| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Recent JSC Announcement - Organizations/Social
- Black Holes as Propulsion Tools - Tomorrow
- Environmental Brown Bag - Cycling To Work
- Flex Friday Exercise Special Returns - Aug. 15
- The Importance of Optimism
- Space Serenity Al-Anon Meeting Today at Noon
- Women's Equality Day Film Festival - Jobs and Training
- Thrift Saving Plan Training
- Pre-Retirement for FERS
- Pre-Retirement for CSRS - Community
- Don't Miss the Rise of Independence - Aug. 14
- Why I Don't Donate Blood - I Will Feel Weak |  |
| Headlines - Recent JSC Announcement
Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web Page to view the newly posted announcement: JSCA 14-018: Key Personnel Assignment Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web Page. Organizations/Social - Black Holes as Propulsion Tools - Tomorrow
Attend JSC's SAIC/Safety and Mission Assurance speaker forum featuring Jeff Lee, researcher and project lead for the X-Physics, Propulsion and Power Group at Icarus Interstellar and faculty member of the Crescent School. Topic: Using Laser-Generated Quantum Black Holes as Power and Propulsion Sources for Future Spacecraft Date/Time: Tomorrow, Aug. 13, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Location: Teague Auditorium Are you interested in traveling beyond low-Earth orbit and the future of space travel? If you enjoyed Dr. Cleaver's presentation on "Icarus Interstellar and NASA's 100-Year Starship Project Goal" earlier this year, you don't want to miss this presentation by Lee. He will discuss the applications and implications of Schwarzschild Kugelblitz (SKs) and the potential speeds and displacements of SK-powered future spacecraft. Laser-generated quantum black holes (SKs) have been proposed as power and propulsion sources for spacecraft. - Environmental Brown Bag - Cycling To Work
Have you ever wondered about cycling to work? Want to know the best route? Which JSC buildings have showers? What kind of bike works best? We will host a Q&A session with JSC bike experts to answer these and any other questions you have about biking to work. We will also have our air expert available to discuss Houston's ozone action days, what they mean and how to watch for them. Find out about resources like People For Bikes and the League of American Bicyclists. Learn about safe routes and biking tips, as well as JSC's Free Range Bike Program. Join us today in Building 45, Room 751, from noon to 1 p.m. - Flex Friday Exercise Special Returns - Aug. 15
Back by popular demand! We understand that getting over to the Gilruth Center is not easy during those nine-hour days. Because of that, Starport is continuing to offer an amazing assortment of FREE programs on Flex Friday for all JSC employees, contractors and their families. Flex Friday - Aug. 15 - special FREE programs include: - FREE 30-minute personal training sessions
- Nature walks
- More SPINNING classes
- Outer Space OSFX class
- Kickboxing class
- Yoga blend class
- Tae Kwon Do class
- Core Strength classes
All Starport locations (Gilruth Center and Buildings 3 and 11) will also be running a 10 percent discount on all athletics, recreation and fitness merchandise. A full schedule and details are listed here. Be sure you stop by the Gilruth Center for a great Flex Friday! - The Importance of Optimism
"A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities, and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties." - Harry S. Truman Optimism is defined as hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something. Come and be a part of the presentation that illustrates examples of positive mental attitudes. We will highlight the positive thinking that is essential for one to present with a more optimistic frame of reference. Concepts that distinguish optimism from pessimism will also be identified. Please join JSC Employee Assistance Program presenter Anika Isaac, LPC, LMFT, LCDC, CEAP, NCC, as she presents "The Importance of Optimism." - Space Serenity Al-Anon Meeting Today at Noon
"Easy does it" reminds Al-Anon members to stay cool during the dog days of summer. Our 12-step meeting is for co-workers, families and friends of those who work or live with the family disease of alcoholism. We meet today, Aug. 12, in Building 32, Room 146, from 12 noon to 12:45 p.m. Visitors are welcome. - Women's Equality Day Film Festival
JSC's Women's Equality Day planning committee invites the JSC family to the viewing of the "MAKERS: Women Who Make America, Part II." MAKERS tells the remarkable story of how women helped shape America over the last 50 years through one of the most sweeping social revolutions in our country's history. It's a revolution that unfolded publicly and privately, in courts and in Congress, in the boardroom and the bedroom, changing not only what the world expects from women, but what women expect from themselves. MAKERS brings this story to life with priceless archival treasures and poignant, often funny interviews with those who led the fight, those who opposed it and the first generations to benefit from its success. MAKERS captures the journey with music, humor and voices of women who lived through turbulent times: the dizzying joy, aching frustration and ultimate triumph of a movement that turned America upside down. Jobs and Training - Thrift Saving Plan Training
Thrift Saving Plan (TSP) is a retirement savings plan for civilians who are employed by the U.S. government and members of the uniformed services. The TSP is one of three components of the Federal Employees Retirement System and is designed to closely resemble the dynamics of private sector 401(k) plans. What You'll Learn: This is an overview of the Federal Investment Program and covers the nuts and bolts of the TSP. Topics Covered: - The basics of the TSP
- Defined contribution plan
- Tax-savings features
- Investment options
- Loan program
- Withdrawal options
- Open seasons and inter-fund transfers
Who Should Attend: Federal employees interested in learning more about the TSP. It is also open to employees covered under the older Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). Session 1: Sept. 11 from 8:30 a.m. to noon in the Gilruth Alamo Ballroom Session 2: Sept. 11 from 1 to 4:30 p.m. in the Gilruth Alamo Ballroom - Pre-Retirement for FERS
PRE-RETIREMENT FOR FEDERAL EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT SYSTEM (FERS) Are you prepared to retire? This pre-retirement for FERS seminar is designed to help you effectively manage today's realities as you begin to explore retirement possibilities. Retirement is often looked upon as a financially based decision. Although the financial aspects are important, many other concerns need to be addressed. This seminar is designed to help you effectively deal with today's realities as you begin to explore retirement possibilities. Topics covered include lifestyle planning, health maintenance, financial planning, legal-affairs planning and more. Who Should Attend: Federal employees interested in learning more about the FERS with five to 10 years or fewer until retirement eligibility. Course length: 16 hours Pre-Retirement for Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) Sept 9 - FERS; and Sept.10 - Financial Planning Gilruth Alamo Ballroom Time: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. CDT Register via SATERN: - Pre-Retirement for CSRS
PRE-RETIREMENT FOR CIVIL SERVICE RETIREMENT SYSTEM (CSRS) Are you prepared to retire? This pre-retirement seminar is designed to help you effectively manage today's realities as you begin to explore retirement possibilities. Retirement is often looked upon as a financially based decision. Although the financial aspects are important, many other concerns need to be addressed. This seminar is designed to help you effectively deal with today's realities as you begin to explore retirement possibilities. Topics covered include lifestyle planning, health maintenance, financial planning, legal-affairs planning and more. Who Should Attend: Federal employees interested in learning more about the CSRS with five to 10 years or fewer until retirement eligibility. Course length: 16 hours Pre-Retirement for Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) Sept. 8 - CSRS, Gilruth Lone Star Room; and Sept. 10 - Financial Planning, Gilruth Alamo Ballroom Time: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. CDT Register via SATERN: Community - Don't Miss the Rise of Independence - Aug. 14
On Thursday, Aug. 14, the public is invited to see a giant crane lift the space shuttle replica Independence to its permanent home atop Space Center Houston's historic shuttle carrier aircraft. This free event, Rise of Independence, will culminate as a team of skilled engineers use a crane to lift the massive orbiter to its resting place at 8 a.m. (weather permitting). The ceremony preceding the lift begins at 7:15 a.m. There is limited viewing available on a first come, first served basis. The event will be postponed to another date in the event of rain or high winds, but updates will posted on both Space Center Houston's website and Facebook page. Don't miss the main event on Aug. 14, and cheer on a chapter from NASA's illustrious history at Space Center Houston—JSC's visitor center. - Why I Don't Donate Blood - I Will Feel Weak
Blood makes up about seven percent of your body's weight, and the average adult has 10 pints of blood. After a donation of whole blood, you will not be eligible to donate for 56 days, during which time your body will completely replenish the blood you have so generously donated. Immediately after your blood donation, you will also be asked to spend a few moments in our waiting area, where you will be served refreshments, cookies and other snacks. This will help replenish some of the sugar and liquids in your body and help us to ensure that you are feeling well after your donation. You can donate at Aug. 20 and 21 at one of the following locations: - Teague Auditorium lobby - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Building 11 Starport Café donor coach - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Gilruth Center donor coach - Noon to 4 p.m. (Thursday only)
| |
| |
| 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. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday – August 12, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
European space cargo ship set for ISS docking
AFP
Europe's final robot cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to dock on Tuesday, its manoeuvres webcast live from several angles, France's CNES space agency said on Monday.
