Friday, November 15, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - November 15, 2013 and JSC Today



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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: November 15, 2013 7:04:43 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - November 15, 2013 and JSC Today

Happy Friday everyone.  Have a great weekend.

 

 

Friday, November 15, 2013

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. Connecting Personal Devices to the NASA Network

If you bring your own device (BYOD) (e.g. smartphone, tablet, etc…) and need WiFi access, please choose the "nasabyod" network. Per policy and for security reasons, users are NOT to connect personal devices to the "nasa" (NASA internal corporate) network, nor to the nasaguest network.

The "nasabyod" network is a new WiFi profile that JSC's Information Resources Directorate is piloting to enable you to connect securely for WiFi internet access (i.e. it's safe for NASA). Since this is a pilot, some technical issues are still being evaluated.

When connecting, users will be prompted to enter their agency userID and NDC password. To access internal sites, you will need to connect to the Virtual Private Network (VPN).

For more information, see wireless network information.

For technical support, contact the ESD at 1-877-677-2123 (option 2) or go to ESD. (NOTE: This does NOT include support for your personal device).

JSC-IRD-Outreach x34883

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  1. Taste the Sweet Success ... and Cake!

JSC's Space Flight Awareness (SFA) Program is honoring the workforce for their exemplary contributions to the success of the International Space Station Program for the past 15 years on Nov. 20. 

Taste a bit of that sweet success AND CAKE, which will be served in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Cafés from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Nov. 20. It's our way of saying thank you to everyone who has helped design, build and sustain this one-of-a-kind laboratory. 

Save the date on your calendar and help SFA recognize this major milestone by stopping by one of the cafés to enjoy this special treat.

Event Date: Friday, November 15, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B3 and B11 Cafes

Add to Calendar

Mae Mangieri x34754

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  1. Swap-It Today for America Recycles Day

Stop by the Building 3 café today from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. with your gently used books and magazines to swap them for new (to you) reading material to celebrate America Recycles Day! Each year, groups across the nation increase awareness of reuse and recycling efforts, and this year's "Swap-It" event at JSC will help "recycle" reading material. With the diverse tastes at JSC, you never know what you might find! Any remaining books or magazines will be donated to charities. If you have any questions, please email the Environmental Office.

Event Date: Friday, November 15, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B3 Cafe

Add to Calendar

JSC Environmental Office x36207 http://americarecyclesday.org/

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  1. POWER of One Award: Nominate Your Peer Today

 

The POWER of One award has been a great success, but we still need your nominations. We're looking for standout achievements with specific examples of exceptional and superior performance. Make sure to check out our award criteria to help guide you in writing the short write-up needed for submittal. If chosen, the recipient can choose from a list of JSC experiences and have their name and recognition shared in JSC Today.

Nominations for this quarter close Nov. 15, so nominate someone deserving today!

Click here for complete information on the JSC Awards Program.

Samantha Nehls x37834

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   Jobs and Training

  1. JSC Imagery Online Training - Nov. 18

Need to find NASA mission pictures or videos? Learn how during a webinar on Monday, Nov. 18, from 2 to 3:15 p.m. Mary Wilkerson, Still Imagery lead, will show users how to find and NASA mission images in Imagery Online (IO) and the Digital Imagery Management System (DIMS). Leslie Richards, Video Imagery lead, will show employees the video functionality in IO. This training is open to any JSC/White Sands Test Facility employee. To register for the WebEx, go to this link.

This training is provided by the Information Resources Directorate.

Event Date: Monday, November 18, 2013   Event Start Time:2:00 PM   Event End Time:3:15 PM
Event Location: WebEx

Add to Calendar

Scientific & Technical Information Center x34245 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov

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   Community

  1. NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars

NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (CAS) is now accepting applications for the spring 2014 workshop. CAS is for community college students from across the state of Texas. As a CAS participant, students will take part in graded Web-based modules. Based on the module grades and completed applications, qualified students will be chosen to attend the three-day on-site experience at JSC. With this experience, you will have the chance to tour JSC and interact with NASA engineers and scientists. You will also have the opportunity to collaborate with community college students from across the state of Texas and participate in engineering design challenges. The deadline to submit an application is Tuesday, Jan. 21. For more information and updated timelines, please visit the CAS website.

Maria Chambers x41496 http://cas.aerospacescholars.org

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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.

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NASA TV: www.nasa.gov/ntv

·         Noon Central (1 EST) – Mars Atmosphere & Volatile Evolution Prelaunch News Conference

·         1 pm Central (2 EST) – MAVEN Spanish Language Prelaunch News Conference

·         1 pm Central SATURDAY (2 EST) – NASA Social - MAVEN Launch – #NASASocial

·         9 am Central SUNDAY (10 EST) – MAVEN Science Briefing

·         10:30 am Central SUNDAY (11:30 EST) – "The Path Toward Humans on Mars" Briefing

 

Human Spaceflight News

Friday – November 15, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Off to outer space

Beverly start-up firm wins grant to test its product on space station

 

Ethan Forman - Salem News (Massachusetts)

 

"Hydrogels in space." That was the cryptic text message Quad Technologies co-founder Brian Plouffe received from co-founder Sean Kevlahan at the end of last month. Plouffe, who was flying back from a conference in Orlando, knew exactly what it meant: The fledgling medical device company would get to fly an experiment involving its microbeads aboard the International Space Station. Kevlahan had just accepted an award as part of the MassChallenge Startup Accelerator competition on Oct. 30, the day the Red Sox won the World Series. To the company's four founders, including Plouffe and Kevlahan, this message was the equivalent of slugger David Ortiz hitting a home run into orbit. Quad's grant from the nonprofit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space will allow the company to study the effects of microgravity in the manufacturing of its microbeads. Microbeads are tiny magnetic, coated beads that are used in medical research. The ones that Quad is producing can be used to isolate stem cells found in blood — stem cells that were only discovered in 2008.

 

How Living in Space Accelerates the Aging Process

 

Darren Orf - Popular Mechanics

 

Humans are not built for space. That fact becomes most obvious when astronauts return to Earth with atrophied muscles, weakened bones, cardiovascular problems, and some immune deficiencies. And it seems we also age faster in space, too.  A study published earlier this month in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal revealed that microgravity in space accelerates biological aging by affecting cells known as endothelium. Dysfunction of these cells, which line the interior of blood vessels, are commonly seen in age- and space-related diseases.

 

NASA to Ditch Astronaut Transport Deal With Russia

 

Moscow Times

 

NASA will phase out its multimillion-dollar deals with the Russian Space Agency to transport U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station, switching to private U.S. companies over the next four years. NASA will seek proposals for its Commercial Crew Program contracts next week and will select companies that meet its safety requirements, NASA said in a statement Wednesday. The first "crewed demonstration missions" to the ISS are expected to begin before 2017, the statement said.

 

Like paying Russia for rides to space?

Tight money in Washington may make America keep doing it

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

NASA already plans to pay Russia $1.7 billion to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station between now and 2017, but a new report says it may be paying Russia even longer if America can't get its "commercial crew" carriers launching by then. And there are reasons - starting with tight money in Washington - to fear it won't be able to do that. NASA Inspector General Paul Martin issued his findings on NASA's effort to develop a "commercial crew" capability Wednesday. The space agency is currently working with three companies to provide those space taxis - Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp. - and Martin found "steady progress" by all three, according to an OIG office press release. But the program is at a "critical stage of development" with the companies expected to finish their spacecraft designs within the next year, Martin said, and there are obstacles ahead. Specifically, he cited "unstable funding," getting cost estimates aligned with schedules, certifying the designs on time, and coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration and Air Force. Failing to solve these problems could "significantly delay" commercial crew capability, Martin said.

 

Another call for — and warning about — commercial crew funding

 

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

 

As NASA celebrated the end of its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday, it also made another pitch for the program following in COTS' footsteps, the Commercial Crew Program. But as NASA leadership were calling for full funding for commercial crew, a separate report by NASA's Inspector General said it looked increasingly likely NASA would not be able to support more than one company in the next phase of the program.

 

Commercialization, law and governance in outer space

 

Steven Robles - The International

 

The launch of the satellite Sputnik in 1957 ignited a race between the world's two great rival powers. The United States and the former Soviet Union, USSR each poured vast amounts of resources into the research and development of technologies for the exploration of outer space. Sputnik and the impressive achievements that followed throughout the space race, raised complicated questions about law and governance in the final frontier. Today, the proliferation and success of private enterprises in the space industry has led to a fresh contest for the cosmos, what MSNBC contributor John Roach and many others have described as "the race to commercialize space."

 

NASA has broad political support, and therein lies one of its biggest problems

 

Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

 

When NASA was going great guns back in the 1960s, when it was capturing nearly 5 percent of the federal budget, it could afford to spread the love. By that I mean the space agency had contracts in every state for the Apollo program. It built 10 field centers in states from Florida to Texas to California. This made political sense for NASA at it ensured widespread, continuing support in Congress as the pork flowed into every senator's backyard. NASA has maintained this mode of spreading its business around in the decades since even as its share of the federal budget has declined from just under 5 percent to 0.5 percent.

