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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: November 20, 2014 2:25:16 PM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Thursday – November 20, 2014
NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsThursday – November 20, 2014HEADLINES AND LEADSBoeing to issue layoff notices for Huntsville employees, number of cuts not yet knownLucy Berry - Alabama.comBoeing confirmed Wednesday evening it will begin issuing layoff notices to a small percentage of its 1,000 Huntsville employees on Friday.Return to the moonDecades after that first small step, space thinkers are finally getting serious about our nearest neighborKevin Hartnett – The Boston GlobeTHIS WEEK, the European Space Agency made headlines with the first successful landing of a spacecraft on a comet, 317 million miles from Earth. It was an upbeat moment after two American crashes: the unmanned private rocket that exploded on its way to resupply the International Space Station, and the Virgin Galactic spaceplane that crashed in the Mojave Desert, killing a pilot and raising questions about whether individual businesses are up to the task of operating in space.Russia Preparing Joint Moon Exploration Agreement With EU: ScientistSputnik NewsLev Zelyony, director of the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences said that scientists from Russia and the EU are preparing an agreement on joint Moon exploration.Next SpaceX launch of ISS cargo set for Dec. 16James Dean – Florida TodayNASA today confirmed SpaceX's next launch of International Space Station cargo from Cape Canaveral is scheduled for 2:31 p.m. Dec. 16.Sarah Brightman may soon start medical tests for tourist space flightITAR TASS, of RussiaBritish singer Sarah Brightman who is set to go into orbit in 2015 may arrive in Moscow in late December to undergo pre-flight medical tests, the head of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems said on Wednesday.McAuliffe wants risks shared for future rocket launches at Wallops IslandMichael Martz - Richmond Times-DispatchGov. Terry McAuliffe is seeking federal help for repairs to a state-owned rocket launch pad on Wallops Island and possibly a new deal with the commercial space flight company responsible for the aborted launch of a space station supply mission there last month.Orbital + NASA How Many Balloons Will US$185M Buy? Science Balloons, That IsSatnews DailyOrbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) announced its Technical Services Division (TSD) in Greenbelt, Maryland was awarded a contract by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to operate the space agency's Science Balloon Operations program. The contract, which was won in a competitive selection process, is valued up to approximately $185 million over its five-year term. The NASA Balloon Operations Contract (NBOC) is administered by the Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in Wallops Island, Virginia. You can learn more about the program here.Russia, China to agree on space exploration program in early 2015Itar Tass, of RussiaRussian and Chinese scientists will agree on a plan of cooperation in outer space research in January 2015, director of Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Space Research Lev Zeleny told reporters on Wednesday.Rosetta Comet Orbiter Poised to Deliver as Dark Lander SleepsJohn Lauerman – Bloomberg NewsAs the first probe ever to be stationed on a comet hibernates, attention is turning to the Rosetta orbiter that's still buzzing around the space rock, just a few miles from its surface.Never Mind Philae's Topsy-Turvy Touchdown, Its Brief Mission Advances Comet ScienceEven the lander's missteps generated valuable dataClara Moskowitz - Scientific AmericanFor a mission that lasted two days instead of its planned one to six weeks, the scientists behind the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Philae comet lander are surprisingly cheerful. "We're extremely happy with how the mission went," lander control team member Valentina Lommatsch said during an ESA press conference November 14. "Beyond words," gushed Matt Taylor, project scientist for the Rosetta mission, which launched in 2004 and released the Philae lander on November 12.COMPLETE STORIESBoeing to issue layoff notices for Huntsville employees, number of cuts not yet knownLucy Berry - Alabama.comBoeing confirmed Wednesday evening it will begin issuing layoff notices to a small percentage of its 1,000 Huntsville employees on Friday.Spokeswoman Patti Soloveichik did not specify how many workers will be affected by the layoffs, but said more information will be available Thursday. She confirmed the layoffs are related to NASA's Space Launch System, a deep space rocket.The affected employees will work at the Huntsville facility through late January. Soloveichik said the company is actively working to place workers into other roles at Boeing."Boeing has hundreds of programs," she said. "There are a lot of opportunities for our very smart and talented Huntsville people."Boeing has 60 days from the time notices are issued Friday to find work for the employees within the company. Soloveichik, who anticipates impacts to Boeing's schedule, procurements and staffing, said the company has been successful in the past in placing Huntsville workers on other programs in town and throughout the company.Earlier this year, Boeing finalized a $2.8 billion