Mark you calendars and do a double take---our first Thursday of every month NASA Retirees Luncheon for the month of July will be delayed to Thursday, July 12th, since next week is July 4th week.
I will notify Hibachi Grill that we will not be there next Thursday but instead move our monthly Retirees Luncheon to Thursday, July 12th instead.
Hope you can join us for a second week of good food and fellowship after you feast a celebrating on 4th of July thru next weekend.
Monday, June 25, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. Info Briefing on UC Human/Vehicle Integration and Performance Laboratory
2. The JSC Library's Move to Building 30A Starts Today: How to Get Services
3. JSC Child Care Center Has a Few Openings
4. Exercise and Eating Plans and Intermediate-Level Finance
5. JSC Weight Watchers at Work With Monthly Pass
6. Project Management Institute Clear Lake/Galveston Chapter Presentation
7. White Sands Test Facility: See the Space Station
8. Pre-Travel to Russia Seminar
9. NASA Retirees Luncheon for July moved to Thursday, July 12th ===details above
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”
-- Willy Wonka
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1. Info Briefing on UC Human/Vehicle Integration and Performance Laboratory
The Human Systems Integration (HSI) Employee Resource Group will hold its monthly meeting tomorrow, June 26, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Building 1, Room 220. Astronaut Stephen Robinson will present information on a new, university-based research center in the field of HSI. The "Human/Vehicle Integration and Performance Laboratory" at the University of California, Davis, will target machine-enhanced human performance in hazardous environments (atmospheric aviation, human spaceflight and surgical robotics). It is anticipated that the research center will integrate the disciplines of engineering, psychology and neuroscience in a uniquely multi-disciplinary approach to HSI research. Please bring your lunch and join us! If you can't join us in person, contact Deb Neubek for telecom and WebEx information.
Deb Neubek 281-222-3687 http://collaboration.jsc.nasa.gov/iierg/HSI/SitePages/Home.aspx
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2. The JSC Library's Move to Building 30A Starts Today: How to Get Services
This week from June 25 to 29, the Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Center main library continues its move from Building 45 to Building 30A, Room 1077. There will be limited access to main library staff. Library users who need immediate assistance locating documents or research can email: https://askalibrarian.nasa.gov
Library staff at the Space Station Library, Bioastronautics Library and Repositories will be available to answer your questions. The main library will re-open on July 2 with the same hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Contact Information for the libraries and repositories are available at the following link: http://library.jsc.nasa.gov/aboutus/default.aspx
The STI Center is a service provided by the Information Resources Directorate: http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov
Scientific and Technical Information Center x34245 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov
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3. JSC Child Care Center Has a Few Openings
Space Family Education, Inc. (SFEI) has openings available to dependents of JSC civil servants and contractors.
Immediate openings:
- Two for children currently 3 years
- Two for children currently 4 years
Openings available Aug. 27 for a child that will be:
- One for a child 15 to 23 months
- Two for a child 29 to 35 months
- Two for a child 3 years
- Two for a child 4 years
Program details:
1. Open 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. (Closed federal holidays.)
2. Competitive pricing with other comparable child cares, but SFEI includes more amenities.
3. Additional security. Badges required to get on site, and an additional security code to get in the school's front door.
4. Accelerated curriculum in all classes with additional enrichment and extracurricular programs.
5. Convenience. Nearby and easy access for parents working at on site at JSC.
6. Breakfast, morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack are all included.
7. Video monitoring available from computers, Androids and iPhones.
Brooke Stephens 281-792-6031
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4. Exercise and Eating Plans and Intermediate-Level Finance
Join us for two different types of wellness classes this week -- physical and financial.
The Exercise and Eating Plan for Health-Related Fitness
Learn to determine the intensity of effort, develop your exercise prescription, principles of training, calculating oxygen utilization and caloric expenditure, weight management, basic nutrition and high-performance eating.
Financial Classes - day and evening
Introductory Level:
Retire with Confidence, Level I - goals, income needs and sources, calculate a simplistic savings gap
Introduction to Estate Planning - basic legal terms, estate-planning concepts and keys to a good estate plan
Intermediate Level:
Insurance; What If ... - do you need insurance, what kind, how much, questions to ask your insurance company
Maximize Your Investments - your risk tolerance, constructing a portfolio and monitoring investments
Details are at the link below.
Jessica Vos x41383 http://www.explorationwellness.com/rd/AE106.aspx?June_Signup.pdf
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5. JSC Weight Watchers at Work With Monthly Pass
JSC has an ongoing Weight Watchers (WW) at Work program.
Meetings are held on Mondays in Building 45, Room 551, with weigh-in from 11:30 a.m. to noon. The meeting is from noon to 12:30 p.m.
If you are already a WW member and have a Monthly Pass, you can use it and attend the JSC meetings.
New members can join any time by purchasing the Monthly Pass at the WW at Work portal at the link below. Use the following data to log in and create an account to see what WW has to offer.
Company ID: 24156
Company pass code: WW24156
If you are ready to join, purchase the Monthly Pass now and get started at today's meeting! If you have existing eTools, you can tie your Monthly Pass to your current online account.
Email for more detailed instructions.
Julie Kliesing x31540 https://wellness.weightwatchers.com
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6. Project Management Institute Clear Lake/Galveston Chapter Presentation
The Project Management Institute Clear Lake/Galveston Chapter presents "The Doolittle Tokyo Raid - A Project Management Success Story," on June 28 from 6 to 8 p.m. The presenter, Walter Viali, will analyze the events of the Doolittle Tokyo Raid using the knowledge areas of the PMBOK® Guide. The meeting will be held at Mario's Flying Pizza Restaurant (618 W. NASA Road 1). Please make your reservation by noon tomorrow, June 26.
Register online at: http://www.pmiclg.org (preferred method)
The cost of the meeting is $20. Dinner is included.
Email: VP-Programs@PMICLG.ORG
Registration/social - 6 p.m.; Dinner - 6:30 to 7 p.m.; Program - 7 to 8 p.m.
One professional development unit hour credit is achieved by attending this presentation.
Cheyenne McKeegan x30106
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7. White Sands Test Facility: See the Space Station
Viewers in the White Sands Test Facility area will be able to see the International Space Station this week.
Monday, June 25, 9:20 p.m. (Duration: 4 minutes)
Path: 18 degrees above NNW to 19 degrees above E
Maximum elevation: 35 degrees
Tuesday, June 26, 10:02 p.m. (Duration: 2 minutes)
Path: 17 degrees above WNW to 31 degrees above SW
Maximum elevation: 31 degrees
Wednesday, June 27, 9:10 p.m. (Duration: 3 minutes)
Path: 38 degrees above NW to 17 degrees above SE
Maximum elevation: 80 degrees
The International Space Station Trajectory Operations Group provides updates via JSC Today for visible station passes at least two minutes in duration and 25 degrees in elevation. Other opportunities, including those with shorter durations and lower elevations or from other ground locations, are available at the website below.
Joe Pascucci x31695 http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/view.cgi?country=U...
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8. Pre-Travel to Russia Seminar
Will you be traveling to Russia on a NASA-sponsored trip soon? Do you know what information you will need to provide in order to obtain a Russian visa? What other types of clearances are required and how to get them? Need to familiarize yourself with the procedures for Russian passport and immigration control, obtaining transportation from the airport to your accommodations, as well as to and from your meetings? Would some tips on Russian etiquette and social or business customs be useful?
For answers to these and other questions, join us at the JSC Language Education Center for the Pre-Travel to Russia Seminar on Friday, July 20. This three-hour class runs from 1 to 4 p.m. in Building 20, Room 133. Please register through SATERN. The deadline for registration is July 17.
Natalia Rostova 281-851-3745
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JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
Human Spaceflight News
Monday, June 25, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Orion High-altitude Abort Test Faces Budget-driven Delay
Dan Leone - Space News
A high-altitude test of the Orion deep-space capsule’s launch abort system could be delayed two years to accommodate the tighter program budgets anticipated by NASA and Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin. NASA has yet to set a firm date for the high-altitude test, which is intended to demonstrate that Orion’s launch abort system — which performed well in a 2010 pad abort simulation at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico — can propel the capsule to safety if its Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket fails midflight.
Boeing Cleared To Begin Design Phase for SLS Core
Brian Berger - Space News
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., said June 21 that the Space Launch System’s (SLS) cryogenic core stage recently passed its first major technical review, clearing prime contractor Boeing Space Exploration to begin the heavy-lift rocket’s design phase. The combined Systems Requirements Review and System Definition Review held the week of June 18 at Marshall validated that Boeing and NASA developed sound system requirements for the shuttle-derived launcher’s cryogenic stage and supporting hardware.
ISS Utilization Advancing After Stumbles
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
Astronaut Don Pettit is a real Mr. Fixit, and that is just fine with the scientists who trust him to run their experiments on the International Space Station. In a recent working session with Paul Ferkul, a combustion engineer at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Pettit carefully bent a combustion sample's frame a little with a pair of pliers so it would touch the igniter, and then he held it up to a video camera for Ferkul—and anyone else watching the webcast of the experiment session. “That looks fine,” said Ferkul in Ohio. “I hope this works,” said Pettit from the station. “This is what our flight suits are made of.”
ISS to Build Up Meteorite Defenses
RIA Novosti
Russian cosmonauts will conduct a space walk in August during which they will install additional anti-meteorite panels on the International Space Station (ISS), cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko said on Friday. Malenchenko, his U.S. and Japanese colleagues, Sunita Williams and Hoshide Akihiko, are scheduled to depart for a space mission on July 15.
Lichen can survive in hostile space conditions
Indo-Asian News Service (IANS)
You can freeze it, thaw it, vacuum dry it and expose it to radiation, but lichen can still survive. In 2008, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) sent a suitcase-sized Expose-E experiment package to the International Space Station (ISS) filled with organic compounds and living organisms to test their reaction to outer space. The samples returned to Earth in 2009. Lichen have proven to be tough cookies - back on Earth, some species continue to grow normally. ESA's Rene Demets explains: "These organisms go into a dormant state waiting for better conditions to arrive."
