| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Coverage for Final European ISS Cargo Ship Docking
- Asteroid Redirect Mission Video Released
- POWER of One - Nominate Your Peer Today - Organizations/Social
- Boldly Go - to Space Explorers Toastmasters
- JSC Lunarfins SCUBA Club Meeting
- Agencywide Offer: EFT-1 Shirts and Caps - Jobs and Training
- Writing That Works - Enroll Today
- Machine Guarding Seminar ViTS - Sept. 24
- Job Opportunities |  |
| Headlines - Coverage for Final European ISS Cargo Ship Docking
The fifth and final docking of a European Space Agency cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) will air live on NASA TV Tuesday, Aug. 12, beginning at 7 a.m. CDT. Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) 5 is named "George Lemaitre" in honor of the 20th century Belgian astronomer and physicist credited with proposing the theory of the expansion of the universe. Loaded with more than 7 tons of fuel and supplies for the station crew, the George Lemaitre is scheduled to dock automatically to the aft port of the station's Zvezda Service Module at 8:30 a.m. The spacecraft's arrival at the station will mark the end of a two-week journey that began July 29 with its launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. The Georges Lemaitre is expected to remain docked to the station until late January 2015. First-time users will need to install the EZTV Monitor and Player client applications: - For those WITH admin rights (Elevated Privileges), you'll be prompted to download and install the clients when you first visit the IPTV website
- For those WITHOUT admin rights (Elevated Privileges), you can download the EZTV client applications from the ACES Software Refresh Portal (SRP)
If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367 or visit the FAQ site. Event Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2014 Event Start Time:7:00 AM Event End Time:9:00 AM
Event Location: NASA TV
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JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111 http://www.nasa.gov/station
[top] - Asteroid Redirect Mission Video Released
NASA is developing a first-ever mission to identify, capture and redirect a near-Earth asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it in the 2020s, returning with samples. Check out a new video about the Asteroid Redirect Mission. JSC External Relations, Public Affairs and Communications x35111
[top] - POWER of One - Nominate Your Peer Today
The POWER of One award has been a great success, but we still need your nominations. We're looking for standout achievements with specific examples of exceptional and superior performance. Make sure to check out our award criteria to help guide you in writing the short write-up needed for submittal. If chosen, the recipient can choose from a list of JSC experiences and have their name and recognition shared in JSC Today. Nominations for this quarter close Aug. 15, so nominate someone deserving today! Click here for complete information on the JSC Awards Program. Organizations/Social - Boldly Go – to Space Explorers Toastmasters
Toastmasters. A new frontier. Come listen to speeches of Space Explorers Toastmasters (SETM) as they explore strange new topics, seek out new ideas and new dramatizations and boldly go where every professional should be: Toastmasters meetings. Toastmasters is an excellent venue for professionals to build speaking and organization skills. It's also a safe forum for those who would like to confidently address an audience or overcome stage fright. Whatever your speaking goal, boldly go to an upcoming SETM meeting and see what all the talk is about! SETM meets from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in Building 30A, Room 1010, on the following dates: - Thursday, Aug. 14
- Friday, Aug. 22 - Speech Evaluation Contest
- Thursday, Aug. 28 - Humorous Speech Contest (very funny)
- JSC Lunarfins SCUBA Club Meeting
Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes in national aquariums? Our Lunarfins Aug. 13 meeting will feature a presentation by Roy Drinnen, assistant curator of fish at The Aquarium at Moody Gardens. He will speak on the diversity of the marine life that share "The Aquarium" tanks and how Aquarium staff manage to keep the large variety of fish and other marine life in a healthy state for prolonged aquarium life. Drinnen will narrate a slideshow of marine life housed at Moody Gardens and explain what tasks are required of the dive department staff. He has a wealth of knowledge on marine life and will answer your questions after his presentation. He will also provide information about becoming a volunteer diver at the Moody Gardens aquarium. Please join us at the Clear Lake Park Recreation Center (south side of NASA Parkway) to learn about aquarium life behind the scenes. - Agencywide Offer: EFT-1 Shirts and Caps
Starport is offering an Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) T-shirt and cap to all NASA and contractor employees for a special price of just $11 for the hat and $7 for shirts sizes youth medium to adult XL and $8 for shirts sizes 2X to 4X. Order online and select "TX-JSC-Starport" as your delivery option to pick up your shirts at Starport (distribution dates and locations to be announced), or have the them shipped to your home for an additional fee. Wear your shirt any Friday through Jan. 31 to receive a 10 percent discount on store merchandise (standard exclusions apply). Order yours today to "get on board" and show your support for the Orion Program's EFT-1, the first step to deep space. 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. Dates: Sept. 16 to 17 - classroom; Sept. 18 to 19 - individual coaching sessions (appointment only) Time: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. CDT Location: International Space Station Conference Facility, Room 5, at: 1800 Space Park Drive, Ste. 100, Nassau Bay, 77058 Register via SATERN: - Machine Guarding Seminar ViTS - Sept. 24
This course is an overview, or refresher, of hazards, needs and requirements for those who may use machines and machinery during the performance of their duties. Basic requirements from NASA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) machine-guarding standards will be discussed, as well as an overview of protective devices and procedures. This course is based on the OSHA Training Institute and includes a quick review of the various types of common machinery used at NASA and the safety standards relating to those types of machines. The course is intended as a refresher for those who have taken SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0204, Machinery and Machine Guarding, and have the need to use machinery in the performance of their duties for operations where machinery is used. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit. Use this direct link for registration. - 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, click: 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. | |
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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 – August 11, 2014
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: If you missed the #Supermoon last night, check out images of the moon from the ISS on ISS astronaut Oleg Artemeyev's Twitter page. HEADLINES AND LEADS
3 commercial companies compete in new space race
Boeing, Space X and Sierra Nevada battle for the prize
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
During the space shuttle's last flight three summers ago visitors crammed the NASA Causeway to glimpse a final, majestic launch. But this June, as sunshine dappled the waters below, the bridge stood nearly empty.
Florida hopes to get Blue Origin launches
Richard Burnett - Orlando Sentinel
SpaceX made it official last week: The California-based company will build its first commercial spaceport in Texas, spurning overtures from Florida and other launch-minded states.
Notebook: NASA ready to wrap up spacewalk scrutiny
James Dean – Florida Today
A year after one of its scariest spacewalking incidents, NASA on Monday hopes to prove it is ready to resume normal spacewalk activity outside the International Space Station.
NASA Postpones US Spacewalks from Space Station Over Battery Issue
NASA has postponed a pair of spacewalks this month for astronauts on the International Space Station in order to replace batteries on the U.S.-built spacesuits that will be used on the excursions.
NASA's 'flying saucer' Mars test called success despite torn chute
Associated Press
NASA engineers insisted Friday that a test of a vehicle they hope to one day use on Mars achieved most of its objectives, despite a parachute that virtually disintegrated the moment it deployed.
NASA's flying saucer takes a supersonic flight, and you can tag along
Julia Rosen – Los Angeles Times
By the time NASA's flying saucer splashed down in the Pacific in June, the engineers who designed it already knew their experiment had been a huge success. From the control tower at Kauai's Pacific Missile Range Facility, they had watched the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator — a device intended to enable bigger and better missions to Mars — soar through a series of critical tests as it arced high in the atmosphere above Hawaii.