contract to design, develop and build the core stages and avionics for the SLS."The contract included all efforts and materials for two core stage production units and synergy with exploration upper stage development and did not include year-over-year funding phasing," she said. "Boeing and NASA are currently discussing FY15 and FY16 funding and schedule. NASA will align the Boeing stages contract to available funding and the SLS launch schedule."Return to the moonDecades after that first small step, space thinkers are finally getting serious about our nearest neighborKevin Hartnett – The Boston GlobeTHIS WEEK, the European Space Agency made headlines with the first successful landing of a spacecraft on a comet, 317 million miles from Earth. It was an upbeat moment after two American crashes: the unmanned private rocket that exploded on its way to resupply the International Space Station, and the Virgin Galactic spaceplane that crashed in the Mojave Desert, killing a pilot and raising questions about whether individual businesses are up to the task of operating in space.During this same period, there was one other piece of space news, one far less widely reported in the United States: On Nov. 1, China successfully returned a moon probe to Earth. That mission follows China's landing of the Yutu moon rover late last year, and its announcement that it will conduct a sample-return mission to the moon in 2017.With NASA and the Europeans focused on robot exploration of distant targets, a moon landing might not seem like a big deal: We've been there, and other countries are just catching up. But in recent years, interest in the moon has begun to percolate again, both in the United States and abroad—and it's catalyzing a surprisingly diverse set of plans for how our nearby satellite will contribute to our space future.China, India, and Japan have all completed lunar missions in the last decade, and have more in mind. Both China and Japan want to build unmanned bases in the early part of the next decade as a prelude to returning a human to the moon. In the United States, meanwhile, entrepreneurs are hatching plans for lunar commerce; one company even promises to ferry freight for paying customers to the moon as early as next year. Scientists are hatching more far-out ideas to mine hydrogen from the poles and build colonies deep in sky-lit lunar caves.This rush of activity has been spurred in part by the Google Lunar X Prize, a $20 million award, expiring in 2015, for the first private team to land a working rover on the moon and prove it by sending back video. It is also driven by a certain understanding: If we really want to launch expeditions deeper into space, our first goal should be to travel safely to the moon—and maybe even figure out how to live there.Entrepreneurial visions of opening the moon to commerce can seem fanciful, especially in light of the Virgin Galactic and Orbital Sciences crashes, which remind us how far we are from having a truly functional space economy. They also face an uncertain legal environment—in a sense, space belongs to everyone and to no one—whose boundaries will be tested as soon as missions start to succeed. Still, as these plans take shape, they're a reminder that leaping blindly is sometimes a necessary step in opening any new frontier."All I can say is if lunar commerce is foolish," said Columbia University astrophysicist Arlin Crotts in an e-mail, "there are a lot of industrious and dedicated fools out there!"When the 1969 moon landing captivated people around the world, it seemed like the beginning of something amazing, a new relationship between Earth and its nearest satellite. Instead, it turned out to be essentially irreproducible—a feat fueled by Cold War competition and an astonishing outlay of national resources.At its height, the Apollo program accounted for more than 4 percent of the federal budget. Today, with a mothballed shuttle and a downscaled space station, it can seem almost imaginary that humans actually walked on the moon and came back—and that we did it in the age of adding machines and rotary phones."In five years, we jumped into the middle of the 21st century," says Roger Handberg, a political scientist who studies space policy at the University of Central Florida, speaking of the Apollo program. "No one thought that 40 years later we'd be in a situation where the International Space Station is the height of our ambition."Without a clear goal and a geopolitical rivalry to drive it, the space program had to compete with a lot of other national priorities. The dramatic moon shot became an outlier in the longer, slower story of building scientific achievements.Now, as those achievements accumulate, the moon is coming back into the picture. For a variety of reasons, it's pretty much guaranteed to play a central role in any meaningful excursions we take into space. It's the nearest planetary body to our own—238,900 miles away, which the Apollo voyages covered in three days. It has low gravity, which makes it relatively easy to get onto and off of the lunar surface, and it has no atmosphere, which allows telescopes a clearer view into deep space.The moon itself also still holds some scientific mysteries. A 2007 report on the future of lunar exploration from the National Academies called the moon a place of "profound scientific value," pointing out that it's a unique place to study how planets formed, including ours. The surface of the moon is