Fwd: NASA and Human Spaceflight News – Feb. 28, 2014

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: February 28, 2014 11:17:27 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News – Feb. 28, 2014

Happy flex Friday and go Texans day.    Have a great weekend everyone.   Hope you can join us next Thursday for our monthly retirees luncheon at Hibachi Grill.

 

 

 

NASA and Human Spaceflight News

Friday – Feb. 28, 2014

 

NASA TV (all times are Central): www.nasa.gov/ntv

9 a.m. - ISS Expedition 38 In-Flight Educational Event with the School of the Osage in Osage Beach, Mo

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Former NASA Official Says Crewed Mars Flyby is Feasible by 2021

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

A crewed Mars flyby mission proposed last year by space tourism pioneer Dennis Tito could conceivably launch in 2021 provided that NASA immediately begins spending money on a large new upper-stage rocket engine and crew-habitation module that currently are not on the agency's development plate, a former NASA official told lawmakers Feb. 26.

 

NASA and Japan launch climate research satellite

 

Bill Harwood – CBS News

 

A Japanese H-2A rocket blasted off and streaked into space Thursday, boosting a sophisticated weather research satellite into orbit, the centerpiece of a $1.2 billion international mission to study global precipitation in an ongoing effort to improve climate models, forecasting and understanding of the water cycle critical to life on Earth. Equipped with a pair of state-of-the-art instruments, the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory will provide world-spanning, near real-time measurements and anchor an international fleet of space-based climate research and weather stations, serving as a calibration standard to improve accuracy across the constellation

 

Japan Launches Next-Generation NASA Satellite to Track Rain & Snow

 

Mike Wall – Space.com

 

NASA's newest weather satellite soared into space today (Feb. 27), kicking off a mission to observe rainfall and snowfall around the globe in unprecedented detail. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint effort between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), blasted off aboard an H-2A rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center today at 1:37 p.m. EST (1837 GMT; 3:37 a.m. Feb. 28 local Japan time). GPM will deliver near real-time observations of precipitation every three hours all over the world, greatly improving scientists' understanding of climate change and the global water cycle, mission officials said.

 

NASA launches game-changing satellite for tracking global precipitation

 

Jason Samenow – The Washington Post

 

From 1:05 p.m.: At 1:37 p.m. today, NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency plan to launch a weather and climate satellite that will revolutionize our understanding and ability to monitor global precipitation.  Known as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite,  it will – for the first time – provide a near global map of rain and snow falling within 3 hours. Think of the radar map over your local area, but extended over most of the world. This satellite mission will help fill massive gaps in precipitation observations as large areas of the Earth's land and ocean don't have radar or rain gauges. The satellite has unprecedented range (for sensing precipitation), and will scan the skies between the Arctic and Antarctic circle, or between 65 degrees north and south latitude.

 

NASA Adopts Changes to Prevent Recurrence of Dangerous Spacesuit Leak

 

Clara Moskowitz – Scientific American

 

NASA has a reputation for leaving no stone unturned to correct anything that goes wrong. True to form, it launched an exhaustive investigation after a leak sprung in a spacesuit during a spacewalk last summer, putting the astronaut in peril of drowning in his helmet. The report (pdf) was released on Wednesday; it includes 49 recommendations for changes to implement at NASA to make sure it never happens again.

 

Spacesuit future looks sleek, speedy and commercial

 

Victoria Jaggard – New Scientist

 

NASA has learned the hard way that water is an extra-slippery customer in space. Water leaking around fan blades in a spacesuit life-support system almost caused an astronaut to drown last July, according to a report the US space agency released yesterday. Thankfully, Luca Parmitano, who was outside the International Space Station when he reported feeling water on the back of his head, abandoned the spacewalk in time and made it back inside. NASA now says the likely cause of the leak was that a water-separation pump became clogged, causing water to back up and flow into the suit's air vents – something its engineers had not anticipated. The agency also revealed that the same suit had leaked only days before. At the time it was put down to a minor problem with the suit's bag of drinking water, one that posed no barrier to the suit being used again by Parmitano. The malfunction highlights the complexity of spacesuits, which are much, much more than souped-up clothing. The type of suit Parmitano wore has been in use for 35 years, but now space garb may be on the brink of a transformation. From NASA "suitports" to designs from emerging commercial players, we bring you three things that look set to transform spacewear.

 

'A Condition That Was Life Threatening': NASA Releases Report Into EVA-23 Water Intrusion Incident

 

Ben Evans – America Space

 

After six months of painstaking work, the NASA Mishap Investigation Board (MIB) has reported its findings, including root and proximate causes, of an incident in July 2013 when water unexpectedly intruded into the helmet of astronaut Luca Parmitano, whilst outside the International Space Station (ISS). As a result, the planned 6.5-hour EVA-23 was terminated, and Parmitano and his spacewalking partner, Chris Cassidy, were summoned back to the station's Quest airlock after just 92 minutes. At its worst, the water entered Parmitano's eyes, nose, and mouth, restricting his visibility, hearing, and breathing and, in the words of the MIB, created the harrowing condition of "EVA crewman exposed to potential loss of life." Moreover, the board's findings have illustrated worrying cultural and organizational issues within NASA itself.

 

NASA Sparked Fire Risk While Drying Sodden Spacesuit On Station, Report Says

 

Elizabeth Howell – Universe Today

Astronauts on the International Space Station "could have ignited flammable materials" on station while drying out a spacesuit that experienced a major leak during a spacewalk in July 2013, a new report reveals. NASA Mission Control directed the Expedition 36 crew to use a vacuum cleaner to suction out the water, a procedure that inadvertently sucked up oxygen from the suit's secondary high pressure oxygen tank, says a mishap report into the spacesuit leak incident. This "potentially hazardous risk" of electricity and pure oxygen created a fire hazard, the report added.

 

Committee Democrats Emphasize Need for Human Space Exploration Roadmap

 

House Science, Space and Technology Committee Democratic Caucus

 

(Washington, DC) – Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing to examine the need for a strategic human exploration roadmap and whether a potential manned Mars flyby mission might fit in such a roadmap.  Although the hearing was also called to examine how NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle being developed might contribute to a potential Mars flyby mission in 2021, there were no witnesses from NASA to provide further details on their status.