NASA encouraging spaceflight to go commercial
Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times
NASA led the way for Americans in space, but now the U.S. space agency is actively encouraging companies to take over primary responsibility for getting in and out of Earth's orbit. Last month, a capsule built and operated by SpaceX completed a nine-day cargo-hauling mission to the International Space Station, becoming the first private-sector spacecraft to make such a journey. But it won't be the last. Ed Mango, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, is charged with helping companies develop vehicles that could ferry astronauts — and eventually, perhaps, civilians — on routine trips to space. Mango visited The Times to discuss his efforts and how they could lead to a "spaceline" industry that resembles today's airlines.
60 Minutes clarifies Neil Armstrong’s position on SpaceX
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
Earlier this month I noted a bit of controversy among SpaceX, Neil Armstrong and 60 Minutes. Specifically, during a 60 Minutes segment, host Scott Pelley asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk, “There are American heroes who don’t like this idea. Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan have both testified against commercial spaceflight and the way that you’re developing it, and I wonder what you think of that?” On Thursday evening I received a letter from Pelley, which included the following:
“We should have made it explicit in our story that, while Armstrong was “not confident” that the newcomers could achieve safety and cost goals in the near term, he did want to “encourage” them. We also should have spelled out more clearly that his concerns were directed toward the “newcomers” in general and not SpaceX in particular.”
'Aquanauts' Complete Mock Asteroid Mission on Ocean Floor
Denise Chow - Space.com
Four "aquanauts" returned to dry land Friday, after spending 12 days living on the ocean floor off the Florida coast as part of a NASA-led mock mission to an asteroid. The undersea explorers wrapped up the 16th expedition of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations Program, or NEEMO 16 this morning, emerging from the water at 9:11 a.m. EDT, NASA officials confirmed.
NASA Asteroid Analog Mission Tackles Surface Mobility
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
NASA’s undersea analog missions — elaborate dress rehearsals that unite astronauts, scientists and engineers on the ocean floor to test hardware and mission operations strategies — are playing a crucial role in preparations for the next wave of human deep-space exploration, according to Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission and the current chair of the NASA Advisory Council. Squyres is scheduled to surface June 22 from his second visit to the Aquarius Reef Base off Key Largo, Fla., an undersea habitat chosen by NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (Neemo) to simulate a 12-day mission to a small asteroid.
Torii Hunter: Angels right fielder, space cadet
Mike DiGiovanna - Los Angeles Times
A 20-minute conversation Friday with astronaut Joe Acaba, who is currently en route to the International Space Station with two Russian astronauts, had Torii Hunter thinking back to those times as a child when his mother, Shirley, thought he was talking gibberish. “When my mom didn’t understand me, she would always tell me, ‘Stop talking like the man on the moon,’ ” the Angels right fielder said. “So mom, I want to tell you that I actually talked to a man in space today, and if you think I need to see a psychiatrist, it’s not true. This was real.” Hunter’s question-and-answer session with Acaba, who was born in Inglewood, raised in Anaheim and graduated from Esperanza High School in 1985, was taped, and excerpts will be played on telecasts of the Dodgers-Angels games Friday night and Saturday.
Sunita Williams headed to space in July
Daily News & Analysis (Mumbai)
Indian-American Sunita Williams, a record-setting astronaut who lived and worked aboard the International Space Station for six months in 2006, is headed to the space once again in July. Williams is scheduled to take off on July 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NASA said. 46-year-old Williams will be a flight engineer on the station's Expedition 32 crew and will become commander of Expedition 33 on reaching the space station.
Go for launch
Canadian Chris Hadfield passes final exam as Soyuz co-pilot
Tom Spears - Ottawa Citizen
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his two future crewmates passed their final exam in flying the Soyuz this week in Star City outside Moscow. Preparing for a December launch, Hadfield, American Tom Marshburn and Russian commander Roman Romanenko drew envelopes with simulated malfunctions, and had to work through them. Hadfield has been tweeting up a storm during the extensive training. He posted this photo after the exam, with the caption: “Final Soyuz exam — facing the commission. On the table are envelopes to choose our malfunctions.” Hadfield, a former CF-18 pilot, could never pilot a NASA shuttle. That job was for Americans only. But on the Soyuz he will be the flight engineer and co-pilot.
Chinese Astronauts Make Their First Manual Docking With Orbiting Module
Jane Perlez – New York Times
A Chinese spacecraft with three astronauts on board docked manually with an orbiting module on Sunday, an important step toward China’s goal of building a space station by 2020. The maneuver of the Shenzhou 9 capsule aligning with the Taingong 1 module was shown live on national television on Sunday to huge audiences. A spokeswoman for China’s manned space program said that hand levers were used to control the capsule as it positioned to dock with the orbiting module.
Chinese spacecraft docks with orbiting module
Associated Press
A Chinese spacecraft carrying three astronauts docked manually with an orbiting module on Sunday, a first for the country as it strives to match American and Russian exploits in space. The Shenzhou 9 capsule's maneuver with the Tiangong 1 module was shown live on national television. It follows a docking last week that was carried out by remote control from a ground base in China. The Chinese astronauts have been living and working in the module for the past week as part of preparations for manning a permanent space station. They returned to the Shenzhou 9 capsule early Sunday and disconnected in preparation for the manual reconnection.
China astronauts mark first manual space docking
Gabriel Wildau - Reuters
China completed its first-ever manual docking between a manned spacecraft and an orbiting lab module on Sunday, putting it a step closer in an ambitious campaign to build a space station. The Shenzhou 9 and its three-person crew, including the country's first woman in Space Liu Yang, separated about 400 meters from the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1 module for about two minutes before re-connecting under the manual control of the astronauts, with state television covering the event live.
China manned docking a key step for space station
Gabriel Wildau & Samuel Shen - Reuters
China re-affirmed its goal of building a full-fledged space station by 2020 on Sunday, following a successful manual docking between a manned spacecraft and an experimental orbiting lab module. "Mastery of rendezvous and docking technology is a decisive step towards realizing the goals of the second stage in the development of China's manned space flight program. It also lays a firm foundation for the further construction of a space station," said Wu Ping, the spokesman for China's manned space program at a press conference following the docking exercise.
Will China Blast Past America In Space?
Ira Flatow - NPR's Science Friday
China's Shenzhou 9 spacecraft docked successfully with the orbiting Tiangong 1 test module this week, ticking off another accomplishment for the country's manned spaceflight program. Jonathan McDowell and Joan Johnson-Freese discuss the future of China's space program, and whether a new space race is heating up. China launched its Shenzhou spacecraft into orbit, carrying three taikonauts, one of whom was a woman, China's first female astronaut. A few days later, the spaceship crept up on the Tiangong space lab in orbit and docked with it, making China one of only three countries to have pulled off such a feat after the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Here in the U.S., almost every person has announced some grand vision for space, George W. Bush's moon mission, for example, only to have the plan scrapped by the next president. China, on the other hand, sets a 30-year plan for space and sticks with it. So is China poised to surpass everyone in space, including the Indians, with a clear, long-term vision? (NO FURTHER TEXT)
Residents get the chance to chat with an astronaut on ham radio
Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press
If you could talk to someone in outer space, what would you say? At precisely 2:22 p.m. Tuesday as the International Space Station hurtles over Hampton Roads, three lucky residents will have a brief window to belly up to a ham radio at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton and ask an astronaut one question each. Residents were chosen by center staff through a Facebook contest, based on what they wanted to ask NASA flight engineer Joe Acaba. A native of California and former science teacher, Acaba has been aboard the space station since mid-May.
Secrets of a super-social spaceman
Alan Boyle - MsNBC.com's Cosmic Log
You might think it's cool enough that NASA astronaut Ron Garan has spent months aboard the International Space Station, but he’s become even better-known as a social-media maven. This month he passed the 2 million mark for Google+ circles, putting him at No. 21 on the Google+ Top 100. His Fragile Oasis postings are a highlight on the Web, Facebook and Twitter. His "Ask Me Anything" exchange with Reddit users went so well he's thinking of doing it again. So what's the secret to his success? It's really not a secret at all: He’s got a good story to share, about the beauty and fragility of planet Earth. During a recent interview, Garan talked about how he became a super-social spaceman, and what he's learned from the adventure…
Tourists finding their way back
Dave Berman - Florida Today
A decline in visitors to the Space Coast last fall appears to have reversed itself, as the draw of the beaches, cruises from Port Canaveral and ecotourism helped strengthen the tourism industry. Data compiled by Smith Travel Research show that room-occupancy rates in Brevard County — a key measurement in tourism — rose 5.4 percent in the first four months of 2012 compared with the same period in 2011. That put Brevard County’s gains third in the state, ahead of major tourism destinations such as Tampa/St. Petersburg (up 4.8 percent), Fort Lauderdale (up 2.6 percent) and Orlando (up 2.3 percent). The gains were even better at hotels in the more tourism-focused areas of Cocoa Beach and Titusville, where occupancy rates are up 9.6 percent during that time frame, which is the latest available. Local hotel officials say preliminary data indicate that year-over-year gains continued in May and June.
Rallying for jobs threatened by DC gridlock
Congressional budget time bomb would hit defense, cost Brevard
Matt Reed - Florida Today (Commentary)
It’s scary how much Brevard County’s economy relies on federal spending. When NASA retired the space shuttle program, thousands rallied to “save space” at the Cocoa Expo in 2010. Still, we lost 7,000 jobs. Now it’s time to “save defense.” With potentially $1 trillion in federal defense cuts looming over the next 10 years, local political leaders and contractors will stage a rally Monday at the AAR Airlift company’s hangar at Melbourne International Airport.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Orion High-altitude Abort Test Faces Budget-driven Delay
Dan Leone - Space News
A high-altitude test of the Orion deep-space capsule’s launch abort system could be delayed two years to accommodate the tighter program budgets anticipated by NASA and Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin.
NASA has yet to set a firm date for the high-altitude test, which is intended to demonstrate that Orion’s launch abort system — which performed well in a 2010 pad abort simulation at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico — can propel the capsule to safety if its Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket fails midflight.
Jose Ortiz, NASA’s lead systems engineer for the Orion launch abort system at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., told Space News in a June 21 email that the high-altitude abort test “may move to fiscal year 2018” as “part of a budget proposal that is still being worked.”
