A reminder that our monthly NASA retirees Luncheon is moved to next Thursday, July 12th for this month only since this is July 4th week. Hope you can join us next Thursday at Hibachi Grill for our monthly Retiree Luncheon!
Monday, July 2, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. JSC Today: IT Services Impacted by JSC Firewall Outage July 7-8 and July 10
2. Catch the New "Human Destiny" at Space Center Houston
3. JSC Career Path Development Course - Register Today
4. Building 30 Mission Control Center Security Office is Moving Temporarily to Building 110
5. Cool Off With the 'Making a Splash' July Roundup
6. It Does Take a Rocket Scientist! Don't Miss Hearing Stan Love Explain Why Mars is Hard to Reach - July 9
7. This Week at Starport: Café Adjusted Schedule and Gift Shop Closures for Week
8. Beat the Heat this Summer - Learn About Wellness and Earn Reward Points
9. Payload Safety Review and Analysis: Aug. 27 to 30, Building 226N, Room 174
10. Too Nervous to Make Your Point at the Meeting?
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge. ”
-- Plato
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1. JSC Today: IT Services Impacted by JSC Firewall Outage July 7-8 and July 10
JSC's Information Resources Directorate will perform a two-stage firewall upgrade that will impact network connectivity from several on-site and off-site facilities.
Intermittent network outages will take place throughout the day:
- Saturday, July 7, and Sunday, July 8: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (stage 1)
- Tuesday, July 10: 7 p.m. to midnight (stage 2, with back-up dates of July 12 and July 14)
MAJOR impacts will take place on Saturday, July 7, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and again from 1 to 3 p.m.
Impacts include:
- Network connectivity from JSC to other NASA centers (excluding WSTF), Russia, other international partners, contractors both around and outside the Clear Lake area, USA, and the public Internet will be disrupted (Example: Email/NOMAD)
- Network connectivity from other NASA centers (excluding WSTF), Russia, other international partners, contractors both around and outside the Clear Lake area, and USA to JSC will be disrupted.
- JSC remote access services, including VPN (https://vpn.jsc.nasa.gov) R2S (https://remote.jsc.nasa.gov/) & Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) will also be disrupted.
- USA's access to and from JSC internal resources; including access to ESA, JAXA , local area contractors both around and outside the Clear Lake area connected to the DMZ Firewall, will be disrupted. (USA access to the Internet from offsite will not be disrupted.)
- Onsite JSC users will not be able to update/synchronize their computer's Outlook email/calendaring information.
Technical Support
During the outage, please call x34800 for the Enterprise Service Desk for technical support.
For more information on this specific activity, please contact your organization's IRD Customer Service Agent (CSA) at http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/IRDHelp/whotocall/Lists/IRD%20Customer%20Service%20Ag...
For more information and specifics, please go to: http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/Lists/wIReD%20in%20The%20Latest%20IRD%20News/DispForm...
JSC IRD Outreach x41334 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov
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2. Catch the New "Human Destiny" at Space Center Houston
"Human Destiny," a Space Center Houston attraction that tells the story of NASA's space exploration from the early days of manned spaceflight to the accomplishment of the International Space Station and beyond, was recently updated by master storyteller Bob Rogers, the film's original creator and producer.
Check out the updated film with your family and visitors at SCH, and read about the premiere of the movie at: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/home/destiny_film.html
Rogers' company created the Shuttle Launch Experience ride and designed the Apollo Launch Center building at KSC's Visitor Center. He also developed the Jim Lovell exhibit at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
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3. JSC Career Path Development Course - Register Today
The JSC Career Path Development Course is designed to instill a sense of initiative and empowerment. The course connects you to resources, highlights your role in the iterative career development process and exposes you to the various development opportunities at NASA.
Objectives:
- To emphasize the value of career path development
- To provide an understanding of the key players and the individual roles they play in an employee's career planning efforts
- To discuss the essentials of the career path development process
- To highlight and provide an overview of the career development tools and resources available
- To boost employee interest in career planning and enable one to make greater contributions to NASA
Course Details:
Date: Friday, July 20
Time: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m.
Location: Building 20, Room 304
For: Civil servant employees
Use this direct link to register in SATERN.
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=REGISTRATI...
Nicole Kem x37894
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4. Building 30 Mission Control Center Security Office is Moving Temporarily to Building 110
The Building 30 Mission Control Center (MCC) Security will be getting a renovation. The office will be closed in the MCC main lobby from July 4 through end of Sept. 2012.
Mission Operations Directorate (Buildings 30, 9, 5) badging (escort required, official visitors, etc.) will now be handled through Building 110 Security Office, located at the front Gate, until renovations are complete.
For more information, call the Security Office at x32119.
Tiffany Sowell x32119 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/ja/js/js4/external/badpro.cfm
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5. Cool Off With the 'Making a Splash' July Roundup
Quench your thirst for knowledge and action with the July Roundup, now online at:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/roundup/online/
We're buzzing about Dragon's recent, unprecedented cargo delivery to the International Space Station by a commercial partner. And don't miss how another partner, Sierra Nevada, has made great strides with the Preliminary Design Review of its Dream Chaser vehicle.
Also of interest is spacesuit testing for Orion being done in a very special way -- with ARGOS. While you're in the issue, check out the recent updates going on inside the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility and learn about two JSC Education projects that are guiding the next generation of explorers.
Enjoy a pictorial of "Shuttlebration," because one never tires of looking at the magnificence of a space shuttle orbiter (even in mock-up form). Also read how researchers have identified a piece of the vision puzzle as to why some astronauts are experiencing vision changes while on long-duration spaceflights.
Check out the Spotlight on Candice Oliphant, an Operations Control Center Specialist, whose favorite indulgence is very appropriate for the summer. Last but not least, if you have "Star Trek" visions of grandeur for your own space agency, see how warp field mechanics could one day hold the key to exploring our nearest star system (a measly 4.3 light years away).
JSC External Relations, Roundup Office http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/roundup/online/
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6. It Does Take a Rocket Scientist! Don't Miss Hearing Stan Love Explain Why Mars is Hard to Reach - July 9
Astronaut, physicist and, well, rocket scientist Stan Love will present his powerful and very entertaining presentation on "Why It's SOOOOOO Hard to Get to Mars." Like Stan says, it does take a rocket scientist. Lots of rocket scientists. And other really cool stuff that we are working on. Join Love in the Building 30 Auditorium Monday, July 9, at 8:30 a.m. for his 40-minute presentation, and stay to ask questions, really tough questions. If you require special accommodation for a specific disability, please contact TQ Bui at x40266 no later than 5 p.m. on Tuesday, July 3.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
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7. This Week at Starport: Café Adjusted Schedule and Gift Shop Closures for Week
Starport Gift Shops in Building 3 will be closed July 4 to 6. Building 11 Gift Shop will be open regular hours July 5 and 6 and closed on July 4.
Building 3 and 11 Cafes will be on an adjusted lunch schedule July 2 to 6 with limited offerings.
- Monday and Tuesday: Building 3 and 11 panini station closed and Building 11 cuisines station closed.
- Wednesday: Cafes closed.
- Thursday and Friday: Building 3 and 11 panini station closed, Building 11 cuisines station closed, Building 3 action station closed.
There will be no changes for breakfast. Lunch hours will be 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and there will be a limited entrée selection all week. Building 3 Starbucks Cart will be open from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. all week.
Don't forget … Tomorrow is First Tuesday. Starport Partners get 10 percent off your merchandise purchase in the Starport Gift Shops and 10 percent off your beverage purchase at the Coffee Cart.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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8. Beat the Heat this Summer - Learn About Wellness and Earn Reward Points
Water is vital to every system in the body. It regulates our body temperature, carries nutrients to our cells, keeps muscles and skin toned and lubricates our joints. During the hot summer months, we lose water through perspiration. The water needs to be replaced to prevent overheating and dehydration. Join us for the challenge or a class this summer, and learn about staying healthy.
July Wellness Challenge: H2O: Don't Wait, Hydrate!
Print the log sheet, track your fluids, and earn rewards points. Fifty points translates into a $50 Starport Gift Card!
http://www.explorationwellness.com/rd/ch07.aspx?H2O.pdf
Join us for wellness classes this month, and earn more points! Each wellness class is worth a point in the Employee Rewards Program.
http://www.explorationwellness.com/rd/AE107.aspx?July_Signup.pdf
Jessica Vos x41383 http://www.explorationwellness.com
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9. Payload Safety Review and Analysis: Aug. 27 to 30, Building 226N, Room 174
Class is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. This course is designed as a guide to payload safety review for payload program safety and management personnel. The student will gain an understanding of payload safety as it relates to the overall payload integration process, how the payload safety review process works and the roles and responsibilities of the various players in the payload safety review process. In addition, the student will be instructed in the hands-on fundamentals of payload hazard analysis, hazard documentation and presentation of analyses to the Payload Safety Review Panel. The course will include a mock presentation to the Payload Safety Review Panel. Those with only support or supervisory responsibilities in payload safety should attend course SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0016, Payload Safety Process and Requirements. SATERN registration required. Contractors note: Please update your SATERN profile with current email, phone, supervisor, NASA organization code your contract supports prior to registering. https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Polly Caison x41279
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10. Too Nervous to Make Your Point at the Meeting?
Toastmasters can help! Be our guest, and bring a friend. You'll enjoy building confidence in your speaking ability in a supportive and friendly environment. No pressure, we promise! The Space Explorers Toastmasters Club meets every Friday from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in Building 30A, Conference Room 1010.
Carolyn Jarrett x37594
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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.
NASA TV:
July 2, Monday
· 9 am Central (10 EDT) – Orion crew module arrives at the Kennedy Space Center
· 10:45 am Central (11:45 EDT) – Orion arrival event interactive Social session
· 11:30 am Central (12:30 pm EDT) – File of E32/33 crew departure for Baikonur activities
Human Spaceflight News
Monday, July 2, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Astronaut Alan Poindexter dies in Jet Ski accident at Pensacola Beach
Pensacola News Journal
A retired NASA astronaut died Sunday afternoon following a Jet Ski crash in Little Sabine Bay at Pensacola Beach, officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported. Capt. Alan G. Poindexter, 51, had been riding on a jet ski with his 22-year-old son Samuel. At about 1:30 p.m., Poindexter and his son were sitting still on the jet ski when Poindexter’s oldest son, 26-year-old Zachary, crashed into them on a separate jet ski. “Zacharay hit the rear of the jet ski the father and his brother were on,” said Stan Kirkland, an FWC public information officer. “Capt. Poindexter was then knocked off his jet ski.”
Former NASA astronaut Alan Poindexter, 50, dies in Jet Ski accident
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
Former astronaut Alan "Dex" Poindexter, 50, a space shuttle commander who flew twice into space, died Sunday after being injured in a water sports accident in Florida, NASA confirmed. "The NASA family was sad to learn of the passing of our former friend, and colleague Alan Poindexter who was killed today during a jet ski accident in Florida," the space agency wrote on Facebook late on Sunday evening. "Our thought and hearts are with his family." According to local media reports citing the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC), Poindexter was jet skiing with his sons on Little Sabine Bay near Pensacola Beach, Fla., when the accident occurred.
NASA Review Committee Mulls Field Center Consolidation
Dan Leone - Space News
Consolidating NASA’s sprawling network of field centers came to the forefront of discussions here between top agency officials and an independent panel established to carry out a congressionally mandated review of NASA’s structure and management. NASA says its 10 field centers employ about 18,000 civil servants and four times as many contractors. These centers, some of which predate the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act that created NASA, house a variety of specialized scientific and engineering facilities, many of which are underutilized today. “I would be less than honest if I told you we need everything we have,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the Committee to Review NASA’s Strategic Direction June 27. “We don’t.”
Soyuz TMA-03M lands in Kazakhstan
William Harwood - CBS News
Three departing station fliers strapped into a Soyuz ferry craft, fired the ship's braking rockets and plunged back to Earth early Sunday, landing in Kazakhstan to close out a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Descending through a mostly clear sky under a red-and-white parachute, the Soyuz TMA-03M command module carrying outgoing Expedition 31 commander Oleg Kononenko, European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers and NASA flight engineer Donald Pettit settled to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 4:14 a.m. EDT (GMT-4; 2:14 p.m. local time).
U.S., Russian & European astronauts land in Kazakhstan to end mission
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
The 29 Soyuz mission spacecraft carrying three U.S., Russian and European astronauts descended to a landing in remote Kazakhstan early Sunday, closing out a 193-day mission to the International Space Station that included the first visit by a U.S. commercial re-supply craft. The Soyuz capsule carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers was greeted by helicopter borne Russian recovery teams, shortly after it touched down under parachute south of Zhezkaghan at 4:14 a.m., EDT, or 2:14 p.m., local time.
Soyuz spacecraft lands safely in Kazakhstan
Peter Leonard - Associated Press
A Soyuz space capsule carrying a three-man multinational crew touched down safely Sunday on the southern steppes of Kazakhstan, bringing an end to their 193-day mission to the International Space Station. Around a dozen recovery helicopters zeroed into the vast uncultivated land mass, where NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, Russia's Oleg Kononenko and Dutchman Andre Kuipers landed in the Russian-made capsule. Russian space officials quickly surrounded the craft, which performed a perfect upright textbook landing, and erected ladders to begin the process of pulling out the astronauts.