 

Kepler's comeback? New K2 mission could chase wilder targets

 

Amina Khan – Lost Angeles Times

 

Don't call it a comeback just yet. Astronomers mourned the Kepler Space Telescope after it was crippled last year. But NASA's planet hunter may be getting a second chance at life — with an ingenious, just-so-crazy-it-might-work plan that would use the sun's rays to steer the spacecraft. The data already collected by Kepler are still turning up a treasure trove of hundreds of planets, as Wednesday's announcement showed. But if it passes NASA approval, the potential new mission, called K2, could mean a whole different kind of search to find Earth-size exoplanets, along with supernovae, protostars and galaxy clusters.

 

COMPLETE STORIES

Former NASA Official Says Crewed Mars Flyby is Feasible by 2021

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

A crewed Mars flyby mission proposed last year by space tourism pioneer Dennis Tito could conceivably launch in 2021 provided that NASA immediately begins spending money on a large new upper-stage rocket engine and crew-habitation module that currently are not on the agency's development plate, a former NASA official told lawmakers Feb. 26.

"I believe that 2021 is possible if the focus is placed on getting that mission on our books," Doug Cooke, former associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and now a private consultant, said during a hearing of the House Science Committee. "It would take a commitment to develop the full upper stage in the timeframe that we're talking about. We would [also] need a small [habitation module], perhaps using an existing structure."

The mission, which was the subject of the hearing, was originally proposed by a Tito-led group calling itself Inspiration Mars, in early 2013 as a privately funded venture. It was subsequently reformulated to take advantage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion Crew capsule NASA is developing.

SLS and Orion are "a good fit" for the proposed Mars flyby mission, said Scott Pace, director of the George Washington University's Space Policy Institute here. Pace, like Cooke, had a senior position at NASA during the administration of former President George W. Bush. At that time, the agency was working on the Constellation Moon exploration program that was canceled in 2010 by President Barack Obama. 

In the wake of that cancellation, which was controversial, Congress directed NASA to build the SLS and Orion, both of which are technical offshoots of Constellation.

Under NASA's current plan, SLS and Orion will first fly together in 2017 in an uncrewed test mission to lunar space. This would be followed in 2021 by a similar test mission in which Orion would have a crew aboard.

The Obama administration has proposed using the SLS-Orion combo as part of a mission, notionally scheduled for the early 2020s, to capture a near-Earth asteroid and redirect it into an orbit close to the Moon. The capture and redirect part of the mission would be performed by a robotic craft; astronauts would then use Orion to approach and inspect the asteroid at close range.

The asteroid capture mission will not require an SLS upper stage capable of boosting astronauts on a Mars-bound trajectory. Nor would it require a habitation module with sophisticated life-support systems that NASA says is needed for a Mars voyage.

Instead, SLS, at least in its initial versions, would utilize a modified version of the upper-stage engine on United Launch Alliance's Delta 4 rocket. Orion, meanwhile, will be sufficient to accommodate the two-person crew NASA envisions for the asteroid capture mission.

Despite Cooke's testimony, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the ranking Democrat of the House Science Committee, said she doubted that SLS and Orion would be making a trip to Mars any time soon.

"Given that 2021 is currently the estimated date for the very first crewed mission of Orion, not just its first deep space mission ... I doubt that a flyby of Mars will ultimately be considered to be an appropriate first shakedown of a new crewed spacecraft, given the risk involved," Johnson said.

 

NASA and Japan launch climate research satellite

 

Bill Harwood – CBS News

 

A Japanese H-2A rocket blasted off and streaked into space Thursday, boosting a sophisticated weather research satellite into orbit, the centerpiece of a $1.2 billion international mission to study global precipitation in an ongoing effort to improve climate models, forecasting and understanding of the water cycle critical to life on Earth.

Equipped with a pair of state-of-the-art instruments, the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory will provide world-spanning, near real-time measurements and anchor an international fleet of space-based climate research and weather stations, serving as a calibration standard to improve accuracy across the constellation

NASA illustration of the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory in space. "Rain and snowfall affect our daily lives in many ways," said Steven Neeck, NASA's deputy associate administrator for Earth science flight programs. "The distribution of precipitation directly affects the availability of fresh water for sustaining life. Extreme precipitation events like hurricanes, blizzards, floods, droughts and landslides have significant socio-economic impacts on our society."

Precipitation also plays a significant role connecting the planet's water, energy and bio-geochemical cycles.

"Since rainfall and snowfall vary greatly from place to place, and in space and time, satellites can provide a more uniform set of observations globally compared to ground instruments," Neeck said. "The GPM, through its core observatory and constellation of satellites, will dramatically improve our knowledge of global precipitation and our ability to forecast it and its consequences.

Said Ramesh Kakar, GPM program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington: "The water cycle is central to creating an understanding of weather, climate and water resource management for the society. You've got to measure precipitation if you want to study the water cycle."

The mission got underway at 1:37 p.m. EST (GMT-5; 3:37 a.m. Friday local time) when the 17-story-tall H-2A rocket's hydrogen-fueled first-stage engine roared to life, following seconds later by ignition of two solid-fuel strap-on boosters. In an instant, the rocket vaulted away from the picturesque Tanegashima Space Center launch pad on the southern coast of Japan, lighting up the pre-dawn sky with a fiery plume.

The climb to space went smoothly, with the solid-fuel strap ons falling away as planned just under two minutes into flight, followed by the spent first stage six minutes and 44 seconds after liftoff. The second stage engine ignited at an altitude of about 148 miles and completed the push to orbit, shutting down about 15 minutes into flight.

The 8,500-pound Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory satellite, built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., was released into a 250-mile-high orbit about one minute later. A few minutes after that, its two solar panels began unfolding as expected.

If all goes well, the spacecraft's instruments and subsystems will be activated over the next 10 days or so, following by two months of detailed checkout and calibration before the the satellite begins full-time science observations.

Gail Skofronick-Jackson, GPM deputy project scientist, said monitoring precipitation is crucial to understanding global weather patterns and climate change.

