Don't forget,,,,,no monthly Retiree luncheon at Hibachi Grill tomorrow.
Its delayed to next Thursday due to this being 4th of July week.
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Let Them Eat (Only the Best) Cake!
- New NASA@work Challenge: Seeking STEM SMEs - Organizations/Social
- HQ Guest Speaker - Agency Scheduling Community
- Mindful Eating
- Starport Youth Karate Classes - Free Class July 12
- Parent's Night Out at Starport - July 18 - Jobs and Training
- Writing That Works - Enroll Today - Community
- Transportation Options Made Easier |  |
| Headlines - Let Them Eat (Only the Best) Cake!
Want to claim bragging rights to the most creative and best-tasting Orion/Exploration Flight Test-1 cake confection? Teams of one to four people must be entered by tomorrow, July 3, if you want to join the cake-decorating contest. Send your creative team name and all participants to: jsc-orion-outreach@mail.nasa.gov Winning teams can either win the overall contest or the people's choice award, where JSC team members can vote on their favorite cake. Cakes will be judged on creativity, taste, presentation and your team's best depiction of Orion or Orion's first flight test. The sugar-filled event happens on July 15 from noon to 1:30 in the Building 3 Collaboration Area. Participants can bring their cake for setup at 11 a.m. that morning. May the best baker(s) win! - New NASA@work Challenge: Seeking STEM SMEs
Are you new to NASA@work? NASA@work is an agencywide, collaborative problem-solving platform that connects the collective knowledge of experts (like YOU) from all centers across NASA. Challenge owners post problems, and members of the NASA@work community participate by responding with their solutions to posted problems. Anyone can participate! Click here for more information. Organizations/Social - HQ Guest Speaker – Agency Scheduling Community
Are you a scheduler at JSC? Curious about how the agency is striving to be an industry leader in scheduling best practices? Join the JSC Scheduling Community of Practice (CoP) for a presentation by Arnold Hill on the agency's new scheduling initiative. Hill will discuss the objectives, scope and approach of this group and how it will benefit the scheduling community here at JSC. Interested in becoming a member of the JSC Scheduling CoP? The CoP was created to provide training for, and communication amongst, schedule practitioners at JSC to improve scheduling practices and efficacy. For more information, contact us! - Mindful Eating
Have you ever had a candy bar and wished you had one more bite? Do you struggle with comfort eating? Mindful eating is not a diet or about giving up anything at all. It's about enjoying the experience of eating fully. You can eat a salad mindfully, if you wish—or you could decide halfway through your meal that you've had enough. Please join Takis Bogdanos, MA, LPC-S, CGP, for an introduction on "Mindful Eating" and techniques on how to practice it. - Starport Youth Karate Classes - Free Class July 12
Let Starport introduce your child to the exciting art of Youth Karate. Youth Karate will teach your child the skills of self-defense, self-discipline and self-confidence. The class will also focus on leadership, healthy competition and sportsmanship. TRY A FREE CLASS ON JULY 12! Please call the Gilruth Center front desk to sign your child up for the free class (only 25 available spots). Five-week session: July 19 to Aug. 16 Saturdays: 10:15 to 11 a.m. Ages: 6 to 12 Cost: $75 | $20 drop-in rate Register online or at the Gilruth Center. - Parent's Night Out at Starport – July 18
Enjoy a night out on the town while your kids enjoy a night with Starport. We will entertain your children with a night of games, crafts, a bounce house, pizza, a movie, dessert and loads of fun! When: Friday, July 18, from 6 to 10 p.m. Where: Gilruth Center Ages: 5 to 12 Cost: $20/first child and $10/each additional sibling if registered by the Wednesday prior to event. If registered after Wednesday, the fee is $25/first child and $15/additional sibling. Jobs and Training - Writing That Works – Enroll Today
Improve your productivity and your career in this lively seminar on how to make your writing clear, complete, concise and convincing. Whether you write about outer space or office space, this proven seminar will make a difference. It cannot take all the pain out of writing, but it can remove a lot of the guesswork ... and that's half the battle. Pre-work, classroom participation and coaching sessions are involved. Writing That Works Date: July 22 to 25 Time: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. CDT Location: Building 12, Room 154 Register via SATERN: Community - Transportation Options Made Easier
Come to this month's environmental brown-bag luncheon to learn about alternative ways to get to work, whether you're traveling from home or navigating on-site. Commuting alone in a multi-passenger car is costly. JSC team members have access to tools and resources that facilitate alternative modes of transportation, including carpooling. Come learn about ways to get to work that are less expensive, healthier and better for the environment. Event Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014 Event Start Time:12:00 PM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B45/751
Add to Calendar
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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
Wednesday – July 2, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
NASA Saturn Probe Will End Mission in Epic 'Grand Finale'
NASA has chosen a name for the dramatic final phase of its Saturn-studying Cassini mission, with a little help from the public.
Delta 2 boosts NASA environmental satellite into orbit
William Harwood – CBS News
A workhorse Delta 2 rocket roared to life and climbed away from California coast early Wednesday, boosting an environmental research satellite into orbit on a $468 million mission to precisely measure global carbon dioxide levels, a key factor in climate change.
NASA Launches Satellite to Monitor Carbon Dioxide
NASA has launched its first spacecraft devoted to monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas thought to be responsible for much of Earth's recent warming trend.
NASA launches satellite to study carbon pollution in the atmosphere
Mesrop Najarian and Emma Lacey-Bordeaux – CNN
NASA launched a satellite to study climate change on Wednesday, shooting the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) into space.
Rockets' red tape
SpaceX is creating the next generation of rockets, but politics may keep them grounded
Houston Chronicle
Amid the serene ecology of Boca Chica Beach, SpaceX is building a stepping-stone to the stars.
NASA Checks Out Solar Array Technology at Deployable Space Systems in Goleta
Administrators tour the business, emphasizing the importance of private industry
Gina Potthoff - The Santa Barbara (CA) Noozhawk
NASA gave an encouraging nod to a Goleta small business Tuesday when administrators took a tour of Deployable Space Systems, viewing solar array technology designed to compete with work from major national contractors.