US Component Suppliers Could Lose Global Space Market Share Over Sanctions
RIA Novosti
US companies producing space-qualified components could lose some of their global market share due to Washington's sanctions, which prevent them from trading with Russia, the head of Russia's United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), Igor Komarov, said.
NASA bets on asteroid mission as best path to Mars
Some scientists question whether redirect plan would get humans any closer to Red Planet
Meghan Rosen- Science News
Somewhere above the clouds, way up into the deep space of the inner solar system, there's an asteroid tumbling near Earth with NASA's name on it.
Rudderless Craft to Get Glimpse of Home Before Sinking Into Space's Depths
Kenneth Chang – New York Times
A 36-year-old NASA spacecraft, still largely in working condition, will zip through Earth's neighborhood on Sunday for the first time in decades before receding again into the solar system.
Extreme space weather threatens to leave the U.S. in the dark
Editorial Board – The Washington Post
YOU PROBABLY haven't noticed, but the sun has been more restless lately. Scientists have been predicting an upswing in volatile solar behavior, resulting in "space weather" that poses a surprisingly dangerous threat to modern society. A big "coronal mass ejection" is one of the least commonly discussed natural hazards humanity faces, but experts warn that "everything that plugs into a wall socket" could be at risk if the products of one hit the planet.
SLS manager says program still on track
Jeff Foust - Space Politics
NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket remains on track for a first launch in December 2017 despite warnings in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) about cost and schedule problems, the program's manager said Friday.
Four things young rocket engineers say about working in Huntsville right now
Lee Roop – Huntsville (AL) Times
Four young rocket engineers got together for a panel discussion Thursday night at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center as the center's weekly biergarten rolled on in the Saturn V Hall a few feet away.
COMPLETE STORIES
3 commercial companies compete in new space race
Boeing, Space X and Sierra Nevada battle for the prize
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
During the space shuttle's last flight three summers ago visitors crammed the NASA Causeway to glimpse a final, majestic launch. But this June, as sunshine dappled the waters below, the bridge stood nearly empty.
As NASA considers what company will build a replacement for the space shuttle, which the space agency needs to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station and end an uncomfortable dependence upon Russia, one of the three competitors is offering more than just a spacecraft.
Boeing has put jobs on the table, too, saying it will build its CST-100 spacecraft at NASA's Florida space center, where the launch crowds could return as soon as 2017.
Boeing's insider style differs markedly from that of another competitor, SpaceX, an upstart that has taken an outsider's approach, preferring to build its spacecraft in-house. The final bidder, Sierra Nevada, is somewhere in between.
NASA should make its decision on the "commercial crew" competition in the next few weeks. At stake is not just a $4 billion contract, but prestige. The next spacecraft that flies U.S. astronauts will have an American flag, yes, but also a prominent corporate logo. That company will also join the elite club - whose only members include the United States, Russia and China - that has flown humans in space.
When Boeing brought a mock-up of its CST-100 to Kennedy Space Center in June, Boeing chose a setting both symbolic and pragmatic for a blue-blooded NASA contractor.
"It's just really great to be back here," said John Elbon, head of Boeing's space divison, standing on a platform inside the Orbiter Processing Facility. To his right was the CST-100 spacecraft. To his left sat Florida Senator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut who wields considerable influence over NASA.
Nelson was all smiles at the prospect of returning manned spacecraft launches and 300 jobs to the sunshine state. "This is the celebration of a great public-private partnership," he said.
The partnership goes back more than half a century. Beginning with Project Mercury, America's first manned orbital spacecraft, Boeing has served as lead contractor in most of NASA's human spaceflight endeavors. Today it has the contract to sustain the International Space Station and is building NASA's next rocket, the large Space Launch System.
Not only is Boeing offering incentives in Florida, it's doing so in Houston as well. The shuttle's retirement also battered Johnson Space Center. Without regular flights to manage, mission control has shed 40 percent of its workforce, or more than 1,300 jobs. Boeing has contracted to use mission control to manage CST-100 flights.
Elbon said the company has emphasized safety and reliability in its design and development of the spacecraft.
The CST-100's shape, mimicking the Apollo capsule, is proven. Its flight computers are the same as those in Boeing's proven X-37 unmanned space plane. Many of its other systems have previously flown in space. The spacecraft will launch into orbit on the Atlas V rocket, which has made four dozen successful flights.
"We go for substance," Elbon said. "Not pizazz."
A reusable capsule
He was referring to SpaceX and, both on and off the record, a lot of people in the aerospace make such allusions. That's because SpaceX has captured the public's imagination and shaken up the spaceflight community with its low-cost rockets.
And the California-based company is flashy, like its chief executive Elon Musk, a dot-com entrepreneur with a rock star persona who helped found Paypal and also heads Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturer.
A month before Boeing's event in Florida to showcase the CST-100, SpaceX held its own affair to reveal the Dragon V2, its entrant into the competition.
SpaceX unveiled the capsule at its California headquarters as multi-colored lights flashed and smoke swirled.
And there was Musk, a master showman, working the crowd. Wearing a sport coat with the top two buttons undone on his collared shirt, Musk explained that the Dragon V2 would be the first reusable capsule and, with thrusters, could land up to seven astronauts almost anywhere they liked on Earth. No more thudding to the ground on a predetermined course.
"That is how a 21st century spaceship should land," Musk said.
It was classic Musk: boasting and proud before an audience of employees, guests and invited journalists. Building a reusable capsule, never before done, may prove difficult to back up.
But by building in-house, and pressing employees to work long hours, there's no question SpaceX is cutting the cost of access to space and shaking up the establishment.
The Air Force recently awarded a contract for dozens of security satellite launches to United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which flies the Atlas V rocket. The Air Force did so on a non-competitive basis, saying Musk's Falcon 9 rocket wasn't certified. But Musk, whose Falcon 9 rocket is three to four times cheaper, said the contract should be re-competed and has sued.
Sierra Nevada
If SpaceX is the unqualified outsider to Boeing's consummate insider, Sierra Nevada, based outside Denver in Louisville, Colo., lies somewhere in the middle.
While it's no Boeing, Sierra Nevada is probably the biggest aerospace company most Americans have never heard of. Privately held, with $2 billion in annual revenues, Sierra Nevada builds spacecraft motors, propulsion systems and is the largest small satellite builder in the world.
"It surprises people because often times, if they don't know me or us, they come in thinking maybe these guys make beer or something," said Mark Sirangelo, the company's chief executive for space systems. "The truth is we know what we're doing and this isn't a new game for us."
In 2005, five years before NASA awarded its first contracts to private companies, Sierra Nevada began work on its vehicle, the Dream Chaser.
"We made an audacious bet, that some day America was going to need an updated version of the space shuttle," Sirangelo said.
The company found the answer in an old NASA design, the HL-20 space plane the agency worked on in the 1990s but never actually built. Sierra Nevada kept the vehicle's shape, but reworked the vehicle's engine and made room inside for up to seven astronauts.
