| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Say Hello to CGE! - Jobs and Training
- Enhancing Your Creative Genius - Enroll Today
- Job Opportunities - Community
- Let's Knock Out Hunger |  |
| Headlines - Say Hello to CGE!
CGE, the long-awaited replacement for FedTraveler, goes live TODAY, June 30. Current travel system users will be receiving an email today from the CGE system administrator with login information. The JSC Travel Help Desk (x39999) will continue to support users in the new CGE system. The JSC Travel Office will be operating a CGE Transition Operations Center to assist the JSC traveling community. The Operations Center will be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, starting today, June 30, in Building 12, Room 142. The operations center will be staffed through Friday, July 11. Instructions on how to create a user profile in the new CGE system are available on the JSC CGE Travel System home page. Questions? Didn't receive the login email? Contact us! Jobs and Training - Enhancing Your Creative Genius - Enroll Today
NASA's Enhancing Your Creative Genius Course is being offered to JSC employees in July! During this non-traditional and highly interactive course, participants will travel to an off-site business location to learn the core principles of creativity, hear from a NASA leader and take a short tour to increase ideation. There will be various brainstorming and ideation techniques used and demonstrated throughout the two days. Monday and Tuesday, July 21 to 22, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. - or - Wednesday and Thursday, July 23 to 24, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The course will be held off-site within the Houston area. Participants are responsible for their own travel. Lunch will be available for purchase (optional). Details to be provided to course participants. Space is limited—sign up today. - Job Opportunities
Where do I find job opportunities? To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. Lateral reassignment and rotation opportunities are posted in the Workforce Transition Tool. To access: HR Portal > Employees > Workforce Transition > Workforce Transition Tool. These opportunities do not possess known promotion potential; therefore, employees can only see positions at or below their current grade level. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies or reassignment opportunities, please call your HR representative. Community - Let's Knock Out Hunger
Once again, the JSC/White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) team is working to knock out hunger in our community through JSC Feeds Families. We are encouraging the entire JSC team (contractors off-site as well) to join in. VERY SOON we will have drop boxes in the cafés and high-population buildings, including prepackaged food bags or food-bag vouchers available for purchase at the Starport Gift Shops. Collection runs from TODAY, June 30, through Aug. 27, with a "Stuff the Truck" event at the Gilruth Center. Themes are: - June 30 to July 18 - "portable meals" - hamburger/tuna helper, ravioli, canned soups, stews, etc.
- July 21 to Aug. 1 - "non-food needs" - toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoos, diapers, etc.
- Aug. 4 to 22 - canned goods and dry goods
JSC donations will benefit the Galveston County Food Bank and the Clear Lake Food Pantry. WSTF donations will benefit Casa de Peregrinos and Jardin de los Ninos. | |
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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
Monday – June 30, 2014
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: Expedition 40 Commander Steve Swanson and Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman made good on their bet with German crewmate Alexander Gerst. The pair shaved their heads late on June 26 to match Gerst's bald pate in the wake of the U.S. soccer team's loss to Germany 1-0 in the team's World Cup showdown earlier in the day in Recife, Brazil. Watch the video here. HEADLINES AND LEADS
NASA calls test for future Mars landings a qualified success
James Queally – Los Angeles Times
A NASA vehicle launched high into the atmosphere to explore how to land heavy spacecraft, and possibly human beings, on Mars splashed down off Hawaii on Saturday, completing a mostly successful test, the agency announced.
Mars 'flying saucer' splashes down after NASA test
Associated Press
NASA has tested new technology designed to bring spacecraft — and one day even astronauts — safely down to Mars, with the agency declaring the experiment a qualified success even though a giant parachute got tangled on the way down.
Bum parachute mars NASA saucer test flight
Irene Klotz – Reuters
A helium balloon carrying an experimental saucer-shaped NASA spacecraft floated off a launch tower at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, on Saturday to test landing systems for future missions to Mars.
Road to Mars: JPL scientists prepare for a supersonic test over Hawaii
Julia Rosen – Los Angeles Times
If the wind blows the right way, sometime around sunset on Friday night, three tractor tugboats operated by P&R Water Taxi will pull up anchor in Honolulu and set off for the aquamarine waters west of Kauai.
Aerojet Rocketdyne systems to help send people back to deep space
Edward Ortiz – The Sacramento Bee
NASA chief Charles Bolden is scheduled to tour the Aerojet facility in Rancho Cordova today – a visit that reflects the company's significant role in the agency's quest to send man back into deep space, and eventually to Mars.
Research Scientist Ved Chirayath Organizes NASA's First Official Gay Pride Contingent In San Francisco
Curtis M. Wong - The Huffington Post
San Francisco's LGBT Pride parade will welcome astronauts and other NASA employees among its many revelers this year.
Cosmic caffeine: Astronauts getting espresso maker
Marcia Dunn – Associated Press
Talk about a cosmic caffeine jolt. The International Space Station is getting a real Italian espresso machine.
Space shuttle Atlantis display drawing in visitors at KSC
Jerry Hume - Central Florida News 13-TV
It's been three years since space shuttle Atlantis blasted off for the final time from the Kennedy Space Center.
NASA Launching Satellite to Track Carbon
Kenneth Chang – New York Times
On an average day, some 100 million tons of carbon dioxide is liberated from oil and coal by combustion, wafting into the air. The gas traps heat in the atmosphere, resulting in the gradual warming that has alarmed scientists and much of the public.
NASA postpones rocket launch from Wallops
Associated Press
NASA has postponed the launch of a suborbital rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore.
