| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Managed Elevated Privileges Continues
- National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
- Recent JSC Announcement - Organizations/Social
- Bus Trip! See the Orion EFT-1 Launch
- Fright Fest at the Gilruth Center - This Friday
- Save the Date: AFGE Lunch and Learn
- Don't Miss the JSC Facility Managers' Forum
- SWAPRA Hosts Congressman John Culberson - Jobs and Training
- Russian Phase One Language Course - for Beginners
- Aerial Platform Oct. 21: B20, Room 205/206, 8 a.m.
- Job Opportunities - Community
- Texas High School Juniors Needed
- View the Partial Solar Eclipse |  |
| Headlines - Managed Elevated Privileges Continues
Tomorrow, Oct. 21, Managed Elevated Privileges (MEP) continues with the Q, S and T org codes. MEP controls admin rights (Elevated Privileges, or EP) on NASA computers and allows users to request EP when needed. Users must complete SATERN training before submitting any requests for EP. All users, especially those scheduled for MEP deployment, are strongly urged to complete the SATERN training for "Basic Users" (Elevated Privileges on NASA Information System - ITS-002-09). The next scheduled deployment date is Nov. 4, which will continue with the Q, S and T org codes. - National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Cybersecurity Tip for Today: STOP, THINK, CONNECT Dispose of information properly. Destroy/shred hardcopy confidential documents that contain personal information such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers and health records. - Recent JSC Announcement
Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcement: JSCA 14-028: Key Personnel Assignment - Holly Ridings Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page. Organizations/Social - Bus Trip! See the Orion EFT-1 Launch
Would you like to experience the historical moment of the Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) launch? Join the Starport team for a bus trip to Florida in December to see the launch. The cost will be based on the number of participants, so the more people who sign up, the lower the cost for everyone. Charges will include transportation, hotel accommodations and park admission, as well as snacks and beverages while traveling. If interested, please contact Cyndi Kibby. Later, Kibby will be contacting all interested individuals when full details are available and registration opens. - Fright Fest at the Gilruth Center - This Friday
This Friday, Starport's popular Fright Fest will once again take over JSC's Gilruth Center with food trucks and lots of activities for the whole family. Starport is working hard to make this the best Fright Fest yet! - Bare Bowls Kitchen
- The Waffle Bus
- Angie's Cake
- Graveyard Dash 2K - REGISTER ONLINE NOW
- Graveyard Trails
- Kids Bash - REGISTER ONLINE NOW
- Haunted House (kid-friendly)
- Thriller Dance Class - FREE - RESERVE YOUR SPOT ONLINE
- Family Halloween movie
Don't miss this frightfully fun event for the whole family! - Save the Date: AFGE Lunch and Learn
Save the date! The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Union Lunch and Learn is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 23. Open to all non-supervisory JSC civil servants. Come and hear what AFGE officials have to talk about: - Know your rights
- Union benefits
- Union representation
Stop by during your lunch break on Oct. 23 between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. in Building 45, Room 251. Lunch will be provided to participants who RSVP by contacting Bridget Broussard-Guidry via email or at x34276. - Don't Miss the JSC Facility Managers' Forum
Don't miss the JSC Facility Managers' Forum on Oct. 23 from 8 a.m. to noon! Join us in the Teague Auditorium. If you are a JSC, Sonny Carter Training Facility or Ellington Field facility manager, building manager or operations staff member, you are invited. The goal of this forum is to provide facility managers with an opportunity to share resources and ideas, seek additional training and otherwise continue to improve their skillset and the performance of their facilities. We will discuss both existing efforts and future opportunities to increase collaboration. See the JSC Facility Managers' Web page for agenda details. For additional information, contact Q. Byron Winters at x33182. - SWAPRA Hosts Congressman John Culberson
On Thursday, Oct. 23, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., the South Western Aerospace Professional Representatives Association (SWAPRA) will host Congressman John Culberson (Texas 7th Congressional District). Culberson will be speaking on "NASA: The Fiscal Year 2015 Budget and Continuing Resolution." Culberson is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for funding the federal government. In addition to his leadership roles on two subcommittees, Culberson also serves on the Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee. This SWAPRA event will be held at the Gilruth Center. The luncheon cost for non-members is $35 at the door, or $25 with pre-paid RSVPs by today, Oct. 20. To RSVP, email or call Chris Elkins at 281-276-2792. Event Date: Thursday, October 23, 2014 Event Start Time:11:30 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center
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Chris Elkins 281-276-2792
[top] Jobs and Training - Russian Phase One Language Course - for Beginners
Russian Phase One is an introductory course designed to acquaint the novice student with certain elementary aspects of the Russian language and provide a brief outline of Russian history and culture. Our goal is to introduce students to skills and strategies necessary for successful foreign language study that they can apply immediately in the classroom. The linguistic component of this class consists of learning the Cyrillic alphabet and a very limited number of simple words and phrases, which will serve as a foundation for further language study. Dates: Nov. 10 to Dec. 11 When: Monday through Thursday, Noon to 1 p.m. Where: Building 12, Room 158Q Please register via SATERN. The registration deadline is Nov. 4. - Aerial Platform Oct. 21: B20, Room 205/206, 8 a.m.
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0030: This three-hour course provides classroom training as required by Occupational Safety and Health Administration 29 CFR 1910.67(C)(2)(ii). Classroom training allows employees to have on-site, hands-on field training and testing that will qualify them for approval to use aerial lifts on a NASA site. Discussions will cover hazard awareness and how to gain from lessons learned. Target Audience: Supervisors of aerial lift operations and aerial lift operators. Use this direct link for registration: - Job Opportunities
Where do I find job opportunities? To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. Lateral reassignment and rotation opportunities are posted in the Workforce Transition Tool. To access, click: HR Portal > Employees > Workforce Transition > Workforce Transition Tool. These opportunities do not possess known promotion potential; therefore, employees can only see positions at or below their current grade level. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies or reassignment opportunities, please call your HR representative. Community - Texas High School Juniors Needed
High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) needs Texas high school juniors. The application is currently open. HAS is an interactive, online experience highlighted by a six-day residential summer experience at JSC. Students will explore science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts, with an emphasis on space exploration, during the online experience. Students who are selected to come to JSC will continue their STEM studies with hands-on team activities while mentored by NASA engineers and scientists. HAS is a great STEM opportunity for Texas high school juniors. - View the Partial Solar Eclipse
The George Observatory will be open on Thursday, Oct. 23, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the partial solar eclipse. We will have a solar telescope and astronomers available. Please remember that this is weather dependent. For more information about the George Observatory, click here. Note: Park entrance fees apply at $7 per person for everyone over 12 years old. | |
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Monday – October 20, 2014
Orion: Have you seen the Orion "Trial by Fire" video? Orion is getting ready to launch and everyone is talking about it. Learn about Orion's first flight December 4 from this video which has nearly 400,000 views. Go Orion!
HEADLINES AND LEADS
SLS Core Stage Test Welds Begin at NASA's Welding Wonder in Michoud
The first pieces of rocket hardware have been loaded onto NASA's gigantic new weld tool tasked with assembling the core stage fuel tanks for NASA's mammoth new heavy lift rocket—the Space Launch System (SLS)—that will one day boost "Humans to Mars."
NASA Langley helps build robot to fetch an asteroid
Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press
Before American astronauts go to Mars, they first have to grapple with an asteroid.
An All-Female Mission to Mars
As a NASA guinea pig, I verified that women would be cheaper to launch than men.
In February of 1960, the American magazine Look ran a cover story that asked, "Should a Girl Be First in Space?" It was a sensational headline representing an audacious idea at the time. And as we all know, the proposal fell short. In 1961, NASA sent Alan Shepard above the stratosphere, followed by dozens of other spacemen over the next two decades. Only in 1983 did Sally Ride become America's first female astronaut to launch.
After Nearly Two Years in Orbit, the U.S. Air Force's Secretive Spaceplane Lands
Mike Gruss - Space News
The U.S. Air Force's unmanned X-37B spaceplane — which had been orbiting Earth on a classified mission for 22 months — landed Oct. 17 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
First female ISS Cosmonaut adjusts to life in space
Tomasz Nowakowski - Spaceflight Insider
Yelena Serova who, in September, became the first female Russian cosmonaut to visit the International Space Station (ISS), is adjusting very fast to life in space and she's now settling in as a permanent ISS inhabitant. On the ISS Mailbox blog, she writes about the everyday life of her crew, their work on the Kardiovektor experiment on the space cardiology, and also about practicing skills necessary in the emergency situations that can arise in the International Space Station.
12 Join International Space Hall of Fame
Janessa Maxilom - Alamogordo Daily News, of New Mexico
People who dreamed of space exploration and shared their dreams with the world were honored on Saturday at the New Mexico Museum of Space History and International Space Hall of Fame.
NASA Ames turns 75; tens of thousands flock to open house
Troy Wolverton - San Jose Mercury
Greg Katayuma visited NASA's Ames Research Center when he was in grade school but hadn't been back since.
A Decade into a New Spaceflight Era, a Mixture of Frustration and Optimism
Jeff Foust – Space News
Ten years after the completion of the Ansari X Prize appeared to open a new era of commercial human spaceflight, company executives and government officials at a commercial space conference expressed a mixture of optimism about the future of the industry and impatience at the perceived lack of progress over the last decade.