Lake view: Restoring American pride
David Creel – Lake News Online (MO)
Forty-five years ago on July 20, the first men landed on the moon. Those of us old enough to remember likely know what we were doing at the exact moment.
No Case for a U.S.-China Space Race
Zack Hester | Space News
You may have seen recent headlines that read, "China Has U.S. in a Space Race" and "Will China Restart the Space Race?" Of course, the term "space race" is a tagline to any competitive space story these days, from the "space race" between private companies to reviving the "space race" between the United States and Russia. No doubt it's a catchy headline, hence why I used it here.
3 commercial companies compete in new space race
Boeing, Space X and Sierra Nevada battle for the prize
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
During the space shuttle's last flight three summers ago visitors crammed the NASA Causeway to glimpse a final, majestic launch. But this June, as sunshine dappled the waters below, the bridge stood nearly empty.
Space station's first year-long crew counts days to launch, debuts mission patch
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE
Scott Kelly is 7 months and 17 days from becoming the first NASA astronaut to spend a year in space.
Editorial | Playing Hard to Get on ISS Extension
SpaceNews Editor
The international space station partnership has long endured the ups and downs in relations between Russia and the West, but recent events and statements might be worrisome to those who favor extending the life of the orbital outpost beyond 2020, as the United States has proposed.
News from AIAA Space 2014 | NASA Officials: Orion 'Challenged' To Make 2017 Launch Date
Dan Leone – Space News
Adapting the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) into a service module for NASA's Orion deep-space capsule is threatening to push the craft's first mission to lunar space beyond its notional December 2017 launch date, a NASA official said here.
ARM Candidates Include Two that Already Will Have Been Sampled
Dan Leone – Space News
At least two of the six asteroids NASA has identified as candidates for redirecting to lunar orbit for astronauts to explore by 2025 will already have been probed and sampled by robotic spacecraft by that time, an agency official told a group of scientists here July 30.
Former teacher honored with ISS experiment memento
Mackenzie Ryan – Florida Today
As teachers returned to work Monday, the first day back at West Shore Jr./Sr. High included a special presentation to honor a former colleague and friend.
For the future of Mars exploration, the past is prologue
Duane Hyland – The Space Review
Past missions, and in some case the spare parts of past missions, will help drive the next decade of Mars exploration, a panel of experts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of California at Berkeley told an audience last week at the AIAA SPACE 2014 Forum in San Diego.
Supermoons and beyond
Late summer has rewarded sky-watchers with visual wonders. But there's even more out there to ponder.
By The Christian Science Monitor's Editorial Board
August has found a supermoon battling the Perseid meteor shower for the attention of sky gazers. The sight of an unusually large and bright full moon beaming back at Earth, and the light show provided by meteors blazing across inky skies, has added heavenly fireworks to late summer.
Cubesats Driving Big Developments in Small Propulsion Systems
Debra Werner – Space News
As cubesats prove their ability to capture imagery and gather scientific data, developers are eager to send the miniature spacecraft on increasingly complex missions, many of which require propulsion.
NASA Ready To Put Robotic Refueling to the Test
Dan Leone – Space News
The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center team that engineered five successful in-space servicing missions to the flagship Hubble Space Telescope is preparing for a ground-based satellite refueling demonstration next April that will include nearly every constraint the team would face if it tried to robotically service an operational satellite.
COMPLETE STORIES
European space cargo ship set for ISS docking
AFP
Europe's final robot cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to dock on Tuesday, its manoeuvres webcast live from several angles, France's CNES space agency said on Monday.
The automated transfer vehicle (ATV), the fifth and last that Europe had pledged for lifeline deliveries to the orbiting outpost, was blasted into space on July 30 from Kourou in French Guiana.
Weighing in at more than 20 tonnes, the double decker bus-sized craft is carrying the biggest-ever payload of more than 6.6 tonnes, including fuel, water, oxygen, food, clothes and scientific experiments for the six ISS crew.
Having navigated its way to the ISS by starlight, the craft is set to dock with its target at a height of about 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the Earth at 1330 GMT on Tuesday.
"For the first time, CNES will be broadcasting live pictures of the event on its website from five cameras," the agency said in a statement.
The webcast will start at 1245 GMT.
This will include live footage of the approaching ATV from cameras on the ISS and updates from the ATV control room at the CNES Space Centre in Toulouse, in charge of docking operations.
The craft is named after Georges Lemaitre, the Belgian astrophysicist who proposed the "Big Bang" theory of how the Universe came into being.
After unloading its cargo, the 10-metre (33-feet) pressurised capsule will provide additional living and working space for the astronauts and use its onboard engines to boost the altitude of the space station, which loses height through atmospheric drag each day.
At the end of its six-month mission, filled with garbage and human waste, the spacecraft will undock and burn up in a controlled re-entry over the South Pacific.
The ISS will in future be resupplied by Russia's Progress freighter and the Dragon and Cygnus craft built by two NASA-contracted private American firms -- Space X and Orbital Sciences.
Lake view: Restoring American pride
David Creel – Lake News Online (MO)
Forty-five years ago on July 20, the first men landed on the moon. Those of us old enough to remember likely know what we were doing at the exact moment.
Forty-five years ago on July 20, the first men landed on the moon. Those of us old enough to remember likely know what we were doing at the exact moment. I happen to be in the cab of a moving van somewhere in the middle of Nebraska desperately trying to find a radio station to hear the news, which was broadcasting the landing live. Through all the static, I heard the words uttered by Neil Armstrong, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
What a marvelous feeling of pride! In a matter of nine short years from when President John F. Kennedy challenged the country to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade, the amazing feat was accomplished.
Through the brilliance and perseverance of NASA engineers, the bravery of our astronauts and the support of the American people, there were several more missions to the moon. With the cooperation of other countries, an international space station was constructed and many missions were flown there through the American Space Shuttle program.
Even unmanned missions to Mars were conceived and realized through the vigorous efforts of scientists in cooperation with NASA. America was the leader in space exploration and what pride and excitement it brought to people―here and abroad―of all ages. America lived up to its promise as a beacon of hope, freedom and opportunity.
