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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: January 29, 2014 9:43:16 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Wednesday – Jan. 29, 2014 and JSC Today
________________________________________Wednesday, January 29, 2014 Read JSC Today in your browserJSC TODAY CATEGORIES1. Headlines- Celebrating Inventors at JSC- JSC Knowledge Online (JKO) for 20142. Organizations/Social- Money and Parenting After the Holidays- Give Your Sweetheart the Gift of Massage Therapy- Starport Financial Wellness: Avoiding ID Theft- Parent's Night Out at Starport - Feb. 21- Youth Dodgeball ClinicHubble's Double TakeHeadlines1. Celebrating Inventors at JSCWe are celebrating and acknowledging inventors from JSC for their individual and team accomplishments. On Thursday, Jan. 30, at 1p.m. in the Building 30 Auditorium, the Technology Transfer Office within the Strategic Opportunity and Development Office is hosting the Invention and Contributions Board (ICB) Awards and the JSC Exceptional Software Awards ceremony.The NASA ICB was established by the Space Act of 1958 and is responsible for the Space Act Awards. The mission of the ICB is to reward and promote outstanding scientific or technical contributions sponsored, adopted, supported or used by NASA that are significant to aeronautics and space activities.For more information about NASA innovations and awards, please contact the Technology Transfer and Commercialization Office via email or by calling x33809.Arlene Andrews x34730[top]2. JSC Knowledge Online (JKO) for 2014New collections of training videos are now offered on the "Leadership and Learning" tab of the JKO. Initially produced and presented by Human Systems Integration and the Human Systems Academy, example lectures include: Changes in Postural Stability after Spaceflight; Effects of Space on the Control of Locomotion; and Exploration Medical Capabilities. Many engineers will be interested in the Structures and Dynamics Series, also available on the "Leadership and Learning" Tab. Examples include: Laminate Composites; Design Process Physiology; Beam Bending; and 2-D Element Mapping. Newly released information sets from the Apollo Program era are also available from the "Historical Records" tab. Check back to this expanding group of program-era information! Thanks to all involved in the hard work and collaboration necessary in keeping valuable knowledge available for JSC.Brent J. Fontenot x36456 https://knowledge.jsc.nasa.gov/[top]Organizations/Social1. Money and Parenting After the HolidaysWorrying about money is one of the major parenting stressors all year round, but it deals a double whammy around the holidays. The temptation is huge to ignore your present reality and just put everything on a credit card … and worry about it later. Well, later is upon us. Are you dealing with the regret of holiday spending? Have the gifts proven to be worth the cost? In the spirit of New Year's resolutions, discover how to begin steps to resolve to plan, save and spend differently during the year to improve your money management habits. Discover the importance of changing how you look at money and the lessons you can teach your children about money and values after the holiday season. Please join Anika Isaac, MS, LPC, LMFT, NCC, CEAP, LCDC, today, Jan. 29, in the Building 30 Auditorium for a presentation on Money and Parenting After the Holidays.Event Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2014 Event Start Time:12:00 PM Event End Time:1:00 PMEvent Location: Building 30 AuditoriumAdd to CalendarLorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Occupational Health Branch x36130[top]2. Give Your Sweetheart the Gift of Massage TherapyNothing says I love you like the gift of relaxation. This Valentine's Day, give your sweetheart 60 minutes of bliss with a Starport massage at the Gilruth Center.Valentine's Day Special: For a limited time, buy your Valentine a 60-minute massage at the reduced rate of $60. Massages must be purchased before Feb. 14 and scheduled before March 31. Only one discounted massage per person.To schedule your appointment, visit the Starport website.Joseph Callahan x42769 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/massage-therapy[top]3. Starport Financial Wellness: Avoiding ID TheftJoin us for a free seminar presented by the JSC Federal Credit Union on Avoiding Identity Theft. Your identity can very easily be ruined if you do not take the proper precautions to maintain it. Identity theft is considered a serious crime. While some identity theft victims can resolve their problems quickly, others spend hundreds of dollars and many days repairing damage to their good name and credit record. Learn how to outsmart the crooks and how to avoid becoming a victim.Feb. 511:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.Building 29, Room 231There is limited seating, and all attendees must RSVP. (The class may fill up and you may be put on a waiting list.) A free lunch will be provided. RSVP by Feb. 3 to Shelly Haralson via email or at x39168.More information on financial wellness classes can be found here.Shelly Haralson x39168 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/[top]4. Parent's Night Out at Starport – Feb. 21Enjoy a night out on the town while your kids enjoy a night with Starport! We will entertain your children with a night of games, a bounce house, pizza, a movie, dessert and loads of fun.When: Friday, Feb. 21, from 6 to 10 p.m.Where: Gilruth CenterAges: 5 to 12Cost: $20/first child and $10/each additional sibling if registered by the Wednesday prior to event. If registered after Wednesday, the fee is $25/first child and $15/additional sibling.Shericka Phillips x35563 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/familyyouth-programs/parents-n...[top]5. Youth Dodgeball ClinicDodge, duck, dip and dive your way into a fun and exciting new youth dodgeball clinic. Children will learn throwing and dodging techniques all while enjoying the game of dodgeball. Soft Gatorskin balls will be used.Dates: Feb. 6 to 27Day and Time: Thursdays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.Ages: 8 to 12Price: $50Robert Vaughn II 281-489-8049 https://apm.activecommunities.com/starport/Activity_Search/youth-dodgeba...[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.________________________________________No virus found in this message.Checked by AVG - www.avg.comVersion: 2014.0.4259 / Virus Database: 3681/7042 - Release Date: 01/29/14NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsWednesday – Jan. 29, 2014INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: This photo is of the Volcanic Smog and Sunglint in the Vanuatu Archipelago.
NASA TV:10 a.m. EST - Annual White House State of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Address - White House/HQ (All Channels)HEADLINES AND LEADSBeings Not Made for SpaceKenneth Chang – The New York TimesIn space, heads swell. A typical human being is about 60 percent water, and in the free fall of space, the body's fluids float upward, into the chest and the head. Legs atrophy, faces puff, and pressure inside the skull rises.NASA To Order More Soyuz Seats
