I am pleased to announce that Mr. Kevin Window has been selected as the new Deputy Director of JSC Engineering. Kevin succeeds Steve Stich who was recently selected as the Director of the Exploration Integration and Science (EIS) Directorate.
Kevin earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from McNeese State University. Kevin's career began as an officer in the US Army and he joined NASA in 1990. Throughout his career, he has served in progressively more responsible positions. Kevin's early NASA career was spent in MOD as part of the ISS Flight Control Team. He began his 20 year career in the ISS Program Office as a software team lead in Avionics and Software. He then held progressive level positions up to the Deputy Manager for the ISS Avionics and Software Office, prior to being selected for the Manager of the Safety and Mission Assurance/Project Risk Office in 2006. For the past 5 years, he has served as Manager, ISS Vehicle Office (OB.) In this role he has been responsible for providing technical and management oversight of the design, integration, development, manufacture, test and verification and sustaining aspects of critical ISS elements/segments, systems, and payload facilities.
Kevin will be relocating to 1/920J at x25329.
Please join me in welcoming Kevin to the Engineering Directorate!
Lauri Hansen
Director, JSC Engineering
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Wednesday's the Day - Help JSC Stuff the Truck
- Feds Feed Families Challenges
- Ice Bucket Challenges
- Aug. 26: Women's Equality Day Commemoration
- Weekly Senior Staff Safety Message
- On-Campus Lane Closure - Aug. 27
- Recent JSC Announcement - Organizations/Social
- Starport Boot Camp - Registration Now Open
- Women's Equality Day - Film Festival is Today
- Starport Celebrates Discovery's 30th Anniversary
- FLEX Friday Fitness Special - Aug. 29
- Free ISS Expedition 2A Pins at ShopNASA - Jobs and Training
- Lockout/Tagout: Sept. 11, 8:30 am; B20, R205/206
- Scaffold Users Seminar: Sept 11,1pm; B20, R205/206 |  |
| Headlines - Wednesday's the Day - Help JSC Stuff the Truck
Engineering been busy collecting food donations and will bring those contributions in a parade of vehicles past Building 1 tomorrow morning on their way to "Stuff the Truck" at the Gilruth. They've challenged the rest of the center to beat their donations. Is your organization up to it? Decorate a truck full of your organization's donations and join the parade to the Gilruth. A Galveston County Food Bank truck will be there tomorrow from 8 to 11 a.m., and JSC team leaders will accept contributions. Let's STUFF THAT TRUCK! Kirk Shireman also accepted the challenge; his truck is parked in front of Building 1 through Wednesday morning, and he's asking our help to fill it! Today, Aug. 26, bring your contributions to the Building 1 lobby. Tomorrow, Aug. 27, from 7:30 to 9 a.m., bring your contributions to Shireman's truck - OR - between 8 and 11 a.m., bring organization contributions to the Gilruth! - Feds Feed Families Challenges
The JSC Legal Office has received several inquiries about using ice-bucket challenges and stuff-the-truck challenges to encourage in-kind donations for Feds Feeds Families. The ethics regulations do not specifically prohibit NASA employees from using challenges to increase permissible in-kind donations for Fed Feds Families. However, federal employees—supervisors and leaders in particular—should be careful to avoid the appearance of coercion of their colleagues and subordinates. Nor should they create the impression that an employee's or group's contribution, or lack of contribution, to Feds Feed Families will result in any official action or confer any official benefit. Participation in Feds Feed Families is strictly voluntary. If you are a NASA employee and have questions regarding a specific challenge or related activity, contact the JSC Office of Chief Counsel at 281-483-3021. - Ice Bucket Challenges
NASA Legal has received questions regarding whether NASA employees can record themselves participating in the Ice Bucket Challenge during official work hours, or represent themselves as NASA employees while participating. NASA employees may fundraise in their personal capacities, but they must not use their official title, position or any authority associated with their public office to further the fundraising effort. In addition, employees engaged in personal fundraising must not solicit funds from a subordinate or from any other person known to the employee to be a prohibited source—see 5 CFR 2635.808(c). Questions? Call the Office of Chief Counsel at 281-483-3021. - Aug. 26: Women's Equality Day Commemoration
Aug. 26 is designated as "Women's Equality Day" to commemorate 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting American women the right to vote. This historic event was the culmination of a massive civil rights movement that spanned decades. A new generation of young women stands ready to carry that spirit forward and bring us closer to a world where there are no limits on how big our children can dream or how high they can reach. The White House Council on Women and Girls promotes women's economic and political empowerment at home and abroad to ensure women have the opportunities they need and deserve at every stage of their lives. Please join Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity as we honor generations of women who have used their intelligence, imagination and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to NASA. To view 2014 Women's Equality Day poster, click here. - Weekly Senior Staff Safety Message
This week's topic: Center Emergency Evacuation Training Find out how the center is doing in completing its emergency evacuation training. Learn about the importance of training and drills through a case study of emergency evacuation for the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. - On-Campus Lane Closure - Aug. 27
Tomorrow, Aug. 27, the two northbound lanes of Second Street (between Buildings 45 and 46) will be closed from 7 a.m. to approximately 2:30 p.m. Traffic will be diverted via cones and controlled by construction flaggers. Northbound and southbound traffic will be down to one lane. There will also be two approach closures into the Building 45 west parking lot. Traffic will have to enter the parking lot from the northern-most and southern-most entries. Thank you for your patience with this ongoing closure. - Recent JSC Announcement
Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcement: JSCA 14-019: Key Personnel Assignment - Kevin Window Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page. Organizations/Social - Starport Boot Camp – Registration Now Open
Starport's phenomenal boot camp is back, and registration is open and filling fast. Don't miss a chance to be part of Starport's incredibly popular program. The class will fill up, so register now! Early registration (ends Sept. 5) - $90 per person (just $5 per class)
Regular registration (Sept. 6 to 15): - $110 per person
The workout begins on Monday, Sept. 15 Are you ready for 18 hours of intense workouts with an amazing personal trainer to get you to your fitness goal? Don't wait! Sign up today and take advantage of this extreme discount before it's too late. Register now online or at the Gilruth Center information desk. - Women's Equality Day - Film Festival is Today
The JSC Women's History Month planning committee invites the JSC family to the viewing of the "MAKERS: Women Who Make America, Part II." Come and watch the remarkable story of how women have helped shape America over the last 50 years through one of the most sweeping social revolutions in our country's history. It's a revolution that has unfolded in public and in private, in courts and in Congress, in the boardroom and in the bedroom, changing not only what the world expects from women, but what women expect from themselves. "MAKERS" brings this story to life with priceless archival treasures and poignant, often funny interviews with those who led the fight, those who opposed it and those first generations to benefit from its success. Come join us and enjoy a snack while enjoying the show. - Starport Celebrates Discovery's 30th Anniversary
Starport is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle Discovery's first launch date with 20 percent off all Discovery-related merchandise all week long. Discovery launched for its first space shuttle mission, STS-41D, on Aug. 30, 1984, and went on to complete 39 successful missions in more than 27 years of service—more than any other spacecraft thus far. Happy Anniversary to Discovery and all of you who worked so hard to make great things happen for our space program! - FLEX Friday Fitness Special - Aug. 29
We understand that getting over to the Gilruth Center is not easy during those nine-hour days. Because of that, Starport is continuing to offer an amazing assortment of FREE programs on Flex Friday for all JSC employees, contractors and their families. Flex Friday - Aug. 29 - special FREE programs include: - FREE 30-minute personal training sessions
- Nature walks
- More SPINNING classes
- Outer Space OSFX class
- Kickboxing class
- Yoga blend class
- Tae Kwon Do class
- Core Strength classes
All Starport locations (Gilruth Center and Buildings 3 and 11) will also be running a 10 percent discount on all athletics, recreation and fitness merchandise. A full schedule and details are listed here. Be sure you stop by the Gilruth Center for a great Flex Friday! - Free ISS Expedition 2A Pins at ShopNASA
Stop by ShopNASA or the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops for a FREE International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 2A lapel pin while supplies last. Jobs and Training - Lockout/Tagout: Sept. 11, 8:30 am; B20, R205/206
The purpose of this course is to provide employees with the standards, procedures and requirements necessary for the control of hazardous energy through lockout and tagout of energy-isolating devices. Occupational Safety and Health Administration standard 29 CFR 1910.147, "The Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout)," is the basis for this course. A comprehensive test will be offered at the end of the class. Use this direct link for registration. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... - Scaffold Users Seminar: Sept 11,1pm; B20, R205/206
This four-hour course is based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration CFR 1910.28 and 1926.451, requirements for scaffolding safety in the general and construction industries. During the course, the student will receive an overview of those topics needed to work safely on scaffolds, including standards, terminology and inspection of scaffold components; uses of scaffolds; fall-protection requirements; signs and barricades; and more. Those desiring to become "competent persons" for scaffolds should take the three-day Scaffold Safety Course, SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0312. This course will be primarily presented via the NASA target audience: Safety, Reliability, Quality and Maintainability Professionals; and anyone working on operations requiring the use of scaffolds. 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. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... | |
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday – August 26, 2014
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: ISS astronauts Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman will talk live with students from Elliott Ranch Elementary in Elk Grove, CA, tomorrow at 12:10 CDT. Tune in on NASA TV and join the conversation on Twitter using #spacechat. Click here for more information.
HEADLINES AND LEADS
SpaceX Failure Seen Slowing NASA Pick on Capsule Contract
Alan Ohnsman - Bloomberg News
Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s rocket test that ended with an explosion over Texas may slow a U.S. decision on a contract to take astronauts to the International Space Station, an aerospace analyst said.
An outer space solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Vid Beldavs – The Space Review
Russia has chosen to invest heavily in military modernization but has let its R&D capacity deteriorate. Russia barely invests 1% of its GDP in R&D, far less than nations like Israel (4.2%), South Korea (3.7%), Sweden (3.3%), and Finland (3.1%.) The EU has a goal of 3% of GDP invested in R&D by 2020, the US invests about 2.7%, and China presently is at about 2% but has targeted 3% in the long term.
The Moon Smells: Apollo Astronauts Describe Lunar Aroma
The moon has a distinctive smell. Ask any Apollo moonwalker about the odiferous nature of the lunar dirt and you'll get the same answer.
Historic Milestone: Pluto Mission Reaches Neptune's Orbit
As we wait in anticipation for NASA's New Horizons probe to make its historic Pluto flyby on July 14, 2015, the mission is about to cross another milestone — it will zoom past Neptune's orbit at 7:04 p.m. PDT (10:04 p.m. EDT) today (Monday), and it has already snapped a pixelated view of the outer solar system's ice giant from 2.5 billion miles away (around 27 times the Earth-sun distance).
Earth's Deep Space explorers – Global fleet hitting milestones
Deep Space spacecraft from the USA, Europe and India are all pressing through their mission milestones. India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is less than a month away from her arrival at Mars, while NASA's New Horizons has crossed Nepture's orbit, en route to Pluto. ESA's Rosetta mission also announced the shortlisting of landing sites on Comet 67P for the robotic lander, Philae.
Russia Considers Meteor Impact Prevention Project
RIA Novosti
A project to protect people and economic facilities from the impact of space objects could be launched in Russia this year, Russian Emergencies Ministry has announced.
Hubble Zooms In on 'Galactic Soup' Ingredients
As the Hubble Space Telescope stares deep into the cosmos, there's not one spot in the sky (no matter how apparently "empty" it appears) that isn't filled with thousands of galaxies. Indeed, the famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field observation of a nondescript portion of inky black space is buzzing with exquisite galaxies of all shapes and sizes. Rethinking Space Debris Mitigation
Dave Finkleman – Space News
We should reconsider the scope and application of measures to mitigate space debris. The same constraints need not and probably cannot be imposed on all satellites.
The unsettled launch industry
Jeff Foust – The Space Review
To the average person, a launch is an exciting event: a spectacle of fire and thunder as the rocket lifts off and ascends into the sky at an ever-increasing speed. To many customers of those launches, a launch can instead be a nerve-wracking event: hundreds of millions of dollars, and years of work, are sitting atop that controlled explosion. No doubt many commercial launch customers—who are not really in the space business but, rather, in the communications business—would be happy to trade in that spectacle for something less visually compelling but with a higher probability of success.
1st Findings Due Sept. 8 For Galileo Launch Failure Review Board
Peter B. de Selding | Space News
Former European Space Agency Inspector General Peter Dubock will head an eight-member board of inquiry into the Aug. 22 failure of the Europeanized Russia Soyuz rocket, which placed two European Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites into a useless orbit, launch service provider Arianespace announced Aug. 25.
Modern Research Borne on a Relic
Airships That Carry Science Into the Stratosphere
Joshua A. Krisch – The New York Times
Airships are dusty relics of aviation history. Lighter-than-air vehicles conjure images of the Hindenburg, in its glory and destruction, and the Goodyear Blimp, a floating billboard that barely resembles its powerful predecessors.
The downhill slide of NASA's "rocket to nowhere"
R.D. Boozer – The Space Review
As predicted years ago, it appears the beginning of the end has begun for the gigantic rocket and Congressional boondoggle called the Space Launch System (SLS). This launcher is also known by its detractors as the "Rocket to Nowhere" because there are no payloads in development that are large enough to justify a rocket of its size.
NASA challenges public to develop applications using climate change data
Stephanie Kanowitz – FierceGovernment
Amid a White House report that outlined the negative economic consequences of delaying action that would stem climate change, NASA has announced a second public challenge to develop innovative applications using climate data.