That message has reached Denver-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems, which had been planning for a 2015 abort test as recently as March. “Because of budget constraints, or the budgets we’ve been given to plan to, I think that high-altitude abort is now after 2017,” John Karas, Lockheed Martin vice president and general manager of human spaceflight, said in a June 19 interview here.
NASA officials have been warning since last year that work on Orion would be slowed to keep pace with the development of SLS and its launch infrastructure. The agency has proposed trimming Orion’s $1.2 billion budget back to $1 billion for 2013.With the high-altitude abort test facing at least a budget-driven delay, the Langley team has proposed conducting one or more less-expensive tests in its place. Ortiz said conducting a hot-fire test in 2015 or 2016 would “keep the [launch abort system] project moving forward and help alleviate risk.”
NASA’s plan for the high-altitude abort test, known officially as Ascent Abort 2, calls for launching an Orion mockup and its top-mounted abort system from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a trajectory simulating an in-flight abort scenario. The flight test would be powered by a special abort-test booster assembled by Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp. from surplus U.S. Air Force solid-rocket motors.
The high-altitude abort is one of two Orion flight tests NASA had been planning to conduct prior to using SLS to send an empty Orion around the Moon in 2017 and repeating the mission in 2021 with a crew onboard.
Karas said Exploration Flight Test 1 — the first orbital launch of an unmanned Orion — remains on schedule for 2014. NASA added $375 million to Lockheed Martin’s Orion contract in December for the test flight, which will be launched by a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket.
NASA announced June 21 that U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, among others, would be on hand July 2 to mark the arrival of NASA’s first space-bound Orion capsule at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Prior to Orion’s launch from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the Orion production team at Kennedy will install the capsule’s thermal protection systems, avionics and other subsystems. NASA says the 2014 test launch will send Orion farther into space than any human spacecraft in more than 40 years. After orbiting the Earth twice, Orion will plunge back toward Earth at speeds close to those it would reach during a return from the Moon.
NASA will use the resulting flight data to evaluate the performance of key Orion systems, including the craft’s heat shield and descent systems.
Boeing Cleared To Begin Design Phase for SLS Core
Brian Berger - Space News
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., said June 21 that the Space Launch System’s (SLS) cryogenic core stage recently passed its first major technical review, clearing prime contractor Boeing Space Exploration to begin the heavy-lift rocket’s design phase.
The combined Systems Requirements Review and System Definition Review held the week of June 18 at Marshall validated that Boeing and NASA developed sound system requirements for the shuttle-derived launcher’s cryogenic stage and supporting hardware.
“Now that we have completed this review, we go from requirements to real blueprints,” Tony Lavoie, manager of the SLS Stages Element at Marshall, said in a statement. “We are on the right track to deliver the core stages for the SLS program.”
The SLS core stage, an 8.4-meter-diameter structure that will stand more than 60 meters tall, will store liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to feed its four Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS-25 engines. NASA intends to use RS-25s left over from the space shuttle program for the first few SLS flights. NASA has 16 RS-25 space shuttle main engines in inventory to use for SLS, the agency said.
SLS is slated to make its debut in 2017 on a test flight launching an unmanned Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle on a trajectory around the Moon. The rocket’s first crewed flight is scheduled for 2021.
ISS Utilization Advancing After Stumbles
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
Astronaut Don Pettit is a real Mr. Fixit, and that is just fine with the scientists who trust him to run their experiments on the International Space Station.
In a recent working session with Paul Ferkul, a combustion engineer at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Pettit carefully bent a combustion sample's frame a little with a pair of pliers so it would touch the igniter, and then he held it up to a video camera for Ferkul—and anyone else watching the webcast of the experiment session.
“That looks fine,” said Ferkul in Ohio.
“I hope this works,” said Pettit from the station. “This is what our flight suits are made of.”
In the experiment that followed, the Nomex test swatch glowed and carbonized as it was heated, but it did not burst into flame, even with a fan-driven draft in the station glovebox Pettit was using.
“That's really what we expected,” says Ferkul. “We thought it might be flammable in space, and this result is good from a safety point of view, in terms of the material used up there.”
That kind of close work with an astronaut in orbit is a dream come true for scientists who want to see what happens when the gravity factor is removed, and for many experiments there is no other way to remove it. Drop towers and parabolic aircraft flights just do not offer enough time in microgravity, and experiment lockers on the space shuttle did not provide the continuity for the long-term laboratory work many experiments require.
The space station can solve that problem, and scientists, engineers and managers are starting to realize just what that might mean in terms of discoveries, applications and return on investment. After 10 years and at least $100 billion, NASA and its international partners are beginning to move beyond the transition from station assembly to station utilization and starting to do real work in space.
It has not been easy, and it is not finished. At present, the U.S. capacity on the space station is about 72% full, according to Julie Robinson, NASA's space station chief scientist. There are 58 bays in the multiuser express racks scattered through the station. Those are about half full and expected to reach 70% utilization in the coming year and a half, she says, comparing managing station resources to running a hotel.
“Other parameters like real estate are not completely full, because that provides opportunity for people to build a new piece of equipment that wouldn't maybe have been envisioned five years ago, and get that on orbit,” Robinson says.
It took so long to build the space station that at least a generation of young scientists largely went elsewhere with their careers. The next generation is finding a complex set of ISS players wrangling for position and priority. The five space agencies that make up the international station partnership must agree among themselves on priorities and, at the same time, reconcile their positions with their own diverse constituencies. Sometimes one experiment has several different constituencies.
Ferkul is principal investigator on the Burning and Suppression of Solids (BASS) experiment on which he works with Pettit and his crewmates. From its start in September 2011 until it closes out in March 2013, the BASS team will try to ignite 41 samples in the Destiny Laboratory Module's Microgravity Science Glovebox. They are applying a wire heating element to flat, spherical and candle-like samples to determine if and how they burn in microgravity with different oxygen flow rates, and how quickly they are extinguished in a nitrogen flow.
In addition to basic safety questions, such as how well Nomex burns in space and how to put out fires there—subjects of great interest to human spacecraft manufacturers and their potential passengers—the tests will gather a wealth of data on combustion in the absence of gravity that can be applied to terrestrial systems that use flame.
“We can refine the model and then apply it to terrestrial applications like engine combustors, furnaces, fire safety—a wide variety of combustion,” says Ferkul. “Even a fraction of a percent improvement in efficiency makes a big difference.”
All those different potential applications and the “stakeholders” who want them make it difficult to set priorities for using scarce station resources. Since the orbiting lab was completed, those problems have sometimes overshadowed the promise that the station is just beginning to show.
In practice, NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, keep track separately of how they use their station assets, dividing the six-member crew in half. On NASA's end of the station—home to the European, Japanese and U.S. laboratory modules—the three non-Russian crewmembers spend a collective average of 35 hr. per week on research. The rest of their time is spent on exercise to counter the effects of microgravity on their bodies, as well as station maintenance, operations and housekeeping, sleep and personal time.
“We're at full utilization in terms of certain parameters,” Robinson says. “For example, we're getting the full utilization crew time that the system was designed for, and we're filling that completely and have things on the reserve list and have ready to go if we get a little extra time because of a launch slip or something like that.”
Research has been underway on the station from the beginning, when the first crew arrived in November 2000. As more and more scientific gear was delivered and installed, crew members began using it for experiments when they were not needed for assembly and maintenance tasks. By October 2011, Robinson says, NASA had run 475 investigations on the station, and the partnership as a whole had done 1,251. That number is rising rapidly now that the station is finished, but perhaps not as rapidly as planners had hoped when they promoted the station as an orbiting laboratory for ground-breaking science.
Officially, NASA has three priorities for the space station: 1) meeting its international commitments; 2) conducting research in the life sciences and spacecraft technology that can feed its own goals in human space exploration; and 3) conducting research “in the national interest” using the U.S. National Laboratory organization mandated by Congress in 2005.
A space-station conference in Berlin last month highlighted some of the funding issues and other problems that all of the ISS partners are facing as they move into the utilization phase of their grand joint project. But it also highlighted some early research successes in orbit that have significant applications on the ground.
In the U.S., work is picking up on the human-exploration part of the portfolio. With the station in operation, astronauts are spending more time in space, growing the pool of human subjects against which to measure the effects of long-duration exposure to microgravity on the human body. One of them appears to be vision changes in some long-duration crewmembers. Station research has pointed to intracranial hypertension induced by microgravity as a potential cause.
Now, additional work on the station suggests there may be a nutritional factor, perhaps involving the dependent one-carbon metabolic pathway that is part of the process the body uses to make DNA. Station crewmembers provide samples of blood and urine that is preserved in the Minus-Eighty-deg. Laboratory Freezer for ISS for eventual analysis on the ground. Work based on those samples, published in the March edition of The Journal of Nutrition, may help screen astronauts who are susceptible to intracranial hypertension in microgravity, or point the way to changes in the ISS cabin atmosphere that could mitigate it. Because intracranial hypertension in the terrestrial population is poorly understood and potentially serious, the space-based studies may have a beneficial application on Earth.
“We clearly have identified a piece of the vision puzzle,” says Scott Smith, a Johnson Space Center nutritionist who co-authored the published paper. “We now need to go another step forward to assess whether it is a small piece among many others, or a large piece that is a primary cause of this problem.”
For spacecraft engineering, Japan is preparing to launch a NASA communications testbed in its HTV-III robotic cargo carrier next month that will evaluate three different software-defined radios (SDR) in the space environment. Set for installation by the Canadian-built Special-Purpose Dexterous Manipulator on the exterior platform of Japan's Kibo laboratory, the Space Communications and Navigations (SCaN) experiment will spend the next five years or more testing ways to upgrade and reconfigure radio-communications systems by uploading new operating-environment and waveform software from the ground.
Operated from the Glenn Research Center's Telescience Support Center where Ferkul works with Pettit, the SCaN Testbed will use S- and Ka-band frequencies to communicate through low-, medium- and high-gain antennas with ground stations and NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. It will be available not just to government researchers, but to commercial users as well.
Commercial researchers will have a route to the station through the National Laboratory arrangement, but there have been problems setting up the non-governmental organization (NGO) that Congress wants to run it. As a result, commercial access to the station probably has been slowed.