incredibly stable—no tectonic plates, no active volcanoes, no wind, no rain—which means that the loose rock, or regolith, on the moon's surface looks the way the surface of the earth might have looked billions of years ago.NASA still launches regular orbital missions to the moon, but its focus is on more distant points. (In a 2010 speech, President Obama brushed off the moon, saying, "We've been there before.") For emerging space powers, though, the moon is still the trophy destination that it was for the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s. In 2008 an Indian probe relayed the best evidence yet that there's water on the moon, locked in ice deep in craters at the lunar poles. China landed a rover on the surface of the moon in December 2013, though it soon malfunctioned. Despite that setback, China plans a sample-return mission in 2017, which would be the first since a Soviet capsule brought back 6 ounces of lunar soil in 1976.The moon has also drawn the attention of space-minded entrepreneurs. One of the most obvious opportunities is to deliver scientific instruments for government agencies and universities. This is an attractive, ready clientele in theory, explains Paul Spudis, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, though there's a hitch: "The basic problem with that as a market," he says, "is scientists never have money of their own."One company aspiring to the delivery role is Astrobotic, a startup of young Carnegie Mellon engineers based in Pittsburgh, which is currently positioning itself to be "FedEx to the moon," says John Thornton, the company's CEO. Astrobotic plans to fly with SpaceX, the commercial space firm founded by Elon Musk, to use a Falcon 9 for an inaugural delivery trip in 2015, just in time to claim the Google Lunar X Prize. Thornton says most of the technology is in place for the mission, and that the biggest remaining hurdle is figuring out how to engineer a soft, automated moon landing.Astrobotic is charging $1.2 million per kilogram—you can, in fact, place an order on its website—and Thornton says the company has five customers so far. They include the entities you might expect, like NASA, but also less obvious ones, like a company that wants to deliver human ashes for permanent interment and a Japanese soft drink manufacturer that wants to place its signature beverage, Pocari Sweat, on the moon as a publicity stunt. Astrobotic is joined in this small sci-fi economy by Moon Express out of Mountain View, Calif., another company competing for the Google Lunar X Prize.Plans like these are the low-hanging fruit of the lunar economy, the easiest ideas to imagine and execute. Longer-scale thinkers are envisioning ways that the moon will play a larger role in human affairs—and that, says Crotts, is where "serious resource exploitation" comes in.If this triggers fears of a mined-out moon, be reassured: "Apollo went there and found nothing we wanted. Had we found anything we really wanted, we would have gone back and there would have been a new gold rush," says Roger Launius, the former chief historian of NASA and now a curator at the National Air and Space Museum.There is one possible exception: helium-3, an isotope used in nuclear fusion research. It is rare on Earth but thought to be abundant on the surface of the moon, which could make the moon an important energy source if we ever figure out how to harness fusion energy. More immediately intriguing is the billion tons of water ice the scientific community increasingly believes is stored at the poles. If it's there, that opens the possibility of sustained lunar settlement—the water could be consumed as a liquid, or split into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel.The presence of water could also open a potentially ripe market providing services to the multibillion dollar geosynchronous satellite industry. "We lose billions of dollars a year of geosynchronous satellites because they drift out of orbit," says Crotts. In a new book, "The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation," he outlines plans for what he calls a "cislunar tug": a space tugboat of sorts that would commute between the moon and orbiting satellites, resupplying them with propellant, derived from the hydrogen in water, and nudging them back into the correct orbital position.In the long term, the truly irreplaceable value of the moon may lie elsewhere, as a staging area for expeditions deeper into space. The most expensive and dangerous part of space travel is lifting cargo out of and back into the Earth's atmosphere, and some people imagine cutting out those steps by establishing a permanent base on the moon. In this scenario, we'd build lunar colonies deep in natural caves in order to escape the micrometeorites and toxic doses of solar radiation that bombard the moon, all the while preparing for trips to more distant points.That may sound far-fetched, or at least way beyond our capabilities and priorities now. But in a certain sense, it casts the moon in a familiar role. "The moon is your gas station," Crotts says. Even in space, a gas station may be something that everyone needs.The list of technological hurdles is long, and there's also a legal one, at least where commerce is concerned. The moon falls under the purview of the Outer Space Treaty, which the United States signed in 1967, and which prohibits countries from claiming any territory on the moon—or anywhere else in space—as