COMPLETE STORIES
SpaceX Failure Seen Slowing NASA Pick on Capsule Contract
Alan Ohnsman - Bloomberg News
Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s rocket test that ended with an explosion over Texas may slow a U.S. decision on a contract to take astronauts to the International Space Station, an aerospace analyst said.
The company led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said the F9R vehicle self-destructed automatically after an "anomaly" following the Aug. 22 launch in McGregor, Texas. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is nearing a decision among contenders including SpaceX for manned missions to the station by 2017.
"The timing is difficult because you have this failure just before the award," Marco Caceres, director of space studies at Fairfax, Virginia-based consultant Teal Group, said today. "At a minimum it may delay the announcement because NASA needs to get its ducks in a line and get all the information."
SpaceX is the first private company to deliver cargo to the space station under a $1.6 billion NASA contract and seeks to expand that to manned launches using its own capsule and rocket. The U.S. has depended on Russian rockets to carry astronauts since retiring the shuttle fleet in 2011, a situation that's grown riskier because of the crisis in Ukraine.
The F9R is a different version of the rocket now used on NASA missions by Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX.
Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesman, declined to discuss the SpaceX incident and the timing of any future announcements. John Taylor, a spokesman for SpaceX, declined to comment on whether the accident may affect NASA's evaluation.
Musk's View
"Rockets are tricky," Musk, 43, wrote in a Twitter post after the rocket's failure. He also leads electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA)
NASA has said an award for manned flights may be announced as early as this month. The agency sought $848.3 million for the commercial spaceflight program in fiscal 2015, and estimates total spending of $3.42 billion on the initiative through the end of the decade, according to documents posted on its website.
SpaceX's competitors for the manned-launch contract include Boeing Co. (BA), the world's largest aerospace company, and closely held Sierra Nevada Corp. Neither has sent its own vehicle to the station, and each uses the Atlas V rocket, which relies on Russian engines, Caceres said.
"The culture of NASA is quite conservative," Caceres said. SpaceX has a lower-cost rocket and capsule, "and there are clearly some advantages to going with a lower-cost system," he said. "It's also still a relatively new system, and the company is still working out some issues."
SpaceX has sent Dragon capsules to the space station four times with its Falcon 9 rocket, including three official cargo trips. The next launch is set to occur as soon as Sept. 18 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The company's cargo contract with NASA is for at least 12 missions.
The Dragon V2 capsule, which was unveiled in May, is designed to carry as many as seven astronauts as well as supplies. The vehicle is intended to be reusable, and land vertically after returning to Earth, Musk said.
An outer space solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Vid Beldavs – The Space Review
Russia has chosen to invest heavily in military modernization but has let its R&D capacity deteriorate. Russia barely invests 1% of its GDP in R&D, far less than nations like Israel (4.2%), South Korea (3.7%), Sweden (3.3%), and Finland (3.1%.) The EU has a goal of 3% of GDP invested in R&D by 2020, the US invests about 2.7%, and China presently is at about 2% but has targeted 3% in the long term.
If innovation is the primary driver of economic development, Russia's choice of emphasizing the military is likely to have disastrous consequences, further exacerbating its brain drain. Bright people, particularly scientists, will continue to leave to do great science elsewhere. Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin often speaks of building a Russian Moon base. The capital flight that has occurred over the years could have funded multiple lunar bases and possibly a base on Mars.
In 2014 the plans have become more elaborate, but less realizable after the Ukraine fiasco. Now Rogozin speaks of a permanent base, with a Russian presence on the Moon forever. Consider the money spent on the military after its modernization drive started in 2008. If a quarter of the hundreds of billions in military spending had gone into advanced space development, it could have been Russia-based asteroid mining companies that find and exploit the asteroids with trillions of dollars of recoverable resources. Instead it will be Deep Space Industries, SpaceX, Planetary Resources, and other American companies that will reap the rewards. Now that weapons have been purchased and the troops have been trained to use them, the impulse is to put the military to use. Russia is losing hundreds of billions due to a senseless war that did not have to take place.
The Ukraine crisis started as a result of a gross misreading of Ukrainian public opinion by Russian leadership. About 75% of the public was for joining the EU in the fall of 2013, eagerly anticipating President Yanukovych to sign the Association Agreement. In the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, 318 votes out of 449 has been cast for joining the EU, reflecting strong support from all regions of the country. The people of Ukraine—Russian, Polish, Tatar, Ukrainian, and other nationalities—had the hope that their country could finally get on the road to prosperity where they could live like their European neighbors. President Yanukovych had been elected in 2010 on the basis of his advocacy for Ukraine joining the EU.
When Russian President Putin compelled the alternative solution, for Ukraine to join the new Eurasian Union led by Russia, the public was outraged. The Maidan revolution was a predictable consequence that had nothing to do with Victoria Nuland, NATO, or other Western influence. Russian interests would have been much better served if Yanukovych had simply been allowed to sign the EU Agreement. He would have increased his political standing in Ukraine while remaining a friend of Russia. Yanukovych is history, Petro Poroshenko is now president, and there have been thousands of casualties in a senseless war that harms Russia, Ukraine, and the EU. Economic growth in the EU is threatening to collapse, while the Russian and Ukrainian economies are imploding.
The Russian and Ukrainian economies are deeply intertwined, particularly in the space and high technology sectors. The war in eastern Ukraine is affecting both economies and resulting in significant delays in Russian space efforts as Russia seeks to substitute its own production for imports from Ukraine.
It is time to consider a solution to the problems of the region. A large-scale project that results in an investment of billions in the Russian, Ukrainian, and EU space and technology sectors could provide a highly visible re-unifier that generates jobs in eastern Ukraine and bolsters science and industrial development in Russia and drives innovation in the EU to lift it back to a growth path. Why not reframe the Russia-Ukraine-EU relationship towards a mutually positive future? Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin has already given the answer: build the Moon base as a joint Russia-Ukraine-EU project. Better yet, why not expand the opportunity and invite the US, China, Japan, and others to join? There is an existing structure that could make it work. It is the International Space Station (ISS): the largest international cooperation effort in technology development in human history. In fact, the ISS has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Such a project could begin the drive for industrial development of the Moon and beyond, and create a permanent Russian presence on the Moon forever, in partnership with Ukraine, the EU and the rest of the world.
Stop the stupid war. Build the Moon base.
The Moon Smells: Apollo Astronauts Describe Lunar Aroma
The moon has a distinctive smell. Ask any Apollo moonwalker about the odiferous nature of the lunar dirt and you'll get the same answer.
With NASA's six Apollo lunar landing missions between 1969 and the end of 1972, a total of 12 astronauts kicked up the powdery dirt of the moon, becoming an elite group later to be tagged as the "dusty dozen."
From the modest 2.5 hour "moonwalk" of Apollo 11 to the forays totaling just over 22 hours outside a spacecraft on Apollo 17, NASA's Apollo landing crews could not escape tracking lunar material inside their moon lander homes.
Decades later, moonwalkers and lunar scientists are still trying to appreciate exactly what the moon's aroma brings to the astronaut's nose.
That fresh lunar regolith smell
"All I can say is that everyone's instant impression of the smell was that of spent gunpowder, not that it was 'metallic' or 'acrid'. Spent gunpowder smell probably was much more implanted in our memories than other comparable odors," said Apollo 17's Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, a scientist-astronaut who walked the moon's surface in December of 1972.
Schmitt said that he believed all the moonwalkers agreed and commented at the time that, when they took their helmets off, 'fresh' regolith (the scientific name for moon dirt) in the cabin air smelled like spent gunpowder.
"For what it is worth, I always have suspected that the olfactory sensors are reacting to a variety of unsatisfied electron bonds as one would have in both just fired gunpowder and lunar dust newly introduced in the cabin," Schmitt said. "By the way, the time from starting re-pressurization [of the lunar lander] to my first comment about gunpowder was almost exactly seven minutes."
Mucus membranes in space
Larry Taylor, director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, agrees with Schmitt's take. He served in the "back-room" at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston during the Apollo 17 mission, and was one of those who directly advised the astronauts on the moon during their trots across the lunar landscape.
"When the entire subject of the dust smell came up several years ago, I put forth that what the astronauts were smelling, that is, what their mucus membrane sensed, was highly activated dust particles with 'dangling bonds,'" Taylor said.
Taylor said that when a geologist smashes a rock here on Earth, that person will smell some odor that has been generated by the smashing of minerals, thereby creating the so-called dangling bonds.
But on the moon, the dangling bonds can exist for a long time, Taylor said. And because lunar rock and soil is roughly 43-percent oxygen, most of these unsatisfied bonds are from oxygen.
"In a nut-shell, I believe that the astronauts all smelled unsatisfied dangling bonds on the lunar dust … which were readily satisfied in a second by the lunar module atmosphere, or nose membrane moisture," Taylor told Space.com. Grab specimen
Apollo 11 lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin also recalls the smell of the moon. As Armstrong and Aldrin re-entered and re-pressurized the Eagle lunar lander, their suits and equipment were soiled by lunar dust. That dust has a definite odor, he said.
"It was like burnt charcoal," Aldrin said, "or similar to the ashes that are in a fireplace, especially if you sprinkle a little water on them."
Aldrin also noted yet another lunar dust episode on the Apollo 11 mission.
"Before we left Earth, the lunar dust was considered by some alarmists as very dangerous, in fact pyrophoric, capable of igniting spontaneously in air," Aldrin said. "The fact that the lunar dust had been so void of contact with oxygen, as soon as we re-pressurized our lunar module cabin it might start to heat up, smolder, even burst into flames. At least that was the worry of a few. A late-July firework display on the moon was not something advisable."
So Aldrin and Armstrong staged an ad hoc moon dust test. They did it using a so-called "grab sample," a lunar sample collected quickly by Armstrong and stashed in his spacesuit pocket in case there was a problem that forced the moonwalkers to depart the scene in a hurry.
That grab specimen was placed on the cylindrical flat top of the Eagle's ascent engine cover. And as the cabin began to fill with air, both Armstrong and Aldrin waited to see if the lunar sample would indeed smoke and smolder.
"If it did, we'd stop pressurization, open the hatch and toss it out. But nothing happened. We got back to the business of readying for departure from the moon," Aldrin said.
A reactive lunar nature
It was Thomas Gold, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University who died in 2004, that first flagged the explosive potential of moon rock, said Donald Bogard, a Heritage Fellow at the Lunar Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
From 1971 until his retirement from NASA in 2010, Bogard was a principal investigator in NASA's lunar and meteorite research programs and was a member of the science team that performed quarantine testing of Apollo lunar samples between 1969 and 1971.
"Tommy Gold was partly correct when he warned NASA prior to Apollo 11 that the lunar dust brought into the lunar module might spontaneously combust and produce a safety issue. I was called into a JSC meeting prior to Apollo 11 to discuss this possibility," Bogard said. "Gold had realized the likely reactive nature of lunar material surfaces, but had over-emphasized their reactive effects."
Historic Milestone: Pluto Mission Reaches Neptune's Orbit
As we wait in anticipation for NASA's New Horizons probe to make its historic Pluto flyby on July 14, 2015, the mission is about to cross another milestone — it will zoom past Neptune's orbit at 7:04 p.m. PDT (10:04 p.m. EDT) today (Monday), and it has already snapped a pixelated view of the outer solar system's ice giant from 2.5 billion miles away (around 27 times the Earth-sun distance).
Today's milestone is also a grand coincidence for solar system exploration. Precisely 25 years ago, on Aug. 25, 1989, NASA's Voyager 2 probe reached Neptune as it made its way to the outermost reaches of the sun's sphere of influence — a magnetic bubble called the heliosphere. Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to encounter the majestic blue planet.
"It's a cosmic coincidence that connects one of NASA's iconic past outer solar system explorers, with our next outer solar system explorer," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Exactly 25 years ago at Neptune, Voyager 2 delivered our 'first' look at an unexplored planet. Now it will be New Horizons' turn to reveal the unexplored Pluto and its moons in stunning detail next summer on its way into the vast outer reaches of the solar system."
"NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 explored the entire middle zone of the solar system where the giant planets orbit," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "Now we stand on Voyager's broad shoulders to explore the even more distant and mysterious Pluto system."
Voyager 2 was the first to gain dramatically clear views of Neptune and its moons in 1989, the last time a "new planet" has been shown to us in beautiful clarity. Next up is dwarf planet Pluto that will be visited by New Horizons, using 21st century camera technology to image the little world — and its largest moon (or "binary partner"?) Charon — in crystal clarity.
As New Horizons approached Neptune's orbit, it was able to grab a distant photo of Neptune and largest moon Triton. Through information gathered from Voyager 2 observations a quarter of a century ago, planetary scientists believe that the strange moon may actually be a "captured" Kuiper Belt object.
Rather than originating from the planetary material that accumulated to form the other Neptunian moons, weird Triton — which has a retrograde orbit around Neptune — seems to have formed in the same outer solar system region as Pluto but somehow migrated toward Neptune and became gravitationally bound to the ice giant. Triton's origin has therefore sparked theories that the moon may have similar features to Pluto, theories that will be tested in a few months time.
"There is a lot of speculation over whether Pluto will look like Triton, and how well they'll match up," said Ralph McNutt of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "That's the great thing about first-time encounters like this — we don't know exactly what we'll see, but we know from decades of experience in first-time exploration of new planets that we will be very surprised."