"We really do need to care, because less than 1 percent of all the water on Earth is easily accessible for us to use as fresh water resources," she said. "And water is vital to life on Earth. We need to measure precipitation both frequently and at the local and regional scales so that we can follow fresh water through the water cycle of the Earth."

The GPM Microwave Imager, or GMI, will measure total precipitation, including light rain and snowfall, while the Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar, or DPR, will give researchers a three-dimensional look at the structures inside clouds that generate rain and snow.

NASA spent $933 million building the spacecraft and the microwave imager, provided by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corp., while the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, contributed $226 million for the H-2A rocket, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and the multi-channel radar, built by NEC Toshiba Space Systems.

The GPM core observatory mission builds on the experience gained by NASA and JAXA in the joint Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission program, a satellite launched in 1997 to measure rainfall in tropical latitudes. The new spacecraft will extend those observations to more northern latitudes and add extensive new capabilities.

"GPM will join a NASA Earth science fleet of 16 missions currently on orbit," Neeck said. "They're devoted to studying the Earth as an integrated system in six science focus areas ranging from atmospheric composition to the Earth's surface and interior. GPM will support the water and energy cycle, the weather and the climate science focus areas."

Other satellites in the constellation are operated by Japan, India, the European Space Agency, the French Space Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"The GPM core observatory is a precipitation science observatory ... that is the primary satellite of the constellation," Neeck said. " It will calibrate and unify precipitation data from other constellation satellites every three hours."

The spacecraft's instruments "will allow scientists to see inside clouds," he said. "The GMI will sense the total precipitation within all cloud layers, including for the first time light rain and snowfall. The DPR will make detailed three dimensional measurements of precipitation structures and rates as well as particle drop size.

"Together, the GMI and the DPR will provide a database that will be used to compare and combine the other constellation satellites microwave observations to make uniform global precipitation datasets."

 

Japan Launches Next-Generation NASA Satellite to Track Rain & Snow

 

Mike Wall – Space.com

 

NASA's newest weather satellite soared into space today (Feb. 27), kicking off a mission to observe rainfall and snowfall around the globe in unprecedented detail.

 

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint effort between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), blasted off aboard an H-2A rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center today at 1:37 p.m. EST (1837 GMT; 3:37 a.m. Feb. 28 local Japan time).

 

GPM will deliver near real-time observations of precipitation every three hours all over the world, greatly improving scientists' understanding of climate change and the global water cycle, mission officials said.

 

The GPM Core Observatory scans the weather with microwaves and two bands of radar.

 

"This is going to provide us the most accurate and advanced precipitation measurements to date from NASA satellites," Gail Skofronick-Jackson, GPM project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said during a press briefing last month.

 

The 8,500-pound (3,850 kilograms) GPM Core spacecraft will orbit Earth at an altitude of 253 miles (407 kilometers), about as high up as the International Space Station. It will circle the planet once every 93 minutes, completing about 16 orbits per day.

 

The satellite will use two instruments — the GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) and the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) — to study rainfall and snowfall from the Arctic Circle in the north to the Antarctic Circle in the south, giving researchers great looks at clouds and storm systems.

 

"These instruments will allow scientists to see inside clouds," Steve Neeck, deputy associate director of flight programs for NASA's Earth science division, said during the January press conference.

 

"The GMI will sense the total precipitation within all cloud layers, including, for the first time, light rain and snowfall," he added. "The DPR will make detailed three-dimensional measurements of precipitation structures and rates, as well as particle drop size."

 

The GPM Core spacecraft will also serve as the anchor of an international network of weather and climate satellites, some of which are already in orbit.

 

"The GPM, through its core observatory and its constellation of satellites, will dramatically improve our knowledge of global precipitation and our ability to forecast it and its consequences," Neeck said.

 

The GPM Core satellite — whose cost to NASA is $933 million — was designed to last for a minimum of three years, but mission officials think it will continue to gather data for much longer than that.

 

"As you know, TRMM was designed for three years, and now it's been 16 years operating," said GPM project manager Art Azarbarzin of NASA Goddard, referring to the NASA-JAXA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, which launched in 1997. "We have designed the exact same way."

 

NASA launches game-changing satellite for tracking global precipitation

 

Jason Samenow – The Washington Post

 

From 1:05 p.m.: At 1:37 p.m. today, NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency plan to launch a weather and climate satellite that will revolutionize our understanding and ability to monitor global precipitation.  Known as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite,  it will – for the first time – provide a near global map of rain and snow falling within 3 hours.

Think of the radar map over your local area, but extended over most of the world.

This satellite mission will help fill massive gaps in precipitation observations as large areas of the Earth's land and ocean don't have radar or rain gauges.

The satellite has unprecedented range (for sensing precipitation), and will scan the skies between the Arctic and Antarctic circle, or between 65 degrees north and south latitude.

NASA's current satellite for research and monitoring precipitation, known as the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), only takes measurements between 35 degrees north and south.

When Hurricane Sandy charged from the Atlantic waters off the Southeast coast into the Mid-Atlantic, TRMM could no longer observe the storm – missing the opportunity to observe the storm's transition from a tropical to mid-latitude storm.

"GPM will be able to observe the extratropical transition [of hurricanes], something we've never been able to do before in three dimensions," said NASA's Dalia Kirschbaum, GPM project scientist, in an interview with the Capital Weather Gang.

The satellite is equipped with two instrument systems: a radiometer and dual-frequency radar that will scan the skies and ping back to earth information about the structure, intensity and amount of precipitation.

Whereas TRMM can only detect rain, GPM can detect and differentiate rain, ice and snow – and their varying intensities.

"GPM has the most advanced instruments to measure precipitation from space that we've ever had," said Kirschbaum. "It also provides the most accurate global picture and dataset of rain and snow that we've ever had."

GPM's 13 channel microwave radiometer surveys the skies in 32 rotations per minute. Kirschbaum explained it operates like an X-ray. "It can differentiate between liquid water versus ice – you get the bones, muscles and tissues," she said.

The dual-frequency radar aboard the satellite will be the first of its kind in space.