Dan Leone – Space NewsU.S. astronauts will continue to fly to and from the international space station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft through the end of 2017, NASA announced Jan. 27.Russia Could Go It Alone After International Space Station ClosesRIA Novosti (RUS)The Russian segment of the International Space Station could live on as a separate facility after the project's conclusion, the head of the company that oversees the country's participation said Tuesday.NASA Offers Non-financial Support for Commercial Lunar LandersDan Leone – Space NewsNASA is offering government-owned experimental rocket hardware and facilities — but no money — to private entities interested in developing a lander that could send small instrument payloads safely to the surface of the Moon.Delta 4 rocket engine cleared for GPS launch on Feb. 20Justin Ray – Spaceflight NowThe next launch of a Global Positioning System satellite is back on track after engineers gained fresh insight into the circumstances surrounding a previous GPS flight and its low-thrust condition on the upper stage.Virgin Tests Engines For Its Small Orbital Launch VehicleFrank Morring – Aviation WeekVirgin Galactic's plans to supplement its suborbital human spaceflight business by launching small satellites from its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft are advancing with hot-fire ground tests of the two kerosene-fueled rocket engines it has designed for the application.Is now the time to start working on space property rights?Jeff Foust – Space PoliticsGiven the current range of space policy issues under discussion and debate, the concept of space property rights can seem a little, well, out there. Lunar bases and asteroid prospecting are still likely years in the future: can't this issue wait? Not in the eyes of some legal experts and space advocates.Outer space is hazardous to your health, especially if you're a flyAlan Boyle - NBCNews.comWeightlessness weakens a key molecular pathway in a fruit fly's immune system, researchers report in a study that raises new questions for human space travelers as well as flies.Titusville is making strides to bounce back from space shuttle layoffsGreg Pallone - Central Florida News 13Brevard County is still reeling from layoffs after the space shuttle fleet retired, but locals in Titusville said the city's "rebirth" is making strides.NASA Planning for Mission To Mine Water on the MoonIrene Klotz – Space NewsFollowing a series of reconnaissance missions that found hydrogen and then water on the Moon, NASA is laying the groundwork for a lunar rover that would scout for subsurface volatiles and extract them for processing.Review: Wheels StopJeff Foust – The Space ReviewWheels Stop: The Tragedies and Triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986–2011by Rick HoustonIt's been just over two a half years since the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down at the Kennedy Space Center, completing the 135th and final mission of the program, but in many respects it seems far longer. The heated debates about whether to keep flying the Shuttle are distant memories, those arguments long since either won or lost, and even the squabbles about where the orbiters should go in their retirement have faded. The Space Shuttle is firmly part of NASA's past, but its impact remains felt on the space agency today, and likely for many years to come.COMPLETE STORIESBeings Not Made for SpaceKenneth Chang – The New York TimesIn space, heads swell. A typical human being is about 60 percent water, and in the free fall of space, the body's fluids float upward, into the chest and the head. Legs atrophy, faces puff, and pressure inside the skull rises."Your head actually feels bloated," said Mark E. Kelly, a retired NASA astronaut who flew on four space shuttle missions. "It kind of feels like you would feel if you hung upside down for a couple of minutes."The human body did not evolve to live in space. And how that alien environment changes the body is not a simple problem, nor is it easily solved.Some problems, like the brittling of bone, may have been overcome already. Others have been identified — for example, astronauts have trouble eating and sleeping enough — and NASA is working to understand and solve them.Then there are the health problems that still elude doctors more than 50 years after the first spaceflight. In a finding just five years ago, the eyeballs of at least some astronauts became somewhat squashed.The biggest hurdle remains radiation. Without the protective cocoon of Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere, astronauts receive substantially higher doses of radiation, heightening the chances that they will die of cancer. How much of a cancer risk later in life is acceptable?At the Johnson Space Center here, the home base for NASA's human spaceflight program, scientists probably have until the 2030s to dissect these problems before the agency sends astronauts to Mars — a mission that would take about 2.5 years, or nearly six times the current standard tour of duty on the space station.The longest any human has been off Earth is almost 438 days, by Dr. Valery Polyakov on the Russian space station Mir in 1994 and 1995. (Two private organizations, Inspiration Mars and Mars One, have announced plans to launch a manned interplanetary flight sooner and have had no problem attracting people despite the risks, known and unknown.)NASA recently announced that it would continue operating the space station until at least 2024, in part for additional medical research.NASA officials often talk about the "unknown unknowns" — the unforeseen problems that catch them by surprise. The eye issue caught them by surprise, and they are happy it did not happen in the middle of a mission to Mars.In 2009, during his six-month stay on the International Space Station, Dr. Michael R. Barratt, a NASA astronaut who is also a physician, noticed he was having some trouble seeing things close up, as did another member of the six-member crew, Dr. Robert B. Thirsk, a Canadian astronaut who is also a doctor. So the two performed eye exams on each other, confirming the vision shift toward farsightedness.They also saw hints of swelling in their optic nerves and blemishes on their retinas. On the next cargo ship, NASA sent up a high-resolution camera so that they could take clearer images of their eyes, which confirmed the suspicions. Ultrasound images showed that their eyes had become somewhat squeezed.NASA is now checking astronauts' eyesight before, during and after trips to the space station.The issue turns out not to be new. Many space shuttle astronauts had complained of changes in eyesight, but no one had studied the matter."It is now a recognized occupational hazard of spaceflight," Dr. Barratt said. "We uncovered something that has been right under our noses forever."Dr. Barratt