The Dream Chaser lands like an airplane, on the same sized runway that 737 jets do. It can also fly around in space and, for example, take astronauts up to the Hubble Space Telescope for repairs.
Like Boeing, Sierra Nevada is working with NASA to develop the vehicle and has contracts with most of NASA's field centers for work.
Yet Sierra Nevada is similar to SpaceX in some ways. Both companies are investing heavily in their vehicles. Sirangelo said, "we are nearly putting in dollar for dollar" for development money received so far from NASA. Like SpaceX and the DragonV2, Sierra Nevada also plans to continue developing Dream Chaser, albeit at a slower rate, if it fails to win a new NASA contract.
Boeing could lay off 215
Boeing will not say how much of its own money has been invested in its CST-100. The large aerospace contractor also says it won't continue developing the CST-100 if it loses the commercial crew contract. The company has notified 170 employees in Houston and 45 in Florida that they would be laid off in the event of a loss.
NASA hopes to support two companies moving forward, to have multiple ways to space. However, due to funding, the space agency may only be able to pick one winner, or perhaps one winner and a partial award to a second company.
Although the commercial crew idea originated during the administration of George W. Bush, President Obama endorsed it as the quickest and cheapest means of ending American reliance on Russia.
Yet as the president sought to privatize parts of NASA, Congress objected and underfunded the program. Perhaps mindful of its home districts and states, Congress was reticent to divert money from NASA's other programs.
This attitude has softened in recent months, however, as the Ukraine crisis has lain bare NASA's reliance upon Russia for access to space.
Florida hopes to get Blue Origin launches
Richard Burnett - Orlando Sentinel
SpaceX made it official last week: The California-based company will build its first commercial spaceport in Texas, spurning overtures from Florida and other launch-minded states.
Although Florida gets the "consolation prize" of SpaceX's government launches at Cape Canaveral, billionaire Elon Musk's company is not the only commercial-launch newcomer Florida has to keep an eye on.
Blue Origin LLC — the brainchild of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos — also has established a facility in western Texas, where it is testing engines and other systems for its New Shepherd launch vehicle. The Kent, Wash.-based company plans to use its Texas complex to launch rockets for suborbital space-tourism and research flights. Does that mean the Lone Star State has the inside track on capturing Blue Origin's full-scale commercial launches in the future?
Space Florida, the state's space development arm, thinks not.
Space Florida executive Dale Ketcham said the Space Coast is in the thick of the competition for Blue Origin's launch business as it advances to include the lucrative orbital flights, which are in most demand.
"Blue Origin is looking at Florida, Georgia and a few other states where they would set up shop," Ketcham said. "The launch schedule they're talking about makes it pretty clear they are likely to start here, like SpaceX did, where we already have the needed facilities."
Blue Origin has been quietly, secretly working on the New Shepherd system, a reusable vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing vehicle — at its Washington and Texas facilities. The company also has a small staff at Cape Canaveral.
The company has lagged well behind SpaceX — which already has 10 successful Falcon 9 rocket launches on its resume. But Blue Origin is taking a far different tack in pursuing the launch business.
Unlike SpaceX, which uses the Falcon 9 to send cargo capsules to the International Space Station, Blue Origin plans to start out with space-tourism flights.
"Our goal with Blue Origin is to make space travel safer and less expensive so anyone who wants to go can go," Bezos told Forbes.com last week. "We have a great team, and they are making rapid progress towards this goal."
Server firm goes international
Atlantic.Net Inc., an Orlando-based high-speed server management company, has opened its first international information-technology center in Toronto, Canada, the company said. Coupled with a new center in Dallas, Atlantic.Net's latest expansion is expected to boost the company's global business by providing Web connectivity for companies around the world, officials said.
"We chose Toronto and Dallas because both locations ensure that our customers have a domestic location to provide the highest-quality support," said founder Marty Puranik in a prepared statement.
Atlantic.Net provides an Internet pipeline for thousands of companies across all industries, including health care, banking, telecommunications and e-commerce.
Notebook: NASA ready to wrap up spacewalk scrutiny
James Dean – Florida Today
A year after one of its scariest spacewalking incidents, NASA on Monday hopes to prove it is ready to resume normal spacewalk activity outside the International Space Station.
Officials will meet at Johnson Space Center in Houston to review measures taken to prevent problems like the spacesuit water leak that could have drowned Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano during a July 16, 2013, spacewalk.
The spacewalk was aborted when Parmitano reported water sloshing around his helmet, making it difficult for him to see and breathe. He returned to an airlock to safely conclude what a NASA mishap report later called a "high-visibility close call."
Since then, astronauts have completed several unplanned or "contingency" spacewalks to repair critical station systems, with new precautions in place including a sponge and snorkel in suits should another leak occur.
But no planned spacewalks could proceed until the root cause of the malfunction was determined and the proposed changes implemented.
Monday's review is expected to conclude with a go-ahead to resume normal spacewalking operations from Bill Gerstenmaier, the head of NASA's human spaceflight programs.
The readiness review had been scheduled shortly before two U.S. spacewalks planned for later this month.
But that "extra-vehicular activity" was put off until the fall after an unrelated issue cropped up with a spacesuit battery. The spacewalks will wait until after new batteries are flown up on SpaceX's next resupply mission, targeted to launch from Cape Canaveral no earlier than mid-September.
Two Russian cosmonauts, who use a different type of spacesuit, are scheduled to work outside the outpost Aug. 18.
Startup flies test mission from Cecil
A recent test flight initiated Jacksonville's Cecil Spaceport into the world of commercial spaceflight.
A Learjet 35 carrier aircraft operated by Generation Orbit Launch Services Inc. (GO), an Atlanta-based startup designing a system to air-launch small satellites, took off from a runway July 30 to simulate maneuvers it would perform during an actual launch.
A test pod attached beneath a jet wing collected data during the three-hour flight that will help advance development of the company's GOLauncher rockets.
"The successful completion of this flight test is a great step forward toward viable air-launch operations for both suborbital and orbital rockets," said A.J. Piplica, GO's chief operating officer, in a statement.
The test involved coordination with the Jacksonville Aviation Authority and U.S. Navy on procedures that will be needed to support future launch operations.
"We considered it a mock launch," said Todd Lindner, the authority's senior manager of planning and spaceport development. "We learned a lot."
GO is Cecil Spaceport's first tenant.
NASA last year awarded the company a $2.1 million contract to launch three CubeSats to a 264-mile orbit in 2016. Kennedy Space Center's Launch Services Program manages NASA's Enabling eXploration and Technology (NEXT) contract.
The Florida Legislature this year approved $2 million for a new taxiway and apron at Cecil Spaceport, and a $1.8 million matching grant Space Florida approved last year will help design and build a hangar for GO.
The Jacksonville Aviation Authority next month will host the Commercial Spaceflight Federation's board meeting on Sept. 9-10, and a bi-annual commercial space summit Sept. 11.
ESA vehicle will dock at ISS
Tune in to NASA TV on Tuesday morning for your last chance to see a European Space Agency Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship dock at the International Space Station.
