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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 20, 2013 9:25:27 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News Dec. 20, 2013 and Pump Module replacement prelim. timeline
Happy flex Friday everyone. Have a safe and fun weekend. Thanks to Rose Mendlowitz for sharing the EVA schedule info.Schedule for EVAs (egress each day at 6:15):EVA 24 12/21/13EVA 25 12/23/13EVA 26 12/25/13 (contingent)NASA TV coverage will begin at 5:15 am each day.NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsFriday – Dec. 20, 2013HEADLINES AND LEADSAstronauts prepare for Christmas spacewalks to replace pumpBy Paul Sutherland - SenAstronauts will begin a series of unscheduled spacewalks tomorrow to replace a coolant pump after part of it failed on the International Space Station.NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins were ordered into action after a faulty valve caused the pump to stop functioning correctly on 11 December.Happy Holidays from Beyond Apollo: Santa and SoyuzBy David S. F. Portree – WiredThe weeks around Christmas and New Years are chaotic, so one way I cope as a blogger is to offer up a heaping helping of historic Cold War-era Soviet space-themed holiday cards. They are examples of what I call "communist whimsy" (two words which are not often used together). As I explained yesterday, Christmas was not an official holiday under the ostensibly atheistic Soviet communists, but they preserved the festive trappings of the holiday by making them part of Russian New Year celebrations. Individuals traded holiday cards that looked like Christmas cards but which (like the one above) wished the recipient a happy New Year. Some celebrated Soviet space accomplishments with surprisingly accurate renditions of Soviet spacecraft.Japan robot chats with astronaut on space stationEMILY WANG – Associated PressTOKYO — The first humanoid robot in space made small talk with a Japanese astronaut and said it had no problem with zero gravity on the International Space Station. Footage released by the robot's developers on Friday showed Kirobo performing its first mission on the station, talking in Japanese with astronaut Koichi Wakata to test its autonomous conversation functions.SpaceX launch contracts gave it edge to win KSC launch pad 39AJames Dean – Florida TodaySpaceX's significant roster of launches under contract gave it the edge over Blue Origin to win use of a historic Kennedy Space Center launch pad, according to a NASA selection statement released today.NASA last week chose to negotiate with SpaceX to lease launch pad 39A, the launching point for the Apollo moon landings and dozens of shuttle missions.Mars lander to launch from California on Atlas 5 in 2016
BY STEPHEN CLARK – Spaceflight NowNASA's InSight lander will launch to Mars in March 2016 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, officials announced Thursday.Monkeys and moon rovers and Mars… oh my?Outer space is getting more and more crowded. Should the US and Europe be worried?
- Audra J. Wolfe – The Guardian (UK)
On Saturday, China became the third nation to pull off a soft landing on the Moon's surface, a feat not seen since the Soviet Union's final Luna mission in 1976. China's achievement capped a remarkable month of space news, coming the same day as the Iranian government's announcement that it had recovered a second monkey from space and just a few weeks after India's Mars orbiter, Mangalyaan, left Earth's orbit for the Red Planet.Europe Launches Satellite to Map 1 Billion StarsBy FRANK JORDANS and DANICA COTO - Associated PressBERLIN -- The European Space Agency launched its star-surveying satellite Gaia into space Thursday, hoping to produce the most accurate three-dimensional map of the Milky Way and to better understand the evolution of our galaxy.The satellite was lifted into space from French Guiana at 6:12 a.m. (0912 GMT; 4:12 a.m. EST) aboard a Russian-made Soyuz rocket, the agency said.