 

How NASA Can be Innovative on Reduced Budgets

 

Elizabeth Howell - Universe Today

 

With 6,000 hailstorm divots scarring a space shuttle external tank, and no backup immediately available to fly, NASA found itself with a problem in February 2007. The STS-117 mission was supposed to carry solar panels and connecting trusses up to the station, so changing the shuttle rotation would affect construction. What to do? To respond to the problem NASA had a program that kept track of tiles on the shuttle, and modified it to take care of the dings. The mission lifted off successfully, using the repaired tank, in June 2007 — three months after the incident. Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator of the human exploration and operations directorate, said this demonstrates that it's possible to be innovative on reduced budgets, and drew parallels to what NASA is facing right now as it fights through fiscal 2014 budget discussions. "We have to turn them not into a 'woe is me' kind of discussion, but rise above that and pull out the innovation, and that's what we're doing in this budget," he said.

 

East Bay teen takes lead on call to International Space Station

 

Joyce Tsai - Contra Costa Times

 

ALAMO, Calif. – More than 100 students sat on the playground of Rancho Romero Elementary School on Wednesday morning staring into the clear, blue sky, waiting for their 10-minute date with an astronaut. Many watched in rapt anticipation for one of the two 14-foot antenna towers perched atop one of the school's buildings to tilt into motion. That, they were told, would be the first sign they had made direct contact with the International Space Station. Flying some 250 miles above them, American astronaut Mike Hopkins was ready to take their call, and ready to be quizzed about his life in space.

 

New head of Canadian Space Agency working on 10-year space plan

 

Peter Rakobowchuk - Canadian Press

 

The new head of the Canadian Space Agency says he's working with other government partners on a 10-year space plan — but he isn't letting on where he wants to take the organization. In his first public speech since getting the job in August, Walt Natynczyk said his role is to work for the success of the Canadian space community and build relationships with government departments. "The Canadian space community is really a small family — and enabling all of them, because of the talents that are there and trying to find the right resources, at the right time, to make the right investments, that's my job," he said Thursday.

 

Lockheed Martin to eliminate 4,000 jobs but none at space center in danger

 

T.J. Aulds - Galveston County Daily News

 

Defense and space programs contractor Lockheed Martin announced Thursday it plans to cut 4,000 jobs, about 3.5 percent of its workforce, within the next two years.

None of those cuts will affect the company's staff or operations in the NASA Johnson Space Center community, a company spokesman said.

 

Real-Life 'Gravity' Space Debris Spells Business for Astrium

 

Francois de Beaupuy & Caroline Connan - Bloomberg News

 

"Gravity," in which satellite debris sets astronauts Sandra Bullock and George Clooney adrift in space, turned into a blockbuster for Warner Bros. Astrium wants real-life spatial waste to do the same for the company. The European satellite and rocket maker can -- together with the region's space agencies -- help clean up the cosmos, Herve Gilibert, chief technical officer of Astrium Space Transportation, said in an interview in Les Mureaux, near Paris, where the unit of Airbus-parent European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. assembles the lower stage of its Ariane 5 launcher. Astrium, which faces mounting competition in its existing businesses, can develop mono- and "multi-chaser" platforms to grab hazardous objects bigger than cars in space with robotic arms or harpoons and nets, and send them up into less crowded orbits or down to burn in the atmosphere, Gilibert said.

 

Rescuing the Hubble Space Telescope

NASA crewmembers reflect on the most complex space repair in history

 

Jennifer Chu - MIT News

 

Astronauts Tom Akers, Ken Bowersox, Dick Covey, Jeff Hoffman & Dr. Story Musgrave talk HST SM-1

 

In the past two decades, the Hubble Space Telescope has produced thousands of staggering images of the universe — capturing colliding galaxies, collapsing stars, and pillars of cosmic gas and dust with its high-precision cameras. With Hubble's advanced capabilities today, it's hard to recall that the telescope was once gravely threatened. But shortly after its launch in 1990, scientists discovered a flaw that jeopardized Hubble's entire endeavor. What followed was a political and public backlash against the $1 billion mission — and NASA, the agency that oversaw it. For the next three years, engineers scrambled to design a mission to repair the telescope in space — an ambitious plan that would result in the most complex Space Shuttle mission ever flown. "[Hubble] was never meant to be a suspense story," Jeffrey Hoffman, a member of the original astronaut crew charged with repairing the telescope, said this week at MIT. Nevertheless, at the time, the future of Hubble — and of NASA itself — seemed to hinge on the repair mission. On Dec. 2, 1993, Hoffman and six other astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour began an 11-day mission, named STS-61 that involved five spacewalks — the most of any shuttle mission — to restore Hubble's vision.

 

Camarda flew key Space Shuttle trip

 

Peter Mastrosimone - Queens Chronicle

 

Could learning to drive and parallel park in Queens be good practice for docking a Space Shuttle at the International Space Station? Maybe, but it really takes a lot of education and The Right Stuff — both of which Ozone Park native Charles Camarda has in spades.

 

'Challenger Disaster' TV film stars William Hurt

 

Frazier Moore - Associated Press

 

The watching world was horrified when, on Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded over Cape Canaveral, Fla., just seconds after liftoff. Seven crew members, including beloved Teacher-In-Space Christa McAuliffe, lost their lives and the manned space program was dealt a nearly mortal blow. Five months later, the reason - two of the shuttle's O-rings had failed during launch - was made public, a major finding of the presidential commission formed to solve the mystery. A vocal member of that commission was Richard Feynman, a world-renowned physicist and Nobel laureate whose sharp mind and dogged spirit led him to the design flaw, in the process exposing negligence and cover-ups by both NASA and the contractor supplying it the O-rings. A new film, "The Challenger Disaster," stars William Hurt as Feynman (with co-stars including Brian Dennehy and Bruce Greenwood). Airing Saturday at 9 p.m. EST on Science Channel and Discovery Channel, it depicts his unswervable search for the truth, even in the face of resistance from his colleagues.

 

New docudrama revisits the Challenger O-ring disaster

 

Nancy Szokan - Washington Post

 

'The Challenger Disaster,' Science Channel

 

Millions of Americans watched in shock on Jan. 28, 1986 as the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Two weeks later, millions also watched the hearing of the presidential commission investigating the disaster. In a scene widely rebroadcast, commissioners were invited to handle some rubbery material from the shuttle's O-ring — a gasket in the solid rocket booster. Then the maverick on the panel, physicist Richard Feynman, asked for some ice water and dropped the sample, gripped in a clamp, into it. After only a few seconds, the formerly flexible material lost its resilience and didn't spring back. At a temperature far warmer than the depths of space, it had clearly lost its ability to seal. The Science Channel re-creates the O-ring drama, with William Hurt as Feynman, in a new docudrama, "The Challenger Disaster." Co-produced with the BBC, the movie portrays the flamboyant Nobel laureate as an independent investigator searching for truth amid the murkiness of Washington politics.

 

'Challenger Disaster' is riveting filmmaking

 

David Wiegand - San Francisco Chronicle

 

Four stars out of five: The Challenger Disaster: Feature film. 9 p.m. ET/PT Saturday on the Discovery Channel and Science Channel.

 

We don't automatically think of science as the stuff of riveting filmmaking, but from "The Story of Louis Pasteur," to "Edison, the Man," ''Madame Curie," to "The Right Stuff," Hollywood has hit dramatic pay dirt with scientific subjects over the years. For its first dramatic feature film, the Science Channel looked into the not too distant past to tell the story of how one scientist challenged the U.S. government and NASA to ensure the real story behind the Challenger disaster wasn't swept under a bureaucratic rug.

 

'The Challenger Disaster' review: Truth and tragedy

 

Verne Gay - Newsday

 

THE TV MOVIE: "The Challenger Disaster"

WHEN | WHERE: Saturday at 9 p.m. on Science Channel and Discovery

MY SAY: Hurt is genetically incapable of turning in a substandard performance -- whether in "Damages," or name-your-favorite-Hurt-flick, or even in this quiet, intelligent film. So, yeah, he's good here and so for the most part is "The Challenger Disaster," which seeks to revive one of the greatest careers in the history of science and also serves as a reminder that to make an omelet you must break a few eggs, or squeeze a few O-rings.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Off to outer space

Beverly start-up firm wins grant to test its product on space station

 

Ethan Forman - Salem News (Massachusetts)

 

"Hydrogels in space."

 

That was the cryptic text message Quad Technologies co-founder Brian Plouffe received from co-founder Sean Kevlahan at the end of last month.

 

Plouffe, who was flying back from a conference in Orlando, knew exactly what it meant: The fledgling medical device company would get to fly an experiment involving its microbeads aboard the International Space Station.

 

Kevlahan had just accepted an award as part of the MassChallenge Startup Accelerator competition on Oct. 30, the day the Red Sox won the World Series. To the company's four founders, including Plouffe and Kevlahan, this message was the equivalent of slugger David Ortiz hitting a home run into orbit.

 

Quad's grant from the nonprofit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space will allow the company to study the effects of microgravity in the manufacturing of its microbeads.

 

Microbeads are tiny magnetic, coated beads that are used in medical research. The ones that Quad is producing can be used to isolate stem cells found in blood — stem cells that were only discovered in 2008.

 

Such stem cells are difficult to harvest out of blood. The ability to isolate cells is a key step in laboratory and clinical research, however.