World Cup In Space: A History Of Belgium, US Partnership Aboard The International Space Station
Charles Poladian – International Business Times
The International Space Station can get quite interesting during the World Cup. Most recently, a NASA astronaut lost a bet to his German fellow crewman, and while there are no Belgians currently aboard the ISS, the U.S. and Belgium share a healthy science and space partnership.
No Canadian astronaut will visit the space station before 2017 – at the earliest
Peter Rakobowchuk – Canadian Press
Unless Canada makes a lot more contributions to the International Space Station, it could be a while before another Canadian astronaut visits the giant orbiting space laboratory.
NASA Astronaut to Run Colorado Wild West Relay while in Space
Amanda Hodges – Colorado Runner
Longtime Competitor Will Join Team from Orbit
NASA Astronaut Steve Swanson is officially registered with a 6-person ultra team to compete in the Wild West Relay which takes place August 1st and 2nd in Colorado. He will join the competition from the International Space Station where he is currently in orbit. The race is a 200-mile relay originating in Fort Collins and ending in Steamboat Springs. Swanson has completed the Wild West Relay Race twice before as a participant.
Entrepreneurs Smell Profits In Low Earth Orbit
Feeling the pull of the off-planet market
Frank Morring, Jr. | Aviation Week & Space Technology
It has been three years since the International Space Station was completed and made available for full-time use, or as full-time as possible given the demands of keeping its crew and hardware functioning in the harsh environment above the atmosphere. Now the shakeout appears to be over, and ISS managers seem to have found their way to relatively efficient use of the unique facility. More important, business types are starting to report early evidence that the terrestrial economy can indeed move into low Earth orbit—on the station and elsewhere.
Air Force engineer developed unique method to track space debris
By The Partnership for Public Service – The Washington Post
More than a half million pieces of space debris are orbiting the earth, at speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour, causing safety concerns for astronauts aboard the International Space Station and threatening to damage or destroy spacecraft and critical military, intelligence, communications, weather and navigation satellites.
How today's technology is rapidly catching up to Star Trek
Vivek Wadhwa – The Washington Post
In a distant part of the galaxy, 300 years in the future, Starship Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk talks to his crew via a communicator; has his medical officer assess medical conditions through a handheld device called a tricorder; synthesizes food and physical goods using his replicator; and travels short distances via a transporter. Kirk's successors hold meetings in virtual-reality chambers, called holodecks, and operate alien spacecraft using displays mounted on their foreheads. All this takes place in the TV series Star Trek, and is of course science fiction.
COMPLETE STORIES
NASA Saturn Probe Will End Mission in Epic 'Grand Finale'
NASA has chosen a name for the dramatic final phase of its Saturn-studying Cassini mission, with a little help from the public.
Starting in late 2016, Cassini will zip between Saturn and its innermost ring a total of 22 times in a mission phase now known as the "Cassini Grand Finale," which will end in September 2017 when the probe intentionally dives into the gas giant's atmosphere.
The spacecraft's handlers had been calling this upcoming period "the proximal orbits" because Cassini will be so close to the planet, but they felt this apellation lacked pizzazz. So in April, they asked the public to vote for names provided by mission team members or suggest monikers of their own.
More than 2,000 people took part, NASA officials said. The team took the public's input into account, then decided to go with the "Cassini Grand Finale."
"We chose a name for this mission phase that would reflect the exciting journey ahead while acknowledging that it's a big finish for what has been a truly great show," Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. Cassini launched toward Saturn in October 1997 and arrived in orbit around the ringed planet 10 years ago yesterday (June 30). The $3.2 billion mission — a collaboration involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — also dropped a lander named Huygens onto Saturn's huge moon Titan in January 2005.
Cassini has made a number of important discoveries during its 10 years at Saturn. For example, the spacecraft detected plumes of water ice blasting from geysers at the south pole of the moon Enceladus, suggesting the Saturn satellite harbors an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell.
The Cassini Grand Finale should ensure the long-lived mission goes out with a bang, NASA officials say. During the 22 super-close orbits, the probe will map Saturn's gravity and magnetic fields in detail, assess how much material is in the planet's iconic rings and take up-close pictures of Saturn and the rings.
The mission team will ultimately steer Cassini into Saturn's atmosphere to ensure that the spacecraft doesn't crash into (and possibly contaminate) the moons Titan and Enceladus, which may host indigenous life of their own.
Delta 2 boosts NASA environmental satellite into orbit
William Harwood – CBS News
A workhorse Delta 2 rocket roared to life and climbed away from California coast early Wednesday, boosting an environmental research satellite into orbit on a $468 million mission to precisely measure global carbon dioxide levels, a key factor in climate change.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 satellite was built to replace a virtually identical spacecraft that was destroyed in a 2009 launch failure aboard a different rocket. The delay and switch to the Delta 2 drove the cost up by nearly $200 million, but mission scientists say the data collected over the next few years will be worth it.
"OCO-2 will measure global concentrations of carbon dioxide and watch the Earth breathe as we measure the greenhouse gas that drives climate change," Betsy Edwards, OCO-2 program executive at NASA Headquarters, said before launch.
"OCO-2 is our first NASA mission dedicated to studying carbon dioxide and this makes it of critical importance to the scientists who are trying to understand the impact of humans on global climate change."
Running a day late because of a launch pad cooling glitch Tuesday, the Delta 2's Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-27A main engine throttled up on time, followed by ignition of three Alliant solid-fuel strap-on boosters at 5:56:23 a.m. EDT (GMT-4; 2:56 a.m. local time), generating a ground-shaking roar and a combined 564,000 pounds of thrust.
Knifing through marine layer fog that spoiled the view for onlookers at the sprawling Air Force base, the 127-foot-tall Delta 2 quickly climbed away from Space Launch Complex 2 atop a brilliant jet of fiery exhaust, arcing away to the south over the Pacific Ocean on a polar orbit trajectory tilted 98.2 degrees to the equator.
