, while NEEMO 19 will focus its studies on telementoring operations for the European Space agency.
Telementoring is when a crew member is given instruction for a task by an expert who is located remotely, but is virtually present via a video and voice connection.
Both missions will include Extravehicular (EVA) objectives and engineering investigations to further develop technologies and training techniques for use on the space station, NASA said.
The crew will live 62 feet under the Atlantic Ocean's surface, 5.4 nautical miles off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.
NASA 'Aquanauts' to Test Space Exploration Tech on Ocean Floor
NASA is heading back to the ocean floor twice in the next three months to test out techniques and technologies that could improve astronauts' lives in orbit and help them explore an asteroid down the road.
Teams of "aquanauts" will live and work at a research facility 62 feet (19 meters) beneath the waves off the coast of Florida in two missions staged by the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations program, or NEEMO.
The first of the two stints, known as NEEMO 18, starts on July 21 and lasts for nine days. The seven-day NEEMO 19 mission begins on Sept. 7.
"It is both challenging and exciting for our astronaut crews to participate in these undersea missions in preparation for spaceflight," Bill Todd, NEEMO project manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement.
"It is critical that we perform science applicable to NASA's exploration goals in a high-fidelity space operational context," he added. "The extreme environment of life undersea is as close to being in space as possible."
NEEMO 18 will primarily investigate astronaut health issues and behavioral health and performance, while NEEMO 19 is designed to evaluate "telementoring" operations for the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA officials said. (In telementoring, an astronaut is given instructions via voice or video by an offsite expert.)
Both missions will also include extravehicular activities (EVAs), simulated spacewalks that send the aquanauts out into the ocean for a variety of purposes.
"These EVAs will focus on evaluating man-machine work systems and EVA tools and techniques for exploration tasks in varying levels of gravity ranging from that of asteroids to the gravity of Martian moons and Mars itself," NASA officials wrote in a description of the upcoming missions.
Both NEEMO 18 and NEEMO 19 will be based at Florida International University's Aquarius Reef Base, which lies 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.
Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will command NEEMO 18, which also includes NASA astronauts Jeanette Epps and Mark Vande Hei and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
NEEMO 19 will be led by NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik. Other crewmembers are Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Herve Stevenin, ESA's head of extravehicular activity training at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany.
Former astronaut Jeff Wisoff tapped as Livermore Lab associate director
Steven E.F. Brown Brown – San Francisco Business Times
Peter J.K. "Jeff" Wisoff, a former astronaut, has been named principal associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, overseeing the National Ignition Project and Photon Science.
The NIF seeks to harness fusion as an energy source -- it uses lasers to zap pellets of deuterium fuel.
Wisoff, who flew four times on NASA's space shuttle and walked in space three times before the lab hired him in 2001, has been acting associate director of NIF and Photon Science since October.
Bill Goldstein, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's director, will be Wisoff's boss.
His job includes overseeing not only the enormous National Ignition Facility project, but also other advanced laser research including target and control systems, as well as work with government agencies that take care of the U.S. nuclear arsenal ("Stockpile Stewardship" in government language). He will also oversee work on other areas of physics and will interact with experts in academia and the private sector.
Wisoff earned his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Virginia, and has his master's and Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University.
Started in 1952 as a Cold War atomic weapons research center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has in the decades since then moved into many other areas of science, including biomedicine, climate studies (using its increasingly powerful supercomputers) and fusion energy. Early work on fusion centered on magnetic "bottles" contained by giant magnets before moving on to the laser fusion project Wisoff will be overseeing.
The lab is managed for the U.S. Department of Energy by a coalition of private businesses and the University of California. Local companies involved in running the lab include San Francisco engineering giants Bechtel Corp. and URS Corp. (NYSE: URS).
NASA Heliophysics Director Fired
Dan Leone – Space News
The director of NASA's Heliophysics Division has been fired after just nine months on the job for what his supervisor characterized as leadership and management failures, according to internal agency memos obtained by SpaceNews.
David Chenette, a veteran solar scientist who came to NASA from industry Sept. 30, will leave his position June 20, according to an official termination notice dated June 6 and signed by NASA Associate Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld, Chenette's supervisor.
"You have demonstrated little effort to engage your personnel and provide an inclusive workplace that fosters development to their full potential, despite being instructed that this was your primary objective when you were selected for this position," Grunsfeld, said in the notice, adding that the former Lockheed Martin executive had sown "confusion and apprehension in the scientific community."
Chenette was placed on paid leave June 6, at which time Jeffrey Newmark, a space scientist at NASA headquarters since 2009, took over as interim heliophysics director, according to another memo.
In the termination notice, Grunsfeld charged that Chenette bungled planning for the $800 million Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, impeded the progress of a NASA space-weather program, and took a lackadaisical approach to a volunteer-led effort to restart an old NASA heliophysics mission, the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3.
Chenette fiercely denied these charges in a June 9 letter to Grunsfeld, to which he appended a six-page memo that sought to refute, in detail, Grunsfeld's reasons for firing him.
"I believe that my termination was based on false and misleading information," Chenette wrote. "I believe that the considerations that led to my termination were dominated by a need to eliminate conflict rather than a desire to address the problems that confronted the division when I arrived and continue today."
Chenette singled out Madhulika Guhathakurta, lead program scientist for NASA's Living With a Star program and program scientist for the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, as a big part of the division's problems.