 

The company says its magnetic microbeads, called QuickBeads, will enable scientists to isolate target cells from a large mix of other cells. The very small magnetic beads coated with the company's chemistry can bind with stem cells outside the body. A magnet can be used to separate the stem cells. Then the microbeads can be dissolved without harming the cell.

 

Once the stem cells are separated, they can aid in research against a host of diseases.

 

While magnetic beads have been used in cell separation before, Kevlahan says the current processes are highly toxic to cells.

 

"With our chemistry that we patented, and that we coat these magnetic particles with, we give a way to decouple the stem cell from the magnetic bead when they are post-processed — without killing the stem cells," Kevlahan said.

 

So, why is being in space so important to Quad?

 

"We developed this coating technology that is droplet-based, and essentially, we coat small magnetic particles," Kevlahan said.

 

"That coating process is highly dependent on gravity. And, so, we want to get a better distribution of the size of those droplets on beads. So, by eliminating or making gravity very small, you get a better mathematical model, which you can tailor back on earth for a manufacturing process."

 

That lack of gravity can be found, of course, in space.

 

To get into space, Quad won one of eight grants through the Boston-based MassChallenge Startup Accelerator, which runs an annual competition for early-stage companies. While Quad did not win the challenge, they won the sidecar prize of $45,000 and the all-expenses-paid trip to space.

 

"It's going to eliminate a huge amount of the research we have to do here," Plouffe said, "and it's just going to put a lot of the cost burden on CASIS (Center for the Advancement of Science in Space) instead of us, which is nice."

 

The grant covers the direct costs for Quad to develop and engineer its platform for space flight and any subsequent analysis. CASIS will pay the cost to transport the payload to and from the space station and the cost of the space scientists on board. For the eight projects, this represents an in-kind contribution of more than $7 million.

 

That's all pretty exciting for this new business, which is less than 2 years old. Kevlahan, 26, and Plouffe, 32, both of whom have PhDs from Northeastern University, founded the company with two other partners in February 2012. They have two full-time employees.

 

In March 2013, they joined North Shore InnoVentures at the Cummings Center in Beverly, a technology business incubator that nurtures young cleantech and life-science companies. InnoVentures gives start-ups reduced rates on office and lab space. Mentors help advise the new companies.

 

"Having one of our client companies conducting manufacturing research on the International Space Station is certainly a first for NSIV," said its CEO Martha Farmer. "This is a reflection of the caliber of companies we have in our incubator and the future potential they have in the marketplace."

 

Plouffe's doctorate is in chemical engineering, and his doctoral project was focused on developing new tools based on magnetic cell separation.

 

"I am kind of the magnetic mind behind the technology," he said. He has worked extensively with the nanotechnology involved in the magnetic beads and manipulating cells using magnetic beads.

 

The company has received seed funding from so-called angel investors and friends and family.

 

So, when might the small company expand and graduate from InnoVentures?

 

Kevlahan said a roll-out of the company's cell separation kit is expected sometime late in 2014. This will dovetail with the work to get their experiment on board the space station. The company will probably look to go out on its own and find more space, in the form of office space, in about a year.

 

How Living in Space Accelerates the Aging Process

 

Darren Orf - Popular Mechanics

 

Humans are not built for space. That fact becomes most obvious when astronauts return to Earth with atrophied muscles, weakened bones, cardiovascular problems, and some immune deficiencies. And it seems we also age faster in space, too.

 

A study published earlier this month in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal revealed that microgravity in space accelerates biological aging by affecting cells known as endothelium. Dysfunction of these cells, which line the interior of blood vessels, are commonly seen in age- and space-related diseases.

 

A team from the Institute of Molecular Science and Technologies in Milan, Italy, led by researcher Silvia Bradamante, studied the effect of microgravity on these cells aboard the International Space Station. The cells were taken from the veins of human umbilical cords. After conducting deep gene expression and protein analysis experiments and comparing the affects of microgravity on the ISS cells versus earthbound cells, researchers found that space-bound cells exhibited dysfunction and inflammation, proving how essential gravity is to human bodily function.

 

Microgravity triggers TXNIP, a stress-responsive gene that plays an important role in age-related diseases, according to the report. This, combined with mitochondrial dysfunction, alters endothelial behavior, putting the aging process in fast-forward. Those endothelial cells are the "common denominator" for a number of space-related biological problems like vascular disease and bone loss.

 

NASA to Ditch Astronaut Transport Deal With Russia

 

Moscow Times

 

NASA will phase out its multimillion-dollar deals with the Russian Space Agency to transport U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station, switching to private U.S. companies over the next four years.

 

NASA will seek proposals for its Commercial Crew Program contracts next week and will select companies that meet its safety requirements, NASA said in a statement Wednesday.

 

The first "crewed demonstration missions" to the ISS are expected to begin before 2017, the statement said.

 

One of the companies competing for the contracts is Boeing, which proposed to launch a first test flight to the ISS in 2016, USA Today reported. But U.S. spending cuts threaten to impede the program, critics of the fiscal measure said.

 

Private companies, such as Boeing, won't participate "if they don't have the money from NASA to do all the redundancies and all of the escape systems in order to make it safe for humans," said Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida and one of NASA's most ardent supporters.

 

Since the space shuttle program was scrapped in 2011, the U.S. has paid Russia more than $70 million per trip to carry astronauts to the space station aboard Soyuz spacecrafts.

 

In recent years, NASA has also signed deals with two private companies, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences, to take supplies and science experiments to the space station, NASA said.

 

SpaceX completed a test flight to the space station in 2012, for the first time since the space shuttle program was retired a year earlier.

 

Like paying Russia for rides to space?

Tight money in Washington may make America keep doing it

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

NASA already plans to pay Russia $1.7 billion to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station between now and 2017, but a new report says it may be paying Russia even longer if America can't get its "commercial crew" carriers launching by then. And there are reasons - starting with tight money in Washington - to fear it won't be able to do that.

 

NASA Inspector General Paul Martin issued his findings on NASA's effort to develop a "commercial crew" capability Wednesday. The space agency is currently working with three companies to provide those space taxis - Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp. - and Martin found "steady progress" by all three, according to an OIG office press release.

 

But the program is at a "critical stage of development" with the companies expected to finish their spacecraft designs within the next year, Martin said, and there are obstacles ahead. Specifically, he cited "unstable funding," getting cost estimates aligned with schedules, certifying the designs on time, and coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration and Air Force. Failing to solve these problems could "significantly delay" commercial crew capability, Martin said.

 

Martin noted that the Commercial Crew Program "has received only 38 percent of requested funding for fiscal years 2011 through 2013," and he cited several other problems.

 

The need for new transport became critical when NASA ended the space shuttle program and retired its fleet of shuttles in 2011. NASA was supposed to have a new crew-carrying rocket system called Constellation in place about then, but the Obama administration canceled it shortly after taking office in 2009 for delays and cost overruns. The White House wanted to push for commercial crew carriers instead.

 

Congress forced a compromise in which NASA would build both a deep space Constellation-lite rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) and also fund commercial crew development, and both programs have fought for funding since. Earlier this week, a NASA forum on human deep-space exploration heard a top NASA official lament the struggle his SLS program is having with sequestration and other budget constraints in Washington.

 

For 2014, NASA requested $821 million from Congress for commercial crew. The House provided $500 million and the Senate $775 million. The final result will be determined when Congress solves its overall budget standoff.

 

Without a way to get to the space station - either via Russian transport or commercial space taxis - America would be denied access to the station taxpayers spent $50 billion to build and fly.

 

There is another option. Some in Congress want NASA to pick one company, or possibly one and a spare, and drop the third to save money. NASA wants to keep the competition going as long as possible to provide adequate backup and nurture a commercial capability for future space commerce and exploration.

 

Another call for — and warning about — commercial crew funding

 

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

 

As NASA celebrated the end of its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday, it also made another pitch for the program following in COTS' footsteps, the Commercial Crew Program. But as NASA leadership were calling for full funding for commercial crew, a separate report by NASA's Inspector General said it looked increasingly likely NASA would not be able to support more than one company in the next phase of the program.

 

"It's now critically important to get full funding from Congress to keep us on track to begin these launches in 2017," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in opening remarks at the COTS press conference, referring to commercial crew. He said that NASA will release the request for proposals for the next phase of the program, called Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap), next week (November 19, according to a notice by NASA earlier this month.) "In many ways, the completion of COTS is simply a passing of the torch of innovation to our partners in the commercial crew program."

 

NASA requested $821 million from Congress for commercial crew in its fiscal year 2014 budget proposal. However, House appropriators only offered $500 million for the program in its spending bill, while their Senate counterparts proposed $775 million. (There's been no recent action on either bill as appropriators await the outcome of broader House-Senate budget negotiations.) In late July, shortly before announcing plans to leave NASA, then-deputy administrator Lori Garver said the Senate figure would be good enough, but pressed for full funding to stay on schedule and "keep competition as long as possible."

 

"It's obviously a very difficult budget environment for all discretionary programs," said Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA, during Wednesday's press conference. "We've said this many times: less money means we go slower than we'd like to go. It's a pretty straightforward equation."

 

An alternative would be for NASA to downselect to a single company in the CCtCap round, a move some in Congress have endorsed to keep the program on schedule with constrained funding. "Getting the systems as soon as possible and also having competition are both goals that NASA would like to maintain through this program," McAlister said. "I can't say one is more important than the other." He added they would wait to see the contents of the CCtCap proposals, due in January. "Those proposals will really dictate how fast we go and how many we have."