The strap-on boosters burned out 69 seconds after launch and fell away 30 seconds later. The rocket's first stage engine fired another two minutes and 45 seconds before it shut down as planned at an altitude of 57 miles. An Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ10 engine powering the second stage then completed the climb to orbit, ending the first of two required burns about 10 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff.
After a 40-minute coast, the engine reignited for a short 12-second burn to complete the launch phase of the mission, putting the craft in a roughly circular orbit at an altitude of around 430 miles. Spacecraft separation followed five minutes later and data relayed through NASA's communications satellite network confirmed OCO-2's twin solar panels unfolded and locked in place as required.
"I am pleased to report that ... all of the spacecraft subsystems that are (required at this point) have been turned on, all appear to be nominal, the solar arrays did deploy and we are power positive," said Ralph Basilio, OCO-2 project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We're now on our way to completing the rest of the spacecraft checkout process."
The original OCO satellite was lost in February 2009 when the protective payload fairing atop its Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL rocket failed to separate from the booster. After a second Taurus fairing separation failure, NASA managers decided to launch OCO-2 aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket.
Only five of the venerable boosters were left in the ULA inventory as the company completes a transition to more powerful Delta 4s and Atlas 5s. But NASA bought four of the remaining Delta 2s for smaller science spacecraft and OCO-2's launch marked the first flight in nearly three years for the familiar booster.
"Delta 2 performed like a champ," said NASA launch director Tim Dunn. "There was pure joy in the mission director's center at spacecraft separation, I can tell you that."
Operating in a polar orbit, OCO-2 will fly over nearly every point on the planet every 16 days, crossing the equator at the same time each day.
The Orbital Sciences-built spacecraft is equipped with a single instrument, a high-resolution spectrometer designed to break down sunlight reflected from Earth into its component colors. Specifically targeted colors lose intensity when high levels of CO2 are present and brighten when levels are lower. By carefully measuring that intensity in three wavelengths, scientists can calculate carbon dioxide levels as small as 1 part per million
OCO-2's spectrometer will make 69,000 measurements every orbit, or 8 million each 16-day cycle. Researchers also will collect data from ground stations once each day to verify the accuracy of the satellite's readings.
"With that one instrument, we're going to collect hundreds of thousands of measurements each day, which will then provide a global description of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Edwards said. "It's going to be an unprecedented level of coverage and resolution."
It will take flight controllers six to seven weeks to activate and check out the spacecraft's systems and to carry out rocket firings to raise the satellite's altitude another nine miles or so.
Once on station, OCO-2 will begin at least two years of around-the-clock observations, joining four spacecraft in the same orbit, known as the "A train," that are monitoring other aspects of Earth's environment in nearly simultaneous fashion.
Carbon dioxide is a critical factor in climate change because it acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Ground-based measurements show an annual cycle of CO2 emission and re-absorption as the seasons change.
Plants emit about 440 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year while the oceans contribute around 330 billion tons. Most of that naturally occurring CO2 is emitted and then re-absorbed as the seasons change.
But overall trend is a slow but steady increase in CO2 levels, with recent readings of up to 400 parts per mission. That's believed to be the highest concentration in the past 800,000 years. A major question mark is the ongoing impact of human activity.
"Since the beginning of the industrial age, we've been burning fossil fuels, also practicing deforestation and other things that have been emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an ever growing rate," said David Crisp, OCO-2 science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"Human beings are now emitting about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. ... That input into the atmosphere isn't balanced by an uptake like the oceans and the (plants). So we're basically building up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the Earth, slowly, but at an ever increasing rate."
About half of the carbon dioxide generated by human activity is re-absorbed each year, on average, but scientists don't understand where it goes or whether the "sinks" that take up the CO2 will continue to operate in the same way down the road.
"Half of the carbon dioxide we're dumping into the atmosphere every year is disappearing somewhere," Crisp said. "It's dissolving in the ocean waters, about a quarter of it is, and the other quarter we assume is going into the land biosphere somewhere, into forests, into grasslands, somewhere. But we don't know where."
"It's absolutely critical that we learn what processes are absorbing carbon dioxide in our system today, over half of the carbon dioxide we're emitting, because we need to understand, first of all, how much longer they might continue to do us that great favor."
Another critical factor is how that absorption varies from year to year.
"While our inputs have been growing slowly but steadily over time, the amount that stays in the atmosphere varies dramatically from year to year," Crisp said. "Sometimes, almost a hundred percent of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere stays there, sometimes almost none. We don't know why.
"We need to understand those processes as well in order to understand how carbon dioxide will build up in our system in the future and how we might manage carbon dioxide buildup if that's what our policy makers decide to do."
NASA Launches Satellite to Monitor Carbon Dioxide
NASA has launched its first spacecraft devoted to monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas thought to be responsible for much of Earth's recent warming trend.
The space agency's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite (OCO-2) blasted off today (July 2) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 5:56 a.m. EDT (0956 GMT, 2:56 a.m. local time), carried aloft by a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket. The liftoff was originally scheduled for Tuesday (July 1), but a problem with the launch pad's water system caused a one-day delay.
The satellite will measure carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere 24 times every second, revealing in great detail where the gas is being produced and where it is being pulled out of the air — CO2 sources and sinks, in scientists' parlance. [NASA's OCO-2 Mission in Pictures (Gallery)] "With the launch of this spacecraft, decision-makers and scientists will get a much better idea of the role of carbon dioxide in climate change, as OCO-2 measures this greenhouse gas globally and provides incredibly new insights into where and how carbon dioxide is moving into, and then out of, the atmosphere," Betsy Edwards, OCO-2 program executive at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., told reporters during a pre-launch press briefing Sunday (June 30).
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen from about 280 parts per million (ppm) before the Industrial Revolution to 400 ppm today, the highest concentration in at least 800,000 years.