SNC v NASA: Boeing and SpaceX Alllowed to Intervene, Next Hearing Date Set
At today's hearing before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Boeing and SpaceX were granted their requests to intervene in Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC's) lawsuit to force NASA to reinstate a stop-work order on the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCAP) contracts.
Boeing completes Commercial Crew milestone
James Dean – Florida Today
Boeing has completed its last milestone in the development program that preceded its win of a NASA contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station.
Exclusive: ULA plans new rocket, restructuring to cut launch costs in half
Greg Avery - Dallas Business Journal
United Launch Alliance is starting to develop a whole new rocket system and will be restructuring its processes and workforce to slash launch costs in half amid smaller military budgets and competition from SpaceX.
Comet's flyby of Mars a boon for scientists
William Harwood - CBS News via Spaceflightnow.com
The red planet's brush with Comet Siding Spring Sunday was a close encounter of the best kind for science, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study a pristine remnant of the solar system's birth 4.6 billion years ago as it makes its first and possibly last visit to the warmth of the inner solar system. Comet avoids hitting Mars but makes astronomical history
Traci Watson – USA Today
A glowing comet barreled past Mars at some 126,000 mph today, its core of ice and dust barely missing the Red Planet and Mars's flotilla of costly scientific spacecraft.
NASA orbiters watch as comet flies safely past Mars
Deborah Netburn – Los Angeles Times
Comet Siding Spring sailed past Mars on Sunday, coming 10 times closer to the Red Planet than any comet on record has come to Earth.
Aerojet Rocketdyne chosen to help with new mission to Mars
Melissa Wiese - Sacramento Business Journal
Aerojet Rocketdyne is on a mission to Mars. The rocket motor maker has a contract with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make motors to help a Mars rover.
NASA Nixes Sunjammer Mission, Cites Integration, Schedule Risk
Dan Leone – Space News
Citing a lack of confidence in its contractor's ability to deliver, NASA has abandoned plans to fly a solar-sail mission in 2015 after investing four years and more than $21 million on the project.
What's Happening in Space Policy October 20-24, 2014
Here is our list of space policy-related events in the coming week, October 20-24, 2014, and any insights we can offer about them. Congress returns on November 12.
Dedication ceremony honors Wilcutt, Finney
Justin Story – Park City Daily News
Marine Col. Terry Wilcutt and Naval Cmdr. David Finney grew up within minutes of each other, but it would be several years and several thousand feet in the air before their paths would cross.
COMPLETE STORIES
SLS Core Stage Test Welds Begin at NASA's Welding Wonder in Michoud
The first pieces of rocket hardware have been loaded onto NASA's gigantic new weld tool tasked with assembling the core stage fuel tanks for NASA's mammoth new heavy lift rocket—the Space Launch System (SLS)—that will one day boost "Humans to Mars."
The road to SLS production and first launch has started, with acceptance testing using parts from the over 34,000 square feet of real metal components already manufactured.
Engineers began performing the very first "confidence welds" in October on an SLS ring and barrel to ensure that the enormous 170-foot-high welder located in the newly dedicated Vertical Assembly Center (VAC) at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans works as it was designed to, before welding actual SLS flight hardware waiting in the wings.
The high-tech welding wonder was "opened for business" following a grand opening ceremony headlined by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Sept. 12, 2014, at Michoud, where the SLS core stage is being manufactured.
"This is the rocket that will take humans to Mars," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden during the Sept. 12 ribbon cutting ceremony for the SLS Vertical Assembly Center tool.
AmericaSpace was on hand for the milestone event, toured the Michoud facility, and visited the various SLS hardware components up close.
"The critical path for this rocket goes through this machine here," said SLS Program manager Todd May at the dedication. "We passed our critical design review on the core.
"There is over 34,000 square feet of hardware sitting in this factory ready to come here and be welded up.
"The team is really anxious to get though the acceptance testing and start putting hardware through it."
NASA's colossal Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will be the world's most powerful rocket ever built in history. The SLS is being developed to propel astronaut crews in the Orion spacecraft to deep space destinations including asteroids and the Red Planet.
The VAC is the world's largest spacecraft welding tool and technicians will use it to integrate the components of the cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel tanks for the SLS core stage.
"When you see something like this [welder] and you look up and see the size of this thing you can't help but understand and realize that this thing is real," said May.
"Before it was just a concept. And now you're looking at a tool.
"Every bolt and piece that came together to make this [welding] tool has happened in less than 3 years. We have a nationwide team with great partners including Boeing, ATK, Aerojet Rocketdyne and sister NASA teams. SLS has over 500 contractors in 42 states working to pull this together.
"It's amazing to be here and look at this tool."
The core stage is comprised of five major structures: the forward skirt, the liquid oxygen tank, the intertank, the liquid hydrogen tank, and the engine section.
The tanks for the very first SLS core stage will be assembled soon by joining domes, rings, and barrels together in the Vertical Assembly Center by a process known as friction-stir welding.
The rings connect and provide stiffness between domes and barrels. All of the flight rings for the first SLS core stage have already been welded.
To date, 10 barrels have been produced, including the first four liquid hydrogen qualification barrels, for the SLS core stage. Whole barrels for the two pressurized tanks, the forward skirt, and the aft engine section are welded together from barrel panels using Michoud's specially designed Vertical Weld Center (VWC) tool.
So the barrel panels are welded together in the VWC and then the completed barrels are fed into the VAC.
NASA says that nearly 1/2 mile of friction-stir welds in Michoud's family of new SLS welders have already been successfully completed to produce the rings, barrels, and domes.
The core stage stores the cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. They will feed the vehicle's quartet of RS-25 space shuttle main engines at the base, which have been repurposed to provide the propulsion and power the core stage.
Altogether, 16 of the RS-25 engines are being adapted and tested at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
The SLS core stage towers over 212 feet (64.6 meters) tall and sports a diameter of 27.6 feet (8.4 m).
Overall, the SLS measures 322 feet and generates 8.4 million pounds of thrust.
Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS core stage and its avionics.
To get an idea of just how big the welder and SLS core stage really are, May gave an illuminating description.
"This [VAC] tool itself is only the length of 1 hydrogen tank of the core stage," May elaborated.
"The whole core would stick up another 50 feet through the roof of this building. Then on top of that you have Orion and its 100 foot stack.
"So here you see how massive the SLS rocket really is. And it takes a massive tool to build this massive rocket that will take humans out beyond low Earth orbit and beyond the bounds that have held us for the past 40 years!"
The VAC checkout and weld testing process ensure that the welder operates as planned and will take a few weeks, starting in October, said NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot during an interview with AmericaSpace at the recent dedication ceremony at Michoud.
Multiple domes, rings, and barrel segments have already been manufactured and await delivery into the VAC welder for integration to produce the maiden core stage unit.
The SLS core stage builds on heritage from NASA's Space Shuttle Program and is based on the shuttle's External Fuel tank. All 135 flight units were built at Michoud during the 30-year-long shuttle program.
The inaugural test flight of the SLS on the EM-1 mission is targeted for November 2018. It will be configured in its initial 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capacity version.
The SLS EM-1 flight will launch an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a roughly three-week-long test mission journeying beyond the Moon to a distant retrograde orbit, according to William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Over time the SLS will evolve into an unprecedented 130 metric tons (143 tons) lift capacity version to enable NASA's human missions to the Red Planet and other places in the Solar System.
"The road to Mars and asteroids begins right here at Michoud … and Mississippi," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "This NASA rocket is a game changer for deep space exploration.
"The SLS will launch NASA astronauts to investigate asteroids and the surface of Mars while opening new possibilities for science missions as well."
Be sure to read about the VAC Welder dedication ceremony at Michoud here.
Stay tuned here for continuing updates.
NASA Langley helps build robot to fetch an asteroid
Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press
Before American astronauts go to Mars, they first have to grapple with an asteroid.
Literally.
NASA plans to launch a robotic mission in a few years to capture a small asteroid, haul it home and redirect it into a stable orbit around the moon. Then astronauts will fly up to study it, conducting spacewalks farther from Earth than ever before. Others can study it, too.
The idea is that finessing all these steps will help build and hone the technology needed to one day send astronauts to explore deep space and colonize Mars.
"The promise of this type of a mission in the big scheme of things — in terms of opening up space for exploration and space resources — this is like the Wright brothers' first flight, in some sense," said Dan Mazanek, senior space systems engineer at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton.
Mazanek and his team are working with other NASA centers to develop a full-scale, prototype robotic system that's one of two options NASA is considering for its Asteroid Retrieval Mission, or ARM, set to launch by the end of this decade.
On Friday morning, he showed off the system to local and state VIPs who, along with Gov. Terry McAuliffe, had just helped launch a new $52 million integrated engineering services building on the NASA Langley campus. The event also included center director Steve Jurczyk, NASA's deputy associate administrator Lesa Roe, Virginia congressmen Scott Rigell and Bobby Scott, and Hampton mayor George Wallace.
Mazanek's system, called Option B, will consist of a spacecraft fitted with two robotic "arms" with what's called microspine grippers — "like thousands of fish hooks on the rock surface; hands with zillions of fingers." With gripping technology this advanced, he said, a robot could walk straight up a wall or even across a ceiling.