their own."It is totally unclear whether a private sector entity can extract resources from the moon and gain title or property rights to it," says Joanne Gabrynowicz, an expert on space law and currently a visiting professor at Beijing Institute of Technology School of Law. She adds that a later document, the 1979 Moon Treaty, which the United States has not signed, anticipates mining on the moon, but leaves open the question of how property rights would be determined.There are lots of reasons the moon may never realize its potential to mint the world's first trillionaires, as some space enthusiasts have predicted. But to the most dedicated space entrepreneurs, the economic and legal arguments reflect short-sighted thinking. They point out that when European explorers set sail in the 15th and 16th centuries, they assumed they'd find a fortune in gold waiting for them on the other side of the Atlantic. The real prizes ended up being very different—and slow to materialize."When we settled the New World, we didn't bring a whole lot back to Europe [at first]," Thornton says. "You have to create infrastructure to enable that kind of transfer of goods." He believes that in the case of the moon, we'll figure out how to do that eventually.To others, the correct analogy for moon exploration isn't the bountiful New World, but another remote location on Earth—one that matters for researchers, but has never become a place people want to spend time. "The moon is going to be done in the context of prestige science," Launius says, "and it will look a lot like Antarctica."Roger Handberg is as clear-eyed as anyone about the reasons why the moon may never become more than an object of wonder, but he also understands why we can't turn away from it completely. That challenge, in the end, may finally be what lures us back."The moon is there; you walk out most nights of the year, you see it," he says. "There's a kind of sense of unfulfillment that we went there, and nobody thought it would be this long between that flight and now."Russia Preparing Joint Moon Exploration Agreement With EU: ScientistSputnik NewsLev Zelyony, director of the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences said that scientists from Russia and the EU are preparing an agreement on joint Moon exploration.Scientists from Russia and the European Union are preparing an agreement on joint exploration of the Moon, Lev Zelyony, director of the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Wednesday."There is a governmental agreement on the ExoMars program and now we are preparing an agreement on the participation of the European Space Agency in the exploration of the Moon," Zelyony said at the press center of news agency Rossiya Segodnya.According to the scientist, the leaders of the European Space Agency and Russian Space Agency Roscosmos have affirmed their readiness to fulfill existing agreements and to sign new ones."A big, huge number of contacts with European scholars over the years, dating back to the Soviet era, have never stopped. Generations pass, but the friendship remains. Many Russian scientists conduct experiments on western devices, all of this comes under the agreements," Zelyony added.The exploration of the Moon and Mars is a priority for the Russian space program. A landing on the Moon is planned in 2030 with the subsequent deployment of a manned base, where test sites for the accumulation and transfer of energy over large distances and new engines tests will be gradually deployed. Another heavy launch vehicle carrying up to 80 tons is being developed for the implementation of plans to fly to the Moon.In spring 2012, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos agreed on the development of the so-called ExoMars program.The research program includes the launch of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in 2016, with the goal of collecting data on atmospheric gases present in low concentrations. The project also involves the exploration of ice found in the soil on Mars, as well as landing the ExoMars Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM).The Mars rover is expected to land in 2018 and perform geological analyses of the planet's soil and search for traces of life.In August Daniil Rodionov, a Russian scientific supervisor on the project, said that Russia will create a landing deck and provide a range of unique scientific equipment for the Russian-European mission to Mars.Next SpaceX launch of ISS cargo set for Dec. 16James Dean – Florida TodayNASA today confirmed SpaceX's next launch of International Space Station cargo from Cape Canaveral is scheduled for 2:31 p.m. Dec. 16.The launch previously had been listed as no earlier than Dec. 9.The mission is SpaceX's fifth of 12 under a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA, and the third launched during 2014.The most recent mission launched in September. An unmanned Dragon capsule successfully returned to Earth about a month later.SpaceX is one of two U.S. companies under NASA contract to deliver cargo to the ISS.Orbital Sciences Corp., however, is recovering from an October launch failure that saw its Antares rocket explode seconds after liftoff from Virginia's Eastern Shore.Orbital is making plans to launch at least one Cygnus spacecraft on another company's rocket -- possibly from Florida -- before the Antares can resume flights from Virginia in 2016 with a different rocket engine.NASA has no near-term concerns