 

Shortly after the press conference ended, NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report on the commercial crew program, identifying funding as one of several key challenges it faces. The report noted that the program has received only 38 percent of its original budget requests in fiscal years 2011 through 2013, pushing back the beginning of service to 2017. "Generally speaking, we determined that each year's budget decrement has resulted in an additional year of schedule delay," the report concluded. "Even if the Program receives its full budget request in future years, the cumulative difference between the Program's initial budget requests and receipts over the life of the Program would be approximately $1.1 billion."

 

The report added that continued funding shortfalls could force NASA to downselect to a single company in the upcoming CCtCap contract. "While NASA officials said they would prefer to continue to work with at least two companies until the transportation services contract, a lack of funding will likely require them to 'down select' to a single partner during Phase 2 of Certification [aka CCtCap], which is currently scheduled to begin in mid-2014." The reports adds that such a downselect, while saving money in the short term, may drive up costs in the long term based on experience with other major spaceflight programs.

 

The OIG report includes one additional item of interest about commercial crew funding, regarding the amount being provided by the industry partners. Specific amounts of investment by the commercial crew partners—Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and SpaceX—have been hard to come by; specific information has been redacted from their Space Act Agreements, and company officials have spoken only vaguely of making significant internal investments. However, according to the OIG report, the commercial crew partners have contributed "under 20 percent" of the overall development costs for the ongoing Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) effort. By comparison, the report notes that the two COTS awardees, Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, contributed "roughly 50 percent" of the total development costs of their systems.

 

Commercialization, law and governance in outer space

 

Steven Robles - The International

 

The launch of the satellite Sputnik in 1957 ignited a race between the world's two great rival powers. The United States and the former Soviet Union, USSR each poured vast amounts of resources into the research and development of technologies for the exploration of outer space. Sputnik and the impressive achievements that followed throughout the space race, raised complicated questions about law and governance in the final frontier.

 

Today, the proliferation and success of private enterprises in the space industry has led to a fresh contest for the cosmos, what MSNBC contributor John Roach and many others have described as "the race to commercialize space." Companies like SpaceX, Boeing and Orbital Sciences have won billions of dollars in government contracts to build space transport systems to replace the retired shuttle program. Meanwhile, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is set to begin ferrying space tourists into suborbital flight by 2015.

 

Still, questions about the law and governance in space raised during the Cold War remain largely unanswered. There are technical questions in the balance, such as who will be held responsible when space debris destroys a satellite and where does airspace end and outer space begin.

 

Then there are the broader questions about ownership and property, such as whether individuals, companies, or governments can claim pieces of space or celestial bodies for themselves. In short, the question asked by many over the decades is, "Who owns outer space?" Wherever billions of dollars are invested, problems of law will inevitably emerge. Whatever the current state of international law for space, the only sure bet is that legal disputes are coming.

 

The Cold War and the province of all mankind

 

Before Sputnik, a few international law scholars had proposed earthly analogies for a legal framework for space. Perhaps space could be governed like national airspace and parceled out into sovereign areas. Maybe the best legal analogy for space was the deep sea.

 

However, the Soviet Union's first satellite shifted this discussion from a theoretical debate into one mired in the politics of the Cold War. The United Nations acted as the forum for these early talks about governing space, and the result was a statement of principles commonly known as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

 

While the treaty established space as "free for exploration and use by all States," it banned the placement of nuclear armament in space. The Outer Space Treaty also described space as the "province of all mankind," though it failed to flesh out that definition. Most importantly, the treaty, to which the U.S. and Russia are parties, expressly prohibited the national appropriation of space or celestial bodies such as the moon.

 

A series of complementary treaties were adopted in the years after 1967 that helped build the principles stated in the Outer Space Treaty into a body of international laws. The last of these, known as the 1979 Moon Treaty, sought to establish a regulatory framework for the exploitation of resources in space and on bodies like the moon and near earth asteroids.

 

Equitable distribution vs. increased exploration

 

By the late 1970's, a new group of nations had emerged from the ashes of old empires. Countries in Asia and Africa now joined the international community, and together demanded the Moon Treaty sharpen the empty words "province of all mankind" to create a clear regulatory regimen for the equitable distribution of space's wealth and resources.

 

As a result, the Moon Treaty described the cosmos as the "common heritage of mankind," a doctrine that the world's space capable countries were unwilling to support. Because of this language, powerful space fairing countries like the U.S. and the Former Soviet Union opposed the treaty, and it failed the ratification process and ended the U.N.'s attempts to regulate outer space.

 

The Moon Treaty's failure shifted the development of international space law from the negotiating rooms of the U.N. to the national policies of the most powerful nations. Today, as the commercial space race quickens, the debates about legal regimes for the cosmos are reemerging. The new question is how existing international laws might influence the exploration of space itself.

 

Space exploration requires heavy investment. For example, the contracts that NASA awarded to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to provide transportation to resupply the International Space Station are valued at a combined $3.5 billion. For commercial ventures to flourish, they would need to be confident that the returns from their sizeable investments were legally theirs. Legal concepts of communal ownership like "the province of all mankind" question whether or not companies like SpaceX and Orbital Sciences can profit from space exploration.

 

The future of international space law

 

International law for outer space remains in limbo. While the U.N. treaties established the basis for governance in space, they have not established an enforceable body of law especially in the wake of the failure of the 1979 Moon Treaty. Meanwhile, private enterprises specializing in space technology have made impressive developments.

 

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk (the entrepreneur behind PayPal and Tesla Motors) has successfully delivered payloads to the International Space Station, providing a viable replacement for the retired shuttle and the Russian Souyz capsule. But Musk's company, which has won a 1.6 billion dollar contract from NASA, has a bigger plan.

 

"The key thing for me," Musk stated in an interview with The Guardian, "is to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars. That's the ultimate awesome thing."

 

Other ventures hope to capture and mine asteroids in the not too distant future. Perhaps the best known of these startups is Planetary Resources, which has received funding from filmmaker James Cameron as well as Google's Larry Paige and Eric Schmidt.

 

But according to Joanne Wheeler, who serves as the UK's adviser to the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, it will not be possible "for Planetary Resources to say it owns all of an asteroid even if they are the first ones there." Moreover, Wheeler admits that "Planetary Resources are in a rather grey zone;" there is "no legal certainty over whether they can [mine asteroids] or not."

 

While the technology to send people to Mars or to capture and mine an asteroid continues to develop, ventures like SpaceX and Planetary Resources have already made the initial attempts to commercialize the cosmos. Every milestone they achieve will further expose the old, unanswered questions about law and governance in outer space.

 

NASA has broad political support, and therein lies one of its biggest problems

 

Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

 

When NASA was going great guns back in the 1960s, when it was capturing nearly 5 percent of the federal budget, it could afford to spread the love.

 

By that I mean the space agency had contracts in every state for the Apollo program. It built 10 field centers in states from Florida to Texas to California. This made political sense for NASA at it ensured widespread, continuing support in Congress as the pork flowed into every senator's backyard.

 

NASA has maintained this mode of spreading its business around in the decades since even as its share of the federal budget has declined from just under 5 percent to 0.5 percent.

 

Today NASA also still has 10 field centers sprinkled across the country, when it was apparent in the 1970s that the space agency didn't need that many. This was a point Chris Kraft, a former spaceflight director, drove home to me in a recent interview:

 

George Low (manager of the Apollo program and a NASA administrator) and myself got together in 1975, and he asked me how we could rebuild and reshape NASA to have a vibrant group of people. We knew we had five or six too many centers. We didn't need that many. Let the Jet Propulsion Laboratory do the unmanned stuff, and have two or three other centers do manned spaceflight. That's all NASA needed then, and needs now. But politics wouldn't let us do that. The centers are still going today, and some are getting bigger.

 

And this point was reinforced this week during an event in Washington, D.C., titled Beyond Earth: Removing the Barriers to Deep Space Exploration, during which NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier gave a presentation.

 

During his talk about the Space Launch System — the rocket and spacecraft NASA is building to take astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit — Gerstenmaier showed the following slide, which displays the locations of partners and suppliers for this rocket and spacecraft:

 

 

Gerstenmaier said the map above exhibits the economic benefits of NASA's human spaceflight program to the country. And it's true that NASA pumps money into a lot of local economies, including Houston.

 

But during a time of strained finances, shouldn't we want our space program to be efficient? Spreading money across the maximum number of states, and 10 field centers, seems to make limited fiscal sense.

 

Which brings me to the point of this article: By spreading its funds across the country, and having 10 field centers, NASA can count on a broad political base. But by having so many fiefdoms (the NASA centers), and feeling compelled to spread contracts across the country, the space agency ends up being horribly inefficient and accomplishing significantly less than it could.

 

I'm not sure there's the political will to fix a problem that's been evident for four decades any time soon.

 

How NASA Can be Innovative on Reduced Budgets

 

Elizabeth Howell - Universe Today

 

With 6,000 hailstorm divots scarring a space shuttle external tank, and no backup immediately available to fly, NASA found itself with a problem in February 2007.

 

The STS-117 mission was supposed to carry solar panels and connecting trusses up to the station, so changing the shuttle rotation would affect construction. What to do?