Coverage of the 9:30 a.m. automatic docking by the fifth and final ATV, named "Georges Lemaitre" for the Belgian astronomer and physicist known as the father of the Big Bang theory, begins at 8 a.m.
Three days later, a Cygnus cargo freighter will depart the station, ending Orbital Sciences' second of eight resupply missions under a $1.9 billion NASA contract. Like the ATV, it will burn up during re-entry.
Atlas V will fly from Vandenberg
Are you in withdrawal after seeing three rockets launched from Cape Canaveral between July 28 and Aug. 5?
United Launch Alliance gets back into the action this week from the West Coast. An Atlas V rocket carrying DigitalGlobe's WorldView-3 commercial remote sensing satellite is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 2:29 p.m. EDT Wednesday. A ULA Webcast begins at 2:10 p.m. EDT.
The next local liftoff is expected about two weeks later, when SpaceX plans to launch the second of two AsiaSat commercial communications satellites this month.
Replica shuttle will go on display
The replica space shuttle orbiter displayed for years at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex will be installed next week in its permanent new home at Space Center Houston, the visitor complex at Johnson Space Center.
During a Thursday event called "Rise of Independence," a 282-foot-tall crane will lift the orbiter atop a retired Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, one of the modified Boeing 747s that used to transport orbiters back and forth across the country. Follow the event online at http://spacecenter.org/look-up-in-the-sky/.
The mock up was called "Explorer" during its 19-year stay in Florida. It was barged to Houston in 2012 and has received extensive upgrades as part of a planned $12 million exhibit paired with the jumbo jet that is expected to open to the public next year.
At KSC, the mockup's removal made way for the $100 million exhibit of the retired orbiter Atlantis that opened last year.
AsiaSat8 doing well after SpaceX flight
After its launch last week by a Falcon 9 rocket, the AsiaSat 8 communications satellite got off to a successful start in orbit, deploying solar arrays and sending signals within an hour to a Hong Kong ground station, satellite owner AsiaSat and builder Space Systems/Loral reported.
The spacecraft was expected to fire its main thruster on Wednesday to begin maneuvering into geostationary orbit 22,300 miles over the equator, where it will serve markets from the Middle East to India.
NASA Postpones US Spacewalks from Space Station Over Battery Issue
NASA has postponed a pair of spacewalks this month for astronauts on the International Space Station in order to replace batteries on the U.S.-built spacesuits that will be used on the excursions.
The space station's current commander Steve Swanson and flight engineer Reid Wiseman, both NASA astronauts, had been preparing for their spacewalks, scheduled for Aug. 21 and 29. The spacewalks are now expected to occur no earlier than this fall, according to NASA officials.
But space station managers decided this week to put this month's spacewalks on hold because of "a potential issue with a fuse within the battery of the U.S. spacesuits," according to a statement from NASA. A new set of long-life batteries will be delivered to the astronaut outpost inside of a robotic SpaceX Dragon capsule as part of the California-based company's next delivery to the space station, currently scheduled to launch Sept. 12. The flight will be the fourth of 12 unmanned cargo missions to the space station as part of a $1.6 billion deal SpaceX has with NASA. SpaceX's last Dragon delivery arrived at the space station on Easter.
The delay in the spacewalks won't affect any daily operations of the station, NASA officials said. But it likely means Swanson won't be participating in any more ventures into the vacuum of space during stay aboard the station; he is scheduled to return to Earth on Sept. 10 on a Soyuz capsule with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev.
Skvortsov and Artemyev, meanwhile, will go ahead with their spacewalk planned for this month. On Aug. 18, the Russian flight engineers will go outside the lab to deploy a nanosatellite, install two experiments and retrieve three other experiments.
Wiseman, Swanson, Skvortsov, Artemyev are four of the six members of Expedition 40 currently living and working on board the $100 billion lab. German astronaut Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency and cosmonaut Maxim Suraev round out the rest of the crew.
NASA's 'flying saucer' Mars test called success despite torn chute
Associated Press
NASA engineers insisted Friday that a test of a vehicle they hope to one day use on Mars achieved most of its objectives, despite a parachute that virtually disintegrated the moment it deployed.
The engineers laid out at a news conference what they've learned in the six weeks since the $150 million high-altitude test of a vehicle that's designed to bring spacecraft — and eventually astronauts — safely to Mars.
Engineers said they achieved the main objective: getting a flying saucer-shaped craft to 190,000 feet above the Earth at more than four times the speed of sound under test conditions that matched the Martian atmosphere.
"The vehicle did an amazing job of getting to the right speed and altitude," said Ian Clark, principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
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 4.3, a task that weeks of analysis have shown it performed beautifully, NASA said.
"At this point, we've actually achieved most of the objectives of the flight we've had for this summer," Mark Adler, the project manager, said of the first of three tests for the vehicle.
In the two other experiments planned for next year, NASA will try to figure out how to properly deploy the parachute, which immediately tore and tangled when it was let out, showing that engineers have "more to learn," Clark said.
"The idea of taking 200 pounds of Kevlar and nylon and deploying it at 2,500 mph, 200 pounds that inflated would be the size of a small warehouse, is certainly a challenging endeavor. There's a lot of physics with this problem that we're now gaining new insights into that we've never had before," Clark said. "And we're going to take all of that knowledge, and feed it toward our flights next year."
NASA's flying saucer takes a supersonic flight, and you can tag along
Julia Rosen – Los Angeles Times
By the time NASA's flying saucer splashed down in the Pacific in June, the engineers who designed it already knew their experiment had been a huge success. From the control tower at Kauai's Pacific Missile Range Facility, they had watched the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator — a device intended to enable bigger and better missions to Mars — soar through a series of critical tests as it arced high in the atmosphere above Hawaii.
The only hitch came at the end of the flight, when the LDSD's parachute failed to inflate. This was the final step in a carefully choreographed sequence of events designed to simulate here on Earth what it's like to land millions of miles away on Mars.
Now, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have had a chance to pore through the gigabytes of data collected during the flight. On Friday, they gave the public a first glimpse of how the supersonic voyage through Earth's atmosphere looked from the vehicle's point of view.
This glimpse was quite literal: NASA released video footage captured by cameras mounted on board as it blazed through the sky.
Speaking from JPL's Von Karman Auditorium in La Cañada Flintridge, project manager Mark Adler said that these videos will be of great help to his team as they continue to analyze how the test went and how to improve the LDSD's performance for future tests – and, eventually, missions to Mars.
"If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth about a million," Adler said.
The cameras aboard the saucer-shaped vehicle allowed the scientists to watch the 34-million-cubic-foot balloon inflate as it climbed through Earth's atmosphere, hoisting the LDSD behind it.
The cameras captured LDSD's thrusters as they flared to life after the balloon dropped the vehicle 120,000 feet above Hawaii, causing it to spin like a top to enhance its stability.
A rocket engine then launched the vehicle to a height of 190,000 feet and a speed of Mach 4.3 — more than four times the speed of sound — in just 71 seconds.
At this point, Adler said, the NASA team had already met the main objectives of the experiment: to demonstrate that they could successfully create the conditions a spacecraft would face as it came hurtling toward Mars from interplanetary space.