about a shortage of supplies on the station. Three more crew members are due to launch from Kazakhstan to the orbiting research complex around 4 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday.SpaceX's launch will be the 14th of its Falcon 9 rocket since 2010. The company plans to continue efforts to recover the rocket's first stage, and for the first time could try to land the booster on a platform deployed in the Atlantic Ocean, if the structure is ready.The resupply mission now is scheduled 12 days after NASA plans to launch its Orion exploration capsule on a test flight from Cape Canaveral. The Exploration Flight Test-1 mission is targeting a 7:05 a.m. Dec. 4 liftoff on a Delta IV Heavy rocket.Sarah Brightman may soon start medical tests for tourist space flightITAR TASS, of RussiaBritish singer Sarah Brightman who is set to go into orbit in 2015 may arrive in Moscow in late December to undergo pre-flight medical tests, the head of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems said on Wednesday."Medical tests are scheduled for the end of December but Ms Brightman has not confirmed her arrival yet," Igor Ushakov told TASS.A source at the Russian cosmonaut training center said earlier that Brightman, 54, will not be allowed to start her pre-flight training in mid-January without permission of medics.Brightman's flight is scheduled for September 1-11, 2015.The Phantom of the Opera star who announced her plans to go into orbit in 2012 may become the first professional singer in space and the eighth space tourist to visit the International Space Station.The cost of her flight remains a commercial secret but sources have suggested that it was dozens of millions of dollars.McAuliffe wants risks shared for future rocket launches at Wallops IslandMichael Martz - Richmond Times-DispatchGov. Terry McAuliffe is seeking federal help for repairs to a state-owned rocket launch pad on Wallops Island and possibly a new deal with the commercial space flight company responsible for the aborted launch of a space station supply mission there last month.McAuliffe has asked the state's two U.S. senators, Mark R. Warner and Timothy M. Kaine, to look for budget help in Congress in paying for repairs estimated at $13 million to $20 million to the nearly $150 million launch pad financed largely by state bonds.The governor also has directed his staff to find ways to ensure that its partners, Orbital Sciences Corp. and NASA, share the financial risk to the state from future launches of medium-sized rockets at the state spaceport on the Eastern Shore. Both the state and Orbital are indemnified from responsibility for damage to the other party's assets at the spaceport under a memorandum of understanding first signed in 2008."We are not going to have a repeat of this in the future," said Secretary of Transportation Aubrey L. Layne Jr., who is a board member of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, which owns the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island.Layne confirmed Tuesday that the McAuliffe administration may seek to renegotiate the memorandum of understanding and launch services agreement with Orbital that the state revised substantially in 2012 under the administration of then-Gov. Bob McDonnell."If it takes a renegotiation or a different MOU, then the answer is yes," he said.Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski said the company is "certainly in dialogue" with the state and NASA about repairs to the launch facility and financial risk to the state, which self-insures the launch pad through the authority."We'll work through this issue together," Beneski said Tuesday. "I don't know exactly how it will come out."Orbital was carrying out a $200 million mission for NASA to resupply the International Space Station when its Antares rocket failed and exploded shortly after liftoff Oct. 28.The company said earlier this month that it believes the failure was caused by a turbo pump in one of the rocket's reconditioned Soviet engines, which it plans to stop using for space launches.Layne said the explosion did not damage the launch pad superstructure or its fuel tanks, but caused up to $20 million in damage to support systems, such as piping and lightning protection.Beneski said it's too soon for a precise damage estimate, but added, "that seems to be in the ballpark."Warner and Kaine, both Democrats, issued a joint statement Tuesday that pledged to work with "colleagues from both parties, both chambers ... to see if there may be federal resources available to help rebound from this setback.""The Wallops facility is a key regional asset, and it will continue to have an important role in NASA's shift to private sector launch-partners," they said.Leaders on the General Assembly money committees say they also support continued commercial flight at Wallops, but want protection for the state from the full liability of damage to the spaceport launch pad that Virginia contributed about $100 million to build."I'm very supportive of efforts at Wallops Island, but it's got to make sense for Virginia at the end of the day," said House Appropriations Chairman S. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, who favors renegotiating the memorandum of understanding to have more shared responsibility going forward.Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, chairman of the Senate Finance subcommittee on economic development and a member of its transportation panel, said Tuesday that he is "still optimistic about Wallops Island" and its potential to launch important scientific missions to space.However, Watkins added, "I think it's entirely appropriate to go in and renegotiate that agreement. No one expected this to happen, but it did."Orbital expects to resume space flights at Wallops in 2016. In the meantime, it is looking for other private facilities to launch its Cygnus spacecraft next year to resupply the space station under a $1.9 billion contract with NASA."We don't really have a choice right now," Beneski said. "We're trying to be good partners with NASA and keep the supply line to the station."Layne said the state would be due compensation under the agreement if Orbital were to launch from facilities other than Wallops."We have let them know what our expectations are," he said.But Layne said the McAuliffe administration said it is not backing off its support of the commercial space flight initiative, for which it provides a subsidy of $16 million a year."This is not a matter of us not wanting to continue operating," he said. "it's a matter of making sure our assets are protected."Orbital + NASA How Many Balloons Will US$185M Buy? Science Balloons, That IsSatnews DailyOrbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) announced its Technical Services Division (TSD) in Greenbelt, Maryland was awarded a contract by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to operate the space agency's Science Balloon Operations program. The contract, which was won in a competitive selection process, is valued up to approximately $185 million over its five-year term. The NASA Balloon Operations Contract (NBOC) is administered by the Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in Wallops Island, Virginia. You can learn more about the program here.Orbital's TSD will provide program management, mission planning, engineering services and field operations for the scientific balloon program, which has a 50-plus year history of support for high-altitude scientific research. The NBOC is executed primarily from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas. Orbital TSD personnel will conduct balloon missions from locations in the U.S. and around the world, with flight rates of approximately 15 per year.Mr. John Pullen, Orbital's Senior Vice President and General Manager of its Technical Services Division, said, "Orbital is honored to have been awarded the Science Balloon Operations contract by NASA. We are excited to be part of an advanced research and technology program with a distinguished legacy of providing critical scientific data for experimenters around the world. We look forward to playing an important role in helping to maintain Wallops Flight Facility's position as the world leader in scientific ballooning and suborbital space and Earth science research."Over more than five decades that scientific research has been conducted using high-altitude balloons, there has been a vast increase in experiment sophistication, flight frequency and mission durations. The growth in balloon size, payload mass and electronics support has been dramatic, increasing from an average payload mass of approximately 400 pounds in the 1960's to payloads that commonly weigh 5,000 pounds and are routinely carried aloft by balloons of 20 to 30 million cubic feet today. The NBOC supports scientific research in areas such as X-ray, ultra-violet, optical and infrared astronomy, as well as in atmospheric conditions, magnetospherics, micrometeorite particles and cosmic microwave background studies. In addition to the balloon operations conducted in the United States, international operations have been carried out in Australia, South America, Europe, Asia and Antarctica.The NBOC contract adds to Orbital's large presence at WFF, which also includes the prime contractor role for NASA's Sounding Rocket Operations Program-2 (NSROC-2), and from which the company assembles, tests and launches Antares and Minotaur space launch vehicles. With the addition of the NBOC program, Orbital will maintain a permanent WFF-based workforce of approximately 250 employees, with substantial influx of other employees and contractors during space launch operations.About OrbitalOrbital develops and manufactures small- and medium-class rockets and space systems for commercial, military and civil government customers. The company's primary products are satellites and launch vehicles, including low-Earth orbit, geosynchronous-Earth orbit and planetary exploration spacecraft for communications, remote sensing, scientific and defense missions; human-rated space systems for Earth-orbit, lunar and other missions; ground- and air-launched rockets that deliver satellites into orbit; and missile defense systems that are used as interceptor and target vehicles. Orbital also provides research rocket and satellite subsystems and space-related technical services to U.S. Government agencies and laboratories. More information about Orbital can be found at http://www.orbital.com. Follow the company on Twitter @OrbitalSciences.Russia, China to agree on space exploration program in early 2015Itar Tass, of RussiaRussian and Chinese scientists will agree on a plan of cooperation in outer space research in January 2015, director of Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Space Research Lev Zeleny told reporters on Wednesday."We have discussed plans of Russian-Chinese