Unfortunately, in recent years, "change" has left our space program gutted, in part, for outreach to Muslims. We no longer have a shuttle program to get our astronauts to and from the International Space Station. We rely now on the Russians to get us there and back.
The "change" has carried over to our foreign policy. Our allies no longer can trust that the United States will stand by them. While there are still people in oppressed countries who seek asylum in our country, the bright shining light called America seems to be dimming. Muslims — the very people we have given billions of aid to —have declared war on all "non-believers," particularly Americans.
Our economy is sluggish and our welfare system has grown exponentially. Our healthcare system―also once the envy of the world―is descending into third world caliber, not because of the doctors, nurses, and hospitals, but because of a government that has decided it is much better qualified to take care of its citizens.
We have a "transparent" administration which spies on its citizens, targets through the IRS groups that are opposed to its ideology and then covers up any investigation. We have an administration that bases every decision on textbook theory and not on real-world experience. For that matter, there are few in this administration with ANY real-world experience.
In short, what we have is an administration which is willing to guide the freest, most benevolent, country--a country whose economic system has raised more people out of poverty than any country in the history of mankind, a country whose military has been a force for good in blocking and defeating the world's bullies--into the abyss of third world status.
We can't afford to let misguided and naïve policies continue to be implemented. We can't afford to keep electing "symbols" to lead our country. Regardless of race or gender, it is time we elect leaders who believe in the American legacy and will restore the pride to this great country we call the United States of America.
No Case for a U.S.-China Space Race
Zack Hester | Space News
You may have seen recent headlines that read, "China Has U.S. in a Space Race" and "Will China Restart the Space Race?" Of course, the term "space race" is a tagline to any competitive space story these days, from the "space race" between private companies to reviving the "space race" between the United States and Russia. No doubt it's a catchy headline, hence why I used it here.
However, most of these race analogies fail to establish a clear finish line between the competitors in question.
On the topic of China, such headlines and articles sometimes invoke thoughts of American astronauts landing on Mars only to find a Chinese flag firmly planted on the surface, without any proper context of China's current space programs. These articles tend to play upon the memories of the 1960s, when Americans were anxiously left wondering what the Soviet Union's Politburo with its mysterious "Chief Designer" would launch next over their heads.
Certainly, there are very legitimate concerns in regards to China in terms of anti-satellite weapon capabilities and under what circumstances the People's Liberation Army (PLA) would launch such weapons. However, in regards to China's human spaceflight activities and objectives, one need not be so left in the dark. China has clearly laid out its strategic plan for the next six to 10 years and there is little indication that it will deviate from it. In fact, it's the same long-term vision and strategy for manned spaceflight that China has employed over the past 10 years, and no, it does not include crash programs to launch manned missions to the Moon or Mars.
While estimates of China's annual space budget vary, most sources agree that China has been increasing its allocations across various space related civilian and defense programs. Its space program serves to promote China's economy, national pride and international prestige. However, it is also accepted that the United States still far exceeds China — and most of the rest of the world, for that matter — in space funding.
It should also be noted that China's space activities are primarily divided between two different agencies and are not encompassed under a NASA-equivalent agency. Human spaceflight missions reside under the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), which is part of the PLA's General Armaments division. Robotic missions reside under the China National Space Administration (CNSA), which is part of the civilian Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but what's key here is that CNSA, not CMSA, operates and develops the recently highly publicized robotic lunar missions like the Chang'e-3 lander and the Yutu lunar rover. While such technologies may one day have dual use for a manned landing, CNSA is currently not setting the stage for manned follow-on missions, but is rather focused on its own Moon strategy, which next calls for a lunar sample-return mission set for 2017.
CMSA's objectives are laid out in a three-step strategy that has been in place since its inception in the 1990s.
The first step: Achieve manned spaceflight. This was achieved with the successful launch of the Shenzhou 5 craft in 2003.
The second step: Develop a space laboratory in low Earth orbit. This was achieved when the Tiangong-1 lab module was successfully launched and placed into orbit followed by a three-person crew onboard the Shenzhou 10 spacecraft who successfully docked with the module in 2013.
The third and final step: Develop a manned space station in low Earth orbit designed to remain operational over a 10-year lifespan by the early 2020s. This is the capstone that CMSA is aiming toward. The station was officially approved in 2010 after years of planning and predevelopment. Additionally, the Chinese may look to incorporate other countries to take part in the space station, including developing nations, as a way to assure the station's peaceful use, spread out costs and create geopolitical capital with developing countries or regional allies.
While a manned Moon landing or an ambitious attempt at a first Mars landing would bring tremendous prestige to China, current human and robotic endeavors have brought sufficient world standing to China as a space power and serve its geopolitical objectives.
CMSA and its Chinese aerospace suppliers still face numerous technological challenges and bureaucratic hurdles to implement a Moon mission or a crash program to Mars anytime soon. CMSA officials have stressed that they still have a long way to go to achieve China's space station aspirations, the third step in China's current strategy.
Even with rapid economic growth, China is also not immune to the struggles faced by its spacefaring Western counterparts in regards to weighing the opportunity costs that come with expensive and high-risk endeavors in human spaceflight. So will Chinese leaders abandon the current and successful three-step strategy and risk their young space program's reputation on such a high-stakes, high-risk manned mission to the Moon or Mars now? History and all current indications tell us no.
Maybe in the mid-2020s China will reach a point in its space program to start executing development of an ambitious manned mission to the Moon or Mars, and the "race" will be underway. However, such long-term predictions in human spaceflight often prove to be overly optimistic.
So the next time you see a headline declaring a "space race" after a successful lunar robotic mission or progress on a Chinese space station, don't be surprised. When it comes to manned spaceflight, the Chinese have left little to the imagination.
3 commercial companies compete in new space race
Boeing, Space X and Sierra Nevada battle for the prize
Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle
During the space shuttle's last flight three summers ago visitors crammed the NASA Causeway to glimpse a final, majestic launch. But this June, as sunshine dappled the waters below, the bridge stood nearly empty.
As NASA considers what company will build a replacement for the space shuttle, which the space agency needs to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station and end an uncomfortable dependence upon Russia, one of the three competitors is offering more than just a spacecraft.
Boeing has put jobs on the table, too, saying it will build its CST-100 spacecraft at NASA's Florida space center, where the launch crowds could return as soon as 2017.
Boeing's insider style differs markedly from that of another competitor, SpaceX, an upstart that has taken an outsider's approach, preferring to build its spacecraft in-house. The final bidder, Sierra Nevada, is somewhere in between.
NASA should make its decision on the "commercial crew" competition in the next few weeks. At stake is not just a $4 billion contract, but prestige. The next spacecraft that flies U.S. astronauts will have an American flag, yes, but also a prominent corporate logo. That company will also join the elite club - whose only members include the United States, Russia and China - that has flown humans in space.
When Boeing brought a mock-up of its CST-100 to Kennedy Space Center in June, Boeing chose a setting both symbolic and pragmatic for a blue-blooded NASA contractor.
"It's just really great to be back here," said John Elbon, head of Boeing's space divison, standing on a platform inside the Orbiter Processing Facility. To his right was the CST-100 spacecraft. To his left sat Florida Senator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut who wields considerable influence over NASA.
Nelson was all smiles at the prospect of returning manned spacecraft launches and 300 jobs to the sunshine state. "This is the celebration of a great public-private partnership," he said.
The partnership goes back more than half a century. Beginning with Project Mercury, America's first manned orbital spacecraft, Boeing has served as lead contractor in most of NASA's human spaceflight endeavors. Today it has the contract to sustain the International Space Station and is building NASA's next rocket, the large Space Launch System.