The Florida-based NGO—the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Casis)—has taken almost a year to prepare its first call for proposals on the commercial experiments it will help mount on the station. The inaugural work it selected is not really a new application of space microgravity. Based on a review of 135 experiments NASA has flown on the shuttle and ISS over the past 10 years, Casis science advisers chose to focus initially on drug research aimed at osteoporosis, muscle loss and the immune system.
That kind of work has been a staple of microgravity medical research in space for decades. Timothy Yeatman, the interim chief scientist at Casis as the NGO labors to launch its program, says the choice of ongoing research was deliberate.
“There is wonderful opportunity in taking the initial discoveries made by the NASA experiments and advancing the research towards real innovation and commercialization,” Yeatman says.
Space station managers at NASA say the problems at Casis have not slowed station research aimed at commercialization, which was already underway with NASA-funded research and with “pathfinder” projects managed by NASA that are being turned over to the NGO (see p. 44). Ultimately, the agency wants the National Lab to use half of the research “upmass” NASA is launching to the station on European, Japanese, Russian and eventually commercial cargo carriers.
“What we've put into the plan is that we want to provide another 2.5 to 3 metric tons from an upmass perspective for what we call National Lab research,” says Mike Suffredini, NASA's ISS program manager.
Part of the NGO's job is broadening interest in space research to new arenas. Casis officials say early outreach has focused on the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, because of the promise microgravity holds for speeding research that could lead to new vaccines and other medicines. James Royston, the Casis interim executive director, is a former president of Astrotech, which conducted highly publicized research on salmonella and MRSA vaccines on the space shuttle. He says he is spending a lot of time promoting continuation of that kind of research on the space station.
“You have to understand, even if we're talking protein crystals or osteo work, or some of these others, that we never really had a stabilized platform, or laboratory, to be able to do that,” Royston says. “Then we never had the recurring opportunities for transportation. Now. we really have something, so if I go to Pharma now, I can promise a certain amount of allocation. We have come a long way with understanding what hardware works, what hardware doesn't, as far as both transportation and on-orbit capability.”
The first flight of the Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX) Dragon cargo carrier to the ISS gave Casis a boost in the transportation department, particularly in the life sciences arena. SpaceX has set up its Dragon operation to allow payloads to be delivered to the capsule late in the launch-preparation sequence and to be retrieved relatively soon after splashdown in the Pacific. That sample-return capability is unique among the near-term commercial cargo options NASA is pushing to replace the capacity lost with the shuttle retirement.
“SpaceX is key for biotech,” says NASA's Robinson. “They're going to have the best capability for launch and return issues.”
That should work out well for SpaceX, because space has long been a useful environment for biological research. Mark Uhran, director of the ISS division in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters, has counted 818 U.S. patents granted since the early 1980s based on microgravity research or applications. The most common subject area among them, representing 36% or 277 patents, is biotechnology.
In a paper on the subject prepared for the American Astronautical Society's ISS Research and Development Conference in Denver this week, Uhran notes that biotech has generated three times the patents as the next-ranked field, analytical instrumentation, and he suggests that the relative simplicity of biological experiments in space may have contributed to the large number.
“The devices and apparatus needed to conduct basic biological studies at the molecular, cellular and microbiotic levels are often less complex and costly than those required for processing of toxic inorganic elements and compounds at high temperatures and pressures,” he writes.
While it remains to be seen how much the pharmaceutical industry will use the space station facilities, the value of microgravity research is well understood in the industry. Amgen, a biotechnology company based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., has partnered with Belgian pharmaceutical giant UCB to develop a sclerostin antibody that counteracts bone loss in post-menopausal osteoporosis and promotes bone healing in fractures.
As part of that work, the company flew a preclinical trial of the antibody on STS-135, the last space shuttle mission, to gauge its effects in mice subjected to microgravity. Bone loss is a well-understood effect of microgravity on mammals, including humans, and the work meshed nicely with NASA's need to protect its astronauts on long-duration space missions and the pharmaceutical industry's search for profitable drugs.
“The sclerostin pathway is regulated by mechanical load, and so if you really want to find out what happens at one extreme level of physiology, like completely unloading the skeleton, there's just no way to do it here on the planet,” says Chris Paszty, scientific executive director at Amgen. “So there are unique things that are only achievable in space.”
Final results of the space tests will be reported in October at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, and Paszty does not want to preview the results. But he describes the quality of data received during the short-duration shuttle mission as “fantastic,” and says right now there is no need to repeat the test on the space station.
It will be up to the ISS marketers at Casis to convince biotech experts like Paszty and his research counterparts in other fields that there is a need to use the station. And it remains to be seen at this point if they will be able to alert researchers in other fields to the capabilities available to them in orbit.
ISS to Build Up Meteorite Defenses
RIA Novosti
Russian cosmonauts will conduct a space walk in August during which they will install additional anti-meteorite panels on the International Space Station (ISS), cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko said on Friday.
Malenchenko, his U.S. and Japanese colleagues, Sunita Williams and Hoshide Akihiko, are scheduled to depart for a space mission on July 15.
“We will have a space walk in August, which I will conduct together with [Russian cosmonaut] Gennady Padalka,” Malenchenko told journalists in Star City near Moscow, where Russian cosmonauts live and train.
“We will have to move a cargo platform so as to use it more conveniently in the future. We will also install meteorite protection panels [on the ISS],” he said, adding that the space walk will last six hours.
The panels are designed to protect the space station from small objects, including space debris.
Lichen can survive in hostile space conditions
Indo-Asian News Service (IANS)
You can freeze it, thaw it, vacuum dry it and expose it to radiation, but lichen can still survive.
In 2008, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) sent a suitcase-sized Expose-E experiment package to the International Space Station (ISS) filled with organic compounds and living organisms to test their reaction to outer space.
The samples returned to Earth in 2009. Lichen have proven to be tough cookies - back on Earth, some species continue to grow normally. ESA's Rene Demets explains: "These organisms go into a dormant state waiting for better conditions to arrive."
The lichen have attracted interest from cosmetic companies. They can survive the full power of the Sun for 18 months, so knowing more could lead to new ingredients for sunscreen, the journal Astrobiology reports.
Living organisms surviving in open space supports the idea of 'panspermia' -- life spreading from one planet to another, or even between solar systems. It seems possible that organisms could colonize planets by hitching rides on asteroids.
ESA is probing this intriguing theory further on future Station missions with different samples, according to an ESA statement.
When astronauts venture on a spacewalk, hours are spent preparing protective suits to survive the hostile conditions. However, no effort was made to protect the bacteria, seeds, lichen and algae attached to the outside of the space station.
Our atmosphere does a wonderful job of protecting life on Earth by absorbing harmful UV rays and keeping temperatures relatively stable. Conversely, the space samples endured the full power of the Sun's rays.
The samples were insulated somewhat by the space station but still had to cope with temperatures changing from -12.C to +40.C over 200 times as they orbited Earth.
NASA encouraging spaceflight to go commercial
The Commercial Crew Program is responsible for helping companies develop vehicles that can ferry astronauts, and maybe civilians, to space. Could this lead to a 'spaceline' industry, a la the airlines?
Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times
NASA led the way for Americans in space, but now the U.S. space agency is actively encouraging companies to take over primary responsibility for getting in and out of Earth's orbit. Last month, a capsule built and operated by SpaceX completed a nine-day cargo-hauling mission to the International Space Station, becoming the first private-sector spacecraft to make such a journey.
But it won't be the last. Ed Mango, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, is charged with helping companies develop vehicles that could ferry astronauts — and eventually, perhaps, civilians — on routine trips to space. Mango visited The Times to discuss his efforts and how they could lead to a "spaceline" industry that resembles today's airlines.
What's the goal of the Commercial Crew Program?
We still have Americans in space. But we don't have a way to get there. So the motivation for this small team I have is that we are the next organization within NASA that's going to get American systems back into low Earth orbit.
Why is NASA relying on private companies instead of operating the flights itself?
It fits with what has happened in the past. Look at how the airlines got started: Air Mail was run by the government, totally. Then eventually, the government didn't want to be the ones to own airplanes, own airfields, employ the pilots — all that kind of stuff. So they said, "We're going to contract this out."
That became cargo capability. And as time went on, companies said, "We can transport people, not just cargo." Thus, the birth of the airlines.
NASA has partnered with seven companies and funded four of them. Why so many?
There's more than one way to get to low Earth orbit. All seven companies have very different approaches.
We had four different capsule designs that can get to low Earth orbit. They all could work, ultimately. I think there are some that could work sooner, some that can work safer, and some that will work with less expense.
The Dragon capsule made by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of Hawthorne just became the first commercial spacecraft to reach the International Space Station. Does SpaceX have a leg up on the competition?
If they're flying cargo today, they already have a system that works. Modifying a system that works is a lot better than starting any new system, so that becomes an advantage for them.
Boeing has their design, which is also a capsule-type design, and is trying to work out the same kind of issues that Dragon has. The only difference is that they haven't flown their stuff yet. But Boeing has 50 years of human spaceflight already. They have all the people who did Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle. They have all the trips and falls that have been made over those 50 years.
What are some other designs?
Sierra Nevada Corp. has what's called Dream Chaser. It's a wing vehicle — some people look at it as a mini-shuttle. It is very small: It carries the same number of people but it doesn't carry any real cargo. The advantage is they land on a runway. And a wing vehicle can land a lot of different places, so that provides a lot more safety.
Every company is different in what they're bringing to the table, which is really good for the government.
Looking ahead, can you envision a time when private spaceline companies would set up their own stations in orbit?
I don't know; I'm not a futurist. But I would predict that we would have more than just a government facility in orbit.
And what will NASA be focusing on instead?
A lot of the research is about how to go beyond low Earth orbit. What do you have to do in order to live out in space for six months, to live out in space for even longer? How do you rehabilitate the body when it wants to come back to Earth? If you don't have enough of that research done when they're ready to go — which won't be for a while yet — then you're putting the crew at bigger risk.
60 Minutes clarifies Neil Armstrong’s position on SpaceX
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
Earlier this month I noted a bit of controversy among SpaceX, Neil Armstrong and 60 Minutes.