But then they had to slow the LDSD down again and bring it safely back to Earth's surface, the ultimate purpose it will serve on Mars.
The vehicle brakes in three steps. First, it inflates a Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator, or SIAD — a giant donut that puffs up around the device and increases its drag.
The video footage taken during the flight shows this worked exquisitely well. In 0.3 seconds, the SIAD inflated to its full volume and easily withstood the violent forces incurred while tearing through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds. The 20-foot airbag deformed by less than an eighth of an inch, said Ian Clark, the project's principal investigator.
You can see all this in a "high-speed panoramic selfie" taken by LDSD's camera, Clark said. ("Look for this on Instagram later," he added.)
After the SIAD successfully slowed the vehicle to a leisurely Mach 2.5, the next phase of deceleration began with the deployment of the "ballute," a combination parachute and balloon that engineers installed to help deploy the massive supersonic chute that would ultimately slow the vehicle to landing speeds.
The ballute also performed seamlessly, despite haunting Clark's dreams in the weeks leading up to the test. Designing and implementing the ballute was just one of the many hurdles scientists faced in building and figuring out how to test the LDSD's massive components, which are too large for any wind tunnel on Earth.
However, the 100-foot wide parachute did not behave as the engineers had hoped. It began to fray and tear as soon as it unfurled behind the 7,000-pound vehicle plummeting to Earth. Clark and his colleagues will continue to scrutinize the video footage for clues about what went wrong and why.
"We've learned a lot already, like we need to learn more about supersonic parachutes," Clark said.
For the second round of tests next summer, Clark said they are already redesigning the parachutes to be rounder and stronger. They will also try to better control how the parachute opens in the turbulent chaos created by the vehicle's descent.
Without the parachute's help, the LDSD plummeted into the ocean on June 28, and the "supersonic space boat," as Adler called it, was retrieved by Navy divers and tugboats. The scientists harvested data from all the sensors that recorded the vehicle's flight and the images captured by its cameras.
They recovered the shredded parachute too, which looked "like a big jellyfish," Adler said. Studying its tattered fabric will further help the team build better versions for the future.
Overall, the effort was really a test of a test — proof that the scientists could find Mars-like conditions on Earth without having to build an impossibly large wind tunnel. Scientists hadn't planned to test the decelerators this year, so learning how the SIAD, the ballute and the parachute performed was a bonus, Clark said, even if the parachute had problems.
The experiment was also a success for NASA's relatively new Space Technology Mission Directorate, created to develop technologies for future projects before they are needed.
"We are creating new knowledge, we are developing new capabilities, and we are demonstrating new technologies," said Jeff Sheehy, a senior technologist of the directorate based in Washington, D.C. "That's what we are all about, and this project has been doing all of those things in a very big way."
US Component Suppliers Could Lose Global Space Market Share Over Sanctions
RIA Novosti
US companies producing space-qualified components could lose some of their global market share due to Washington's sanctions, which prevent them from trading with Russia, the head of Russia's United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), Igor Komarov, said.
"There's growing discontent in Russia, as well as globally, with the fact that the overwhelming majority… of radiation-resistant components are produced in the United States. I think if they press ahead with these sanctions, their [market] share in 3-4 years will drop far below 50 percent," Komarov said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
Long-term sanctions against Russia could also force the country's space industry to rely less on imports and more on its own efforts.
"It's likely that we will eventually get together and stop relying on our long-time partners in space exploration, such as the United States… and other countries that have already joined or are about to join the sanctions," Komarov asserted.
The URSC head said Russia must learn to build key components and equipment on its own "to ensure our autonomy and independence."
On Thursday, the URSC announced it was going to draw up an import substitution program for Russian space companies by the end of 2014.
The United States and European Union have been imposing targeted sanctions against sensitive sectors of Russia's economy since its re-unification with Crimea's in March.
Although imports of space technologies are exempt from the US-EU dual-use technology ban,
Washington has been pushing for the NASA space agency to curb communications with its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos. The United States is now also seeking to put an end to US dependency on Russia for flights to the International Space Station.
NASA bets on asteroid mission as best path to Mars
Some scientists question whether redirect plan would get humans any closer to Red Planet
Meghan Rosen- Science News
Somewhere above the clouds, way up into the deep space of the inner solar system, there's an asteroid tumbling near Earth with NASA's name on it.
Within the next decade or so, the space agency wants to snag the space rock and haul it to the moon. And they've hatched two fantastical plans to do it. One would snare an asteroid with a gigantic inflatable bag; the other might send a sticky-fingered robot out to grab a golf cart–sized boulder off an even bigger rock.
Both would help humans prepare for an eventual trip to Mars. At least that's what NASA says.
"We would have access to a completely new alien body that no one had ever touched or seen," says planetary scientist and former NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who studied the feasibility of the mission. What's more, he says, astronauts might be able to mine the rock for resources, instead of relying only on supplies hauled up from Earth for voyages into deep space.
But not everyone's convinced that the plan, called the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM, brings people any closer to the Red Planet. Since NASA announced the mission last year, the so-called stepping stone to Mars has sparked a bristling debate.
Many scientists believe that the mission's link to the fourth planet from the sun is hazy, at best. At worst, critics say that NASA has slapdashed together an outlandish stunt to find something — anything — that fits in with the president's budget and vision for humans in space.
"NASA's just looking for a place to go," says asteroid scientist Alan Harris, retired from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The ARM doesn't carry a whole lot of scientific weight, he says, though "it is good entertainment."
A crowd-pleasing mission might be just what the agency needs to electrify a sluggish human space exploration program.
And NASA is running out of options. Its space shuttle fleet retired in 2011, the International Space Station has support only through 2024, and the agency's budget has plummeted from a 1960s high of about a nickel of every tax dollar spent to less than a penny. Even if the ARM is a kooky scheme that brings humans only marginally closer to Mars, shoehorning the unlikely mission into place could be a shrewd way to secure Americans' spot in deep space — before it's too late.
Two grand plans
If NASA can swat away the doubts and drive the ARM forward, the out-there mission would be the stuff of sci-fi lovers' dreams.
In one ARM concept, a solar electric propulsion spacecraft — the largest ever built — will blast off from Earth in 2019 and sail through space toward its massive target: a rock about half the diameter of the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk last year (SN Online: 2/15/13). The spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid and then, when positioned just right, nab it with a blow-up bag.
"Think of it like a bounce house," says JPL aerospace engineer Brian Muirhead. All inflated, the bag — thin yellow plastic — will stretch about as tall as a three-story building and hold up to 1,000 tons of asteroid. After swallowing the mighty rock, the plastic would cinch shut like a garbage sack.
Then the spacecraft will fire up its engines and slowly, gently begin nudging the asteroid into a new orbit. With only about a third of a pound of thrusting force, the spacecraft will be kind of wimpy — like a blue jay tugging a jumbo jet off course.
But scientists think years of steady effort will shift the asteroid just enough so that it slingshots around the moon into a stable orbit, perhaps sometime in 2024 — though the date depends on which rock NASA selects. (The agency has already picked several candidates.) Then astronauts launched toward the moon could meet up with the asteroid and go exploring. The two-person crew could slice open the plastic or tear off Velcro patches to expose the bagged goods and chip off chunks to bring home.