"It looks every 250 meters, layer by layer, through clouds," Kirschbaum said. "It's able to discern particle distribution, and type.  By having 2 frequencies, we'll be able to get a much better understanding of what's there which is important for weather forecasting and climate modeling."

Perhaps GPM's most valuable asset – the ability to provide a near global view of precipitation and intensity within a few hours – cannot be achieved by the satellite itself. Rather, the data collected by GPM's radiometer will be used to calibrate measurements from a constellation of other satellites which remotely sense precipitation.

"Observations from its radiometer will act as the standard to unify all the other satellite measurements," writes NASA's Ellen Gray, the science writer for the mission.

NASA's Kirschbaum believes GPM's global precipitation mapping capabilities will prove invaluable for disaster response and famine early warning systems.

"The data is important on a local scale so responders can anticipate where we might be experiencing food shortage and respond accordingly," she said. "They need to have the vantage point from space to get that global picture."

Kirschbaum said it may be a number of months before the global mapping capabilities of GPM reach the public. The data have to be first checked for a quality and the GPM database for calibrating measurements from other satellites will require time to build.

"Data will then be freely available to anyone in the world, all processed at NASA Goddard, and distributed in different formats so most people have access," she said.

You can follow the launch coverage on NASA TV, @NASA_Rain on Twitter and on Facebook.

 

NASA Adopts Changes to Prevent Recurrence of Dangerous Spacesuit Leak

 

Clara Moskowitz – Scientific American

 

NASA has a reputation for leaving no stone unturned to correct anything that goes wrong. True to form, it launched an exhaustive investigation after a leak sprung in a spacesuit during a spacewalk last summer, putting the astronaut in peril of drowning in his helmet. The report (pdf) was released on Wednesday; it includes 49 recommendations for changes to implement at NASA to make sure it never happens again.

 

Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano was 44 minutes into a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on July 16 when he reported that water was floating around in his helmet. The problem quickly worsened, and NASA called the spacewalk short, sending Parmitano and his partner Chris Cassidy of NASA scrambling to get back inside the station. While Parmitano was making his way, the water moved from the back of his head to the front, clogging his nose, blinding his vision and intermittently cutting his radio communications. By the time he removed his helmet inside the station, 1.5 liters of liquid had accumulated. "Of all the EVA [extravehicular activity] issues that we've encountered to date, this is probably the most serious," NASA International Space Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini told reporters during a teleconference on Wednesday.

 

NASA immediately launched an in-depth investigation into the accident, appointing a group of experts outside of the normal space station team to find out what went wrong, both in terms of the hardware and the space agency practices that let this happen. "We decided it would be in the best interests of NASA to have an independent group go look at this," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. "This was a high-visibility enough event that I think it warrants a broader look, not only from an anomaly perspective but from an overall agency perspective."

 

One of the surprising findings of the report was that July 16 was not the first time this leak had appeared. During another spacewalk just a week earlier a small leak was noticed, but was attributed to a much more minor problem of a malfunctioning drink bag. "This event was not properly investigated, which could have prevented placing a crew member at risk a week later," the report stated.

 

In fact, both leaks were caused by a blockage in the spacesuit's water separator that allowed liquid to leak into a vent loop and into the helmet. That the spacesuit could fail in this way had never been anticipated, in part because the flow of water in microgravity caused these components to work differently than they did during ground tests. "When you combine the behavior of water and how it works in zero gravity, and when you combine that with a very complex system…it's impossible to test on the ground," said Chris Hansen, an ISS chief engineer and chair of the Mishap Investigation Board. "It's just a really difficult thing."

 

Still, the report concluded that mission controllers should have dug deeper into the earlier leak and should have recognized the seriousness of the problem sooner. Some of the report's recommendations are aimed at getting engineers to be more open-minded when analyzing failures. "What this tells us is that we need to always be vigilant," Suffredini said. "The suit has been around for 35 years, we have quite a bit of experience. But even in systems we think we know, there's always an opportunity for us to ask the next question and think twice about something that we think we understand."

 

The investigation team also recommended the agency should  make it easier for space station staffers to raise problems and request astronaut crew time to address them, even if that takes away from the crew's valuable hours devoted to science experiments. The report also requests improved communication channels between the Space Station Program Office and the  office responsible for EVAs at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston to enable quicker decision-making when problems arise.

 

NASA has already implemented many of the report's recommendations, and officials hope to have all of the critical ones done by June, to be ready to schedule the next EVAs in July or August. "I look at this as a chance that we can all improve and do better," Gerstenmaier said. "We're going to learn from this event and make sure we do better in the future."

 

Spacesuit future looks sleek, speedy and commercial

 

Victoria Jaggard – New Scientist

 

NASA has learned the hard way that water is an extra-slippery customer in space. Water leaking around fan blades in a spacesuit life-support system almost caused an astronaut to drown last July, according to a report the US space agency released yesterday.

 

Thankfully, Luca Parmitano, who was outside the International Space Station when he reported feeling water on the back of his head, abandoned the spacewalk in time and made it back inside. NASA now says the likely cause of the leak was that a water-separation pump became clogged, causing water to back up and flow into the suit's air vents – something its engineers had not anticipated.

 

The agency also revealed that the same suit had leaked only days before. At the time it was put down to a minor problem with the suit's bag of drinking water, one that posed no barrier to the suit being used again by Parmitano.

 

The malfunction highlights the complexity of spacesuits, which are much, much more than souped-up clothing. The type of suit Parmitano wore has been in use for 35 years, but now space garb may be on the brink of a transformation. From NASA "suitports" to designs from emerging commercial players, we bring you three things that look set to transform spacewear.

 

Taking into account other cases of spacesuit glitches, NASA is currently honing its next-generation suits, called the Z series. The focus of the first prototype – the Z-1– is easy dressing and undressing.

 

Existing suits have soft legs and a hard fibreglass upper body, which are tough to put on and take off. Rather than being worn on and pressurised inside a spacecraft, the Z-1 would be mounted to the outside of the craft. Astronauts would simply slide through a hatch into the back of the Z-1, then close the hatch behind them and spacewalk away.