experiments with the chief of the similar institute just a week ago. We have a long list of 15-20 issues on each side. We will merge them at a meeting in January," Zeleny said.He noted that major potential of cooperation with China have not been tapped yet. Meanwhile, the Russian academician noted that China keeps mistrusting Russian partners over the 2011 aborted launch of the Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt with a Chinese micro-satellite installed on it."Chinese partners find our industry blamed for this. They had some indisposition to us, because not everything was done correctly towards them," Zeleny added.Rosetta Comet Orbiter Poised to Deliver as Dark Lander SleepsJohn Lauerman – Bloomberg NewsAs the first probe ever to be stationed on a comet hibernates, attention is turning to the Rosetta orbiter that's still buzzing around the space rock, just a few miles from its surface.The Philae lander's batteries lasted just about 60 hours before going dark. Rosetta is expected to observe the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet for more than a year, perhaps into 2016, said Kathrin Altwegg, an experimental physicist from the University of Bern who's working on orbiter experiments."Of course the lander is exciting," she said in a telephone interview. "The science from the orbiter is probably more extensive and ultimately more valuable, because you have more time and better instruments."Unlike the lander, which is fixed in one spot, Rosetta will observe the comet from all angles for months to come, Altwegg said. When the comet is visible to Earth telescopes in August, Rosetta will still be there, she said. It will pass as close as 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from the comet's surface, or lower than an airplane's cruising altitude of about 30,000 feet (5.7 miles).Philae bounced out of its intended, sunny landing site Nov. 12 after its anchoring harpoons failed to fire. European Space Agency scientists expect the lander to get a solar energy boost and "wake up" as it approaches the sun, Altwegg said.Lander ExperimentsBefore running out of power, the lander performed a number of experiments aimed at understanding the comet and its structure. One involved sending a radio signal through the rock to the orbiter. Researchers are studying the transmission to see what it can tell about how comets form and how they break up."Knowing the inner structure of the comet is the most exciting aspect of the mission," said Essam Heggy, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It's like medical imaging."The experiment may also provide clues as to how planets develop, too, said Joel Parker, a director at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who's a member of the Rosetta science team. Both the orbiter and the lander were designed to study the comet for clues to the origins of the solar system and life on Earth. Scientists said that comets may provide ready-made ingredients for life, such as water and complex molecules.Comet OriginsPlanets probably began their existence in a hot, molten state that would have been inhospitable to water and complex molecules, Parker said. Comets have their origin deep in space, which may have served as a "cold storage" reservoir for these substances, he said.Complex molecules can occur in mirror-image forms, called chirals. Most of those on Earth occur in what scientists think of as a left-handed form, but it's possible that the comet may have a preference for right-handed versions, said Mark Hofstadter, also a planetary scientist at JPL.The orbiter can also distinguish among various versions of elements, called isotopes, that are in the comet, Hofstadter said."By looking at the details of abundances in the comet and comparing them to Earth, we can get an idea of not only what temperatures and conditions were when the comet was formed, we can get an idea of whether comets provided these molecules to Earth," he said.Multiple missions and experiments have shown that comets and asteroids harbor organic molecules, which contain carbon, an element in all forms of Earth-bound life, Parker said. Close analysis has also found glycine, one of the amino acids that make up protein, and bases, which are needed to make DNA, in space rocks.Tough NutBefore going dark, Philae attempted to drill into the surface of the comet and sweep up some crumbs for analysis. While the drill deployed, no rock pieces were obtained, suggesting that the comet was a tougher nut to crack than anticipated.The orbiter can still answer some questions that the lander left hanging. As the comet approaches the sun at the rate of about a kilometer per second, more ices on and beneath its surface will heat and turn directly into gas. The reaction with the sun is almost like a laboratory experiment itself, and Rosetta is equipped with a sensor, called a mass spectrometer, that can see what these gases and the comet contain, Altwegg said.Puzzling QuestionsOne of the most puzzling questions that scientists have about life on Earth has to do with the original source of water, Parker said. The orbiter can analyze gases released by ice on the comet to determine whether it's rich in deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen, one of the two elements that make up water, he said. A match in the mix of heavy water may show whether comets could have borne water to Earth, he said.Scientists are anxiously awaiting the data from the