said the vision shift had no effect on his ability to work in space. The concern, however, is that the farsightedness may be just a symptom of more serious changes in the astronauts' health. "What are the long-term implications?" he said. "That's the $64 million question."It is one of the many things NASA will be monitoring in the health of Scott J. Kelly, who will spend one year on the space station beginning in spring 2015: twice as long as his stay there in 2010 and 2011 and the longest for an American. A Russian astronaut, Mikhail Kornienko, will also make a yearlong trip to orbit then. Dr. Polyakov and three other Russian astronauts have already had orbital stays longer than that and returned seemingly not much the worse for wear.John B. Charles, chief of the international science office of NASA's human research program, is setting up the medical experiments, designed to figure out whether there are differences between a six-month stay and a 12-month stay. "Logically, you might say, how can there not be?" Dr. Charles said.But it is also possible that the body becomes acclimated to weightlessness after only a few months, and that the changes in vision and bones level off.The doctors will also compare Scott Kelly's health with that of Mark Kelly, his twin brother. "I imagine I'll be giving blood and urine samples," said Mark Kelly, who is married to Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman. "My attitude is, I worked at NASA for 16 years and whatever I can do to help, I will."A decade ago, NASA scientists worried that astronauts were returning to Earth with weaker bones, their density draining away by 1 to 2 percent per month. In space, the body does not need to support its weight, and it responds by dismantling bone tissue much faster than on Earth.NASA turned to osteoporosis drugs and improved exercises, like having the astronauts run while strapped to a treadmill. The up-and-down pounding set off signals to the body to build new bone, and NASA scientists reported that astronauts then came back with almost as much bone as when they had left."That was huge," said Scott M. Smith, a NASA nutritionist.Because both the formation and destruction occur at accelerated rates, "we don't know if that bone is as strong as when you left," Dr. Smith said. But the scientists now feel that bone loss is not a showstopper for a long-duration mission.For the eyesight issues, scientists have more questions than answers. They suspect that the adverse effects result largely from the fluid shift, the higher pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid in the skull pushing on the back of the eyeballs, but that has not been proved. And that theory does not explain why it usually affects the right eye more than the left, and men far more than women.Dr. Smith has also found that the astronauts who experienced a shift in vision had increased levels of the amino acid homocysteine, often a marker for cardiovascular disease. That may suggest that a zero-gravity environment sets some biochemical process in motion.Artificial gravity could be generated by spinning the spacecraft like a merry-go-round, alleviating both the bone loss and the fluid shift. But that would also add complexity to a mission and raise the potential for a catastrophic accident. But the eye issue "could be something that drives us back to artificial gravity," Dr. Barratt said.The lack of gravity also jumbles the body's neurovestibular system that tells people which way is up. When returning to the pull of gravity, astronauts can become dizzy, something that Mark Kelly took note of as he piloted the space shuttle to a landing. "If you tilt your head a little left or right," he said, "it feels like you're going end over end."That may not be as big an issue for a Mars spacecraft that lands autonomously, and in which the astronauts have time to rest before getting out of their seats.Regarding radiation, NASA operates under a restriction that astronauts should not have their lifetime cancer risk raised by more than three percentage points, but that is an arbitrary limit. Mark Kelly, for one, said he would be willing to accept twice that if he had a chance to go to Mars.There may be other complications, though. At Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, scientists are bombarding mice with radiation that mimics high-energy cosmic rays that zip through outer space. Those mice take longer to navigate a maze, suggesting that the radiation may be damaging their brains.Scientists say it may damage other organs, including the heart, nervous system and digestive system. "Those could be acute effects," said William H. Paloski, the head of NASA's human research program. "We just don't know. It's one we're looking at."Beyond the body, there is also the mind. The first six months of Scott Kelly's one-year mission are expected to be no different from his first trip to the space station.But Dr. Gary E. Beven, a NASA psychiatrist, said he was interested in whether anything changed in the next six months. "We're going to be looking for any significant changes in mood, in sleep, in irritability, in cognition," he said.For trips beyond Earth orbit, astronauts will be isolated from the rest of humanity. During the Apollo missions, there was a lag time of 1.3 seconds between a command from mission control and an astronaut's hearing it, the time for a radio signal to travel the 240,000 miles from Houston to the moon. At Mars, the lags would stretch minutes, and real-time conversation with someone on Earth would be impossible.The crew of a Mars mission — four or six astronauts in NASA's current thinking — would have to be more self-reliant to solve any personality conflicts. Dr. Beven envisioned computer systems that could detect subtle changes in facial expressions or tone of voice, perhaps offering some suggestions for defusing tensions.In a Russian experiment in 2010 and 2011, six men agreed to be sealed up in a mock spaceship simulating a 17-month Mars mission. Four of the six developed disorders, and the crew became less active as the experiment progressed."I think that's just an example of what could potentially happen during a Mars mission, but with much greater consequence," Dr. Beven said. "Those subtle changes in group cohesion could cause major problems."Dr. Charles said he thought NASA could already send astronauts to Mars and bring them back alive. But given the huge expense of such a mission, he said it was crucial that the astronauts arrived productive and in great health."My goal," he said, "is to see a program that doesn't deliver an astronaut limping to Mars."NASA To Order More Soyuz Seats