The spacecraft will also have three robotic limbs or legs for landing on a large asteroid and straddling a small boulder of between two and five meters. Once the arms pick up the boulder, the legs will "hop up" from the asteroid's microgravity environment and head back into space.
As the spacecraft begins its long, leisurely journey back to Earth under solar power, it can tuck the asteroid boulder safely inside its three closed limbs and use its arms for other things, like taking pictures of the asteroid.
The other concept, or Option A, is being developed by other NASA centers. That concept would use a large inflatable system to capture and house a small asteroid for the journey back to Earth. This system could envelope an asteroid of about 10 meters.
According to NASA, it will choose between those two concepts by the end of the year.
Retrieving and studying an asteroid will do much more than hone space exploration technology, NASA says.
It will enable commercial partners to learn how to use asteroids for raw materials or mine for minerals in microgravity. The right asteroids could provide water to drink, grow crops and provide radiation shielding. And asteroid material could be used in 3-D printing to fabricate space structures and replacement parts.
Asteroids could also be used in planetary defense — a small asteroid attached to a spacecraft, for instance, could provide enough gravitational attraction to alter the track of a large asteroid that threatens Earth.
McAuliffe didn't stay for the ARM tour; NASA staff said his schedule didn't allow it. But speaking earlier at the ribbon-cutting for the center's new building, the governor said he often cites the science at NASA Langley and Jefferson Laboratory in Newport News to lure potential business investors and try to "offset the headwinds" of future sequestration, or across-the-board federal budget cuts mandated by Congress.
He said he was about to leave on a trip to Asia in part to try to convince Canon to locate its global research and development headquarters in Newport News, where it already has a manufacturing, engineering, recycling and support services center.
"We're in the final throes," McAuliffe said of negotiations. "We'll see what happens."
An All-Female Mission to Mars
As a NASA guinea pig, I verified that women would be cheaper to launch than men.
In February of 1960, the American magazine Look ran a cover story that asked, "Should a Girl Be First in Space?" It was a sensational headline representing an audacious idea at the time. And as we all know, the proposal fell short. In 1961, NASA sent Alan Shepard above the stratosphere, followed by dozens of other spacemen over the next two decades. Only in 1983 did Sally Ride become America's first female astronaut to launch.
But why would anyone think a woman would be the first to space, anyway? Medical studies, for one thing. Some studies in the 1950s and '60s suggested female bodies had stronger hearts and could better withstand vibrations and radiation exposure. Moreover, psychological studies suggested that women coped better than men in isolation and when deprived of sensory inputs.
Some of these investigations were limited in their design and sample sizes. But there was another, more compelling reason that women might outshine men as potential astronauts: basic economics. Thanks to their size, women are, on average, cheaper to launch and fly than men. As a NASA guinea pig, I had the chance to verify this firsthand.
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Last year I took part in a NASA-funded research project called HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation). It required that I and five other crewmembers live as astronauts on the surface of Mars. We didn't leave Earth, obviously, but for four months we were cooped up in a geodesic dome on the side of the very red, very rocky, very Mars-like Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. Our food, water, power, and communications were limited, and we were only allowed to exit the habitat if we wore mock spacesuits. So many Martian hassles, so little glory. This was the first HI-SEAS mission—a third starts this month—and it was designed mainly to study the types of food Mars explorers might eat. I was the crew writer, blogging for Discover and the Economist, and since I had the scientific background and interest, I conducted a sleep study, too. I collected and managed the crew's sleep data over the course of the experiment. One device we used to track sleep was the sensor armband from BodyMedia, which also provides estimates of daily and weekly caloric expenditure. While I didn't know which data belonged to which subject due to anonymity requirements, I could see each subject's sex. Over time I noticed a trend.
Week in and week out, the three female crew members expended less than half the calories of the three male crew members. Less than half! We were all exercising roughly the same amount—at least 45 minutes a day for five consecutive days a week—but our metabolic furnaces were calibrated in radically different ways.
During one week, the most metabolically active male burned an average of 3,450 calories per day, while the least metabolically active female expended 1,475 calories per day. It was rare for a woman on crew to burn 2,000 calories in a day and common for male crew members to exceed 3,000.
The data certainly fit with my other observations. At mealtime, the women took smaller portions than the men, who often went back for seconds. One crew member complained how hard it was to maintain his weight, despite all the calories he was taking in.
The calorie requirements of an astronaut matter significantly when planning a mission. The more food a person needs to maintain her weight on a long space journey, the more food should launch with her. The more food launched, the heavier the payload. The heavier the payload, the more fuel required to blast it into orbit and beyond. The more fuel required, the heavier the rocket becomes, which it in turn requires more fuel to launch.
Every pound counts on the way to space. NASA was keenly aware of this, and that's why in the early 1960s it nearly considered a female astronaut corps. Of course, politics and culture have a pesky way of sneaking into engineering decisions, especially when a country's pride is on the line, according to Margaret A. Weitekamp, author of Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program. Despite extensive training and excellent performance, the women in the program were dismissed. Some of the reasons included fears about public relations if female astronauts were killed, as well as NASA's reliance on military pilots, who at the time were only male. The first woman in space was cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union, who flew 20 years before Sally Ride. Her flight bolstered the appearance of communist egalitarianism during the Cold War. Russia hasn't kept up a female presence in orbit, though; it only just last month launched its first female cosmonaut in almost two decades, Elena Serova.
Back to Mars. According to Robert Zubrin, aerospace engineer, author, and president of the Mars Society, a round-trip mission to Mars could cost as little as $30 billion. While this is a low-ball estimate that ignores many of the details, it suggests that a manned Mars mission might not cost $450 billion, an amount proposed by NASA in 1989 that many believe is close to the upper limit for such a mission. Many of today's estimates tend to be around $100 billion.
To put these price tags in perspective, the Curiosity rover cost $2.5 billion. And while Curiosity is an impressive feat of engineering that is collecting and analyzing more of Mars than any robot before, its capabilities as an explorer pale in comparison to that of a human crew. In mere hours, a trained geologist could spot a rock that fills in gaps of solar system formation theory. Such a significant discovery could take a rover weeks, months, or years, if ever. Admittedly, though, rovers also have the benefit of running on plutonium dioxide and never needing to deficate. A manned Mars mission requires designing for the burdens of having a body.
In the early 2000s, Alan Drysdale, a systems analyst in advanced life support and a contractor with NASA, was thinking about the problem of astronaut bodies. He turned to a NASA document on physiological metrics called STD-3000, Man-Systems Integration Standards (now revised to STD-3001), which details needs and effluents for a range of body types. The STD-3000 gave the stats for women whose size was in the fifth percentile to men sized in the 95th percentile, a range from about 4-foot-11 and 90 pounds to 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds. He crunched the numbers.
Drysdale found that a fifth-percentile woman would use less than half the resources of a 95th-percentile man. While we didn't have a woman on the HI-SEAS crew who was in the fifth percentile, our stats were similar to the predictions.
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Drysdale, who no longer works with NASA, is emphatic that the space agency wastes money and doesn't consider cost-saving approaches like a Mars crew of smaller astronauts. He says his calculations suggest all things being equal, such a crew would launch for half the payload cost. "Small women haven't been demonstrated to be appreciably dumber than big women or big men, so there's no reason to choose larger people for a flight crew when it's brain power you want," says Drysdale. "The logical thing to do is to fly small women."
Harry Jones, of NASA Ames Research Center, says that he too noticed the average female and male calorie requirement differed significantly and published on the topic in the early 2000s. "For a Mars mission, life support will be a major cost," he says. "It is expected that oxygen and water can be recycled, but not food. Reducing the crew's calorie requirement would cut cost."
Indeed, a number of people I talked to acknowledged the benefits of an all-female crew, or even just a crew made of smaller people in general. One proponent is Andrew Rader, a mission integrator at SpaceX. "Anything to reduce weight and even in terms of making the spacecraft seem bigger, having smaller astronauts would be great," he says, noting that he isn't speaking on behalf of his company. "I think it's a reasonable proposal."
As reasonable as an all-female Mars mission is from an economic perspective, some might find the idea offensive. After all, it'd be an expedition that fails to represent half the world's population; an all-female Mars crew would strike many as exceptionally biased.
Then again, space-mission design has always been biased in one way or another. Exploration in general is nothing if not political, dictated by the people with the money and power to choose the face of the expedition. Right now, it's unlikely that those with the power to do so would agree to fund a crew of small female astronauts even to save money.
And at this stage of predesign research for Mars, many who work with NASA believe selecting the right people for a mission is more nuanced than simply calculating size and resource requirements. "It's not really politically correct to mention that size, body type, gender, intelligence, agility, emotional structure, education, and other individual differences might all affect the cost-benefit equation in astronaut selection," says Jones. "Really, the issues are all about crew performance including group dynamics, individual psychology, etc."
Crew cohesion was an important subject of study during the HI-SEAS mission last year. My six crew members and I were chosen out of 700 applicants worldwide. We were a relatively diverse bunch: a Belgian man, a Canadian man, a Russian-American man, a Puerto Rican woman, a black woman who grew up in the Northeast, and me, a white woman from Kansas. We had a range of engineering, science, and creative backgrounds. For half of us, English wasn't our first language.
Because of our differences, we were often learning and relearning each other's problem-solving approaches, personalities, language quirks, and food preferences. But soon we realized that our diversity helped us solve various problems that came up, from designing new scientific experiments and analyzing data to building equipment to finding ingredient substitutions for recipes.