NASA's Robot Astronaut Inspiring Tech Advances Here on Earth
A humanoid robot aboard the International Space Station is inspiring technology that could be useful to both astronauts and people on Earth.
SpaceX, Orbcomm want to launch satellites in July
Associated Press
SpaceX and Orbcomm are hoping that it can launch six commercial satellites from Cape Canaveral early next month.
LaunchHouse and NASA partner on Ohio's first hardware technology accelerator
Robert L. Smith - Cleveland Plain Dealer
When Shaker LaunchHouse debuted the region's first business accelerator two years ago, the emphasis on software technology made sense. Web-based companies were the rage coast to coast. Everyone wanted to launch the next Groupon or viral iPhone app.
ekWhy Russia Won't Catch Up in the Space Race
Jeffrey Kluger – TIME
It takes a lot of things to run a successful space program, but petulance, anger and impulsiveness are not among them. That's a lesson Vladimir Putin has to learn.
COMPLETE STORIES
NASA calls test for future Mars landings a qualified success
James Queally – Los Angeles Times
A NASA vehicle launched high into the atmosphere to explore how to land heavy spacecraft, and possibly human beings, on Mars splashed down off Hawaii on Saturday, completing a mostly successful test, the agency announced.
The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, or LDSD, launched about 11:40 a.m. PDT from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.
The test was the result of a four-year project aimed at landing a vehicle on Mars heavier than the roughly 2,000-pound Curiosity rover, which arrived on the Red Planet in 2012.
Though NASA deemed the test a success, even sending out a celebratory Twitter message -- "It's a wrap!" -- about 3 p.m., NBC News was reporting that the vehicle's supersonic parachute failed to deploy properly, causing a hard landing in the Pacific Ocean.
The LDSD is meant to slow a Mars-bound body, likely to be traveling at four times the speed of sound, with the expansion of an inflatable doughnut
With the successful test run, the LDSD should allow NASA to ferry loads weighing up to 3 metric tons to Mars' surface, twice the capacity of the Curiosity mission.
In its statement, NASA said the test vehicle dropped from its balloon successfully and its rockets appeared to fire as expected.
Scientists had long struggled to find a test environment similar to Mars' thin atmosphere, but found something close in the air over Kauai.
To conduct the test, NASA hitched the vehicle to a balloon and floated it to the upper reaches of the stratosphere -- about 120,000 feet, or 22 miles, in the air.
NASA will hold a media teleconference on Sunday to discuss the results of the test.
Mars 'flying saucer' splashes down after NASA test
Associated Press
NASA has tested new technology designed to bring spacecraft — and one day even astronauts — safely down to Mars, with the agency declaring the experiment a qualified success even though a giant parachute got tangled on the way down.
Saturday's $150 million experiment is the first of three involving the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator vehicle. Tests are being conducted at high altitude on Earth to mimic descent through the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet.
A balloon hauled the saucer-shaped craft 120,000 feet into the sky from a Navy missile range on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Then, the craft's own rocket boosted it to more than 30 miles high at supersonic speeds.
As the craft prepared to fall back to earth, a doughnut-shaped tube around it expanded like a Hawaiian puffer fish, creating atmospheric drag to dramatically slow it down from Mach 4, or four times the speed of sound.
Then the parachute unfurled — but only partially. The vehicle made a hard landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Engineers won't look at the parachute problem as a failure but as a way to learn more and apply that knowledge during future tests, said NASA engineer Dan Coatta with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"In a way, that's a more valuable experience for us than if everything had gone exactly according to plan," he said.
A ship was sent to recover a "black box" designed to separate from the vehicle and float. Outfitted with a GPS beacon, the box contains the crucial flight data that scientists are eager to analyze.
NASA investigators expect to know more once they have analyzed data from the box, which they expect to retrieve Sunday along with the vehicle and parachute. They also expect to recover high resolution video.
"We've got a lot to look at," Ian Clark, principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told reporters on a teleconference.
Since the twin Viking spacecraft landed on the red planet in 1976, NASA has relied on a parachute to slow landers and rovers.
But the latest experiment involved both the drag-inducing device and a parachute that was 110 feet in diameter — twice as large as the one that carried the 1-ton Curiosity rover in 2011.
Cutting-edge technologies are needed to safely land larger payloads on Mars, enabling delivery of supplies and materials "and to pave the way for future human explorers," a NASA statement said.
Technology development "is the surest path to Mars," said Michael Gazarik, head of space technology at NASA headquarters.
Bum parachute mars NASA saucer test flight
Irene Klotz – Reuters
A helium balloon carrying an experimental saucer-shaped NASA spacecraft floated off a launch tower at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, on Saturday to test landing systems for future missions to Mars.
A novel inflatable shield to burn off speed worked but the test fell apart when a massive parachute, intended to guide the saucer to a splashdown in the ocean, failed to inflate properly.
"This is an opportunity for us to take a look at the data, learn what happened and apply that to the next test," NASA engineer Dan Coatta, with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said during an interview on NASA Television.
"That's a more valuable experience for us than if everything had gone perfectly," he said. The balloon – big enough to fill the Rose Bowl football stadium in Pasadena, California – lifted off at 2:40 p.m. EDT and reached its designated altitude 120,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean about 2.5 hours later.
The launch, which had been delayed six times this month because of unsuitable weather, and the test were broadcast live on NASA Television.
The saucer-shaped Low Density Supersonic Decelerator, or LDSD, successfully separated from the balloon and fired up its rocket motor, reaching speeds of 3,000 mph – roughly four times the speed of sound.