 

"I've got this tank that takes us a bit over two years to manufacture, and essentially it looks like your car here that was peppered by a hailstorm, and what are we going to do?" said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator of the human exploration and operations directorate, speaking today (Nov. 14) at the Canadian Space Society's annual summit in Ottawa, Canada.

 

"Mike Griffin was the administrator at the time. He said, 'Get rid of that tank and put another one out there,' and we didn't have another one."

 

To respond to the problem — based mostly on the word of two technicians who felt repairs were possible, Gerstenmaier said — NASA set out to fix the problem. Communications flew between the launch site in Florida and the manufacturer in New Orleans. NASA had a program that kept track of tiles on the shuttle, and modified it to take care of the dings. The mission lifted off successfully, using the repaired tank, in June 2007 — three months after the incident.

 

Gerstenmaier said this demonstrates that it's possible to be innovative on reduced budgets, and drew parallels to what NASA is facing right now as it fights through fiscal 2014 budget discussions.

 

"We have to turn them not into a 'woe is me' kind of discussion, but rise above that and pull out the innovation, and that's what we're doing in this budget," he said.

 

Reduced budgets have helped NASA make use of reduced resources before, he added. It encouraged the agency to tender out to commercial companies (such as SpaceX) for cargo flights to the space station, even though development would occur on the fly. Gerstenmaier, however, did not address concerns that the new budget could cut back commercial crew budgets even further.

 

Another example of past innovation by both NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, Gerstenmaier said, occurred when the space station's Canadarm2 robotic arm was adapted to capture these commercial cargo vehicles and berth them into station. If the Canadians had been told in the 1990s — when the space station was just beginning — that the arm would have been required to do this, they likely would have balked, Gerstenmaier said.

 

While only touching lightly on the ongoing budget discussions, Gerstenmaier did say NASA is keeping an eye on the efforts of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and others as it continues to develop outreach. He joked that the movie "Gravity" really showed the divide between space fans and the general public.

 

"We see it one way and [say] that isn't physically correct … it doesn't actually look like that in space. This is wrong," he said. "Then the general public says 'this is really stressful, she lost her child,' — they're in this other mode. We're sitting next to each other in the theater. My non-space colleague is crying, and I'm saying this violates the law of physics."

 

Some of Gerstenmaier's past work in NASA includes top managerial positions in the shuttle//Mir program, space shuttle program integration, the International Space Station and NASA's space operations directorate (where he oversaw the final 21 space shuttle missions.)

 

East Bay teen takes lead on call to International Space Station

 

Joyce Tsai - Contra Costa Times

 

ALAMO, Calif. – More than 100 students sat on the playground of Rancho Romero Elementary School on Wednesday morning staring into the clear, blue sky, waiting for their 10-minute date with an astronaut.

 

Many watched in rapt anticipation for one of the two 14-foot antenna towers perched atop one of the school's buildings to tilt into motion. That, they were told, would be the first sign they had made direct contact with the International Space Station.

 

Flying some 250 miles above them, American astronaut Mike Hopkins was ready to take their call, and ready to be quizzed about his life in space.

 

"This is going to be the biggest science experiment we've done with the school -- and my career as principal," proclaimed Skye Larsh, principal of Rancho Romero.

 

The lead engineer in the whole grand experiment: 16 year-old Rebecca Rubsamen of Alamo, a sophomore at Bentley School in Lafayette who built her own VHF radio and crafted two large antennas in her backyard with the help of her father Reid Rubsamen, who is also an amateur radio enthusiast.

 

A licensed amateur radio operator, Rebecca wanted to return to her elementary alma mater to let students talk to astronauts in space. She applied for permission to do the direct contact through NASA's Amateur Radio on the International Space Station program. Since 1983, the program has connected schools and universities with astronauts in space to encourage interest in math and science -- and youth to become future astronauts.

 

NASA grants about 50 such permissions a year for amateur radio enthusiasts to make contact with the International Space Station. This year, there have been about 68 granted internationally. Rancho Romero's is one of 20 in the United States this year and just the third in California, said Ashle Harris, a NASA spokeswoman.

 

Tim Bosma, a NASA volunteer who helps to mentor amateur radio buffs through the program, said Rebecca was among the youngest people to act as a lead operator for such a radio communication for a school.

 

"It's very impressive," he said, adding that it is something he hadn't seen in his 30 years or so as a mentor in the program.

 

It was no small deal to get the kids hooked up to space.

 

It took a flatbed truck and a forklift to put the radio system on the school's roof. And Rebecca and the school tested out the equipment numerous times to ensure it would work the day of the big flyover.

 

During the 8-minute radio transmission, most of the 15 students who were selected to talk to Hopkins, were able to fit in their questions. They asked what it was like to sleep on the space station, whether there were insects on board and how they keep track of what day of the week it is.

 

Hopkins told them he has a special contraption

 

and scuba-type outfit that allows him to sleep wherever he wants onboard. He told them there are no insects on board for experiments at this time, but that a fly got stuck in the spacecraft and it took them some time to get out.

 

He told the students it is hard to tell whether it was morning, noon or night in space, because the spacecraft orbits Earth some 60 times a day, but that with the help of computers, they can figure it out.

 

Rebecca said that since she took up amateur radio as a hobby with her dad about two years ago, she has talked to folks all over.

 

"The beauty of ham radio is that it can connect people from around the world," she said.

And even beyond it, it turns out.

 

"It's the final frontier," she said. "And, no, I never imagined this would be possible."

 

New head of Canadian Space Agency working on 10-year space plan

 

Peter Rakobowchuk - Canadian Press

 

The new head of the Canadian Space Agency says he's working with other government partners on a 10-year space plan — but he isn't letting on where he wants to take the organization.

 

In his first public speech since getting the job in August, Walt Natynczyk said his role is to work for the success of the Canadian space community and build relationships with government departments.

 

"The Canadian space community is really a small family — and enabling all of them, because of the talents that are there and trying to find the right resources, at the right time, to make the right investments, that's my job," he said Thursday.

 

Natynczyk made the comments during an animated speech at the annual summit of the Canadian Space Society.

 

It was one year ago this month that former cabinet minister David Emerson criticized the Canadian space program, saying it had been floundering.

 

Emerson also presented a report then that recommended the CSA's core funding be stabilized over a 10-year period.

 

Natynczyk told reporters he is sifting through each of the report's recommendations and looking at how the space agency can "pragmatically" implement them.

 

"We're working with our government partners right now to try to figure that out," he said.

 

Natynczyk added he can't say when the public will get some idea of his plans for the space agency.

 

The retired chief of defence staff replaced former astronaut Steve MacLean, who quit earlier this year.

 

During his term, MacLean put together a five-year space plan and made recommendations to the Harper government but no action was taken.

 

Natynczyk's wide-ranging speech, which focused on Canada's past successes in space, also entertained his audience of scientists, academics and industry representatives.

 

He walked around without a microphone, shouting out at the room and joking they knew more about space than he did.

 

Chuck Black, treasurer of the Canadian Space Commerce Society, said the new president "made all the right noises" during his speech.

 

"However, he also spent a lot of time indicating that most of the specifics of the solution are still in progress," Black added.

 

"So naturally we should wait six months before we pass any final judgment."

 

The Canadian Space Society kicked off its two-day summit with a keynote speech by NASA's Bill Gerstenmaier, an administrator with the space agency's human-exploration program.

 

He said in an interview he sees a role for Canada in NASA's proposed mission to an asteroid.

 

"We're looking for international partnerships, we're looking for robotic devices that could be part of that mission," Gerstenmaier said, noting that about 400 ideas have been put forward.

 

"We're looking for innovative creative ways that other countries, other partners can participate.

 

The NASA official said he expects a manned crew to visit an asteroid "sometime in the mid-20s."

 

Lockheed Martin to eliminate 4,000 jobs but none at space center in danger

 

T.J. Aulds - Galveston County Daily News

 

Defense and space programs contractor Lockheed Martin announced Thursday it plans to cut 4,000 jobs, about 3.5 percent of its workforce, within the next two years.

 

None of those cuts will affect the company's staff or operations in the NASA Johnson Space Center community, a company spokesman said.

 

"In the face of government budget cuts and an increasingly complex global security landscape, these actions are necessary for the future of our business," CEO Marilyn Hewson said in a statement.

 

About 2,000 of the job cuts will come from Lockheed's space systems, information systems and global solutions, mission system and training units by the end of 2014, the company announced.

 

"For Lockheed Martin Space Systems, this announcement includes planned actions affecting our Newtown, Pa., Sunnyvale, Calif. and Denver, Colo., facilities only," company spokesman Chip Eschenfelder said.

 

Lockheed Martin is the primary contractor for the Orion space capsule, which is on schedule to launch for its first mission in about a year.

 

Across-the-board spending cuts by the federal government have helped trim U.S. budget deficits. Budget negotiators in Congress are holding talks on finding ways to cut spending and on tax breaks.

 

Lockheed Martin Corp., maker of Patriot missile defense system and the F-35 and F-16 fighter planes, will close plants in Goodyear, Ariz.; Akron, Ohio; Newtown, Pa.; and Horizon City, Texas; as well as four buildings at its Sunnyvale, Calif., campus by mid-2015, eliminating 2,000 jobs.