This was also the experience of astronaut So-yeon Yi, South Korea's first and only astronaut, who flew to the International Space Station in 2008. On being in a diverse group, she told me: "At first it's hell, but in the long term, diversity is very good. It's because uniform people in a team may be comfortable, but they can't know what they don't know."
Soyeon Yi, who is 5-foot-4, said she didn't feel as cramped in the space station as the cosmonauts who were more than 6 feet tall. They were envious of her freedom of movement, she said. But she also stressed that she'd rather be in a diverse group than one that's too similar.
Based on my HI-SEAS experience, I tend to agree. Still, if the bottom line is what matters in getting to Mars, the more women the better.
After Nearly Two Years in Orbit, the U.S. Air Force's Secretive Spaceplane Lands
Mike Gruss - Space News
The U.S. Air Force's unmanned X-37B spaceplane — which had been orbiting Earth on a classified mission for 22 months — landed Oct. 17 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
Built by Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems of El Segundo, California, the X-37B is a reusable unmanned orbital maneuvering vehicle that launches atop an expendable rocket and returns to Earth much like NASA's now-retired space shuttle, gliding in for a runway landing.
The X-37B touched down at 9:24 a.m. local time, wrapping up its third classified trip to orbit since 2010.
A fourth mission is planned for 2015, the Air Force announced after the landing.
"We're pleased with the incremental progress we've seen in our testing of the reusable space plane," Col. Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander, said in an Oct. 17 press release.
The X-37B launched Dec. 11, 2012, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
Since then, the Air Force has been tight-lipped about the program's mission. In the press release, officials said only that the spaceplane is managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office and the program performs "risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies."
Experts have suggested the spaceplane's mission was reconnaissance-related and may also have included surveillance of spacecraft in low Earth orbit. Others have suggested an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission for the National Reconnaissance Office to test out new sensor technologies.
Brian Weeden, a former Air Force officer specializing in space surveillance who now works as a technical adviser at the Secure World Foundation think tank, said the spaceplane likely is used both for reconnaissance and testing guidance and thermal protection systems for reusable spacecraft.
Weeden said that the spaceplane likely was not collecting data over Russia, which is north of the orbit where the X-37B was flying. Instead,X-37B's reconnaissance targets were more likely in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Weeden said he thought it unlikely the spaceplane was used to perform orbital inspection, repair or retrieval.
Construction is underway to convert a former space shuttle hangar at NASA's Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral into a maintenance facility for the spaceplane. The facility will allow the Air Force to land, recover, refurbish and relaunch the X-37B, the Boeing officials have said.
All three X-37B missions to date were launched from Cape Canaveral and landed at Vandenberg. The fourth mission will also launch from Cape Canaveral. The Air Force did not say where the spaceplane will land.
First female ISS Cosmonaut adjusts to life in space
Tomasz Nowakowski - Spaceflight Insider
Yelena Serova who, in September, became the first female Russian cosmonaut to visit the International Space Station (ISS), is adjusting very fast to life in space and she's now settling in as a permanent ISS inhabitant. On the ISS Mailbox blog, she writes about the everyday life of her crew, their work on the Kardiovektor experiment on the space cardiology, and also about practicing skills necessary in the emergency situations that can arise in the International Space Station.
"I'm getting used to living in microgravity conditions. I exercise regularly, and conduct scientific experiments as well," Serova writes on her blog on Roscosmos website. "Last week I've spent much time on doing exercises regarding reacting in emergency situations like fire or depressurization, for example."
In her first blog post, Serova exclaimed, "ISS-41/42 crew on the line! I take the relay from my colleague Oleg Artemiev!"
One of the experiments Serova is working on is the Kardiovektor experiment, which aims to provide new scientific information on the role of right and left ventricle of the heart in the adaptation of the circulatory system to the conditions of long-duration space flight.
"I will conduct this experiment on a monthly basis during my stay at the station," Serova revealed.
On Tuesday, Serova performed an equipment check for the Otklik experiment, which is developing a system to track the impacts of particles on the station's exterior using piezoelectric sensors. Throughout the day she also manually mixed test samples in the Kaskad cell-cultivation experiment's bioreactor. On Friday she performed routine daily maintenance on the life-support system in the Zvezda service module.
Serova also conducts observations for the Relaxation experiment. That study observes chemical reactions due to jet exhaust and body reentries in the Earth's upper atmosphere. She is also involved in the Calcium experiment, which examines the causes of the loss of bone density that occurs in a weightless environment. For this study, Russian researchers are looking at the solubility of calcium phosphates and bone samples in water in space.
Serova is the fourth female cosmonaut from Russia to ever fly in space, the first being USSR's Valentina Tereshkova who made history in 1963 as the first woman ever to go into space on a sole flight. Tereshkova was followed by Svetlana Savitskaya who circled the Earth orbit twice, in 1982 and 1984. Yelena Kondakova was the third to be put into orbit in 1994 and 1997. A total of 57 women have flown to space so far.
12 Join International Space Hall of Fame
Janessa Maxilom - Alamogordo Daily News, of New Mexico
People who dreamed of space exploration and shared their dreams with the world were honored on Saturday at the New Mexico Museum of Space History and International Space Hall of Fame.
Twelve individuals were inducted into the International Space Hall of fame as the Induction Class of 2014.
"Here at the New Mexico Museum of Space History and the International Space Hall of Fame, we say that we 'celebrate the spirit of exploration.' We honor the past history of space exploration and we try to inspire a bright future for mankind's push toward the distant stars." NMMSH Executive Director Chris Orwoll said.
Orwoll said inductees were selected for their achievement or accomplishments that advanced space exploration or astronomical knowledge.
"We gather here to honor 12 men and women who come from incredibly varied backgrounds," Orwoll said. "Some ventured into that most unforgiving realm of endeavor, the exploration or space. Some worked their miracle with a pen or a slide rule. Some dreamed and then turned those dreams into reality - a reality that is inspiring the world."
The first person to be inducted was Yuri Kondratyuk a Russian civil engineer. Kondratyuk wrote visionary works on spaceflight and rocketry. He is known for the suggestion of suing space vehicles that had tow or more modules that could use the Earth's gravity to 'sling-shot' a manned vehicle to the Moon; the first 'Lunar Orbiter Rendezvous' proposal. His ideas were used by NASA for the Apollo lunar landing missions.
Kondratyuk's award was accepted by Elena Schukina, the director of the Museum of the City of Novosibirsk, Russia.
"Yuri Kondratyuk was a talented civil engineer, self-educated scientist and author of bold and unorthodox projects," Schukina said. "In 1929 he published his book Conquest of Interplanetary Space in Novosibirsk at his own expense. That was how Novosibirsk became a part of space exploration history.
"We would like to sincerely thank you for the decision to include our fellow countryman Kondratyuk into the International Hall of Fame of the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo," Schukina said.
The second inductee was John Houbolt. Houbolt was an engineer at both NASA and its predecessor the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. He made critical contributions to the space program, especially the Apollo Program.
Houbolt helped develop the initial plan to use a 'Lunar Obiter Rendezvous' method of putting men on the Moon.
The third inductee was Thomas Kelly. Kelly was part of the team that successfully bid for the $2 billion lunar landing vehicle project from NASA. He subsequently led the team that designed and built the Lunar Module at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation.
Kelly's award was accepted by his wife, Joan Kelly and two sons David and Thomas Kelly Jr.
"I think it's a great honor," Kelly Jr. said. "Father was part of the Apollo program and he would be glad that it hasn't been forgotten."
General Joe Engle was the fourth inductee. Engle was one of the first astronauts in the Space Shuttle Program and took part in the flight tests of the Space Shuttle Enterprise in 1977. Engle logged over 225 hours in space and is the only person to have flown two different types of winged vehicles in space.
Guenter F. Wendt was the fifth inductee honored. Wendt worked on the launch pad operation for the MR-2 mission which was the suborbital flight of Ham, the first chimpanzee in space. He was the Pad Leader in charge of Apollo 7.
Wendt's daughter Norma Wendt accepted the award on behalf of her father.
"He would have been thrilled by this," Norma said. "My father got the nickname of 'der Fuehrer of der Launch Pad' because he was kind of a dictator when it came to his work. But it was because the safety of the astronauts was so very important to him. He got along great with the astronauts and joked with them all the time. It wasn't unusual for astronauts to be over at our house spending time and joking with my father."
Famous authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were also inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame for their acclaimed science fiction novels.
The founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), Elon Musk of South Africa was also inducted into the Space Hall of Fame. Space X developed and manufactured space vehicle Falcon 1, the first privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket to achieve orbit in 2009.
Peter Diamandis was inducted for his role as a visionary in space exploration. Diamandis founded the International MicroSpace Inc, Rocket Racing Inc., Constellation Communications Inc. and the Zero Gravity Corporation. He was also the founder of what is now the Ansari XPRIZ Foundation.
Anousheh Ansari, known as the first female private space explorer, was awarded for her efforts to make space exploration more accessible to people. Ansari is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Prodea Systems. She also earned a place in history as the first astronaut of Iranian descent, the first Muslim woman and the fourth private explorer to visit space.
"When you look at the earth from space the lines that we draw on our maps are not there and it really changes the way you see life." Ansari said. "We are all a part of this universe and our spaceship is Earth. I hope that mankind continues to work together to reach for the stars.