That set the stage for the real point of the test – collecting engineering data on a novel doughnut-shaped structure designed to quickly unfold, inflate and slow the craft's descent. The LDSD also held a massive supersonic parachute – the largest NASA has ever tested – that was to guide the craft to a controlled re-entry into the Pacific Ocean.
The 110-foot-diameter parachute failed to properly inflate, however, engineers monitoring the test said.
Recovery teams were standing by to pick up all the equipment splashing down in the ocean.
The point of the test flight was to put a prototype landing system through conditions that would be experienced on Mars.
"When we're actually going to use it for real, it's going to be on a spacecraft, entering the atmosphere of Mars at thousands of miles per hour, so we have to come up with some way on Earth to simulate that condition in order to prove that these things work," Coatta said.
The test is part of a larger technology-developing initiative to prepare to send heavier rovers and eventually human habitats to Mars.
NASA is spending about $200 million on the five-year project, which began in 2010. LDSD's next test is scheduled for next summer.
Road to Mars: JPL scientists prepare for a supersonic test over Hawaii
Julia Rosen – Los Angeles Times
If the wind blows the right way, sometime around sunset on Friday night, three tractor tugboats operated by P&R Water Taxi will pull up anchor in Honolulu and set off for the aquamarine waters west of Kauai.
On Saturday, assuming all goes well, these vessels will collect the sodden remains of a massive high-altitude balloon, a saucer-shaped spaceship and its black box (which is designed to detach when it hits the water in case the vehicle starts to sink).
If they do, it will mean the first full-scale test of NASA's new Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (or LDSD) took place high in the atmosphere. The LDSD could be the space agency's next hero in the quest to explore the Red Planet; the device acts like a brake pedal for large loads headed to its surface.
"This is part one of a 12-step program to get people to Mars," said Project Manager Mark Adler of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.
Right now, step one is still in progress. The scientists are in Hawaii to test whether they can even create the right conditions to test the vehicle for Mars.
NASA experts picked Hawaii as their test spot because winds at the tropical paradise are ideal for launching the device away from people, high into the stratosphere, where atmospheric conditions are about as close to those on Mars as they can find on Earth. (Their only other good option was in the Australian outback, but the logistics of schlepping people and gear into a remote desert made Hawaii the simpler option.)
The tugboats are just the opening act of a long and intricate drama that will play out the night before LDSD's launch at the Pacific Missile Range Facility.
"It's like baking," said Grace Tan-Wang, the operations lead on the project. "You have all your ingredients out there, but actually mixing it all together, that has to happen the day of."
Different teams will report to work at different times and begin readying their portion of the project. Nine hours before launch, the balloon specialists will assemble the launch tower and rally the helium trucks. Vehicle engineers will begin rolling the LDSD toward the launch pad, which lies a mile from the storage hangar along the main road of the Navy base on the flat, fertile soils of the Mana coastal plain.
Once the test craft arrives at the launch site, crews will strip off the vehicle's storage covers and connect the umbilical cords linking it to the balloon that will hoist it into the sky and to the data loggers that will record every aspect of its short supersonic flight.
Eight hours before launch, the operations team, including Tan-Wang, will file into the team's command center. They will start up the vehicle's operation and communication systems, running through checklists and making sure it talks to the arrays of antennas perched high in the rugged hills behind the base.
With four hours to go, Adler will take his position in the base's high-security command center, known as the ROCC for Range Operations Command Center. From here, he will give the go-ahead for each major step of the process -- assuming the range staff, who wield absolute control over the base and its missions, approve.
Robert Manning, the chief engineer, will be there too.
"We all hope he has nothing to say," Tan-Wang said, "because he's only there to deal with unexpected events."
Manning knows this is true: "I specialize in failure," he said. "And I have to admit it's a lot of fun."
That basically sums up Team LDSD's approach to the never-ending circus of obstacles and setbacks inherent in developing new technology: revel in them.
"We learn even more when we fail," Manning said, echoing a sentiment also expressed by Adler and every other member of the team. Adler likes to juggle in his spare time, and invokes a saying he heard when he was just starting out, "if you're not dropping balls, you're not learning how to juggle."
So far, the team has learned a lot about how to launch and test a vehicle designed for Mars while it's still stuck on Earth. (All of this would be much easier, Manning noted, if they could just test the vehicle on Mars, where it belongs.)
NASA's saucer-shaped experimental flight vehicle is prepared for a Range Compatibility Test at the US Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kaua'i, Hawaii.NASA/JPL-CaltechNASA's saucer-shaped experimental flight vehicle is prepared for a Range Compatibility Test at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii.The NASA team figured out how to install a rocket engine in the prime real estate where the parachute usually belongs, smack dab in the center of a circular projectile. They have learned new knots for attaching the device to the balloon and debated which type of dye markers will help them find the floating objects in the sea.
But they won't know until the test goes off which — if any — of the mistakes they've unknowingly made will help prepare them for Mars.
Manning explained that there are very good reasons to hope for mistakes in Hawaii.
"There's failure, and then there's failure," he said. The first kind has a happy ending; the second is devastating, sometimes costing billions of dollars and years of work.
The wildly successful Spirit and Opportunity rovers were made possible in part by the dismal fates of Mars Climate Orbiter, which never hit its target because of a metric-to-English unit mistake buried in its code, and the lost Mars Polar Lander.
With old-fashioned human error, "the mistake is not making the mistake, it's not catching it," Manning said.
The point of testing the LDSD is to root out these problems now, to scrub out any chance of real failure. That leaves only one other source of problems: the ones they can't predict.