Specifically, during a 60 Minutes segment, host Scott Pelley asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk, “There are American heroes who don’t like this idea. Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan have both testified against commercial spaceflight and the way that you’re developing it, and I wonder what you think of that?”
After the segment I received a letter from spaceflight pioneer Chris Kraft saying the 60 Minutes piece distorted the views of Armstrong, Cernan and himself. I published their letter as part of the blog entry.
On Thursday evening I received a letter from Pelley, which included the following:
“We should have made it explicit in our story that, while Armstrong was “not confident” that the newcomers could achieve safety and cost goals in the near term, he did want to “encourage” them. We also should have spelled out more clearly that his concerns were directed toward the “newcomers” in general and not SpaceX in particular.”
Here’s the entire letter from Pelley.
Dear Mr. Berger,
Recently you published an article that took note of an interview with Elon Musk that appeared on 60 Minutes. We’re glad you noticed our reporting on SpaceX Corporation. Because you are interested in the privatization of manned space flight I wanted to make you aware of something that we should have made more clear in our story.
Part of our interview dealt with the congressional testimony of Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan. Both raised concerns about the Obama administration program. Part of Armstrong’s testimony included this:
“I am very concerned that the new plan, as I understand it, will prohibit us from having human access to low Earth orbit on our own rockets and spacecraft until the private aerospace industry is able to qualify their hardware under development as rated for human occupancy. I support the encouragement of the newcomers toward their goal of lower-cost access to space. But having cut my teeth in rockets more than 50 years ago, I am not confident. The most experienced rocket engineers with whom I have spoken believe that it will require many years and substantial investment to reach the necessary level of safety and reliability.”
In our 60 Minutes story on SpaceX, I reminded Elon Musk of the criticism. The quote of my question is:
“Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, have both testified against commercial space flight in the way you are developing it, and I wonder what you think of that?”
We should have made it explicit in our story that, while Armstrong was “not confident” that the newcomers could achieve safety and cost goals in the near term, he did want to “encourage” them. We also should have spelled out more clearly that his concerns were directed toward the “newcomers” in general and not SpaceX in particular.
Armstrong contacted us after our story to say that many people have misconstrued his position as a result of what we said on 60 Minutes.
We agree he has a point. I wanted to give you a little more clarity on this in the event you continue to write about the subject.
If you feel publishing this note would be a service to your readers, please feel free to do so.
Sincerely,
Scott Pelley
In the age of digital journalism it’s seemingly increasingly rare for journalists and news organizations to step forward with corrections and clarifications, so Pelley has my respect for clarifying this story.
'Aquanauts' Complete Mock Asteroid Mission on Ocean Floor
Denise Chow - Space.com
Four "aquanauts" returned to dry land Friday, after spending 12 days living on the ocean floor off the Florida coast as part of a NASA-led mock mission to an asteroid.
The undersea explorers wrapped up the 16th expedition of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations Program, or NEEMO 16 this morning, emerging from the water at 9:11 a.m. EDT, NASA officials confirmed.
"The NEEMO 16 crew is back on the surface, heading back to land! Splash up time was 9:11 am ET," mission controllers relayed via Twitter.
During the 12-day mission, the aquanauts lived at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Aquarius Underwater Laboratory, which lies 62 feet (19 meters) below the ocean's surface, roughly 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) off the coast of Key Largo in the Florida Keys.
The NEEMO 16 expedition was designed to simulate aspects of a real mission to an asteroid, focusing in particular on the most effective ways to fasten to a space rock and how to cope with communication delays with mission control, NASA officials said.
The aquanauts also performed several mock spacewalks to test different techniques for attaching to, and navigating around, on an asteroid.
This work will help NASA plan a future manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid, which was one of the top goals assigned to the agency by President Barack Obama in 2010. As outlined in his directive, NASA is aiming to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, then on to Mars by the mid-2030s.
The NEEMO 16 crew was made up of astronaut Dottie M. Metcalf-Lindenburger, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, European Space Agency astronaut Timothy Peake and Cornell University professor Steven Squyres, who is the lead scientist for NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers.
The 81-ton Aquarius research station measures 43 feet by 20 feet by 16.5 feet (13 by 6 by 5 meters). The underwater outpost has six bunk beds, a shower, toilet, kitchen and computers.
Aquarius is owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and managed by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Aquarius is the world's only undersea research station, according to NASA, but it is in danger of being shut down in 2013. An organization, called One World One Ocean, has initiated a campaign to save the laboratory from being axed due to NOAA's budget consolidation.
NASA Asteroid Analog Mission Tackles Surface Mobility
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
NASA’s undersea analog missions — elaborate dress rehearsals that unite astronauts, scientists and engineers on the ocean floor to test hardware and mission operations strategies — are playing a crucial role in preparations for the next wave of human deep-space exploration, according to Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission and the current chair of the NASA Advisory Council.
Squyres is scheduled to surface June 22 from his second visit to the Aquarius Reef Base off Key Largo, Fla., an undersea habitat chosen by NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (Neemo) to simulate a 12-day mission to a small asteroid.
“I feel what we are doing is extremely valuable,” Squyres said in a June 21 interview. “The problem we face is how do you do field work in microgravity. Asteroids are effectively a zero-g environment. No one knows how to do that. Hit a rock with a hammer and you will go flying. So we need completely new techniques for getting around and stabilizing yourself at a worksite.”
Two years ago, President Obama directed NASA to prepare for a human mission to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and consider it a stepping stone to the Martian environs a decade later.
Squyres will emerge from the base – submerged 63 ft. below the Atlantic Ocean, just off Key Largo, Fla. – as part of a crew led by NASA astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger and also including European Space Agency astronaut Timothy Peake and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The analog mission, which marked the 16th Neemo excursion to Aquarius since 2001, focused on three areas: surface mobility and science sample collection, communication delays and optimum crew size.
Surface mobility at a tumbling, almost gravity-free near-Earth asteroid is a major obstacle. Astronauts working outside the International Space Station and the now-retired space shuttle rely on plentiful hand rails, rigid tethers and mobile foot restraints to anchor their torsos or legs so their hands are free for assembly or repair tasks. Training for their tightly choreographed spacewalks is carried out in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, an enclosed 4.2-million-gal. water tank managed by NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
“Asteroids don’t have handrails,” Squyres says of the asteroid challenge. “You can’t do an asteroid mission in [the NBL]. You need rocks, soil, sediment. You need a lot of room. So, the ocean is the obvious place to do it.”
During the latest undersea trial, Metcalf and her colleagues carried out 16 spacewalks, evaluating techniques for stringing tethers along the sea floor, gliding along with jet packs and coordinating “spacewalks” with small piloted submersibles that filled in for the multimission Space Exploration Vehicles (SEV) NASA is also developing for deep-space missions. A wheeled version of the SEV would roll across the surface of the Moon or Mars carrying at least two astronauts. A second version hovers over the surface of an asteroid while guided by small thrusters.
Squyres and his colleagues clearly favored the hovering SEV approach, when the submersible was also outfitted with a short stinger equipped with a portable foot restraint. A shuttle legacy tool, the foot restraint gives spacewalkers both mobility and stability at scientifically significant sites. “That has turned out to be a very effective technique,” Squyres says.
Throughout much of the analog, the astronauts coped with a 50-sec. time delay in their communications with their Mission Control team, even in their off-duty chats with friends and families — long enough to simulate a mission to an asteroid more than 9 million mi. from Earth.
When properly equipped, the undersea astronauts found few obstacles exploring the ocean floor without a constant dialogue with Mission Control, Squyres says.
Torii Hunter: Angels right fielder, space cadet
Mike DiGiovanna - Los Angeles Times
A 20-minute conversation Friday with astronaut Joe Acaba, who is currently en route to the International Space Station with two Russian astronauts, had Torii Hunter thinking back to those times as a child when his mother, Shirley, thought he was talking gibberish.
“When my mom didn’t understand me, she would always tell me, ‘Stop talking like the man on the moon,’ ” the Angels right fielder said. “So mom, I want to tell you that I actually talked to a man in space today, and if you think I need to see a psychiatrist, it’s not true. This was real.”
Hunter’s question-and-answer session with Acaba, who was born in Inglewood, raised in Anaheim and graduated from Esperanza High School in 1985, was taped, and excerpts will be played on telecasts of the Dodgers-Angels games Friday night and Saturday.
Among Hunter’s questions to Acaba: How do astronauts go to the bathroom in space? Can you see the halo around the Big A in the Angel Stadium parking lot from space? Have you ever seen E.T.?
“NASA was monitoring the conversation, and they were all rolling” with laughter, Hunter said. “It was cool. He’s very outgoing. And it was pretty neat to see him floating.”
Hunter invited Acaba, an Angels fan, to a game in September when the astronaut returns from his mission.
“He’s a hero,” Hunter said. “I’m pretty sure all kids, at one time, said, ‘I want to be an astronaut.’ These guys work hard, they go through a lot, and for him to fulfill a childhood dream is pretty awesome.”
Sunita Williams headed to space in July
Daily News & Analysis (Mumbai)
Indian-American Sunita Williams, a record-setting astronaut who lived and worked aboard the International Space Station for six months in 2006, is headed to the space once again in July.
Williams is scheduled to take off on July 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NASA said.
46-year-old Williams will be a flight engineer on the station's Expedition 32 crew and will become commander of Expedition 33 on reaching the space station.
According to NASA, Williams and her colleagues will be aboard the station during an exceptionally busy period that includes two spacewalks, the arrival of Japanese, US commercial and Russian resupply vehicles, and an increasingly faster pace of scientific research.
Williams, whose father hailed from Gujarat, was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in 1998. She was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and then joined Expedition 15. She holds the record of the longest spaceflight (195 days) for female space travellers.
She received a master's degree from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1995.
In the space, Williams and her team of astronauts plan an orbital sporting event to mark the Summer Olympics in London.
"I'm just looking forward to seeing the full capability of the space station, it's an experiment, not only the things that we're doing inside but also all the engineering that has gone into allowing us to dock new vehicles, do space walks, Russian and US. So, it's a pretty complicated vehicle now and I'm looking forward to being part of it," Williams said.
"Sprint' is an experiment that's trying to optimize our exercise protocol on board and trying to understand if intense exercise will take the place of long exercise. And 'ICV' is 'integrated cardio-vascular'. It's a pretty complicated experiment, and from the name you can understand it's trying to understand what is happening with your heart on board," she said at a news conference.
Go for launch
Canadian Chris Hadfield passes final exam as Soyuz co-pilot
Tom Spears - Ottawa Citizen
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his two future crewmates passed their final exam in flying the Soyuz this week in Star City outside Moscow.
Preparing for a December launch, Hadfield, American Tom Marshburn and Russian commander Roman Romanenko drew envelopes with simulated malfunctions, and had to work through them.
Hadfield has been tweeting up a storm during the extensive training. He posted this photo after the exam, with the caption: “Final Soyuz exam — facing the commission. On the table are envelopes to choose our malfunctions.”
Hadfield, a former CF-18 pilot, could never pilot a NASA shuttle. That job was for Americans only. But on the Soyuz he will be the flight engineer and co-pilot.
This week’s test was in preparation for another crew’s launch on July 15. Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are backups in case a “prime” crew member is too sick to fly. There will be more testing before the December launch, then six months on the International Space Station. He will be the station commander for the final three months, the first non-Russian and non-American to do so.
Hadfield continues to give the public an unprecedented window into astronaut training. Some recent tweets:
· On good and bad space food: “best: Russian soup, Hawaiian chicken, shrimp cocktail, Cdn maple syrup. Worst: turkey tetrazzini, too dry and lumpy.”
(Historically, shrimp cocktail is the favourite astronaut food. Zero-gravity drives fluid up to the head, giving a clogged-sinus feeling and deadening the sense of taste. Shrimp with horseradish sauce clears this up.)
· To someone who asked whether he trusts Russian space technology: “I’ve been studying it and training on it for 18 years. I helped build Mir. I trust it with my life.”
· To a woman who asked, “Have you ever ‘lost your cookies’?” His answer: “yes, of course. No big deal, just don’t miss the bag. You can get more cookies later.”
· On sleeping in space. A woman asked, “what do you prefer when your sleeping in space, free-floating or tethering yourself to the wall?” He replied: “tethered; you don’t drift into things and wake up.”
· He tweeted that he has been training to use the Canadarm2, the big arm on the space station, “for grabbing and berthing cargo ships like Dragon and Cygnus, plus potentially for moving spacewalkers around if needed.”
· And on May 13, as another crew prepared to fly: “Soyuz rocketship rolled out to launch this morning. Just over 6 months until ours. Incredible.”
Beginning after his 2001 space flight, Hadfield served as NASA’s director of operations in Russia. He coordinated and directed astronaut training, oversaw support staffing and negotiated policy changes among the station’s global partners, all while honing his Russian language skills.
City announces probable permanent home for space shuttle mock-up
Ben Baeder - Downey Beat
For the first time, the city has named a likely long-term location to house the life-sized space shuttle mock-up now being stored in Building 1 in the old NASA site off Lakewood Boulevard.
The preferred spot for the model is the field just south of the Columbia Memorial Space Center, said Louis Atwell, the city’s assistant director of public works.
The city would like build a shelter for the mock-up, which is made mostly of wood and plastic.
“It will basically be an annex building to the Space Center,” he said.
But the new home won’t come cheap.
The city will need $2 – $3 million for a building to house mock-up, and it will need even more money to shore up the giant model, which is in disrepair.
“That $2 million figure does not cover any of the cost of renovations,” Atwell said.
The city this month announced a plan to temporarily move the shuttle mock-up into a tent on the parking lot just north of Space Center. The tent will be massive, Atwell said. The mock-up is 35-feet tall and more than 122-feet long.
It will probably stay there for about two years until the city, in partnership with the Aerospace Legacy Foundation, raises enough money to build a permanent home.
The cost of the relocation is $157,000. Industrial Realty Group, the owner of the old NASA plant, paid $100,000 of the moving costs and the city is picking up the rest of the tab.
IRG is demolishing most of the buildings at the NASA site to build a shopping center and office complex.
As for paying for the new building, the city realistically cannot afford it.
City officials are counting on grants and donations to get the project going, Atwell said.
The goal, according to Atwell, is to eventually let people back into the shuttle, which is currently unsafe and will need major work before its ready for aspiring astronauts to climb around inside.
The shuttles were built at the Rockwell facility in Downey, and city officials say they are dead set on keeping the city’s history and engineering culture alive.
At a Public Works Committee hearing on Thursday, Atwell dished a little trivia about the mockup. It was built with one wing so it would take up less space. And the tail fin was a little short.
And, according to Atwell, the mock-up – built in 1972 — was among the main reasons Rockwell was awarded the contract to build the shuttle, which was first launched into space in 1981.
“One of the ways they won it was because the mock-up we have here,” he said.
The mock-up was used by engineers and designers to build out the inside of the shuttle, and it was also used as a showcase to convince government workers that Rockwell had the right stuff to build a vehicle that could launch into space and then return safely to earth.
Due to the final flight of the space shuttle last year and the effort by communities all over the nation to get the shuttles and other space memorabilia for museum displays, the time is ripe to raise money for Downey’s project, Atwell said.
“We couldn’t have asked for better timing,” Atwell said.
Chinese Astronauts Make Their First Manual Docking With Orbiting Module
Jane Perlez – New York Times
A Chinese spacecraft with three astronauts on board docked manually with an orbiting module on Sunday, an important step toward China’s goal of building a space station by 2020.
The maneuver of the Shenzhou 9 capsule aligning with the Taingong 1 module was shown live on national television on Sunday to huge audiences.
A spokeswoman for China’s manned space program said that hand levers were used to control the capsule as it positioned to dock with the orbiting module.
The effort was “precise and perfect,” and the three astronauts, including China’s first woman in space, worked “calmly and skillfully,” said the spokeswoman, Wu Ping.
“This success in manual docking represents a major breakthrough in our space rendezvous and docking technologies,” Ms. Wu said.
The female astronaut, Liu Yang, 33, an air force pilot, has become a national hero since the crew launched into space a week ago from the Jiuquan space center in the Gobi Desert in western China. The other members of the mission are the commander, Jing Haipeng, 45, and Liu Wang, 43.
The crew has been living and working in the module since the launching on June 16, and their feats have prompted an outpouring of national pride, and saturation media coverage.
The success of the Shenzhou 9 launching and its docking maneuvers will allow China to move forward toward its goal of building a permanent space station by 2020. China has said it plans to eventually put a Chinese astronaut on the moon.
China has spent billions of dollars on its space program in an effort to put the country on par with the United States and Russia in space. The United States and Russia are the only countries to have sent independently maintained space stations into orbit.
The first Chinese astronaut was sent into space in 2003, and a Chinese astronaut completed a spacewalk in 2008. American space experts have said they have been impressed with the pace and scope of the Chinese space program.
An initial docking of the capsule and the module was completed last week by remote control from a ground base in China.
Chinese spacecraft docks with orbiting module
Associated Press
A Chinese spacecraft carrying three astronauts docked manually with an orbiting module on Sunday, a first for the country as it strives to match American and Russian exploits in space.
The Shenzhou 9 capsule's maneuver with the Tiangong 1 module was shown live on national television. It follows a docking last week that was carried out by remote control from a ground base in China.
The Chinese astronauts have been living and working in the module for the past week as part of preparations for manning a permanent space station. They returned to the Shenzhou 9 capsule early Sunday and disconnected in preparation for the manual reconnection.
Wu Ping, spokeswoman for China's manned space program, told reporters in Beijing that hand levers were used to control Shenzhou 9 and position it to dock with the orbiting module. The maneuver was "precise and perfect" and the three astronauts carried it out "calmly and skillfully," Wu said.
"This success in manual docking represents a major breakthrough in our space rendezvous and docking technologies," Wu said.
China's next goals include another manned mission to the module later this year and replacing Tiangong 1, which was launched last year, with a permanent space station around 2020. Possible future missions could also include sending a man to the moon.
China's permanent space station is to weigh about 60 tons, slightly smaller than NASA's Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station.
The Shenzhou 9 crew includes 33-year-old Liu Yang, an air force pilot and China's first female space traveler. Liu is joined by mission commander and veteran astronaut Jing Haipeng, 45, and crew mate Liu Wang, 43.
Their mission, which is expected to last at least 10 days, is China's fourth manned mission. Shenzhou 9 launched June 16 from the Jiuquan center on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China.
Wu said the astronauts will spend three to four more days in the module before returning to the capsule and manually separating from Tiangong 1. Once back in Shenzhou 9, they will return to Earth within a day, she said.
China is hoping to join the United States and Russia as the only countries to send independently maintained space stations into orbit. It is already one of just three nations to have launched manned spacecraft on their own.
Wu said China spent 20 billion yuan (US$3.1 billion) on its space program between 1992 and 2005. By the time the next Shenzhou mission is completed, Beijing will have spent an additional 19 billion yuan (US$3 billion), she said.
China astronauts mark first manual space docking
Gabriel Wildau - Reuters
China completed its first-ever manual docking between a manned spacecraft and an orbiting lab module on Sunday, putting it a step closer in an ambitious campaign to build a space station.
The Shenzhou 9 and its three-person crew, including the country's first woman in Space Liu Yang, separated about 400 meters from the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1 module for about two minutes before re-connecting under the manual control of the astronauts, with state television covering the event live.
Rendezvous and docking exercises between the two vessels are an important hurdle in China's efforts to acquire the technological and logistical skills to run a full space lab that can house astronauts for long periods.
The Shenzhou 9 had already conducted an automated docking with Tiangong 1, on June 18, a day after it blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Compared with an automated docking, manual docking is more challenging in terms of orbit control, said Xie Jianfeng, a space scientist with the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, told China's official Xinhua news agency on Saturday.
China manned docking a key step for space station
Gabriel Wildau & Samuel Shen - Reuters
China re-affirmed its goal of building a full-fledged space station by 2020 on Sunday, following a successful manual docking between a manned spacecraft and an experimental orbiting lab module.
"Mastery of rendezvous and docking technology is a decisive step towards realizing the goals of the second stage in the development of China's manned space flight program. It also lays a firm foundation for the further construction of a space station," said Wu Ping, the spokesman for China's manned space program at a press conference following the docking exercise.
The Shenzhou 9 and its three-person crew, including the country's first woman in space, Liu Yang, separated about 400 meters from the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1 module for about two minutes before re-connecting under the manual control of the astronauts, with state television covering the event live.
"It means China has completely grasped space rendezvous and docking technologies and the country is fully capable of transporting humans and cargo to an orbiter in space, which is essential for building a space station in 2020," the official Xinhua news agency said on its website.
Wu said the next step for the program would be further manned docking exercises using the Shenzhou 10, but she said the program had not yet settled on a timeline for the next launch.
The Shenzhou 9 had already conducted an automated docking with Tiangong 1, on June 18, a day after it blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
"The automated docking and manual docking are both essential and they serve as a backup for each other," Xinhua reported Zhou Jianping, designer-in-chief of China's manned space program, as saying.
Compared with an automated docking, manual docking is more challenging in terms of orbit control, Xie Jianfeng, a space scientist with the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, told Xinhua on Saturday.
Residents get the chance to chat with an astronaut on ham radio
Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press
If you could talk to someone in outer space, what would you say?
At precisely 2:22 p.m. Tuesday as the International Space Station hurtles over Hampton Roads, three lucky residents will have a brief window to belly up to a ham radio at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton and ask an astronaut one question each.
Residents were chosen by center staff through a Facebook contest, based on what they wanted to ask NASA flight engineer Joe Acaba. A native of California and former science teacher, Acaba has been aboard the space station since mid-May.
"We didn't want to have a crazy question," said Toni Williams, a center spokeswoman. "We wanted one that was relevant and sort of dynamic."
They ended up with a winner:
· "I have often wondered if you begin to share your different languages while you are sharing a home in space. I am a Spanish teacher, and languages fascinate me. What is the common language you tend to share? Do you find yourselves slipping into your native tongues and then sharing new words and phrases with each other?"
But they also reeled in two runners-up:
· "Is it true the ISS is bright enough to be seen with the naked eye in broad daylight?"
· "Why was the International Space Station invented?" (Asked by a mother on behalf of her 7-year-old.)
The astro-chat will last only a few short minutes, till the space station hurtles out of ham radio range.
It's low-tech going high-tech, but not as unusual as one might think. Such ground-to-space contacts are scheduled through the Amateur Radio International Space Station, or ARISS, a partnership of international space agencies. The space station is equipped with amateur radio equipment, and if conditions are just right, ham radio operators on Earth have even been able to make fleeting connections with astronauts by sheer fluke.
Wally Carter has done so twice, although he can't recall exactly when or which astronauts.
"It's old hat to me," Carter said.
A "ham" for 55 years, Carter is an 81-year-old retired musician and Army veteran who built his first amateur radio set-up as many of his peers did — out of surplus military parts.
Carter is a docent at the Air & Space Center and mans its Amateur Radio Exhibit, where the astro-chat will take place. Ticketed visitors are welcome to observe.
Secrets of a super-social spaceman
Alan Boyle - MsNBC.com's Cosmic Log
You might think it's cool enough that NASA astronaut Ron Garan has spent months aboard the International Space Station, but he’s become even better-known as a social-media maven. This month he passed the 2 million mark for Google+ circles, putting him at No. 21 on the Google+ Top 100. His Fragile Oasis postings are a highlight on the Web, Facebook and Twitter. His "Ask Me Anything" exchange with Reddit users went so well he's thinking of doing it again.
So what's the secret to his success? It's really not a secret at all: He’s got a good story to share, about the beauty and fragility of planet Earth.
The 50-year-old New York native is a former Air Force fighter pilot who has degrees in business economics and aerospace engineering. He joined the astronaut corps in 2000, and his training for spaceflight included a turn as an "aquanaut" for NASA's NEEMO underwater research mission in 2006. Garan has been up in space twice — in 2008, on the shuttle Discovery to help deliver Japan's Kibo lab to the International Space Station; and just last year for a nearly six-month tour of duty on the station.
Garan says another stint on the space station is "always a possibility, down the road." But right now, he's focusing on NASA's Open Government Initiative, which aims to build stronger collaborative ties between government, industry and the general public. That means social engagement isn't just something he does in his spare time. It's part of his job.
During a recent interview, Garan talked about how he became a super-social spaceman, and what he's learned from the adventure. Here are some edited excerpts of the Q&A:
Cosmic Log: When you come into contact with the public, what do you find they’re most curious about?
Garan: "Well, what they’re most curious about is the basic question of what life is like, living in space. It really is a marvelous experience. It’s very interesting in a lot of respects — and probably the greatest part about it is that it gave me an incredible sense of appreciation for what we have here on our planet. Everything from just simple things that define the beauty of life on our planet — the breeze in your face, and the smell of flowers, watching a flock of birds and a million other things. After you’re up there for a while, those are things that you really start to miss.
"I had the opportunity to have a short-duration flight on the space shuttle Discovery back in 2008, during which I was up there for two weeks, and then a long-term one where I was up for five and a half months. And it’s a very different experience. You have the same views, you have the same environment that you live in. But being able to see the earth, day in and day out, and watch the earth change ... and to really start to miss some of the things that I took for granted, that really gives you that appreciation."
Q: So how did the Fragile Oasis website enter into the mix?
A: "That came out of my shuttle mission in 2008. I had a little bit of frustration. I imagine it’s like when you go to the Grand Canyon, and you’re there by yourself, and you sit there at the rim of the Grand Canyon and you’re looking out over this amazing thing. And imagine that very, very few people have been able to have that experience. For me, at least, that would be frustrating, and the experience would not be as rich as it would be if I had the opportunity to share that with people. So I was frustrated during my shuttle mission that I couldn’t share the experience.
"When I got assigned to my long-duration mission, there’s two and a half years of training, and during that two and a half years, I really brainstormed how I could do that. We came up with Fragile Oasis, not just to have it as a website where we could tell stories about space, but the goal was always to provide a platform for people to follow along on the mission, not as spectators but as fellow crew members. To have an interactive way to do it.
"We had some significant technical challenges in getting that thing off the ground, and it’s still a work in progress. It doesn’t have a lot of the interactive features that we wanted it to have, but we’re working on it. When I launched to the International Space Station, and I had the five and a half months up there, I really was very thankful that I had this tool, this platform, to be able to communicate. And in the meantime, we had the exponential increase in the popularity of social media tools.
"First I did Facebook, but I didn't see that as a public outreach tool. I saw that as a way to connect with old friends, and I was just using it on a personal basis. On the other hand, I started Twitter for one reason: I saw it as a way to do education outreach. I could say, I’m learning about this experiment we’re going to be doing in space, and I’d put a link on there to the experiment's website and the science behind it. I saw that as a very powerful way to do outreach. I now see the benefits of outreach in other platforms as well, including Facebook and obviously Google+. In the case of Google+, I see a very robust mechanism to share the space program and the experience of living in space with a lot of interactive features on that platform."
Q: With all your experience in social media, do you find that you favor one tool over the other? From your comments, it sounds as if you’re seeing some differentiation in how those different tools can be used. Particularly with Google+, you just recently passed the 2-million-follower mark. That must be one of the big successes for your efforts.
A: "Well, I think all the platforms offer slightly different tools to tell the story. I think they all fit together really well, actually. So it’s not a 'one-platform' type of message. We want to reach the broadest audience we can, because the excitement of spaceflight is global. It’s for all humanity. So the more tools we can use to tell that story, and the more people we can get involved with the story, the better off the whole message will be."
Q: Did you have to do a selling job with NASA to do the sorts of things you’re doing?
A: "It took a while to catch on, but it’s catching on now across the board. We realize the benefit of social media. I’m on some social-media committees now, on some working groups to help not only crew members and astronauts, but also thousands of other people who work in the space program. They have a very compelling story as well. We’re trying to find the best way to get that story out. And what we’re finding is that just letting people tell their story in the way they want to tell it is the best way to do it.
"Obviously, there have to be guidelines. But the more leeway we can give people in the space program to tell their story, the richer the experience will be, both for the people who are reading it and for the people who are doing it. That’s one of the cardinal rules here, to give people as much leeway as we possibly can."
Q: Are there any guidelines or favorites that you want to pass along to people who want to be closer in touch with the space adventure?
A: "Oh, yeah. There are tons and tons of people. Most of the astronauts who fly in space right now have Twitter accounts. They’re all on there. There’s also @NASA_Astronauts, where we try to retweet, as best we can, everything from all the astronauts. There’s @NASA, the official Twitter account. There’s the Facebook version, and soon the Google+ version of all these as well. There’s commercial spaceflight: @SpaceX has a social media presence. There are people outside the space agency who are involved in telling the story as well, such as @YurisNight and #spacetweeps.
"What we’re finding through this is that it’s not just the official word from NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japanese space agency. There are citizen scientists and all these other groups that have formed around the idea of space exploration, and they really do a great job of telling the story as well. It’s obvious that there’s a lot of passion and heart and soul that’s put into this."
Q: Is there something about the space story that particularly resonates with social media?
A: "I think it’s because it’s a human endeavor, and throughout the 50 years of human spaceflight, it’s always been a select few people who have gotten to fly in space, and we’ve relied on them to come back and tell us what it was like. Now, through technology and through these new platforms, we can bring people along with us on the missions and have them experience this is real time. You can see example after example of this.
"An easy example is, if one of us sends out a tweet with a picture, let’s say, and we misidentify the geographic location, we’re going to find out about that pretty fast. That happened to me on my mission, and I thanked the person who brought that to my attention. I started sending pictures to that person first, to make sure I got it right. We don’t have a lot of time up there, and all the pictures and all the social media that we do is in our free time. So to have people on the ground, crowdsourcing or open-sourcing or however you want to put it, that really empowers us to do more. It makes communication much more effective."
Q: Have you ever thought if it would be possible to boil down the glory of space down into one tweet? Is there any elevator talk you’ve thought about giving in 140 characters, about what it’s like to fly in space?
A: "You’d need at least 147 characters to do that ... no. I know I couldn’t do it. That would be a pretty remarkable feat."
Q: What’s the one thing that you’d like people to know about spaceflight.
A: "In 140 characters?"
Q: Not 140 characters, but what’s the one biggest message that you think the space experience provides for people on Earth?
A: "Well, to go back to the reason we started Fragile Oasis: The really compelling reason is that we wanted to use this perspective we have on the planet to inspire people to go out and make a difference, and make the world a better planet. The one gift that I think we get when we fly in space is this perspective.
"You don't necessarily have to be in space to get this perspective, but being in space really reinforces it: You see how fragile the planet is. You see how beautiful it is, how peaceful it looks. Then you realize that life is not as beautiful for everybody on the planet as it looks from space. That's a very compelling thing to experience, and hopefully it serves as a call to action, to not accept the status quo and make life on the planet as beautiful as it looks. That's the No. 1 thing that I want to get across."
Where in the Cosmos
Garan and his colleagues at Fragile Oasis offer a cornucopia of outer-space imagery and blog postings, including this picture of the International Space Station and the moon, as seen from the shuttle Atlantis during its approach for docking last July. The photo served as today's quiz picture in the "Where in the Cosmos" contest, presented weekly on the Cosmic Log Facebook page.
Len Whitney's comment was my favorite: "I believe it's a TIE fighter ... but those are short-range fighters, we're too far out in space ... Must have taken off from that moon ... Wait a second ... that's no moon!!!! It's a space station!"
For figuring out so quickly that the picture showed a moon and a space station, I'm sending 3-D glasses to Facebook followers Matt Jaworski and Lawrence Johnson. I'm also reserving a pair for Whitney. To make sure you're in on next week's contest, click the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page and join the alliance. It's not a trap!
Tourists finding their way back
Dave Berman - Florida Today
A decline in visitors to the Space Coast last fall appears to have reversed itself, as the draw of the beaches, cruises from Port Canaveral and ecotourism helped strengthen the tourism industry.
Data compiled by Smith Travel Research show that room-occupancy rates in Brevard County — a key measurement in tourism — rose 5.4 percent in the first four months of 2012 compared with the same period in 2011. That put Brevard County’s gains third in the state, ahead of major tourism destinations such as Tampa/St. Petersburg (up 4.8 percent), Fort Lauderdale (up 2.6 percent) and Orlando (up 2.3 percent).
The gains were even better at hotels in the more tourism-focused areas of Cocoa Beach and Titusville, where occupancy rates are up 9.6 percent during that time frame, which is the latest available. Local hotel officials say preliminary data indicate that year-over-year gains continued in May and June.
Another measure of how well Space Coast hotels are doing — the collection of the county’s room-occupancy taxes — has risen each month compared with same months the previous year since back-to-back declines in October and November.
“I’m feeling really positive,” Space Coast Office of Tourism Executive Director Rob Varley said.
It’s also positive for the local economy, as hotel room stays generate business for Space Coast attractions, restaurants and retailers. Varley estimates that the tourism industry has at least a $3 billion-a-year effect on the local economy. A yearlong study that began this month will seek to confirm those estimates.
Varley said the popularity of cruises from Port Canaveral is helping overcome the loss of tourism related to the end of the space shuttle program last year, when tourists poured into Brevard County and filled local hotels while also providing a boost to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
Abraham Pizam, the dean of the Rosen College of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida, said the tourism industry in general, like the overall economy, was in the doldrums for the last few years before its recent recovery. In fact, he said, tourism appears to be recovering stronger than many other industries.
“It was a major crisis” in Florida before the recent recovery, Pizam said, although he added that tourism on the Space Coast and in the Orlando area held up better than on the Gulf Coast, which was hurt by the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Orlando pushThe Space Coast Office of Tourism is working to encourage more cruise passengers to spend a day or longer in Brevard County before and after their cruises, rather than spending all their non-cruise time in the Orlando area. Many out-of-state cruise passengers fly into Orlando, then take a rental car or shuttle to the port.
Brevard tourism officials and hotel operators are increasing their promotional efforts in Orlando, including at Orlando International Airport, to persuade more cruise passengers and others to vacation here. That includes cooperative advertising with the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Port Canaveral, the Victory Casino gambling ship that sails from the port, and local hotel groups.
Tom Williamson, a partner with Ocean Partners Associates, which operates two hotels in Cocoa Beach and one in Cape Canaveral, said he is noticing more cruise passengers staying at his company’s hotels. He said there’s also potential to draw more Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise passengers to Space Coast hotels. Disney Cruise Line passengers will be a harder nut to crack, since Disney often combines cruises with packages at Disney’s Orlando-area hotels and theme parks.
Williamson said the untapped cruise market represents hundreds of thousands of room nights a year for Space Coast hotels and is growing, as larger ships are based at Port Canaveral.
The improving economy this year also is helping the Space Coast tourism business, according to Williamson, who also is president of the Cocoa Beach Area Hotel and Lodging Association.
“I think people were getting cabin fever,” Williamson said.
Variety of eventsVarley said the growth of air shows in Cocoa Beach and Titusville, the three-day Runaway Country concert in May at Wickham Park in Melbourne, the Space Coast Super Boat Grand Prix in May in Cocoa Beach and Port Canaveral also helped to attract visitors to the Space Coast, both for the events themselves and for follow-up vacations by people who initially came for the events.
Williamson said one welcome surprise he has noticed is a steady volume of business customers at his hotel who work for space industry contractors involved in a range of projects.
“We’re not a one-rocket town,” he said.
One caution, Williamson said, is that early bookings for July look a bit weak, compared with last year.
He said the fact that the Fourth of July falls on a Wednesday this year may be part of the reason, because that makes it harder for tourists to schedule a long weekend out of the holiday.
“Wednesday is the worst day it could be,” Williamson said.
But he said he’s not overly worried, since a growing number of tourists book hotel rooms at the last minute.
“Everything is so fickle,” Williamson said.
Varley said there are major projects under way that could further boost the tourism industry.
The space shuttle Atlantis exhibit, scheduled to open in July 2013, should help attendance at the KSC Visitor Complex, which already is Brevard County’s most popular paid tourist attraction. The $100 million project is part of a 10-year plan to upgrade the visitor complex.
Varley said the Office of Tourism also plans to attend more than 40 trade shows in the coming year in an effort to maintain momentum in attracting visitors.
At these shows, Varley said, his staff will meet with travel agents, tour operators, travel journalists, meeting planners and sports event promoters.
Varley said he also hopes to draw more visitors to the area after a Space Coast Welcome Center opens late next year at a rest area off the southbound lanes of Interstate 95, near Scottsmoor. The idea is to let people driving toward Central Florida and South Florida know about the attractions the Space Coast has to offer.
Rallying for jobs threatened by DC gridlock
Congressional budget time bomb would hit defense, cost Brevard
Matt Reed - Florida Today (Commentary)
It’s scary how much Brevard County’s economy relies on federal spending.
When NASA retired the space shuttle program, thousands rallied to “save space” at the Cocoa Expo in 2010. Still, we lost 7,000 jobs.
Now it’s time to “save defense.”
With potentially $1 trillion in federal defense cuts looming over the next 10 years, local political leaders and contractors will stage a rally Monday at the AAR Airlift company’s hangar at Melbourne International Airport.
The Space Coast has begun to replace shuttle jobs with work in aviation and defense. Now Florida could lose anywhere from 39,000 to 56,000 jobs at contractors such as AAR, Harris Corp., Rockwell Collins and countless small companies that supply parts or computer consulting, industry groups estimate.
Like I said — scary.
“We stand together to urge Congress to act quickly to find an alternative to sequestration,” says a joint announcement issued by AAR Corp., the Aerospace Industries Association and the Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast.
“Sequestration” is the name Congress gave to the time bomb it planted in the federal budget last year and programmed to go off in January 2013 to persuade Democrats and Republicans to negotiate a budget deal. If it blows, it will force across-the-board spending cuts of $1.2 trillion, half to defense. That’s on top of $487 billion the Defense Department plans to cut over a decade as it winds down from two wars.
Congress has yet to agree on anything.
'Conservative' spending
Which is why some worried conservatives are among those planning to rally Monday “to raise awareness of the critical contribution of the aerospace and defense industry to the U.S. economy and to our national security,” as the group’s statement says.
One sign this is more than the usual moaning over budget cuts: Organizers include U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge.
Posey, you’ll recall, was among a handful of House Republican rebels in last year’s war over the debt ceiling, holding out his vote and threatening any deal that didn’t include his demand for a vote on a balanced-budget amendment. (He got his vote; it didn’t pass.)
Posey, whose district includes military-launch operations at Cape Canaveral, proved he is a hardliner on balanced budgets. Yet, even he fears cutting $1.2 trillion overnight and the impact of meat-axe austerity on a district that includes an Air Force base and launch operations at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
That scenario is too scary even for conservatives.
Said David Storch, CEO of AAR: “We hope to emphasize with this rally that businesses — not just large businesses and prime contractors, but small family-owned suppliers and firms — cannot wait for a lame-duck session to take action.”
Economic, not military, threatMonday’s event is called the “Second to None Community Rally,” a name that suggests the potential consequences to American military might.
Marion Blakely, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, warned of “mindless, aimless spending cuts that will capsize critical investments in our military, our space program and commercial aviation infrastructure.”
But the threat to Brevard stems more from our enviably large defense-contracting industry than from any potential weakening of national defense.
Under President Barack Obama’s planned cuts of $487 billion, the country’s defense budget would still be 10 times the combined military spending of China, Russia, the U.K. and the next seven strongest nations.
“The message that the world needs to understand is: America is the strongest military power, and we intend to remain the strongest military power, and nobody ought to mess with that,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Further subtract the “sequestration” cuts, and the Pentagon budget would slip to 2007 levels — an 11 percent cut overall, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Brevard would lose sales and jobs. Panetta would throw his strategies “out the window and start over,” he said.
Next recession
But it’s the national impact of Washington’s budget stalemate that most worries economists.
If Congress strikes a deal and defuses the bomb, the U.S. economy is expected to grow 4.4 percent in 2013. If Congress fails, the economy will shrink 3.5 percent.
That’s called a recession.
The prospect is scary.
See you at the rally Monday.
Said Storch: “It is incumbent on businesses to lead the charge and help get the word out, and let the general public and our elected officials know what is really at stake.”
END
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