Not only is Boeing offering incentives in Florida, it's doing so in Houston as well. The shuttle's retirement also battered Johnson Space Center. Without regular flights to manage, mission control has shed 40 percent of its workforce, or more than 1,300 jobs. Boeing has contracted to use mission control to manage CST-100 flights.
Elbon said the company has emphasized safety and reliability in its design and development of the spacecraft.
The CST-100's shape, mimicking the Apollo capsule, is proven. Its flight computers are the same as those in Boeing's proven X-37 unmanned space plane. Many of its other systems have previously flown in space. The spacecraft will launch into orbit on the Atlas V rocket, which has made four dozen successful flights.
"We go for substance," Elbon said. "Not pizazz."
A reusable capsule
He was referring to SpaceX and, both on and off the record, a lot of people in the aerospace make such allusions. That's because SpaceX has captured the public's imagination and shaken up the spaceflight community with its low-cost rockets.
And the California-based company is flashy, like its chief executive Elon Musk, a dot-com entrepreneur with a rock star persona who helped found Paypal and also heads Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturer.
A month before Boeing's event in Florida to showcase the CST-100, SpaceX held its own affair to reveal the Dragon V2, its entrant into the competition.
SpaceX unveiled the capsule at its California headquarters as multi-colored lights flashed and smoke swirled.
And there was Musk, a master showman, working the crowd. Wearing a sport coat with the top two buttons undone on his collared shirt, Musk explained that the Dragon V2 would be the first reusable capsule and, with thrusters, could land up to seven astronauts almost anywhere they liked on Earth. No more thudding to the ground on a predetermined course.
"That is how a 21st century spaceship should land," Musk said.
It was classic Musk: boasting and proud before an audience of employees, guests and invited journalists. Building a reusable capsule, never before done, may prove difficult to back up.
But by building in-house, and pressing employees to work long hours, there's no question SpaceX is cutting the cost of access to space and shaking up the establishment.
The Air Force recently awarded a contract for dozens of security satellite launches to United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which flies the Atlas V rocket. The Air Force did so on a non-competitive basis, saying Musk's Falcon 9 rocket wasn't certified. But Musk, whose Falcon 9 rocket is three to four times cheaper, said the contract should be re-competed and has sued.
Sierra Nevada
If SpaceX is the unqualified outsider to Boeing's consummate insider, Sierra Nevada, based outside Denver in Louisville, Colo., lies somewhere in the middle.
While it's no Boeing, Sierra Nevada is probably the biggest aerospace company most Americans have never heard of. Privately held, with $2 billion in annual revenues, Sierra Nevada builds spacecraft motors, propulsion systems and is the largest small satellite builder in the world.
"It surprises people because often times, if they don't know me or us, they come in thinking maybe these guys make beer or something," said Mark Sirangelo, the company's chief executive for space systems. "The truth is we know what we're doing and this isn't a new game for us."
In 2005, five years before NASA awarded its first contracts to private companies, Sierra Nevada began work on its vehicle, the Dream Chaser.
"We made an audacious bet, that some day America was going to need an updated version of the space shuttle," Sirangelo said.
The company found the answer in an old NASA design, the HL-20 space plane the agency worked on in the 1990s but never actually built. Sierra Nevada kept the vehicle's shape, but reworked the vehicle's engine and made room inside for up to seven astronauts.
The Dream Chaser lands like an airplane, on the same sized runway that 737 jets do. It can also fly around in space and, for example, take astronauts up to the Hubble Space Telescope for repairs.
Like Boeing, Sierra Nevada is working with NASA to develop the vehicle and has contracts with most of NASA's field centers for work.
Yet Sierra Nevada is similar to SpaceX in some ways. Both companies are investing heavily in their vehicles. Sirangelo said, "we are nearly putting in dollar for dollar" for development money received so far from NASA. Like SpaceX and the DragonV2, Sierra Nevada also plans to continue developing Dream Chaser, albeit at a slower rate, if it fails to win a new NASA contract.
Boeing could lay off 215
Boeing will not say how much of its own money has been invested in its CST-100. The large aerospace contractor also says it won't continue developing the CST-100 if it loses the commercial crew contract. The company has notified 170 employees in Houston and 45 in Florida that they would be laid off in the event of a loss.
NASA hopes to support two companies moving forward, to have multiple ways to space. However, due to funding, the space agency may only be able to pick one winner, or perhaps one winner and a partial award to a second company.
Although the commercial crew idea originated during the administration of George W. Bush, President Obama endorsed it as the quickest and cheapest means of ending American reliance on Russia.
Yet as the president sought to privatize parts of NASA, Congress objected and underfunded the program. Perhaps mindful of its home districts and states, Congress was reticent to divert money from NASA's other programs.
This attitude has softened in recent months, however, as the Ukraine crisis has lain bare NASA's reliance upon Russia for access to space.
Space station's first year-long crew counts days to launch, debuts mission patch
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE
Scott Kelly is 7 months and 17 days from becoming the first NASA astronaut to spend a year in space.
Well, maybe not a full year, at least based on the currently published schedules.
Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail "Misha" Kornienko are slated to launch to the International Space Station on March 28, 2015 for the first yearlong expedition aboard the orbiting laboratory. They are scheduled to return to Earth 346 days later – 19 days shy of an entire year – on March 7, 2016.
"I made a deal with the station program, they'll extend that to make it a whole year, but that doesn't show up on paper yet," Kelly told collectSPACE.com in a recent interview. "It better be [a full year], although I could be regretting that when March 7 rolls around and I think I could be home."
Full year or not, Kelly and Kornienko's expedition will set the record for the space station's longest mission in its 15-year history. Most crew members spend about five and a half months working and living on the outpost.
Only four people, all of them cosmonauts, have remained in orbit longer than a year during stays onboard the former Russian Mir space station.
During their 12 months in space, Kelly and Kornienko will be joined by a rotating contingent of four other astronauts and cosmonauts to conduct hundreds of experiments and to gather data to better prepare future crews for missions beyond Earth orbit, such as to Mars.
First though, Kelly and Kornienko have had to be prepare to spend a year off the planet. The two were appointed to the long-duration flight in 2012 and have been in training for the expedition since. It has only been recently though, that Kelly has started to notice the days ticking down to their launch.
"As far the flight coming up quickly, I think it's just starting to feel that way for me," he told collectSPACE.com. "The backup [crew] launch flow is August through September, which culminates with the Expedition 41 launch because I am [flight engineer Butch Wilmore's] backup."
"Then I am back in Houston for the month of October, in Russia in November, Japan in December, January back in Houston, February in Russia and then — space. So even though it is pretty much seven months away, it's going to happen pretty quick," Kelly observed.
At the 12 month mark in March, Kelly began a countdown with daily Twitter updates. Those posts have dropped off a bit since as the pace of preparations have picked up, and as Kelly's given thought to the effect of counting down, or up.
"I do recognize there is a risk to counting down — well, in this case, counting down isn't that risky, but counting the number of days until the end of the flight, or I was thinking of counting up days — a countdown [to launch] and then a count-up — there is obviously some risk in that as it could make the time seem to go by much more slowly," he said. "Maybe I will start counting up and then quit after awhile."
There are other ways Kelly might mark the year in space. He joked about not shaving for the length of his stay, but quickly abandoned that idea.
"All joking aside, I have considered taking pictures of the same spots on the Earth, as best as possible, to capture the changes over the period of a year. You know, on each continent, one spot," he explained.