Dan Leone – Space NewsU.S. astronauts will continue to fly to and from the international space station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft through the end of 2017, NASA announced Jan. 27.NASA plans to reserve six Soyuz seats to cover round-trip transportation and related training for three astronauts during 2017, according to a sole-source procurement notice posted online. Also included in the pending Soyuz order, which will be NASA's second in as many years, is emergency crew rescue services through the spring of 2018, NASA said.The procurement notice did not say how much NASA would pay the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, for these services. NASA spokesman Trent Perrotto, reached by email Jan. 28, had no immediate comment about the price.Senior NASA officials hinted late last year that another contract for Soyuz rides was probably inevitable because the crew taxis U.S. companies are working on under the agency's Commercial Crew Program would likely not be ready to fly before NASA's current contract with Roscosmos runs out.In May 2013, NASA paid Russia $424 million for astronaut transportation to the station in 2016, and for emergency crew rescue services through June 2017. The total cost averaged out to roughly $70 million a seat.NASA has lacked the ability to ferry astronauts to the space station since the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. Boeing Space Exploration of Houston, Sierra Nevada Space Systems of Louisville, Colo., and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of Hawthorne, Calif., are working on crew-carrying spacecraft using money from NASA's Commercial Crew Program. NASA wants at least one of those vehicles to fly astronauts to station starting in 2017.In its online procurement note, NASA said the first crewed demonstration flight to station under the Commercial Crew Program was tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2017.NASA plans to pay for astronaut transportation with task orders from a contracting vehicle dubbed the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability Contract, competition for which is ongoing, with an award scheduled for August or September.This fourth major contract of the Commercial Crew Program will pay for development and certification of at least one industry-designed crewed transportation system, plus task orders for routine flights. A company must complete a crewed demonstration before it is eligible for a task order.Russia Could Go It Alone After International Space Station ClosesRIA Novosti (RUS)The Russian segment of the International Space Station could live on as a separate facility after the project's conclusion, the head of the company that oversees the country's participation said Tuesday."By the mid-2020s our American colleagues will have exhausted their technical resources and Russia will have a unique opportunity to use the segment, still to be completed, as an orbiting international port," RSC Energia's president Vitalii Lopota said at an annual space conference in Moscow.Lopota said the long-delayed Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module would only be completed in 2018-2020.Russian officials have in the past suggested their segment could be detached and operated independently of the ISS as the United States had previously considered leaving the project as early as 2016.But earlier this month US President Barack Obama vowed to keep the American segment operational until 2024.Lopota said the Russian segment could still be detached at that time, when its first modules will already be more than 20 years old, to serve as a transit point for international missions headed deeper into space.The ISS, developed as a joint project between the US and Russia in the 1990s, has been continuously occupied for more than 13 years by astronauts from more than a dozen countries.NASA Offers Non-financial Support for Commercial Lunar LandersDan Leone – Space NewsNASA is offering government-owned experimental rocket hardware and facilities — but no money — to private entities interested in developing a lander that could send small instrument payloads safely to the surface of the Moon.The agency plans to award several unfunded Space Act Agreements for its Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (CATALYST) program in April. The nominal performance period for these agreements is three years, Jason Crusan, director of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division, said during a Jan. 27 conference call with reporters.Proposals are due March 17. NASA is interested in concepts that could safely land small- and medium-size payloads, which the agency defined as 30-100 kilograms and 250-500 kilograms in mass, respectively. Landers designed for smaller payloads would also be considered, Crusan said.Mission proposals must include a U.S. commercial launch vehicle to be considered for an award, according to slides NASA released Jan. 27 for an industry briefing held prior to Crusan's media call. Representatives from about 50 different groups, including academia and nonprofits, attended that briefing, Crusan said. State and local governments, NASA centers and U.S. national labs are not eligible for a CATALYST award.The CATALYST solicitation, which was released Jan. 16, does not specify what sort of payloads would receive favorable treatment from NASA's selection official. Crusan said the agency was interested in concepts that enable scientific missions, such as lunar sample return, and engineering demonstrations, such as resource harvesting.Previous missions to the Moon have revealed the presence of water ice at the poles, which can be refined into breathable oxygen and rocket fuel. The ability to produce oxygen and rocket fuel on the Moon could make it much easier to stage exploration missions to more distant destinations.Although CATALYST award winners will not get any money, they will get access to NASA civil servants and test facilities, as well as the agency's Morpheus and Mighty Eagle vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing rockets. These experimental vehicles, similar to craft produced commercially by companies including Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., could be rigged with third-party guidance, navigation and control systems that improve their ability to negotiate dangerous terrain, such as the lunar poles.Crusan billed CATALYST as a follow-on of sorts to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) flight development program NASA started in 2006. That program paved the way for Orbital Sciences Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. to start flying cargo to the international space station under a pair of commercial delivery contracts that, combined, are worth nearly $2.5 billion today.However, the COTS and CATALYST programs differ in fundamental ways. For one, NASA is not bundling any funding with CATALYST. For another, CATALYST is not matched up with any of the priority missions the agency has identified for its human spaceflight and science programs, as was COTS.For crewed missions, NASA is focused on the space station and Asteroid Redirect Mission, which was announced in 2013 and calls for prodding a small asteroid into lunar space to be visited by astronaut crews around 2025. NASA's Science Mission Directorate, meanwhile, is focused on launching the James Webb Space Telescope to an Earth-Sun Lagrange point and on