Humanity is primarily responsible for this increase, researchers say. The species pumps 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, chiefly by burning fossil fuels such as coal and gasoline; the planet's natural sinks remove just 20 billion tons annually, on average.
Six weeks or so from now, OCO-2 will maneuver into a polar orbit 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Earth, joining five other Earth-observation satellites in the A-Train constellation. ("A" is short for "afternoon," since these spacecraft cross the equator going north at about 1:30 p.m. local time every day.)
The new satellite will then begin using its single scientific instrument, a grading spectrometer, to measure carbon dioxide levels with an anticipated precision of 1 part per million, NASA officials have said. The spacecraft will zoom over the same swathe of Earth once every 16 days, allowing researchers to track changes in CO2 concentration over a variety of timescales.
"Ultimately, scientists predict that looking at these changes over time will give us patterns that are weeks or months or years long [and] that will help them to unravel the mysteries of the carbon cycle," Edwards said.
The $465-million mission has a nominal lifetime of two years, but the spacecraft has enough fuel to keep operating for much longer than that, OCO-2 team members have said.
This marks NASA's second attempt to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide from orbit. The space agency's original Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite crashed into the Pacific Ocean in February 2009 shortly after launch, when the nose-cone fairing of its Orbital Sciences Taurus XL rocket failed to open properly.
The original OCO mission cost just $275 million. The higher price tag of its successor, which features a nearly identical spacecraft, is partly a result of the decision to go with a different, bigger rocket, NASA officials have said.
The OCO-2 craft is the second of NASA's Earth-observation satellites to blast off in 2014, after the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory, which launched Feb. 27. The space agency plans to loft three more Earth-science missions this year: the free-flying Soil Moisture Active Passive spacecraft, as well as ISS-RapidScat and the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, two instruments that are slated to be installed aboard the International Space Station.
NASA launches satellite to study carbon pollution in the atmosphere
Mesrop Najarian and Emma Lacey-Bordeaux – CNN
NASA launched a satellite to study climate change on Wednesday, shooting the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) into space.
The liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Station, California, was originally scheduled for Tuesday but was scrubbed because of a water flow issue in the launch pad.
With OCO-2, NASA is attempting to achieve a "vantage point" from space to study atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is the most prevalent of the human-produced greenhouse gases impacting the Earth. Its annual production approaches 40 billion tons.
The use of fossil fuels, which generates carbon dioxide, has been increasing exponentially.
While part of the gas is absorbed by the Earth, many scientists, such as geologist Gregg Marland of Appalachian State University, maintain that humans have "tipped the balance."
The NASA mission is interested in the dynamics of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere -- not only the points of its emanation, but also the places where it is absorbed.
An adequate understanding of both the "sources" and "sinks" is needed to create measures that could control the balance.
Here's how it would work, according to Marland: "If you visualize a column of air that stretches from Earth's surface to the top of the atmosphere, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 will identify how much of that vertical column is carbon dioxide.
"It will act like a plane observing the smoke from forest fires down below, with the task of assessing where the fires are and how big they are."
The satellite will provide a full picture in comparison to what we have now, which Marland describes as "cobbling together data."
The OCO-2 will conduct its study by analyzing the wavelengths of sunlight absorbed by the gas.
Rockets' red tape
SpaceX is creating the next generation of rockets, but politics may keep them grounded
Houston Chronicle
Amid the serene ecology of Boca Chica Beach, SpaceX is building a stepping-stone to the stars.
The private rocket company's plan to construct a launch site near Brownsville is proceeding at a steady pace, receiving a thumbs up from the federal government and working well with local environmentalists. If all goes according to plan, SpaceX will launch up to 12 rockets a year from Texas' Gulf Coast as early as 2016.
The company's Falcon 9 rocket already has several successful missions under its belt, including cargo trips to the International Space Station. SpaceX has done this with an efficiency and low cost that stands in stark contrast to other launch vehicles. At the rate things are going, SpaceX could replace Russia as our astronauts' ferry to the ISS.
While President Barack Obama has generally failed to provide a solid vision of NASA's future - and Congress has failed to provide adequate funding - NASA's collaboration with private space transportation has been delivering promising results.
It feels as if NASA is on the precipice of yielding low-Earth orbit transportation to the private sector, allowing the government agency to focus on new missions.
But not everyone is happy about this partnership. U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., wants to drag companies like SpaceX back to Earth and force them to comply with NASA's usual regulatory paperwork. This idea threatens to kill the goose that could lay the golden egg.
Under the current Commercial Crew Development program, SpaceX contracts with NASA for a flat payment. If SpaceX comes in under cost, it gets to keep the profit. If it goes over budget, SpaceX has to make up the difference. This system gives SpaceX more flexibility to operate as it sees fit.
Shelby has inserted language in a Senate appropriations bill that would instead force SpaceX to work on NASA's old cost-plus model. This would require the private company to track every step of its development, assign a cost to those steps and charge it to NASA, plus an additional fee. This stilted payment model forces engineers to be accountants and removes disincentives for bloated budgets.
SpaceX's success comes from the fact that it follows its own business model. Unlike the usual web of contractors necessary to build rockets, SpaceX keeps everything under one roof. This means more efficient management and better collaboration between engineers.
NASA itself knows that SpaceX has a good thing going. In August 2011, the NASA associate deputy administration for policy published a policy report estimating the cost of developing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Under NASA's environment and culture, the Falcon 9 was estimated at nearly $4 billion. Under SpaceX's commercial development approach, the cost would be less than half of that, at about $1.7 billion.
Shelby may have his own reasons for wanting to burden SpaceX. NASA's Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Ala., is working on the $9 billion Space Launch System - the largest NASA rocket in decades.
As fans of the Johnson Space Center, we can sympathize with Shelby's desire to protect his constituents' jobs against a perceived competitor. But Shelby's policy is misguided. Freeing up NASA's focus on low-Earth orbit could actually allow it to direct more funds to projects like the SLS, which will take us to the Moon and beyond.