Both he and Kornienko will visually mark the year another way, too. Borrowing a long-standing spaceflight tradition, the two now have their own commemorative mission patch to mark their yearlong journey.
"There is a big number one and it says 'Year in Space' and in Russian and English are Misha's and my names," Kelly said, describing the recently revealed emblem. "There is a picture of the space station over the Earth with the station going around the Earth and then the Earth going around the sun."
Editorial | Playing Hard to Get on ISS Extension
SpaceNews Editor
The international space station partnership has long endured the ups and downs in relations between Russia and the West, but recent events and statements might be worrisome to those who favor extending the life of the orbital outpost beyond 2020, as the United States has proposed.
During a press conference July 28 — the day before the launch of Europe's fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) cargo freighter to the station — a senior official with Russia's Roscosmos space agency cited tensions over Ukraine as the reason Moscow has yet to approve continued participation beyond 2020. Alexey Krasnov, head of the space station program at Roscosmos, said he is eager to begin ordering the hardware necessary to extend the station's life but not optimistic of securing government approval to do so this year.
Mr. Krasnov's remarks came roughly two-and-a-half months after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Russia would in fact end its participation in station after 2020. This was after the U.S. government imposed sanctions on Mr. Rogozin and other Russian officials in response to Russia's meddling in Ukraine and specifically its annexation of Crimea.
Mr. Rogozin's declaration was taken with a grain of salt by many space policy experts who assumed cooler heads would prevail over time. But the situation in Ukraine has only gotten worse, punctuated by the downing of a Malaysian civilian jetliner with nearly 300 people aboard by what U.S. authorities say was a sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft missile operated by Ukrainian separatist forces. The U.S., European and Canadian governments are imposing or preparing harder-hitting sanctions, and fighting in areas of eastern Ukraine has intensified.
Despite all this, operations aboard the international space station have continued, seemingly unaffected. Russia launched three new crew members May 28, for example, and cargo vessels continue to come and go — the ATV 5 that launched July 29 was slated to dock with the station Aug. 12. Mr. Krasnov said Roscosmos and its space station partners continue to work well together even as relations between Washington and Moscow slide toward Cold War depths.
It's not surprising under the circumstances that Russia hasn't jumped at the U.S. proposal to extend station operations to 2024, and to be fair, none of the other partners has either. All are wrestling with budget difficulties, while in Europe the matter is tied up in very challenging negotiations over the future of its launch vehicle sector. Senior NASA officials have said it could be some time before these countries decide their future roles in space station.
But without Roscosmos, it is hard to see how the program could continue. Not only is Russia solely responsible for transporting crews to and from the station, but following the last ATV mission it will possess the only capability to deorbit the facility in a controlled manner. NASA aims to field an independent crew capability starting around 2017 but currently has no plans for a propulsion module capable of guiding the 420,000-kilogram station to a controlled re-entry over an uninhabited stretch of the Pacific Ocean.
That means unless and until Russia commits to participation beyond 2020, any organization — commercial or otherwise — contemplating an investment in research aboard the space station might have to think twice, as such experiments can take years to develop and launch. It also means the commercial crew taxis being developed with hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer assistance might have no place to go after just a couple of years of operation.
Russia, of course, has plenty at stake here too. The country is justifiably proud of its legacy in human spaceflight — its program obviously was first and remains the most prolific — but has yet to articulate a credible alternative program for beyond 2020. Delivering astronauts to and from the station also is an important source of hard currency for Roscosmos and Russia's space industry.
It therefore seems very likely that Russia — assuming the situation in Ukraine doesn't come completely unhinged — eventually will commit to extending station operations. When that might happen is anyone's guess, but it's probably safe to say Moscow won't act while the imposition of Western economic sanctions — and they are warranted, Russia's retaliatory measures notwithstanding — is still fresh on people's minds.
In the meantime, space station researchers and advocates will have to exercise a little faith and patience. Moscow might not be in any hurry to give Washington something it has said it wants, but Russian authorities surely recognize it's still in their interest to do so.
News from AIAA Space 2014 | NASA Officials: Orion 'Challenged' To Make 2017 Launch Date
Dan Leone – Space News
Adapting the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) into a service module for NASA's Orion deep-space capsule is threatening to push the craft's first mission to lunar space beyond its notional December 2017 launch date, a NASA official said here.
ESA officials said in May that ATV prime contractor Airbus Defence and Space was back on track to deliver Orion's service module in time for a late-2017 launch without having to resort to double- and triple-shifts to get the job done. ESA's assurances followed a May 19 preliminary design review where Airbus officials showed they had resolved the module's excess weight. With the module's critical design review slated for late 2015, Airbus' head of orbital systems and space exploration, Bart Reijnen, said in an interview at the time that the overall schedule remained challenging.
Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion program manager, told SpaceNews here Aug. 5 at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space 2014 conference that timely delivery of Europe's ATV-based service module remains a concern.
"We're struggling to make December 2017, and I have a lot of challenges to make that date," Geyer said. "They're finalizing their contract in September with Airbus, and they have challenges on the schedule that we are negotiating with them on what that means for me. If they show up a little later than I planned, is there something they can do at the Cape? Can they travel some work to the Cape so they can get it to me earlier? That's what we're talking about now, and we're going to finalize their delivery date probably by the end of this month."
An uncrewed Orion — with a U.S.-built service module — is due to launch Dec. 4 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, aboard a Delta 4 Heavy rocket to check out the capsule's heat shields and avionics during the course of two orbits and a high-speed re-entry. Europe's service module is not needed until Orion's next flight, a planned December 2017 launch, known as Exploration Mission 1, that would take another uncrewed Orion to a distant lunar retrograde orbit using the capsule's intended carrier rocket, the heavy-lift Space Launch System.
Todd May, NASA's SLS program manager, said during an Aug. 5 panel discussion here that the heavy-lift rocket is on track for a December 2017 launch.
Whether Orion will be ready remains an open question. In addition to the schedule challenges at ESA and Airbus, NASA and Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver have been dealing with schedule challenges of their own.
Orion's heat shield, being made by Lockheed subcontractor Textron Industries of Providence, Rhode Island, came out of the factory with cracks and had to be recured. In addition, welds on the complex plumbing for Orion's propulsion system "took us longer than we expected," Geyer said. NASA and Lockheed teams also had to take time to repair the crew module's pressure vessel, which cracked during proof tests at the Kennedy Space Center in 2012.
On top of all that, the two-week partial government shutdown last October kept the Orion team locked out of the Kennedy Space Center, Geyer noted. The delays pushed Orion's upcoming debut from September to December, which in turn delayed the date Lockheed and NASA engineers could begin working on the craft bound for lunar space.
ARM Candidates Include Two that Already Will Have Been Sampled
Dan Leone – Space News
At least two of the six asteroids NASA has identified as candidates for redirecting to lunar orbit for astronauts to explore by 2025 will already have been probed and sampled by robotic spacecraft by that time, an agency official told a group of scientists here July 30.
In a presentation to the NASA-chartered Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG), the Asteroid Redirect Mission's so-called pre-program manager, Brian Muirhead of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said that all six of the asteroids on NASA's short list could be robotically retrieved between 2023 and 2025. The candidates include both three free-flying asteroids and three boulder-sized samples that could be collected from larger asteroids, according to Muirhead.
Two of the potential boulder-retrieval targets either have been or will have been sampled by the time astronauts would get a crack at them as part of the Asteroid Redirect Mission.