__________COMPLETE STORIESAstronauts prepare for Christmas spacewalks to replace pumpBy Paul Sutherland - SenAstronauts will begin a series of unscheduled spacewalks tomorrow to replace a coolant pump after part of it failed on the International Space Station.NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins were ordered into action after a faulty valve caused the pump to stop functioning correctly on 11 December.Spacewalks have been hastily arranged for Saturday, Monday and, if necessary, Wednesday which is Christmas Day. If that goes ahead, it will be the first spacewalk carried out on Christmas Day since 1974.The failure of one pump does not endanger the astronauts, but NASA is keen to ensure a backup is restored as quickly as possibleThat happened during the Skylab 4 mission when NASA's Gerald Carr and William Pogue stepped outside to retrieve film from a telescope and to photograph Comet Kohoutek.The spacewalks will be the first for Hopkins. Mastracchio has already made six, notching up 38 hours and 30 minutes of extra-vehicular activity (EVA).There are two coolant loops on the ISS which circulate water and ammonia to carry heat away from the complex electronics systems on the orbiting outpost. The failure of one does not endanger the astronauts, but NASA is keen to ensure a backup is restored as quickly as possible.They will replace it with an existing spare pump module that is stored on an external stowage platform on the ISS.The first spacewalk is scheduled for Saturday at 7:10 a.m. EDT when the spacewalkers will set up the worksite on the S1 truss. Monday's spacewalk will include the removal of the old pump module and the installation of the spare. If necessary a third spacewalk would then occur on Christmas Day to complete installation of the new part.While Expedition 38 astronauts Mastracchio and Hopkins carry out the actual EVAs, Wakata will operate the station's robotic arm to manoeuvre the spacewalkers at the worksite. Each spacewalk is expected to last about six hours 30 minutes.
The astronauts have been warned to prepare for ammonia leaks during their spacewalks. Leaks have occurred while astronauts disconnected cables during previous repair spacewalks. If ammonia flakes land on a crew member's suit, the spacewalkers will need to go through a series of decontamination steps before re-entering the space station.The pump problem has caused NASA to delay the first commercial supply mission by Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft, which was due to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, atop an Antares rocket, on Thursday night. It will now launch in mid-January at the earliest.In May, Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn carried out a spacewalk to examine and replace a pump controller box on the ISS's far port truss after it began leaking ammonia coolant.Then in July, a spacewalk by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano was dramatically cut short in an emergency when his helmet began filling with water.In the Russian side of the space station, Commander Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy are preparing for a pre-planned spacewalk on 27 December. The pair will install a foot restraint, two new cameras, a new experiment plus a payload boom on the Zvezda service module.Happy Holidays from Beyond Apollo: Santa and SoyuzBy David S. F. Portree – WiredThe weeks around Christmas and New Years are chaotic, so one way I cope as a blogger is to offer up a heaping helping of historic Cold War-era Soviet space-themed holiday cards. They are examples of what I call "communist whimsy" (two words which are not often used together). As I explained yesterday, Christmas was not an official holiday under the ostensibly atheistic Soviet communists, but they preserved the festive trappings of the holiday by making them part of Russian New Year celebrations. Individuals traded holiday cards that looked like Christmas cards but which (like the one above) wished the recipient a happy New Year. Some celebrated Soviet space accomplishments with surprisingly accurate renditions of Soviet spacecraft.The card above is a prime example. Santa stands in the Soviet Flight Control Center just outside of Moscow and views an image of the joined Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 piloted spacecraft on a large TV screen as they orbit the Earth. The moon looms large in the background, pointing up the significance of the Soyuz 4/Soyuz 5 mission for the Soviet piloted lunar program.Soyuz 4 lifted off with cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov on board on 14 January 1969. The next day, Soyuz 5 lifted off bearing cosmonauts Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev, and Yevgeny Khrunov. On 16 January, the two piloted spacecraft maneuvered to a docking in low-Earth orbit. It was the first time two piloted spacecraft joined up in space.Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 used a unique docking unit design. The part on Soyuz 4, the active vehicle in the docking, included a pin-like probe, while Soyuz 5 carried a socket-like drogue. The two parts included no tunnel or hatches to enable cosmonauts to pass from one spacecraft to the other.Instead, two cosmonauts from Soyuz 5 (Yeliseyev and Khrunov) spacewalked to join their comrade Shatalov in Soyuz 4. The spacecraft then undocked. Soyuz 4 landed safely on 17 January. Soyuz 5, bearing Volynov, landed the next day after a terrifying backwards reentry and an off-course hard landing. One hopes that Volynov got a little something extra in his stocking after his near-fatal flight.The unusual Soyuz 4/Soyuz 5 docking was a test of engineering principles the Soviets planned to use in their manned moon landing program. Had a Soviet manned moon mission gone ahead, it would have included two cosmonauts and two piloted spacecraft. One cosmonaut would have spacewalked to the LK lunar lander attached to the rear of the LOK mothership. He would have separated his small craft from the mothership and lowered to the moon's surface. After a brief moonwalk, he would have lifted off in the LK and returned to lunar orbit. The LOK would then have inserted a probe into a honeycomb-like plate atop the LK. The moonwalking cosmonaut would have spacewalked back to the LOK, then the cosmonauts in the LOK would have cast off the LK and the probe docking unit.Though an impressive achievement, the Soyuz 4/Soyuz 5 docking was anticlimactic, for it occurred just three weeks after the U.S. Apollo 8 spacecraft orbited the moon 10 times on Christmas Eve 1968. Seven months later, on 20 July 1969, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle became the first piloted spacecraft to land on the moon. Though the Soviet Union would not wholly abandon piloted lunar plans for several more years, they had by the time Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin hopped about the Sea of Tranquility already begun to downplay their piloted moon program and to focus attention on their robotic lunar program. Tomorrow's holiday card will feature one of those robotic lunar spacecraft.Japan robot chats with astronaut on space stationEMILY WANG – Associated PressTOKYO — The first humanoid robot in space made small talk with a Japanese astronaut and said it had no problem with zero gravity on the International Space Station.Footage released by the robot's developers on Friday showed Kirobo performing its first mission on the station, talking in Japanese with astronaut Koichi Wakata to test its autonomous conversation functions.Wakata says he's glad to meet Kirobo, and asks the robotic companion how it feels about being in a zero-gravity environment."I'm used to it now, no problem at all," Kirobo quips.Kirobo is programmed to process questions and select words from its vocabulary to construct an answer, instead of giving pre-programmed responses to specific questions.The creator of the robot, Tomotaka Takahashi, said the autonomous functions meant nobody knew how well Kirobo would be able to answer Wakata's questions.Though Kirobo had some awkward pauses and Wakata spoke more slowly than usual at times in their chat earlier this month, Takahashi said conversations smoothed out over time."Through layers of communication, we were able to observe the initial stages of a relationship begin to develop between a human and a robot, and I think that was our biggest success" he said.Kirobo took off from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center for the International Space Station this summer aboard a space cargo transporter. Wakata arrived in November and will assume command of the station in March.The project is a joint endeavor between advertising company Dentsu, automaker Toyota, and Takahashi at the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology.Experiments with Kirobo will continue until it returns to Earth at the end of 2014.In the meantime, Kirobo says he wants to ask Santa for a toy rocket this ChristmasSpaceX launch contracts gave it edge to win KSC launch pad 39AJames Dean – Florida TodaySpaceX's significant roster of launches under contract gave it the edge over Blue Origin to win use of a historic Kennedy Space Center launch pad, according to a NASA selection statement released today.NASA last week chose to negotiate with SpaceX to lease launch pad 39A, the launching point for the Apollo moon landings and dozens of shuttle missions.Both companies proposed 20-year leases and said launches could begin in 2015, and NASA evaluators found both the billionaire-backed companies had the financial resources to operate the pad.A key difference was that SpaceX wanted exclusive control of the pad while Blue Origin planned to make it available to multiple rockets.However, SpaceX has more than 40 