 

Lockheed Martin, which is based in Bethesda, Md., said it would shift work and some employees to facilities in Denver and Valley Forge, Pa. The company also is reviewing other possible plants to which it could move programs, including facilities in Owego, N.Y. and Orlando, Fla.

 

Lockheed Martin said it has cut its workforce to 116,000 employees from 146,000 since 2008.

 

Last month, the company said revenue would decline "slightly" next year on likely federal budget cuts.

 

Real-Life 'Gravity' Space Debris Spells Business for Astrium

 

Francois de Beaupuy & Caroline Connan - Bloomberg News

 

"Gravity," in which satellite debris sets astronauts Sandra Bullock and George Clooney adrift in space, turned into a blockbuster for Warner Bros. Astrium wants real-life spatial waste to do the same for the company.

 

The European satellite and rocket maker can -- together with the region's space agencies -- help clean up the cosmos, Herve Gilibert, chief technical officer of Astrium Space Transportation, said in an interview in Les Mureaux, near Paris, where the unit of Airbus-parent European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. assembles the lower stage of its Ariane 5 launcher.

 

"As you see in the Gravity movie, debris in space is becoming a real concern for us and for satellite operators," he said. "Such debris can totally destroy anything that's in space today: satellites, shuttles, the space station or a part of the space station."

 

Astrium, which faces mounting competition in its existing businesses, can develop mono- and "multi-chaser" platforms to grab hazardous objects bigger than cars in space with robotic arms or harpoons and nets, and send them up into less crowded orbits or down to burn in the atmosphere, Gilibert said.

 

Space debris created by everything from defunct satellites to rocket bodies and payload parts is growing exponentially as they smash into each other, potentially threatening the lives of astronauts, disrupting telecommunications, broadcasts, and Earth observation, and may inflate the cost of insuring satellites worth several tens of million dollars for operators such as SES (SESG) SA and Eutelsat Communications SA. (ETL)

 

Lethal Debris

 

"The debris issue is most acute on low orbits, where we mainly find government satellites used for Earth observation and weather and for military applications such as imagery intelligence, as well as three commercial constellations of communications satellites like Iridium," said Rachel Villain, a space industry analyst at Euroconsult in Paris.

 

Some 20,000 objects larger than a mobile phone that are currently tracked and an estimated half-a-million objects no bigger than a British pound coin that can't be surveyed may turn lethal as they hurtle through space at a speed of more than 8 kilometers (5 miles) a second, the London-based Royal Aeronautical Society said in a statement this month.

 

While the "Gravity" movie is "pessimistic" because real-life operational spacecraft can make avoidance maneuvers, removing 10 large objects a year would ensure that the amount of space debris is stabilized, the British body said.

 

The cost of debris tracking and avoidance alone is in the tens of million euros per year, according to Astrium's Gilibert.

 

Envisat Test

 

The collision of two satellites in 2009 generated 2,000 more pieces of debris, and the out-of-control 7-ton Envisat satellite, owned by the European Space Agency, is another disaster waiting to happen over our heads, he said.

 

"The first mission we need to accomplish around 2020, before 2025, is the Envisat deorbiting; it will be very painful if there's a collision," the Astrium executive said. "By 2025, one can imagine two to three missions per year to do a bit of cleaning, especially in the lower orbits."

 

Potential customers for these missions include insurers of satellite operators, which are paying "a fortune" against accidents, and the U.S. and European armed forces for whom keeping observation and communication channels clear is "a very important issue," Gilibert said.

 

"As always in the space industry, when there's a national solution, governments will not use foreign players to remove their own debris," said Euroconsult's Villain. "Identifying the owners of the debris may not be a walk in the park."

 

Challenges Ahead

 

There are signs some governments are beginning to take space-debris clearing seriously.

 

German satellite maker OHB AG said Nov. 13 that it signed an accord with the country's space administration to study possible uses for a spacecraft developed by the U.S.'s Sierra Nevada Corp., including removals of decommissioned satellites.

 

Other barriers remain.

 

"In space, innovation has to be proven over a long period," said Villain. "Debris capture is very technical, and the cost remains to be seen, while all states may not have the same perception of the risks."

 

In about 20 years, debris might be destroyed using lasers, although the biggest challenge will be creating a global body to govern such operations since military operations in space are currently banned by an international treaty, Gilibert said.

 

Musk's SpaceX

 

For Astrium, seeking out new businesses is becoming important as new rivals emerge in its current businesses.

 

The maker of satellites, space-cargo vehicles and nuclear ballistic missiles, which also operates communications for the public and private sectors, is bracing for the end of its contract to resupply the International Space Station.

 

Also, competition with new launchers such as Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s Falcon 9 is intensifying. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, for which Astrium is developing the cargo vehicle for the Orion manned spacecraft that's supposed to fly past the Moon, is turning to the likes of SpaceX to resupply the space station after retiring its shuttle fleet in 2011.

 

Headed by billionaire Elon Musk, SpaceX is "overhauling the launchers' market a little bit, based on a low-cost offer and a robustness that it will have to demonstrate," said Astrium's Gilibert. "It's displaying launch costs that are 40 percent to 70 percent lower than our costs, around $60 million for a 4-ton class satellite."

 

Cheaper, Faster

 

India may also enter the fray of commercial satellite launchers in three to four years, challenging Europe's Arianespace and International Launch Services, controlled by Russia's Khrunichev, while China is excluded because of U.S. and European export rules on sensitive technologies, he said.

 

To help Arianespace defend its share of 50 percent to 60 percent in the 2-to-3-billion-euro annual market for commercial launches that's open to international competition, Astrium is upgrading its Ariane 5 rocket.

 

The current version, which boasts 57 consecutive successful launches since its last setback, can send 10.3 metric tons of payloads in geostationary orbit at almost 36,000 kilometers above Earth. The new Ariane 5 will be able to send 12 tons for the same cost by 2017, Gilibert said.

 

Astrium, which had revenue of more than 5.8 billion euros last year, is also interested in buying Avio SpA's space operations to consolidate the launchers market, he said. It's also designing Ariane 6, a launcher that will be able to orbit a single vehicle at a price 40 percent lower than Ariane 5, the Astrium executive said.

 

"We're aiming at SpaceX," Gilibert said. "Ariane 6 should enter service in 2021. We're trying to go faster, but it will depend a lot on budget availability."

 

Rescuing the Hubble Space Telescope

NASA crewmembers reflect on the most complex space repair in history

 

Jennifer Chu - MIT News

 

Astronauts Tom Akers, Ken Bowersox, Dick Covey, Jeff Hoffman & Dr. Story Musgrave talk HST SM-1

 

In the past two decades, the Hubble Space Telescope has produced thousands of staggering images of the universe — capturing colliding galaxies, collapsing stars, and pillars of cosmic gas and dust with its high-precision cameras. These images have driven many scientific discoveries, and have made their way into popular culture, having been featured on album covers, fashion runways, and as backdrops for sci-fi television episodes.

 

With Hubble's advanced capabilities today, it's hard to recall that the telescope was once gravely threatened. But shortly after its launch in 1990, scientists discovered a flaw that jeopardized Hubble's entire endeavor. What followed was a political and public backlash against the $1 billion mission — and NASA, the agency that oversaw it.

 

For the next three years, engineers scrambled to design a mission to repair the telescope in space — an ambitious plan that would result in the most complex Space Shuttle mission ever flown.

 

"[Hubble] was never meant to be a suspense story," Jeffrey Hoffman, a member of the original astronaut crew charged with repairing the telescope, said this week at MIT. Nevertheless, at the time, the future of Hubble — and of NASA itself — seemed to hinge on the repair mission.

 

On Dec. 2, 1993, Hoffman and six other astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour began an 11-day mission, named STS-61 that involved five spacewalks — the most of any shuttle mission — to restore Hubble's vision.

 

This week, Hoffman, now a professor of the practice in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was joined by other members of the STS-61 crew in reflecting on Hubble's rescue mission in an all-day symposium held in MIT's Bartos Theatre. Talks and panel discussions — often with the air of a warm reunion — explored Hubble's initial promise; its failure shortly after launch; and the planning, training, and execution of a rescue mission to fix the telescope.

 

Hubble's backlash

 

The first inkling of a problem came during a NASA press conference held to present the first image taken by Hubble from space: The image, of a far-off star, appeared fuzzy. Scientists soon discovered a "spherical aberration": Due to a defect in the manufacturing process, the telescope's primary mirror had been ground too flat, setting its curvature off by less than the width of a hair. 

 

"The unthinkable had become fact," said James Crocker, then an optical engineer at NASA.

 

Once word of the defect spread, Hoffman recalled that NASA and the astronomy community experienced "a maelstrom of public opprobrium," mainly circling around the same question: "How did you screw up so badly?"

 

To illustrate the public feeling at the time, John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Center at George Washington University, presented editorial cartoons deriding the mission with pictures of lemons in space and images of static, "courtesy of the Amazing Hubble Telescope." Overall, Logsdon observed, public perception of the problem focused less on the defects in space than on the agency on the ground.

 

"NASA was very much at risk," Logsdon said.