Asteroid Itokawa, a boulder-sized piece of which Muirhead said would be retrievable by July 2025, was visited in 2010 by Japan's Hayabusa mission. NASA, meanwhile, is preparing to collect a sample of Bennu as part of the robotic Osiris-Rex mission launching in 2016 to collect a 60-gram cache of surface material and bring it back to Earth by 2023. A boulder-sized chunk of Bennu could be robotically retrieved by March 2025, according to Muirhead.
The other four candidate asteroids on the list Muirhead presented July 30 are:
- 2009 BD, a free-flyer retrievable by October 2023.
- 2011 MD, a free-flyer retrievable by August 2025.
- 2013 EC20, a free-flyer retrievable by October 2025.
- 2008 EV5, a boulder-retrieval candidate retrievable by July 2025.
Until recently, the European Space Agency was considering a sample-collection mission to 2008 EV5 as part of its Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. The mission concept, known as MarcoPolo-R, was passed over for funding in February, when the European agency instead decided to fund an exoplanet observatory known as the Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars mission.
The Asteroid Redirect Mission, NASA's response to U.S. President Barack Obama's challenge to send human explorers to an asteroid by 2025, notionally calls for launching a $1.25 billion robotic retrieval craft in 2019 to capture an asteroid, or a piece of an asteroid, about 10 meters in diameter.
The space rock would then be redirected to a distant retrograde lunar orbit where it would be visited by astronauts as part of a demonstration mission for the Orion deep-space capsule and Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket NASA is building.
The Small Bodies Assessment Group, in a draft report published July 30, said NASA's human exploration and space technology divisions stand to benefit far more from the asteroid retrieval mission than the science division, and that therefore no NASA science funding should be used by the mission. The report also said scientists do not want to see the same asteroid sampled twice, a recommendation that would rule out Itokawa and Bennu, assuming NASA's Osiris Rex mission succeeds.
SBAG member Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology went even further, calling the Asteroid Redirect Mission a "one-and-done stunt" that scientists should actively oppose.
Other SBAG members, however, said the small-bodies science community needs to go along for the ride if any science is to come out of the Asteroid Redirect Mission.
"I don't particularly like [the Asteroid Redirect Mission], but I think science needs to be involved with this," Daniel Britt, an astronomy professor at the University of Central Florida, said during the meeting.
Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, cautioned the group that embracing the mission could end up costing the small-bodies science community.
"NASA has a history of finding ways of taxing everybody who benefits from a mission," Sykes said.
Lindley Johnson, NASA program executive for the Near-Earth Object Program Office at the agency's headquarters here, acknowledged that the Asteroid Redirect Mission is not the kind of mission most SBAG members would design.
"If we were to start this from a clean sheet and do it in a logical manner, I think every one of us involved with this would do it differently than how it's being done right now," Johnson said.
But Johnson also cautioned members "to stick to the science, as opposed to taking what some would consider political shots."
Former teacher honored with ISS experiment memento
Mackenzie Ryan – Florida Today
As teachers returned to work Monday, the first day back at West Shore Jr./Sr. High included a special presentation to honor a former colleague and friend.
Jason Whitworth, a former gym teacher and cross country coach, was the inspiration behind a student science project that researched ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal disease. Whitworth was diagnosed with ALS in September 2011.
The science experiment flew to the International Space Station last school year.
On Monday, Whitworth received a special present acknowledging his role, a gift from Steven Kremer, chief for the range and mission management office at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The plaque includes pictures of the Orbital Sciences mission that carried "Project Whitworth."
"Jason is part of the West Shore family," said Amy McCormick, the science teacher who mentored students on the project. "We all want to be there for such an honor."
As part of the science project, students met ALS patients and their loved ones. And they were struck by the hope medical research provides.
For the future of Mars exploration, the past is prologue
Duane Hyland – The Space Review
Past missions, and in some case the spare parts of past missions, will help drive the next decade of Mars exploration, a panel of experts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of California at Berkeley told an audience last week at the AIAA SPACE 2014 Forum in San Diego.
The session provided a comprehensive look at current and past missions. "We are quite fortunate at this time to have eleven missions over the next decade: five operating, two on their way, and four on the board for future deployment," said Joe C. Parrish, NASA JPL deputy manager of the Mars Program Formulation Office.
The amount of scientific information that we have already gained from existing missions was reviewed in depth, with special attention shown to the Opportunity and Curiosity rover missions, which have just about settled the debate about water on Mars and the early potential for microbial life. Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist at the Mars Science Laboratory at NASA JPL, summed it up best: "Our evidence shows that Mars had water for thousands, if not millions, of years."
After the discussion of Mars' watery past, it was time to look at what future exploration might yield. Those upcoming missions include Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which will yield valuable clues to the dissipation of Mars' atmosphere; the 2016 Mars Insight mission, which will place a stationary lander on the Martian surface to drill beneath the Martian surface to measure seismic activity and core heat; and the 2020 Mars Rover, which will have the capability to cache samples for later return to Earth, allowing for a much more nuanced and in-depth study of them for signs of life. Each of these programs seeks to answer the same basic questions: How did Mars form? What happened to its atmosphere? And was there, at one time, microbial life on the planet?
Each of these missions builds on the heritage of the projects before it, perhaps most literally illustrated with the Mars 2020 mission. Its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) phase lead, Allen Chen, said that it will use both the "skycrane" delivery system and left-over spare parts from the Curiosity Rover mission to mitigate the risk of mission failure. As he succinctly put it, "If it's not broke, don't fix it!" Each panelist noted that the ultimate goal of each of the missions is to gather the crucial data needed for successful human exploration of Mars by, or before, 2040.
Other revelations from the session included an amusing discussion of the Curiosity Rover's tires, which have suffered some damage after two years of rolling across the Martian surface. "Who knew if you had a sharp rock on bedrock that the weight of the rover coming down on it would damage the tire?" Vasavada said. "Now we know. Sand is much better: if you hit a sharp rock on sand, the rover simply pushes the rock down. Hit that same rock on bedrock and it's problematic."
"Mars 2020 has learned Curiosity's lesson and that its tires will be able to withstand those interactions," Chen emphasized. He also noted that the Mars 2020 rover will employ a much better aerodynamic decelerator, or parachute system, that will help avoid Curiosity's "slight overshoot" of its landing zone.
Robert Lillis, member of the MAVEN Science Team at the University of California Berkeley, emphasized that MAVEN's "gull-wing" design will allow it to cruise much more efficiently through the lowest reaches of Mars' upper-atmosphere—about 120 kilometers above the surface—allowing for a complete examination of the entire upper atmosphere, which was not possible before.
Tom Hoffman, the project manager of the Insight mission, emphasized the role that past rover missions have had on the careful selection of Insight's landing area, "optimizing our ability to take seismic and heat readings in the best ways possible."
The threat and opportunity of Comet Siding Spring
For those spacecraft already at Mars, a comet's close approach with Mars in October is unlikely to endanger them, but the encounter will nevertheless create "30 minutes of concern" for scientists and engineers, reported speakers during the separate "Robotic Mars Explorers Encounter Comet Siding Spring" panel at the AIAA SPACE 2014 forum in San Diego.
On October 19 at 6:32 pm GMT, Comet Siding Spring (2013A1) will approach within about 150,000 kilometers of Mars: about one-third the distance between Earth and the Moon. The comet's dust will pass over the Martian North Pole, possibly endangering orbiting spacecraft in the region during a 30-minute window. Three spacecraft are currently in Martian orbit: NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, and the European Space Agency's Mars Express. They will be joined in September by NASA's MAVEN and India's Mars Orbiter Mission, which are en route to the planet.