In the second asteroid-capture idea, a robot — with three arms and three legs, or two arms bearing hundreds of little hooks, or some combination of the two — would snatch a boulder off a space rock perhaps longer than a football field. Then the spacecraft would shuttle the prize to the moon for an astronaut crew to explore later.
And NASA has been waiting decades for the chance to stretch its space exploration muscles.
NASA hopes to choose between the bag and the robotic arm ideas in late 2014. Either approach, the agency says, will test-drive asteroid-moving technology and give astronauts spacewalking experience that would bring humans one step closer to getting to Mars.
The ARM is NASA's latest attempt to launch humans beyond low-Earth orbit — a feat that hasn't been accomplished since the Apollo days, more than 40 years ago. Mars, one of Earth's nearest neighbors, is a tempting target because it may have once hosted life. Trekking out to the Red Planet could help scientists find out for sure. In April, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden even called getting people to Mars — and becoming a multiplanet species — necessary for human survival.
American aspirations
Exploration runs deep in Americans' blood. From the vast plains of Kansas to the gold veins of California, "we're a nation founded by explorers," says space historian Valerie Neal, a curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. "It's kind of in our DNA."
The fledgling idea of human spaceflight first took off among Americans in 1958, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA. Less than two years later, the agency sketched out a slow and steady approach to get humans into space: First send humans into low-Earth orbit, then build a space station and then venture out to the moon and nearby planets sometime after 1970. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy scrapped the slow approach for speed.
"He said, 'Let's go to the moon and let's do it quickly!' " says Neal. Just eight years later, Apollo 11 landed three American astronauts on the moon and NASA was riding high. The agency next set out to launch humans to Mars, and pronto — by 1981.
But the nation's interest lagged. "Everybody felt as if we had won the space race," says Neal. "So we didn't need to keep having an expensive, fast-paced space program."
NASA's funding nose-dived from the sky-high levels of the Apollo days. The gleaming ambition of traveling to the Red Planet slipped out of reach.
President George H.W. Bush tried to rekindle the dream on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Standing on the steps of the Air and Space Museum, he proposed sending humans back to the moon and on to Mars. But he never sent a budget to Congress to fund the plan, Neal says, "so that idea just died on the vine."
In 2004, President George W. Bush revived his father's withered vision and unveiled a grand plan for human space exploration. The Constellation Program called for building a family of launch rockets and a deep-space craft named Orion to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, then to the moon by 2020 and then on to Mars. "The next giant leap has begun," promised Constellation's slogan.
Yet once again, the lofty goal of getting humans to Mars barely got off the ground. When President Obama took office in 2009, he enlisted a group of experts to review Constellation's progress and the future of human spaceflight. Called the Augustine Committee, the group released its report the following October. Constellation was over budget and behind schedule.
Obama canned the program four months later, and then announced a new idea in April. Standing in front of a space shuttle engine at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with NASA's flag at his left and Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the audience, Obama pledged to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars by the mid-2030s.
To get there, NASA would use two vehicles: a new crew-and-cargo rocket, called the Space Launch System, and the Orion spacecraft.
The agency just needed to pick an asteroid.
Birth of a mission
As NASA delved into the nitty-gritty details of its new plan, prospects began to look grim.
It quickly became apparent that the Space Launch System wouldn't be able to hurl the Orion space capsule far enough into the solar system to reach most near-Earth asteroids, Jones says. And the capsule wouldn't have enough room for the supplies a crew would need on the six- to 12-month mission.
What's more, trying to find an asteroid that's the right size, the right speed and streaking by Earth during the early 2020s is a daunting task. There aren't many good options out there, says astronomer Robert McMillan, who runs the asteroid-tracking Spacewatch Project of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Most asteroids knock around farther away, in the massive ring of space rocks known as the main belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
As NASA grappled with these problems, a group of scientists cooked up an idea that could have been inspired by Bruce Willis' space cowboy antics in Armageddon: Instead of sending astronauts to an asteroid, they suggested, why not bring the asteroid to the astronauts?
A think tank called the Keck Institute for Space Studies, or KISS, pulled together 34 experts to explore the scheme's feasibility and published its report in the spring of 2012. NASA latched onto the concept like a lifeline.
When NASA announced its budget for 2014, a plan to capture an asteroid, which NASA named the Asteroid Redirect Mission, took center stage.
"We were totally flabbergasted and surprised that NASA picked it up officially and put it into their program so quickly," says Jones, one of the experts on the KISS team.
The space agency had been in a pickle: It had to meet the president's requirement to visit an asteroid, and it had to do it with a vehicle combo that couldn't actually reach a near-Earth asteroid, he says. "NASA's coping with reality," Jones says. The asteroid redirect idea "sort of bails them out."
But NASA bungled the rollout. When the agency introduced the idea last year, administrators didn't say much about how capturing an asteroid would help humans get to Mars — the grand finale of the president's plan for human space exploration. Instead, NASA focused on the mission's potential for technological innovations, scientific discoveries and defense against asteroids headed for Earth.
Critics pounced. "There's nothing about pushing around a tiny space rock that has anything to do with getting humans to the moon or Mars," says MIT planetary scientist Richard Binzel, an expert on near-Earth asteroids.
Though the mission jibes with what the president outlined, says former NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin, NASA won't be sending humans out to where asteroids really live: "It's just some hokey orbit around the moon."
And the idea that towing a small asteroid with a spacecraft could eventually help NASA defend Earth from a massive collision is thinkable, but perhaps a little far-fetched.
"A threatening asteroid is not something we're ever going to put in a bag," says planetary scientist Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Although, he admits, learning about small asteroids could offer clues about how to move larger ones. And if NASA chooses the robotic arm concept to pluck a boulder off a large asteroid, the agency wants to tug on it with a gravity tractor, a way of — potentially — nudging huge rocks off path using the tiny attraction between the boulder-hugging spacecraft and the asteroid.
The prospects for scientific discovery are a little iffy, too. "Bringing back a sample of a near-Earth asteroid doesn't excite me terrifically," says asteroid scientist Harris. "Nature dumps these things in our backyard all the time." Museums are full of them, he says.
What's more, NASA already has plans to nab some rocks from space. So do space agencies in Europe and Japan. Ten years ago, the European Space Agency sent the Rosetta spacecraft across the solar system to an icy comet hundreds of millions of kilometers away. And the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is gearing up for a second trip to an asteroid in late 2014, with the robotic explorer Hayabusa 2.
In 2016, NASA will launch a similar mission. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will pluck samples off the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. Mission leader Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, is happy to see NASA bring home more asteroid nuggets. Scientists can study them to learn about planetary building blocks and even the origins of the solar system. "We love new samples from space," Lauretta says. But even he's not so sure they're worth the ARM's cost.
At roughly $1.25 billion, the mission doesn't include the cost of the Space Launch System rocket or the Orion space capsule or the astronauts. And some scientists believe NASA is low-balling the price tag.