"What we fear most is ourselves," Manning said. "Our failure of imagination."
They will find out soon if they dreamt up all the possible ways things could go wrong.
The five-day launch window opens Saturday, and staff meteorologists have started keeping a close eye on weather conditions. The long-range forecast calls for favorable winds, and the team is preparing to get that late-night call. (If not, the tests get shelved until next year.)
"The team is anxious," Tan-Wang said. "We're all like, 'Let's do it!'"
Aerojet Rocketdyne systems to help send people back to deep space
Edward Ortiz – The Sacramento Bee
NASA chief Charles Bolden is scheduled to tour the Aerojet facility in Rancho Cordova today – a visit that reflects the company's significant role in the agency's quest to send man back into deep space, and eventually to Mars.
During his visit, Bolden will deliver an update on NASA's Orion mission, which is poised to end a 42-year drought in manned exploration of deep space. The Orion spacecraft is scheduled for an unmanned test launch on Dec. 4 – the first step toward landing astronauts on Mars by the late 2020s.
"The test flight is NASA's next giant leap," Bolden said in a phone interview.
Orion's first launch will be watched with intense scrutiny at Aerojet (renamed Aerojet Rocketdyne after a recent merger), which made and tested some of the spacecraft's most crucial components.
Aerojet has partnered with NASA since the 1960s-era Mercury missions that first lifted humans into space. The company designed the propulsion systems that powered all of NASA's space shuttle missions. It also supplied the batteries for the Mars Curiosity Rover, which recently marked its first Martian year exploring the Red Planet.
For Orion, Aerojet Rocketdyne supplied the rocket's abort system – meant to save astronauts in case of a catastrophe during launch. It also produced the small thruster engines that will allow the Orion crew module vehicle – which will eventually house four astronauts – to orient itself during flight and re-entry to Earth's atmosphere.
Final testing of those systems occurred last summer in a bunker-like building at Aerojet called the hot-fire test assembly building. The equipment was then sent out for assembly at other Aerojet locations and eventual shipping to NASA's Cape Canaveral launch site in Florida.
That equipment is now stacked on the assembled rocket at the cape's Pad 37B, where 25 NASA missions have launched.
"The test flight will provide important information we can use to improve Orion's design," Bolden said. "It will stress systems critical to safety, including the heat shield, parachutes, avionics and attitude control."
The heat shield will be of paramount importance. Orion's crew module craft will reach speeds of 20,000 mph and temperatures of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit when it re-enters Earth's atmosphere.
The Aerojet thrusters on the crew module are also crucial. They are designed to allow the craft to enter Earth's atmosphere at the right angle. A spacecraft entering at the wrong angle can end in disaster.
The first crewed flight of Orion is slated for 2021.
Another Orion effort to originate at Aerojet is a jettison motor that will allow one stage of the craft to separate from another. It was tested last June.
"The testing went very well," said Cheryl Rehm, the company's deputy program manager for human space.
Rehm oversees a team of 40 on the jettison-motor team. She said the jettison motors made at Aerojet have worked every time they've been employed on missions.
Rehm said Aerojet is continuing to build motors and other equipment for testing and eventual approval for manned flight on Orion. These are expected to be delivered to NASA by 2018.
Although the December flight test will be unmanned and take only four hours, it is no small matter for Aerojet's Julie Van Kleeck, who heads the company's human space program.
"That's 40 times farther than a human-rated spacecraft has been since the Apollo missions of the 1960s," Van Kleeck said. "As a species, we're confined to low Earth orbit. Just about 200 miles up."
During the flight, the Orion vehicle will travel 15 times farther than the International Space Station.
For its December test flight, Orion is being powered by a Delta rocket. However, the agency has a new rocket system in the works for Orion called the Space Launch System. That system, built in partnership between Boeing and Aerojet, is reconceiving the use of four engines employed in the space shuttle program.
"Orion and the Space Launch System, the most capable launch vehicle ever built, are enabling us to redefine our place in the universe by giving us a new perspective of ourselves and our planet," Van Kleeck said.
The engines will provide upper-stage propulsion that will push the Orion spacecraft beyond lower earth orbit. That launch system will get its first test flight in 2017.
Research Scientist Ved Chirayath Organizes NASA's First Official Gay Pride Contingent In San Francisco
Curtis M. Wong - The Huffington Post
San Francisco's LGBT Pride parade will welcome astronauts and other NASA employees among its many revelers this year.
Ved Chirayath, who is currently enrolled at Stanford University in an aeronautics and astronautics graduate program and a Point Foundation scholar, received permission from NASA to have their first official contingent in San Francisco's parade, which takes place June 29.
Chirayath, who works at NASA's Ames Research Center's Earth Science Division, said over 100 of his colleagues and their friends and family members will also join the parade, wearing T-shirts and other accessories emblazoned with rainbow logos. Meanwhile, vehicles pulling a satellite and a test model of a supersonic jet will also be on hand.
"NASA's commitment to workplace diversity, equal opportunity and a supportive environment for minorities, such as myself and the LGBT community, have made it the world leader in aeronautics and space exploration and I am so touched to see support from NASA HQ for our NASA Pride Parade Float and LGBT rights," Chirayath told The Huffington Post in an email.
He then added, "NASA's mission to reach for new heights and reveal the unknown makes it, to my mind, the coolest and most supportive place to work and I am proud to be marching this Sunday and representing NASA at the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade."
Cosmic caffeine: Astronauts getting espresso maker
Marcia Dunn – Associated Press
Talk about a cosmic caffeine jolt. The International Space Station is getting a real Italian espresso machine.