In Texas, SpaceX's cheaper rockets would also make the ISS - the Johnson Space Center's key focus these days - less of a burden on the budget. Adding Shelby's unnecessary expense could further threaten Houston's status as Space City.
Texas' own senators should go to bat for SpaceX and ensure that its multimillion dollar investment outside Brownsville doesn't get tied up in Shelby's red tape. Shelby is fighting for his state. Where are the Texans fighting for Texas?
NASA Checks Out Solar Array Technology at Deployable Space Systems in Goleta
Administrators tour the business, emphasizing the importance of private industry
Gina Potthoff - The Santa Barbara (CA) Noozhawk
NASA gave an encouraging nod to a Goleta small business Tuesday when administrators took a tour of Deployable Space Systems, viewing solar array technology designed to compete with work from major national contractors.
The morning tour marked the first public glimpse of DSS' large, high-powered solar array system — Roll
Out Solar Array (ROSA) — and advanced, more affordable technology that could create a roadmap to get humans to Mars and beyond by the 2030s.
NASA awarded DSS a $4.7 million contract in 2012 to develop a system that supports solar electric propulsion, and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden checked on the progress Tuesday, along with Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, and other NASA representatives.
DSS President Brian Spence, who founded the company in 2008, was flanked by his white-coat-clad technicians and members of the media as he led the excursion and asked NASA to consider DSS' ROSA 25 kW Class Solar Array Wing and larger Mega-ROSA.
The ROSA system features a "roll out" design that uses composite booms to structure and deploy the solar panels without the aid of motors, making it lighter and less expensive than current solar array designs.
If NASA likes what DSS comes up with, the company could compete for a second round of funding to test the arrays in a harsh space environment, battling it out with fellow Goleta business ATK Space Systems, Boeing and more. "The profile, the shape is very desirable, too," Spence said of the array that could be strapped to satellites. "You can pack a lot of power into a given space."
Bolden asked questions about class sizes and solar array wing proportion while watching videos demonstrating tests.
"What happens if one side snags?" Bolden asked during the tour.
"One side can't roll faster than the other," Spence answered, referring to a coupled design.
Technician directors outlined DSS-conducted tests for wing levels, launch vibration and acoustics.
Spence noted the ROSA arrays would be much more expensive than those on regular people's rooftops.
DSS also designed the solar electric power system to be mass manufactured in a fully automated robotic assembly, which could slash the price of production by half.
Spence concluded the tour by highlighting the Mega-ROSA, which integrates multiple high-voltage ROSA modular "winglets" into a deployable backbone structure, featuring a flex-blanket solar array configuration conducive to providing higher power levels.
"This is really important to us," Bolden said of developing technology to explore Mars. "We constantly have to answer the question 'why?' My fear is that if we don't do it, humans will miss out on a chance of a lifetime."
He said private industry plays a key role in NASA, which is merely a facilitator for future pioneers.
DSS will continue configuring its solar array system to support an International Space Station spaceflight experiment in early 2016.
World Cup In Space: A History Of Belgium, US Partnership Aboard The International Space Station
Charles Poladian – International Business Times
The International Space Station can get quite interesting during the World Cup. Most recently, a NASA astronaut lost a bet to his German fellow crewman, and while there are no Belgians currently aboard the ISS, the U.S. and Belgium share a healthy science and space partnership.
There is currently one Belgian astronaut in the European Space Agency corps. Frank De Winne is the second Belgian in space and served as ISS Expedition 21 Commander in 2009. The first Belgian in space was Dirk Frimount.
As NASA notes, Belgium is a member of the ESA and partners with the United States' NASA on the ISS. The ESA's PROBA satellite, launched in 2001, was developed by Belgium and the SOIR-NOMAD instrument will be aboard the ExoMars Satellite, which will launch in 2016. NASA also notes Belgium partnered with France to develop the Pleiades satellites that observe Earth.
The NASA astronauts currently aboard the ISS, Expedition 40 commander Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman, will be watching the World Cup match between the U.S. and Belgium Tuesday night. German astronaut Alexander Gerst already saw his national team advance to the Quarterfinals after Germany beat Algeria on Monday. Astronauts have been able to watch World Cup matches aboard the space station with a slight delay as NASA uploads the matches after they broadcast.
In the group stage, Gerst, Wiseman and Swanson had a friendly bet on the outcome of U.S. vs. Germany. If the U.S. won, the NASA astronauts would draw an American flag on Gerst's head; if Germany, Reid and Wiseman would have to shave their heads. Germany won the World Cup match and Gerst shaved the heads of Wiseman and Swanson.
No Canadian astronaut will visit the space station before 2017 – at the earliest
Peter Rakobowchuk – Canadian Press
Unless Canada makes a lot more contributions to the International Space Station, it could be a while before another Canadian astronaut visits the giant orbiting space laboratory.
For the moment, what's clear is that no Canadians will be heading up to the space station before 2017 — at the earliest.
"We've kind of booked up the flights through the end of 2016," NASA's chief astronaut Bob Behnken said in an interview from Houston.
Right now, Canada is not even in a position to get a spot for one of its two active astronauts to take part in a mission.
Under a bartering system, it collects "credits" based on its contributions to the development of the space station, with the credits traded in for trips by astronauts.
But Behnken says Canada used up most of them for Chris Hadfield's five-month visit which ended in May 2013.
"They (Canadians) have another opportunity that's projected, but not out until the 2019-2020 time frame, just depending on how the balance of contributions works out." Behnken said.
"So if they wanted to fly more often, they unfortunately would have to contribute more to the space station."
The NASA astronaut was involved in two space station assembly missions in 2008 and 2010 and he made the trips on the now-retired U.S. Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Behnken, who has also served as chief of NASA's space station operations branch, operated Canadarm2 and the Canadian-built DEXTRE robot on the space lab.
When the Canadian Space Agency was contacted recently, it had nothing new to add to what CSA President Walt Natynczyk said in April about the next space trip by a Canadian.