"It is my hope to inspire and encourage people to keep dreaming. I would especially like to encourage women to pursue their dreams," she said. "Women are often told that they cannot do things. I say to women 'Don't set limits on your dreams.' When I was young girl I used to always dream of going to space. I never stopped dreaming and I kept working towards my dream."
Ansari said she was honored to be inducted alongside her fellow inductees. She added that she thought it was great that people from all around the world are recognized for their efforts in space exploration.
Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan was honored for his work as a pioneer in engineering. Rutan built numerous record-breaking, innovative and operational aircraft such as Voyager. The Voyager was the first aircraft to circle the world non-stop without refueling.
The final person inducted was Paul Gardner Allen. Allen is an American philanthropist and innovator who has donated more than $1.8 billion to scientific and educational causes.
NASA Ames turns 75; tens of thousands flock to open house
Troy Wolverton - San Jose Mercury
Greg Katayuma visited NASA's Ames Research Center when he was in grade school but hadn't been back since.
So when he heard that the center was inviting the public into the famed facility to celebrate its 75th anniversary, he jumped at the chance to return.
"We thought we'd come out here and take a look and see what they do," said Katayuma, 59, who spent the better part of Saturday with his family touring the Moffett Field center. He was one of thousands of curious visitors who attended the open house, Ames' first in 17 years.
Visitors to the event visited booths set up by NASA researchers looking at everything from nanotechnology to astrobiology. They walked inside Hangar One and peered through its steel skeleton. They walked through an inflatable mock-up of an International Space Station module, pretended to take a ride in a model of a lunar rover, and took pictures next to an inflatable model of the new Orion space capsule.
They also got to go inside the "back fence," the inner part of NASA Ames where its employees actually work. There, some lucky folks got to go inside particular buildings while others were able to just view some of the imposing structures.
Perhaps most impressive was Ames' National Full Scale Aerodynamic Complex, a gigantic wind tunnel complex used to test the aerodynamics of full-sized aircraft. Show organizers opened two massive doors on the wind tunnel, allowing visitors to take a rare look inside.
"People often wonder post-Shuttle what NASA's doing," said Chuck Duff, Ames' director of center operations. "We're doing more than ever. We're focusing on exploration."
Seeing the wind tunnel up close was the one thing Katayuma definitely wanted to do during his visit. "The sheer size of this one building is the most impressive thing we've seen so far," he said.
Show organizers were expecting a crowd of 150,000 people. They handed out 120,000 tickets to the event last month. But organizers weren't checking for tickets at the door, meaning that anyone who fought the traffic -- which backed up cars on northbound and southbound Highway 101 and on Moffett Boulevard -- could get in.
Many visitors came with their kids in tow, whether to accommodate their interest in space science -- or to try to encourage it.
That was certainly what Rachel Chang was thinking when she heard that tickets were available for the open house. She thought it would be a good opportunity for her kids to learn about Ames.
"Maybe they'll start to have more interest in this field," said Chang, 45, a pre-school teacher in Sunnyvale.
Shailesh Mittal's daughter didn't need any encouraging -- she's already a space nut. She was watching a documentary on the history of Ames' wind tunnels, while Mittal and his family waited and indulged her interest.
For Mittal, a 34-year-old software architect from Santa Clara, one of the highlights of the day was being able to walk through the mock-up of the International Space Station.
"There were so many cool things to see," he said. "There were so many things you have to be aware of."
NASA had employees visiting from several of its space centers around the country to explain various projects.
David Hitt, who works in communications at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, was on hand to answer people's questions about the Orion capsule.
Hitt said that he was excited to be part of the team working with the new space vehicle and excited to be able to talk with the public about it.
"The opportunity to talk to 100,000 people in one day is amazing," he said.
Some people were visiting Ames from even farther away. Matt De Vincentis, 27, was at the open house with some of his family members from Australia who happened to be in town.
De Vincentis, who works in high-tech marketing, said he was excited to see up close the buildings he's only seen from a distance while driving past them on 101. Even an hour drive to the event from Cupertino didn't dampen his enthusiasm to be there.
For him, one of the best things was just arriving at the facility.
"It was pretty awesome to drive out on the runway and walk through Hangar One," he said.
A Decade into a New Spaceflight Era, a Mixture of Frustration and Optimism
Jeff Foust – Space News
Ten years after the completion of the Ansari X Prize appeared to open a new era of commercial human spaceflight, company executives and government officials at a commercial space conference expressed a mixture of optimism about the future of the industry and impatience at the perceived lack of progress over the last decade.
"I'm actually quite frustrated with the pace of commercial space," said Brett Alexander, director of business development and strategy for Blue Origin, the privately funded spaceflight company led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
"It really has been frustrating to be 10 years into commercial space, 10 years from the X Prize, and not see a proliferation of activity, of people flying regularly," he said in a presentation at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) here Oct. 15.
Alexander was referring to the flights of SpaceShipOne on Sept. 29 and Oct. 4, 2004, that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for vehicle developer Scaled Composites and the project's financial backer, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. At the time, those flights appeared to signal the beginning of a major expansion of commercial space activities, including suborbital space tourism.
The company most closely linked to that vision of commercial spaceflight has been Virgin Galactic, which announced its plans to partner with Scaled Composites on what would become SpaceShipTwo shortly before those X Prize flights. At the time of the original announcement, Virgin Galactic proposed starting commercial service as soon as late 2007. Those flights are still at least several months in the future.
In an Oct. 15 ISPCS speech, Virgin Galactic Chief Executive George Whitesides said the company had just completed ground qualification tests of a new hybrid rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo. "We expect to get back into powered test flight quite soon," he said.
As is customary for the company, Whitesides did not give a schedule for when commercial SpaceShipTwo flights would begin, although the company's founder, Sir Richard Branson, said in September that he expected to be on the first commercial flight in February or March of 2015. "I, personally, am incredibly excited about the next six months," Whitesides said.
The ISPCS, marking its 10th year, is itself an outgrowth of the X Prize. The conference started in 2005 as the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight, a one-day event held on the New Mexico State University campus here just before the X Prize Cup, a space-themed airshow held at the local airport.
While the X Prize Foundation ended the X Prize Cup after the 2007 event, the conference has continued, diversifying into other aspects of commercial spaceflight.
That diversification has included a greater presence by U.S. government officials in their roles of both regulating and incentivizing commercial space efforts. At this year's conference, they argued that the growing capabilities of the commercial space industry are becoming increasingly critical to civil and military space efforts, and overall national space power.
"I see a collision coming between commercial space and defense space needs," Douglas Loverro, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said in an Oct. 15 speech here. That intersection of needs and requirements, he said, could mitigate reductions in government spending by allowing agencies to make greater use of commercial capabilities. "This is the way the U.S. will stay ahead of others in space," he said.
One way the Defense Department is supporting that intersection is through the Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) program at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Three companies — Boeing, Masten Space Systems and Northrop Grumman — received phase one contracts this year to begin initial design work on a reusable lower stage that could be used to place satellites weighing up to 2,250 kilograms into orbit for less than $5 million per launch.
"We are trying to build a capability that is useful to the military, but do it on the backs of commercial space," Jess Sponable, DARPA XS-1 program manager, said Oct. 16. "If you can do that, we have a sustainable solution. If we can't, then we're just another space program."
In an Oct. 16 speech here, George Nield, associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, outlined a dozen "mission areas" where industry is playing, or plans to play, a major role, from launching satellites to space tourism to space-based resource extraction. That, he said, is a major change from 10 to 20 years ago, when commercial space activities were largely limited to the construction, launch and operation of communications satellites.
"I find the depth and breadth of the things being worked on right now in the commercial sector to be really exciting, and they frankly give me hope for the nation's future in space," he said.
Much of that hope is pinned to the future of the international space station, including both commercial transportation to and from the ISS and commercial research performed there. That near-term work on the ISS may be critical in developing demand for future commercial space stations, said William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations.
"The question is, can we use the space station as a government entity to show others that there is a market out there that is independent of the government and is worth their investment?" he asked.
Some of those partnerships have moved faster than even Alexander expected. "Who would have thought 10 years ago that we'd be talking about NASA funding two commercial crew providers, flying their own astronauts on privately owned and operated vehicles?" he said. "I thought then it would take a lot longer than that."
"This progression that we've had over the last decade from fully government activities to hybrid government-commercial activities to now some fully commercial activities has been exciting to watch," Alexander said, "but the pace of it has been a little bit frustrating."
SNC v NASA: Boeing and SpaceX Alllowed to Intervene, Next Hearing Date Set
At today's hearing before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Boeing and SpaceX were granted their requests to intervene in Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC's) lawsuit to force NASA to reinstate a stop-work order on the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCAP) contracts.
SNC filed suit on Wednesday asking the court to declare "illegal and void" NASA's October 9 decision to override provisions of the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) so that work could proceed under the CCtCAP contracts despite SNC's protest of the award. Today was the first hearing in the case.
Boeing, SpaceX and SNC are all being funded under the current phase of NASA's commercial crew program -- the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCAP) phase. On September 16, NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX to continue into the next phase, CCtCAP. Sierra Nevada filed a protest against that decision with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on September 26. NASA issued a stop-work order to Boeing and SpaceX on the CCtCAP contracts because of the protest, but rescinded it on October 9 arguing that it was acting under its statutory authority to avoid serious adverse consequences.