Astronauts of all nationalities - but especially the Italians - have long grumbled about the tepid instant coffee served in pouches and drunk with straws 260 miles above Earth. The pouches and straws aren't going away, but at least the brew will pack some zero-gravity punch.
The specially-designed-for-space espresso machine is dubbed ISSpresso - ISS for International Space Station.
Its launch early next year from Wallops Island, Virginia, is timed to coincide with the six-month mission of Italy's first female astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti. The 37-year-old fighter pilot and Italian Air Force captain will fly to the space station in November aboard a Russian capsule.
She'll be the first out-of-this-world barista.
"How cool is that?" she said in a tweet earlier this month. "I'll get to operate the first space espresso machine!"
Italy's century-old coffee maestro Lavazza teamed up with a Turin-based engineering company, Argotec, and the Italian Space Agency to improve coffee conditions aboard the orbiting outpost.
Besides espresso, ISSpresso is capable of whipping up tea and consommé.
What more could an astronaut want?
During his 5½-month stay on the space station last year, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano repeatedly talked about missing espresso. (This is the cool-as-ice test pilot who nearly drowned during a spacewalk last July when his helmet filled with water from his suit's cooling system.)
Argotec already was working on a space espresso machine. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Virginia will make the delivery on its Cygnus cargo ship; the launch is targeted for January.
NASA's coffee-loving astronaut Donald Pettit actually offered some ideas for ISSpresso during its design phase. He's a two-time space station resident who invented and even patented a zero-gravity cup for sipping his orbital joe versus sucking it with a straw.
No question, an espresso machine will be "a welcome addition" to space station life, Pettit said Wednesday from Johnson Space Center in Houston. The pre-measured bags of freeze-dried coffee served in orbit taste good - when you're up there on the frontier, he said. On Earth, any coffee lover would go "Yeeck."
Argotec spokesman Antonio Pilello has sampled the ISSpresso espresso and gives it a thumbs-up. The space machine is designed to operate at the same temperature and pressure as Earthly espresso makers, according to the company, to guarantee taste and flavor.
"You know, coffee is very important for Italian people. We are really hard to please about it!" Pilello wrote in an email.
Certified for safety and approved by NASA, ISSpresso initially will fly with 20 coffee capsules. Extra packets will follow for the six-member crew, if the trial run goes well. The 44-pound machine - a compact 14 inches by 17 inches - will be housed in the U.S. laboratory, Destiny. It resembles a microwave oven, with all the action occurring inside.
Engineers replaced the typical plastic tubing in an espresso machine with steel for robustness. They also used buttons and switches similar to those already on the space station, so the astronauts would be familiar with the design.
Astronaut Pettit points out that the lack of gravity will prevent the bubbly foam from rising to the top. Yet even if the space espresso falls short by connoisseur standards, "it would be the best coffee that we've ever had in space."
Space shuttle Atlantis display drawing in visitors at KSC
Jerry Hume - Central Florida News 13-TV
It's been three years since space shuttle Atlantis blasted off for the final time from the Kennedy Space Center.
And Sunday is exactly one year since the shuttle — which is the biggest investment in the history of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex — has been put on display.
Officials said the investment has paid off. The shuttle has drawn in more than 1 million visitors over the past year.
"With the close of the space shuttle program, it really had an impact on attendance," said Andrea Farmer, spokeswoman for the Visitor Complex.
Delaware North, the operator of the Visitor Complex, invested $100 million into the Atlantis exhibit, with the hope that more visitors would check out the space center.
"Now, with the addition of space shuttle Atlantis, we've seen an increase in attendance of double digits, which is huge," Farmer said.
Visitors travel from near and far to see Atlantis as if it were flying on one of its 33 missions in space.
"The history that we've heard about, read about and then to actually see her in her glory as she was — with everything that she's capable of doing is awe-inspiring," said Lisa O'Toole, who was visiting from Carlsbad, California. "I was just telling my family it was giving me goose bumps."
Terry White worked on Atlantis. Nowadays, he volunteers his time explaining the orbiter to guests.
"One of the things that have surprised me is the amount of interest, especially in foreign guests," White said. "A lot of people that are not local here, but when they come out and you see the emotion in their face."
And no matter how many times you see Atlantis, it still can be quite emotional.
"It brings tears to your eyes, it puts a lump in your throat," said James Wallace, who was visiting from Limerick, Ireland.
And while Delaware North is certainly focused on Atlantis, they're already looking ahead to the next exhibit here at the Visitor Complex. No taxpayer dollars were used to make the Atlantis display, Delaware North officials said.
"We're opening great balls of fire — a new exhibit that has traveled around the country, but for us here in Central Florida, we're going to be able to find out all about meteorites, asteroids, commits and our solar system," Farmer said.
That new exhibit opens Wednesday.
NASA Launching Satellite to Track Carbon
Kenneth Chang – New York Times
On an average day, some 100 million tons of carbon dioxide is liberated from oil and coal by combustion, wafting into the air. The gas traps heat in the atmosphere, resulting in the gradual warming that has alarmed scientists and much of the public.
But only half of the carbon dioxide stays up there; the other half falls back to earth. While scientists know what happens to half of that half — it dissolves into the oceans — the rest is a continuing puzzle. It is taken up by growing plants, but nobody knows exactly where and how. "Somewhere on earth, on land, one-quarter of all our carbon emissions released through fossil fuel emissions is disappearing," said David Crisp, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We can't identify the processes responsible for this. Wouldn't it be nice to know where?"
Now NASA is launching a satellite to help solve the puzzle.