"We're working with the international community or the partnership with the International Space Station to see when is the next opportunity that we can get one or both of our astronauts into space," Natynczyk said on April 20.
"I wouldn't want to speculate on any time, but rather work bilaterally with NASA and then multilaterally with the other partners," he told The Canadian Press.
Meantime, Canada's two astronauts, David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen, continue their training.
In September, Hansen will take part in NEEMO 19, an underwater mission that closely resembles a space environment. He 'll be on a team of engineers, scientists and astronauts who will spend seven days under 19 metres of water in "Aquarius", the world's only undersea research station.
NEEMO stands for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations.
Saint-Jacques took part in a similar NEEMO mission off Key Largo in the Florida Keys in 2011.
Even if a Canadian astronaut is eventually chosen for a space station visit in the coming years, more training will be required.
Astronauts need to be trained to make sure they can handle the different modules which are built by different countries.
"We need to identify the crewmembers at least two-and-a-half-years in advance right now in order to make sure (they do) the things that need to be done to get them trained," Behnken said.
"(And) we need another three months or so to kind of make the decisions on who is going to have what role when they actually fly on that mission."
Former Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau points out that since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011, trips to the giant laboratory in the sky are less frequent.
"That was a source of flights for Canadians and because we did very well, we were quite often chosen to go on flights of the shuttle," he said in a recent interview.
"We now have to wait beyond the Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Russians and wait until our next turn occurs," the astronaut-turned Liberal MP said in a recent interview.
"And, as a result of that, it's going to be a while before we see another Canadian go up to the International Space Station."
But Garneau remained hopeful that Canada could partner with other programs from other space agencies to get its astronauts "back up there."
"After a big high like Chris Hadfield's flight, people are saying: 'well, what's next?' and it's a little hard for us to wait, but if people are patient, I think they'll see that we're going to get back there — eventually."
Right now, the only way for any international astronaut to get to the space station is by hitching a ride on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
But that could change as private U.S.-based companies continue to develop space capsules to ferry astronauts up to the space station.
Canada's two astronauts may even have a choice of their space bus when their turn finally comes.
"Our current plan is to continue to use the Soyuz until Boeing, Sierra Nevada or SpaceX — one of the three companies that we have on the U.S. side that are developing vehicles to visit the space station — are kind of ready to take us there instead," Behnken said.
"We don't yet have the contracts in place to specify what dates those vehicles would be out there, but it's in the 2017 time frame."
NASA Astronaut to Run Colorado Wild West Relay while in Space
Amanda Hodges – Colorado Runner
Longtime Competitor Will Join Team from Orbit
NASA Astronaut Steve Swanson is officially registered with a 6-person ultra team to compete in the Wild West Relay which takes place August 1st and 2nd in Colorado. He will join the competition from the International Space Station where he is currently in orbit. The race is a 200-mile relay originating in Fort Collins and ending in Steamboat Springs. Swanson has completed the Wild West Relay Race twice before as a participant.
To participate, Swanson will be strapped onto a treadmill on the International Space Station where he will run his six relay legs for his team at his designated times. The team is hoping to be in communication with Swanson during the race to notify him when to start running, and for him to notify his team when the next runner should start when each of his legs is completed.
Swanson will compete on a six person ultra-team (each runner averages 33 miles) with the team 200 Miles, 20 Orbits and 90 Schillings. The name of the team represents the number of miles of the relay, the expected number of orbits that will be made during the course of the relay and the team's favorite beverage. The captain of the team is Bredt Eggleston of Fort Collins, a friend of Swanson's and previous participant in the relay. Other astronauts are expected to be part of the team, including Sunita "Suni"
Williams, who participated in the Boston Marathon in 2007 by running her marathon on the Space Station.
Swanson is originally from Steamboat Springs and attended the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is currently two months into a six month mission on the International Space Station.
About the Race
August 1-2, the Wild West Relay will cover 200 miles from Fort Collins to Steamboat Springs. Runners compete on a 12-person or a 6-person ultra team through foothills, open spaces, and back roads, passing through three National Forests and crossing two mountain passes. The race finishes at the Steamboat Springs Ski Resort. More information available at www.rltrelays.com.
Roads Less Traveled Relays are staged by Timberline Events LLC, a Colorado owned company. Our races benefit Volunteers with a Purpose, Inc. (www.VolunteersWithAPurpose.org; which benefits non-profits in the communities that races pass through – over $250,000 raised and distributed), and 1% For the Planet.
Entrepreneurs Smell Profits In Low Earth Orbit
Feeling the pull of the off-planet market
Frank Morring, Jr. | Aviation Week & Space Technology
It has been three years since the International Space Station was completed and made available for full-time use, or as full-time as possible given the demands of keeping its crew and hardware functioning in the harsh environment above the atmosphere. Now the shakeout appears to be over, and ISS managers seem to have found their way to relatively efficient use of the unique facility. More important, business types are starting to report early evidence that the terrestrial economy can indeed move into low Earth orbit—on the station and elsewhere.
"I think we absolutely have a market," says John Olson, who helped shape government attempts to push the off-planet economy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, before moving on to a job as vice president of space systems with Sierra Nevada. "We're truly starting to see an explosive demand pull as well as a supply push."
Sierra Nevada is in the running under NASA's commercial crew development seed-money effort to take astronauts to the ISS with its reusable Dream Chaser. At the Third ISS Research and Development Conference, sponsored by the American Astronautical Society in Chicago June 17-19, Olson said the company will complete the lifting-body vehicle on its own dime even if it doesn't win a NASA contract, in the belief that there is enough business beyond the space station to make money.
"The International Space Station is a strong driver," he says. "It's not the only driver, but it's a very substantive one."
Smaller companies already are making money on the ISS, led by NanoRacks, which pioneered commercial operations on the station with a suite of payload accommodations that paying customers can use on a turnkey basis. The startup's prices are low enough that some high schools have taken advantage of them (AW&ST Oct. 3, 2011, p. 54).