According to Stern at a special press conference on Monday, we can expect to see a better-than-Hubble image of Pluto as New Horizons approaches the Kuiper Belt from January 2015 onwards — and that's when many questions about Pluto's mysterious nature will start to be answered.
Earth's Deep Space explorers – Global fleet hitting milestones
Deep Space spacecraft from the USA, Europe and India are all pressing through their mission milestones. India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is less than a month away from her arrival at Mars, while NASA's New Horizons has crossed Nepture's orbit, en route to Pluto. ESA's Rosetta mission also announced the shortlisting of landing sites on Comet 67P for the robotic lander, Philae.
Robotic Adventures:
While humanity has remained restricted to the realm of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since the 1970s, multiple robotic spacecraft have continued to extend our reach throughout the solar system.
The two NASA Voyager spacecraft are the long distance explorers, with Voyager 1 now exploring the unknowns of interstellar space.
The United States leads the way in deep space exploration, with a multitude of spacecraft having ventured out into the depths of the solar system, providing vital data for scientists, along with beaming back spectacular photography of our planetary neighbors.
One such spacecraft is closing in on her primary destination, as NASA's New Horizons mission continues to blaze a path toward Pluto.
New Horizons began her journey atop of an Atlas V rocket in 2006, sent directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory with an Earth-relative speed of 36,373 mph – setting a record for the highest velocity of a human-made object from Earth.
A Jupiter flyby provided a gravitational assist, increasing New Horizon's velocity by another 9,000 mph.
On Monday, NASA noted New Horizons had reached Neptune's orbit – nearly 2.75 billion miles from Earth – in a record eight years and eight months.
New Horizons' milestone matches precisely the 25th anniversary of the historic encounter of NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft with Neptune on August 25, 1989.
"NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 explored the entire middle zone of the solar system where the giant planets orbit," noted Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
"Now we stand on Voyager's broad shoulders to explore the even more distant and mysterious Pluto system."
When New Horizons arrives at Pluto for her closest approach on 14 July 2015, she will not only explore Pluto and its neighbors Charon, Nix, and Hydra, but also two newly named moons which were discovered in 2011 and 2012 via the Hubble Space Telescope.
Notably, Hubble has been recruited to provide potential destinations for the spacecraft once her Pluto mission has concluded.
The planned search will involve targeting a small area of sky in search of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) for the outbound spacecraft to visit. The Kuiper Belt – a vast debris field of icy bodies – was formed from the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.
Hubble will scan an area of sky in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius to try and identify any objects orbiting within the Kuiper Belt.
"No country except the United States has the demonstrated capability to explore so far away," Dr. Stern added.
"The U.S. has led the exploration of the planets and space to a degree no other nation has, and continues to do so with New Horizons.
"We're incredibly proud that New Horizons represents the nation again as NASA breaks records with its newest, farthest and very capable planetary exploration spacecraft."
NASA's dominance in exploring the solar system is mirrored by its success in sending spacecraft to the specific destination of Mars. However, India is hoping the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will set them on a path towards the Red Planet.
MOM – launched via a PSLV rocket in November, 2013 – is based on a derivative of ISRO's I-1K satellite bus, a platform first used for the METSAT-1 weather satellite launched in September 2002.
The MOM spacecraft hosts five scientific instruments: the Mars Color Camera; Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer; Lyman Alpha Photometer; Methane Sensor for Mars and Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser.
Set to arrive in an areocentric orbit on 24 September, MOM will make India the first Asian country to have a spacecraft orbiting the red planet. Japan and China have both attempted missions to Mars; Japan with Nozomi in 2003, and China with Yinghuo-1 in 2011; however both missions failed.
Three orbiters are currently in operation around Mars; NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter, and ESA's Mars Express – soon to be joined by NASA's MAVEN orbiter. A further two spacecraft are operational on the surface: the Opportunity rover and Curiosity (Mars Science Laboratory).
Another deep space mission – this time under the control of the European Space Agency – is also closing in on the business end of its mission.
The Rosetta mission was launched on March 2, 2004 via an Ariane 5G rocket, ahead of clocking up 6.4 billion kilometers, taking in an orbit of Jupiter and also involved passing by Earth three times and Mars once, while also flying past two asteroids.
Finally, Rosetta arrived at the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko this month.
Next up will be another milestone, as the lander, Philae, will aim to become only the second human-made object to land on a cosmic body far from Earth. She will follow the Huygens probe that landed on Saturn's moon Titan, 1.3 billion kilometers from Earth, in January 2005.
Where she will land on the comet is now under evaluation, with a shortlist of five landing sites selected, according to ESA on Monday.
European scientists noted that the landing is expected to take place in mid-November when the comet is about 450 million km from the Sun, before activity on the comet reaches levels that might jeopardise the safe and accurate deployment of Philae to the comet's surface, and before surface material is modified by this activity.
With an array of close up imagery and data now at hand from the Rosetta spacecraft, the Landing Site Selection Group met in Toulouse, France over the weekend, to consider the available data and determine a shortlist of five candidate sites.
"This is the first time landing sites on a comet have been considered," noted Stephan Ulamec, Lander Manager at DLR. "Based on the particular shape and the global topography of Comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it is probably no surprise that many locations had to be ruled out.
"The candidate sites that we want to follow up for further analysis are thought to be technically feasible on the basis of a preliminary analysis of flight dynamics and other key issues – for example they all provide at least six hours of daylight per comet rotation and offer some flat terrain. Of course, every site has the potential for unique scientific discoveries."
Even before the mission arrived at the comet, scientists knew that the southern regions offered the most stable landing conditions, not least because Philae is powered by solar cells.
The probe will experience higher levels of illumination as the comet approaches the Sun, aiding its health.
The five shortlisted sites were assigned a letter from an original pre-selection of 10 possible sites, which does not signify any ranking.
Three sites (B, I and J) are located on the smaller of the two lobes of the comet and two sites (A and C) are located on the larger lobe.
The Rosetta mission team are working towards a nominal landing date of 11 November.
As such, confirmation of the primary landing site is expected to be decided on 12 October. This will be followed by a formal Go/No Go from ESA, in agreement with the lander team, after a comprehensive readiness review on 14 October.
"The process of selecting a landing site is extremely complex and dynamic; as we get closer to the comet, we will see more and more details, which will influence the final decision on where and when we can land," added Fred Jansen, ESA Rosetta mission manager.
"We had to complete our preliminary analysis on candidate sites very quickly after arriving at the comet, and now we have just a few more weeks to determine the primary site. The clock is ticking and we now have to meet the challenge to pick the best possible landing site."
Russia Considers Meteor Impact Prevention Project
RIA Novosti
A project to protect people and economic facilities from the impact of space objects could be launched in Russia this year, Russian Emergencies Ministry has announced.
"The Emergencies Ministry, working jointly with the Academy of Sciences, has been instructed to produce a design for a pilot project for the protection of people and social facilities from the impact of space objects," reads a report by the ministry.
The issue received additional attention in Russia and worldwide after a meteor exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia in February 2013. The shock wave from that explosion shattered glass in over 7,000 buildings, injuring over 1,600 people. Economic damage was assessed at over 1.2 billion rubles (over $30 million).
Vladislav Bolov, Head of the Emergencies Ministry's Natural Disaster Center, told RIA Novosti, that the impact could be much more destructive if the meteor had hit the city directly.
IMPACT AVOIDANCE
According to Boris Shustov, Director of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Astronomy, an impact avoidance system could be created in Russia by 2030. Today, no country in the world has the technology to destroy space objects similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor in the atmosphere.
Shustov said the system would comprise both ground and space elements. However, Russia has no federal targeted program that provides for creating this system.
The budget of the US asteroid impact alert system was tripled to $60 million after the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion.
CHELYABINSK METEOR
NASA calculated that the Chelyabinsk meteor, which measured about 17 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 10,000 metric tons, entered the Earth's atmosphere with a speed of about 18 kilometers per second, or almost 60 times the speed of sound. Judging by the duration of its flight, the meteor entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle.
The meteor exploded approximately 32.5 seconds later, generating a powerful shock wave. NASA estimated its total kinetic energy before atmospheric impact at about 440 kilotons of TNT.
The Chelyabinsk meteor was the largest celestial body, fallen to Earth since the Tunguska disaster in 1908. On average, such large impacts are registered approximately once every 100 years.
GLOBAL DISASTER RISKS
An impact with a near-Earth object (NEOs) that is more than one kilometer in diameter could result in a global catastrophe. Scientists have found approximately 120 very large asteroid craters on the Earth.
The largest mark in Russia is the Popigai crater in the north of the Siberian Platform. The internal diameter of the crater is 75 kilometers and the exterior diameter is 100 kilometers. The impact is dated to about 36 million years ago.
Smaller NEOs are also dangerous, because the shock and thermal waves of their explosion near populated areas can result in major destruction, comparable to the effects of a nuclear blast. It was a piece of good fortune that the Tunguska meteor hit a sparsely populated area in 1908 and hence did not lead to disastrous consequences.
Hubble Zooms In on 'Galactic Soup' Ingredients
As the Hubble Space Telescope stares deep into the cosmos, there's not one spot in the sky (no matter how apparently "empty" it appears) that isn't filled with thousands of galaxies. Indeed, the famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field observation of a nondescript portion of inky black space is buzzing with exquisite galaxies of all shapes and sizes. Often these Hubble observations can look like a "soup" — where the ingredients are countless galaxies, each one filled with billions of stars. Now Hubble has zoomed in on a couple of these galactic ingredients, showing just how strange some of the galaxies billions of light-years away can appear.
Shown here are two galactic objects that don't appear to conform to the elegant structure of spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way. Called 2MASX J16133219+5103436 (bottom) and its bluish companion SDSS J161330.18+510335 (top), together they make up a galactic pair called Zw I 136. As a comparison, a clearly defined spiral galaxy can be seen to the right of the image.
The galactic pair are located in close proximity to one another, and they appear to be interacting gravitationally. Both are disturbed, with extended, fuzzy halos of stars being tugged away from their galactic homes.
For us to better understand galactic evolution and how that evolution corresponds to their shape and star formation, galactic pairs such as this are important to study, an endeavor that Hubble continues to provide mind blowing imagery for.
Rethinking Space Debris Mitigation
Dave Finkleman – Space News
We should reconsider the scope and application of measures to mitigate space debris. The same constraints need not and probably cannot be imposed on all satellites.
Space debris is a serious environmental threat. The consequences of collisions between satellites may be unacceptable. We must mitigate low-probability, high-consequence events.
However, not all mitigation guidelines may be required for all satellites, and some classes of satellites cannot satisfy all of the guidelines.
Voluntary debris mitigation guidelines were published in 2002 by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC), an advisory body composed of representatives of the 12 principal governmental space agencies. After five years of deliberation, most of these achieved consensus among the 69 (now 77) nations represented in the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. These led to a voluntary international standard for debris mitigation (ISO 24113) and several standards and technical reports, describing what should be done but not how to do it, vetted by the 18 national standards bodies represented in International Organization for Standardization (ISO) space operations subcommittees. These cover avoiding collisions, estimating orbit lifetime, depleting stored energy, and disposing of debris from low and high Earth orbit.
It has taken a long time to achieve consensus in any of these bodies.
The preponderance of satellites are civil, commercial and military, but these sectors had almost no voice, even though they would be affected most. Small satellites cannot meet many of the guidelines. Cubesats have been placed in long-lived orbits such as geostationary transfer orbit. If a 1,000-cubic-centimeter cubesat were all high-energy-density cryogenic hydrogen propellant, it would contain only about half of the energy required for deorbit. The surface area of a cubesat is hardly sufficient to provide enough solar electric energy for reasonable deorbit with electric thrusters.
Other guidelines are difficult to enforce even if they are codified in national laws, as France has done. Propagating orbits far into the future is notoriously imprecise. Compounding this with great uncertainty in the strength and occurrence of solar maxima and minima makes orbit lifetime estimates over a couple of decades notoriously imprecise.
ISO's attempts to establish a uniformly understood lifetime estimation analysis have failed. Everyone has his own, few are willing to accept any other, and estimates vary by many years.
Disposing of spent boosters is similarly hampered because few have both the residual propellants and enduring guidance and control to achieve controlled re-entry. More so for the emerging generation of small boosters for small satellites.
There have also been well-motivated and diligently considered decisions arguably contravening the guidelines. Satellite lifetimes have been extended beyond planned mission end. This risks insufficient propellant for safe re-entry, and failure of subsystems beyond their planned life can disable satellites, making them space debris.
All satellites do not pose the same collision risk, and all do not produce the same consequences. Collisions are avoided and debris prevented by choosing orbits wisely, accommodating the disparate risks of diverse satellites, and disposing safely at end of mission — not waiting 25 years or gaming what 25 years is.
One size does not fit all, but IADC guidelines are indiscriminate.
The unsettled launch industry
Jeff Foust – The Space Review
To the average person, a launch is an exciting event: a spectacle of fire and thunder as the rocket lifts off and ascends into the sky at an ever-increasing speed. To many customers of those launches, a launch can instead be a nerve-wracking event: hundreds of millions of dollars, and years of work, are sitting atop that controlled explosion. No doubt many commercial launch customers—who are not really in the space business but, rather, in the communications business—would be happy to trade in that spectacle for something less visually compelling but with a higher probability of success.