robotic exploration of the martian surface.China performed the most recent soft Moon landing, setting its Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover down on the lunar surface back in December. That broke a dry spell of soft lunar landings reaching back to 1976, when the former Soviet Union sent the sample-caching Luna 24 to the Moon. The United States has not had a soft Moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.Delta 4 rocket engine cleared for GPS launch on Feb. 20Justin Ray – Spaceflight NowThe next launch of a Global Positioning System satellite is back on track after engineers gained fresh insight into the circumstances surrounding a previous GPS flight and its low-thrust condition on the upper stage.The Delta 4 rocket is aiming for a Feb. 20 launch of the GPS 2F-5 navigation satellite. The evening launch window at Cape Canaveral extends from 8:40 to 8:59 p.m. EST. Engineers have been studying the situation since the October 2012 flight, even continuing to investigate after putting in place vehicle modifications that allowed three high-profile launches to go forward in 2013. Rocket-operator United Launch Alliance and the Air Force were preparing to launch GPS 2F-5 in October 2013 when work was halted."The cause for delaying the GPS 2F-5 launch was not a new observation, but rather a potential new understanding the dynamic signatures that were measured during the October 2012 launch, along with the need to assess whether this could result in any change in previous flight clearance assessment," officials said."The investigation had previously determined that a fuel leak occurred within the engine system and that this fuel leak caused the low thrust. The ongoing Phase II investigation included very detailed characterization and reconstructions of the instrumentation signatures obtained from the October 2012 launch. These efforts resulted in some updated preliminary conclusions last October that perhaps low-frequency dynamic responses occurred on the engine system during the first engine start event."By taking the flight telemetry from 2012, teams were able to replicate the charateristics in ground testing over the past few months."It was new ground testing of the launch vehicle instrumentation system that led to the preliminary conclusion that there may have been low-frequency dynamic responses during the first engine start," officials said.During the 2012 flight, a fuel leak started as the engine was lit for the first time. That dropped the thrust level down five percent. Two subsequent burns of the upper stage also experienced five percent drops as well, but the flight did achieve the planned orbit successfully. "Over the past few months, the investigation team has conducted additional high-fidelity dynamic testing and analysis related to the hardware system structural and telemetry system characteristics," officials said. "[I]t has been reconfirmed that the mitigations/system improvements previous implemented were appropriate. The flight constraint that was imposed last October has been removed." Those mitigations included extra inspections, officials said, looked for any signs of existing damage or foreign objects within the engine that could impact the mission.In addition, Delta 4 launches now include in-flight helium purges to critical areas of the engine system and changes how the engine is thermally conditioned during ascent to prepare for its initial ignition after first stage separation. During the Oct. 4, 2012 launch, a small fuel leak began at the moment the engine was ignited, robbing the rocket of its expected top-level thrust settings and forcing the vehicle to improvise to overcome the anomaly during the flight. The first stage and its strap-on boosters had done their jobs during the morning blastoff, separating to leave the cryogenic upper stage to perform three firings to lob the 3,400-pound bird into an orbit 11,000 nautical miles up. But as the RL10B-2 engine was ignited for the initial time and reached its peak chamber pressure, a leak started above the narrow throat portion of the thrust chamber, officials revealed in December 2012.The situation reduced the engine thrust output below the expected 25,000 pounds, causing the powerplant to burn longer to compensate and still achieve the proper orbit targets on its circuitous route into the GPS constellation. It could have doomed some launches, but the coupling of the relatively light-weight GPS and the generous fuel margins on the Delta 4 allowed the flight to persevere.Fed with supercold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10B-2 is the latest in a long line of upper stage engines dating back a half-century. The original version of the RL10 debuted successfully on an Atlas rocket in 1963 and has been part of Centaur for more than 200 space missions.The RL10 has dispatched robotic expeditions to every planet in our solar system, plus multiple missions to the moon and countless military spacecraft and commercial communications satellites in orbits around Earth.This latest RL10 variant was introduced in 1998 as part of Boeing's Delta 3 program, which served as a stepping-stone to the Delta 4 rocket and development of its cryogenic upper stage. The engine design has been fired in space 26 times to date.Virgin Tests Engines For Its Small Orbital Launch VehicleFrank Morring – Aviation WeekVirgin Galactic's plans to supplement its suborbital human spaceflight business by launching small satellites from its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft are advancing with hot-fire ground tests of the two kerosene-fueled rocket engines it has designed for the application.Developed and built by Virgin Galactic engineers, the 3,500-lb.-thrust NewtonOne and 47,500-lb.-thrust NewtonTwo are the first- and second-stage engines, respectively, for the company's planned LauncherOne rocket.NewtonOne, the upper-stage engine, completed a full-mission duty cycle of 5 min. on the company's test stand on Mojave, Calif. The larger main-stage engine has had multiple firings for short durations, including one that came within a 12-hr. turnaround for engine swap out to demonstrate responsiveness, according to Virgin Galactic. Longer-duration tests of the NewtonTwo engine are planned "in the coming months," the company said."Combined with parallel progress made by the company in advanced tank and avionics technology, we are now well on our way to providing customers with the lowest-cost opportunity for small satellite manufacturers and operators to buy a dedicated ride to space," said George Whitesides, the Virgin Galactic CEO.LauncherOne is being designed to deliver a 500-lb. payload (225 kg) to low inclination equatorial low Earth orbit, and 225 lb. (100 kg) to polar sun-synchronous orbit at higher altitudes. Higher-capability configurations are also planned, the company says.The two-stage rocket will be drop-launched from WhiteKnightTwo in the same fashion as the company's SpaceShipTwo suborbital human vehicle now undergoing flight testing. Falling from an