Taking advantage of the free access NASA provides to the U.S. National Laboratories, NanoRacks has grown to a staff of almost 40, who spend their time designing equipment and working it through the NASA safety wickets at the Johnson Space Center. Despite its reliance on the government facility, the company says it operates like "any other business," which is probably significant as others contemplate launching commercial-space enterprises.
"The whole premise is that we fund it ourselves," says founder and CEO Jeff Manber, a commercial-space veteran who cut his teeth with MirCorp selling payload accommodation on the old Soviet space station. "If we treat it as any other business, a business not in space, you would say it's ho-hum. We opened our doors, we self-invested, we have a landlord, but because it's in space, very often you think you can't do anything unless you get prefunded by the government. We chose not to do that. We chose to treat this just like any other business."
Manber says business is good. The company recently delivered a $5 million external payload platform to NASA for preflight checkout (AW&ST June 23, p. 31), and one of its scientists —Carl Carruthers, Jr.—was honored at the ISS conference for finding a way to use off-the-shelf laboratory gear to prepare protein crystal growth experiments for the station. NanoRacks, which started with simple power-and-data racks mounted inside the ISS, has taken advantage of the airlock, robotic arm and "front porch" attached to Japan's Kibo module to move outside.
In addition to its pointable NanoRacks External Platform, the company has installed a dispenser on the Kibo porch that launched 28 Earth-observation "Dove" cubesats for PlanetLabs (AW&ST Jan. 13, p. 18). Like Manber, the San Francisco startup's idealistic founders (see photo) see space, and access to it, as a useful commodity rather than an end to itself. After launching one "flock" of Doves from the ISS (plus two more on an Orbital Sciences Antares), NanoRacks used a Russian Dnepr on June 19 to orbit another 11 Doves.
For Planet Labs, which draws on the same technology base as the fast-moving smartphone industry, spacecraft technology is as much of a commodity as the view from space itself. Mike Safyan, the company's senior compliance and operations engineer, says a Dove will become obsolete if it has to wait six months for launch, because Silicon Valley will have upgraded the cameras and other hardware it uses.
"One of the things we like to do is use space as an extension of our laboratory, so it's not really to get the satellite perfect, work six years on it and launch it," Safyan says. "It's more 'here's the best thing we have today. Let's launch it and see what happens.'"
That normalization of the space business was reflected again and again at the ISS conference, where commercial activities were a big part of the discussion.
"I think there is a tipping point," says Erika Wagner of Blue Origin. "I think the accessibility of software, miniaturized hardware, the availability of materials [are] really making a big difference. The availability of private capital in Blue's case certainly is making a huge difference in the ability to move forward, consistently and independently. I think there is something new happening here."
Air Force engineer developed unique method to track space debris
By The Partnership for Public Service – The Washington Post
More than a half million pieces of space debris are orbiting the earth, at speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour, causing safety concerns for astronauts aboard the International Space Station and threatening to damage or destroy spacecraft and critical military, intelligence, communications, weather and navigation satellites.
Richard Rast, a senior engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory, created an innovative way to track this space debris to help reduce the risk of potential collisions—a system that could become a cost-effective supplement to the current processes used by the Air Force and NASA that rely on expensive telescopes, radar systems and considerable manpower for analysis.
Rast's invention uses a series of small telescopes developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory that capture the faint light signals entering the lens. Rast converts the camera photos into a movie, where he uses the human eye's sensitivity to detect variations between frames to separate man-made objects from the star background and identify objects the size of just a few centimeters.
"Richard Rast demonstrated that his small telescope approach can find and track space objects at a much lower cost than traditional methods and provide a quality of data previously assumed impossible for a small telescope system to achieve," said Maj. James Thomas, the chief of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Satellite Assessment Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M.
Rast's small telescopes are portable, providing an added advantage to the large telescopes now in use that cannot be easily repositioned to capture critical images and therefore can potentially miss valuable information.
"He is breaking new ground," said Thomas. "We are on the cutting edge of being able to discover and track objects in the farthest orbit, the geostationary belt. Before that, they looked like blips. Richard's techniques help identify these objects."
Air Force Capt. Stephen Bump, the assessment center's acting deputy branch chief, said Rast's ability to use small portable telescopes to see things in space, predict collisions and warn satellites to avoid them is "just now taking hold and it is going to continue to grow."
"This is the future of space situational awareness," said Bump.
A five-telescope version of Rast's system is currently being tested by the Air Force in Hawaii. The Air Force is also evaluating locations for a 16-telescope system that will serve as a pilot project and, if successful, could become a component of the Air Force's permanent space surveillance system.
Being aware of objects in space is critically important because of the nation's reliance on satellites. If satellites are damaged by space debris, it costs millions of dollars to replace them and can take down vital communications, surveillance, navigation, timing, weather, imagery and military systems.
As satellites reach end-of-life and are replaced with new versions, the old equipment and the boosters often are not properly de-orbited or moved to safe disposal orbits, creating the growing hazard. The space debris currently orbiting the earth includes more than a half million objects, of which more than 20,000 pieces are larger than a softball and are traveling at extraordinarily high speeds.
The risk was dramatically depicted in the recent Academy Award-winning film Gravity, in which high-speed debris strikes the space shuttle, sending a medical engineer aboard the orbiting laboratory hurtling into space and touching off a series of catastrophes.
The real-life dangers of floating debris became evident in March 2014 when astronauts aboard the space station were forced to raise its altitude by half a mile in order to dodge a piece of an old weather satellite predicted to come within 1,900 feet of the station.
Rast has used his experimental system on a number of occasions, including to locate a satellite that had drifted far from its original orbit and had been lost for a decade.
The Air Force engineer also was able to use his small telescope to capture video of a laser beam fired from the CALIPSO, a joint NASA and French space agency satellite. The telescope's portability and Rast's ability to be in the right place at the right time helped enable the discovery. The result made NASA aware that CALIPSO's laser is a potential eye hazard for people observing from earth.