And, in recent months, the overall commercial launch industry has itself gotten a little more nerve-wracking for those involved in it, or customers of it. Demand for launches has remained relatively flat, particularly in the primary market of geostationary communications satellites.
However, more launch providers have been trying to get into the market, leading to what some in the industry fear to be a case of overcapacity, with consequences for established and emerging firms alike.
Problems for the big three
Since the early 2000s, the commercial launch market has been dominated by three companies: Arianespace, International Launch Services (ILS), and Sea Launch. Combined, those three providers accounted for the vast majority of commercial launches, particularly to GEO, with only a handful going to other launch providers. Now, all three are facing challenges.
For two of the three, those problems are leading to cutbacks. In early August, ILS, a US-based company that sells launches of the Russian Proton rocket, announced it was laying off a quarter of its staff. The company said the layoffs were linked to an anticipated decline in demand for the Proton in the commercial market.
"This level of staffing is appropriate for our current backlog and our customers will continue to be well-supported," said ILS president Phil Slack in an August 4 press release. "Previous staffing was consistent with planning for 7–8 launches per year. We are now targeting for 3–4 missions annually."
This decline in demand is, at least in part, a self-inflicted wound. The Proton rocket has suffered several launch failures in recent years, although on Russian missions as opposed to commercial ones sold by ILS. The most recent failure, in May, caused the loss of the Express AM4R communications satellite, which fell to Earth after the Proton's third stage malfunctioned. The Proton has not launched since then, and its return to flight, on a Russian government mission, is not expected until late September or October.
Sea Launch, another of those three major launch providers, is also struggling. On Friday, the company—majority owned by Russia's RSC Energia but with its headquarters in Switzerland and launch operations based in Long Beach, California—announced "staff reductions" of its own. The company didn't disclose how many people would be laid off, other than the layoffs would take place both in Switzerland and California. Sea Launch said it would also be temporarily "laying up" the two vessels it uses to perform launches to reduce its costs.
The company blamed a "manifest gap," or lack of launches planned for the near future, for those moves. Sea Launch performed its first launch since an early 2013 launch failure in May, successfully placing a Eutelsat communications satellite into orbit. However, the company had no missions under contract through next year, although the company says it can support launches as soon as mid-2015.
"In light of this gap in our launch manifest, Sea Launch is taking the opportunity to pursue all prudent business solutions to realize significant cost savings in labor, maintenance and fuel while maintaining the capability to call-up the vessels as needed," Sea Launch CEO Sergey Gugkaev said in Friday's announcement. "Sea Launch continues to aggressively market all available launch opportunities beginning in mid-2015 and will maintain a short launch call-up readiness state."
A contributing factor to both ILS's and Sea Launch's woes may be current geopolitical tensions involving Russia. That's a potentially very acute problem for Sea Launch, whose Zenit-3SL rocket uses lower stages built in Ukraine. Neither company, though, has indicated that those tensions have affected business, including the loss of any launch contracts.
The other "big three" launch provider, Arianespace, has built its reputation on a track record of success. Its flagship launch vehicle, the Ariane 5, has an unparalleled record of success: the most recent Ariane 5 launch, of the ATV-5 cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station last month, was the 60th consecutive successful launch of that vehicle, a streak going back more than a decade. At the same time, Arianespace has sought to diversity its launch capabilities: it now offers the small Vega launch vehicle and the medium-class Soyuz, all launching, like Ariane 5, from French Guiana.
Now, though, even that sterling reputation for success is tarnished. On Friday morning, a Soyuz rocket carrying the first two operational Galileo navigation satellites lifted off from French Guiana. Nearly four hours later, the rocket's Fregat upper stage released the satellites after performing the second of two planned engine burns. Arianespace and ESA declared the launch a success. "The Galileo program has just reached a major milestone: it is a great day for European space and a great day for Europe," said Arianespace chairman and CEO Stéphane Israël in a post-launch press release.
By Friday evening, though, it was clear it was no longer a great day. Tracking data from US Strategic Command appeared to show that the two Galileo satellites were not in their planned circular medium Earth orbit, but instead in elliptical orbits with a different inclination. Late Friday evening, Arianespace confirmed there was an "orbital injection anomaly" with the launch.
In a statement Saturday, Arianespace said that the anomaly was linked to the Fregat upper stage, but offered no other details. (Some independent analysts noted the orbit the Galileo satellites are in could be explained if the Fregat fired for its planned length, but was mis-oriented by as much as 180 degrees.) Israël said in the statement that Arianespace, ESA, and the European Commission would convene an independent board on Monday to begin the investigation into the incident.
Even without the shadow cast by a launch failure, Arianespace was aware of the increasing competitive pressures it was facing in the market. In June, Airbus Group and Safran, the two largest shareholders in Arianespace, announced plans to consolidate their launch vehicle businesses into a 50–50 joint venture. Airbus Defence and Space is the prime contractor for the Ariane 5, while Safran provides the cryogenic main engine for the rocket. The joint venture will play a major role in shaping Ariane's future, including plans—yet to be finalized—for the Ariane 6.
A Safran executive cited competition from other launch providers as a major reason for the merger. "Given this new situation, the European space agency must become more agile, and move towards more integrated structures," said Jean-Lin Fournereaux, vice president of space for Safran. "Airbus and Safran have the same vision in this area, namely to develop lower-cost, more modular launchers."
Upstarts' startup issues
While a number of organizations are seeking to enter, or in some cases re-enter, the commercial launch market, the one that attracts the most attention is SpaceX. Its lower launch prices—now just over $60 million for a Falcon 9 launch—has attracted business from a number of commercial customers. While SpaceX initially made inroads with smaller satellite operators, like AsiaSat and Thaicom, it's now winning business from larger operators as well: last month Inmarsat announced it would launch up to three satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy launch vehicles.
SpaceX, though, has been challenged to carry out the launches already on its manifest. Earlier this year, the company said it planned to perform ten launches in 2014. However, it completed only two in the first half of the year, and two more since: an ORBCOMM launch in mid-July and an AsiaSat launch early in August. Its next launch, also for AsiaSat, is planned for 12:50 am local time Wednesday from Cape Canaveral.
Despite that slow start, SpaceX officials remain confident that they can still get most of those ten planned launches done this year. "At this point, I can say five more launches of the Falcon 9 this year," said Lauren Dreyer, director of business affairs of SpaceX, during a launch industry panel session at the AIAA Space 2014 conference in San Diego earlier this month, immediately after the most recent Falcon 9 launch. She noted the ORBCOMM and AsiaSat launches took place 22 days apart; that same separation will hold true if the next mission launches as scheduled this Wednesday.
SpaceX has also experienced some growing pains as it ramps up to meet that commercial and government demand. Last month, the company confirmed it had let go of a small fraction of its workforce—less than five percent, according to a company statement—after an annual review. Those dismissals were widely reported as layoffs, though.
"We did our annual performance review, there were some low performers, and we terminated them," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said after an appearance on a panel at the NewSpace 2014 conference in San Jose, California, on July 26.
However, two of those terminated employees have since filed suit in California courts, claiming that they were laid off and not given proper notification. Under state and federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN), any mass layoff of employees required 60 days' advance notice, which the company did not provide. However, WARN notices are typically not required if employees are terminated for cause.
SpaceX is facing other lawsuits about its employment practices as well. In one, a former employee claims that the company did not provide required rest periods and meal breaks during shifts. In another, two former employees alleged SpaceX was "fostering a racist working environment." The company has denied the allegations. At least some of those employees filing suit are among those who were terminated by the company last month.
Another company trying to take a bigger share of the commercial launch market is Orbital Sciences. It has won commercial contracts in the past for its smaller rockets, including Pegasus and Taurus, but is now trying to win business for its larger Antares rocket, which launched most recently last month (see "Getting to love logistics on the space station", The Space Review, July 14, 2014).
In a conference call with financial analysts July 17, after the release of its latest quarterly earnings reports, Orbital president and CEO Dave Thompson confirmed that the company had submitted two bids for Antares launches not linked to its current NASA business. "So we have two proposals outstanding but those are for, if we were to be selected, those would be for missions between late 2016 and early 2018," he said, adding he expected decisions from those unnamed customers before the end of the year.
Those proposals come as Orbital weighs plans to re-engine the Antares first stage. The rocket currently uses AJ26 engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne, which are "Americanized" versions of NK-33 engines from Russia. There are enough AJ26 engines in hand by Aerojet Rocketdyne to handle Orbital's current backlog of Antares missions, but Orbital has indicated an interest in replacing those AJ26 engines with alternative designs—including, possibly, solid motors from ATK, with whom Orbital is in the process of merging.
"We are currently in the throes of a first-stage propulsion decision for the long term for Antares," John Steinmeyer, senior program manager at Orbital, said at the AIAA Space 2014 panel. "We knew early on in the program that there was a limited supply of those [AJ26] engines, so we have been searching for an alternative solution, both globally and domestically."
Neither Steinmeyer, at the AIAA panel, nor Thompson, in the earnings call, would say when Orbital would make that decision, other than it would come in the relatively near future. "As we discussed back in April at the first-quarter call, we at that point said that we thought we would be in a position to make a propulsion system decision in three or four months and I think we are right on track to do that," Thompson said last month. "We are very close to doing so now. I think I know which way it is going to go."
"We have a few more things that have to be verified but I think we've got a really good approach that I am happy with," he added. "And that should be solidified here very shortly." Thompson didn't disclose whether the launch contracts it's competing for would use that re-engined Antares.
Combined, all those developments make the commercial launch industry a little unsettled after a long period of relative stability. It may, in fact, make a launch seem positively relaxing by comparison.
1st Findings Due Sept. 8 For Galileo Launch Failure Review Board
Peter B. de Selding | Space News
Former European Space Agency Inspector General Peter Dubock will head an eight-member board of inquiry into the Aug. 22 failure of the Europeanized Russia Soyuz rocket, which placed two European Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites into a useless orbit, launch service provider Arianespace announced Aug. 25.
The board, which will coordinate its activities with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, is scheduled to begin its work Aug. 28 and to report initial findings by Sept. 8, Arianespace said.
Evry, France-based Arianespace operates the Europeanized Soyuz from Europe's Guiana Space Center spaceport on the northeast coast of South America.
In its ninth flight from the European spaceport, the rocket's Fregat upper stage placed the two 730-kilogram Galileo satellites into an orbit that was way off target both in terms of its perigee and its orbital inclination.
Government and industry officials have said privately that they doubt the satellites will be able to travel the necessary distance to the correct orbit with sufficient fuel left to operate for any appreciable length of time.
The Galileo system, which is designed to comprise 30 satellites in orbit, is managed by the 20-nation ESA for the European Union, the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union.
Before the Aug. 22 failure, an identical Soyuz-Fregat rocket was scheduled to carry two more Galileo satellites into medium-Earth orbit in December. Whether that schedule can be maintained is unclear, but the defective performance of the Fregat stage, which has a demonstrated success record, was so flagrant that officials immediately began speculating about problem in its guidance, navigation and control software.
In addition to Dubock, the board of inquiry members are:
- Guido Colasurdo, a flight-mechanics professor at the University of Rome Sapienza.
- Michel Courtois, former technical director at ESA and a veteran of several failure and program-quality reviews for ESA.
- Paul Flament, Galileo program unit head at the European Union's directorate-general for enterprise and industry, which has charge of Galileo.
- Giuliano Gatti, head of the space-component office for Galileo at ESA.
- Wolfgang Kubbat, former manager of the Institute of Flight Dynamics and Automatic Control at the Technical University of Darmstadt, in Germany.
- Isabelle Rongier, inspector-general and director of quality at the French space agency, CNES.
- Toni Tolker Nielsen, ESA deputy inspector general.
Roscosmos named Alexander Daniliuk, deputy director of Russia's TsNIIMASH organization, to be the interface between the Russian and European inquiries. The Fregat upper stage is built by Russia's NPO Lavochkin.
Arianespace Chief Executive Stephane Israel said in a statement that the board of inquiry will operate in full independence, and on a tight schedule.
Modern Research Borne on a Relic
Airships That Carry Science Into the Stratosphere
Joshua A. Krisch – The New York Times
Airships are dusty relics of aviation history. Lighter-than-air vehicles conjure images of the Hindenburg, in its glory and destruction, and the Goodyear Blimp, a floating billboard that barely resembles its powerful predecessors.
But now engineers are designing sleek new airships that could streak past layers of cloud and chart a course through the thin, icy air of the stratosphere, 65,000 feet above the ground — twice the usual altitude of a jetliner. Steered by scientists below, these aerodynamic balloons might be equipped with onboard telescopes that peer into distant galaxies or gather oceanic data along a coastline.
"Stratospheric airships could give us spacelike conditions from a spacelike platform, but without the spacelike costs," said Sarah Miller, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Irvine.
High-altitude airships are still in their relative infancy. None has ever flown at 65,000 feet for longer than eight hours. But a recent study from the Keck Institute for Space Studies at Caltech suggests that a more capable airship may not be far-off. And NASA is expected to sponsor a contest to build better airships, breathing new life — and funding — into the idea.
These airships would not be the first vehicles to venture into the stratosphere, of course. Rockets and satellites routinely whiz past 65,000 feet into earth orbit and beyond, and weather balloons already bob about in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
"Balloons have been around for 200 years, so everybody thinks, well, gosh, it's such old technology, how hard can it be?" said Steve Smith, an aerospace engineer who in 2005 designed one of the first successful stratospheric airships. "That's the farthest thing from the truth."
Unlike free-flying weather balloons, a blimp can be actively maneuvered, providing the control necessary to carry out advanced missions with expensive equipment. But that maneuverability is compromised the moment it begins to lose its aerodynamic shape.
For that reason, airship design is a balancing act. During the day, the helium inside the balloon warms and expands; at night, it contracts as the temperature drops.
"That's the real technical challenge," Mr. Smith said. "You want enough gas in there so that it won't collapse at night, and strong materials so it won't burst during the day."
This problem is compounded in a stratospheric airship, which must maintain its aerodynamic shape as it ascends through rapid temperature and pressure changes between layers of the atmosphere. For Mr. Smith's first successful stratospheric airship, the Hi-Sentinel 20, he chose a milky white polyester fabric that was tear-resistant and highly flexible.
The United States Army commissioned test flights of the Hi-Sentinel 20 to determine whether blimps could hoist communications satellites above enemy territory. The airship took off from New Mexico in 2005 and remained aloft only about eight hours, but it proved that an unmanned blimp could be steered through the stratosphere by a team of engineers on the ground.
Other test ships — the Hi-Sentinel 50 and the Hi-Sentinel 80 — were also successful. But the Army's interest waned with the end of the Iraq war, leaving Mr. Smith and his team short on funds. In search of a new market, he approached scientists with his promise of an inexpensive aircraft that could carry remote-controlled telescopes above the clouds.
Enter Sarah Miller, who was then studying for her doctorate in astrophysics at Oxford. "I took one look at the picture in the press release and I said, 'Oh, you could put a telescope on that,' " she recalled.
Her research on hydrogen emissions in early galaxies had been stymied by a lack of space-based instrumentation — even the Hubble Space Telescope was incapable of studying these particular emissions — and she had been looking for a more convenient way to get her experiments above the clouds.
But after a few phone calls, it became clear to her that stratospheric airships were not ready to play host to her research. Mr. Smith's successful test flights had remained in the stratosphere only a matter of hours, a time limit that would make long-term research impossible. And Hi-Sentinel had never been tested with heavy scientific equipment on board.
"They weren't at the technology readiness level that we'd entrust a large mission to them, or even a small mission, for that matter," Dr. Miller said.
To get a better idea of how stratospheric airships might fit into scientific research, Dr. Miller and colleagues prepared a lengthy analysis at the Keck Institute for Space Studies. The paper, published in February, found that conventional space satellites could cost up to 100 times as much as low-altitude, nonstratospheric airships. (There have been too few stratospheric airships to analyze their cost.) And while satellites end their missions by falling to earth, incinerated beyond repair, airships could theoretically land, swap out their payloads and lift off for another round of research.
As part of the study, Dr. Miller and her colleagues asked other researchers whether they thought they might benefit from access to a stratospheric airship. To their surprise, they found that climate scientists were just as interested as cosmologists were in developing a low-cost, reusable platform for their research.
"Really, there are two very broad scientific applications of stratospheric airships," said Jason Rhodes, an astrophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a co-author of the study. "You can look up and do astronomy, or you can look down and do earth science."
For years, climate scientists have used low-altitude blimps — and their lighter-than-air cousins, weather balloons — to sample atmospheric gases and have a bird's-eye view of local ecosystems. But high-endurance, high-altitude airships would allow scientists to study phenomena like the carbon cycle over extended periods at varying altitudes, and sample some of the less-understood greenhouses gases that contribute to climate change.
Meteorologists could fly stratospheric airships over hurricanes and tropical storms, tracking extreme weather in real time. Geologists told Dr. Miller's team that they would use such airships to explore layers of volcanic plumes.
The only problem, the team found, is that stratospheric airships are expensive and complicated to test. Many qualified engineers had fled the lighter-than-air market after their projects were scrapped for lack of funds. To revitalize the airship market, the Keck study suggested that an institution offer a prize to the first civilian team to build a better stratospheric airship
In April, Dr. Rhodes took the Keck study's suggestion to his NASA colleagues. Keck studies carry substantial weight with NASA: A recent Keck paper suggested that the United States lasso an asteroid, a highly unconventional plan that NASA hopes to execute in 2018. Dr. Rhodes proposed that NASA fund a Centennial Challenge to bring engineers back into the airship market. Centennial Challenges offer millions of dollars in prize money to civilian teams that build innovative technologies for NASA missions. Over the next few months, Dr. Rhodes will research and refine the rules of the challenge, and explore how to push the limits of airships' payload and endurance. If NASA accepts the terms of the challenge, the race for a science-worthy stratospheric airship will begin shortly afterward. Airships would not be the only research platforms in the stratosphere. Free-floating balloons routinely fly at 65,000 feet and higher, tethered to expensive scientific equipment. Barth Netterfield, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the Keck study, has been launching lighter-than-air telescopes over Antarctica for years.
But he said powered airships would probably serve a different purpose from his simpler balloons.
"We don't care where we are as long as we're up," he said. "So I'll launch from Antarctica, and the balloon just floats around there. That's fine."
Powered airships, by contrast, could provide a level of reliability that scientists need for advanced, expensive missions. Like conventional space satellites, balloons often crash into the sea, ending their voyage by destroying everything aboard.
"With a free-flying balloon, you may get stuck dropping your payload into the ocean," Dr. Netterfield said. "With a powered airship, you can bring your payload down exactly where you want to."
Airship designers will face other obstacles, he said, including the question of weight. "The big challenge is going to be getting the payload up to a useful mass for scientific experiments, and that's about one ton," he said, adding: "It's a long road ahead. But if they pull it off, it could be quite interesting."
The downhill slide of NASA's "rocket to nowhere"
R.D. Boozer – The Space Review
As predicted years ago, it appears the beginning of the end has begun for the gigantic rocket and Congressional boondoggle called the Space Launch System (SLS). This launcher is also known by its detractors as the "Rocket to Nowhere" because there are no payloads in development that are large enough to justify a rocket of its size.
In 2011, NASA administrator Charles Bolden commissioned Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) to do an analysis of the shuttle-derived SLS. This action was taken after it became clear that Congress was determined to implement this hyper-expensive launch vehicle, rather than developing the more economically practical alternative technology needed for deep spaceflight that was specified in NASA's prior proposal to the legislature in 2010. In one of my earlier articles here (see "Dennis Tito's 'Spaceship to Everywhere' may be a dead-end for NASA", The Space Review, April 7, 2014), I summarized the BAH report as follows:
SLS will probably stay on schedule within its assigned budget for the first three to five years of development. "Beyond this horizon, the inclusion of large expected cost savings in the estimates, the beginning of development activities, and the potential for significant risk events" decreased the confidence of the BAH report's authors. This situation would result from SLS being restricted to an annual budget of a size that Congress will actually appropriate. It renders meaningless the claim that SLS's meeting of its current development schedule is an indicator that the rocket is viable, since the total development time to date is still within the five-year window specified in the BAH report. In fact, the report says that after the window period, it is likely the amount of time between the accomplishment of the developmental goals will get stretched further and further apart.
It's possible the initiation of the BAH study was a precautionary move by Bolden. That is, in the likely event that SLS habitually doesn't meet its timeline goals and Congress looks to use the NASA administrator as a scapegoat, Bolden can point to the report and say he tried to warn them. After all, the Ares I launcher of the earlier Constellation Program met the same fate for similar reasons, while consuming many billions of dollars in the process. Given that almost all of the same disadvantages that hobbled Ares I apply to SLS as well (outdated and expensive shuttle-derived technology, excessively costly contracting methods, and so on), it would probably have been obvious to Bolden how SLS was virtually certain to end.
According to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the BAH report was indeed prescient. The GAO report concluded the initial launch date of SLS Block 1 may slip from late 2017 to mid-2018, and for the reasons mentioned in the earlier BAH report. And, like the BAH report, the GAO mentioned that the slippage is likely to get worse as time goes on. This fact is in stark contradiction of statements recently made by SLS prime contractor Boeing, which indicated that SLS development was months ahead of schedule (see "Making progress, and seeking stability, with SLS and Orion", The Space Review, May 27, 2014).
Sometime in 2015, SpaceX plans to perform the inaugural launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket. When it flies, it will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V that sent astronauts to the Moon. Its entire development costs will have been paid for by SpaceX on its own. As I mentioned on page 61 of a book I released last year called The Plundering of NASA: "Now ponder this idea. If SpaceX can build a rocket with three quarters of the payload capacity of the SLS Block 1 without taxpayer money, what could they do with just a fraction of the money that is being spent on SLS?"
Indeed, before Congress forced SLS on NASA, it asked both United Launch Alliance and SpaceX to submit proposals to develop a super rocket with capabilities similar to the most powerful proposed version of the SLS. The quoted costs with fixed priced contracts were many billions of dollars less than the most optimistic cost projections for SLS. What's more, it appears that going the SLS route has increased US reliance on Russian rocket technology for both the Department of Defense and NASA because it has taken funds away from efforts that would have weaned us from that dependence (see "NASA's big rocket gives Putin a big advantage", The Space Review, June 16, 2014).
Considering the evidence as presented by both the new GAO report and the earlier BAH study, it is reasonable to conclude that the SLS development program was doomed before it even got started. Once the Falcon Heavy is flying, SLS's developmental shortcomings will be hard to ignore. Since SpaceX is already working on a methane-powered rocket engine called Raptor for use in a rocket even more powerful than the largest proposed version of SLS, it seems the writing is on the wall. Events in the near future will spell doom for SLS.
NASA challenges public to develop applications using climate change data
Stephanie Kanowitz – FierceGovernment
Amid a White House report that outlined the negative economic consequences of delaying action that would stem climate change, NASA has announced a second public challenge to develop innovative applications using climate data.
The first challenge recently produced four winning ideas for new uses of climate projections and Earth-observing satellite data.
Both challenges are part of the Open NASA Earth Exchange, or OpenNEX, a data, cloud-computing and knowledge platform where users can share modeling and analysis codes, scientific results, information, and expertise to solve big data challenges in the Earth sciences.
"The ideas generated by this OpenNEX challenge demonstrate the value of these NASA data assets when put in the hands of citizen scientists," said Ramakrishna Nemani, principal scientist for the NEX project at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, in an Aug. 22 press release. "Our second challenge seeks to rapidly turn these ideas into practical applications."
The four winners of the initial challenge, or idea development stage, which ran from July 1 to Aug. 1, will share a $10,000 award.
Ideas include building an app to predict how plant hardiness zones will change with a shifting climate, comparing a community's predicted climate with the historical record of another, and creating a web app to map potential and actual climate-related environmental hazards such as wildfires, floods and droughts nationwide. The fourth idea is about converting the repository of OpenNEX climate model data to formats compatible with the Open Web Platform — a collection of open technologies and standards — to make it easier for web developers to use the information.
The second "builder" challenge, with awards of $50,000, began Aug. 22 and asks applicants to develop an app or algorithm that explains the effects of climate change using OpenNEX data to the public. Competitors can base their submissions on the winning proposals from the first challenge or present new ideas. Entries are due Oct. 21 with winners announced Dec. 15.
The space agency wants applications to include summaries of effects over time that can be easily related to well-known climate-related events and processes, including key climatic events or observable events dependent on climate. For example, they can be changes in the timing of snow melt and runoff, plant flowering and the start of allergy season, and the annual migration of birds.
"NASA is committed to engaging and enabling individuals and groups to make use of these high-quality scientific data and innovative technologies to better communicate climate change impacts to the general public," said Tsengdar Lee, program manager in the NASA's Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate.
In late July, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report that said ignoring climate change could cost the country about $150 billion annually — in decreased agricultural production, coastal flooding, extreme weather events and other consequences — when the earth's temperature rises 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
For more:
- read NASA's press release.
END
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HEADLINES AND LEADSSpaceX Failure Seen Slowing NASA Pick on Capsule ContractAlan Ohnsman - Bloomberg NewsSpace Exploration Technologies Corp.'s rocket test that ended with an explosion over Texas may slow a U.S. decision on a contract to take astronauts to the International Space Station, an aerospace analyst said.An outer space solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflictVid Beldavs – The Space ReviewRussia has chosen to invest heavily in military modernization but has let its R&D capacity deteriorate. Russia barely invests 1% of its GDP in R&D, far less than nations like Israel (4.2%), South Korea (3.7%), Sweden (3.3%), and Finland (3.1%.) The EU has a goal of 3% of GDP invested in R&D by 2020, the US invests about 2.7%, and China presently is at about 2% but has targeted 3% in the long term.The Moon Smells: Apollo Astronauts Describe Lunar AromaLeonard David - Space.comThe moon has a distinctive smell. Ask any Apollo moonwalker about the odiferous nature of the lunar dirt and you'll get the same answer.Historic Milestone: Pluto Mission Reaches Neptune's OrbitIan O'Neill - Discovery.comAs we wait in anticipation for NASA's New Horizons probe to make its historic Pluto flyby on July 14, 2015, the mission is about to cross another milestone — it will zoom past Neptune's orbit at 7:04 p.m. PDT (10:04 p.m. EDT) today (Monday), and it has already snapped a pixelated view of the outer solar system's ice giant from 2.5 billion miles away (around 27 times the Earth-sun distance).Earth's Deep Space explorers – Global fleet hitting milestonesChris Bergin, William Graham and Chris Gebhardt - NASA Spaceflight.comDeep Space spacecraft from the USA, Europe and India are all pressing through their mission milestones. India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is less than a month away from her arrival at Mars, while NASA's New Horizons has crossed Nepture's orbit, en route to Pluto. ESA's Rosetta mission also announced the shortlisting of landing sites on Comet 67P for the robotic lander, Philae.Russia Considers Meteor Impact Prevention ProjectRIA NovostiA project to protect people and economic facilities from the impact of space objects could be launched in Russia this year, Russian Emergencies Ministry has announced.Hubble Zooms In on 'Galactic Soup' IngredientsIan O'Neill - Discovery.comAs the Hubble Space Telescope stares deep into the cosmos, there's not one spot in the sky (no matter how apparently "empty" it appears) that isn't filled with thousands of galaxies. Indeed, the famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field observation of a nondescript portion of inky black space is buzzing with exquisite galaxies of all shapes and sizes.Rethinking Space Debris MitigationDave Finkleman – Space NewsWe should reconsider the scope and application of measures to mitigate space debris. The same constraints need not and probably cannot be imposed on all satellites.The unsettled launch industryJeff Foust – The Space ReviewTo the average person, a launch is an exciting event: a spectacle of fire and thunder as the rocket lifts off and ascends into the sky at an ever-increasing speed. To many customers of those launches, a launch can instead be a nerve-wracking event: hundreds of millions of dollars, and years of work, are sitting atop that controlled explosion. No doubt many commercial launch customers—who are not really in the space business but, rather, in the communications business—would be happy to trade in that spectacle for something less visually compelling but with a higher probability of success.1st Findings Due Sept. 8 For Galileo Launch Failure Review BoardPeter B. de Selding | Space NewsFormer European Space Agency Inspector General Peter Dubock will head an eight-member board of inquiry into the Aug. 22 failure of the Europeanized Russia Soyuz rocket, which placed two European Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites into a useless orbit, launch service provider Arianespace announced Aug. 25.Modern Research Borne on a RelicAirships That Carry Science Into the StratosphereJoshua A. Krisch – The New York TimesAirships are dusty relics of aviation history. Lighter-than-air vehicles conjure images of the Hindenburg, in its glory and destruction, and the Goodyear Blimp, a floating billboard that barely resembles its powerful predecessors.The downhill slide of NASA's "rocket to nowhere"R.D. Boozer – The Space ReviewAs predicted years ago, it appears the beginning of the end has begun for the gigantic rocket and Congressional boondoggle called the Space Launch System (SLS). This launcher is also known by its detractors as the "Rocket to Nowhere" because there are no payloads in development that are large enough to justify a rocket of its size.NASA challenges public to develop applications using climate change dataStephanie Kanowitz – FierceGovernmentAmid a White House report that outlined the negative economic consequences of delaying action that would stem climate change, NASA has announced a second public challenge to develop innovative applications using climate data.COMPLETE STORIESSpaceX Failure Seen Slowing NASA Pick on Capsule ContractAlan Ohnsman - Bloomberg NewsSpace Exploration Technologies Corp.'s rocket test that ended with an explosion over Texas may slow a U.S. decision on a contract to take astronauts to the International Space Station, an aerospace analyst said.The company led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said the F9R vehicle self-destructed automatically after an "anomaly" following the Aug. 22 launch in McGregor, Texas. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is nearing a decision among contenders including SpaceX for manned missions to the station by 2017."The timing is difficult because you have this failure just before the award," Marco Caceres, director of space studies at Fairfax, Virginia-based consultant Teal Group, said today. "At a minimum it may delay the announcement because NASA needs to get its ducks in a line and get all the information."SpaceX is the first private company to deliver cargo to the space station under a $1.6 billion NASA contract and seeks to expand that to manned launches using its own capsule and rocket. The U.S. has depended on Russian rockets to carry astronauts since retiring the shuttle fleet in 2011, a situation that's grown riskier because of the crisis in Ukraine.The F9R is a different version of the rocket now used on NASA missions by Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX.Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesman, declined to discuss the SpaceX incident and the timing of any future announcements. John Taylor, a spokesman for SpaceX, declined to comment on whether the accident may affect NASA's evaluation.Musk's View"Rockets are tricky," Musk, 43, wrote in a Twitter post after the rocket's failure. He also leads electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA)NASA has said an award for manned flights may be announced as early as this month. The agency sought $848.3 million for the commercial spaceflight program in fiscal 2015, and estimates total spending of $3.42 billion on the initiative through the end of the decade, according to documents posted on its website.SpaceX's competitors for the manned-launch contract include Boeing Co. (BA), the world's largest aerospace company, and closely held Sierra Nevada Corp. Neither has sent its own vehicle to the station, and each uses the Atlas V rocket, which relies on Russian engines, Caceres said."The culture of NASA is quite conservative," Caceres said. SpaceX has a lower-cost rocket and capsule, "and there are clearly some advantages to going with a lower-cost system," he said. "It's also still a relatively new system, and the company is still working out some issues."SpaceX has sent Dragon capsules to the space station four times with its Falcon 9 rocket, including three official cargo trips. The next launch is set to occur as soon as Sept. 18 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The company's cargo contract with NASA is for at least 12 missions.The Dragon V2 capsule, which was unveiled in May, is designed to carry as many as seven astronauts as well as supplies. The vehicle is intended to be reusable, and land vertically after returning to Earth, Musk said.An outer space solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflictVid Beldavs – The Space ReviewRussia has chosen to invest heavily in military modernization but has let its R&D capacity deteriorate. Russia barely invests 1% of its GDP in R&D, far less than nations like Israel (4.2%), South Korea (3.7%), Sweden (3.3%), and Finland (3.1%.) The EU has a goal of 3% of GDP invested in R&D by 2020, the US invests about 2.7%, and China presently is at about 2% but has targeted 3% in the long term.If innovation is the primary driver of economic development, Russia's choice of emphasizing the military is likely to have disastrous consequences, further exacerbating its brain drain. Bright people, particularly scientists, will continue to leave to do great science elsewhere. Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin often speaks of building a Russian Moon base. The capital flight that has occurred over the years could have funded multiple lunar bases and possibly a base on Mars.In 2014 the plans have become more elaborate, but less realizable after the Ukraine fiasco. Now Rogozin speaks of a permanent base, with a Russian presence on the Moon forever. Consider the money spent on the military after its modernization drive started in 2008. If a quarter of the hundreds of billions in military spending had gone into advanced space development, it could have been Russia-based asteroid mining companies that find and exploit the asteroids with trillions of dollars of recoverable resources. Instead it will be Deep Space Industries, SpaceX, Planetary Resources, and other American companies that will reap the rewards. Now that weapons have been purchased and the troops have been trained to use them, the impulse is to put the military to use. Russia is losing hundreds of billions due to a senseless war that did not have to take place.The Ukraine crisis started as a result of a gross misreading of Ukrainian public opinion by Russian leadership. About 75% of the public was for joining the EU in the fall of 2013, eagerly anticipating President Yanukovych to sign the Association Agreement. In the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, 318 votes out of 449 has been cast for joining the EU, reflecting strong support from all regions of the country. The people of Ukraine—Russian, Polish, Tatar, Ukrainian, and other nationalities—had the hope that their country could finally get on the road to prosperity where they could live like their European neighbors. President Yanukovych had been elected in 2010 on the basis of his advocacy for Ukraine joining the EU.When Russian President Putin compelled the alternative solution, for Ukraine to join the new Eurasian Union led by Russia, the public was outraged. The Maidan revolution was a predictable consequence that had nothing to do with Victoria Nuland, NATO, or other Western influence. Russian interests would have been much better served if Yanukovych had simply been allowed to sign the EU Agreement. He would have increased his political standing in Ukraine while remaining a friend of Russia. Yanukovych is history, Petro Poroshenko is now president, and there have been thousands of casualties in a senseless war that harms Russia, Ukraine, and the EU. Economic growth in the EU is threatening to collapse, while the Russian and Ukrainian economies are imploding.The Russian and Ukrainian economies are deeply intertwined, particularly in the space and high technology sectors. The war in eastern Ukraine is affecting both economies and resulting in significant delays in Russian space efforts as Russia seeks to substitute its own production for imports from Ukraine.It is time to consider a solution to the problems of the region. A large-scale project that results in an investment of billions in the Russian, Ukrainian, and EU space and technology sectors could provide a highly visible re-unifier that generates jobs in eastern Ukraine and bolsters science and industrial development in Russia and drives innovation in the EU to lift it back to a growth path. Why not reframe the Russia-Ukraine-EU relationship towards a mutually positive future? Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin has already given the answer: build the Moon base as a joint Russia-Ukraine-EU project. Better yet, why not expand the opportunity and invite the US, China, Japan, and others to join? There is an existing structure that could make it work. It is the International Space Station (ISS): the largest international cooperation effort in technology development in human history. In fact, the ISS has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Such a project could begin the drive for industrial development of the Moon and beyond, and create a permanent Russian presence on the Moon forever, in partnership with Ukraine, the EU and the rest of the world.Stop the stupid war. Build the Moon base.The Moon Smells: Apollo Astronauts Describe Lunar AromaLeonard David - Space.comThe moon has a distinctive smell. Ask any Apollo moonwalker about the odiferous nature of the lunar dirt and you'll get the same answer.With NASA's six Apollo lunar landing missions between 1969 and the end of 1972, a total of 12 astronauts kicked up the powdery dirt of the moon, becoming an elite group later to be tagged as the "dusty dozen."From the modest 2.5 hour "moonwalk" of Apollo 11 to the forays totaling just over 22 hours outside a spacecraft on Apollo 17, NASA's Apollo landing crews could not escape tracking lunar material inside their moon lander homes.Decades later, moonwalkers and lunar scientists are still trying to appreciate exactly what the moon's aroma brings to the astronaut's nose.That fresh lunar regolith smell"All I can say is that everyone's instant impression of the smell was that of spent gunpowder, not that it was 'metallic' or 'acrid'. Spent gunpowder smell probably was much more implanted in our memories than other comparable odors," said Apollo 17's Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, a scientist-astronaut who walked the moon's surface in December of 1972.Schmitt said that he believed all the moonwalkers agreed and commented at the time that, when they took their helmets off, 'fresh' regolith (the scientific name for moon dirt) in the cabin air smelled like spent gunpowder."For what it is worth, I always have suspected that the olfactory sensors are reacting to a variety of unsatisfied electron bonds as one would have in both just fired gunpowder and lunar dust newly introduced in the cabin," Schmitt said. "By the way, the time from starting re-pressurization [of the lunar lander] to my first comment about gunpowder was almost exactly seven minutes."Mucus membranes in spaceLarry Taylor, director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, agrees with Schmitt's take. He served in the "back-room" at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston during the Apollo 17 mission, and was one of those who directly advised the astronauts on the moon during their trots across the lunar landscape."When the entire subject of the dust smell came up several years ago, I put forth that what the astronauts were smelling, that is, what their mucus membrane sensed, was highly activated dust particles with 'dangling bonds,'" Taylor said.Taylor said that when a geologist smashes a rock here on Earth, that person will smell some odor that has been generated by the smashing of minerals, thereby creating the so-called dangling bonds.But on the moon, the dangling bonds can exist for a long time, Taylor said. And because lunar rock and soil is roughly 43-percent oxygen, most of these unsatisfied bonds are from oxygen."In a nut-shell, I believe that the astronauts all smelled unsatisfied dangling bonds on the lunar dust … which were readily satisfied in a second by the lunar module atmosphere, or nose membrane moisture," Taylor told Space.com.Grab specimenApollo 11 lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin also recalls the smell of the moon. As Armstrong and Aldrin re-entered and re-pressurized the Eagle lunar lander, their suits and equipment were soiled by lunar dust. That dust has a definite odor, he said."It was like burnt charcoal," Aldrin said, "or similar to the ashes that are in a fireplace, especially if you sprinkle a little water on them."Aldrin also noted yet another lunar dust episode on the Apollo 11 mission."Before we left Earth, the lunar dust was considered by some alarmists as very dangerous, in fact pyrophoric, capable of igniting spontaneously in air," Aldrin said. "The fact that the lunar dust had been so void of contact with oxygen, as soon as we re-pressurized our lunar module cabin it might start to heat up, smolder, even burst into flames. At least that was the worry of a few. A late-July firework display on the moon was not something advisable."So Aldrin and Armstrong staged an ad hoc moon dust test. They did it using a so-called "grab sample," a lunar sample collected quickly by Armstrong and stashed in his spacesuit pocket in case there was a problem that forced the moonwalkers to depart the scene in a hurry.That grab specimen was placed on the cylindrical flat top of the Eagle's ascent engine cover. And as the cabin began to fill with air, both Armstrong and Aldrin waited to see if the lunar sample would indeed smoke and smolder."If it did, we'd stop pressurization, open the hatch and toss it out. But nothing happened. We got back to the business of readying for departure from the moon," Aldrin said.A reactive lunar natureIt was Thomas Gold, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University who died in 2004, that first flagged the explosive potential of moon rock, said Donald Bogard, a Heritage Fellow at the Lunar Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.From 1971 until his retirement from NASA in 2010, Bogard was a principal investigator in NASA's lunar and meteorite research programs and was a member of the science team that performed quarantine testing of Apollo lunar samples between 1969 and 1971."Tommy Gold was partly correct when he warned NASA prior to Apollo 11 that the lunar dust brought into the lunar module might spontaneously combust and produce a safety issue. I was called into a JSC meeting prior to Apollo 11 to discuss this possibility," Bogard said. "Gold had realized the likely reactive nature of lunar material surfaces, but had over-emphasized their reactive effects."Historic Milestone: Pluto Mission Reaches Neptune's OrbitIan O'Neill - Discovery.comAs we wait in anticipation for NASA's New Horizons probe to make its historic Pluto flyby on July 14, 2015, the mission is about to cross another milestone — it will zoom past Neptune's orbit at 7:04 p.m. PDT (10:04 p.m. EDT) today (Monday), and it has already snapped a pixelated view of the outer solar system's ice giant from 2.5 billion miles away (around 27 times the Earth-sun distance).Today's milestone is also a grand coincidence for solar system exploration. Precisely 25 years ago, on Aug. 25, 1989, NASA's Voyager 2 probe reached Neptune as it made its way to the outermost reaches of the sun's sphere of influence — a magnetic bubble called the heliosphere. Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to encounter the majestic blue planet."It's a cosmic coincidence that connects one of NASA's iconic past outer solar system explorers, with our next outer solar system explorer," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Exactly 25 years ago at Neptune, Voyager 2 delivered our 'first' look at an unexplored planet. Now it will be New Horizons' turn to reveal the unexplored Pluto and its moons in stunning detail next summer on its way into the vast outer reaches of the solar system.""NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 explored the entire middle zone of the solar system where the giant planets orbit," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "Now we stand on Voyager's broad shoulders to explore the even more distant and mysterious Pluto system."Voyager 2 was the first to gain dramatically clear views of Neptune and its moons in 1989, the last time a "new planet" has been shown to us in beautiful clarity. Next up is dwarf planet Pluto that will be visited by New Horizons, using 21st century camera technology to image the little world — and its largest moon (or "binary partner"?) Charon — in crystal clarity.As New Horizons approached Neptune's orbit, it was able to grab a distant photo of Neptune and largest moon Triton. Through information gathered from Voyager 2 observations a quarter of a century ago, planetary scientists believe that the strange moon may actually be a "captured" Kuiper Belt object.Rather than originating from the planetary material that accumulated to form the other Neptunian moons, weird Triton — which has a retrograde orbit around Neptune — seems to have formed in the same outer solar system region as Pluto but somehow migrated toward Neptune and became gravitationally bound to the ice giant. Triton's origin has therefore sparked theories that the moon may have similar features to Pluto, theories that will be tested in a few months time."There is a lot of speculation over whether Pluto will look like Triton, and how well they'll match up," said Ralph McNutt of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "That's the great thing about first-time encounters like this — we don't know exactly what we'll see, but we know from decades of experience in first-time exploration of new planets that we will be very surprised."According to Stern at a special press conference on Monday, we can expect to see a better-than-Hubble image of Pluto as New Horizons approaches the Kuiper Belt from January 2015 onwards — and that's when many questions about Pluto's mysterious nature will start to be answered.Earth's Deep Space explorers – Global fleet hitting milestonesChris Bergin, William Graham and Chris Gebhardt - NASA Spaceflight.comDeep Space spacecraft from the USA, Europe and India are all pressing through their mission milestones. India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is less than a month away from her arrival at Mars, while NASA's New Horizons has crossed Nepture's orbit, en route to Pluto. ESA's Rosetta mission also announced the shortlisting of landing sites on Comet 67P for the robotic lander, Philae.Robotic Adventures:While humanity has remained restricted to the realm of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since the 1970s, multiple robotic spacecraft have continued to extend our reach throughout the solar system.The two NASA Voyager spacecraft are the long distance explorers, with Voyager 1 now exploring the unknowns of interstellar space.The United States leads the way in deep space exploration, with a multitude of spacecraft having ventured out into the depths of the solar system, providing vital data for scientists, along with beaming back spectacular photography of our planetary neighbors.One such spacecraft is closing in on her primary destination, as NASA's New Horizons mission continues to blaze a path toward Pluto.New Horizons began her journey atop of an Atlas V rocket in 2006, sent directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory with an Earth-relative speed of 36,373 mph – setting a record for the highest velocity of a human-made object from Earth.A Jupiter flyby provided a gravitational assist, increasing New Horizon's velocity by another 9,000 mph.On Monday, NASA noted New Horizons had reached Neptune's orbit – nearly 2.75 billion miles from Earth – in a record eight years and eight months.New Horizons' milestone matches precisely the 25th anniversary of the historic encounter of NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft with Neptune on August 25, 1989."NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 explored the entire middle zone of the solar system where the giant planets orbit," noted Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado."Now we stand on Voyager's broad shoulders to explore the even more distant and mysterious Pluto system."When New Horizons arrives at Pluto for her closest approach on 14 July 2015, she will not only explore Pluto and its neighbors Charon, Nix, and Hydra, but also two newly named moons which were discovered in 2011 and 2012 via the Hubble Space Telescope.Notably, Hubble has been recruited to provide potential destinations for the spacecraft once her Pluto mission has concluded.The planned search will involve targeting a small area of sky in search of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) for the outbound spacecraft to visit. The Kuiper Belt – a vast debris field of icy bodies – was formed from the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.Hubble will scan an area of sky in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius to try and identify any objects orbiting within the Kuiper Belt."No country except the United States has the demonstrated capability to explore so far away," Dr. Stern added."The U.S. has led the exploration of the planets and space to a degree no other nation has, and continues to do so with New Horizons."We're incredibly proud that New Horizons represents the nation again as NASA breaks records with its newest, farthest and very capable planetary exploration spacecraft."NASA's dominance in exploring the solar system is mirrored by its success in sending spacecraft to the specific destination of Mars. However, India is hoping the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will set them on a path towards the Red Planet.MOM – launched via a PSLV rocket in November, 2013 – is based on a derivative of ISRO's I-1K satellite bus, a platform first used for the METSAT-1 weather satellite launched in September 2002.The MOM spacecraft hosts five scientific instruments: the Mars Color Camera; Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer; Lyman Alpha Photometer; Methane Sensor for Mars and Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser.Set to arrive in an areocentric orbit on 24 September, MOM will make India the first Asian country to have a spacecraft orbiting the red planet. Japan and China have both attempted missions to Mars; Japan with Nozomi in 2003, and China with Yinghuo-1 in 2011; however both missions failed.Three orbiters are currently in operation around Mars; NASA's Mars Odyssey and MarsReconnaissance Orbiter, and ESA's Mars Express – soon to be joined by NASA's MAVEN orbiter. A further two spacecraft are operational on the surface: the Opportunity rover and Curiosity (Mars Science Laboratory).Another deep space mission – this time under the control of the European Space Agency – is also closing in on the business end of its mission.The Rosetta mission was launched on March 2, 2004 via an Ariane 5G rocket, ahead of clocking up 6.4 billion kilometers, taking in an orbit of Jupiter and also involved passing by Earth three times and Mars once, while also flying past two asteroids.Finally, Rosetta arrived at the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko this month.Next up will be another milestone, as the lander, Philae, will aim to become only the second human-made object to land on a cosmic body far from Earth. She will follow the Huygens probe that landed on Saturn's moon Titan, 1.3 billion kilometers from Earth, in January 2005.Where she will land on the comet is now under evaluation, with a shortlist of five landing sites selected, according to ESA on Monday.European scientists noted that the landing is expected to take place in mid-November when the comet is about 450 million km from the Sun, before activity on the comet reaches levels that might jeopardise the safe and accurate deployment of Philae to the comet's surface, and before surface material is modified by this activity.With an array of close up imagery and data now at hand from the Rosetta spacecraft, the Landing Site Selection Group met in Toulouse, France over the weekend, to consider the available data and determine a shortlist of five candidate sites."This is the first time landing sites on a comet have been considered," noted Stephan Ulamec, Lander Manager at DLR. "Based on the particular shape and the global topography of Comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it is probably no surprise that many locations had to be ruled out."The candidate sites that we want to follow up for further analysis are thought to be technically feasible on the basis of a preliminary analysis of flight dynamics and other key issues – for example they all provide at least six hours of daylight per comet rotation and offer some flat terrain. Of course, every site has the potential for unique scientific discoveries."Even before the mission arrived at the comet, scientists knew that the southern regions offered the most stable landing conditions, not least because Philae is powered by solar cells.The probe will experience higher levels of illumination as the comet approaches the Sun, aiding its health.The five shortlisted sites were assigned a letter from an original pre-selection of 10 possible sites, which does not signify any ranking.Three sites (B, I and J) are located on the smaller of the two lobes of the comet and two sites (A and C) are located on the larger lobe.The Rosetta mission team are working towards a nominal landing date of 11 November.As such, confirmation of the primary landing site is expected to be decided on 12 October. This will be followed by a formal Go/No Go from ESA, in agreement with the lander team, after a comprehensive readiness review on 14 October."The process of selecting a landing site is extremely complex and dynamic; as we get closer to the comet, we will see more and more details, which will influence the final decision on where and when we can land," added Fred Jansen, ESA Rosetta mission manager."We had to complete our preliminary analysis on candidate sites very quickly after arriving at the comet, and now we have just a few more weeks to determine the primary site. The clock is ticking and we now have to meet the challenge to pick the best possible landing site."Russia Considers Meteor Impact Prevention ProjectRIA NovostiA project to protect people and economic facilities from the impact of space objects could be launched in Russia this year, Russian Emergencies Ministry has announced."The Emergencies Ministry, working jointly with the Academy of Sciences, has been instructed to produce a design for a pilot project for the protection of people and social facilities from the impact of space objects," reads a report by the ministry.The issue received additional attention in Russia and worldwide after a meteor exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia in February 2013. The shock wave from that explosion shattered glass in over 7,000 buildings, injuring over 1,600 people. Economic damage was assessed at over 1.2 billion rubles (over $30 million).Vladislav Bolov, Head of the Emergencies Ministry's Natural Disaster Center, told RIA Novosti, that the impact could be much more destructive if the meteor had hit the city directly.IMPACT AVOIDANCEAccording to Boris Shustov, Director of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Astronomy, an impact avoidance system could be created in Russia by 2030. Today, no country in the world has the technology to destroy space objects similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor in the atmosphere.Shustov said the system would comprise both ground and space elements. However, Russia has no federal targeted program that provides for creating this system.The budget of the US asteroid impact alert system was tripled to $60 million after the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion.CHELYABINSK METEORNASA calculated that the Chelyabinsk meteor, which measured about 17 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 10,000 metric tons, entered the Earth's atmosphere with a speed of about 18 kilometers per second, or almost 60 times the speed of sound. Judging by the duration of its flight, the meteor entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle.The meteor exploded approximately 32.5 seconds later, generating a powerful shock wave. NASA estimated its total kinetic energy before atmospheric impact at about 440 kilotons of TNT.The Chelyabinsk meteor was the largest celestial body, fallen to Earth since the Tunguska disaster in 1908. On average, such large impacts are registered approximately once every 100 years.GLOBAL DISASTER RISKSAn impact with a near-Earth object (NEOs) that is more than one kilometer in diameter could result in a global catastrophe. Scientists have found approximately 120 very large asteroid craters on the Earth.The largest mark in Russia is the Popigai crater in the north of the Siberian Platform. The internal diameter of the crater is 75 kilometers and the exterior diameter is 100 kilometers. The impact is dated to about 36 million years ago.Smaller NEOs are also dangerous, because the shock and thermal waves of their explosion near populated areas can result in major destruction, comparable to the effects of a nuclear blast. It was a piece of good fortune that the Tunguska meteor hit a sparsely populated area in 1908 and hence did not lead to disastrous consequences.Hubble Zooms In on 'Galactic Soup' IngredientsIan O'Neill - Discovery.comAs the Hubble Space Telescope stares deep into the cosmos, there's not one spot in the sky (no matter how apparently "empty" it appears) that isn't filled with thousands of galaxies. Indeed, the famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field observation of a nondescript portion of inky black space is buzzing with exquisite galaxies of all shapes and sizes.Often these Hubble observations can look like a "soup" — where the ingredients are countless galaxies, each one filled with billions of stars. Now Hubble has zoomed in on a couple of these galactic ingredients, showing just how strange some of the galaxies billions of light-years away can appear.Shown here are two galactic objects that don't appear to conform to the elegant structure of spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way. Called 2MASX J16133219+5103436 (bottom) and its bluish companion SDSS J161330.18+510335 (top), together they make up a galactic pair called Zw I 136. As a comparison, a clearly defined spiral galaxy can be seen to the right of the image.The galactic pair are located in close proximity to one another, and they appear to be interacting gravitationally. Both are disturbed, with extended, fuzzy halos of stars being tugged away from their galactic homes.For us to better understand galactic evolution and how that evolution corresponds to their shape and star formation, galactic pairs such as this are important to study, an endeavor that Hubble continues to provide mind blowing imagery for.Rethinking Space Debris MitigationDave Finkleman – Space NewsWe should reconsider the scope and application of measures to mitigate space debris. The same constraints need not and probably cannot be imposed on all satellites.Space debris is a serious environmental threat. The consequences of collisions between satellites may be unacceptable. We must mitigate low-probability, high-consequence events.However, not all mitigation guidelines may be required for all satellites, and some classes of satellites cannot satisfy all of the guidelines.Voluntary debris mitigation guidelines were published in 2002 by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC), an advisory body composed of representatives of the 12 principal governmental space agencies. After five years of deliberation, most of these achieved consensus among the 69 (now 77) nations represented in the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. These led to a voluntary international standard for debris mitigation (ISO 24113) and several standards and technical reports, describing what should be done but not how to do it, vetted by the 18 national standards bodies represented in International Organization for Standardization (ISO) space operations subcommittees. These cover avoiding collisions, estimating orbit lifetime, depleting stored energy, and disposing of debris from low and high Earth orbit.It has taken a long time to achieve consensus in any of these bodies.The preponderance of satellites are civil, commercial and military, but these sectors had almost no voice, even though they would be affected most. Small satellites cannot meet many of the guidelines. Cubesats have been placed in long-lived orbits such as geostationary transfer orbit. If a 1,000-cubic-centimeter cubesat were all high-energy-density cryogenic hydrogen propellant, it would contain only about half of the energy required for deorbit. The surface area of a cubesat is hardly sufficient to provide enough solar electric energy for reasonable deorbit with electric thrusters.Other guidelines are difficult to enforce even if they are codified in national laws, as France has done. Propagating orbits far into the future is notoriously imprecise. Compounding this with great uncertainty in the strength and occurrence of solar maxima and minima makes orbit lifetime estimates over a couple of decades notoriously imprecise.ISO's attempts to establish a uniformly understood lifetime estimation analysis have failed. Everyone has his own, few are willing to accept any other, and estimates vary by many years.Disposing of spent boosters is similarly hampered because few have both the residual propellants and enduring guidance and control to achieve controlled re-entry. More so for the emerging generation of small boosters for small satellites.There have also been well-motivated and diligently considered decisions arguably contravening the guidelines. Satellite lifetimes have been extended beyond planned mission end. This risks insufficient propellant for safe re-entry, and failure of subsystems beyond their planned life can disable satellites, making them space debris.All satellites do not pose the same collision risk, and all do not produce the same consequences. Collisions are avoided and debris prevented by choosing orbits wisely, accommodating the disparate risks of diverse satellites, and disposing safely at end of mission — not waiting 25 years or gaming what 25 years is.One size does not fit all, but IADC guidelines are indiscriminate.The unsettled launch industryJeff Foust – The Space ReviewTo the average person, a launch is an exciting event: a spectacle of fire and thunder as the rocket lifts off and ascends into the sky at an ever-increasing speed. To many customers of those launches, a launch can instead be a nerve-wracking event: hundreds of millions of dollars, and years of work, are sitting atop that controlled explosion. No doubt many commercial launch customers—who are not really in the space business but, rather, in the communications business—would be happy to trade in that spectacle for something less visually compelling but with a higher probability of success.And, in recent months, the overall commercial launch industry has itself gotten a little more nerve-wracking for those involved in it, or customers of it. Demand for launches has remained relatively flat, particularly in the primary market of geostationary communications satellites.However, more launch providers have been trying to get into the market, leading to what some in the industry fear to be a case of overcapacity, with consequences for established and emerging firms alike.Problems for the big threeSince the early 2000s, the commercial launch market has been dominated by three companies: Arianespace, International Launch Services (ILS), and Sea Launch. Combined, those three providers accounted for the vast majority of commercial launches, particularly to GEO, with only a handful going to other launch providers. Now, all three are facing challenges.For two of the three, those problems are leading to cutbacks. In early August, ILS, a US-based company that sells launches of the Russian Proton rocket, announced it was laying off a quarter of its staff. The company said the layoffs were linked to an anticipated decline in demand for the Proton in the commercial market."This level of staffing is appropriate for our current backlog and our customers will continue to be well-supported," said ILS president Phil Slack in an August 4 press release. "Previous staffing was consistent with planning for 7–8 launches per year. We are now targeting for 3–4 missions annually."This decline in demand is, at least in part, a self-inflicted wound. The Proton rocket has suffered several launch failures in recent years, although on Russian missions as opposed to commercial ones sold by ILS. The most recent failure, in May, caused the loss of the Express AM4R communications satellite, which fell to Earth after the Proton's third stage malfunctioned. The Proton has not launched since then, and its return to flight, on a Russian government mission, is not expected until late September or October.Sea Launch, another of those three major launch providers, is also struggling. On Friday, the company—majority owned by Russia's RSC Energia but with its headquarters in Switzerland and launch operations based in Long Beach, California—announced "staff reductions" of its own. The company didn't disclose how many people would be laid off, other than the layoffs would take place both in Switzerland and California. Sea Launch said it would also be temporarily "laying up" the two vessels it uses to perform launches to reduce its costs.The company blamed a "manifest gap," or lack of launches planned for the near future, for those moves. Sea Launch performed its first launch since an early 2013 launch failure in May, successfully placing a Eutelsat communications satellite into orbit. However, the company had no missions under contract through next year, although the company says it can support launches as soon as mid-2015."In light of this gap in our launch manifest, Sea Launch is taking the opportunity to pursue all prudent business solutions to realize significant cost savings in labor, maintenance and fuel while maintaining the capability to call-up the vessels as needed," Sea Launch CEO Sergey Gugkaev said in Friday's announcement. "Sea Launch continues to aggressively market all available launch opportunities beginning in mid-2015 and will maintain a short launch call-up readiness state."A contributing factor to both ILS's and Sea Launch's woes may be current geopolitical tensions involving Russia. That's a potentially very acute problem for Sea Launch, whose Zenit-3SL rocket uses lower stages built in Ukraine. Neither company, though, has indicated that those tensions have affected business, including the loss of any launch contracts.The other "big three" launch provider, Arianespace, has built its reputation on a track record of success. Its flagship launch vehicle, the Ariane 5, has an unparalleled record of success: the most recent Ariane 5 launch, of the ATV-5 cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station last month, was the 60th consecutive successful launch of that vehicle, a streak going back more than a decade. At the same time, Arianespace has sought to diversity its launch capabilities: it now offers the small Vega launch vehicle and the medium-class Soyuz, all launching, like Ariane 5, from French Guiana.Now, though, even that sterling reputation for success is tarnished. On Friday morning, a Soyuz rocket carrying the first two operational Galileo navigation satellites lifted off from French Guiana. Nearly four hours later, the rocket's Fregat upper stage released the satellites after performing the second of two planned engine burns. Arianespace and ESA declared the launch a success. "The Galileo program has just reached a major milestone: it is a great day for European space and a great day for Europe," said Arianespace chairman and CEO Stéphane Israël in a post-launch press release.By Friday evening, though, it was clear it was no longer a great day. Tracking data from US Strategic Command appeared to show that the two Galileo satellites were not in their planned circular medium Earth orbit, but instead in elliptical orbits with a different inclination. Late Friday evening, Arianespace confirmed there was an "orbital injection anomaly" with the launch.In a statement Saturday, Arianespace said that the anomaly was linked to the Fregat upper stage, but offered no other details. (Some independent analysts noted the orbit the Galileo satellites are in could be explained if the Fregat fired for its planned length, but was mis-oriented by as much as 180 degrees.) Israël said in the statement that Arianespace, ESA, and the European Commission would convene an independent board on Monday to begin the investigation into the incident.Even without the shadow cast by a launch failure, Arianespace was aware of the increasing competitive pressures it was facing in the market. In June, Airbus Group and Safran, the two largest shareholders in Arianespace, announced plans to consolidate their launch vehicle businesses into a 50–50 joint venture. Airbus Defence and Space is the prime contractor for the Ariane 5, while Safran provides the cryogenic main engine for the rocket. The joint venture will play a major role in shaping Ariane's future, including plans—yet to be finalized—for the Ariane 6.A Safran executive cited competition from other launch providers as a major reason for the merger. "Given this new situation, the European space agency must become more agile, and move towards more integrated structures," said Jean-Lin Fournereaux, vice president of space for Safran. "Airbus and Safran have the same vision in this area, namely to develop lower-cost, more modular launchers."Upstarts' startup issuesWhile a number of organizations are seeking to enter, or in some cases re-enter, the commercial launch market, the one that attracts the most attention is SpaceX. Its lower launch prices—now just over $60 million for a Falcon 9 launch—has attracted business from a number of commercial customers. While SpaceX initially made inroads with smaller satellite operators, like AsiaSat and Thaicom, it's now winning business from larger operators as well: last month Inmarsat announced it would launch up to three satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy launch vehicles.SpaceX, though, has been challenged to carry out the launches already on its manifest. Earlier this year, the company said it planned to perform ten launches in 2014. However, it completed only two in the first half of the year, and two more since: an ORBCOMM launch in mid-July and an AsiaSat launch early in August. Its next launch, also for AsiaSat, is planned for 12:50 am local time Wednesday from Cape Canaveral.Despite that slow start, SpaceX officials remain confident that they can still get most of those ten planned launches done this year. "At this point, I can say five more launches of the Falcon 9 this year," said Lauren Dreyer, director of business affairs of SpaceX, during a launch industry panel session at the AIAA Space 2014 conference in San Diego earlier this month, immediately after the most recent Falcon 9 launch. She noted the ORBCOMM and AsiaSat launches took place 22 days apart; that same separation will hold true if the next mission launches as scheduled this Wednesday.SpaceX has also experienced some growing pains as it ramps up to meet that commercial and government demand. Last month, the company confirmed it had let go of a small fraction of its workforce—less than five percent, according to a company statement—after an annual review. Those dismissals were widely reported as layoffs, though."We did our annual performance review, there were some low performers, and we terminated them," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said after an appearance on a panel at the NewSpace 2014 conference in San Jose, California, on July 26.However, two of those terminated employees have since filed suit in California courts, claiming that they were laid off and not given proper notification. Under state and federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN), any mass layoff of employees required 60 days' advance notice, which the company did not provide. However, WARN notices are typically not required if employees are terminated for cause.SpaceX is facing other lawsuits about its employment practices as well. In one, a former employee claims that the company did not provide required rest periods and meal breaks during shifts. In another, two former employees alleged SpaceX was "fostering a racist working environment." The company has denied the allegations. At least some of those employees filing suit are among those who were terminated by the company last month.Another company trying to take a bigger share of the commercial launch market is Orbital Sciences. It has won commercial contracts in the past for its smaller rockets, including Pegasus and Taurus, but is now trying to win business for its larger Antares rocket, which launched most recently last month (see "Getting to love logistics on the space station", The Space Review, July 14, 2014).In a conference call with financial analysts July 17, after the release of its latest quarterly earnings reports, Orbital president and CEO Dave Thompson confirmed that the company had submitted two bids for Antares launches not linked to its current NASA business. "So we have two proposals outstanding but those are for, if we were to be selected, those would be for missions between late 2016 and early 2018," he said, adding he expected decisions from those unnamed customers before the end of the year.Those proposals come as Orbital weighs plans to re-engine the Antares first stage. The rocket currently uses AJ26 engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne, which are "Americanized" versions of NK-33 engines from Russia. There are enough AJ26 engines in hand by Aerojet Rocketdyne to handle Orbital's current backlog of Antares missions, but Orbital has indicated an interest in replacing those AJ26 engines with alternative designs—including, possibly, solid motors from ATK, with whom Orbital is in the process of merging."We are currently in the throes of a first-stage propulsion decision for the long term for Antares," John Steinmeyer, senior program manager at Orbital, said at the AIAA Space 2014 panel. "We knew early on in the program that there was a limited supply of those [AJ26] engines, so we have been searching for an alternative solution, both globally and domestically."Neither Steinmeyer, at the AIAA panel, nor Thompson, in the earnings call, would say when Orbital would make that decision, other than it would come in the relatively near future. "As we discussed back in April at the first-quarter call, we at that point said that we thought we would be in a position to make a propulsion system decision in three or four months and I think we are right on track to do that," Thompson said last month. "We are very close to doing so now. I think I know which way it is going to go.""We have a few more things that have to be verified but I think we've got a really good approach that I am happy with," he added. "And that should be solidified here very shortly." Thompson didn't disclose whether the launch contracts it's competing for would use that re-engined Antares.Combined, all those developments make the commercial launch industry a little unsettled after a long period of relative stability. It may, in fact, make a launch seem positively relaxing by comparison.1st Findings Due Sept. 8 For Galileo Launch Failure Review BoardPeter B. de Selding | Space NewsFormer European Space Agency Inspector General Peter Dubock will head an eight-member board of inquiry into the Aug. 22 failure of the Europeanized Russia Soyuz rocket, which placed two European Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites into a useless orbit, launch service provider Arianespace announced Aug. 25.The board, which will coordinate its activities with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, is scheduled to begin its work Aug. 28 and to report initial findings by Sept. 8, Arianespace said.Evry, France-based Arianespace operates the Europeanized Soyuz from Europe's Guiana Space Center spaceport on the northeast coast of South America.In its ninth flight from the European spaceport, the rocket's Fregat upper stage placed the two 730-kilogram Galileo satellites into an orbit that was way off target both in terms of its perigee and its orbital inclination.Government and industry officials have said privately that they doubt the satellites will be able to travel the necessary distance to the correct orbit with sufficient fuel left to operate for any appreciable length of time.The Galileo system, which is designed to comprise 30 satellites in orbit, is managed by the 20-nation ESA for the European Union, the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union.Before the Aug. 22 failure, an identical Soyuz-Fregat rocket was scheduled to carry two more Galileo satellites into medium-Earth orbit in December. Whether that schedule can be maintained is unclear, but the defective performance of the Fregat stage, which has a demonstrated success record, was so flagrant that officials immediately began speculating about problem in its guidance, navigation and control software.In addition to Dubock, the board of inquiry members are:
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