That prompted SNC to file this lawsuit against the U.S. Government on the basis that NASA had not demonstrated that it could not wait until GAO issued its ruling on SNC's protest. GAO has until January 5, 2015 to make its determination.
Today, Judge Marian Blank Horn granted motions from Boeing and SpaceX to "intervene" in the case and ordered that they file their submissions by Monday, October 20, at noon. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, October 21, at 2:30 pm ET.
The commercial crew program is essentially a public-private partnership where the government and the private sector are sharing the costs of developing new crew space transportation systems to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) with NASA serving as a market for the resulting services. CCtCAP is the final phase of the development program, leading, NASA hopes, to operational systems by the end of 2017. Until commercial crew systems are operational, NASA must rely on Russia to take crews to and from ISS because the space shuttle was terminated in 2011.
Boeing completes Commercial Crew milestone
James Dean – Florida Today
Boeing has completed its last milestone in the development program that preceded its win of a NASA contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station.
Boeing is the first of the three companies that contended for the contracts to finish its work under a competition phase called Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or iCap, during which Boeing earned $480 million.
NASA last week said a design review confirmed that Boeing was ready to proceed with building and testing of its CST-100 crew capsule, which will launch from Cape Canaveral on United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket.
NASA last month also awarded SpaceX a Commercial Crew contract worth up to $2.6 billion. SpaceX expects to complete its iCap milestones next year, as does Sierra Nevada Corp., which is protesting its loss in the competition for a contract to fly astronauts.
NASA hopes one of the companies is ready to fly astronauts from Cape Canaveral to the ISS by 2017.
Exclusive: ULA plans new rocket, restructuring to cut launch costs in half
Greg Avery - Dallas Business Journal
United Launch Alliance is starting to develop a whole new rocket system and will be restructuring its processes and workforce to slash launch costs in half amid smaller military budgets and competition from SpaceX.
The result will be a smaller ULA in the near term, but one able to grow again and win new kinds of business in the long run, said Tory Bruno, new CEO of the Centennial-based rocket maker in his first interview since being appointed Aug. 12.
Bruno, the former president of Lockheed Martin's strategic missiles and missile defense programs, said ULA will have preliminary design ideas by year's end for a new line of rockets blending the best features of ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV rocket families.
The new launch system, its booster stage powered by new engines made by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company, is meant to start flying in 2019 and cap a remaking of ULA as a more efficient organization.
"We are working right now to design what that future will be. And we're going to finish our [preliminary] studies this year, and we're going to announce this is what our next generation launch system will look like," he said. "There will be other technologies that are enabling of that whole system, and they'll be part of what brings the overall cost down .... We're cutting [ launch cost] in half again, we're getting in to the commercial [launch] marketplace. We will also adjust design our teams and our organization to be the most effective at delivering that."
What affect the restructuring will have on ULA's work force isn't yet clear, Bruno said, but he expects ULA will be smaller. How much smaller remains to be seen.
ULA's board chose Bruno to replace Mike Gass, the first CEO to run the Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. joint venture. ULA formed at the end of 2006.
The company employs 3,700 people nationwide. About 1,700 of them work locally, primarily in engineering and ULA's administrative functions. Manufacturing, assembly and launch take place in ULA facilities in Harlingen, Texas; Decatur, Alabama and launch complexes in Florida and California.
Gass oversaw the blending of rocketry divisions of the two defense and aerospace giants, creating one company from rival teams of engineers whose companies previously competed over billions of military and spy satellite launch contracts and NASA space missions.
In nearly eight years, ULA launched 88 consecutive successful missions carrying more than $61 billion worth of payloads into orbit or out to deep space.
"Perfect mission success, total certainty. Always on time and always on budget. Those are tremendous accomplishments, and they're just what the country needed," Bruno said of Gass, who remains with ULA now but is retiring soon. "By setting up ULA, he took out half the cost of national security launch — literally cut the cost of launch in half. But defense budgets are shrinking.
SpaceX, the Hawthorne, California rocket company started by entrepreneur Elon Musk, is trying to break into the national security launch business by promising cheaper launches and casting ULA as an expensive monopoly.
Federal government budget pressures amid a "degraded and more intense" international security environment are driving ULA to adapt, Bruno said.
"Affordability is even more important, because if we can't be affordable then our customers can't cover all their missions. It's important that all of them are covered, not just some of them," he said. "There's an opportunity for the government to have competition now in this marketplace, and there are new entrants who are bringing in new thoughts and ideas, so ULA adapts to that. We cut costs in half [in forming ULA]. We're going to cut them in half again and bring in a whole lot of innovation."
Nearly a year ago, ULA won its first "block buy" contract for U.S. military launches over five years. The U.S. Air Force oversees the $11 billion contract as part of what's called the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program.
The first-of-its kind bulk purchasing agreement committed the Air Force to buy 36 ULA rockets for defense and spy satellite launches over the next five years and represented savings of $4.4 billion in saving to the U.S. government.
In May, ULA revealed pricing ranges for individual block buy missions range between $164 million and $350 million, depending on the size of the payload, its destination and other factors.
That price range is half of what the comparable launches would've been when Boeing and Lockheed Martin launched their Delta and Atlas rockets separately. Gass predicted earlier this year ULA's average price per rocket booster could go below $100 million. Bruno's cost goals could put some launches well under that amount.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., as SpaceX is formally known, is challenging the contract in federal court, arguing it should be allowed to bid against ULA for the work.
Bruno says he's used to such pressures from the highly competitive world of missile defense contracting. He said competition is good for ULA.
"We're not afraid of competition; there's nothing anti-competitive about ULA. We have the best team in the world. We have the premier product line. We know how to bring our costs down. So we're happy to compete," Bruno said.
ULA's transformation to a more efficient, affordable company with a new rocket family is timed to position the company for what it expects will be the Air Force's next big EELV contract.
"I am confident the current block-buy contract will execute through to its end and it's going to deliver over $4 billion in savings on cost," he said. "I expect them to want to block-buy in the future. I also expect it to be competitive. And I expect to win."
Bruno detailed some ways ULA is streamlining its rocket design, manufacturing and assembly processes. Some traditions — such as full dress rehearsals of launches and duplicative tests of every solder on a circuit board that's tested again upon final assembly — were started before ULA was launching its current Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. Looking back at its 88 launches, ULA can identify which are unnecessary "belt and suspenders" tests and which have actually caught real problems.
Dropping unnecessary tests and streamlining processes will bring down costs, he said. Building a new rocket system around a Blue Origin-made booster engine — meant to replace the RD-180 engines that are imported from Russia — is expected to result in the rest of the cost savings.
Industry for years has complained that launching with ULA domestically is too expensive. The vast majority of U.S. commercial satellites launch overseas.
ULA hasn't had as much success landing contracts to launch private, commercial communications and earth observation satellites as Bruno thinks it can, he said.
Cost reduction by ULA could change that, Bruno said.
"When we've hit those prices that our [government] customers now need to support their missions, that is one of the key enablers to being competitive in the commercial [launch] marketplace. It allows us to grow into a whole new market segment," he said.
Comet's flyby of Mars a boon for scientists
William Harwood - CBS News via Spaceflightnow.com
The red planet's brush with Comet Siding Spring Sunday was a close encounter of the best kind for science, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study a pristine remnant of the solar system's birth 4.6 billion years ago as it makes its first and possibly last visit to the warmth of the inner solar system.
Comet C/2013 A1, discovered last year at the Siding Spring observatory in Australia, was expected to pass within about 87,000 miles of Mars at 2:27 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) at a relative velocity 126,000 mph.
An international fleet of spacecraft at Mars, two surface rovers and five orbiters -- including a newly-arrived NASA satellite built to study the martian atmosphere -- had ringside seats for the high-speed flyby. Monitoring from afar were the Hubble Space Telescope and more than a half-dozen other spacecraft, along with telescopes at ground-based observatories around the world.
"It's awesome. It's such a ridiculously close approach to the planet," Karl Battams, an astrophysicist and comet expert at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. "We've got these fantastic spacecraft out at Mars. ... It's an extraordinary coincidence, and I think we're very lucky to see it. It could well be we don't see anything like it again in our lifetimes."
Observers in the southern hemisphere were able to study Mars and the comet during close approach, but it was not bright enough at Earth's distance to be visible to the unaided eye. Complicating the picture, Siding Spring has faded considerably in recent weeks as it approached Mars and then perihelion -- closest approach to the sun -- on Oct. 25.
"We were really pleasantly surprised at how it was behaving until about two weeks ago," Battams said. "And then, suddenly it started to drop in brightness much faster than we had anticipated. So now we're sort of re-assessing our expectations of the comet and the model we were judging it against."
Even so, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was expected to have a good view. Commands were uplinked earlier to aim its high-resolution HiRISE camera at the comet in a bid to image its hidden nucleus. The agency's MAVEN orbiter, which arrived at Mars last month, was poised to look for changes in the martian atmosphere due to interactions with the comet's dust tail.
NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, along with the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and India's first planetary probe, the Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, also trained their instruments on the comet, as did NASA's two surface rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity.