 

The technology that makes the Z-1's "suitport" possible also shortens the time it takes for an astronaut to get used to breathing the purer air inside. That means astronauts can more quickly be suited up and ready to explore. De-suiting is also easy: returning explorers would self-dock with the craft and slip back out – especially helpful if things go wrong during a spacewalk, as they did for Parmitano.

 

Sadly, the suitport won't be headed to the ISS any time soon, as you would have to change the configuration of the station's airlocks to use it, says Philip Spampinato at ILC Dover in Frederica, Delaware, the company working on the Z series for NASA. The Z series is a kind of testbed for several concepts that are being developed in parallel. The first sample of the next in the series, the Z-2, should be delivered to NASA by the end of 2014, says Spampinato. A flight-ready suit won't be ready until 2020 at the earliest.

 

Spacesuits aren't just for spacewalks: they can also help astronauts inside the ISS. Next year the space station should welcome its first "skinsuit" – a sleek spandex affair that looks something like a futuristic wetsuit. Named the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit (above), it was designed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the support of the European Space Agency.

 

The skinsuit is meant to squeeze an astronaut to create pressure, mimicking the way Earth's gravity affects the body. The idea is that wearing the suit should counterbalance some of the effects of weightlessness, such as muscle loss and weakening bones.

 

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have worked on various iterations of such a suit for a decade, and one is finally close to going into space. Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen will try it out when he heads for the ISS in September 2015.

 

Commercial outfitters: watch this space

 

We all know that these days, government agencies aren't the only game in space, so will private enterprise shake up spacesuit technology just as it could revolutionise space flight and exploration?

 

ILC Dover is hoping to share its spacesuit smarts with commercial firms vying to launch astronauts into space, either as tourists or to do work on board space-shuttle replacements, on behalf of NASA. These companies' plans do not include spacewalks, at least in the short-term, so their suit specifications are different. "The commercial guys are only looking for suits that stay inside the vehicle. All they are doing is carrying people up and down, so that's a different beast," says Spampinato.

 

Commercial space-flight firm SpaceX plans to send astronauts to the ISS using a modified version of its Dragon capsule, which already ferries supplies there. The firm recently posted a job opening for a spacesuit engineer. Spokesperson Hannah Post confirmed the company is developing its own suit, but says it is not ready to share details.

 

'A Condition That Was Life Threatening': NASA Releases Report Into EVA-23 Water Intrusion Incident

 

Ben Evans – America Space

 

After six months of painstaking work, the NASA Mishap Investigation Board (MIB) has reported its findings, including root and proximate causes, of an incident in July 2013 when water unexpectedly intruded into the helmet of astronaut Luca Parmitano, whilst outside the International Space Station (ISS). As a result, the planned 6.5-hour EVA-23 was terminated, and Parmitano and his spacewalking partner, Chris Cassidy, were summoned back to the station's Quest airlock after just 92 minutes. At its worst, the water entered Parmitano's eyes, nose, and mouth, restricting his visibility, hearing, and breathing and, in the words of the MIB, created the harrowing condition of "EVA crewman exposed to potential loss of life." Moreover, the board's findings have illustrated worrying cultural and organizational issues within NASA itself.

 

At 7:57 a.m. EDT on 16 July 2013, Expedition 36 crewman Cassidy (EV1) and Parmitano (EV2) left the Quest airlock on what should have been a 6.5-hour spacewalk to attend to numerous tasks outside the International Space Station (ISS). As noted in AmericaSpace's EVA-23 article, their work began normally and the men split up to begin their first activities. Cassidy moved to the Z-1 truss to reconfigure Y-Bypass jumper cables, which he had begun on EVA-22, on 9 July, whilst Parmitano set to work to route data and Ethernet cables in readiness for the arrival of Russia's Nauka Multi-Purpose Laboratory Module (MLM). At 8:42 a.m.—some 44 minutes into EVA-23—Parmitano made the first reference to water inside his "Snoopy" communications skullcap, on the back of his head.

 

He was quickly joined by Cassidy, who verified that water was indeed visible inside the helmet. Initially suspecting a coolant leak, Parmitano reduced the flow rate and an assumption that his Disposable In-Suit Drink Bag (DIDB) had leaked seemed unlikely as it was already dry. The situation rapidly deteriorated. By 9:06 a.m., after Parmitano reported that the amount of water had increased and migrated from the back of his head onto his face and into his eyes, nose, and mouth, Flight Director David Korth terminated EVA-23 and instructed the spacewalkers to return to the airlock. Cassidy handled the closure of the hatch, which was sealed at 9:26 a.m., and repressed back up to ISS ambient pressure about 11 minutes later. At 9:38 a.m., the hatch connecting the outer "crew lock" with the inner "equipment lock" was open and Expedition 36 crew member Karen Nyberg removed Parmitano's helmet, releasing a flurry of water droplets.

 

During his debriefing, the Italian astronaut—flying as a representative of the European Space Agency (ESA)—explained that he had experienced impaired visibility, hearing, and breathing. In an ESA blog, he wrote in terrifying detail of its impact on his movements: "As I move back along my route towards the airlock, I become more and more certain that the water is increasing," Parmitano described. "I feel it covering the sponge on my earphones and I wonder whether I'll lose audio contact. The water has also almost completely covered the front of my visor, sticking to it and obscuring my vision … At that moment, as I turn 'upside-down', two things happen: the Sun sets, and my ability to see—already compromised by the water—completely vanishes, making my eyes useless; but worse than that, the water covers my nose—a really awful sensation that I make worse by my vain attempts to move the water by shaking my head. By now, the upper part of the helmet is full of water and I can't even be sure that the next time I breathe I will fill my lungs with air and not liquid … "

 

With his visibility thus restricted, Parmitano was forced to "feel" his way back toward the airlock. "When returning to the airlock," the MIB report noted, "EV2 had to rely on manual feel of his safety tether's cable for pathway directions." In the aftermath of the incident, it was determined that about 0.26-0.39 gallons (1.0-1.5 liters) of water had entered the astronaut's helmet. Yet the danger was not over. During the drying of the two space suits after EVA-23, a vacuum cleaner was used and unexpectedly removed oxygen from the secondary high-pressure oxygen tank. This created a potentially hazardous mixture of electricity and pure oxygen, which could have ignited flammable materials in and around the vacuum cleaner. Fortunately, no such incident occurred. However, in addition to the Primary Undesired Outcome of "EVA crewman exposed to potential loss of life"—with specific reference to "risk of asphyxiation, impaired vision and a compromised ability to communicate"—the MIB highlighted a Secondary Undesired Outcome: "The ISS crew was exposed to a potential fire hazard, due to inadvertent activation of the suit's secondary oxygen pack during drying-out activities."