However, concerns about the dust may turn out to be "much ado about nothing," Paul Chodas, a senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during the panel discussion. "Multiple studies at JPL, the University of Maryland, and other sites have confirmed that the comet's dust trail is unlikely to threaten the orbiting systems," Chodas said, adding that "the comet did not begin to ejaculate dust at the critical distance of between 15 and 20 astronomical units from the sun, which would have had to have happened for the dust cloud to fully impact the orbiters' operations." He said "the comet's bulk dust is being ejected at speeds below 1 meter per second," well below the speeds where it would pose a threat to systems.
Based on the data, researchers have concluded that the cloud will pass up and over Mars, barely skirting a 1-kilometer edge of the orbiters' operating zone for 30 minutes, prompting Joseph Guinn, manager of the mission design and navigation section JPL, to joke that the situation is not one of "seven minutes of terror, but more like 30 minutes of concern." Chodas added, however, that if "the models are wrong, it will result in particles ranging in size between 1 millimeter and 1 centimeter, about the size range of a sunflower seed to a grain of rice," impacting the orbiters like "cannonballs, causing extensive, most likely catastrophic, damage."
Charles D. Edwards Jr., chief technologist of the Mars Exploration Program and telecommunications engineer at JPL, said that "despite the low risk of impact posed by the dust, NASA ESA and ISRO did develop plans to shield the orbiters during the 30-minute window," with each agency having plans to adjust the attitudes of their assets, including "hiding" them behind Mars during the window to shield them from any impacts. The mitigation plans are especially critical for MAVEN and the Mars Orbiter Mission, which will arrive on station shortly before the comet's flyby.
The minimized dust risk means researchers can focus on gleaning valuable scientific data from the fly-by, including Siding Spring's spin speed, nucleus shape and corona composition, Edwards said. Richard Zurek, chief scientist of the Mars Exploration Program at JPL, said this is "a unique chance to get a first-ever resolution of the nucleus of a long-period comet, especially as the nucleus is thought to be a kilometer wide."
Additional areas of study, according to Zurek, "will be the comet's effect on the upper Martian atmosphere, at about 150 kilometers, especially allowing scientists to better understand how atoms potentially escape the Martian atmosphere, as well the potential for the comet's ejaculate to form cirrus clouds above Mars." Cameras on the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers will also provide excellent images of the comet.
Zurek concluded the session by warning that the data from the flyby can only come about if the dust models are right, warning that there are "no guarantees here, all the dice are being thrown, but it only takes one particle. The chance is very low, but it's not zero that we get damage."
Duane Hyland is Communications Specialist, STEM/Workforce Portfolio Manager, and Grassroots Program Manager with AIAA.
Supermoons and beyond
Late summer has rewarded sky-watchers with visual wonders. But there's even more out there to ponder.
By The Christian Science Monitor's Editorial Board
August has found a supermoon battling the Perseid meteor shower for the attention of sky gazers. The sight of an unusually large and bright full moon beaming back at Earth, and the light show provided by meteors blazing across inky skies, has added heavenly fireworks to late summer.
But a bigger celestial story is being written by scientists doing work unseen by backyard observers. After a 10-year pursuit, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, the first to ever visit a comet, has caught up with its prey. It will soon begin orbiting the comet and by November is expected to send a probe to its surface.
Comets, scientists say, may carry material from the time the solar system itself was formed. A close-up analysis of this comet may yield important answers to scientific questions as well as raise new questions scientists haven't even known to ask.
But looming above even that sky-high observation is a still bigger question: Does life exist beyond this planet?
The planned James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018 as a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, will be the most powerful yet. It will build on existing work that has already located planets orbiting other stars. Increasingly it appears that Earth has a multitude of brother and sister planets spinning around their own suns.
Sophisticated analyses of data returned by space telescopes may not be able to single out a planet that definitely has life. But it could show that the conditions conducive to life are so prevalent, and promising planets so numerous, that the statistical likelihood of life somewhere "out there" becomes overwhelming.
"[I]t is within our reach to be the first generation in human history to ... learn if there is life of any kind beyond Earth," wrote Dr. Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a widely cited scientific paper released in early August.
In September the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Library of Congress will gather historians, philosophers, and theologians at a symposium to ask how humanity should prepare for the discovery of life beyond planet Earth.
Some argue that finding even primitive microbial life elsewhere would severely shake up humanity's way of thinking about itself. It might create a watershed akin to Galileo proposing that Earth was not at the center of the universe. Some even see it as a death blow to religion.
But other scholars have pointed out how the concept that life can only exist on Earth limits an infinite God. "The more things we discover, the more wonders of God there will be," argues Salman Hameed, an associate professor of integrated science and humanities at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. And many point to the biblical reference to a God of "heaven and earth," who "telleth the number of the stars" and "calleth them all by their names," to indicate that His creation includes much more than this planet. In fact, concludes one astronomer, anything other "than a universe beaming with life is an insult to glory of the God."
Might we find that as our understanding of the universe grows so does our concept of God?
That's a cosmic thought to ponder – perhaps on a late summer night while bathing in the light of a supermoon or watching meteors flash across the sky.
Cubesats Driving Big Developments in Small Propulsion Systems
Debra Werner – Space News
As cubesats prove their ability to capture imagery and gather scientific data, developers are eager to send the miniature spacecraft on increasingly complex missions, many of which require propulsion.
"With any satellite there's a lot of mission capability you can get when you're able to maneuver," said Andrew Petro, NASA's Small Spacecraft Technology program executive. "We are trying to do more things with these satellites and that requires mobility."
NASA is exploring a wide range of propulsion technologies to enable cubesats to change altitude, conduct proximity operations, disperse and form arrays, including cold gas, monopropellant, liquefied gas, solid rocket, Hall effect and electrospray thrusters. "We want to cast a wide net," Petro said. "We are not looking for one solution, but for a whole set of solutions."
NASA's Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration, slated for launch in 2015 as part of NASA's Cubesat Launch Initiative, is to use cold gas thrusters to enable two 1.5-unit cubesats to maneuver and operate to within 200 meters of each other. NASA's Small Spacecraft Technology Program has earmarked about $3.5 million over two years for the project led by the Aerospace Corp. of El Segundo, California.
The Small Spacecraft Technology Program is providing approximately $13.5 million over three years for a related effort, Cubesat Proximity Operations Demonstration. For that mission, Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems of Irvine, California, is developing two three-unit cubesats to rendezvous, conduct proximity operations and dock with one another with the help of cold gas propulsion.
Aerojet Rocketdyne is developing liquid propulsion systems for cubesats, including MPS-100 Cubesat High-impulse Adaptable Modular Propulsion System (CHAMPS), a miniature hydrazine thruster designed to provide a change in velocity of more than 200 meters per second, and MPS-120 CHAMPS, a version that uses additive manufacturing to produce the piston propellant tank and miniature isolation system.
In August 2013, NASA's Small Spacecraft Technology Program selected MPS-120 as one of 10 payloads for space agency-supported development. Through the project, Aerojet plans to conduct the first flight of that hydrazine-fueled engine, which it produced with additive manufacturing. "All the plumbing and a lot of the features are printed right into the tank," said Christian Carpenter, MPS-120 principal investigator for Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Washington. "This will not only be the first test of a liquid system at this size scale but also the first test of a 3-D printed liquid system and pressurized tank."