launches under contract while Blue Origin, which is still developing an orbital rocket for flight by 2018, has none."Blue Origin's multi-use approach involved uncertainty regarding the extent other users would use the pad," wrote Richard Keegan Jr., director of NASA's Office of Program and Institutional Integration, in the 13-page selection statement. "In contrast, SpaceX's approach for exclusive use and its proposed manifest was specific, firm, and included customers under contract. I determined the certainty and number of launches associated with SpaceX's proposal outweighed the potential benefits associated with Blue Origin's multi-use approach."Keegen continued: "I concluded that SpaceX's proposal better met the Government objective of 'fullest commercial use of space' with its early, consistent, and more certain launch manifest."The selection statement blacked out the amounts each company proposed to invest in the launch pad, which is one of two at KSC, and the numbers of flights planned each year.According to the statement, Blue Origin's multi-use vision depended on SpaceX using the pad, but there was no certainty SpaceX would under that operating model.Blue Origin's model also assumed companies would pay to design rocket interfaces enabling a variety of vehicles to share common pad infrastructure, and potentially to build other support facilities, adding uncertainty to the business case.Blue Origin received letters of interest from three companies – one of which is known to be United Launch Alliance – and submitted a memorandum of understanding with a fourth, but none made firm commitments to use the pad.SpaceX said it needed the pad exclusively to recoup its investment in the facility, to support a high anticipated flight rate and pre-flight testing, and to avoid scheduling issues that could arise with a multi-user pad."I found that SpaceX amply justified its need for its approach involving exclusive use," Keegan wrote.SpaceX proposed either a 20-year lease or a five-year lease with three five-year options that the company could choose to exercise; NASA said it could negotiate more favorable terms under the longer-term option.The release of NASA's decision came after the U.S. Government Accountability Office rejected a bid protest in which Blue Origin argued NASA was not evaluating the proposals properly.
Mars lander to launch from California on Atlas 5 in 2016
BY STEPHEN CLARK – Spaceflight NowNASA's InSight lander will launch to Mars in March 2016 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, officials announced Thursday.The launch will mark the first interplanetary mission to lift off from America's West Coast space base about 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles. InSight will take off from Space Launch Complex 3-East at Vandenberg, the West Coast home of ULA's Atlas 5 rocket."We could not be more honored that NASA has selected ULA to launch the InSight mission, which will be landing on the surface of Mars," said Jim Sponnick, ULA's vice president of Atlas and Delta programs. "This mission will be the eighth mission to Mars that ULA vehicles have launched since 2001, including Mars Science Lab and most recently MAVEN."According to NASA, the total cost for the launch of InSight is approximately $160 million, including spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry and other launch support requirements.The Atlas 5 rocket for InSight will launch in the "401" configuration with a four-meter payload fairing, no solid rocket boosters and a single-engine Centaur upper stage.All of NASA's probes to other planets have launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., but the specifics of the InSight spacecraft gave officials flexibility in choosing the launch site, according to mission managers.The InSight spacecraft is based on the Phoenix lander launched to the red planet in 2007. Phoenix was sized to fly on the smaller Delta 2 rocket, meaning an Atlas 5 has plenty of power to dispatch InSight to Mars from Florida or California.Vandenberg typically hosts launches with Earth observation payloads heading for polar orbits."With 42 successful missions spanning more than a decade of operational service, the commercially developed Atlas 5 has the performance capability and the reliability required for this high-value NASA mission," Sponnick said in a statement.NASA has considered launching Mars missions from California in the past. The agency's Mars Odyssey mission launched in 2001 was initially assigned to lift off from Vandenberg before its launch site was switched to Cape Canaveral.
Artist's concept of the InSight lander with its seismometer and heat probe drill deployed on the Martian surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Atlas 5 launch manifest in Florida is busier than in California, so the selection of Vandenberg as InSight's launch base may reduce impacts to other ULA missions.The three-legged InSight lander, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., will set down on Mars in September 2016, starting a surface mission expected to last at least two years.The InSight mission will deploy a seismometer to make the first direct measurements of Mars quakes. The lander will also employ a hammering drill to burrow up to 15 feet underground, taking temperature readings to measure heat changes at different layers immediately beneath the Martian surface.The French space agency, CNES, is providing InSight's $42 million seismometer. Germany is funding the lander's underground heat probe.Scientists will also analyze radio signals bouncing between Earth and the InSight spacecraft, detecting tiny wobbles in the red planet's rotation, revealing properties of the Martian core.All the investigations have the objective of telling scientists about the interior of Mars.Bruce Banerdt, InSight's principal investigator from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said researchers can take that information a step further, comparing InSight's findings with what is known about Earth and the moon to paint a clearer picture of how the solar system's rocky planets formed and cooled.InSight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.NASA selected InSight in August 2012 as the next mission in the agency's Discovery program, which funds planetary exploration missions on relatively low budgets.According to Banerdt, InSight's cost is projected to be approximately $480 million, excluding launch services and contributions from international partners in France and Germany.Europe Launches Satellite to Map 1 Billion StarsBy FRANK JORDANS and DANICA COTO - Associated PressBERLIN -- The European Space Agency launched its star-surveying satellite Gaia into space Thursday, hoping to produce the most accurate three-dimensional map of the Milky Way and to better understand the evolution of our galaxy.The satellite was lifted into space from French Guiana at 6:12 a.m. (0912 GMT; 4:12 a.m. EST) aboard a Russian-made Soyuz rocket, the agency said.Soon after the launch, Gaia unfurled its 10-meter (33-feet) circular sun shield — a crucial moment in the mission. The shield protects the spacecraft's sensitive instruments from the rays of the sun while simultaneously collecting solar energy to power the spacecraft."Everything was super smooth," said Paolo Ferri, head of mission operations at the Paris-based European Space Agency.Gaia is now heading for a stable orbit around a point known as Lagrange 2 — some 1.5 million kilometers (930 million miles) away on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun. Once it gets there next month, the satellite's instruments will be switched on and it will follow what Ferri described as "a very peculiar pattern" designed to keep its back always turned to the sun.Timo Prusti, ESA's project scientist, likened the mission's goal to the switch from two-dimensional movies to 3D. At the moment, he said scientists are working with a largely "flat" map of the galaxy."We want to have depth," he said.Using its twin telescopes, Gaia will study the position, distance, movement, chemical composition and brightness of a billion stars in the galaxy, or roughly 1 percent of the Milky Way's 100 billion stars.The data will help scientists determine the Milky Way's origin and evolution, according to Jos de Bruijne, deputy project scientist for the Gaia program."The prime importance of this mission is to do galactic archaeology," he said in a phone interview from French Guiana. "It will reveal the real history of our galaxy."The project is the successor to ESA's Hipparcos satellite, which was launched in 1989 and measured the position of 100,000 stars in the Milky Way.Gaia, which is named after an ancient Greek deity, will go far beyond that. Scientists have compared its measuring accuracy to measuring the diameter of a human hair from 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away."There is still a lot that we don't understand about the Milky Way," said Andrew Fox, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. He is not involved in the project, but his position at the science center is funded by the European Space Agency.ESA has dubbed Gaia the "ultimate discovery machine" because its sophisticated instruments will allow scientists to look for small wobbles in stars' movements that indicate the presence of nearby planets."Those are the stars that people are going to go out and look for planets around, and ultimately for signs of life," said Fox.Equipped with dozens of cameras capable of piecing together 1,000-megapixel images, scientists also expect to find hundreds of thousands of previously undiscovered asteroids and comets inside our solar system.Beyond that, scientists hope that Gaia can also be used to test a key part of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity that predicts "dips" and "warps" in space caused by the gravity of stars and planets.Carmen Jordi, an astronomer at the University of Barcelona who is involved in the mission, said the satellite's findings will become the main reference for scientists in the years to come."Almost all the fields of astrophysics will be affected," said Jordi.The mission's scientific operations will begin in about 4 ½ months. The 740 million-euro ($1-billion) mission, which was delayed by about a month due to a technical problem with another satellite, has a planned lifetime of five years.If Gaia is still operational after that, scientists say they might extend its mission for up to two yearsMonkeys and moon rovers and Mars… oh my?Outer space is getting more and more crowded. Should the US and Europe be worried?
- Audra J. Wolfe – The Guardian (UK)
On Saturday, China became the third nation to pull off a soft landing on the Moon's surface, a feat not seen since the Soviet Union's final Luna mission in 1976. China's achievement capped a remarkable month of space news, coming the same day as the Iranian government's announcement that it had recovered a second monkey from space and just a few weeks after India's Mars orbiter, Mangalyaan, left Earth's orbit for the Red Planet.Like their Cold War predecessors, the Chinese, Iranian, and Indian governments all see their space programs as proxies for national status. China, whose participation in the International Space Station has been blocked by the U.S., takes particular pride in its manned space program at a time when the United States lacks the means to send its own astronauts into space. With monkeys, Moon shots, and missions to Mars, it seems fair to ask: is a new space race underway?Well, no. Not unless a one-sided race counts. Neither American nor European politicians appear to be eager to enter into a space competition against the Chinese—or, for that matter, anyone else. But in an odd way, this too feels like a page out of the late 1950s playbook, when President Dwight Eisenhower steadfastly refused to see "a race" while Nikita Khrushchev crowed over a series of Soviet satellite launches and the first lunar probes. Eisenhower never regretted this position; he slept soundly knowing that the Soviet Union's space spectaculars disguised that country's limited nuclear strike capability.Where Eisenhower erred was in underestimating the damaging effects of the Soviet space program on American prestige. The Soviet triumphs rattled America's allies, who counted on the United States' reputation as a leader in science and technology. It took the media-savvy John F. Kennedy to commit the United States to a bona fide space race that ultimately sent 12 astronauts to the surface of the Moon and restored global confidence in American science and technology.Eisenhower and Kennedy's different approaches go a long way toward explaining why so many present-day commentators wonder if the United States and Europe should be panicking about a space race, despite the fact that NASA and the European Space Agency have a long and accomplished record in both manned and unmanned space exploration. It would nevertheless be a mistake to apply the logic of the Cold War to the contemporary politics of space. The psychological power of the last space race came from being first. With the exception of a manned mission to Mars—an expedition that no space agency has yet to fully embrace—none of the current space programs offer dramatic new accomplishments. Instead, they promise incremental advances to scientific knowledge and technology. They might best be interpreted as proof of basic technical mastery, a claim to a seat at the space table.NASA and ESA have already demonstrated their competence in spades. If there's a challenge in Chinese, Indian, and Iranian ambitions in space, it's in confronting that very complacency. Neither NASA nor ESA currently have their own craft for human spaceflight; both organizations rely on Russian Space Agency Soyuz capsules to ferry their astronauts to and from the International Space Station. While the United States hopes to launch an unmanned version of its next-generation Orion vehicle in 2014, the spacecraft won't be cleared to carry humans until at least 2020. In the meantime, the United States hopes to rely on Space X, a private contractor, whose Dragon capsule has already successfully docked with the ISS (without passengers).Even NASA's planetary exploration missions—flagship operations like the Mars Curiosity rover and Cassini, the Saturn orbiter—are under threat from lack of sustained political attention. The proposed NASA budget for 2015 includes no additional funding for robotic missions, despite new projects on the books, and fear is rampant among the space science community that one or the other of these projects will be cut.Americans and Europeans might respond to the growing number of space states with apathy, alarm, or excitement. But American politicians in particular would be wise to remember that this is a situation at least in part of their making. By barring Chinese participation in the ISS and prohibiting bilateral agreements between NASA and the Chinese National Space Administration, the U.S. Congress has pushed China toward going it alone.The challenges of space exploration—whether manned or robotic, focused on Earth, the Moon, or other planets—are too daunting and expensive for such a chauvinistic approach. International collaborations in space are good for science and good for international relations. Instead of closing ranks, NASA and the ESA should welcome the space ambitions of a new group of rising powers. After all, they offer resources—public enthusiasm and a willingness to fund—currently in short supply.Audra J. Wolfe is a writer, editor and historian based in Philadelphia. She tweets as @ColdWarScience.ENDMore detailed space news can be found at:
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