 

Preparing a fix

 

Following the discovery of Hubble's defective mirror, engineers at NASA faced immense pressure to fix the problem. Crocker eventually experienced what he called a "eureka moment" in the most unlikely of places: a shower in Munich, where he had traveled to appeal to the European Space Agency for possible solutions. On a break in his hotel room, he was adjusting the showerhead — a European design that extends or retracts to accommodate one's height — when an idea came to him: Why not outfit Hubble with corrected mirrors built on robotic arms that can extend into the telescope and retract into place, just like an adjustable showerhead?

 

NASA engineers ran with the idea, building the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC2, to replace Hubble's defective mirror. Getting the piano-sized instrument into the satellite required 11 months of training by Hoffman and six other astronauts, who spent more than 230 hours in a water tank, choreographing intricate maneuvers and learning to use more than 150 tools. Meanwhile, engineers tested and retested the instruments to be installed on the telescope.

 

Frank Cepollina, then NASA's manager of space servicing capabilities, remembers that at the time there was "great turmoil in checking every socket and bolt."

 

A spacewalk to save NASA

 

All preparations led up to Dec. 2, 1993, when the STS-61 crew launched. On the mission's third day, the crew used the shuttle's robotic arm to grab hold of the free-floating telescope, attaching it to the shuttle's cargo bay, an event that prompted mission commander Dick Covey to announce: "We've got a firm handshake with Mr. Hubble's telescope."

 

The next day, Hoffman and payload commander Story Musgrave embarked on the mission's first spacewalk, during which Hoffman, anchored to the robotic arm, replaced two gyroscopes on the telescope.

 

Astronauts Kathryn Thornton and Thomas Akers set out on the second spacewalk to replace one of the telescope's solar panels, which had begun to list. After the astronauts disengaged the panel from the telescope, Hoffman remembers watching the array drift off into space, "like some prehistoric bird floating away — we were mesmerized."

 

Hoffman and Musgrave performed the mission's third spacewalk to swap out Hubble's defective mirror with the 620-pound WFPC2 — the crux of the mission, and one that saw Hoffman anchored to the robotic arm, with Musgrave free-floating inside the telescope as Hoffman fed tools to him.

 

"It was a little like working under a car," recalled Hoffman, who said the procedure was so complex that the shuttle crew had to talk them through each step. The procedure was a success, as NASA's ground controllers found that the new mirror passed all its initial tests.

 

The remainder of the mission went largely according to plan, except for one hair-raising moment on the final spacewalk. On his previous outing, Hoffman had noticed that Hubble's magnetometers, located at the very tip of the telescope, were flaking. To prevent more debris from possibly damaging equipment, pilot Kenneth Bowersox and mission specialist Claude Nicollier fabricated makeshift covers out of insulation to wrap around new magnetometers.

 

During the fifth and final spacewalk, Hoffman and Musgrave replaced the telescope's magnetometers with the insulated upgrades, a maneuver that required removing screws and placing them in a bag while removing one instrument. In the process, a screw got away, floating free of the astronauts' grasp. While seemingly harmless, the 3-millimeter screw had the potential to dent the telescope or the shuttle.

 

Hoffman, anchored to the shuttle's arm, reached in vain for the screw, while Nicollier tried moving the arm farther out. But both the arm and the screw were moving at the same speed. In a spur-of-the-moment action, Bowersox reprogrammed the shuttle's computer to reset the arm's maximum speed, allowing Hoffman to reach the screw. From then on, the astronauts would refer to the escapade as "the Great Screw Chase."

 

Continuing success

 

Since that first repair mission, astronomers have used Hubble to collect thousands of stunning images of the universe and make countless discoveries, with more than 11,000 published papers based on Hubble images. The telescope has undergone four more servicing missions to replace old instruments and add new capabilities.

 

Of Hubble's future, Cepollina said: "As long as the telescope can collect photons, and we can provide next-generation instruments, we should keep truckin'."

 

For the astronauts who rescued Hubble, disengagement from the telescope was bittersweet.

 

"It was a little sad to let the telescope go," Bowersox recalled. "It was like saying goodbye to a friend. It was a great, magical time."

 

Camarda flew key Space Shuttle trip

 

Peter Mastrosimone - Queens Chronicle

 

Could learning to drive and parallel park in Queens be good practice for docking a Space Shuttle at the International Space Station? Maybe, but it really takes a lot of education and The Right Stuff — both of which Ozone Park native Charles Camarda has in spades.

 

Camarda was a crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on the historic Return to Space Flight of July 26 to Aug. 9, 2005, the first shuttle mission since the tragic loss of the Columbia and its crew on Feb. 1, 2003. The flight was designed not only as a rendezvous with the ISS but as a test for new protocols meant to avoid any repeat of the Columbia disaster, which was caused by a piece of insulation that broke off during launch, damaging part of the shuttle's hull and causing it to burn up on re-entry.

 

A piece of insulation also broke off Discovery when it took off but did not damage the ship.

 

Before the mission, Camarda told NASA writer Amiko Nevills that he fully recognized the danger of spaceflight.

 

"I've always been aware of the risks," he said. "I think every one of us understands that spaceflight is risky. It's important that we take those risks for the future of space and for the future of the development of technology to help us on Earth."

 

Camarda, a research scientist with seven patents to his name, was a mission specialist on the flight, and sent the computer commands that locked the shuttle to the space station once the craft was in place.

 

Born in 1952, Camarda had wanted to fly into space ever since he was a boy awed by America's original seven astronauts. "It was a time when spaceflight was so intriguing," he said. "It was natural for me to want to be an astronaut, to dream of being an astronaut."

 

It takes a lot of education to get there. Camarda graduated from Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary School and Archbishop Molloy High School here in Queens. He earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, a master's in engineering science from George Washington University and a doctorate in aerospace engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

 

His work at NASA focused on thermal protection systems and materials for the leading edge of the Space Shuttle. He was selected as a candidate for spaceflight in 1996.

 

Nine years later he and six other crew members spent two weeks in space on the mission dubbed STS-114. It was hailed as a success.

 

"STS-114 included breathtaking in-orbit maneuvers, tests of new equipment and procedures, and a first-of-its-kind spacewalking repair," NASA said. "The flight provided unprecedented information on the condition of an orbiter in space."

 

Camarda, who is married with four children, later became the senior advisor for innovation in the Office of the Chief Engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

 

'Challenger Disaster' TV film stars William Hurt

 

Frazier Moore - Associated Press

 

The watching world was horrified when, on Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded over Cape Canaveral, Fla., just seconds after liftoff. Seven crew members, including beloved Teacher-In-Space Christa McAuliffe, lost their lives and the manned space program was dealt a nearly mortal blow.

 

Five months later, the reason - two of the shuttle's O-rings had failed during launch - was made public, a major finding of the presidential commission formed to solve the mystery.

 

A vocal member of that commission was Richard Feynman, a world-renowned physicist and Nobel laureate whose sharp mind and dogged spirit led him to the design flaw, in the process exposing negligence and cover-ups by both NASA and the contractor supplying it the O-rings.

 

A new film, "The Challenger Disaster," stars William Hurt as Feynman (with co-stars including Brian Dennehy and Bruce Greenwood). Airing Saturday at 9 p.m. EST on Science Channel and Discovery Channel, it depicts his unswervable search for the truth, even in the face of resistance from his colleagues.

 

"In a way, Feynman interested me more than the project did," says Hurt. "This is mostly an event story, but I thought we could allow character to exist within the narrative and lead to a greater conclusion: Human courage is really what it's all about, and listening to your own instinctive, loving skeptic. That's what Feynman did."

 

It's a nippy fall day and Hurt is discussing the film, and many other things, with a reporter as he walks his dog, Lucy, in Manhattan's Riverside Park.

 

The 63-year-old Hurt, a TV, stage and Oscar-winning film star (for "Kiss of the Spider Woman"), has been taking an acting break this fall to play a different role, that of student, as this former Tufts theology major plunges, with undisguised humility, into a pair of courses at Columbia University: computer science and Indo-Tibetan Hinduism.

 

"I'm working pretty hard," he says with clear understatement as he unsnaps the leash worn by Lucy, a gentle Doberman pinscher-Labrador mix, who is nibbling some grass and contemplating the joggers.

 

"Your mind, your heart must learn to value yourself," Hurt says, pivoting back to what Feynman taught him. "That's where your answers will come from: Learn to bear your frustrations gladly, `cause they're your teacher. YOU are your teacher."

 

An actor often outspoken about the frustration he bears as an actor ("I have a hard time finding work that will allow me to do what I know how to do, because they won't give me time to prepare") has only good things to say about shooting "The Challenger Disaster."

 

A co-production with the BBC, the film was directed by James Hawes ("Doctor Who," "Fanny Hill"), whom Hurt hails as "a great human being and a great director."

 

Under Hawes' stewardship, Hurt says, he got what he craves as an actor: "Not to be showing off, not to be insecure, but to open myself to a new look at life."

 

Hawes, speaking by phone from England, describes their first meeting while he was on a trip to New York last fall.

 

The pair took a stroll to visit, fittingly, the shuttle Enterprise prototype installed nearby at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Complex.

 

"The sun was shining," Hawes recalls, "and we had the most extraordinary walk. By the end of it, we had a bond."

 

Once shooting commenced in South Africa, Hawes goes on, "I arranged for William to have a lesson on the bongos, because Feynman notoriously played them. I'm not usually that Method, but I knew that he is a man who loves his research. I'll never forget sitting there in the dying light of a South African evening with William Hurt and a bongo teacher hammering out rhythms."

 

In Riverside Park, Hurt describes his fascination with the character whose rhythms he channeled.

 

"I was so grafted to Feynman as a spirit," he says. "A spirit like that, you can legitimately worship. They don't want your enslavement, they want your freedom. Feynman wants your freedom!

 

"Look! Here comes a cop!" he interrupts himself as he spies a parks department golf cart. "He'll arrest you," Hurt tells Lucy as he re-snaps the leash the law requires her to wear. "You'd go to prison. We'd go to prison together."

 

Feynman died in 1988 at age 69 of the cancer he was battling while on the commission, but his spirit lives on, including, Hurt hopes, in this film, and in the interest the film might spur in what Feynman stood for. That sort of impact, Hurt says, is what makes drama great.

 

"Being interesting for its own sake is worthless," he declares. "You have to be interested in a theme: The question of who we are, why we are, should be considered carefully and audaciously. Just attracting attention for its own sake is chaos."

 

Just then, the cawing of birds attracts attention overhead.

 

"When the crows caw, you know the interview's over," says Hurt, amused. "They're here to tell us we're no longer being useful, you know what I mean?"

 

With that, he and Lucy head off to a neighborhood pet store. It's time to buy her a treat.

 

New docudrama revisits the Challenger O-ring disaster

 

Nancy Szokan - Washington Post

 

'The Challenger Disaster,' Science Channel

 

Millions of Americans watched in shock on Jan. 28, 1986 as the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Two weeks later, millions also watched the hearing of the presidential commission investigating the disaster. In a scene widely rebroadcast, commissioners were invited to handle some rubbery material from the shuttle's O-ring — a gasket in the solid rocket booster. Then the maverick on the panel, physicist Richard Feynman, asked for some ice water and dropped the sample, gripped in a clamp, into it. After only a few seconds, the formerly flexible material lost its resilience and didn't spring back. At a temperature far warmer than the depths of space, it had clearly lost its ability to seal.

 

"I believe that has some significance for our problem," Feynman said, with dramatic understatement. His accusation that NASA had failed to calculate the true risks of the mission has resonated for decades.

 

The Science Channel re-creates the O-ring drama, with William Hurt as Feynman, in a new docudrama, "The Challenger Disaster." Co-produced with the BBC, the movie portrays the flamboyant Nobel laureate as an independent investigator searching for truth amid the murkiness of Washington politics.

 

The movie premieres Saturday on the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel.

 

'Challenger Disaster' is riveting filmmaking

 

David Wiegand - San Francisco Chronicle

 

Four stars out of five: The Challenger Disaster: Feature film. 9 p.m. ET/PT Saturday on the Discovery Channel and Science Channel.

 

We don't automatically think of science as the stuff of riveting filmmaking, but from "The Story of Louis Pasteur," to "Edison, the Man," ''Madame Curie," to "The Right Stuff," Hollywood has hit dramatic pay dirt with scientific subjects over the years.

 

For its first dramatic feature film, the Science Channel looked into the not too distant past to tell the story of how one scientist challenged the U.S. government and NASA to ensure the real story behind the Challenger disaster wasn't swept under a bureaucratic rug.

 

The true story of Dr. Richard Feynman's seemingly Quixotic quest for the truth of what caused the 1986 shuttle explosion, airing concurrently Saturday on the Science and Discovery Channels, is made even more dramatic by the fact that he was battling cancer that would take his life two years later. He lived long enough, though, to influence the final report by the special Challenger committee, and to write his own appendix.

 

Feynman, played to gruff and tousled perfection by Oscar winner William Hurt ("Kiss of the Spider Woman"), was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was initially reluctant to be part of the special commission on the Challenger to be chaired by former Secretary of State William Rogers (Brian Dennehy, "Death of a Salesman"). It doesn't take much in the film for his wife (Joanne Whalley, "The Borgias") to convince her husband that the loss of the seven astronauts, including New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe, was reason enough for him to lend his expertise to the quest for what caused the explosion.

 

From the beginning, though, Feynman realizes the deck is stacked against a full airing of the facts when Rogers declares that, of course, NASA did an excellent job.

 

The commission, which also includes Dr. Sally Ride (Eve Best, "The King's Speech"), the first US woman in space, is supposed to function as a unit. No one is supposed to go off on his own to pursue possible causes for the shuttle explosion.

 

Naturally, that's exactly what Feynman does, going on his own to NASA operations in Huntsville, Al., and staying on in Florida to examine recovered pieces of the shuttle stored in an empty hanger after the rest of the committee returns to Washington..

 

Feynman has few friends on the commission, but he does get encouragement from two members, Ride and Maj. Gen. Donald E. Kutyna (Bruce Greenwood, "Star Trek Into Darkness"), who had been in charge of the Titan rocket program that was usurped in a bureaucratic move to shore up the economic imbalance of the NASA shuttle program. Kutyna had reason to be skeptical of NASA, but he also knew that whatever the cause of the explosion that cold January day in Florida, Feynman was the only one likely to uncover it because he was the only truly independent member of the panel.

 

Many people know what caused the disaster because it was major news when Feynman found the answer. He strategically chose a moment in the televised commission hearings to dip a piece of a shuttle O-ring into a glass of ice water to prove that when the rubber was subjected to freezing temperatures, it would not resume its original shape as it was designed to do in the shuttle. The morning of Jan. 28, 1986, the temperature at Cape Canaveral, Fl, was below freezing.

 

''The Challenger Disaster" is such a good drama you may not be aware at first that you're also learning something about the scientific process. But Feynman's painstaking commitment to find the truth was the most effective defense against NASA's attempt to preserve its own reputation and against bureaucratic inertia.

 

''The Challenger Disaster" feels at times like an actual thriller, but that isn't only because of James Hawes' well-paced direction: It's because the real story has elements of a thriller. At one point, Feynman types up a document about his preliminary findings, sends it to the commission to be distributed to other members and finds it has mysteriously disappeared.

 

In the end, the reason behind the bureaucratic dust storm over Challenger has to do with petty, budgetary self-defensiveness and agency hubris. The Titan project had been absorbed by NASA, because the space agency promised it would be able to place spy satellites in orbit through the shuttle program. There had already been six aborted shuttle lift-offs by the time Challenger was ready to launch. The previous night, NASA had been warned that the cold temperature might imperil the launch, but the agency ignored the warning.

 

You could say that NASA "lost" when the O-rings were determined to be the cause of the explosion, but in the long run, the agency won. Thanks to Feynman's dogged persistence, NASA had to adjust its priorities, especially with regard to its private contractors like Morton-Thiokol which had developed the O-ring seals and was found at fault for the Challenger disaster.

 

''The Challenger Disaster" is not only a noble first effort by the Science Channel, but an eminently watchable one as well. The film is both dramatically viable and instructive. Yes, we learn about science, but perhaps more important, we also learn about standing your ground no matter what challenges you face.

 

'The Challenger Disaster' review: Truth and tragedy

 

Verne Gay - Newsday

 

THE TV MOVIE: "The Challenger Disaster"

 

WHEN | WHERE: Saturday at 9 p.m. on Science Channel and Discovery

 

WHAT IT'S ABOUT: The Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off on a cold January morning in 1986 and 73 seconds later exploded, killing all seven astronauts on- board, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, 37. This docudrama picks up the story in the sobering, tragedy-haunted moments afterward, when a presidential commission is convened, chaired by former Secretary of State Williams Rogers (Brian Dennehy). Other members include U.S. Air Force Gen. Donald Kutyna (Bruce Greenwood) and astronaut Sally Ride (Eve Best) -- who both understand the intricacies at the intersection of science and politics -- and Dr. Richard Feynman (William Hurt), the world's leading theoretical physicist and a leading renegade, too. Soon Feynman begins to suspect the so-called

 

"O-ring" -- a rubbery material that joined the solid rocket boosters -- may be at fault. Later, at a hearing, he demonstrates that it lacks resilience at low temperatures, even when dipped in a glass of cold water.

 

MY SAY: Hurt is genetically incapable of turning in a substandard performance -- whether in "Damages," or name-your-favorite-Hurt-flick, or even in this quiet, intelligent film. So, yeah, he's good here and so for the most part is "The Challenger Disaster," which seeks to revive one of the greatest careers in the history of science and also serves as a reminder that to make an omelet you must break a few eggs, or squeeze a few O-rings.

 

Hurt's Feynman is irascible, inquisitive, arrogant, passionate, beset with bad hair days and singularly devoted to one outcome: the truth, or the approximation of it. Feynman, one of the fathers of quantum electrodynamics, famously observed that absolute truth -- much like the exact position of a subatomic particle -- is an impossible goal, so best to get as close to it as you can. A famously tough critic, too, Feynman would probably even like this performance.

 

Beyond Hurt, "The Challenger Disaster" merges into the "dutiful" lane. It covers some of the record, ignores the contributions of most of the other boldface names and offers a too-shallowly explored conspiratorial angle. But Feynman's moral still stands: "For a successful technology," he wrote, "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

 

BOTTOM LINE Quiet, intelligent, worth checking out

 

GRADE B+

 

END

 

 

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