The MPS-120 project is designed to demonstrate that hydrazine can be safely handled and stored on cubesats. "Just like large satellites, cubesats eventually will fly pressurized systems with liquid propellants," Carpenter said.
Busek Co. Inc. plans to demonstrate the use of an iodine-fueled Hall effect thruster on Iodine Satellite, a 12-unit cubesat scheduled for launch in 2017 by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "The advantages of iodine is that it has three times the propulsive energy per liter as xenon," Dan Williams, Busek business development director, said by email. In addition, Busek is developing propulsion systems based on electrospray, micro-RF ion, ammonia-fueled micro-resistojet, green monopropellant and micro-pulsed plasma thrusters.
In the past, cubesats did not include onboard propulsion because it would disqualify them from piggybacking on government flights. Now, some cubesat developers are obtaining waivers from those rules, allowing them to begin to experiment with miniature propulsion systems. "We are very interested in finding less-hazardous propulsion systems because if you are trying to fly as a secondary, you may be very limited in what the primary mission will allow you to carry," Petro said. "Keeping the propulsion safe and simple is especially valuable when you've got a low-cost project to begin with and you want to keep it that way."
NASA Ready To Put Robotic Refueling to the Test
Dan Leone – Space News
The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center team that engineered five successful in-space servicing missions to the flagship Hubble Space Telescope is preparing for a ground-based satellite refueling demonstration next April that will include nearly every constraint the team would face if it tried to robotically service an operational satellite.
The demo, part of a project known as Restore, will be a "full-up, bring-it-all-together" test staged in a converted clean room at Goddard's Building 29, according to Benjamin Reed, deputy project manager for the 40-person Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office at the Greenbelt, Maryland-based NASA field center. The team, led by veteran robotics wizard Frank Cepollina, was formed after the final Hubble servicing mission in 2009 in order to preserve the expertise and capabilities Goddard developed during nearly two decades of supporting astronaut repair calls to the orbiting telescope.
In the Restore demo scheduled for April, the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office will take over the same room that once housed the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite, the largest spacecraft ever assembled at Goddard. Reed and his team will stack a dummy satellite above a space-capable robotic satellite servicing craft and, using time-delayed remote control to simulate communications lag from orbit, attempt an end-to-end refueling mission.
The servicing craft will have to cut through the dummy satellite's thermal blanket, remove a fuel cap that was designed never to be removed, and pipe fake satellite fuel through lines pressurized to roughly 17 kilograms per square centimeter — about the same pressure the servicing robot would encounter refueling an operational satellite.
Unlike February's Remote Robotic Oxidizer Transfer experiment, in which Goddard operators remotely commanded a robot at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to pump corrosive, explosive oxidizer into a pressurized fuel tank, the Restore demo on the slate for April will not involve toxic fluids. However, it will use a space-capable robot designed to function in microgravity, and not the heavy, industrial robotic arm used in the remote control experiment this year.
The Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office is trying to figure out how to prolong the life of operational satellites that have working instruments but empty fuel tanks. It is an old idea that has yet to catch on either in the public or private sector, but it has the full support of Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Goddard's guardian angel.
Mikulski steered $100 million to the office for 2014, which was reduced to $74 million in NASA's operating plan, agency spokeswoman Adrienne Alessandro said in a July 17 email. This year, the senior senator from Maryland prescribed $130 million for the office as part of a 2015 spending bill that stalled after clearing the Senate Appropriations Committee in June.
However, months before the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, which also is chaired by Mikulski, proposed a raise for the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office, there were signs the Obama administration and the senator were not seeing eye-to-eye on satellite servicing.
When the White House released its 2015 budget request in April, it proposed moving funds for the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office out of the international space station program's nearly $1.5 billion systems operations and maintenance budget and into a roughly $300 million ISS research budget.
The White House also wants to rename the office "In Space Robotic Servicing" and give its activities a more general-purpose slant that could "enable multiple NASA missions, including servicing potential science satellites, non-NASA users, and providing robotic tools for an Asteroid Redirect Mission, as well other applications for use and/or testing on ISS."
This, according to the report accompanying the stalled 2015 spending bill, "highly frustrated" Senate appropriators, who fumed that NASA's "most senior leadership" had failed to embrace satellite servicing as a "transformational approach to managing the Nation's governmental space assets." The report said the agency should disregard the White House's plan and continue work on "a Restore Pathfinder mission to be achieved no later than 2017 and which may be used for either a low-earth orbit or geostationary orbit servicing of government assets only."
The bill report, which is in limbo along with the bill itself, also said NASA's 2016 budget should include a "full program of record on satellite servicing that includes technology development, the Restore Pathfinder, and recommendations for a Restore follow-on mission."
Of the 40 people now working in the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office, about 30 have been there since 1994, when the office was still known as the Hubble Space Telescope Flight Systems and Servicing Project. About half a dozen of the team's most veteran technicians, including Cepollina, have been with the office since 1984, when it was known as the Satellite Servicing Project, Alessandro told SpaceNews.
The team's focus in the early 1980s was much the same as it is now: to develop tools and plans for servicing operational spacecraft. Members cut their teeth on the Solar Maximum Mission, a heliophysics satellite that launched in 1980, malfunctioned in 1981, and had to be repaired in 1984 by the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Astronauts captured the satellite and maneuvered it into the shuttle's payload bay for repairs. Unlike the spacecraft the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office wants to work with these days, Solar Maximum was designed to be serviced.
Meanwhile, in Space ...
As recently as 2012, the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office was considering a repair mission to the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS)-9, which launched in 2002. The satellite is part of the geostationary communications-relay constellation NASA uses to communicate with the international space station and other spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
TDRS-9 was launched in 2002 and continues to operate despite low pressure in its fuel system that has slowed its maneuvering capability. Alessandro said a mission to refuel TDRS-9 was still possible but not currently planned. Another real-life target that caught the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office's eye was GOES-12, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration took it out of the running when it decommissioned the 12-year-old geostationary weather satellite last year.
Although not as ambitious as topping off one of the primary U.S. weather satellites or repairing a NASA communications spacecraft, the Goddard robotics office has already completed a few on-orbit demos and is planning more.
At the international space station since 2013, specialized Goddard-built satellite servicing tools fitted to the station's Canadian-built robotic arm have helped ground operators at the Johnson Space Center in Houston — directed by the team at Goddard — transfer an ethanol-based satellite fuel stand-in from one reservoir to another as part of the Robotic Refueling Mission.
In these tests, ground controllers poke and prod Goddard-made dummy satellites known as test boards, which were brought to station by the space shuttle and Japan's H-2 Transfer Vehicle. The test boards are mounted to a platform on one of the station's Earth-facing trusses. There are three of these boards on orbit now, and a fourth launched to the orbital outpost July 29 aboard Europe's Final Automated Transfer Vehicle.
Also along for the ride on the European cargo freighter is a brand new satellite servicing attachment known as the Visual Inspection Poseable Invertebrate Robot (VIPIR): a flexible 90-centimeter-long boroscope equipped with a camera and lights that will help ground operators see what they are doing when they approach a serviceable satellite for the first time.
It is not clear when that tool will first be tested on-orbit, Reed said. Resources are at a premium on the station, including the time it will take to have a controller at the Johnson Space Center install the new VIPIR-specific servicing taskboard on the station's exterior using the Canadian arm.
Setup could happen either later this summer or early this fall. After that, the station's "tremendously complex schedule program," makes things harder to predict, Reed said.
"We will wait for our turn in line to get those activities scheduled," he said.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment