Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - January 8, 2014 and JSC Today squared

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: January 8, 2014 8:58:52 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - January 8, 2014 and JSC Today squared

Hope to see you at Hibachi Grill tomorrow for our monthly Retirees luncheon at 11:30.

 

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

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JSC Special: Cygnus Launch Scrubbed Early this morning, Orbital Sciences Corp. decided to scrub today's launch attempt of the Antares rocket and the Cygnus cargo spacecraft on the company's first resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) due to an unusually high level of space radiation that exceeded constraints imposed on Antares.    The solar flux activity that occurred late yesterday afternoon resulted in an increasing level of radiation beyond what the Antares engineering team monitored earlier in the day. Overnight, Orbital's engineers conducted an analysis of the radiation levels, but the Antares team decided to postpone the launch to further examine the potential effects of the space radiation on the rocket's avionics. The Cygnus spacecraft would not be affected by the solar event.   Today, in consultation with NASA, Orbital Sciences will continue to monitor the levels of space radiation with a goal of setting a new launch date as soon as possible. At Mission Control in Houston, the flight control team reported that the ISS crew is not affected by this solar event and does not require any special precautionary measures.   For the full schedule of space station activities, including NASA TV coverage, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/stationnews Point of contact: JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs, x35111

 

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Wednesday, January 8, 2014

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JSC TODAY CATEGORIES Headlines -  Jan. 15: Last Day to Contribute to CFC -  Get Back in Saddle With Thunderbolt Pilot Jan. 10 -  Sidewalk Closure -  Latest International Space Station Research Organizations/Social -  JSC SAIC/S&MA Speaker Forum - Jan. 15 -  Join the JSC Green Team in 2014 -  Youth Dodgeball Clinic Jobs and Training -  Enhancing Your Creative Genius -  Pressure Systems Operator and Refresher Training

Antares Rocket Ready for Launch

 

Headlines Jan. 15: Last Day to Contribute to CFC JSC employees have always given wholeheartedly in support of the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), and this year is no exception. Jan. 15 is the last day to participate in this year's campaign, so you still have an opportunity to give to your favorite charities and are encouraged to use Employee Express for your campaign contributions. It is an accessible, convenient and secure means of giving generously through payroll deduction to any of the 2,000 plus charitable organizations included in the Agency Charity Guide. Pledge forms may also be used for single donations via cash or check. Please visit the JSC CFC website to view the Agency Charity Guide, find your organization's point of contact for assistance or obtain a paper form for your one-time donation. Every dollar makes a difference! Thank you for your generous support. Carolyn Woolverton x30314 http://jscpeople.jsc.nasa.gov/CFC/cfc.html [top] Get Back in Saddle With Thunderbolt Pilot Jan. 10 Join us as we fine-tune our focus for 2014 at our back-in-the-saddle presentation. Our special guest speaker Jeff "Odie" Espenship will talk about Target Leadership. Head to Teague Auditorium at 9 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 10.  Target Leadership was founded by Jeff "Odie" Espenship to motivate and encourage people, employees and leadership to embrace the culture leadership safety systems in their workplace. As a USAF A-10 "Thunderbolt" fighter pilot and international airline pilot, Odie knows how to operate safely and lead others who work in high-risk and sometimes dangerous work environments. Failures in the cockpit rarely occur due to improper equipment or poor training. Ninety percent of the time it's the little things: lack of focus, complacency, inattention to detail, miscommunication, poor job briefing, non-compliance, assuming, snap decision, shortcut, failing to speak up or failing to listen.   Event Date: Friday, January 10, 2014   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:10:00 AM Event Location: Teague Auditorium Add to Calendar Suprecia Franklin x37817 [top] Sidewalk Closure There will be ongoing work west and north of Building 45 as the old library is renovated. The sidewalk on the west side of Building 45, including the crosswalk, will be closed to pedestrians until further notice. Adrianna Kukan x46944 [top] Latest International Space Station Research Want a sneak preview of space station research in 2014? Some of it includes deployable satellites, protein crystal growth, rodent research and defining the research complement for the one-year increment crew. International Space Station Chief Scientist Julie Robinson talks about the exciting year to come in this short video. Liz Warren x35548 [top]    Organizations/Social JSC SAIC/S&MA Speaker Forum - Jan. 15 You're invited to JSC's SAIC/Safety & Mission Assurance (S&MA) speaker forum featuring Sharon Goza, IGOAL lab manager. Subject: Visual ISS Configurator (VIC) Tool Expert Date: Wednesday, Jan. 15, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Location: Building 1, Room 966 Goza will demonstrate the VIC and how the user can interact with the tool using a mouse or keyboard. The VIC assists with visualizing and communicating the current and potential ISS configuration to a wide audience. Key VIC features: Drag/rotate/zoom a 3-D ISS mode View ISS from above (bird's eye view) or set the viewpoint to one of five external cameras Relocate/add major elements based on recently discussed ISS configuration options Attach multiple visiting vehicles to ports Relocate MBS to different worksites on MT; relocate SSRMS/SPDM between base points, etc. Attach cargo Change ISS attitude Rotate appendages (solar arrays, etc.) Event Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2014   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM Event Location: Building 1, room 966 Add to Calendar Della Cardona/Juan Traslavina 281-335-2074/281-335-2272 [top] Join the JSC Green Team in 2014 Are you interested in finding out more about the JSC Green Team? The JSC Green Team communicates to employees on how to personally make sustainable decisions and take "green" actions. Our next meeting will be meeting in the Building 35 Collaboration Center on Jan. 15 at 1 p.m. This meeting will focus on the team's direction for 2014, so please come, bring your ideas and let your voice be heard. You can also email your ideas to the Green Team email in advance. We look forward to seeing you at the meeting. JSC Green Team x42206 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/ja/ja13/greenteam.cfm [top] Youth Dodgeball Clinic Dodge, duck, dip and dive your way into a fun and exciting new youth dodgeball clinic. Children will learning throwing and dodging techniques all while enjoying the game of dodgeball. Soft Gatorskin balls will be used. Dates: Feb. 6 to 27 Day and time: Thursdays, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Ages: 8 to 12 Price: $50 Robert Vaughn x38049 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/familyyouth-programs/sports-ca... [top]    Jobs and Training Enhancing Your Creative Genius Interested in expanding your creative potential? NASA's Enhancing Your Creative Genius course is being offered to JSC employees in February! During this non-traditional and highly interactive course, participants will travel to an off-site business location to learn the core principles of creativity, hear from a NASA Leader and take a short tour to increase ideation. There will be various brainstorming and ideation techniques used and demonstrated throughout the two days.  Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 3 and 4, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. SATERN ID: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=REGISTRATI...  -or-  Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 5 and 6, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. SATERN ID: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=REGISTRATI...  The course will be held off-site within the Clear Lake area. Participants are responsible for their own travel. Lunch will be available for purchase (optional). Details to be provided to course participants. Space is limited - sign up today. Diane Kutchinski x46490 [top] Pressure Systems Operator and Refresher Training ATTENTION: The Pressure Systems Operator and Refresher Training date has changed from Jan. 15 to Jan. 29. Same times and location.  These courses cover updated pressure systems requirements, do's and don'ts to operating, hazard analysis awareness and lessons learned.  Location: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205-206  Use these direct links to SATERN for course times and to register. Pressure Systems Operator, 9 to 11 a.m. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...  Pressure Systems Operator and Refresher, 11:01 a.m. to 12:01 p.m. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... Aundrail Hill x36369 [top]

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday – Jan. 8, 2014

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Huge Solar Flare Delays Private Rocket Launch to Space Station

Tariq Malik – space.com

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — A huge solar flare unleashed by the sun has delayed plans to launch a private cargo ship to the International Space Station today (Jan. 8) due to worry over space weather radiation. The first major solar flare of 2014 erupted from a massive sunspot seven times the size of Earth on Tuesday (Jan. 7) after a series of mid-level sun storms in recent days. The event occurred as the commercial spaceflight company Orbital Sciences was preparing to launch a landmark cargo delivery flight to the space station today with its Antares rocket and robotic Cygnus spacecraft. "Early this morning the Antares launch team decided to scrub today's launch attempt due to an unusually high level of space radiation that exceeded by a considerable margin the constraints imposed on the mission to ensure the rocket's electronic systems are not impacted by a harsh radiation environment," Orbital Sciences officials said in a statement today. [Biggest Solar Flares of 2014 (Photos)]

 

Sunspot goes wild! X-class solar flare blasts in our direction

 

Alan Boyle – NBC News

The sun erupted with a powerful solar flare on Tuesday, disrupting radio traffic and sending a blast of electrically charged particles our way. And there may be more blasts to come. The X1.2-class flare was recorded by sun-observing satellites, including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, at about 2:32 p.m. ET. X-class flares are the strongest category of solar outbursts, although X1.2 is toward the category's low end. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center said the flare sparked a strong radio blackout.

 

NASA Langley part of ISS 'fluid slosh' experiment

Tamara Dietrich – Newport News Daily Press

When a liquid-fueled rocket vaults into space, there's a whole lot of sloshing going on inside those fuel tanks. A better understanding of how that liquid behaves in zero gravity could help engineers build a better, safer rocket — one that could enable humans to explore asteroids, Mars, the moons of outer planets and, eventually, even deeper into space. Now NASA expects that one of the many science experiments aboard the Cygnus commercial space freighter set to launch Wednesday from Wallops Island to the International Space Station will help toward that goal.

 

Hubble Space Telescope Captures Photo of Distant Galaxies

 

Laura Dattaro – Weather Channel

 

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have peered back in time and captured some of the oldest galaxies ever seen in new images released at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week.The images feature a massive cluster of several hundred galaxies, known as Abell 2744. Because the cluster is so far away, and because it takes time for light to travel from the galaxies to Earth, Hubble is seeing the galaxy cluster as it looked 3.5 billion years ago.

 

Mars rover photographs featured at Smithsonian

Brett Zongker – Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ten years after NASA landed two rovers on Mars for a 90-day mission, one is still exploring, and the project has generated hundreds of thousands of images from the planet's surface. NASA and Smithsonian to Host 10 Year Anniversary Events for Mars Rovers PR Newswire 10 Years on Mars: NASA Rover Mission Celebrates 10th Martian Birthday SPACE.com Now the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is presenting more than 50 of the best photographs from the two rovers known as Spirit and Opportunity in an art exhibit curated by the scientists who have led the ongoing mission. "Spirit and Opportunity: 10 Years Roving Across Mars" opens Thursday and includes many large-scale photographs of craters, hills, dunes, dust clouds, meteorites, rock formations and the Martian sunset. The Smithsonian's first exhibit of art from the Martian rovers marks the 10th anniversary of the ongoing mission.

 

UrtheCast plans second attempt to install Earth-viewing cameras on ISS

 

CBS News

 

The Russian cosmonauts working aboard the International Space Station will make a second attempt to install a set of cameras on the exterior of the space station in late January. The first attempt to install the UrtheCast cameras, which will provide near-live streaming footage of the Earth, ended in failure after a marathon spacewalk on Dec. 27.

 

NASA Slowly Amassing List of Potential Targets for Asteroid Retrieval Mission

 

Dan Leone – Space News

 

WASHINGTON — NASA has identified about a dozen potential targets for its proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission, but will make no decision until at least 2017 about which space rock to bring back to the Earth-Moon system to be probed by astronauts, an agency official said. That means the new robotic spacecraft that will redirect the chosen asteroid into a distant lunar retrograde orbit — where NASA engineers believe it could be stored for close to a century — will launch no earlier than 2018, according to Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA headquarters here. The proposed NASA mission uses as its blueprint a concept developed at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. Unveiled last April as part of the White House's 2014 budget request for NASA, early concepts called for launching a robotic spacecraft in 2017 to capture an asteroid roughly 10 meters in diameter, which astronauts could visit later.

 

New Japanese travel agency to start selling seats for space tours on Virgin Galactic

 

John Hofilena – Japan Daily Press

 

A new Tokyo-based travel agency is set to start marketing seats on space tours via a commercial space flight program based in the United States. Club Tourism Space Tours Inc. was officially launched on Monday as a subsidiary of Club Tourism International Inc. for the express purpose of marketing Virgin Galactic space tours in Japan priced at US$250,000 (around 25 million yen).

 

This Spacesuit for Exploring Mars Is a Form-Fitting Math Problem

 

Joseph Flaherty – Wired

 

In science fiction, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Ender's Game, astronauts zip around zero-g environments clad in stylish, skin-tight spacesuits. In reality, outfits designed for outer space are bulky, hard to maneuver, and have all the charm of adult diapers. Even their name, Extravehicular Mobility Units, or EMUs, is clumsy. Enter Dava Newman, fashion designer to the stars. You won't see her work on the red carpet, but if this MIT professor has her way, all the most fashionable space explorers will be wearing her designs when they set foot on the red planet. A thousand feet of ribbing is held in place with over 140,000 stitches. For a mission to Mars to succeed, off-world explorers desperately need a new wardrobe to deal with the planet's unique challenges. In humanity's entire spacefaring existence, there have been 514 extravehicular space walks, but a single, multi-year mission to Mars will require over 1,000.

 

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Huge Solar Flare Delays Private Rocket Launch to Space Station

Tariq Malik – space.com

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — A huge solar flare unleashed by the sun has delayed plans to launch a private cargo ship to the International Space Station today (Jan. 8) due to worry over space weather radiation.

The first major solar flare of 2014 erupted from a massive sunspot seven times the size of Earth on Tuesday (Jan. 7) after a series of mid-level sun storms in recent days. The event occurred as the commercial spaceflight company Orbital Sciences was preparing to launch a landmark cargo delivery flight to the space station today with its Antares rocket and robotic Cygnus spacecraft.

"Early this morning the Antares launch team decided to scrub today's launch attempt due to an unusually high level of space radiation that exceeded by a considerable margin the constraints imposed on the mission to ensure the rocket's electronic systems are not impacted by a harsh radiation environment," Orbital Sciences officials said in a statement today. [Biggest Solar Flares of 2014 (Photos)]

The Antares rocket was awaiting an afternoon launch at its pad here at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility when the decision was made. It is the latest delay for the mission, which was initially pushed back from a mid-December liftoff when astronauts on the station had to perform emergency cooling system repairs, and later postponed a day due to the extremely cold weather affecting the United States this week.

The solar flare currently poses no threat to the six astronauts and cosmonauts currently living on the International Space Station. The crew will not have take to any measures to shelter themselves from the solar flare's radiation, NASA spokesman Rob Navias, of the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, told SPACE.com in an email.

The Jan. 7 solar flare occurred at 1:32 p.m. EST (1832 GMT) from an active sunspot region known as AR1944. The sunspot facing Earth from the middle of the sun, as viewed from Earth, and is "one of the largest sunspots seen in the last 10 years," NASA officials said in a statement Tuesday.

The solar flare registered as an X1.2-class sun storm, the strongest class of solar flares the sun can release. It occurred just hours after an intense M7.2-class solar flare earlier on Tuesday, and followed several days of increased solar activity on the sun.

"The solar flux activity that occurred late yesterday afternoon resulted in an increasing level of radiation beyond what the Antares engineering team monitored earlier in the day," NASA officials added in a separate statement today. "Overnight, Orbital's engineers conducted an analysis of the radiation levels, but the Antares team decided to postpone the launch to further examine the potential effects of the space radiation on the rocket's avionics. The Cygnus spacecraft would not be affected by the solar event."

The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle. The current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, began in 2008.

Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft had a 95-percent chance of good weather for today's planned launch at 1:32 p.m. EST (1832 GMT). That weather forecast deteriorates as the week progresses, with cloudy conditions dropping it to 70-percent chance of favorable weather on Thursday, and the potential for rain on Friday leaving just a 30-percent chance of good launch conditions, NASA Wallops test director Sarah Daughtery told SPACE.com.

Orbital Sciences officials said they are closely monitoring the fallout from Tuesday's solar flares.

"Orbital will continue to monitor the levels of space radiation with a goal of setting a new launch date as soon as possible," company officials said.

Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to launch 40,000 lbs. of supplies to the International Space Station by 2016 using its Antares rockets and disposable Cygnus spacecraft. The first Antares and Cygnus test flights launched in 2013, with today's launch expected to mark the first official cargo delivery for Orbital.

For the delivery flight, called Orb-1, the Cygnus spacecraft is carrying 2,780 pounds (1,260 kilograms) of gear to the International Space Station. That haul includes a space ant colony, 33 small cubesat satellites and 23 other experiments designed by students from across the country.

The Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences is one of two companies with a NASA contract to delivery supplies to the space station. The other company is SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., which has launched two of 12 planned delivery missions for NASA under a $1.6 billion agreement. The third mission in SpaceX's schedule is expected to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Feb. 22.

 

Sunspot goes wild! X-class solar flare blasts in our direction

 

Alan Boyle – NBC News

The sun erupted with a powerful solar flare on Tuesday, disrupting radio traffic and sending a blast of electrically charged particles our way. And there may be more blasts to come.

The X1.2-class flare was recorded by sun-observing satellites, including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, at about 2:32 p.m. ET. X-class flares are the strongest category of solar outbursts, although X1.2 is toward the category's low end. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center said the flare sparked a strong radio blackout.

For days, space weather forecasters have been bracing themselves for solar eruptions from a large active sunspot region called AR1944. This region has now turned to face Earth directly, which means strong solar flares are likely to send storms of charged particles — also known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs — heading straight for us.

Strong solar storms can damage satellites and electrical grids. One such outburst in 1989 knocked out power for a wide swath of Quebec. And don't get us started about thesuperstorm of 1859!

The geomagnetic storm generated by Tuesday's flare won't be that disruptive, but it could have an impact. NASA expects the CME to sweep over us somewhere around 3 p.m. ET Wednesday. The current space weather report says there's a chance we'll see more X-class flares through Friday.

Although space storms can be damaging, they can be beautiful as well: Be on the watch for enhanced northern lights over the next couple of nights. To get the auroral forecast for your area, check out the maps at SpaceWeatherLive.com. And for cool views of the aurora, keep an eye on SpaceWeather.com.

 

NASA Langley part of ISS 'fluid slosh' experiment

Tamara Dietrich – Newport News Daily Press

When a liquid-fueled rocket vaults into space, there's a whole lot of sloshing going on inside those fuel tanks.

A better understanding of how that liquid behaves in zero gravity could help engineers build a better, safer rocket — one that could enable humans to explore asteroids, Mars, the moons of outer planets and, eventually, even deeper into space.

Now NASA expects that one of the many science experiments aboard the Cygnus commercial space freighter set to launch Wednesday from Wallops Island to the International Space Station will help toward that goal.

"We've all seen liquid in space break into globules," said Steve Gaddis at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton. "Imagine that going on in the tank, but you need to change thrust, change attitude … and if you don't know where that (fuel) is in the tank, it actually could cause risk to the crew and the mission."

Gaddis is head of NASA's Game Changing Development Program, which partnered on the project with NASA's Launch Services Program, the Florida Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Game Changing program provided funding and technical guidance.

Computer models already show how fluids react in a near-zero environment, but there's not much data for zero-gravity, said Gaddis. Typically that's pertinent during the third-stage of a rocket launch, when more maneuvering takes place.

When the Cygnus cargo ship arrives, station crew will assemble the free-floating test platform, called the Synchronized Position Hold Engage Reorient Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES. It's about 18 inches long and 8 inches in diameter and "much more high-tech than you might imagine," Gaddis said. The device will maneuver the water container around the space station as cameras and sensors send data back to a control panel for analysis.

What NASA learns could benefit future launches in other ways. Fuel and tanks are heavy, and every ounce is costly to boost into space. If propulsion engineers can use the new data to find ways to reduce that volume and weight, Gaddis said, it means not only less cost going forward, but more room for valuable science payload.

The project has such widespread appeal and potential, he said, that Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp. is giving it a "free ride" aboard its Antares rocket and its Cygnus, and the ISS program office is charging NASA nothing to conduct the experiment aboard the station.

"The data that this experiment will gather sets the foundation for all long-term space flight involving liquid fuels," said Charlie Holicker, a student at FIT who worked on the project.

 

Hubble Space Telescope Captures Photo of Distant Galaxies

 

Laura Dattaro – Weather Channel

 

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have peered back in time and captured some of the oldest galaxies ever seen in new images released at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week.

The images feature a massive cluster of several hundred galaxies, known as Abell 2744. Because the cluster is so far away, and because it takes time for light to travel from the galaxies to Earth, Hubble is seeing the galaxy cluster as it looked 3.5 billion years ago.

The cluster is so immense that its gravity warps the space around it enough to create an effect known as "gravitational lensing," which allows astronomers to use the galaxy as a kind of microscope to magnify features of space that are even more distant. In this case, about 3,000 background galaxies are seen as they looked more than 12 billion years ago, not long after the big bang — the birth of the universe itself. (Click here for a zoomable version of the image.)

The images are part of a program called "Frontier Fields," which uses Hubble, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to look further back in time than ever before.

"The Frontier Fields is an experiment," Matt Mountain, Space Telescope Science Institute director, which operates Hubble, said in a release. "Can we use Hubble's exquisite image quality and Einstein's theory of general relativity to search for the first galaxies?"

Hubble image of galaxy cluster Abell 1689. (NASA, ESA, and B. Siana and A. Alavi (University of California, Riverside))

More images released from Hubble today also took advantage of the gravitational lensing effect to capture 58 galaxies as they appeared more than 10 billion years ago in ultraviolet light. The galaxies are believed to have birthed many new stars forming in the early universe. (Click here for a zoomable version of the image.)

"There's always been a concern that we've only found the brightest of the distant galaxies," Brian Siana, a University of California, Riverside astronomer and leader of the research, said in a release. "The bright galaxies, however, represent the tip of the iceberg. We believe most of the stars forming in the early universe are occurring in galaxies we normally can't see at all. Now we have found those 'unseen' galaxies, and we're really confident that we're seeing the rest of the iceberg."

 

Mars rover photographs featured at Smithsonian

Brett Zongker – Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ten years after NASA landed two rovers on Mars for a 90-day mission, one is still exploring, and the project has generated hundreds of thousands of images from the planet's surface.

 

NASA and Smithsonian to Host 10 Year Anniversary Events for Mars Rovers PR Newswire 10 Years on Mars: NASA Rover Mission Celebrates 10th Martian Birthday SPACE.com Now the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is presenting more than 50 of the best photographs from the two rovers known as Spirit and Opportunity in an art exhibit curated by the scientists who have led the ongoing mission.

 

"Spirit and Opportunity: 10 Years Roving Across Mars" opens Thursday and includes many large-scale photographs of craters, hills, dunes, dust clouds, meteorites, rock formations and the Martian sunset. The Smithsonian's first exhibit of art from the Martian rovers marks the 10th anniversary of the ongoing mission.

 

John Grant, a planetary geologist at the museum who is part of the rover mission team, organized the exhibit, in part as a travel log with images on one side from Sprit and images from Opportunity on the other. The rovers landed in January 2004 on opposite sides of Mars and began exploring volcanic deposits and plains, as well as meteorites and impact craters, so the exhibit also focuses on the science, Grant said.

 

"Every one of the images you see here tells a story of discovery that goes along with the story of beauty on Mars," Grant said.

 

It's a look at an alien planet through the rovers' eyes, he said.

 

After about 800 days, one of Spirit's front wheels stalled and stopped functioning. So the engineering team decided to continue driving it in reverse, dragging the broken wheel across the Martian surface. That dragging dug a trench behind the rover that soon uncovered a new material as white as snow. It turned out to be silica material that would normally be found in hot springs and hydrothermal systems — habitable environments.

 

"It was a total surprise," said Steven Squyres, an astronomy professor at Cornell University who headed the Mars Exploration Rover mission. "It was just pure good luck. We wouldn't have even seen that if we didn't have the busted wheel."

 

The rovers also found concretions and layered sedimentary rocks made of sulfate salt that showed water had once been on the planet's surface.

 

While some panoramic images clearly show the red Martian landscape, other images focus on other colors that can be found in Mars' rocks, soil and sky. One image of the Martian sunset shows a bluish color in the sky, which is usually pink in the daytime due to the reddish dust in the atmosphere. But it turns blue at sunset — the opposite of Earth, Squyres said.

 

"In human exploration, it's not like 'Star Trek.' It's not go where no man has gone before," he said. "Actually, the scientists have to lead that. We have to know everything about the environment before we send humans onto that next journey."

 

UrtheCast plans second attempt to install Earth-viewing cameras on ISS

 

CBS News

 

The Russian cosmonauts working aboard the International Space Station will make a second attempt to install a set of cameras on the exterior of the space station in late January.

The first attempt to install the UrtheCast cameras, which will provide near-live streaming footage of the Earth, ended in failure after a marathon spacewalk on Dec. 27.

After running into problems hooking up the two cameras, cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy reluctantly brought them back inside the Pirs airlock module, a disappointing end to the eight-hour, seven-minute space walk. It was the longest Russian spacewalk on record, and nearly beat the U.S. record of eight hours, 56 minutes.

On Jan. 7, the commercial company that will run the cameras, UrtheCast, announced that they are ready for a second attempt.

"The issue that delayed the initial installation of the cameras has now been resolved, allowing for the scheduling of the next spacewalk, which is expected by the end of January," the company said in a press release.

The first attempt failed due to cabling issues inside the ISS, according to the release.

"We are extremely grateful for the extraordinary work by Energia and the cosmonauts onboard the ISS, especially during the holidays," explained UrtheCast's chief executive officer, Scott Larson. "We are confident that our cameras will soon be successfully installed and we are looking forward to collecting our first high resolution videos."

The exact date of the spacewalk has not yet been announced.

 

NASA Slowly Amassing List of Potential Targets for Asteroid Retrieval Mission

 

Dan Leone – Space News

 

WASHINGTON — NASA has identified about a dozen potential targets for its proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission, but will make no decision until at least 2017 about which space rock to bring back to the Earth-Moon system to be probed by astronauts, an agency official said.

That means the new robotic spacecraft that will redirect the chosen asteroid into a distant lunar retrograde orbit — where NASA engineers believe it could be stored for close to a century — will launch no earlier than 2018, according to Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA headquarters here.

The proposed NASA mission uses as its blueprint a concept developed at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. Unveiled last April as part of the White House's 2014 budget request for NASA, early concepts called for launching a robotic spacecraft in 2017 to capture an asteroid roughly 10 meters in diameter, which astronauts could visit later.

However, "a launch as soon as 2017 is probably not feasible, particularly given the budget situation," Johnson told SpaceNews in a Dec. 19 phone interview. "We'd have to be ramping up, starting to build, be into the preliminary design phase already to be able to launch in 2017. And of course, that's not going to happen."

Once corralled into the distant lunar orbit, the captured asteroid would, according to NASA's current plans, be visited by human explorers using the Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket the agency is working on. That mission would notionally take place around 2025 — a date that has more political than practical significance, being the year by which U.S. President Barack Obama, back in 2010, challenged NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid. 

The mission, which in Congress has received reactions ranging from lukewarm to hostile, will be among the subjects discussed here Jan. 8-9 at the NASA-chartered Small Bodies Assessment Group. 

At the moment, NASA is looking at seven small, free-flying asteroids and six larger space rocks from which boulder-size samples could be pried. 

However, the list of potential targets is bound to grow between now and 2017, and some — maybe all — of the asteroids discovered so far could fall off NASA's list, depending on what follow-up observations reveal about their spin rates and composition.

At the moment, NASA knows only that the orbits of the potential targets are such that a robotic craft should be able to nudge them into the desired capture orbit around the Moon — provided that the asteroids are not spinning too fast, or composed of materials that make capture an impossible ordeal, Johnson said.

The seven free-floating asteroids that could be retrieved using the Caltech concept are: 2007 UN12, 2008 EA9, 2010 UE51, 2013 LE7, 2009 BD, 2013 PZ6, 2011 MD. These asteroids could be be put into NASA's desired lunar retrograde orbit between 2020 and 2024, Johnson said.

Larger asteroids from which boulder-size samples could be collected and redirected are: Itokawa, a sample of which was returned to Earth in 2010 under Japan's Hayabusa mission; Benu, from which NASA's Osiris-Rex mission, launching in 2016, plans to return a small sample to Earth in 2023; 1999 JU3; 2008 EV5; 2011 UW158; 2009 DL46. 

NASA has yet to put a price on its proposed asteroid redirect mission, which would require the construction and launch of a new solar-propelled robotic spacecraft to retrieve the asteroid. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has said the endeavor would cost less than the $2.2 billion estimate that came attached to the Caltech concept. 

Bolden has said the Caltech concept did not figure in work NASA has already done on SLS and Orion, which Congress ordered the agency to build in 2010 using hardware and contracts left over from the space shuttle program, and the Constellation Moon exploration program canceled by the Obama administration that year. These programs are among the most expensive in NASA's portfolio.

 

New Japanese travel agency to start selling seats for space tours on Virgin Galactic

 

John Hofilena – Japan Daily Press

A new Tokyo-based travel agency is set to start marketing seats on space tours via a commercial space flight program based in the United States. Club Tourism Space Tours Inc. was officially launched on Monday as a subsidiary of Club Tourism International Inc. for the express purpose of marketing Virgin Galactic space tours in Japan priced at US$250,000 (around 25 million yen).

The concept and driving force behind Virgin Galactic is adventurer and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. When this idea was floated in 2006, it was no better than a pipe dream, but because of the strong-willed development of the plan, suborbital spaceflights are now set to start late this year. The flight accommodates six passengers, along with two pilots, and will take off from New Mexico. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo will first be taken to the proper altitude by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier craft. Then at 15,000 meters, SpaceShipTwo will detached and go on an amazing 90-second fuel burn to climb to an altitude around 100,000 meters above the Earth. At this point, passengers will experience zero gravity for around four minutes and have an amazing view of the planet. SpaceShipTwo will then glide back down to Spaceport America to complete the roughly two-hour tour.

The Virgin Galactic flights are not cheap, but will there be any takers at US$250,000? Apparently, there are – almost 700 persons have already signed up for the flights, and 18 of those are Japanese citizens. CTI is envisioning 900 tourists from Japan to take part in the space program in over a decade. But if you – like most of us in the real world – have no ability to pony up the 25 million yen required for a two-hour space flight, maybe a more affordable alternative will be these "star fighter" bus tours that give tourists a chance to explore Tokyo the nerdy way. The tour comes complete gaming LED screens (yey!), "hyper windows" (which really are just normal windows), and "missions" to complete as you go along. For US$80, you really get what you pay for. When you got this, who needs space travel anyways? Psshh.

 

This Spacesuit for Exploring Mars Is a Form-Fitting Math Problem

 

Joseph Flaherty – Wired

In science fiction, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Ender's Game, astronauts zip around zero-g environments clad in stylish, skin-tight spacesuits. In reality, outfits designed for outer space are bulky, hard to maneuver, and have all the charm of adult diapers. Even their name, Extravehicular Mobility Units, or EMUs, is clumsy.

Enter Dava Newman, fashion designer to the stars. You won't see her work on the red carpet, but if this MIT professor has her way, all the most fashionable space explorers will be wearing her designs when they set foot on the red planet.

A thousand feet of ribbing is held in place with over 140,000 stitches.

For a mission to Mars to succeed, off-world explorers desperately need a new wardrobe to deal with the planet's unique challenges. In humanity's entire spacefaring existence, there have been 514 extravehicular space walks, but a single, multi-year mission to Mars will require over 1,000.

On the ground, astronauts will be expected to explore extreme environments like the Olympus Mons, a volcano the size of Arizona that's nearly three times the height of Mount Everest. Suits will need to be easier to don and doff, provide greater freedom of movement, and be comfortable for long haul journeys. Newman's solution is called the BioSuit and looks a bit like a superhero's costume, but it's actually just a form-fitting math problem.

In order to survive in the vacuum of space, human bodies require pressure. EMUs solve this problem by creating a pressurized vessel, sort of like a mini airplane cabin. By contrast, the BioSuit employs semi-rigid ribs traced across the body to provide mechanical counterpressure while letting the wearer retain a full range of movement.

While they haven't sent the suit to space, Newman's group has access to a focus group of astronauts, including moon walker Buzz Aldrin. Photo: Marla Aufmuth

Providing that life-preserving pressure requires over a thousand feet of ribbing, which is threaded through the suit at critical strain points and held in place with over 140,000 stitches. Gold fibers are woven through the outfit and paired with biometric sensors to collect data that helps mission control keep tabs on the crew. The snug unis protect astronauts, provide greater freedom of movement and more physically taxing experiments, and importantly, make the astronauts look more like characters in a J.J. Abrams movie than some doofy educational film.

"Aesthetics are a critical component of design and engineering," says Newman. "I still think space exploration is the most exciting thing going on, and heroic-looking suits might help make more of a human connection for folks."

Beyond its good looks, the BioSuit will also be safer. If a micrometorite or piece of space junk pierced an EMU, the suit would rapidly depressurize, leaving the astronaut out of luck in outer space, but the BioSuit could be patched with next-gen duct tape.

Newman has filed a number of patents on her invention, but is quick to share credit with earlier thinkers in the field. Dr. Arthur S. Iberall developed a similar concept for NASA in the 1960s, and a textbook from 1882 called Lehrbuch der systematischen und topographischen Anatomie provided Newman with the basic math that dictates the placement of the ribs that create the suit's soft exoskeleton. These older ideas served as a launchpad while modern innovations like shape memory alloys, passive-elastic materials, and electro-spun fabrics served as the fuel.

Newman's team has tested the suits by exploring the alien terrain near Area 51.

3-D tools have also been critically important to the project. Scanners allow the design team to make perfectly fit gear for each member of the flight crew. "Custom-designed individual suits are critical in my opinion since we want to facilitate extreme exploration," says Newman. "And the best way I know how to improve performance is to provide astronaut explorers with maximum mobility while requiring the least amount of energy expenditure."

Meanwhile, 3-D printers have advanced to levels that would have been unimaginable at the start. "The great thing about 3-D printing today is that we can use it for concepts, almost like sketch models, early in our design process rather than 3-D printing for only final designs, as we did in the past," says Newman.

"A former NASA Administrator was quoted as saying 'anytime you can tell a female astronaut from a male astronaut in a spacesuit, that's a good thing.' I tend to agree," says Newman. Photo: Marla Aufmuth

Newman's team has tested the suits by donning the futuristic garb and exploring the alien terrain near Area 51 in the Southwest. They also developed a custom robot that can simulate a full range of human movement and withstand the uncomfortable prodding required to ensure a proper fit. While they haven't sent the outfit to space, the group is lucky to have a focus group of astronauts, including moon walker Buzz Aldrin, to provide feedback.

Science comes first, but Newman isn't skimping on style. While busy bringing dozens of technologies to bear and developing the complex mathematics that drive the suit's functionality, Newman sought out design partnerships with Dainese, an Italian firm that makes high-performance gear for motorcyclists and extreme athletes, as well as a contingent of RISD students to ensure that the suits are flattering as well as functional. "A former NASA Administrator was quoted as saying 'anytime you can tell a female astronaut from a male astronaut in a spacesuit, that's a good thing.' I tend to agree," says Newman.

There's no final countdown for the suits to become available. Newman has spent years refining the designs, testing new materials in simulations, and developing new fabrication techniques—in fact, many of her most recent publications have focused more on advances in testing technology than extravehicular missions. The majority of the work is completed on the mechanical aspects of the suit, but the life support systems still need to be integrated before it can be tested in the unforgiving vacuum of space, a process which will require significant funding. In the past NASA has funded the development of the research, but perhaps Virgin Galactic or Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin might want spiffy threads for their stewards?

Even if the flight plan for Mars is delayed indefinitely, all of Newman's R&D will have down to Earth applications. Already, some of the innovations are being applied to treatments for children with cerebral palsy and seniors with severe balance impediments. Ultimately, Newman hopes we can design our way towards a world devoid of disability.

 

END

 

 

Megan Sumner

Public Affairs Specialist 

NASA Johnson Space Center