altitude of 50,000 ft., its main-stage engine will ignite 4 sec. after release. Because the rocket will be air-launched, the company is marketing its relatively simple ground operations from runways around the world.Initial plans call for launches using the runway at the Spaceport America facility in New Mexico, Virgin's commercial base of operations, and other U.S. facilities. Later flights could come from the planned spaceport in Abu Dhabi, home of Virgin partner Aabar Investments PIS, and elsewhere.Is now the time to start working on space property rights?Jeff Foust – Space PoliticsGiven the current range of space policy issues under discussion and debate, the concept of space property rights can seem a little, well, out there. Lunar bases and asteroid prospecting are still likely years in the future: can't this issue wait? Not in the eyes of some legal experts and space advocates.In an op-ed in this week's Space News, Berin Szoka and Jim Dunstan argue that the US should take steps now to address the issue of space property rights, particularly regarding resources extracted from the Moon or other celestial bodies. They cite in particular Bigelow Aerospace's interest in establishing a lunar base and utilizing lunar resources. "Fortunately, what's needed to drive private investment isn't the right to own a plot of land on the Moon or resell it to raise capital," Szoka and Dunstan write. "It's the rights sought by Bigelow: to extract, use and profit from extraterrestrial resources without interference."The approach they seek is not to go through a body like the UN or engage in protracted international negotiations, but instead to get support from the US government, in particular the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST), to recognize the ownership by Bigelow (or other US companies) of the resources they extract, and to bar interference by US companies in those operations. They chose FAA/AST in part because their launch licensing process includes an interagency "payload review" that ensures that launches and their payloads comply with treaties and related international obligations. That process could become, they argue, a catalyst for a more permanent solution.This op-ed was a response to one in Space News last month by lawyer Michael Listner, who argued any discussion of a space property rights regime was premature. "The current legal and policy environment is not ready for a regime that would unilaterally grant private property rights in outer space, and any attempt by the United States at this juncture to create such an independent regime for its citizens would be opposed by other nations and would result in significant geopolitical backlash," he wrote in early December.This topic came up at last month's meeting of the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) in Washington, just days after Listner's original op-ed. "We want to reaffirm to the FAA that what we are looking for is confirmation that a company that invests in extraction of resources has ability to profit from them," Bigelow's Mike Gold, who is also chairman of COMSTAC, said during a meeting of the committee's business and legal working group on December 10 as they crafted a recommendation calling for such an approach."We want property rights recognized, but I don't think we're interested in a very extensive regulatory regime," said Paul Stimers of K&L Gates, who representing Planetary Resources at last month's COMSTAC meeting. "We do need to provide that certainty to investors, to the people who are preparing to make a significant commitment to this effort, that they will be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor."Outer space is hazardous to your health, especially if you're a flyAlan Boyle - NBCNews.comWeightlessness weakens a key molecular pathway in a fruit fly's immune system, researchers report in a study that raises new questions for human space travelers as well as flies.The NASA-funded study, published Friday in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, focuses on the genetic machinery that helps flies defend themselves against infections. The researchers found that when the flies grew up in orbit, as part of an experiment conducted in 2006 on the space shuttle Discovery, they were left more susceptible to fungal infections.Risks of spaceflightScientists have long known that extended exposure to weightlessness can have a negative effect on the immune system, as well as on muscles and bones. But the mechanism behind that effect is still little-understood. To drill down into the details, the researchers looked specifically at the Toll signaling pathway and immune deficiency pathway, which is also known as the imd pathway.Both of those molecular pathways play roles in fighting infections, and they have counterparts in humans and other mammals. The researchers found that the imd pathway continued to work as it should for the flies that were raised in space. However, the receptor that controlled the Toll pathway ceased to function."That receptor is somehow not signaling the response for fungal infections," Deborah Kimbrell, a biologist at the University of California at Davis who led the study team, told NBC News.The link between gravity and the immune system was reinforced by experiments conducted in a centrifuge on Earth. Kimbrell and her colleagues found that normal flies actually had higher resistance to fungal infections when they were subjected to a stronger-than-normal gravitational pull. But they saw no difference for fruit flies with the "yuri gagarin" mutation, which leaves them without normal responses to gravitational fields. ("Yuri gagarin" refers to the Soviet cosmonaut who became the first human in space in 1961.)Related to stress?How does zero gravity interfere with the Toll-like receptor? There's no clear answer to that question yet, but the researchers noticed that space-raised flies showed higher expression of genes that produce stress-related proteins. It could be that those proteins gum up the receptors, or that zero gravity interferes with the way proteins behave outside the cell.Further insights could come from the Fruit Fly Lab, an experiment that's due to be delivered to the space station this year aboard a SpaceX Falcon cargo capsule.The space station's long-term human residents already spend a lot of time doing resistance exercises to guard against bone and muscle loss — but the researchers say even more could be done to simulate gravity's effect. "There should be centrifuges for human space travel," Kimbrell told NBC News.The better-than-normal immune response seen in fruit flies that were spun in a high-G centrifuge also suggests a health tip for us humans here on Earth. "It might be helpful for the immune response to spend a little time on a carnival ride," Kimbrell joked.Titusville is making strides to bounce back from space shuttle layoffsGreg Pallone - Central Florida News 13Brevard County is still reeling from layoffs after the space shuttle fleet retired, but locals in Titusville said the city's "rebirth" is making strides.Plans to raze a closed mall are on track, and a dream of bringing back a pair of rundown motels is becoming reality.Mark Wade's realtor thought he was crazy to be interested in a dilapidated, drug-infested motel built in the 1950s, but Wade insisted on buying the 12-room building, which sits just outside downtown Titusville.Wade approached the building's owner, saying he wanted to turn it into a niche motel, just like it was more than a half-century ago."I'm a firm believer in Titusville, so I thought it was perfect," said Wade. "I made him an offer; he said 'It's yours.' So, we went to work. We gutted all the rooms, redid them, put in all new furniture and flat screen TVs, that kind of stuff. And people started coming."From all across the country and around the world, from places like Canada and Europe, people have begun flocking to Titusville again. Wade said the visitors like to take tours of the Kennedy Space Center, and head to the beaches and fish.Gary Brown, a snowbird from Ontario, said he's been coming to Titusville for the last 12 years. He heard about Wade's new motel and wanted to give it a try."I think it was the sign out there that made me stop in," said Brown.The sign certainly stands out, reminiscent of the neon signs of the late '50s."The original sign was made to look like the hood emblem off a 1959 Buick," said Wade.The motel has done so well, Wade's brother and sister-in-law moved to Titusville from Tennessee, and bought and renovated another motel like it down the street."I hope we are doing our small part to make Titusville a better place," said Mimi Post Wade, Mark's sister-in-law.A better place that will soon see even more new businesses. City leaders said the shut-down Miracle City Mall, just down the street from the Wade family's motels, has its own new owners, who plan to demolish it as early as this spring and build a new, open-air mall.The city said a $50 million investment will bring 800 new jobs, and the mall will have a projected $65 million economic impact, which Wade said is all part of the "renaissance" of Titusville."Titusville is on its way back, no question about it," said Wade. "You're seeing improvements. Things are being brought back. People are spending money."If all goes as planned, the mall developer said he would like to open it in the first-quarter of 2015.NASA Planning for Mission To Mine Water on the MoonIrene Klotz – Space NewsFollowing a series of reconnaissance missions that found hydrogen and then water on the Moon, NASA is laying the groundwork for a lunar rover that would scout for subsurface volatiles and extract them for processing.The heart of the proposed Resource Prospector Mission (RPM) is the Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen & Lunar Volatile Extraction (RESOLVE) payload, a technology development initiative that predates its official start two years ago in NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate's Advanced Exploration Systems Division.Notionally targeted for launch in 2018, RPM would be NASA's first attempt to demonstrate in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) beyond Earth. The agency has spent just north of $20 million on the project to date, but expects its investment to top out around a quarter of a billion dollars."The concept of RPM came up out of the need to fly RESOLVE and the near-term, close way to test that would be on the Moon," said Jason Crusan, NASA's chief technologist for space operations."A lot of the technologies have broader use than just lunar, so RPM is not about a lunar mission per se. It's just a convenient location to be testing the ISRU technology," he said.All NASA's planning for eventual human missions to Mars depend on tapping the indigenous resources to make propellant for launching the return ship back to Earth.RESOLVE, as well as a second ISRU payload slated to fly on NASA's 2020 Mars rover, are intended to pave the way toward incorporating use of space resources into mission architectures."Even though [RESOLVE] is a lunar mission to look at water ice on the poles, it has ties to what we might also want to do on Mars," said Bill Larson, the former head of NASA's ISRU program at the Kennedy Space Center."This is a cheap way to do a precursor mission. It's a way to not only learn a little bit more about the resources on the Moon, but test the technologies that we might need to go to Mars and try to assess in a similar fashion," he said.NASA intends to cap RPM costs at $250 million, including the launch vehicle, which has not yet been selected. Additional contributions are expected from international partners and potentially commercial firms as well. Discussions with Canada for a rover are underway, Crusan said.Other potential partners are the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which is considering providing a lander, and the Korean space agency, which has discussed a lunar orbiting communications satellite and science instruments.Partnership agreements are expected to be finalized this year, Crusan said.NASA expects to spend about $16.8 million for the program for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, including costs of 68 full-time employees. In 2012 and 2013 , the agency spent a combined $18 million. NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., is overseeing the mission.The idea is to have the rover scout for areas with high concentrations of subsurface hydrogen then drill out samples for heating and analysis. The big payoff would be water, although RESOLVE also will be equipped to extract oxygen from the lunar regolith and process it with hydrogen to make water."Water is just huge in anything. It's life-support, but it's also propulsion and propulsion is the big bang for the buck for ISRU," Larson said."If we had water on the Moon that was easily accessible, you could start to set up fuel depots based on lunar propellant. It's a lot easier to bring water up out of the one-sixth gravity well of the Moon than it is to bring it up out of the one gravity well of Earth," he said.If the concentration of water in a soil sample is as much as even 1 percent by mass, project managers plan to recondense the vapor to form a droplet for public relations and educational purposes.If the samples come up dry, an alternative ISRU demonstration is planned."The Moon is 42 percent oxygen by mass in the regolith itself. In the minerals, there is oxygen," said Jacqueline Quinn, RESOLVE project manager at the Kennedy Space Center."We can take the sample, heat it to over 900 degrees Celsius and pass hydrogen over it in a reducing environment. Then we liberate the oxygen from the granular material and it joins with hydrogen and creates water," she said.In an operational mission, water molecules could be further processed by electrolysis to produce oxygen for breathing or for propellant, while the hydrogen is recirculated back into the system."While that doesn't give us all the fuel we would need, when you look at a launch vehicle sitting on the launch pad, two-thirds