An avid amateur astronomer, Rast first experimented with his invention for a project some years ago and was startled that he could see the same satellites as much larger telescopes. After telling his boss about the discovery, his space debris project got underway.
Rast said he sees his role as helping government organizations become aware of and embrace new technology and new ideas. Working at the Air Force Research Laboratory, he said, also gives him the "freedom to be creative and think outside the box" to help his country.
This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to the Fed Page of The Washington Post to read about other federal workers who are making a difference. To recommend a Federal Player of the Week, contact us at fedplayers@ourpublicservice.org. How today's technology is rapidly catching up to Star Trek
Vivek Wadhwa – The Washington Post
In a distant part of the galaxy, 300 years in the future, Starship Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk talks to his crew via a communicator; has his medical officer assess medical conditions through a handheld device called a tricorder; synthesizes food and physical goods using his replicator; and travels short distances via a transporter. Kirk's successors hold meetings in virtual-reality chambers, called holodecks, and operate alien spacecraft using displays mounted on their foreheads. All this takes place in the TV series Star Trek, and is of course science fiction.
This science fiction is, however, becoming science reality. Many of the technologies that we saw in Star Trek are beginning to materialize, and ours may actually be better than Starfleet's. Best of all, we won't have to wait 300 years.
Take Captain Kirk's communicator. It was surely an inspiration for the first generation of flip phones, those clunky mobile devices that we used in the 1990s. These have evolved into smartphones, far more advanced than the science-fiction communicator. Kirk's device didn't receive e-mail, play music, surf the Web, provide directions, or take photos, after all. It also didn't sweet-talk him as Apple's Siri does when you ask her the right questions.
Soon, our smartphones will also add the medical-assessment features of a tricorder, and it won't need to be a separate device.
Apple recently announced that iOS 8 will provide a platform for medical-sensor data that will be displayed by an app called Health. Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and others are all racing to build their own platforms and medical devices. We will soon see a new generation of wearable devices such as bracelets, watches, and clothing that use external sensors to perform electrocardiograms and measure our temperature, blood oxygenation, and other vital signs. These will later be replaced by less obtrusive sensors in skin patches, tattoos and eventually microchips embedded in our bodies. As well, we will have cameras and heat, gas, and sound sensors in our bathrooms, kitchens, and living rooms that constantly monitor our health and lifestyle.
What are making these health sensors possible are miniaturized mechanical and microelectromechanical (MEMS) elements made using microfabrication technology. Similar advances in microfluidics and nanofluidics are enabling development of labs on thumbnail-sized chips. Nanobiosym, for example is developing a device, called GENE-Radar, that can identify, within minutes, a range of illnesses, including AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and cancer. Such devices will also be ubiquitous and immediately identify a broad range of disease markers. Unlike the Star Trek tricorder, which is used occasionally, they will constantly be monitoring our bodies. When you look at the advances that have already happened in 3D printing, you begin to realize that this is the making of the Star Trek replicator. 3D printers can create objects in plastic, metal, glass, titanium, human cells, and yes, even chocolate from a design. Today's 3D printers are painfully slow, and it takes many hours to print a breadbox-sized object; but in a decade, they will become as common, fast, and inexpensive as our laser document printers. In about two decades, we will be 3D printing our dinner as well as our electronics.
We already have Star Trek– and Jetsons-like video-chat capabilities. Rather than require the large, clunky monitors that we saw George Jetson and Captain Kathryn Janeway use, ours use free Facetime and Skype apps that run on smartphones and laptops. Holodeck-type video conferences have also been possible for several years. I spoke via hologram, in 2011, to a bunch of entrepreneurs in Uruguay using technology that a small company there, Holograam, had developed. Remember the holographic message from Princess Leia to Obi-Wan Kenobi, in Star Wars? That's how my beamed image looked.
Start-ups such as Oculus, which Facebook recently purchased, are developing virtual-reality goggles that simulate the real world. Others companies are developing three-dimensional projectors that beam images onto screens that make a person look as though physically present. These technologies are in their infancy, but watch them grow and add touch and smell capabilities. We will be meeting each other through virtual reality, and it will feel as if we are really there.
The universal translator that Captain Kirk used to talk to alien species is also in development. Google Translate already does a great job of translating pages of text from one human language to another. And earlier this year, Microsoft demonstrated a real-time, voice-based, language interpreter that works on Skype. I don't expect any progress on alien languages until we encounter some alien species, but a commercially available virtual real-time translator (a virtual interpreter) for human languages isn't so far away.
Scientists recently announced that they had made breakthroughs in quantum teleportation. They were able to show a promise of quantum information transmission — showing the duplication in the spin state of an electron between one place and another, through quantum tunneling — without transmitting matter or energy through the space intervening. This led to hopes that we might one day see a Star Trek-like transporter that can beam our atoms from one place to another. I am not waiting for this one, however, as there is no way that I will willingly allow my atoms to be disintegrated in one location and reassembled in another. I would worry about a software bug or a hardware crash. We saw these too in Star Trek. I'll just stick to the self-driving cars that will become commercially available by the end of this decade.
The most exciting Star Trek marvel of all — the Starship Enterprise — may also be on its way.
In discussion at Fox Studios in March 2012, Elon Musk told me that he planned to retire on Mars. He said he was inspired by Star Trek and planned to build a spacecraft like the Starship Enterprise to take him there. I really thought he was joking — or had had too much to drink. But after that, his company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, successfully docked a spacecraft it had built, called the Dragon, with the International Space Station and returned with cargo. On Dec. 3, 2013, SpaceX launched a commercial geostationary satellite using Falcon rockets. SpaceX says it is planning a Dragon/Falcon 9 flight in 2015, which will have a fully certified, human-rated, escape system useable during launch.
I'll bet that Musk does develop a version 1 of the Enterprise. And he may well be our first real-life Captain Kirk.
Vivek Wadhwa is a fellow at Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, director of research at Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke, and distinguished fellow at Singularity University. His past appointments include Harvard Law School, University of California Berkeley, and Emory University.
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