"The closest a comet has ever approached Earth in modern records is about 16 times greater than the distance of this thing going by Mars," Battams told CBS News in a phone interview Friday. "It's going to be the equivalent of one third the Earth-moon distance. So it's a really close flyby for some amazing instrumentation we've got at Mars.
"Now granted, those spacecraft at Mars weren't designed for looking at comets. But just by luck and a little bit of adaptation, we should get some really cool science out of it."
But it will take time. The Mars spacecraft were not designed for realtime data transmission and it likely will take the science teams hours to several days to receive and process the data before any pictures, much less conclusions, are unveiled.
Siding Spring is of particular interest because it originated in the Oort Cloud, a vast spherical realm of icy debris left over from the original swarm of gas and dust that coalesced to form the sun and its retinue of planets 4.6 billion years ago.
The Oort Cloud extends from well beyond the orbit of Pluto halfway to the nearest star, so far comets like Siding Spring need a million years or more to make the long plunge into the inner solar system.
"We're going to observe an event that happens maybe once every million years," Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division, said last week. "And this is where a comet coming from the farthest reaches of the sun's gravity will come to the inner part of our solar system. This comet will fly right in front of the planet Mars. Mars will be blanketed in cometary material."
Last year, another Oort Cloud comet -- ISON -- generated headlines as it fell toward a close flyby of the sun, breaking apart and fading from view as scientists looked on from a distance using sun-watching telescopes in orbit and on the ground.
But Siding Spring is the first Oort Cloud comet ever observed at relatively close range with modern instrumentation, giving scientists a chance to study a pristine remnant of the solar nebula.
And they have a lot of questions.
"We're hoping the HiRISE instrument on MRO will be able to actually resolve the nucleus, actually see the overall shape of the nucleus spread over several pixels of its camera," Battams said. "And that'll be the first time we've ever seen an Oort Cloud comet nucleus. Then we'll know how big it is. It could be anywhere from one to 10 kilometers, but that could be off by a factor of two in any direction. We're really not sure."
Another item of interest: The comet's brightness. Comets studied to date have all made repeated trips around the sun, going through cycles of heating and cooling. They tend to be dark.
"This is a pristine object coming in, so maybe the surface will be unusually reflective or vice versa, maybe the surface will be unusually dark," Battams said. "Or maybe it'll look just like the other ones. But again, it's a new data point from a whole different subset of comets."
Along with its size, scientist want to study its shape to glean clues about how comets formed in the Oort Cloud. Most comets studied to date have ranged from potato- or dumbbell-shaped bodies, irregular "dirty snowballs." A comet now being studied by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft features two distinct lobes that give it the appearance of a rubber duck when viewed from a distance.
"We don't know what leads to the formation of those shapes," Battams said. "Is it that comets are sometimes formed in weird shapes and that's it? Or maybe as a consequence of being in the solar system for a long time they kind of take on a new shape due to erosion processes.
"From looking at just one fuzzy little image of one Oort Cloud nucleus (Siding Spring), we're not going to answer the question. But it's a data point. It's the first data point we've ever had. ... If the nucleus is completely spherical it sort of leaves the question open ended, but maybe we'll see another duck-shaped nucleus. Just purely from looking at it it's going to tell us something."
Of major interest is the comet's interaction with the martian atmosphere as the planet moves through the outer region's of Siding Spring's dust tail. Moving at a relative velocity of 35 miles per second, even tiny dust particles will impart energy in collisions with atmospheric particles.
"MAVEN (is) designed to look at fuzzy gas clouds in the solar wind," Battams said. "That's what Mars is, that's all MAVEN cares about, that there's a gas cloud sitting in the solar wind. And it's got a comet coming along. It's smaller, but it's another gas cloud sitting in the solar wind, and it's going to see these two interact.
"It's an extraordinary coincidence, and I think we're very lucky to see it. It could well be we don't see anything like it again in our lifetimes. It could be centuries before something like this comes along. So I'm glad we've got the chance to get some good observations."
Comet avoids hitting Mars but makes astronomical history
Traci Watson – USA Today
A glowing comet barreled past Mars at some 126,000 mph today, its core of ice and dust barely missing the Red Planet and Mars's flotilla of costly scientific spacecraft.
Comet Siding Spring, a cosmic leftover of the planet-building process, veered 16 times closer to Mars than any comet has come to Earth in recorded history.
Scientists had once thought the comet might actually smash into Mars. Instead Siding Spring cleared the planet by roughly 84,000 miles, which is about one-third the distance from Earth to the moon.
Confirmation of the close approach, at 2:27 p.m. ET, came from the Twitter feed of the European Space Agency's operations team, which is monitoring the health of its Mars Express spacecraft at the Red Planet.
"And that, Ladies & Gentlemen, is history! The closest (non-impacting ... ) planetary approach by a comet in our recorded history!" tweeted comet expert Karl Battams of the Naval Research Laboratory.
"I'm very happy. … It was an extremely rare thing to see," said amateur astronomer Allen Versfeld of Centurion, South Africa, who captured pictures of the comet's close approach. "To be part of that was quite exciting."
Comets have certainly brushed past Mars before, but never before have human beings had the means to scrutinize such an encounter. All five spacecraft orbiting Mars — three belonging to NASA, one to Europe and one to India — recorded the comet's mad dash. So did NASA's two Mars rovers and a Who's Who of other observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and a network of serious hobbyists whose images were collected online as part of a collaboration between amateur and professional astronomers.
Even a single piece of comet dust could cause dramatic damage to a spacecraft, so NASA and others took the precaution of making sure their satellites were shielded by Mars when the planet passed through the comet's trail.
Europe's Mars Express survived unscathed, and NASA said late Sunday that its three Mars orbiters suffered no ill effects from the fly-by.
"Everything went extremely well," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project manager Dan Johnston. "Our spacecraft executed everything perfectly."
Spacecraft managers may curse the comet for putting their precious machines at risk, but scientists hailed the close approach as a piece of incredibly good luck. Siding Spring's home base is the Oort Cloud, an comet repository in the coldest, most isolated reaches of the solar system. Sculpted some 4 billion years ago from the same stuff that makes up the planets, the Oort-Cloud comets have been in the deep freeze ever since, making them time capsules of the solar system's early days.
Never before have astronomers gotten a good look at an Oort-Cloud comet. The Oort Cloud itself is too distant, and Oort-Cloud comets don't show up in our part of the solar system on a predictable schedule. That makes it impossible to send a spacecraft to one: by the time scientists realize an Oort-Cloud comet is close by, it's too late to plan a mission.
"If you would have told me … that we'd have the opportunity to observe a comet, I wouldn't have believed you," Johnston said. "This is once-in-a-lifetime."
NASA orbiters watch as comet flies safely past Mars
Deborah Netburn – Los Angeles Times
Comet Siding Spring sailed past Mars on Sunday, coming 10 times closer to the Red Planet than any comet on record has come to Earth.
At the time of the comet's closest approach at 11:27 a.m., it was just 87,000 miles from Mars. That's less than half the distance between Earth and the moon.
Jim Green, director of planetary science for NASA, said the close encounter between planet and comet was a once-in-a-million-year event.
Comet Siding Spring traveled a long way to make its rendezvous with Mars. Its journey began a million years ago and billions of miles away in the Oort cloud, an icy region at the very outer edge of the solar system.
Scientists don't know what sent the comet hurtling toward the inner solar system -- perhaps the gravity of a passing star bumped it into its million-year orbit. They do think, however, that this is the closest the comet has ever come to the sun.
The comet will continue to sail toward the sun for a few more days before its orbit takes it on another million-year trip toward the outer solar system.
When the comet was discovered in January 2013, NASA officials were concerned that speeding dust particles in the comet's tail might damage the expensive and delicate spacecraft in orbit around Mars.
Computer models showed this was unlikely, but as a precaution, NASA officials made sure Odyssey, MAVEN and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) were hiding on the far side of the planet 80 minutes after the comet's closest approach. This was deemed to be the time of highest risk to the orbiters.
The duck and cover strategy worked out, and NASA said all three orbiters are safe and sound.
"The spacecraft performed flawlessly throughout the comet flyby," said MRO project manager Dan Johnston, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement. "It maneuvered for the planned observations of the comet and emerged unscathed."
- Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Mars is 141,000,000 miles from the sun. Don't think the comet is going to reach the sun in a couple of days, absent warp drive.
Camusfan
at 6:47 PM October 19, 2014
Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the principal investigator of the MAVEN mission also had good news to report. "We're glad the spacecraft came through, we're excited to complete our observations of how the comet affects Mars, and we're eager to get to our primary science phase," he said in a statement.
It will probably take scientists several months to start interpreting the data collected during this flyby, but comet enthusiasts should still keep their eyes on the Internet for the next few days. In a press event last week, officials said the public can expect to see the first comet pictures from the Mars orbiters and probes on Monday or Tuesday.
We can hardly wait!
Aerojet Rocketdyne chosen to help with new mission to Mars
Melissa Wiese - Sacramento Business Journal
Aerojet Rocketdyne is on a mission to Mars. The rocket motor maker has a contract with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make motors to help a Mars rover.
According to a news release, Aerojet would also make the power supply through a U.S. Department of Energy contract to help the rover move and make experiments on Mars.
The NASA mission is expected to launch in 2020, and is based on the design of the current rover, Curiosity, operating on the red planet since 2012. The new mission would be to test rock and soil samples with a potential return to Earth, according to the news release.