The satellite, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, is scheduled to lift off Tuesday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Passing over the North and South Poles at an altitude of 438 miles, it will observe the same spots every 16 days as the earth rotates beneath.
These repeated measurements will allow scientists to observe the rise and fall of carbon dioxide with the seasons. They may also figure out how the balance changes with droughts or floods.
That should give them a better idea of whether the oceans and land plants will continue to absorb half of the carbon dioxide emissions as in the past or whether any of these so-called carbon sinks are close to overflowing, leaving even more gas in the air.
In particular, scientists do not understand how plants have kept pace with fossil fuel emissions that have nearly tripled since 1960. "Have you seen a new rain forest spring out of nowhere that wasn't there before?" asked Dr. Crisp, the leader of the science team for the mission. "No."
The orbiting observatory carries a single instrument, to measure colors of sunlight bouncing off the earth. The relative intensity of the colors will tell how much carbon dioxide the light beam passed through, and the spacecraft will take a million measurements a day.
Because of intervening clouds, only a tenth of the measurements — about 100,000 a day — will prove useful data. Still, that will dwarf what 150 carbon dioxide measuring stations on the ground are able to provide. A Japanese satellite is making similar measurements, but with less precision.
An earlier Orbiting Carbon Observatory mission failed in 2009, when the clamshell nose cone surrounding the spacecraft did not open and the satellite splashed into the ocean a few minutes after liftoff — a $273 million loss. "That was a heartbreak, utter devastation," said Ralph R. Basilio, the project manager for the current mission.
At the end of 2009, the Obama administration decided to build a nearly identical satellite scheduled for launch in February 2013. But those plans were disrupted when the same launch failure that had doomed the first mission occurred again, destroying another NASA satellite, the Glory mission, in 2011.
The space agency then decided to switch rockets, putting the new satellite on a Delta 2 rocket, which has long history of successful launches.
The switch delayed the launching date, and the bigger Delta 2 added to the cost — which totaled $467.5 million this time. The cost also includes an extra copy of the carbon dioxide measuring instrument, which was built to ensure against delays if problems arose during testing. That extra instrument may be flown to the International Space Station to provide another set of observations.
Levels of carbon dioxide in the air have jumped 40 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution, but the amount is still tiny: Of every million molecules of air, just 400 are carbon dioxide. Over a power plant or a city where emissions are higher, that number rises by perhaps one molecule per million. A field of corn stalks at the height of growing season might reduce the number by a similar amount.
To detect such minute changes, Dr. Crisp said, the parts of the 300-pound instrument had to be aligned within the width of a human hair. The scientists think they may also be able to discern a faint infrared fluorescent glow emitted by plants as they photosynthesize, which could indicate their health.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 is part of a busy year for NASA's earth sciences division — the second of five launches — reflecting increased financing for this segment of NASA even as other parts have been squeezed by tight budgets.
Michael Freilich, director of the earth sciences division, said, "There is no question that the Obama administration puts a very high priority on understanding the earth."
NASA postpones rocket launch from Wallops
Associated Press
NASA has postponed the launch of a suborbital rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore.
NASA had planned to the SubTech-6 on Sunday morning to test new suborbital rocket technologies. The space agency says the launch was scrubbed because boats were in the hazard area.
The launch has been rescheduled for Monday between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.
The technologies to be tested during the launch include improvements in telemetry and a deployment system for forming vapor clouds. The launch also will test flight recorders to increase the rates for data collected and transferred during flight.
NASA's Robot Astronaut Inspiring Tech Advances Here on Earth
A humanoid robot aboard the International Space Station is inspiring technology that could be useful to both astronauts and people on Earth.
NASA's Robonaut 2, which arrived at the orbiting lab in 2011, has human-like arms and hands capable of performing simple tasks such as flipping switches and grasping objects. The robot was originally designed to do work outside the station, potentially reducing the number of time-consuming and strenuous spacewalks required of astronauts.
First, scientists converted Robonaut into a full exoskeleton called X1 that can help astronauts exercise and stay healthy while spending long periods in space. But X1 also has potential application closer to home; scientists think paraplegia or stroke patients could use the skeleton to regain some lost motion here on Earth.
NASA robotics engineers worked with researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition to create the exoskeleton, which straps on over the shoulders and back and covers the legs. Motorized joints installed at the hips and knees allow the wearer to take halting steps.
The exoskeleton can also be programmed to resist movement, making it a useful device for astronauts who need to exercise two hours a day to mitigate the long-term effects of microgravity exposure. (Without exercising, long periods of time in microgravity can cause muscles to shrink and bones to weaken.)
Robonaut also inspired Roboglove, a glove designed with flexible tendons that can assist grip force. On spacewalks, astronauts must repair and maintain the outside of the orbiting lab. But zero gravity combined with a bulky spacesuit can make even simple tasks difficult.
"Due to pressurization of the suit, it's like squeezing a balloon every time you move your hand," Lyndon Bridgwater, senior robotics engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement. "That causes extreme fatigue and even injury. We're looking at putting the hardware and actuator in the glove itself to provide muscle augmentation for the hand."
Finally, scientists think Robonaut could be useful for telemedicine. Tests at the Methodist Hospital in Houston have shown it's possible for Robonaut to guide a user's hand to stick a needle in a vein. In the future, scientists think Robonaut could assist astronauts performing medical procedures in space with doctors supervising from Earth.
"The robot could stabilize an injured individual or do nursing-level work, even on Earth," Ron Diftler, Robonaut project manager, said in a statement. "That essentially transports a doctor's skill and presence to somewhere the doctor can't go or, in an emergency situation, where it would be dangerous for a person to go."