Getting to deep space
Since the plan's debut, the space agency's leadership has begun to explain more clearly how they see the ARM's connection to Mars. And NASA's not just spinning the story; the agency has been brainstorming ways to use the ARM as a launch pad for deep-space exploration.
"They've learned their lesson," says former astronaut Jones. "They got criticized, and I think they've gone and done their homework. In the past year, NASA's learned a lot more about how to apply this technology to Mars."
In April, Jones and other experts, including JPL and other NASA scientists, got together for a three-day KISS workshop to think about how the agency could build upon the ARM.
NASA has a long list of ideas. The ARM would advance solar electric propulsion, or SEP, technology, for one, says NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot. The low-thrust power system would use xenon gas instead of rocket fuel, tug-tug-tugging spacecraft along instead of blasting them through space. SEP systems soak up energy from the sun, accelerate xenon atoms and then spew the glowing blue particles into space, propelling spacecrafts forward.
NASA has worked with SEP before — to send the Dawn spacecraft out to the biggest residents in the main belt — but the ARM spacecraft would be about 16 times as powerful. Such an efficient system could one day haul cargo to Mars, so astronauts wouldn't have to bring everything with them, Lightfoot says. Shooting cargo into space is expensive, and even a mission that just cruised around Mars and back could require thousands of tons of supplies.
Digging into an asteroid could also be a boon. A water-rich asteroid, for example, could save NASA the trouble of toting water up from Earth. Mining asteroids could even offer astronauts shielding materials for radiation, a big health problem for humans in space (SN: 7/26/14, p. 18).
Even if the ARM is more like a baby step toward Mars than a giant leap, that might be OK, says planetary geologist Raymond Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, a leader of the Mars rover missions. "Going to Mars is incredibly difficult — hugely difficult," he says. "You need to have waypoints."
Some scientists still aren't on board. Binzel thinks extending human crews into deep space is the right next step, but instead of pushing an asteroid around, he'd rather see NASA use SEP to place a cache of supplies in deep space. That, he says, would extend a mission's duration and distance, which are necessary for getting humans to Mars.
NASA's Lightfoot doesn't expect to please everybody. "If there's one thing I've learned in this industry, it's that people are going to have different approaches and ideas they'd like to try," he says.
"The primary goal for us is to get humans to Mars," he says. "To us, the Asteroid Redirect Mission is the most logical and affordable step."
Jones is sympathetic to the space agency's plight. He thinks the ARM may be the best bet right now for advancing human space exploration.
"If the Asteroid Redirect Mission is squashed or defunded by Congress or criticized to death," he says, "then NASA will do nothing with human spaceflight for the next 10 years."
Rudderless Craft to Get Glimpse of Home Before Sinking Into Space's Depths
Kenneth Chang – New York Times
A 36-year-old NASA spacecraft, still largely in working condition, will zip through Earth's neighborhood on Sunday for the first time in decades before receding again into the solar system.
The craft — the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, or ISEE-3, better known as the zombie spaceship that was revived by a scrappy band of space enthusiasts — will pass about 9,700 miles from the surface of the moon at 2:16 p.m. Eastern time.
The enthusiasts had hoped to nudge it much closer to the moon, just 30 miles from its surface; the moon's gravity would then have swung the spacecraft into orbit around Earth, from which it could have been catapulted on a new mission.
But when they tried the course change on July 8, the thrusters sputtered. The craft's nitrogen tanks, needed to pressurize the propulsion system, had somehow emptied.
Although ISEE-3 and many of its scientific instruments are still working, there is now no way to steer the spacecraft.
"Obviously, we were very, very disappointed," said Dennis Wingo, an engineer and entrepreneur who is a leader of the ISEE-3 Reboot Project.
But the enthusiasts did not give up. They have commanded the craft to continue collecting scientific measurements and sending them back to Earth, an interplanetary exercise in "citizen science" that they hope will show NASA how to tap into the expertise of people outside the space agency.
A website started on Friday with help from Google, spacecraftforall.com, offers an interactive history of the mission and an archive of the science data, including of the magnetic fields in space and the number of protons from the sun streaming by. The team will hold a live video chat on Sunday afternoon from its mission control, a former McDonald's at an old Navy airfield north of San Jose, Calif., that is now part of a research park run by NASA Ames Research Center. Mr. Wingo said his team had turned on eight of the spacecraft's 14 experiments and recruited the help of some of the original mission scientists.
They include Michael Coplan, a physicist at the University of Maryland who, along with his students, helped build the ion composition instrument, which counted different types of charged atoms. Dr. Coplan had largely forgotten about the experiment after they received the last data in the late 1980s. This year, to clear space in a laboratory he would be sharing with another scientist, he threw out his ISEE-3 data notebooks.
Then, in June, one of his former students heard about the reboot project and told Dr. Coplan, who went to the waste bin and found the notebooks. "That sat around for a while, fortunately," he said.
Mr. Wingo said scientists were already comparing ISEE-3's data with observations from newer spacecraft. "We're already in touch with the larger scientific community," he said.
He said his team should be able to send commands to the craft for four more months before it is too far away, and moderate-size radio telescopes will be able to hear the spacecraft's signals for at least the next year or two.
"There is still much we need to learn about the sun, and ISEE-3 will continue to contribute to gathering science data," Mr. Wingo said.
Still a mystery is what happened to the nitrogen, especially as the first firing of the thrusters, on July 2, worked perfectly. Firings on July 8 also initially seemed to work, but then stopped. Two weeks of troubleshooting indicated that everything was working properly and the spacecraft had plenty of fuel.
But the nitrogen tanks were empty. "All of the options are equally unlikely, but one of them has to be the case," Mr. Wingo said.
The propulsion failure was a disappointment to Robert W. Farquhar, the flight director for ISEE-3 when it was launched in 1978. When he last fired the thrusters, in 1987, he deliberately set the spacecraft on a course to fly by Earth on Aug. 10, 2014.
"I'm going to wave goodbye to the spacecraft," said Dr. Farquhar, who will be at the mission control at the former McDonald's on Sunday.
The craft's looping orbit around the sun will again put it in the vicinity of Earth 17 years from now. Might he plot something for it then?
"Hah," said Dr. Farquhar, now 81. "No."
Extreme space weather threatens to leave the U.S. in the dark
Editorial Board – The Washington Post
YOU PROBABLY haven't noticed, but the sun has been more restless lately. Scientists have been predicting an upswing in volatile solar behavior, resulting in "space weather" that poses a surprisingly dangerous threat to modern society. A big "coronal mass ejection" is one of the least commonly discussed natural hazards humanity faces, but experts warn that "everything that plugs into a wall socket" could be at risk if the products of one hit the planet.
The danger is not hypothetical. A huge coronal mass ejection hit the Earth in 1859, inducing dangerous sparks in telegraph offices, some of which burned to the ground. In 1921, the planet saw a similar episode. But humans now rely much more on vast, interconnected electricity grids. A lesser solar event in 1989 knocked out electric power to millions in Quebec. Because humans don't have extensive experience with large-scale geomagnetic storms in the age of ubiquitous electric power, predicting exactly how one would play out is tough. Still, a National Academy of Sciences study warned in 2009 that the costs could be staggering, ending electric power to millions, permanently damaging power-grid equipment, costing up to $2 trillion during the first year of recovery — and taking four to 10 years to fully rebuild. Even access to basic necessities such as potable water and toilet facilities could be limited because a big coronal mass ejection could knock out the electric pumps that drive public water systems.