orbiter to answer such questions, Parker said."The lander did an amazing job," he said. "A lot of people think that's the end of Rosetta, and they're going to be surprised a few weeks from now when we'll have fantastic new pictures and observations."Never Mind Philae's Topsy-Turvy Touchdown, Its Brief Mission Advances Comet ScienceEven the lander's missteps generated valuable dataClara Moskowitz - Scientific AmericanFor a mission that lasted two days instead of its planned one to six weeks, the scientists behind the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Philae comet lander are surprisingly cheerful. "We're extremely happy with how the mission went," lander control team member Valentina Lommatsch said during an ESA press conference November 14. "Beyond words," gushed Matt Taylor, project scientist for the Rosetta mission, which launched in 2004 and released the Philae lander on November 12.These reactions might be surprising, given that Philae failed to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko as intended. Instead of touching down on a safe spot on the comet and latching on with harpoons, it bounced off the surface twice before finally settling down next to a cliff that is blocking sunlight from reaching its solar panels. As a result, Philae won't be able to take long-term readings as planned; it has also had trouble drilling below the surface to collect samples for analysis, which is a disappointment. Still, the mission has been overwhelmingly successful, accomplishing between 80 to 90 percent of its main science goals, said Stephan Ulamec, lander manager at the German Aerospace Center. And even the elements of the mission that strayed from the plan, such as the bounced landing, have been useful. Because Philae technically touched down in three places before settling, rather than making a single landing, it was able to measure the magnetic field surrounding the comet at three different points, Taylor said.
Furthermore, many of Philae's "failures" provided valuable data in themselves. For example, the thermometer probe in its Multi-Purpose Sensors for Surface and Subsurface Science instrument was unable to hammer more than a few millimeters into the comet's surface to take temperature measurements as planned. That told the scientists the comet's ground was much harder than predicted, with a strength comparable to solid ice—useful knowledge for a mission whose main job was to characterize a comet's surface. This strength may have caused Philae to bounce as high as it did after its first landing attempt, when its harpoons, intended to attach it to the comet, failed to deploy. "Was it perfect? No," says planetary scientist Bruce Betts, director of science and technology at the Planetary Society. "Was it a huge success? Yes, definitely."
Although Philae's landing was not quite graceful, it was the first ever "soft" landing on a comet. (NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft dropped an impactor probe into a comet in 2005, but that was meant to crash into and disrupt the surface to create ejecta for measurement.) "We finally have ground truth from a comet," Betts says. "This was a very hard thing to try to do, and to have achieved getting science data back at all is a success at some level."
The lack of sunlight to recharge Philae's batteries cut its mission short, sending the lander into hibernation on November 15, after just two days and seven hours. Given that the spacecraft's primary science goals were mostly planned to take place during the first 72 hours or so after landing, however, this was not as big a loss as it may seem. In its short active time Philae managed to operate all of its science instruments—it analyzed the chemical makeup of gas around the comet, captured x-ray spectrometry, imaged the surface and measured temperature and magnetic properties there, among other accomplishments.
All of Philae's events, good and bad, will inform future missions to small solar system bodies. Many of the glitches reinforce just how difficult it is to land on a comet, which does not have enough gravity to pull objects into orbit around it or hold them on its surface. Comet 67P, for example, has just one one-hundred-thousandth of Earth's gravity. Scientists planning NASA's Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification and Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission, which will launch in 2016 to return a sample from an asteroid, is taking particularly close notes. "We are eagerly watching what you learn from actually operating in this environment and will apply that," Gordon Johnston, OSIRIS-REx program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said during the ESA broadcast.
Philae may not have had its last word quite yet. Although the lander is currently "sleeping" after exhausting its onboard battery, there is a chance it will wake again if enough sunlight hits its solar panels as the comet moves closer to the sun. Comet 67P is due to make its closest approach, called perihelion, in August 2015. Even if it doesn't reawaken, Philae has done its scientists proud. "Let's stop looking at things we could have done if everything had worked properly," said Andrea Accomazzo, the Rosetta flight operations director. "Let's look at what we have done, what we have achieved. This is unique and will be unique forever."ENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
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