Robonaut 2 has thus far been humanoid only from the waist up; it launched to the space station without any legs. But a pair of legs for the robot arrived at the orbiting complex aboard SpaceX's unmanned Dragon cargo craft in April, so Robonaut 2 will soon get quite a bit taller.
SpaceX, Orbcomm want to launch satellites in July
Associated Press
SpaceX and Orbcomm are hoping that it can launch six commercial satellites from Cape Canaveral early next month.
Florida Today reports (http://on.flatoday.com/1qH1njK ) that the Air Force is reviewing a proposed July 14 launch date for approval. There is a backup date of July 15.
The companies are eventually trying to launch 17 Orbcomm satellites, after having to abort two previous attempts this month because of weather and technical issues. The most recent attempt on June 22 was also scrubbed because of a rocket problem.
Orbcomm said in a statement on its website that the delay provides necessary time for the highest possible mission assurance and also allows for previously scheduled maintenance.
LaunchHouse and NASA partner on Ohio's first hardware technology accelerator
Robert L. Smith - Cleveland Plain Dealer
When Shaker LaunchHouse debuted the region's first business accelerator two years ago, the emphasis on software technology made sense. Web-based companies were the rage coast to coast. Everyone wanted to launch the next Groupon or viral iPhone app.
But after graduating 21 tech companies that attracted marginal local investment, the startup enthusiasts at LaunchHouse are returning to that old-time religion.
By tradition and by skill, they say, Cleveland is a manufacturing town, a city where people respect the heft of hardware. Here it comes.
LaunchHouse, which pioneered support for early-stage tech entrepreneurs in Ohio, is ready to launch the state's first hardware accelerator. It's planning a 16-week, business boot camp that will help startup teams design, test and market a physical product.
It plans to accelerate the businesses of people who want to make things in the Cleveland-Akron tradition.
Out are the online games and Internet shopping services of earlier accelerator classes. In are robotics, sensors and tech with a hard case.
"As much as we tried to push Cleveland into being a software city, it's hardware that works here," said Todd Goldstein, the chief executive officer at LaunchHouse, an entrepreneurship hub that he founded with his friend, Dar Caldwell, and that now includes seven partners.
Goldstein said the leadership team came to that conclusion from their front-row seats on an emerging startup scene. Since 2008, LaunchHouse has invested in 51 companies that went on to raise more than $15 million in follow-on funding.
But the venture capital pool has grown noticeably shallower in Ohio, observers agree. Some of the graduates of the LaunchHouse Accelerator, or LHX, have had to move their businesses to other cities to find investors, Goldstein said.
He argues the nation is saturated with software accelerators, a type of business incubator that in Greater Cleveland includes LaunchHouse, Bizdom and FlashStarts. They churn out dozens of young tech companies that compete for limited venture capital concentrated on the coasts.
Suddenly, deal flow looks more promising on the legacy side of the economy. The LaunchHouse partners count only eight hardware accelerators nationwide. Theirs will be the ninth. It will offer entrepreneurship training, investor contacts and $20,000 in startup cash in exchange for equity in the company.
And it will tap not only a skill set but a culture, Goldstein believes.
Already, the concept is drawing interest from people known for making things--incredible things.
To boldly go
When the new accelerator begins classes in September, the team from the NASA Glenn Research Center figures to be the Big Man on Campus. NASA is joining the accelerator as a mentor and as a student in search of answers.
Gregory Robinson, the center's deputy director, explained that NASA Glenn is justifiably renowned for its expertise in advanced aeronautics, spacecraft propulsion systems and microgravity science. But it's a bit of a kludge at bringing innovations to market.
"We're trying to get better at that," Robinson said. "We have great inventors--some of the best in the world. We're trying to encourage them to become more entrepreneurial."
Enter LaunchHouse, which first put out its lamp for aspiring entrepreneurs in 2008 and has helped to launch dozens of startups.
NASA accepted a LaunchHouse offer to join its hardware accelerator as an industry partner. It will offer scientific expertise, help with manufacturing and use of its uncommon testing facilities. Those include a wind tunnel and thermal vacuum chambers, should anyone need to simulate space conditions.
Meanwhile, it will enter a team into the accelerator classes in hopes of commercializing NASA technology through a local company. Robinson said the favored product has not yet been selected but that it could be a translucent insulating gel known as aerogel.
NASA Glenn scientists and polymer experts at the University of Akron developed a super-strong version of the gel to insulate lightweight spacecraft from extreme temperatures. Robinson suspects there's a commercial application to be discovered.
"LaunchHouse is very good at that process," he said. "We'll certainly try to help them and I think we can. At the same time, we think they're going to help us. This accelerator, it's interesting to us."
By partnering with NASA Glenn and other local manufacturers, LaunchHouse leaders say they hope to accelerate the convergence of manufacturing and high technology in Northeast Ohio, which could create jobs.
That was the pitch Shannon Lyons made to the Third Frontier Commission. As chief business development officer for LaunchHouse, Lyons, 31, argues technology is part of most manufacturing processes in Northeast Ohio.
In April, the commission approved another contribution to a LaunchHouse accelerator, $200,000, this time for an accelerator focused on hardware.
"Advanced manufacturing is a broad term, but that includes almost everybody who works with technology today," Lyons said in an interview.
Cleveland area manufacturers are imbedding software into hardware to make it smarter, she said. Engineers and tinkerers around town probably have lots of ideas for Internet-connected devices and robotics.