of the mass is usually liquid oxygen. We can buy down most of the propellant mass fraction for any vehicle by simply making oxygen on the lunar surface," Larson said."The Holy Grail, of course, is water and the ability to make methane or liquid hydrogen, but it's not a bust if you must make oxygen on the lunar surface," he added.RESOLVE engineers will not have much time for their demonstration. The lunar polar regions targeted for study spend long periods in darkness, a showstopper for the solar-powered rover. Without heaters to keep its electronics warm, once the rover shuts down it is not likely to revive. RESOLVE, which will be remotely operated by control teams on Earth, is expected to run for 6-10 days."We can get a lot of information in that time," Quinn said.Engineers plan to get the rover off the lander as quickly as possible and drive it at least 1 kilometer to search for regions with high hydrogen signals. Instruments on lunar orbiters already have identified potential hydrogen-rich areas, though the maps show detail only to about 60 kilometers. RESOLVE's instruments will be able to fine-tune that measurement down to 1 meter."This is just that first prospecting step that you have to take before you begin to seriously consider 'Is there enough water there to go mine?'" Larson said. "It's very analogous to the Earth-mining process."A review to assess if the mission is ready to move forward is planned for this spring."We've demonstrated in field tests to advance our readiness and learn how to do this," Quinn said. "It's obvious that we're ready to move to the next step to flight."Review: Wheels StopJeff Foust – The Space Review
Wheels Stop: The Tragedies and Triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986–2011by Rick HoustonIt's been just over two a half years since the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down at the Kennedy Space Center, completing the 135th and final mission of the program, but in many respects it seems far longer. The heated debates about whether to keep flying the Shuttle are distant memories, those arguments long since either won or lost, and even the squabbles about where the orbiters should go in their retirement have faded. The Space Shuttle is firmly part of NASA's past, but its impact remains felt on the space agency today, and likely for many years to come.In Wheels Stop, author Rick Houston revisits the Space Shuttle and the wide range of missions it performed. The title alone might indicate a book about the end of the Shuttle program, but he reviews a much broader swath of the program's history, starting with STS-26, the first post-Challenger mission, and going through STS-135 in 2011. The book is not a dry, mission-by-mission recounting of the more than 100 missions flown in the post-Challenger era, but a more narrative examination of shuttle history based heavily on interviews with astronauts, flight controllers, and others involved with the program.Rather than do a strictly chronological history of those Shuttle missions, Houston instead provides a more thematic organization to the book, writing chapters about the different types of missions the Shuttle flew. After the chapter about the return-to-flight STS-26 mission, Houston devotes a long (more than 60 pages) chapter to the scientific and military missions the orbiters flew in the late 1980s and well into the 1990s. These missions are often overlooked today, overshadowed by the Shuttle's later roles in assembling the International Space Station, but they were critical for getting the Shuttle program back up to speed. "It was a time of creativity, innovation, and doing one-of-a-kind missions," former flight director Rob Kelso recounts in the book. "The flights we did in that time period had never been done before or since."Another chapter is devoted to the various Shuttle missions to deploy and later service the Hubble Space Telescope, including the efforts to get the fifth and final servicing mission restored after NASA announced in 2004 it would not fly the mission. Later chapters examine the Shuttle-Mir missions and the early ISS assembly missions. The Columbia accident and the return to flight are covered in separate chapters, as are the remaining missions to assemble the ISS and, then, STS-135 and the closeout of the program.Houston doesn't try to give each mission equal treatment: some missions are covered in great detail, and others briefly mentioned at best. For example, STS-135 understandably gets a full chapter, but the preceding few missions get little mention, even STS-134 and all the attention surrounding its commander, Mark Kelly. However, Houston's interviews offer a personal view of the missions and the Shuttle program in general, and in some cases don't shy away from controversy. Charles Camarda, who flew on STS-114 and was the director of engineering at the Johnson Space Center during preparations for the following mission, STS-121, in 2006, discusses being removed from his position shortly before that launch: officially for unspecified "managerial behavior", although Camarda suspects that it had to do with his disagreement with the decision by then-administrator Mike Griffin to launch the mission despite concerns by Camarda and others that there was still a serious risk of foam coming off the external tank. (Griffin says in the book that Camarda's reassignment to the NASA Engineering and Safety Center "had nothing to do with the decision to fly or not fly on STS-121.")While Wheels Stop provides an interesting, personal look at the post-Challenger history of the Shuttle program, it stumbles a bit at the end when Houston examines the end of the program and the uncertain future of NASA's human spaceflight efforts. He makes several errors here, from claiming that Griffin became NASA administrator in the immediate aftermath of the Columbia accident (he took the job more than two years after the accident, and more than a year after President George W. Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration) to suggesting that the major policy shift made by the Obama Administration was first announced in the president speech at the Kennedy Space Center (many of those policy elements were already in the administration's budget request released two and a half months earlier.)To this day, some lament the decision to end the Space Shuttle program despite its expense and the two fatal accidents, arguing that the program was flying quite well in its final years. Among those who don't agree with that is former astronaut Jerry Ross, who, in the book's foreword, said he believed that if the Shuttle continued to fly, "there was a fairly high probability of losing another vehicle and crew." For better or for worse, the Space Shuttle is now part of history, and Wheels Stop offers an often fascinating review at what those orbiters accomplished.END-----No virus found in this message.Checked by AVG - www.avg.comVersion: 2014.0.4259 / Virus Database: 3681/7042 - Release Date: 01/29/14
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