But maybe the probability of an extreme coronal mass ejection hitting Earth is low enough to allay concern? Alarmingly, the budding science of space weather tentatively suggests otherwise. A recent NASA write-up highlighted a huge, 1859-style coronal mass ejection that narrowly missed Earth two years ago. It instead slammed into a close-by sun-observing probe built to resist interplanetary stresses, which sent back reams of new data on these events. NASA cited an analysis concluding that the chances Earth will be hit by a similarly large event in the next decade are a too-high-for-comfort 12 percent. That's higher than the probability that a major earthquake will strike the San Francisco area over the same time period.
The world can and should do more to prepare, adapting satellite systems, toughening electric grids and, above all, ensuring that scientists have the tools they need to anticipate space weather. With some warning, for example, electrical grid operators can adjust the systems they control to avoid damaging "ground currents" induced by the geomagnetic disturbances from large coronal mass ejections. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains the Space Weather Prediction Center, though with a tiny budget. Meanwhile, funding constraints perpetually threaten to erode the coverage of satellite-based sensors that monitor all sorts of phenomena on Earth and elsewhere — including the sun. Congress has a poor record of remembering to keep these sorts of important scientific tools in mind at funding time. For a variety of reasons — including the threat of severely inclement space weather — lawmakers must take a wider view.
SLS manager says program still on track
Jeff Foust - Space Politics
NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket remains on track for a first launch in December 2017 despite warnings in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) about cost and schedule problems, the program's manager said Friday.
Speaking at the 17th Annual International Mars Society Convention in Houston, SLS program manager Todd May said the program was at or ahead of schedule as it works through a series of critical design reviews (CDRs) for the SLS and its major systems. "We said four years ago we'd be at critical design review on the core [stage] this November. I'm glad to report that we actually completed that last month," he said, a statement that generated an impromptu round of applause from the couple hundred attendees of the session. The CDR on the booster stages was completed just this week, he said, and the CDR for the full SLS is on track for the spring of 2015.
"Things are going pretty well. As far as the critical path, we've still got three to five months of slack" on the date the core stage is due to be delivered to the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for testing, he said. "We're just clicking off milestones."
That rosy assessment stands in contrast to a report issued last month by the GAO that warned of cost and schedule risks to the program. "The SLS program office calculated the risk associated with insufficient funding through 2017 as having a 90 percent likelihood of occurrence," the report stated, "furthermore, it indicated the insufficient budget could push the planned December 2017 launch date out 6 months and add some $400 million to the overall cost of SLS development."
Asked about the GAO report, May suggested that conclusion was based on information that was now out of date. "They saw some things a couple of years ago. Some of the data is now obsolete," he said. Specifically, he said the funding SLS received in fiscal year 2014, and what it expects to get in 2015 when the appropriations process is completed, is above the original request. In 2014, the administration requested $1.385 billion for SLS, but received $1.6 billion. In 2015, the administration requested $1.38 billion, but House and Senate version of appropriations bills offer $1.6 and 1.7 billion, respectively, for SLS.
That additional funding, May said, has mitigated the risk identified in the GAO report, provided that level of support continues. "If you don't receive the appropriated levels, you could see challenges," he said.
As for schedule risks, May said Monte Carlo risk models widely used in such analyses aren't always accurate. "To me, they don't change a basic program management tenet, which is to hurry every chance you get," he said. That approach, he said, has worked for planetary exploration missions that have to launch within narrow windows. "They don't pay attention to those things. They hurry every chance they get. So far, that's paying off for us."
Four things young rocket engineers say about working in Huntsville right now
Lee Roop – Huntsville (AL) Times
Four young rocket engineers got together for a panel discussion Thursday night at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center as the center's weekly biergarten rolled on in the Saturn V Hall a few feet away.
Questioned by Dr. Tracie Prater, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, they riffed on everything from the best career advice they'd ever received to the influence of politics on rocketry and the state of the space industry itself.
Future posts from the discussion will dip into more of those questions. Today, the question is, Why Huntsville right now? Engineers can work anywhere these days. Why Huntsville? (Responses edited for space).
- Keithe Baggett, a program manager for Zero Point Frontiers.
"As a young engineer, some things that are important to me that I've found in Huntsville are things like accountability. I need to be accountable for my work and actions. A feeling of being valued, that I'm providing input into something valuable, a feeling that I'm contributing to a future that's better for myself, my company, my community, for society. Huntsville nurtures this sort of mindset.
As a young professional here in town, I really think that the balance Huntsville offers young professionals is very rare. We have a balance of a very strong sense of technical acumen coupled with a very strong sense of community. When I go to work and I know that my peers and the people I report to have my back just as much as I have theirs, then I know I'm in the right place."
- Dr. Sharon Cobb, assistant program manager for the Space Launch System program at NASA Marshall.
"We have a foundation here that makes it very unique to many parts of the country. For us specifically at the Marshall Space Flight Center, we have a portfolio that allows us to work on a number of different projects. So as a young engineer, you have an opportunity to get hands-on experience in a number of different fields.
If you find an area you're particularly passionate about, you have an opportunity to do many things. If a project gets canceled, there are many opportunities to take your skills and work on many different projects over your career. I think this area in general has so much to offer in education, academia and just career growth. "
- Tim Pickens, inventor, entrepreneur, innovator and engineer who is the chief propulsion engineer for Moon Express
"It should be obvious to most of us that we have one of the largest research parks in the country in Huntsville, Ala., and you have to ask yourself, why is that? It has to do with history and, obviously, funding and other important things. So, everyone locates mainly field offices here and a lot of them are doing really cool stuff.....
It's tough to recruit talent for (rocket) propulsion just anywhere, and it's hard to recruit people who can build and manufacture things in Huntsville, too, by the way. I'm not looking forward to competing with Remington gun manufacturing and other people who will take those good talented folks, and they need many hundreds of them. But Huntsville does have some very unique people and a lot of entrepreneurial-minded people, as well. We're not all working toward being just engineering support, either. We want to see stuff get built and manufactured in our own backyard area....
The talent is here, it's just getting more expensive, so you guys who want to make pretty good money in these fields, Huntsville is probably a pretty competitive environment and a low cost of living."
- Fred Hernandez, the chief engineer for production operations, at the United Launch Alliance facility in Decatur
"Where else can you have a biergarten under a Saturn V rocket? Why wouldn't you want to be here?
There are a lot of cool things going on here in Huntsville. Depending on where you are in your career, whether you're just starting out, whether you're a mid-career professional, or whether you're a seasoned engineer, you can really find all of that here in Huntsville There are all kinds of innovative companies, startup companies ... within that context you can find your niche, what excites you. And if you don't find it at Company A, you can find it at Company B, Company C or Company D, all still in Huntsville. I think that says a lot for what the city and area has done to bring in technology and the companies we have here."
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