"I believe that the problems in the Heliophysics Division are dominated by the continuing actions of Dr. Madhulika Guhathakurta," Chenette wrote. "By her actions she chooses not to work as a member of the Heliophysics Division team. More than any other person she has been an unusually divisive and polarizing presence in the heliophysics community."
Chenette wants his firing, and the circumstances that led to it, probed by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin.
"[I]f my departure triggers a detailed examination of this issue and correction of the problems that triggered it, then perhaps some good will have come out of this appalling situation," Chenette wrote.
Officials in NASA's public affairs office were not immediately available for comment.
Cosmic Explosion-Hunting Space Telescope Earns Top Rank at NASA
A NASA space telescope built to seek out the most powerful explosions in the universe has earned top billing on the space agency's list of nine astronomical observatory missions.
The space-based Swift X-ray observatory took the top spot in NASA's latest biannual review of its astronomy missions. The study, which does not include the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, evaluates the scientific performance of the remaining space telescopes to determine if they should continue operations and what their level of funding should be.
"The entire Swift team is delighted that NASA has recognized the high priority of our scientific mission and has extended it for at least another two years," David Burrows, of Pennsylvania State University, said in a statement.
Burrows serves as the lead scientist for Swift's X-ray telescope.
The Swift observatory relies on three instruments to discover and measure gamma-ray bursts, the universe's most energetic explosions. These brief but powerful explosions occur roughly once a day, lasting only a few milliseconds to a few hundred seconds. Scientists think that the powerful bursts are created when black holes and neutron stars form.
Swift not only detects these puzzling phenomena, it also provides a rapid response notification that allows both space- and ground-based telescopes around the world to study their afterglow.
"Swift's built-in, near-immediate response capability allows us to make early, frequent, and continuing observations of new gamma-ray bursts, supernova explosions, and other powerful explosions in the universe," principle investigator Neil Gehrels of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said in the same statement.
Launched in 2004, Swift has provided several notable detections of gamma ray bursts, including one that occurred approximately 520 million years after the Big Bang. The finding ensures that the telescope will continue to operate for at least another two years.
In addition to Swift, the other 8 astronomical telescopes reviewed by NASA were Fermi, Kepler, MaxWISE, NuSTAR, Planck, Spitzer, Suzaku, and XMM-Newton. Hubble and Chandra were reviewed separately.
"Swift continues to provide unique and exciting science both as stand-alone results and as part of multi-wavelength campaigns," the review said. "Swift is the premier facility for multi-wavelength time-domain astronomy in the world."
NASA postpones Mars 'flying saucer' test on Earth
Associated Press
NASA has postponed its plan to send a "flying saucer" into Earth's atmosphere to test technology that could be used to land on Mars.
Spokeswoman Shannon Ridinger says weather conditions caused Wednesday's launch of the saucer-shaped vehicle to be scrubbed. The next potential launch date is June 14.
For decades, NASA has depended on the same parachute design to slow spacecraft after they enter the Martian atmosphere. But it needs a larger and stronger parachute if it wants to land heavier objects and astronauts.
After being launched via balloon from Hawaii, the new vehicle will ignite its rocket engine and climb to 34 miles. It will slow itself down from supersonic speeds and unfurl a parachute for a water landing.
Engineers will analyze the data to determine if the test was successful.
New Private Spacecraft Will Be 1st US Space Lifeboat in 40 Years
The next U.S. spacecraft designed to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station also needs to act as a lifeboat if something goes wrong on the orbiting outpost.
NASA officials hope to find the next astronaut lifeboat — the first American one in 40 years — through the agency's Commercial Crew Program. The space agency is partnering with private companies to find better ways to explore space from American soil. Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX are all currently developing new spacecraft that could bring NASA astronauts into orbit and keep them safe if disaster strikes the space station.
The commercial spacecraft will have to meet two especially important criteria: They will have to be able to shelter astronauts in case of an emergency, and they will have to be able to detach and return to Earth quickly.
"You've got to make sure it provides the same capability on day 210 as it does on day one," Justin Kerr, manager of the NASA Commercial Crew Program's spacecraft office, said in a statement.
Therefore, the new ships will have to be able to wake up from a sleep state at any time during one of its months-long periods parked at the station, and perform as well as it did on the first day.
At the moment, the lifeboat function on the space laboratory is filled by two Russian Soyuz craft, each of which can seat three people. There can only be as many crewmembers aboard the station as can fit in the two Soyuz vehicles, so when the two craft are parked at the station, only six space fliers can be on the station. When one Soyuz leaves to take three astronauts back to Earth, no more than three astronauts can stay behind.
There are other criteria as well: The new craft must remain functional for a full seven months, keep the station crew alive in case the craft has to be used as a shelter, evacuate the crew quickly and safely, survive being pummeled by micrometeoroids, deliver four astronauts back to Earth and keep its air supply well circulated.
In outer space, the air inside a man-made environment can "develop dead spots, or sections of the cabin without air for breathing, unless there is something to move the air around," NASA officials said in a statement.
"You don't want someone to go into the spacecraft and immediately pass out because there's no breathable air in that one area," Scott Thurston, deputy manager of the Commercial Crew Program's spacecraft office, said in a statement.
The first component of the International Space Station reached orbit in 1998. Since then, the station has hosted 204 people and has been visited by spacecraft from Russia, Europe, the United States, Japan and private companies. The station covers an area as large as a football field.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment