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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: August 29, 2014 11:40:13 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday – August 29, 2014
Happy Flex Friday everyone. Have a good and safe labor day weekend.Hope you can join us for our monthly NASA Retirees Luncheon next Thursday at Hibachi Grill at 11:30.Then hang around and join the NASA Alumni League folks for their monthly special talks at the Gilruth at 2:30. Then you can join the Keg of the Month folks at 4pm at the Gilruth Pavilion for a beer or soda, etc.NAL First Thursday Series at the Gilruth - All sessions from 2:30 - 4:00 PMo September 4, 2014 - Space Commercialization, Mack Henderson Near term recommendation for Exploration & Space Habitation of the Space Propulsion Synergy Team at AIAA 50th Joint Propulsion Conferenceo October 2, 2014 - Orbital Sciences Corporation, Carl WalzOSC's Commercial Crew Program accomplishments, status and views of CCPo November 6, 2014 - SpaceX, Garrett ReismanSpaceX Commercial Crew Program accomplishments, status and views of CCPNASA and Human Spaceflight NewsFriday – August 29, 2014International Space Station:Astronaut Captures Aurora in Stunning Time-LapseNow that's a heck of a light show! An astronaut living on the International Space Station posted this stunning time-lapse video of an aurora –- an atmospheric light display far above the earth. Part-time social media maven and full-time astronaut Reid Wiseman posted the Vine from his perch aboard the space station on Thursday. It's just one of a series of auroral views that Wiseman has been passing along on social media. "Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this," @astro_reid tweeted on Aug. 19. "10 minutes ago on the #ISS #aurora." NASA explains that an aurora is generated when clouds of gas from the sun collide with Earth's magnetic field. Earthly observers living at high latitudes can see the auroral lights from below, but you have to be an astronaut to see them from above.HEADLINES AND LEADSCapitol Hill Reacts to SLS DelayJeff Foust – Space NewsIn the wake of a review of the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket that likely pushes its first launch into 2018, two key House members argued that NASA and the Obama administration were not adequately funding the program, while one of the agency's biggest advocates in the Senate sought support for accelerating that schedule.Rep. Mo Brooks praises progress of SLS rocket, says U.S. on 'clear path' to MarsPaul Gattis – Huntsville TimesThe U.S. space program is on a "clear path" to explore beyond low-earth orbit and eventually travel to Mars, U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks said Thursday.House Committee RepublicansQuestion SLS/Orion Schedule ChangesMarcia S. Smith - Spacepolicyonline.comThe top two Republicans who oversee NASA activities on the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee sent NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden a letter yesterday with a list of questions about the status of the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion programs. The questions stem from a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and prior congressional testimony by Bolden. The letter does not reference NASA's announcement yesterday that it is committing to a launch readiness date for SLS that is almost one year later than previously projected.Proto-Planetary Smashup Discovered Around Baby StarIrene Klotz – Discovery.comScientists believe they have spotted a rocky planet in the making around a young, sun-like star 1,200 light years away in the constellation Vela.Endearing and Enthusiastic: 30 Years Since NASA's Teacher in Space ProjectBen Evans - AmericaSpace.comThirty years ago, yesterday, on 27 August 1984, one of the most momentous—and, as circumstances would transpire, also tragic—events in space history unfolded, when President Ronald Reagan announced the Teacher in Space Project (TISP) and directed NASA to find a gifted educator with the ability to communicate his or her enthusiasm to ground-based students from the orbiting shuttle. Over the course of the following months, more than 11,000 U.S. teachers applied and were assessed, culminating in July 1985 with the selection of Christa McAuliffe, a social studies educator from Concord, N.H. Her fateful launch aboard Challenger on Mission 51L on 28 January 1986 brought the shuttle program to its knees, but the spirit of McAuliffe's unrealized voyage endured and finally came to pass in August 2007, when her backup, Barbara Morgan, flew as a fully-fledged mission specialist on STS-118.Race to Build NASA Space Taxi Down to the WireIrene Klotz – Discovery.comA three-way race to build a commercially operated spaceship to shuttle astronauts -- and other paying customers -- to and from low-Earth orbit is close the finish line, with NASA aiming to award development and flight service contracts as early as next week.Galileo Satellites Incident Likely Result of Software ErrorsRia NovostiThe failure of the European Union's Galileo satellites to reach their intended orbital position was likely caused by software errors in the Fregat-MT rocket's upper-stage, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported Thursday.Too Early for Conclusions on Galileo Satellites Incident – Russian Space CorporationRIA NovostiRushing to conclusions on the possible causes of the Galileo satellites incident before the end of the EU-Russian investigation is both too early and inappropriate, a Russian Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) spokesperson told RIA Novosti on Thursday.Russia to Launch New Heavy-Lift Angara Rocket in DecemberThe Moscow TimesHaving managed to launch its first rocket of post-Soviet design in July, Russia is now getting ready to test a beefed-up version of the vehicle by the end of the year, thereby highlighting the Russian space industry's position as a major global player.SpaceX blames rocket explosion on bad sensorStephen Clark - Spaceflightnow.com
A faulty sensor aboard a prototype rocket likely led to its destruction last week during a flight at SpaceX's test facility in Central Texas, company officials said.What to Wear in Space: Spacesuit Chic with Final Frontier DesignMiriam Kramer - Space.comIt all started with a glove.COMPLETE STORIESCapitol Hill Reacts to SLS DelayJeff Foust – Space NewsIn the wake of a review of the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket that likely pushes its first launch into 2018, two key House members argued that NASA and the Obama administration were not adequately funding the program, while one of the agency's biggest advocates in the Senate sought support for accelerating that schedule.In a letter released Aug. 28 by the House Science Committee, Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), the chairmen of the full House Science Committee and its space subcommittee, respectively, asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden for additional details on potential delays for both SLS and the Orion crew spacecraft.The letter does not explicitly mention the latest NASA review, but instead references a July report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office on potential SLS delays, as well as recent comments by Orion program manager Mark Geyer that he was "struggling" to make a December 2017 launch date."These findings are surprising to say the least considering the numerous claims of sufficient funding," Smith and Palazzo write in the letter. "Despite numerous statements over several years that these two national priority programs are sufficiently funded, it now appears that this may not be the case."Smith and Palazzo ask Bolden several questions in the letter, including whether the first SLS/Orion mission will launch in 2017 and why the administration sought less funding for those programs in its 2015 budget request versus what Congress appropriated for fiscal year 2014. They are seeking responses from the agency by Sept. 10.In a brief statement late Aug. 27, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Commerce space subcommittee, offered a more positive spin on the review. "Technically things look good," he said. "But we need to keep the budget on track so NASA can meet an earlier readiness date — which I think can be done."Rep. Mo Brooks praises progress of SLS rocket, says U.S. on 'clear path' to MarsPaul Gattis – Huntsville TimesThe U.S. space program is on a "clear path" to explore beyond low-earth orbit and eventually travel to Mars, U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks said Thursday."And SLS is how we'll get there," Brooks said in a statement.Brooks referred to the Space Launch System, the heavy-lift NASA rocket under development at Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal.SLS cleared a critical hurdle this week when the giant rocket moved past Key Decision Point C – something no U.S. space vehicle has done since the space shuttle. It moves SLS from the designing and testing stage to building and integrating the rocket's flight hardware."The United States is on a clear path to explore beyond low earth orbit . . . to capture and study asteroids, to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond, and SLS is how we'll get there," Brooks said in his statement. "Passing this rigorous review is a huge milestone for SLS and for America's space program."Capturing asteroids or putting a man on Mars used to sound like science fiction, but thanks to the hard work and dedication of the Marshall Space Flight Center SLS team and support organizations, it is now a reality. The fact is, the first humans who will step foot on Mars are already alive today, and now, their spacecraft begins full development."House Committee RepublicansQuestion SLS/Orion Schedule ChangesMarcia S. Smith - Spacepolicyonline.comThe top two Republicans who oversee NASA activities on the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee sent NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden a letter yesterday with a list of questions about the status of the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion programs. The questions stem from a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and prior congressional testimony by Bolden. The letter does not reference NASA's announcement yesterday that it is committing to a launch readiness date for SLS that is almost one year later than previously projected.House SS&T Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Space Subcommittee Chairman Steve Palazzo (R-MS) sent the four page letter yesterday, August 27, the same day that NASA announced it is committing to a November 2018 launch readiness date for SLS at a development cost of $7 billion. NASA officials have been saying publicly for years that the first SLS launch would take place by December 2017, although in recent months hints that it would slip into 2018 emerged.In their letter, Smith and Palazzo challenged Bolden on prior testimony he gave to the committee on the schedule for SLS and Orion and criticized the Obama Administration for not requesting sufficient funding to keep the programs on track. The letter cites a July 2014 GAO study that concluded NASA needs $400 million more in order to meet the December 2017 date, a conclusion based on analysis by the SLS program itself. Smith and Palazzo also say that the committee "recently learned" that the first SLS launch, Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), might slip 6 months "due to insufficient funding and unresolved technical challenges that are facing the Orion." Orion is the spacecraft being built to carry crews launched by SLS, although EM-1 is a test flight and no crew will be aboard. (The first flight with a crew is expected about 4 years later.)In its announcement yesterday, NASA officials did not provide a date for the first SLS launch. Instead, they stressed that the agency is making a commitment to have SLS ready to launch by November 2018 -- a "launch readiness" date, not a "launch" date. Yesterday's announcement followed completion of the Key Decision Point-C (KDP-C) process for SLS. The agency is still working on the KDP-C processes for Orion and the ground infrastructure needed at Kennedy Space Center, FL. Only when all three are completed will the agency commit to a launch date.The Smith-Palazzo letter hones in schedule and funding issues, asking Bolden to respond by September 10, 2014. The overall theme is that the Obama Administration is "starving these programs" resulting in schedule delays.Republicans and Democrats in Congress have had a testy relationship with the Obama White House over NASA's future since February 2010 when President Obama proposed cancellation of the Constellation program, initiated by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to take astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars. Under Constellation, NASA was building two versions of a new rocket, Ares, and a spacecraft, Orion, to replace the space shuttle for ferrying crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit (LEO) and for taking astronauts beyond LEO to the Moon and Mars. Obama proposed terminating all of that, but still adopting President Bush's decision to terminate the space shuttle program as soon as construction of ISS was completed. Under the Bush plan, a four-year gap (2010-2014) would have existed between the end of the shuttle program and the availability of his new Ares/Orion system. The Obama proposal was to kill Ares/Orion and instead rely on the private sector, with help from the government, to develop "commercial crew" transportation systems to take astronauts back and forth to ISS. The Obama plan also envisioned a four-year gap (2011-2015) in America's ability to launch people into LEO. Initially Obama offered no plan for the future of human spaceflight beyond LEO, but in April 2010 made a speech rejecting the Moon as a destination and directing NASA to send astronauts to as asteroid as the next step in human exploration, with Mars as a longer term goal.After a contentious debate, a compromise was reached in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act where Congress agreed to the commercial crew program, but also directed NASA to build a big new "heavy lift" rocket and a spacecraft to take crews beyond LEO -- essentially a replacement for Constellation. The new rocket is SLS; NASA kept Orion as the spacecraft.The 2010 law did not end the controversy, however. As the Smith-Palazzo letter illustrates, some in Congress continue to accuse the Obama Administration of favoring commercial crew over SLS/Orion in its budget requests. Congress routinely appropriates less money than requested for commercial crew and more than requested for SLS/Orion. Because it has appropriated less money than NASA says it needs for commercial crew, the gap during which the United States is unable to launch people into space has grown from 4 years to at least 6 years. NASA currently expects a commercial crew system to be available by 2017. NASA had has to rely on Russia to take crews to and from ISS since the final space shuttle mission in 2011.Congressional advocacy for SLS/Orion is largely based on a desire for U.S. preeminence in space exploration, skepticism over the commercial crew concept, as well as constituent interests. Smith is from Texas, home to NASA's Johnson Space Center where NASA's astronaut corps is based, though Smith's district is not near JSC. Palazzo represents the district in Mississippi that includes NASA's Stennis Space Center, where NASA tests rocket engines like those that will be used for SLS (which were originally built for the space shuttle program).Proto-Planetary Smashup Discovered Around Baby StarIrene Klotz – Discovery.comScientists believe they have spotted a rocky planet in the making around a young, sun-like star 1,200 light years away in the constellation Vela.The violent process, marked by collisions of asteroids and other proto-planetary bodies, was detected by a dramatic change in telltale infrared radiation emissions coming from warm dust circling the 35 million-year-old star.Astronomers monitored the star, known as NGC 2547-ID8, with NASA's Spitzer infrared space telescope between May 25, 2012, and Aug. 23, 2015, taking a 157-day break when the star was behind the sun and not visible. During the gap, the star's disk of orbiting dust dramatically brightened, then slowly dimmed over the course of a nearly a year."The observed sudden brightening and the consequent decay would be very hard to explain, if at all possible, without the occurrence of a new impact," Huan Meng, a planetary sciences graduate student at the University of Arizona, wrote in an email to Discovery News.Meng and colleagues turned to computer simulations to better understand what they were seeing. The best explanation is that in late 2012, a major collision took place among the star's orbiting proto-planetary bodies, producing vapor that condensed into a thick cloud of silicate spheres. Later collisions pulverized the small spheres into dust.The crash is believed to be similar to the one that occurred early in Earth's history which led to the formation of the moon.While scientists have discovered brightening in stars' debris disks before, they did not have real-time observations to rule out other phenomena besides smashing proto-planets as the cause. A super-volcanic explosion on a young terrestrial planet, for example, or the breakup of a comet could brighten up a debris disk, but these events wouldn't cause variations over time like what was observed around ID8."This is the first detection of a planetary impact outside our solar system," Meng said.Scientists estimate it takes 10 to 15 giant impacts of planetary embryos to form a rocky Earth-sized world."We now directly witness a large impact around ID8, suggesting a reservoir of large asteroids and planetary embryos, but we still do not know whether ID8 has giant or ice-giant planets, or outer planetesimals analogous to Kuiper belt objects," Kate Su, associate astronomer at University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, wrote in an email to Discovery News."This study pioneers a new way to gain direct observational evidence for terrestrial planet formation," added astronomer Peter Plavchan, with Missouri State University "Because the debris disk from the star ID8 changes in brightness on particular timescales or periods, we can use Newton's version of Kepler's Third Law to infer the formation of planets at specific distances from the host star."The research, which appears in this week's Science, also may shed light on the construction phase of Earth and the rest of the terrestrial planets in our solar system.Endearing and Enthusiastic: 30 Years Since NASA's Teacher in Space ProjectBen Evans - AmericaSpace.comThirty years ago, yesterday, on 27 August 1984, one of the most momentous—and, as circumstances would transpire, also tragic—events in space history unfolded, when President Ronald Reagan announced the Teacher in Space Project (TISP) and directed NASA to find a gifted educator with the ability to communicate his or her enthusiasm to ground-based students from the orbiting shuttle. Over the course of the following months, more than 11,000 U.S. teachers applied and were assessed, culminating in July 1985 with the selection of Christa McAuliffe, a social studies educator from Concord, N.H. Her fateful launch aboard Challenger on Mission 51L on 28 January 1986 brought the shuttle program to its knees, but the spirit of McAuliffe's unrealized voyage endured and finally came to pass in August 2007, when her backup, Barbara Morgan, flew as a fully-fledged mission specialist on STS-118.From the outset, NASA had presented the shuttle as a vehicle capable of carrying not only professional astronauts, scientists, and engineers into orbit, but also eventually civilians, and by 1984 the need to make good on that pledge became apparent. Explorers, journalists, and entertainers had been considered, as the space agency pondered which profession might yield "the best" private citizen to send aloft on the pioneering first mission. Ultimately, the decision settled on a teacher. Dick Scobee, who commanded Mission 51L, agreed that it was the right decision. "Teachers teach the lives of every kid in this country through the school system and if you can enthuse the teachers about doing this, then you enthuse the students and impress on them that's something to expect in their lifetime," he said in one of his last interviews. "Man needs to explore and that's part of the thing we have to do to ensure our future. So as far as I'm concerned, it's a good insurance policy for the human race."The woman upon whom fate would both smile and scowl was born Sharon Christa Corrigan in Boston, Mass., on 2 September 1948. She was the eldest of five children of accountant Edward Corrigan and teacher Grace Corrigan, with an ancestry which included Irish, Lebanese, German, English, and Native American. After high school in Framington, the young girl developed a fascination with the space program—even telling one of her classmates in the wake of John Glenn's orbital mission that someday people would journey to the Moon and beyond—and entered Framington State College to study education and history. She received her degree in 1970 and, within weeks, married her long-term boyfriend, Steven McAuliffe.The couple moved closer to Washington, D.C., to allow him to attend law school, and Christa McAuliffe found work as an American history teacher at Benjamin Foulois Junior High School in Morningside, Md. She next moved to Thomas Johnson Middle School in Lanham, Md., teaching history and civics, where she remained until 1978. During this period, McAuliffe completed a master's degree in education supervision and administration at Bowie State University and she and her husband moved to Concord, N.H., where Steve accepted a post as assistant to the New Hampshire Attorney-General. By 1982, Christa began teaching American history, law, and economics—together with a self-designed course, "The American Woman"—at Concord High School.Following President Reagan's announcement in August 1984, McAuliffe duly applied for the Teacher in Space Project. The non-profit Council of Chief State School Officers was selected by NASA to co-ordinate the selection process and from November 1984 until February 1985 more than 11,000 applications were submitted. These were winnowed down to 114 semi-finalists by state, territorial, and agency review panels and McAuliffe was one of only two teachers to be nominated in New Hampshire. In her application, she wrote: "I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfil my early fantasies. I watched the space program being born and I would like to participate." A judging panel, including former astronauts, university presidents, actress Pam Dawber, former basketball player Wes Unseld, and Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart, presided over these candidates at interview and eventually narrowed the list to just 10 finalists.On 26 June 1985, at the White House, President Reagan could not resist bringing his irrepressible humor to the proceedings when he presented the finalists to the press. "Whichever one of you is chosen might also want to take under consideration the opinion of another expert: The acceleration which must result from the use of rockets inevitably would damage the brain," he told them, "so consider yourself forewarned!" Little could he possibly have known that such dire predictions would come awfully true for the Teacher in Space in January of the following year.Finally, on 18 July, Vice President George H.W. Bush named McAuliffe as the prime candidate, backed up by McCall, Idaho, elementary school teacher Barbara Morgan. NASA psychiatrist Terry McGuire told New Woman magazine that McAuliffe was the most "balanced" of the 10 finalists, whilst other senior officials found that her endearing manner and infectious enthusiasm set her apart from the others. Her 100-hour training program at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, began in September, with launch aboard Mission 51L targeted for late December.The planned six-day flight had changed considerably since the selection of its "core" NASA crew—Commander Dick Scobee, Pilot Mike Smith, and Mission Specialists Ellison Onizuka, Judy Resnik, and Ron McNair—in January 1985. Originally, they were targeted to launch in November aboard shuttle Atlantis to deploy NASA's third Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS), as well as one of the commercial satellites (either Palapa-B2 or Westar-VI) recently retrieved by the 51A crew. As 1985 wore on, their payload manifest morphed, and by March they were listed on Mission 61C in December to deploy a pair of commercial satellites atop Payload Assist Module (PAM) boosters and perform a pair of EVAs to operate an experimental Space Station structure. By the early fall, they had been redesignated to Mission 51L, carrying the TDRS-B payload and the Spartan-203 astronomy satellite to perform observations of Halley's Comet.As important as 51L's primary payloads were, in the eyes of the press and the public it was McAuliffe's intended activities which drew the most attention. She was to teach from space, providing a much-needed publicity boost for NASA as it sought to demonstrate that its reusable fleet of orbiters were truly the spacefaring equivalents of commercial airliners and convince senior lawmakers to support a permanent Space Station. Years later, McAuliffe's mother insisted that the general atmosphere in the weeks leading up to Challenger's fateful launch was that the shuttle was far safer than an airliner, simply due to the high number of precautions taken by NASA. Even McAuliffe herself had expressed confidence that her only "fear" was a failure of the orbiter's toilet.Her tasks included a pair of 15-minute lessons: the first, entitled "The Ultimate Field Trip," was a guided tour of the shuttle to familiarize students with on-board living and working conditions, while the second, called "Where We've Been, Where We're Going," focused on NASA's plans for the Space Station. Both were to have been aired by PBS on 2 February 1986, the last full day of Mission 51L, and McAuliffe would have explained the roles of her six crewmates, identified and summarized the experiments aboard Challenger, and enthused her students with a vision of the future."I think it's going to be very exciting for kids to be able to turn on the TV and see the teacher teaching from space," she said in one of her last interviews. "I'm hoping that this is going to elevate the teaching profession in the eyes of the public and of those potential teachers out there. Hopefully, one of the secondary objectives of this is students are going to be looking at me and perhaps thinking of going into teaching as professions."McAuliffe and fellow payload specialist Greg Jarvis, representing Hughes Aircraft, joined the 51L crew relatively late in their training process. Yet both were quickly accepted and grew to become highly respected members of the team. "It's refreshing to have somebody on board that's really dedicated and enjoys doing what they're doing," Dick Scobee remarked, "but also she goes into the training with a positive attitude and stays out of the way when she needs to stay out of the way, she gets involved when she needs to get involved and does basically all the right things, and so does Greg Jarvis. Both of them, from our standpoint, are good payload specialists. They came aboard with a good, open mind, they're accommodating to our system, we try to be accommodating to theirs and it's a nice tradeoff."As the world reflects on the 30th anniversary of the unveiling of the Teacher in Space Program, it is difficult not to be struck by the lost opportunity of Christa McAuliffe achieving orbit and sharing her passion and her excitement with students on the ground. Yet her legacy endures to this day, with honors, scholarships, and prizes in her name. In July 2004, in the aftermath of the second shuttle disaster, McAuliffe and the 51L and STS-107 crews were recognized by President George W. Bush with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. By that time, her backup, Barbara Morgan, was already training to fly shuttle mission STS-118 and in that same year, 2004, three other educators—Joe Acaba, Ricky Arnold, and Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger—had been selected for astronaut training. All three would ride shuttles and journey to the International Space Station (ISS) later in the decade.Race to Build NASA Space Taxi Down to the WireIrene Klotz – Discovery.comA three-way race to build a commercially operated spaceship to shuttle astronauts -- and other paying customers -- to and from low-Earth orbit is close the finish line, with NASA aiming to award development and flight service contracts as early as next week.So far, two companies favoring capsule designs -- Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX -- have won the lion's share of NASA's Commercial Crew program funds. The effort, which began in 2010, is intended to provide a U.S. alternative for flying crews to the International Space Station, which orbits about 260 miles above Earth.Since NASA retired the space shuttles in 2011, the only human transportation system flying to the station is owned by Russia, which charges about $70 million per person for rides on its Soyuz capsules. NASA hopes to change that before the end of 2017.Along with Boeing and SpaceX, NASA has been funding space taxi design work at a third company, Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp., though its contracts have been about half of what Boeing and SpaceX received.Sierra Nevada eschewed the capsule design in favor of a small winged spaceplane called Dream Chaser, which resembles a miniature space shuttle. The company has signed partnership agreements with more than 30 companies, nine universities, nine NASA field centers and three international space agencies, a strategy that could provide some flexibility if it is not selected for additional NASA funding."We've always looked at this as a system, with the space station being a mission. There are other missions that we are looking at. Having this wide group of companies allows us to look at construction, repair missions, the ability to do short- and long-duration science missions independent of the space station," Mark Sirangelo, Sierra Nevada Space Systems president, told Discovery News."For us, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars less at the start of the competition put us at a schedule disadvantage -- we couldn't do as many things -- but it made us be a lot more creative in how we were going to manage the last two years," Sirangelo said."Showing that you can manage to a very tight budget is a pretty big thing," he added.Like Boeing's CST-100 capsule, the Dream Chaser initially would fly on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, which uses a controversial Russian-built motor to power its first stage. Russia has threatened to cut off exports of the motors for military missions in response to U.S. embargoes punishing Russia for incursions into Ukraine. So far, however, the rocket business has continued unimpeded.SpaceX, which already flies cargo to the space station aboard its Dragon capsules, is adding seats, life support and other upgrades for a passenger version. Both types of Dragon spacecraft launch on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets.So far, NASA has spent about $1.5 billion on the Commercial Crew program. The agency says competition is critical to drive down costs and reduce technical risks. It intends to continue backing development of two space taxi designs, though has not said how it will pay for that.As part of the program, companies contribute development funds and will own their vehicles and intellectual property. NASA wants to buy flight services, similar to how it pays SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp to make supply runs to the station.Even without NASA funding, SpaceX says it will continue developing its human version of Dragon, albeit at a slower pace.Sierra Nevada will wait to see what happens with the contract awards before deciding how to proceed, said Sirangelo."If we weren't a winner, we need to understand why and that's going to factor into our thinking ... but we're still planning to move forward," Sirangelo said.Boeing's take is that without NASA investment and flight service contracts, building a business case for the CST-100 "would be very difficult to do," John Mulholland, Boeing vice president, said earlier this month at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2014 conference in San Diego.Contract awards are expected by early September.Galileo Satellites Incident Likely Result of Software ErrorsRia NovostiThe failure of the European Union's Galileo satellites to reach their intended orbital position was likely caused by software errors in the Fregat-MT rocket's upper-stage, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported Thursday."The nonstandard operation of the integrated management system was likely caused by an error in the embedded software. As a result, the upper stage received an incorrect flight assignment, and, operating in full accordance with the embedded software, it has delivered the units to the wrong destination," an unnamed source from Russian space Agency Roscosmos was quoted as saying by the newspaper.Both the upper-stage and the software for it were developed by a Moscow-based government-owned corporation, the Academician Pilyugin Scientific-production Center of Automatics and Instrument-Making, or the Academician Pilyugin Center.On August 22, the launch of Galileo's Full Operational Capability (FOC) satellites aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket took place at the European Union's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The satellites, which are part to the Galileo program, designed to provide a European alternative to the American GPS and Russian Glonass navigation systems, have been placed in a lower orbit than expected.The Arianespace satellite launch company, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos are currently investigating the incident.Too Early for Conclusions on Galileo Satellites Incident – Russian Space CorporationRIA NovostiRushing to conclusions on the possible causes of the Galileo satellites incident before the end of the EU-Russian investigation is both too early and inappropriate, a Russian Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) spokesperson told RIA Novosti on Thursday."While the commission is still working, it is inappropriate and too early to speculate different versions and draw rash conclusions on the reasons of the launching of the space units [into an unintended orbit]," URSC information policy director Igor Burenkov said.On August 22, the launch of Galileo's Full Operational Capability (FOC) satellites aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket took place at the European Union's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The satellites, which are part to the Galileo program, designed to provide a European alternative to the American GPS and Russian Glonass navigation systems, have been placed in a lower orbit than expected.Earlier on Thursday, Russian newspaper Izvestia quoted an unnamed source from the Russian space agency Roscosmos as saying that the failure of the European Union's Galileo Satellites to reach their intended orbital position was probably caused by software errors in the Fregat-MT rocket's upper stage.Russia to Launch New Heavy-Lift Angara Rocket in DecemberThe Moscow TimesHaving managed to launch its first rocket of post-Soviet design in July, Russia is now getting ready to test a beefed-up version of the vehicle by the end of the year, thereby highlighting the Russian space industry's position as a major global player.Preparations for the launch, which is scheduled for the end of December, are already under way at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome near Arkhangelsk, the head of Russia's air and space defense forces, Lieutenant General Alexander Golovko, was quoted as saying Wednesday by Interfax.Called Angara, the new rocket was commissioned in the early 1990s, when Russian space officials were concerned that an independent Ukraine might withhold deliveries of vital components used in the construction of Russian rockets like the Proton.The Angara rocket launched successfully on July 9, nearly two weeks after the cancellation of the first attempt, which was derailed by a leaky pressure valve.The rocket's design means that it can be attached to the side of its core booster, which allows the vehicle's lifting capacity to be tailored to the weight of its payload.In this way, the Angara rocket follows the economical approach to rocket design currently employed by U.S-based commercial launch company SpaceX, which is developing a heavy launch vehicle based on its already proven Falcon-9 rocket. The two vehicles will compete on the global commercial launch market.SpaceX blames rocket explosion on bad sensorStephen Clark - Spaceflightnow.com
A faulty sensor aboard a prototype rocket likely led to its destruction last week during a flight at SpaceX's test facility in Central Texas, company officials said.The rocket testbed, powered by a modified first stage from the Falcon 9 booster with three engines, flew off of its prescribed trajectory during an Aug. 22 vertical takeoff and landing test flight. The rocket's on-board safety system recognized the problem and issued a self-destruct command.A video of the incident showed a fireball envelop the rocket, then debris raining down on SpaceX's test site in McGregor, Texas.The Falcon 9R Dev 1 was designed to demonstrate reusable rocket technologies for SpaceX's operational launchers. SpaceX aims to return a Falcon 9 first stage to a precise vertical touchdown on land or an ocean platform by the end of the year.SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in a statement Tuesday that the cause of the prototype rocket's demise was a "blocked sensor port."Garrett Reisman, who heads SpaceX's effort to develop a private space taxi for NASA astronauts, said Wednesday that the investigation into the loss of the rocket testbed is not yet complete."I can tell you that it certainly looks like it was basically a single-point failure that existed on that test article that does not exist on the Falcon 9," Reisman said. "We think it was a failure of a single sensor, and Falcon 9 has multiple sensors in its algorithm that it uses. So if the same failure occurred on the Falcon 9 it would not affect the mission in any way."The sensor failure in one of the three Merlin 1D engines on the Falcon 9R caused the vehicle to stray from its intended flight path, triggering an automatic self-destruct command to ensure it did not threaten nearby people and property.Reisman said an operational Falcon 9 flight, which uses nine first stage engines, could overcome the loss of an engine. On the three-engine Falcon 9R, such redundancy does not exist."We've been taking a lot of risks with the [Falcon 9R], so we're flying this thing in flight regimes and ConOps (concept of operations) that it was not designed for, all in an effort to learn," Reisman said. "One of the risks bit us last week, and one of the single-point failures failed, which we knew was a possibility."The Falcon 9R Dev 1 vehicle was the second in a series of vertical takeoff and landing rocket testbeds built by SpaceX. It followed the Grasshopper, a smaller single-engine rocket.Fitted with landing legs around the base of the rocket, the Falcon 9R Dev 1 was designed to take off from a concrete pad, fly to a predetermined altitude, then descend under rocket power to a precise touchdown.The sensor failure led the rocket astray on the Aug. 22 flight."We set a certain bound, and if we exceed that bound either vertically or laterally, then the flight computer initiates the sequence that occurred," Reisman said.SpaceX plans to transfer future flights like the mission lost Aug. 22 to New Mexico, which offers a more remote environment for higher-altitude tests.Engineers found no link between the Falcon 9R mishap and operational flights of the Falcon 9, but SpaceX postponed this week's planned launch of the commercial AsiaSat 6 telecommunications satellite as a precaution."Had the same blocked sensor port problem occurred with an operational Falcon 9, it would have been outvoted by several other sensors," Musk said in a statement. "That voting system was not present on the test vehicle."What to Wear in Space: Spacesuit Chic with Final Frontier DesignMiriam Kramer - Space.comIt all started with a glove.In 2009, two previously competing designers teamed up to build a spacesuit glove to enter in a NASA competition. After taking home second prize and winning $100,000 for their high-tech creation, Ted Southern and Nikolay Moiseev decided to go into business togetherToday, the partners at Final Frontier Design are on the third version of their spacesuit after building the first in 2010. They have slowly made improvements to their design, and one day, the team hopes to sell its suits to commercial companies hoping to launch private astronauts into space. [See photos of the Final Frontier Design spacesuit]Southern and Moiseev are a bit of an odd couple. Moiseev started off in the detail-oriented world of engineering in the Russian space program, while Southern got his undergraduate degree in classical music performance before moving on to fine arts. But it seems to work for them and their New York-based company.Space.com sat down with the Final Frontier Design partners to talk about spacesuits, engineering and the odd middle-ground between science and art.Space.com: Why build spacesuits?Ted Southern: I had sort of a catch phrase when I was younger about wanting to extend the ability of the human body. There are a lot of different ways that people do that — with firefighter turnout gear, with racecar driver gear and even with underwater gear — submersibles, things like that, it's almost an extension of the body. But for me, working through art and costuming many years ago, spacesuits really cried out to me as the perfect manifestation of my interests.For a while, I made body armor, historical body armor, and I see spacesuits as the modern analogue of Henry VIII-style armor. Very similar complexity and mobility issues they're dealing with. A lot of times it, was governments that contracted both spacesuits and body armor.In the bigger picture, and in terms of Final Frontier Design as a business, spacesuits are a mandatory part of human spaceflight. There needs to be some redundancy in every system for any crewed vehicle, and pressure redundancy is usually found through a spacesuit itself. The analogue for commercial airline travel would be the oxygen masks that fall from above in case of a loss of cabin pressure. If you're up at 100,000 feet [3,048 meters] or even higher, at ISS [International Space Station] levels, low-Earth orbit, a mask doesn't really do you any good anymore. You need to cover your whole body to protect [yourself] from pressure.Space.com: Where did you start off, and how did Final Frontier Design come to be?T.S.: When I moved to New York, I joked with people that I wanted to make body armor for a living. In fact, I found a place fairly quickly — a costume shop in Chelsea — that actually does make body armor. I worked there for five or six years before going back to graduate school, but learned a lot about materials and processes, and actually a fair amount of technique and technical processes for costumes that are more than just period pieces, that actually help people perform in extreme situations like for Cirque du Soleil or Broadway shows.I went back to graduate school and got my masters in fine arts and sculpture, but everything I made in graduate school had to do with hands and hand functionality in particular. Hands are really what make us human and allow us to interact with the world, and toward the end of my graduate stint, NASA has a citizen inventor challenge called the "astronaut glove challenge," which seemed like the perfect outlet for my thesis. So I coincided my thesis gallery show with this technical project, the astronaut glove challenge. [Evolution of NASA Spacesuits in Pictures]Space.com: You're up to the third generation of your suit now. What is the newest suit like?T.S.: We've built three 3G [third-generation] suits at this point. We're on our third iteration of the third generation. They're all fairly similar, but there are some particular patterning improvements on each design, and we've also advanced the manufacturing process where all the pieces are laser-cut. Before, we were cutting by hand. And we have some hardware advancements in the newer 3G suits.Space.com: Who do you hope will buy the spacesuits?T.S.: In terms of a customer to really buy the suits, we're looking at launch providers and training companies. There's a whole host of them that are interested, and we're currently working on a couple.Space.com: Nikolay, you have some pretty extensive experience with spacesuit design. Where did you start before you partnered with Ted?Nikolay Moiseev: I'm from Moscow, Russia. I spent almost 21 years in Russian space program, and left my position as lead designer and project manager for advanced spacesuits. My first gloves worked in open space since 1988, so hundreds and hundreds of EVAs [extra-vehicular activity, or spacewalks]. I'm proud that nobody lost nails in my gloves.Space.com: Why are gloves important?N.M.: Spacesuit is [firstly] clothes for astronauts. The second, it is pressure garment. Astronauts have difficulty bending in any joint, so without special design, joint or spacesuit, you couldn't move elbow or a lot of joints in the glove. For example, NASA's glove does have the four knuckle joints, only the finger joints.Space.com: What is it like to combine science and art in your everyday work? What does it mean to be in the middle of the two?T.S.: People are often surprised that I used to and actually still make costumes. [They think] it's so different: costumes and spacesuits. In fact, I see the continuum exactly the same. There's a lot more at stake with a spacesuit than there is for a wing for Victoria's Secret, for instance, but the thought process and the concept is a very similar thing. You want the person to be comfortable. You want the object itself to work well, and it needs to be reliable. [See images of a NASA spacesuit designed for Mars]Even with Victoria's Secret, we only had one shot down the runway, so whatever its was we sent down the runway had to work. With Broadway shows, Broadway show costumes are incredibly complex, and they have to work eight times a week. They perform eight times a week. If something fails on that, it's my butt that's got to go up to Broadway, to Times Square and fix. Some of those Cirque du Soleil costumes, people's lives really are on the line, so they have to be comfortable and adequate for the dancers. I really do see it as a continuum. There is more time and money involved with spacesuits than there is with costumes, just by necessity, and there is more complexity, but it's a continuum, and it's definitely a space that we occupy in between.Space.com: What is it like for you and Nik to work together?T.S.: I think that it's surprising sometimes, and I don't think Nik totally disagrees with me when I say this: On paper, Nik is the scientist and I'm the artist, so I have weird ideas and he follows protocol. But in reality, sometimes it switches where Nik has a crazy idea, and I say, "No, no we have to slow down, follow protocol, what's the science? How are the standards working?" It's not a cut and dry relationship in that way. We're both creative and scientific.Space.com: Would you go to space if given the chance?T.S.: Yes. Before I started with the astronaut glove competition, I didn't really obsess about space at all, but the more I learned about it, the more I got interested and the more there was to know, and it's just sort of been a down-the-rabbit-hole thing. I would absolutely go to space. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it's one of these things that's the ultimate experience. Discomfort aside, I wouldn't miss [out on] it at all.Space.com: If someone handed you a ticket to go to the space station, would you?N.M.: Definitely not. I'm going to MarENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
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