"Typically with software, it's a kid in a dorm room," Goldstein added. "This shift really allows us to focus on people with industry experience."
He and Lyons expect the new accelerator to attract an older, more seasoned entrepreneur, a person handy with tools and open to ideas: the kind of people who belong to the Cleveland Makers' Alliance.
Makers see trend for them
LaunchHouse is built into a former Oldsmobile dealership on Lee Road, where the makers meet Tuesday nights in a couple of repair bays. Surrounded by a confusion of tools both low and high-tech, they tinker, experiment and collaborate.
Last Tuesday, Joe O'Donnell, the group's treasurer, was working beside 16-year-old Ian Mullaney, who describes himself as a small engine repair wizard. Two college-aged men walked in carrying a set of organ pedals trailing wires and circuits.
They said they thought it would be cool to craft the parts into a "synth," a sound synthesizer for electronic music.
O'Donnell nodded approvingly. "We'll pull out some instruments and see what we can do," he said.
O'Donnell founded and runs Synthetic Intelligence, a big data consulting firm. But his hobby is tinkering with machines and electronics, a passion shared by an alliance of about 70 makers.
A hardware accelerator strikes him as an idea whose time has come. He notes many of the projects crowdfunded successfully on Kickstarter.com are hardware products, like watches and robots. In fact, LaunchHouse plans to add a Kickstarter campaign to the marketing strategy of every accelerator team. "America needs to reclaim its economy with products," O'Donnell said. "And there's no better place to do that than Northeast Ohio."
LaunchHouse is accepting applications for its new boot camp through July 12. It expects to winnow the pool with in-person interviews and demonstrations and seat a class of 11 teams in September.
Goldstein thinks he'll meet some of the job creators of Cleveland's future.
"There's a new type of entrepreneur that we believe is out there; that we think has been out there a long time," he said.
ekWhy Russia Won't Catch Up in the Space Race
Jeffrey Kluger – TIME
It takes a lot of things to run a successful space program, but petulance, anger and impulsiveness are not among them. That's a lesson Vladimir Putin has to learn.
It's a hard fact of exploratory history that angry people don't achieve much in space. You have to be patient when you design your rockets, steely-eyed when you launch them and utterly unflappable when you actually get where you're going.
That stay-poised doctrine was conspicuously at work in the past few days, as two different space projects played out in two different parts of the world with two very different results. On Friday, Russia scrapped the launch of its new Angara rocket—a booster that has been in development since 1994 and has gone pretty much nowhere. Vladimir Putin was personally involved both in overseeing the launch and in authorizing the stand-down—a line of command that would seem awfully strange if it were President Obama on the horn with Cape Canaveral telling the pad engineers what they can launch and when they can launch it.
On Saturday, meantime, NASA successfully tested its Low Density Supersonic Decelerator, a nifty piece of engineering that the space agency admittedly overhyped as a "flying saucer," but that does kind of look like one and is actually a prototype of a new landing system for spacecraft going to Mars—a place NASA has been visiting with greater and greater frequency of late.
The U.S. and Russia were once the Castor and Pollux of space travel, cosmic twins that dazzled the world with their serial triumphs in the 1960s and '70s, but they've gone in different directions since. America's manned space program has been frustratingly adrift since the end of the Apollo era, but the shuttles did fly successfully 133 times (and failed disastrously twice) and new crewed spacecraft are in development. The unmanned program, meantime, has been a glorious success, with robot craft ranging across the solar system, to planets, moons, comets and asteroids—and one ship even exiting the solar system altogether.
And Russia? Not so much. The collapse of communism, the loss of Kazakhstan—which put the Baikonaur Cosmodrome, Russia's Cape Canaveral, in an entirely different country—and hard economic times made space an unaffordable luxury. But now Russia is grimly trying to claw its way back—and the grimness is a problem.
The Angara launch was supposed to take place from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia, a new installation intended to re-centralize the space program, getting it out of Kazakhstan and back on home soil. It's of a piece with a range of Russia's actions lately, which have, much like the Angara, been more fizzle than flight.
Putin's Crimean land grab seemed bold if larcenous for a moment, but the blowback has been severe and he's already backing down from further actions, with his ambitions for a renewed Russian empire limited—for the moment at least—to a single Black Sea island with less square mileage than Massachusetts. His long dreamed-of economic union—announced with enormous fanfare in early June and intended to serve as a counterweight to the 28-member EU—turned out to be nothing more than a table for three, shared with Belarus and Kazakhstan. Ukraine initially RSVP'ed yes, but that was one revolution and one Russian invasion ago, and the new government is once again tilting west.
And so it will probably go with Russia in space. The original space race was no less political than anything Russia is doing today, but both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were operating from positions of strength, projecting their competing power over a sprawling region of client states and taking the duel to the cosmic high ground. Russia today—with Putin calling the shots on when a booster should be launched and the government issuing petulant threats to quit flying American astronauts to the International Space Station—is acting neither strong nor confident.
It is, instead, joining the long list of states that have dreamed of space but sought to power themselves more with rage than rocket fuel. And consider how far they've gotten. North Korea? Pathetic. Iran? Please. China? They're doing great things now, but that only started when they climbed down from their revolutionary zeal and started focusing on the engineering and physics instead of the ideology and slogans.
Russia may once again become the cosmic pioneer it was—and space fans of good will are rooting for that. With the Cold War over, it matters less whether the first flag on Mars or the next one on the moon is the stars and stripes or the Russian tri-color or even the Chinese stars. As long as a human being is planting it, that will be good enough. So the door is always open, Russia. But please, leave the nasty outside before you come in.
END
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