"Aerojet Rocketdyne has provided propulsion for every Mars mission since Viking 1 and Viking 2, and we are proud to continue that legacy with a mission designed to drive innovation and technologies that may enable humans to live on our planetary neighbor one day," Warren Yasuhara, vice president of space systems, said in a news release.
The power support for the new Mars rover would be nuclear, with no moving parts, making it robust and able to withstand the conditions on Mars, according to Larry Trager, director of advanced power systems.
Aerojet Rockedyne is a subsidiary of Rancho Cordova-based GenCorp. (NYSE: GY).
NASA Nixes Sunjammer Mission, Cites Integration, Schedule Risk
Dan Leone – Space News
Citing a lack of confidence in its contractor's ability to deliver, NASA has abandoned plans to fly a solar-sail mission in 2015 after investing four years and more than $21 million on the project.
The Sunjammer mission, including the spacecraft and a deployable 1,200-square-meter solar sail, was being developed by L'Garde Inc. of Tustin, California, under a contract awarded in September 2011. The contract is slated to expire this coming December, and NASA has no plans to continue the work, according to an internal memo circulated at NASA headquarters here the week of Oct. 7.
"NASA is working with L'Garde to de-scope the existing contract to close out the documentation and deliver completed work to the Agency by the end of 2014," the memo reads.
NASA spokesman David Steitz said problems with the program surfaced a year ago. "During the annual review last October NASA identified key integration issues that increased the schedule risk," he said via email Oct. 7.
Nathan Barnes, president of L'Garde, said in an Oct. 17 phone interview that the company's final delivery to NASA will be a design for a spacecraft module and solar sail that in theory could propel a small spacecraft by harnessing the energy of photon strikes. L'Garde will turn over its design in a Critical Design Audit scheduled for Nov. 7, he said.
After that, L'Garde will lay off about 16 employees, all of them in Tustin, cutting the company's head count roughly in half. L'Garde employed some 35 people when the Sunjammer project was in full swing.
The mission had been manifested as a secondary payload aboard a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Falcon 9 rocket scheduled to launch the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's Deep Space Climate Observatory in 2015.
As designed, Sunjammer's solar sail — measuring only about 0.005 millimeters thick — would generate about 0.002 pounds of thrust, or roughly equivalent to the amount of energy a packet of artificial sweetener exerts on an upturned palm. But even that would have been enough for Sunjammer to perform station-keeping maneuvers in near-perpetuity at its intended solar orbit roughly 3 million kilometers away from Earth.
The craft was being designed to serve as an experimental space weather buoy and would have used a pair of U.K.-funded instruments to detect so-called coronal mass ejections from the sun that upon reaching Earth can disrupt sensitive electronic systems, including spacecraft.
NASA's current early warning system for these events is the 16-year-old Advanced Composition Explorer.
Barnes admitted L'Garde underperformed relative to the work it promised in the 2011 proposal, "Beyond the Plum Brook Chamber; An In-Space Demonstration of a Mission-Capable Solar Sail," that won it the Sunjammer contract.
L'Garde proposed to develop and build both the experimental solar sail — which would have been the largest ever built — and the spacecraft that would carry it to its operating orbit. The company has built novel space structures before, such as the Inflatable Antenna Experiment that flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour's STS-77 mission in 1996, but has no experience whatsoever with procuring and integrating spacecraft.
Barnes said that in 2011 he reached out to several NASA centers and companies that he believed could build the spacecraft and leave L'Garde free to focus on the solar sail. None of those he approached — he only identified NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California — took him up on the offer.
Rather than give up on the opportunity to land a NASA contract, L'Garde decided to bring the spacecraft development in house. It did not work out, and as of Oct. 17, the company had taken delivery of about $2 million worth of spacecraft hardware including a hydrazine tank from ATK Space Systems of Commerce, California, and four mono-propellant thrusters from Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California.
Sunjammer would have used its propellant-free solar sail to maintain its intended orbit, but it still would have needed a chemical propulsion system to reach that orbit, Barnes said.
NASA is "not ruling out possible opportunities for flight of the sail in the coming years," Steitz said.
Steitz would not speculate on the timing of a future mission, but Barnes said it would have to be a launch profile similar to the one Falcon 9 will provide to get NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory on its way to the gravitationally stable Earth-sun Lagrange Point 1.
"The closest date we were hearing bantered about was 2018," Barnes said.
Sunjammer enjoyed a run of good publicity during its development, including on Capitol Hill, and one Republican on the House Science Committee said he was disappointed to learn NASA had put the brakes on the project.
"Obviously, I'm very disappointed that we won't complete this," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) wrote in an Oct. 17 email. "We never seem to be able to afford these small technology development projects that can have potentially huge impacts ... but we can find billions and billions of dollars to build a massive launch vehicle with no payloads, and no missions," he said, referring to NASA's Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket.
"It looks like it just wasn't big enough for us to afford it," Rohrabacher added.
What's Happening in Space Policy October 20-24, 2014
Here is our list of space policy-related events in the coming week, October 20-24, 2014, and any insights we can offer about them. Congress returns on November 12.
During the Week
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has scheduled a second hearing on Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC's) lawsuit against the government vis a vis the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCAP) contracts for Tuesday at 2:30 pm ET (it's not listed on our calendar because we don't list court dates for lawsuits since they are rarely open to the public). The first hearing was on Friday, where the court allowed SpaceX and Boeing to intervene in the case. The court is also considering SNC's request to keep most of the filings under seal because some of the material may be proprietary and some is protected under SNC's protest to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). SNC is protesting NASA's award of the CCtCAP contracts to Boeing and SpaceX. Ordinarily, under the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA), work would stop under those contracts until GAO rules on SNC's protest (it has until January 5, 2015).
NASA did issue a stop-work order, but later rescinded it based on its statutory authority to avoid significant adverse consequences. SNC is challenging the legality of that rescission. Check back with SpacePolicyOnline.com to learn about what happens on Tuesday.
There are many other interesting events on tap during the week as well. On Monday, the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (which administers the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space), the Mexican Space Agency and another Mexican organization, CICESE, will hold a symposium on Making Space Technology Accessible and Affordable. The opening ceremony and a press conference -- including the head of the Mexican Space Agency, Javier Mendieta -- will be webcast. The third of three International Space Station (ISS) spacewalks in as many weeks is scheduled for Wednesday. This time it is two Russians, Max Suraev and Alexander Samokutyaev, who will step outside. NASA TV will cover it beginning at 9:00 am ET.
Those and other events we know about as of Sunday afternoon are listed below.
Monday, October 20
Wednesday, October 22
Wednesday-Sunday, October 22-26
Thursday, October 23
Dedication ceremony honors Wilcutt, Finney
Justin Story – Park City Daily News
Marine Col. Terry Wilcutt and Naval Cmdr. David Finney grew up within minutes of each other, but it would be several years and several thousand feet in the air before their paths would cross.
Wilcutt, a native of Russellville, and Finney, originally from Auburn, were honored Saturday at Aviation Heritage Park in Warren County during a dedication ceremony for a restored NASA T-38 Talon airplane, the supersonic jet on which Wilcutt, Neil Armstrong, John Glenn and other astronauts trained before flying missions into space.
Wilcutt is a veteran of four space flights who served as commander on two space shuttle missions and piloted two others.
He is now director of Safety and Mission Assurance at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
For all his accomplishments, Wilcutt still recalls the training missions he flew while under the watchful eye of Finney, who was chief of the Johnson Space Center Aircraft Operations Division in the Flight Crew Operations Directorate.
"You knew that he wasn't going to miss a thing," Wilcutt said of Finney, who died in 2010. "He would inform you if he let something slip."
Finney served in Vietnam, flying several combat missions as a Naval pilot.
Upon retiring from the Navy, Finney joined NASA in 1987 as a civilian research pilot and engineering manager at the Johnson Space Center.
Wilcutt said Finney exuded impeccable leadership that culminated in his being awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the space agency's highest honor, in 2008.
During his remarks, Wilcutt touched on how appropriate it seemed that Finney's name on the restored Talon was positioned outside the instructor's seat.
"He routinely lived up to and exceeded very high expectations," Wilcutt said. "His technical expertise, moral courage, personal integrity and leadership set a standard for all of us."
NASA Administrator Gen. Charles Bolden said Wilcutt serves as the agency's "conscience" on issues of safety and reliability.
Bolden marveled at the restored aircraft on display at the park and said that the Talon, which was relocated to the park last month, should serve as a piece of living history to inspire young visitors who may not know about the community's ties to the space program.
"These are machines back here, but what they really do is tell a story, and it's the story of the people who flew them and prepared them," Bolden said.
David Finney's brother, retired Naval Rear Adm. Jim Finney, said David's career has served as a source of pride for his surviving family.
Jim Finney also recalled the many childhood hunting and fishing jaunts he and his brother took in the area.
"He was very willing to share his knowledge and his humor," Finney said.
Wilcutt said after the ceremony that he felt he was born with a desire to fly, recalling a fascination with the silvery streaks left by passing jets when he played baseball as a child.
Wilcutt said he hoped that young visitors who see the names on the Talon and other aircraft in the park become curious about the people associated with the artifacts and motivated to pursue a career in the skies.
"This park is an investment in our kids, and I hope to see a return in that investment," Wilcutt said.
END
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