 

Less than a week after EVA-23, on 22 July 2013, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, assembled the five-person investigative board, tasked with identifying the causes of the incident. Chaired by Chris Hansen, the ISS Program's chief engineer at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, the board included astronaut Mike Foreman, ISS safety and mission assurance lead Richard Fullerton, human factors specialist Sudhakar Rajula, and NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) chief engineer Joe Pellicciotti. "I recognize that this activity will be different as the affected crew and hardware will not be directly available," wrote Mr. Gerstenmaier in his instruction to assemble the MIB. "The lack of directly available physical evidence will require this board to work closely with the ISS Program and its ongoing activities. This information will be used to substantiate any board findings, but should not delay any board proceedings."

 

The EVA-23 incident was classified as a "High Visibility Close Call," and the MIB's report provides harrowing reading and offers a measure of insight into how close Parmitano came to suffering serious injury or even death. In summary, the board noted that the mishap evolved from a blockage of drum holes in the fan pump separator of Parmitano's suit, caused by inorganic materials, which resulted in water spilling into the vent loop. "The source of the inorganic materials blocking the water separator drum holes had not been experienced during an EVA before," it was stressed, "and is still undergoing a concurrent investigation."

 

Of equal, if not greater, weight was that the five root causes and three proximal causes of the incident, as identified by the MIB, offer a worrying insight into the kind of cultural and organizational problems which doomed Challenger and Columbia. Five Root Causes for the incident were identified. The first was that the ISS Program's emphasis was upon maximizing crew time for science and utilization of the space station. "The strong emphasis on utilization was leading team members to feel that requesting on-orbit time for anything non-science related was likely to be denied," the MIB explained. "The danger with that thought process is that lower-level team members were in effect making risk decisions for the Program, without necessarily having a Program-wide viewpoint or understanding the risk trades actually being made at a Program level."

 

The second Root Cause brought to light an event about which little was known: At the end of EVA-22, a week earlier, on 9 July 2013, Parmitano removed his helmet and between 0.13-0.26 gallons (0.5-1.0 liters) of water was found. Cassidy reported that he had not seen any water during the EVA itself or during the repressurization of the airlock, when the spacewalkers were facing each other. They concluded that it was most likely caused by Parmitano inadvertently pinching the valve of his drink bag with his chin, thereby introducing water into the helmet. Mission Control accepted the crew's judgement. The astronauts cleaned up the residual water and the ground team instructed them to use a new drink bag for EVA-23. There was no discussion of water in the helmet during briefings on 11 July and 15 July 2013, ahead of EVA-23.  In its summary, the MIB noted that this automatic perception that Parmitano's drink bag must have leaked—coupled with the EVA community not challenging this determination or investigating it further—contributed to a failure in identifying and resolving the issue before EVA-23.

 

Thirdly, flight controllers felt that the process of reporting anomalies was so intense that invoking it would lead to a long investigation which would interfere with necessary work on EVA-23. It was considered "that this issue would likely not uncover anything significant enough to justify the resources which would have been spent." Additionally, the board noted that ground teams did not fully understand the behavior of water inside a space suit, simply assuming that it would cling to the helmet's inner surface, rather than to the spacewalker's head. In essence, "the significant hazard it presented was not anticipated." Finally, interviews with ground personnel and reviews of earlier space suit performance records indicated that some water entering the helmet was considered normal. "Despite the fact that water carryover into the helmet presented a known hazard of creating eye irritation, due to its interaction with anti-fog agents, and also presented a potential fogging hazard," the MIB explained, "the ground teams grew to accept this as normal behavior." It was not perceived to be a hazardous condition, and "when the water began entering EV2′s helmet, the ground team discussed anti-fog/eye irritation concerns and visibility concerns; however, a more hazardous condition was not expected because the presence of water in the helmet had been normalized."

 

In addition to these Root Causes, three further Proximate Causes—which directly caused the undesired outcome and whose elimination or modification might have prevented it—were found by the MIB. Firstly, the ISS Program had "misdiagnosed" the nature of the water leak at the end of EVA-22, and it was "not determined to be a constraint to EVA-23." The water which emerged in Parmitano's helmet during EVA-23 originated "somewhere behind his head, near the neck/lower heard" area, which the MIB described as having "created a condition that was life-threatening." Troublingly, Mission Control did not terminate the spacewalk as soon as the water was reported. "The MIB determined that the time between first mention of water in EV2′s helmet and the call the terminate the EVA was roughly 23 minutes," it was noted, and "the fact that no one on the ground or the EVA crew immediately recognized the severity of the hazard and terminated the EVA resulted in the crew member being exposed to an increased level of risk."

 

Nevertheless, the MIB praised Parmitano's "calm demeanor," which "possibly saved his life," and added that Mission Control also performed well, based on the knowledge that they had available at the time. "The team applied what they did know to the symptoms they saw during EVA-23," it was added. "Several possible causes were discussed in real-time between the ground team and the crew members. Ultimately, the team came to the correct conclusion that the water in EV2′s helmet was more serious than anything that could be explained by previous experience and the EVA was terminated." In addition to the Primary and Secondary Undesired Outcomes, the five root and three proximate causes, the MIB identified 19 intermediate causes, 30 observations, 13 contributing factors, and made 49 recommendations.

 

In the aftermath of EVA-23, all further U.S.-based spacewalks were placed on indefinite hold, pending the outcome of the MIB's investigation. However, in December 2013, a pump module failure necessitated two EVAs by Expedition 38 astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins, neither of which showed any water intrusion problems. "The spacewalks to repair the ISS pump module that occurred in late 2013," it was noted, "was planned with full co-operation between the ISS Program and the MIB." Looking ahead to 2014, current plans envisage three EVAs in the July-August timeframe—by which time Expedition 40 crewmen Steve Swanson, Reid Wiseman, and Alexander Gerst will be aboard the U.S. segment of the ISS—for maintenance and other activities.

 

NASA Sparked Fire Risk While Drying Sodden Spacesuit On Station, Report Says

 

Elizabeth Howell – Universe Today

Astronauts on the International Space Station "could have ignited flammable materials" on station while drying out a spacesuit that experienced a major leak during a spacewalk in July 2013, a new report reveals.

NASA Mission Control directed the Expedition 36 crew to use a vacuum cleaner to suction out the water, a procedure that inadvertently sucked up oxygen from the suit's secondary high pressure oxygen tank, says a mishap report into the spacesuit leak incident. This "potentially hazardous risk" of electricity and pure oxygen created a fire hazard, the report added.

In a phone call with reporters yesterday (Feb. 27), report chair Chris Hansen added that the "levels of oxygen were perfectly safe" in this particular incident and that the "the risk to the crew in the end was none", but said the incident still warranted attention in the 222-page report, which mainly deals with the spacesuit leak.

The incident occurred on July 17, 2013, one day after a "life-threatening" amount of water leaked into a spacesuit helmet used by Luca Parmitano, the report said. The astronauts and NASA were doing looking for the source of the leak. Astronauts reported no damage to the water bag and no water in the suit (which had been cleaned up after the spacewalk).

Next, they turned on the fan to the portable life support system (or backpack) with a secondary oxygen pack (SOP) check-out fixture. The fixture covered a vent port and oxygen switch for about 14 minutes. All appeared to be running normally, with no water detected. When the crew then removed the fixture (following procedure), they heard a "sucking" noise and the fan ceased moving, the report said.

"The crew was directed to turn off the suit fan and move the O2 Actuator to OFF. The crew then turned the suit fan back ON and again set the O2 Actuator to [the] IV [setting]. The fan briefly began spinning and then shut down almost immediately, with the crew reporting a water "sucking" or "gurgling" sound," the report added.

The crew found "a few drops" of water in a canister outlet and "about a spoonful" of water in the suit inlet ports, as well as a few drops of water in a neck vent port. As the ground decided what to do, an infrared carbon-dioxide transducer in the suit "began to show an increase in its reading and eventually went off-scale high, most likely due to moisture in the vent loop near the CO2 [carbon dioxide] transducer," the report stated.

With water in the suit, Mission Control then asked the crew to remove the water with a vacuum (one that is designed for wet or dry cleanup) as soon as the astronauts had the chance. Everything was normal until after the station emerged from a routine loss of signal, at which point controllers saw the secondary oxygen pack was turned on and reading 500 pounds per square inch lower than before the loss of communication.

"They quickly realized that their procedure had resulted in the EMU releasing 100% oxygen from the SOP into the vent loop, which was then sucked into the vacuum cleaner. This was a potentially dangerous situation involving unintended consequences," the report said.

"During interviews, system experts indicated that they should have been able to anticipate SOP activation due to the reduced pressure created by the vacuum cleaner. The procedure was immediately stopped. No fire occurred and the crew was not harmed."

In interviews after the incident, individuals spoke of "perceived pressure" to do the dry-out procedure quickly instead of first testing it on the ground with similar hardware. They instead used a non-functional spacesuit before directing the crew to do the procedure.

There were at least three factors contributing to that pressure, the report added: the desire to avoid corrosion in the suit, limited crew time, and the impending loss of signal.

The report did not identify any "additional causes, findings, or observations" from this event, noting that it is not technically an anomaly and was not classified as such in the NASA literature.

You can read the full report here. As for the spacewalk mishap investigation, some of the major findings showed it took 23 minutes to order Parmitano back to the airlock, and that water was seen as a normal thing in spacesuit helmets.

 

Committee Democrats Emphasize Need for Human Space Exploration Roadmap

 

House Science, Space and Technology Committee Democratic Caucus

 

(Washington, DC) – Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing to examine the need for a strategic human exploration roadmap and whether a potential manned Mars flyby mission might fit in such a roadmap.  Although the hearing was also called to examine how NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle being developed might contribute to a potential Mars flyby mission in 2021, there were no witnesses from NASA to provide further details on their status.

 

Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said in her opening statement, "It's time for NASA to tell us how they intend to achieve that goal [of a human mission to the surface of Mars].  What technologies will be needed, what sequence of intermediate destinations should be pursued and why, and what are the risks that will need to be addressed?  We also need to hear from NASA about the progress being made on the Space Launch System and on Orion, the two systems that are critical to our exploration efforts beyond low Earth orbit.  What are the challenges they are facing, how will they be used to support NASA's roadmap to Mars, and are they being adequately funded to meet the milestones laid out for those two programs?"

 

The witness panel included Dr. Scott Pace, the Director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University; General Lester Lyles (ret.), an independent aerospace consultant and former Chairman of the Committee on "Rationale and Goals of the U.S. Civil Space Program" established by the National Academies; Mr. Doug Cooke, the owner of Cooke Concepts and Solutions and former NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate; and Dr. Sandra Magnus, the Executive Director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

 

Members and witnesses discussed the importance of developing a roadmap that will lead to a human mission to Mars.  Subcommittee on Space Ranking Member Donna Edwards (D-MD) called for NASA to create such a roadmap in the NASA authorization bill she introduced last July.  In her statement for the record she said, "NASA does not currently have such a roadmap or integrated strategic framework.  As a result, NASA cannot provide us with specifics on Mars mission risk areas, potential risk mitigation approaches, and the rationale for planned intermediate destinations.  Nor can it articulate how its programs or selected interim destinations contribute effectively to making progress on such a roadmap."

 

Several other members and witnesses also discussed other needed aspects of a roadmap, including technologies, commitment, and sustainability. In addition, they discussed the need for continued NASA funding, setting long-term priorities and goals, as well as the role of NASA's human spaceflight missions in inspiring the nation.

 

General Lester Lyles' expressed concern with the Mars flyby mission in his prepared statement saying,  "In my own opinion, the Inspiration Mars proposal is high risk, poses significant challenges to the crew because of radiation and life support concerns, has unidentified cost, and is being proposed at a time that NASA's budget is already over-constrained." He added, "[W]hat will it all cost, and is this the best way to spend limited resources?  Before making any major decisions concerning such a mission, it is vital that the proposal undergo a vigorous independent technical evaluation."

 

Dr. Sandy Magnus said in her prepared statement, "The Mars Flyby thus can only be discussed in the context of that larger strategy and the associated missions and operational goals.  I would also like to underscore that any plan, whether its goals are to retrieve an asteroid, establish a lunar base, or send people to Mars – or any combination thereof – is doomed to failure without the resources to support it – resources provided in a sustained and sustainable manner based on realistic projections."

 

Ranking Member Johnson called for a future hearing with a witness from NASA to discuss the progress being made on SLS, Orion, and related investments, as well as on NASA's progress in developing a clear human space exploration roadmap.

 

Kepler's comeback? New K2 mission could chase wilder targets

 

Amina Khan – Lost Angeles Times

 

Don't call it a comeback just yet. Astronomers mourned the Kepler Space Telescope after it was crippled last year. But NASA's planet hunter may be getting a second chance at life — with an ingenious, just-so-crazy-it-might-work plan that would use the sun's rays to steer the spacecraft.

 

The data already collected by Kepler are still turning up a treasure trove of hundreds of planets, as Wednesday's announcement showed. But if it passes NASA approval, the potential new mission, called K2, could mean a whole different kind of search to find Earth-size exoplanets, along with supernovae, protostars and galaxy clusters.

 

"The K2 mission is basically a brand new mission in a sense, even though it reuses the Kepler Space Telescope," Kepler mission project scientist Steve Howell said in an interview. "I find that kind of exciting."

 

Since launching in 2009, the Kepler spacecraft has revealed 3,601 candidate planets (961 confirmed) comprising an interstellar menagerie: super-Jupiters, super-Earths, mini-Neptunes, and other alien worlds that have defied comparison to those in our own solar system.

 

The spacecraft did so by staring at roughly 150,000 stars in a celestial patch representing 1/400th of the sky, waiting for tiny dips in starlight that would signal a planet was passing by, blocking a little bit of light. But to get the exquisitely precise data it needed to pick out individual dimming stars, it had to be able to hold itself very still.

 

For that kind of precision pointing, it needed to have at least three working reaction wheels to steer it and hold it in place. The spacecraft came with four, but two of them failed. The first failed in July 2012; the second stopped working in May 2013. That left only two reaction wheels, not enough for Kepler to keep up its planet-hunting work.

 

Astronomers mourned. (UC Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy even penned a poem in memoriam.) The mission had just been renewed a year before. And Kepler's scientific prowess would only have increased with time because the longer it stared at that patch, the higher the likelihood that it would identify smaller planets farther away from their home stars' searing rays — and thus, under potentially more 'Earth-like' conditions.

 

The problem was the sun. Out in space, very little disturbs Kepler from its position, except for the photons (light particles) streaming out of the sun that constant bombard the spacecraft. Those photons exert just enough pressure to push the spacecraft around a little bit, which is what the telescope's reaction wheels try to counteract. Without one of them, Kepler couldn't combat this pressure in all directions.

 

Scientists tried to think of workarounds, to no avail. But then engineers at Ball Aerospace in Colorado came up with a mind-boggling solution: Rather than try to fight the sun, they'd use it to their advantage.

 

The plan uses the sun as Kepler's "third wheel." They position a ridge on the spacecraft so that when sunlight hits it, the photons split equally along both sides, thus helping to hold it in balance.

 

"The K2 mission won't be able to point that precisely," Howell said. "It'll point maybe about four to 10 times worse than the Kepler mission. And while that sounds horrible, it's still 500 or more times better than anything you can do from a ground telescope."

 

Instead of staring at one patch of sky, Kepler's gaze will trace the ecliptic — the plane in which the Earth orbits the sun — and will cover roughly five times more area, Howell said.

 

The spacecraft will have to reposition itself roughly every 75 days in its orbit,  sometimes to keep from getting blinded by the sun, other times to move its solar panels out of the shadow. This means it can't stare at the same patch of sky for years on end, and so it probably won't be finding Earth-size planets with Earth-like orbits.

 

The original Kepler mission's patch of sky was considered somewhat boring in that it was fairly uniform — and with good reason: When you're looking for tiny fluctuations in light in a field of sun-like stars, you don't need a lot of distractions.

 

But if approved, K2 will be looking at a much more diverse region of sky with a wide range of astronomical and astrophysical phenomena: planets with short orbits around cooler stars (which, if in their star's habitable zone, could still harbor water); young, still-forming proto-stars, which could provide insight into star and planet formation; and supernovae and galaxy clusters.

 

"The scientific opportunities just really started to explode — there's so much to do," said UC Berkeley's Marcy, who poetically mourned Kepler.

 

"And if instead what you're interested in is the stars themselves," he added, "then new K2 may be even more exciting than the Kepler mission was."

 

The researchers demonstrated that their new method would work when they managed to pick out a previously identified planet called WASP-28b. On March 8, they plan a full-blown test, to dip the telescope into the ecliptic and try the method out until the end of May.

 

"It's been sort of going from a newborn baby starting to walk to a 3-year-old here in the last four or five months," Howell said. "We had never flown the spacecraft this way. This idea of balancing the sun had never been tried before."

 

By May, Howell said, Kepler's controllers should know if they've been approved for the K2 mission, which would cost about $10 million a year for a two-year stint, about half of the original Kepler mission's current annual cost to operate. And for the next couple of years both missions would run in tandem, Howell said.

 

"I will have both my hats," Howell said. "I will switch them every day. Kepler still has a number of years of its mission left."

 

 

END

 

 

More detailed space news can be found at:

 

http://spacetoday.net/

 

 

 

Megan Sumner

Public Affairs Specialist 

NASA Johnson Space Center