Space Station Astronauts Return to Earth Aboard Soyuz Capsule
Denise Chow - Space.com
After half a year living on the International Space Station, three astronauts safely returned to Earth Sunday aboard a Russian-built space capsule. The Soyuz spacecraft landed on Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 4:14 a.m. EDT (0414 GMT) to return NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers back to their home planet.
NASA celebrates Orion milestone Monday at Cape Canaveral
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
NASA celebrates the arrival of its first space-bound Orion spacecraft at Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Monday, and Huntsville will bring a key piece of the plan to make Orion fly. Orion will be launched 3,000 miles into space in 2014 on an unmanned test flight. That's farther than any human spacecraft has gone in 40 years, and the test will tell NASA a lot about whether its new crew capsule is ready for missions to deep space destinations such as Mars. But Orion can't launch in 2014 on NASA's new Space Launch system, which won't be ready yet, and it can't launch without hardware being built at Marshall Space Flight Center.
Sierra Nevada Advances Commercial Spaceplane
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
Like some of its billionaire competitors in the race to build commercial vehicles to take humans to orbit, Sierra Nevada Corp. is taking advantage of its private-company status to build its Dream Chaser reusable spaceplane. One of the first winners in NASA's effort to seed a commercial space transport industry with federal funds, the 2,200-strong company is leveraging its experience with aircraft modification and autonomous flight-control systems to develop a vehicle designed to carry seven crew to the International Space Station (ISS) atop an expendable launch vehicle, return to a runway landing virtually anywhere a Boeing 737 can land, and do it again as soon as another rocket is ready.
Space Tourist Trips to the Moon May Fly on Recycled Spaceships
Rob Coppinger - Space.com
Space tourists may soon be able to pay their own way to the moon onboard old Russian spacecraft retrofitted by a company based in the British Isles. The spaceflight firm Excalibur Almaz estimates that it can sell about 30 seats between 2015 and 2025, for $150 million each, aboard moon-bound missions on a Salyut-class space station driven by electric hall-effect thrusters. Excalibur Almaz founder and chief executive officer Art Dula estimates it will take 24 to 30 months to develop the remaining technology needed and to refurbish the ex-Soviet spacecraft and space stations the company already owns. It bought four 1970s-era Soviet Almaz program three-crew capsules and two Russian Salyut-class 63,800-pound (29,000 kilograms) space station pressure vessels.
Astrium Says Tests Prove Viability Of Liberty Production
Amy Svitak - Space News
Astrium says it has completed a series of tests proving that key design and production processes used to manufacture Europe’s Ariane 5 launcher can support production of the Liberty transportation system, one of a handful of proposals vying for NASA development funding under a third round of commercial crew transportation awards the agency will announce this summer. Led by Alliant TechSystems (ATK), Liberty is based on a combination of hardware from NASA’s defunct Constellation program, including the five-segment solid-rocket booster developed for the Ares 1 rocket and a composite space capsule based on the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle. Astrium Space Transportation is providing the Liberty second stage based on the liquid-fueled cryogenic core of the Ariane 5, which is powered by the Snecma-built Vulcain 2 engine. With 48 consecutive successful missions over nearly nine years, the rocket is arguably the world’s most reliable launcher.
Alternative Fuel Rocket Roars to Life in Test
Space.com
A new hybrid rocket motor fired up Friday, demonstrating technology that its builders say could lead to efficient, alternative-fuel launch vehicles down the road. California-based Space Propulsion Group, Inc. (SPG) test-fired the 22-inch-wide (56-centimeter) liquid oxygen/paraffin motor for about 20 seconds Friday, blasting a streak of bright flame into the air at the company's testing facility in Butte, Mont. Proponents of hybrid technology claim that it combines the advantages of the other two types, offering the simplicity of solid systems and the safety of liquid rockets. (Solid rockets, such as the boosters that helped loft NASA's now-retired space shuttle, generally can't be shut off once they've been lit.) Hybrid rockets are playing a large role in the burgeoning private spaceflight industry. Virgin Galactic's suborbital SpaceShipTwo vehicle employs hybrid motors, as does Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser, a mini-shuttle that's in the running to transport NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
NASA Brings Plasma Propulsion Engine To Liberia, Costa Rica
Inside Costa Rica
The Ad Astra Rocket Laboratory located in Earth University at La Flor, has a new guest. They are hosting a full sized model of the VF-200 engine, the same Franklin Chang and his team are building to fly to the International Space Station in 2015. The prototype hangs just above the site that links to a model of the Aurora platform, a structure designed and built in Costa Rica to connect the motor with the Space Station. It is a stunning image that allows those who see it to make a trip about three years into the future and visualize the plasma propulsion engine designed for flights to Mars and beyond.
Astronauts support expansion of space station crew size
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station said this week they would welcome NASA's proposals to expand the lab's crew size from six to seven. "It would certainly help," said Don Pettit, a flight engineer and one of three crew members working in the U.S. half of the station. NASA senior leaders have begun talking about expanding the lab's crew size to seven when vehicles built by private contractors, such as SpaceX, come online as expected later this decade. The space agency currently relies upon Russian Soyuz space capsules to get its astronauts to orbit, but the spacecraft can only carry three people at a time. Dragon is designed to carry up to seven astronauts.
Catching up with the space station crew before they fly home
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
After six months in space astronauts Oleg Kononenko, Don Pettit and André Kuipers, whose tour of duty began two days before Christmas, will leave the space station Saturday evening to return home. Before their departure I had a chance to speak on Thursday morning with Pettit, Kuipers and Joe Acaba, who arrived on the station in mid-May. Here’s a transcript of that interview, which hits upon a variety of topics including expansion of the space station crew, taking photos from space and the personification of vegetables.
NASA celebrates Kennedy Space Center’s 50th year
Rick Neale - Florida Today
Though NASA relies on Russia to transport astronauts into orbit, retired astronaut Winston Scott remains optimistic about the next half-century of American spaceflight. Monday, NASA will show off its new Orion crew capsule at Kennedy Space Center in advance of an unmanned 2014 orbital test flight. This deep-space exploration program may ultimately send humans to the moon, asteroids and Mars. And on a parallel path, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule splashed down in May in the Pacific Ocean, pushing commercial spacecraft closer to servicing the International Space Station.
Atlantis makes familiar trip one more time
Justin Ray – SpaceflightNow.com
Mere minutes after the Delta 4-Heavy rocket's thunderous roar reverberated across Florida's Space Coast on its successful trek to space Friday morning, the retired space shuttle Atlantis made a brief appearance outdoors as she moved from the hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Looking almost like she was headed for another spaceflight, now fitted with three main engines, the nose thruster piece and twin rocket pods on the tail, Atlantis' transfer proved looks can be deceiving. The engines are replicas, the maneuvering pods are only shells and the spaceplane is going to the VAB to sit in storage for six weeks. The shuffle was necessary so technicians can move forward with shutting down Orbiter Processing Facility bay 1 that had housed Atlantis.
Super Guppy, with shuttle trainer aboard, touches down at Boeing Field
Jack Broom - Seattle Times
Watching the chained and shrouded space shuttle mock-up being slowly moved toward its permanent home at the Museum of Flight Saturday, astronaut Greg Johnson was thinking how much he'll miss it. "It's like watching a kid go off to college," said Johnson, a West Seattle native. "You hate to see them go, but you know they're going to do great things."
NASA space shuttle trainer lands at Seattle's Museum of Flight
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
Seattle's The Museum of Flight on Saturday moved a nose closer to exhibiting a full-size mockup of the space shuttle with the delivery of the front section of a retired astronaut trainer by a large NASA cargo plane. Thousands of spectators gathered for a "Shuttlefest" in the museum's parking lot to see the Super Guppy aircraft deliver NASA's Full Fuselage Trainer's (FFT) crew compartment from Johnson Space Center in Houston. Before landing at Boeing Field, the bulbous cargo plane circled the Seattle area — including flying by the city's landmark Space Needle — and then made a low pass over The Museum of Flight to the delight of the waiting crowd.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Shuffles Operations, Managers
Warren Ferster - Space News
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. of Denver, the world’s biggest space company, is realigning and shuffling senior management in a move billed as the latest in its effort to enhance competitiveness. The realignment consolidates Lockheed Martin’s military and civil space businesses, while creating a separate commercial operation, the company said in a June 28 press release. The changes are effective July 2, Lockheed Martin spokesman Charles Manor said. The Human Space Flight and Sensing and Exploration units will be combined into a Civil Space division led by Jim Crocker, currently the head of sensing and exploration systems. Wanda Sigur, currently vice president of engineering, will become Crocker’s deputy.
Former astronaut Jemison to campaign for Obama on Monday
SpacePolitics.com
The Florida campaign for President Barack Obama announced Sunday that former astronaut Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, will campaign for the president’s reelection on Florida’s Space Coast on Monday. Jemison, according to the media advisory, will tour Advanced Magnet Lab, a small business in Palm Bay, Florida, that “embodies the importance of President Obama’s space exploration policies for Florida,” in the words of the statement. After the tour, Jemison and Mark Santi, the president of Advanced Magnet Lab, will speak to the media “to discuss how President Obama’s policies ensure that Kennedy Space Center will continue to make history as America’s spaceport during the new chapter in space exploration that our nation is embarking upon.”
Space junk diplomacy
Jamie Crawford - CNN
Imagine waking up to a world where your cell phone doesn't work, you can't fill your car's tank using a credit card, and you cannot monitor the day's news or watch your favorite program on television. Sound farfetched? Perhaps - but the U.S. government is leading the charge with other nations to keep one possible catalyst for that scenario from unfolding. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the United States would join the European Union and other nations to develop the "International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities" that would establish an international framework for the responsible use of space. In a statement announcing the initiative, Clinton said the United States was committed to "reversing the troubling trends that are damaging our space environment."
Delays, overruns leave space program in crisis
John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)
In case you wonder sometimes the practical impact of the United States space program's inability to deliver its projects on time and within budget, here is one that hits close to home: We are short on satellites that help forecast hurricanes. For a decade or so now, scientists have warned about a potential gap in forecasting capability because of the epidemic of delays and cost overruns on satellites to replace aging ones in orbit. The cycle is a vicious one, with cost overruns forcing cancellations and postponements and lagging delivery of spacecraft gobbling up more tax dollars.
A vibrant future
KSC bustling with activity, lofty goals as it marks 50 years
Robert Cabana - Florida Today (Commentary)
(Cabana is director of the Kennedy Space Center and a former astronaut)
Fifty years after NASA established a spaceport to launch men to the moon and probes to explore the far reaches of our solar system, Kennedy Space Center’s mission has not wavered. This week, our team is celebrating five decades of extraordinary accomplishments and unprecedented abilities. We’re also gearing up for a vibrant future full of processing, testing and launching the most complex machines ever built.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Astronaut Alan Poindexter dies in Jet Ski accident at Pensacola Beach
Pensacola News Journal
A retired NASA astronaut died Sunday afternoon following a Jet Ski crash in Little Sabine Bay at Pensacola Beach, officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported.
Capt. Alan G. Poindexter, 51, had been riding on a jet ski with his 22-year-old son Samuel. At about 1:30 p.m., Poindexter and his son were sitting still on the jet ski when Poindexter’s oldest son, 26-year-old Zachary, crashed into them on a separate jet ski.
“Zacharay hit the rear of the jet ski the father and his brother were on,” said Stan Kirkland, an FWC public information officer. “Capt. Poindexter was then knocked off his jet ski.”
Poindexter was pulled from the water onto a boat and driven to a nearby beach where friends performed CPR on him.
He was then taken by Lifeflight to Baptist Hospital where he later died from injuries sustained in the crash.
Poindexter’s sons were not injured in the accident, Kirkland said. The FWC has launched an investigation into the crash.
“We get involved anytime there’s a boating accident,” Kirkland said. “So we’re conducting an investigation, and that’s where we’re at right now.”
Poindexter received his associate degree in engineering at Pensacola State University in 1983. He went on to the Georgia Institute of Technology then Pensacola Naval Air Station for flight training.
In his career with NASA, he piloted the Atlantis space shuttle in 2008 to deliver the Columbus module to the International Space Station. Columbus is a 23-foot-long, $2 billion cylindrical science lab.
Retired NASA Astronaut Alan Poindexter Lost in Fatal Jet Ski Accident
Mike Killian - AmericaSpace.org
United States Navy Captain and retired NASA Astronaut Alan Poindexter lost his life Sunday in a tragic jet ski accident near Little Sabine Bay off Pensacola Beach, Florida. A veteran of two space shuttle flights, Poindexter was reportedly on a jet ski with his younger son Samuel when his oldest son, Zacharay, crashed into and struck Poindexter. Captain Poindexter was airlifted to Baptist Hospital where he later died.
“Zacharay hit the rear of the jet ski the father and his brother were on,” said Stan Kirkland, an FWC public information officer. “Capt. Poindexter was then knocked off his jet ski. We’re conducting an investigation, and that’s where we’re at right now.”
Affectionately known as “Dex” to family and friends, Poindexter graduated with highest honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1986, earning a bachelors degree in aerospace engineering. He went on to become a Naval Aviator, piloting the famed F14 Tomcat and served on two deployments to the Persian Gulf during operations Desert Storm and Southern Watch.
Poindexter graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School / U.S. Naval Test Pilot School Cooperative Program in 1995 where he earned a master of science degree in aeronautical engineering, becoming a test pilot and Project Officer at the Naval Strike Aircraft Test Squadron (NSATS) at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland.
Captain Poindexter was serving as department head at NAS Oceana, Virginia when he was selected for Astronaut training in 1998. In addition to his two shuttle flights on STS-122 and STS-131, the Rockville, Maryland native served in the Astronaut Office Shuttle Operations Branch and served as CAPCOM for several shuttle missions.
Poindexter’s first shuttle flight was on the space shuttle Atlantis in 1998, where he served as Pilot on mission STS-122, delivering the European Space Agency’s Columbus Laboratory to the International Space Station. His second – and final – space flight was as commander of space shuttle Discovery’s penultimate mission on STS-131 in 2010, where he and his crew delivered the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module to the International Space Station. During those two shuttle flights Captain Poindexter logged 669 hours (nearly a month) in space, and travelled over 11 million miles, orbiting the Earth 441 times.
When he retired from the Astronaut Corps in December of 2010, Peggy Whitson – Chief of the Astronaut Office – remarked, “Dex was a well-respected leader within our office, We will miss him being part of our team and wish him the best in his new role as he continues his service to the Navy and the country.” NASA issued the following statement hours after learning of Poindexter’s passing: “The NASA family was sad to learn of the passing of our former friend, and colleague Alan Poindexter who was killed today during a jet ski accident in Florida. Our thoughts and hearts are with his family.”
At the time of his passing, Poindexter was serving as dean of students and executive director of programs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He was 50 years old.
Former NASA astronaut Alan Poindexter, 50, dies in Jet Ski accident
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
Former astronaut Alan "Dex" Poindexter, 50, a space shuttle commander who flew twice into space, died Sunday after being injured in a water sports accident in Florida, NASA confirmed.
"The NASA family was sad to learn of the passing of our former friend, and colleague Alan Poindexter who was killed today during a Jet Ski accident in Florida," the space agency wrote on Facebook late on Sunday evening. "Our thought and hearts are with his family."
According to local media reports citing the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC), Poindexter was jet skiing with his sons on Little Sabine Bay near Pensacola Beach, Fla., when the accident occurred.
"Poindexter and his 21-year-old son were on one jet ski and his oldest son was on another jet ski. Poindexter was sitting still in the water when his [older] son's Jet Ski came barreling into him," the local ABC affiliate WEAR reported, citing the FWC, which investigates boating accidents.
Poindexter was rushed to Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, where he later died from his injuries.
Veteran of two spaceflights
"He was a talented, courageous Navy veteran with gifts," fellow astronaut classmate Gregory H. Johnson wrote on Twitter. "Dex was a lovable guy with a strong work ethic."
Named as an astronaut in 1998, Poindexter was a veteran of two spaceflights. In February 2008, he flew as pilot on the space shuttle Atlantis' STS-122 mission to deliver and install the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory for the International Space Station.
Two year later in April 2010, Poindexter commanded the space shuttle Discovery on its second-to-last spaceflight. The STS-131 mission delivered more than 13,000 pounds (5,900 kilograms) of hardware and equipment to the space station.
In total, Poindexter logged 27 days and 21 hours in space over the course of his two missions.
Well-respected leader
Before flying in space, Poindexter served in the Astronaut Office shuttle operations branch as the lead support for activities at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He later served in Mission Control as a spacecraft communicator, or capcom, for several missions, including STS-125, the final flight to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
"Dex was a well-respected leader within our office," Peggy Whitson, chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in 2010, when Poindexter announced his retirement from the space agency.
A U.S. Navy Captain with more than 4,000 hours in more than 30 different aircraft types, including more than 450 aircraft carrier landings, Poindexter left NASA to return to his alma mater, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, Calif. Poindexter was still serving there as dean of students and executive director of programs at the time of his death.
Alan Goodwin Poindexter was born on Nov. 5, 1961, in Pasadena, Calif., but considered Rockville, Md. to be his hometown, according to his NASA biography. He earned his bachelor's in aerospace engineering in 1986 from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a master of science in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1995.
He was designated a Naval Aviator in 1988 and made two deployments to the Arabian Gulf during Operations Desert Storm and Southern Watch. Poindexter was serving as a department head for Fighter Squadron 32 at the Naval Air Station Oceana, Va., when he was recruited by NASA.
NASA Review Committee Mulls Field Center Consolidation
Dan Leone - Space News
Consolidating NASA’s sprawling network of field centers came to the forefront of discussions here between top agency officials and an independent panel established to carry out a congressionally mandated review of NASA’s structure and management.
NASA says its 10 field centers employ about 18,000 civil servants and four times as many contractors. These centers, some of which predate the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act that created NASA, house a variety of specialized scientific and engineering facilities, many of which are underutilized today.
“I would be less than honest if I told you we need everything we have,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the Committee to Review NASA’s Strategic Direction June 27. “We don’t.”
The ad hoc panel of the National Research Council (NRC) has its origins in the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 (H.R. 2112), which funded NASA and other federal agencies. The law set aside $1 million for the NASA inspector general “to commission a comprehensive independent assessment of NASA’s strategic direction and agency management.”
The inspector general delegated the task to the NRC.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, which drafted the NASA portion of the legislation, made clear June 27 that he wants the panel to consider consolidation of the space agency’s field centers.
“I urge you to take a close look at the agency’s structure and facilities,” Wolf said in a letter to the committee’s chairman, Albert Carnesale, chancellor emeritus of the University of California, Los Angeles. “If NASA were being established today, how would it be structured and what would its priority programs be for the 21st century?”
Wolf also asked the committee to consider whether NASA administrators should serve 10-year terms — currently it’s a politically appointed post, meaning the administrator can be removed at any time — and whether NASA should submit its annual budget requests simultaneously to Congress and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). NASA annual budget requests today are vetted by OMB before being delivered to Congress.
The June 25-27 meeting was the second of four Washington meetings planned by the NRC committee. The next is set for July 26, the last for Aug. 6. The group expects to deliver its final report to Congress Jan. 14.
The final report should “recommend how NASA could establish and effectively communicate a common, unifying vision for NASA’s strategic direction that encompasses NASA’s varied missions,” the agency’s inspector general said in its directives to the panel.
“This is the first comprehensive look at all aspects of NASA’s programs, its institutional base [and] its organization that’s been carried out in a long time,” said John Logsdon, founder of and professor emeritus at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute here.
Logsdon compared the current review to that of the Advisory Committee on the Future of the United States Space Program, conducted in 1990 and chaired by Norm Augustine, who at the time was chief executive of Martin Marietta Corp.
Logsdon said concern over NASA’s institutional footprint “has festered really since the end of the Apollo program,” but that closing field centers is “politically hard.” NASA field centers are fiercely protected by the lawmakers in whose states and districts they are located.
Bolden’s deputy, Lori Garver, speaking to the committee June 25, offered a justification for maintaining idle and underused facilities.
“The private sector would be very efficient and probably not stay in business to operate as we do,” Garver said. “That being said, we’re not the private sector. NASA has capabilities that are unmatched around the world, so do we want to close these or not carry them because they aren’t 100 percent utilized on a program we know we’re doing now? Probably not, because there’s a risk there that you might need that capability in a few years.”
Still, Garver acknowledged that NASA’s infrastructure was designed to accommodate a level of program activity that does not exist today.
Speaking to the panel June 26, James Beggs, who ran NASA from 1981 to 1985 said, “There is too much institution for the program, and there is too much program for the budget. If we are stuck with a budget of the current size, $17 billion plus … then we’ve got too much institution for a long time and we’ve got to figure out a way to shut part of it down.”
Soyuz TMA-03M lands in Kazakhstan
William Harwood - CBS News
Three departing station fliers strapped into a Soyuz ferry craft, fired the ship's braking rockets and plunged back to Earth early Sunday, landing in Kazakhstan to close out a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station.
Descending through a mostly clear sky under a red-and-white parachute, the Soyuz TMA-03M command module carrying outgoing Expedition 31 commander Oleg Kononenko, European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers and NASA flight engineer Donald Pettit settled to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 4:14 a.m. EDT (GMT-4; 2:14 p.m. local time).
Russian recovery crews stationed nearby rushed to the spacecraft and opened the main hatch within minutes to begin assisting the station fliers as they began their re-adaptation to gravity after 193 days in the weightlessness of space.
Because of the entry trajectory and the location of ground stations, Russian flight controllers were unable to communicate with the crew during the final stages of the descent, but recovery personnel reported no problems as the spacecraft made an on-target landing.
Within a half hour or so, all three crew members had been helped out of the cramped descent module. Kononaneko and Kuipers appeared tired but in good spirits as they relaxed in lounge chairs set up near the capsule.
Pettit could be seen during his initial exit from the spacecraft, but he was not seen again until the trio was being moved to an inflatable tent for initial medical checks. As he was carried past a camera, he appeared to be resting with his eyes closed.
Kononenko, Kuipers and Pettit were to be flown by helicopter to Karaganda. From there, Kononenko will be flown to Star City near Moscow while Kuipers and Pettit will board a NASA jet for a flight back to Houston for debriefing and reunions with friends and family.
Mission duration was 192.8 days since blastoff Dec. 21, giving Kononenko a cumulative total time in space of 392 days over two flights. Kuipers has now logged 204 days in space during two missions while Pettit's total stands at 370 days over three space missions.
Re-entry preparations began late Saturday when Kononenko, Pettit and Kuipers bid Expedition 32 commander Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin and Joseph Acaba farewell and floated into the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft just after 9:30 p.m. After donning Russian pressure suits, they undocked from the station's Rassvet module at 12:48 a.m. Sunday.
Before moving away for re-entry, Kononenko tested a new digital autopilot that would permit a manual docking, if required, without requiring the lab crew to re-orient the station.
He then moved the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft to a point just over 6 miles from the station to prepare for re-entry. A four-minute 15-second deorbit rocket firing starting at 3:19 a.m. slowed the spacecraft by about 258 mph, just enough to drop the far side of its orbit deep into the atmosphere for a landing in Kazakhstan.
Twenty-four minutes after the retro firing, the three modules making up the Soyuz TMA-03 spacecraft separated and the central descent module carrying the crew was oriented heat shield forward, plunging into the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of 61.5 miles around 3:51 a.m. The main parachute opened about eight minutes later at an altitude of 6.7 miles.
"We work together to get the spacecraft back home, starting off with undocking," Pettit said in a recent interview. "We get inside, we close the hatch, we have to do a leak check, make sure the hatches don't leak. Then we strap in and undock. Then we do a de-orbit burn. As we hit the atmosphere, the spacecraft separates so only the descent module comes through the atmosphere in one piece and then our parachute comes out and (we) go thump, roll, roll, on the steppe of Kazakhstan."
During his two space station missions, Pettit gained a wide following on the ground for so-called "Saturday morning science" demonstrations, downlinking video of innovative experiments that demonstrated a variety of microgravity phenomena. He also posted spectacular photos and video of Earth and space, including the recent transit of Venus.
Asked what his favorite targets were, Pettit told an interviewer "that's like asking what's your favorite food. It kind of depends on your mood."
"Probably the transit of Venus is pretty high on the list," he said. "The solar eclipse is another one, this is the second solar eclipse I've seen, both of them have been from space. And then aurora borealis, aurora australis is just amazing, each display is different and captivates you."
Another favorite target: polar mesospheric clouds, or noctilucent clouds, made up of ice crystals at extreme altitudes that are only visible when the sun is below the horizon and the lower layers of the atmosphere are in Earth's shadow.
"This mission, I've been fortunate enough to see both southern hemisphere clouds, which are only visible during the winter time, and now we're into the summer time northern hemisphere noctilucent cloud season," Pettit said. "So to be able to see both of these clouds in one mission is, I think, a real treat."
Another highlight of the crew's stay in space was the arrival of the first commercial cargo craft -- the SpaceX Dragon -- in May. Pettit and Kuipers captured the spacecraft using the station's robot arm.
"It was a great moment," Kuipers said. "This will be the future of spaceflight, it will be commercial companies taking over. That's the idea. (Government) agencies will continue to explore and go further, and then commercial industry on the ground will take over the use of low-Earth orbit. So I think this was a great moment, the first step of a new era."
Pettit agreed, saying "I hope in the future that these things become so routine that journalists just go ho-hum, another visiting commercial vehicle's docked at the space station, and they'll hardly take note. That I think would be a sign of the technology moving in the right direction."
Asked if he was ready to return to Earth, Kuipers said he was looking forward to seeing his family again. But he added, "I would love to stay longer. Or better, to come back here. It would be great to be up here to serve two, three weeks a year as a holiday after this. It's a fantastic place. Yeah, I have to go back, but I'd like to come back, too."
Joked Pettit: "I just ran out of vitamin supplements, so I figure it's time for me to go home."
During a brief ceremony Friday, Kononenko turned over command of the space station to Gennady Padalka, who was launched to the station May 15 aboard the Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft along with cosmonaut Sergei Revin and NASA flight engineer Joseph Acaba.
"It's been a privilege to serve as commander of the space station and to work with such a good crew as well as such dedicated ground support staff," Kononenko said. "The station is an accomplishment, the result of the cooperative effort of mankind which has expanded understanding between individual people and nations. The exploration of space is one of the great opportunities for us to test ourselves and our limits and to focus our energies into positive efforts that will benefit everyone. So, Gennady, it's your time to be commander of ISS."
The two Russians shook hands, and Padalka thanked Kononenko and he crewmates "for a great job keeping space station in great operational condition. And from our (crew) I would like to say we will continue to stick to this high standard."
Padalka, Revin and Acaba will have the space station to themselves until July 17 when the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft is scheduled to arrive carrying cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide.
U.S., Russian & European astronauts land in Kazakhstan to end mission
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
The 29 Soyuz mission spacecraft carrying three U.S., Russian and European astronauts descended to a landing in remote Kazakhstan early Sunday, closing out a 193-day mission to the International Space Station that included the first visit by a U.S. commercial re-supply craft.
The Soyuz capsule carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers was greeted by helicopter borne Russian recovery teams, shortly after it touched down under parachute south of Zhezkaghan at 4:14 a.m., EDT, or 2:14 p.m., local time.
Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers appeared to be in good shape as they were assisted from their capsule by team members to a medical field tent for a series of health checks. They were to be flown aboard separate helicopters to Karaganda for a landing ceremony. There, they will part company, with Pettit and Kuipers headed for Houston, Tex., home of NASA's Johnson Space Center, aboard a NASA jet. Kononenko will be flown to Star City, Russia.
The fliers undocked from the station's Rassvet berthing port in their Soyuz TMA-O3M spacecraft at 12:48 a.m., EDT, ending the 31st expedition to the orbiting science lab since crewed operations began in late 2000. As the crew transport backed away from the station's Russian segment, Kononenko halted, then yawed the motion for several seconds for a test of the capsule's digital autopilot.
Their 6.5 months aboard the station featured the arrival of the first U. S. commercial re-supply mission. As the SpaceX Dragon capsule rendezvoused with the orbital outpost in May, Pettit guided Canadarm2 through the track and capture steps to latch onto and berth the supply craft at the station's U. S. segment with assistance from Kuipers and Acaba.
"I think you could call it a stressful day at the office. It was something we practiced for 27 different ways," recalled Pettit in a news media interview, two days days before the Soyuz departure.
"In reality, it went very smoothely," added Kuipers. "So, it was a very great moment for everybody."
However, Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers focused most of their energies on research in the fields of human health, physics, biology, materials properties, Earth observations, robotics and astrophysics. Their multi-national science agenda included more than 200 individual on going experiments.
"We are doing a lot of fascinating science," said Pettit. "Some people might call it boring, science in the process of being made is not necessarily exciting."
With the departure of the 29 Soyuz crew, command of the orbiting science lab shifted from Kononenko to fellow Russian Gennady Padalka, the first space flier to take charge of the station for a third time. Padalka, cosmonaut Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba reached the space station in mid-May.
Six crew station operations for Expedition 32 are scheduled to resume on July 17, when the 31 Soyuz mission spacecraft docks, delivering NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian Yuri Malenchenko and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Soyuz spacecraft lands safely in Kazakhstan
Peter Leonard - Associated Press
A Soyuz space capsule carrying a three-man multinational crew touched down safely Sunday on the southern steppes of Kazakhstan, bringing an end to their 193-day mission to the International Space Station.
Around a dozen recovery helicopters zeroed into the vast uncultivated land mass, where NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, Russia's Oleg Kononenko and Dutchman Andre Kuipers landed in the Russian-made capsule.
Russian space officials quickly surrounded the craft, which performed a perfect upright textbook landing, and erected ladders to begin the process of pulling out the astronauts.
The voyage from the space station started 3 -1/2 hours earlier, when it undocked and began a slow, gentle drift away. It made a perfect landing in the still and summery weather at 2:14 pm local time (08:17 GMT), right on schedule.
Commenting on the landing, NASA TV reporter Rob Navias described it as "a bullseye."
Kononenko was the first to be extracted from the descent module. He looked pale and tired, but medical staff announced him healthy. Pettit, second out of the module, was heard to say: "It's good to be home."
The three men were hoisted into recliners and posed for photos for a number of minutes before being carried into a tent for further checks.
Writing on his NASA blog on the eve of his departure from the space station, Petit write: "I only hope that my small efforts here, perhaps adding one grain of sand to the beach of knowledge, will help enable a generation of people in the future to call space 'home.'"
Petit and his colleagues were part of the team that handled the arrival to the space station last month of the privately owned SpaceX Dragon capsule. That became the first private delivery to the International Space Station.
The retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet has left Russia's venerable Soyuz spacecraft as the only means to deliver crews to the orbiting laboratory.
Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and U.S. astronaut Joseph Acaba are expected to remain onboard the orbiting space station for a further three months.
They will be joined later this month by NASA astronaut Suni Williams, Russia's Yury Malenchenko and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide, who are set to take off on a Soyuz spaceship from the Baikonur cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan.
Space Station Astronauts Return to Earth Aboard Soyuz Capsule
Denise Chow - Space.com
After half a year living on the International Space Station, three astronauts safely returned to Earth Sunday aboard a Russian-built space capsule.
The Soyuz spacecraft landed on Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 4:14 a.m. EDT (0414 GMT) to return NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers back to their home planet.
"Everything is good, we feel great," Kononenko radioed Russia's Mission Control Center just before landing.
The spaceflyers had undocked from the space station several hours earlier in their Russian-built Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft to begin the journey home. They landed upright under a blue sky dotted with some white clouds in Kazakhstan, where the local time was Sunday afternoon.
Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers arrived at the orbiting outpost in December 2011. All three had flown previous missions to the space station, making them a crew of veteran spaceflyers.
In a blog post describing his final day in space, Pettit reflected on the impact of his months-long mission, and encouraged humanity to keep pushing the boundaries of space exploration.
"On Earth, the frontiers opened slowly," Pettit wrote. "The technology of sailing was known and advanced for over a thousand years before the Earth was circumnavigated. Such bold acts require the technology, the will, and the audacity to explore. Sometimes you have one, but not the others. I only hope that my small efforts here, perhaps adding one grain of sand to the beach of knowledge, will help enable a generation of people in the future to call space 'home.'"
Throughout their mission, Pettit and Kuipers shared with the public stunning photos of the Earth from space through Twitter and the photo sharing flight Flickr. Pettit also regularly updated a blog about his experiences on the space station, which included several poems in tribute to life in space.
Pettit also kept a journal as a fun way to document his scientific activities on the orbiting outpost. For instance, Pettit wrote blog updates in the voice of a zucchini plant when he experimented with growing different kinds of plants in microgravity.
On Friday, Pettit wrote a poem called "Last Day in Space," to reflect on the memories of the mission, the experiences that moved him, and his anticipation over seeing his wife and children again soon.
Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers made up half of the station's Expedition 31 crew. During their stay at the orbiting laboratory, the spaceflyers rolled out the welcome mat for the first commercial spacecraft to visit the station.
SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule was launched to the International Space Station on a test flight to demonstrate the spacecraft's ability to carry cargo to and from low-Earth orbit. As Dragon approached the station, Pettit and Kuipers used the outpost's robotic arm to pluck it from space and manually park it to the complex.
The successful test flight lays the groundwork for NASA to use commercial spaceships to ferry cargo, and one day astronauts, to the space station. SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with the agency for 12 unmanned cargo delivery flights.
Sunday's Soyuz landing placed Pettit fourth in the ranks of most experienced American astronauts. He now has a total of 370 days in space during his three missions, two of them as part of a space station crew. Kononenko ended the flight with 392 days, a total that he accrued during two separate long-duration stints aboard the station. Kuipers ended the mission with 204 days of career spaceflight time.
Kononenko served as commander of Expedition 31 during his stay, but passed the torch to fellow Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka in an official change-of-command ceremony Saturday.
The departure of Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers leaves only three residents to currently occupy the space station until three new crewmembers launch to the complex on July 14. Padalka, NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Revin will remain aboard the orbiting outpost until September.
Russian space station flight controllers radioed Padalka and his Expedition 32 crew after today's landing to let the spaceflyers know their comrades were safely back on Earth and in good health.
"Good to hear," Padalka radioed back. "Another mission completed."
NASA celebrates Orion milestone Monday at Cape Canaveral
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
NASA celebrates the arrival of its first space-bound Orion spacecraft at Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Monday, and Huntsville will bring a key piece of the plan to make Orion fly.
Orion will be launched 3,000 miles into space in 2014 on an unmanned test flight. That's farther than any human spacecraft has gone in 40 years, and the test will tell NASA a lot about whether its new crew capsule is ready for missions to deep space destinations such as Mars.
But Orion can't launch in 2014 on NASA's new Space Launch system, which won't be ready yet, and it can't launch without hardware being built at Marshall Space Flight Center.
Orion will launch atop a Delta IV rocket built in Decatur by United Launch Alliance. And the same kind of hardware that will mate Orion to the Delta IV - an aluminum adapter ring built at Marshall - will also mate Orion to NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket for its first test flight in 2017.
The adapter is necessary in 2014 because the Delta IV and Orion are about a half-meter different in size. Orion is 5 meters wide, and the Delta is 5.5 meters.
But because a similar adapter will be needed for SLS, NASA gets to use the same technology for two programs and test it in space three years before the first SLS test in 2017.
Just as nice, from NASA's perspective, techniques developed at Marshall for the now-cancelled Constellation rocket program will be put to new use. "It's taking advantage of some unique capabilities here at Marshall Space Flight Center," David Beaman said Friday. "It will be a friction stir-welded part."
Beaman is the spacecraft and payload integration manager for SLS. He'll be at Cape Canaveral Monday, along with Florida U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, to brief reporters after the ceremony marking Orion's arrival.
Friction stir-welding is an advanced welding technique that essentially heat-stirs pieces of metal together for a much-stronger bond.
"We're designing it once and building it a bunch of times," Beaman said of the ring. "It saves money overall for the program instead of two programs (Orion and SLS) designing things. It is a true teaming arrangement."
The first two rings - a test ring and the 2014 flight ring - will be built at Marshall. The test ring is already assembled. Managers will decide later if they want to bid construction of future mating rings or build them at Marshall, too.
Speaking Friday at Marshall, Beaman also wanted to acknowledge NASA's Langley Research Center, which is providing some components for the ring.
There's one more benefit to flying SLS technology early on an Orion test, Beaman said. "It excites the employees," he said. "It engages some of our younger, new engineers in real hardware design and building. It excites the technicians.
"Basically," Beaman said, "hardware excites folks."
Sierra Nevada Advances Commercial Spaceplane
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
Like some of its billionaire competitors in the race to build commercial vehicles to take humans to orbit, Sierra Nevada Corp. is taking advantage of its private-company status to build its Dream Chaser reusable spaceplane.
One of the first winners in NASA's effort to seed a commercial space transport industry with federal funds, the 2,200-strong company is leveraging its experience with aircraft modification and autonomous flight-control systems to develop a vehicle designed to carry seven crew to the International Space Station (ISS) atop an expendable launch vehicle, return to a runway landing virtually anywhere a Boeing 737 can land, and do it again as soon as another rocket is ready.
The company is owned by its management and plows a lot of the profits it makes on aircraft, small satellites and spacecraft components back into the business. The model has won it $125 million in Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) funding from NASA, matching that with almost the same in internal funds to push the Dream Chaser through preliminary design review and probably to a good shot at another infusion of NASA funds this summer. At that pace, operational flights could come as early as 2016, according to Mark Sirangelo, who pieced together the company's space division five years ago in a creative merger with his former business.
“Because we're private and because we don't have any outside investors or venture capitalists and no long-term debt, we're able to reinvest a lot of capital into the business,” he said in an interview at the space division's newly remodeled facility in an office park here. “We carry about twice the industry average in R&D budget.”
Sierra Nevada is not alone in that approach. SpaceX, initially bankrolled by dot.com entrepreneur Elon Musk, has already flown its Dragon commercial cargo capsule to the ISS with funds from NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, and is another top contender for the next tranche of CCDev funding.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has set up Blue Origin to build an orbital crew vehicle that has also drawn CCDev funding.
Sirangelo believes the Dream Chaser will have advantages over the competition, which also includes the Boeing CST-100 capsule. Three companies working with NASA under unfunded Space Act agreements also are in the running.
Primary among those advantages, at least at first, will be Sierra Nevada's ability to support space-station research with substantial “down-mass” capability and low-g runway landings.
“The idea of bringing something home to a soft landing on a runway and getting access to it almost immediately became pretty enticing for science,” he says.
Beyond that, Sierra Nevada wants to make the Dream Chaser as utilitarian as possible to exploit potential new markets, including delivering cargo as well as crew to orbit, remaining there as a free-flying autonomous research platform, and servicing satellites.
Sirangelo says Dream Chaser will be “an SUV” to the space shuttle's moving van—it can add or remove seats as needed for hauling and other jobs.
The vehicle's composite structure will allow the company to build additional vehicles for cargo and other applications relatively inexpensively, since the molds already have been built and used to shape engineering and atmospheric test vehicles. In a fine irony, the lifting-body shape those molds reflect has heritage that goes back to the Soviet BOR-4 subscale spaceplane that once figured prominently in the Soviet Military Power yearbook published during the Cold War by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
NASA based its HL-20 experimental lifting body on the Soviet craft, and the Dream Chaser retained the outer mold line to take advantage of the data generated by 1,200 wind-tunnel tests NASA ran on that vehicle, Sirangelo says. The resulting commercial vehicle will be well positioned to compete with the Russian Soyuz capsule, developed by the same Soviet aerospace industry that produced the BOR-4, as well as with the U.S. competition.
“We're not trying to create new science here,” says Sirangelo. “We're trying to create a reliable, safe, predictable, reusable system.”
Like Boeing and Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada chose the Atlas V as its initial launcher, although in the longer term Sirangelo stresses that his company is “rocket agnostic” and willing to use other vehicles if it makes sense. However, the 402 variant of the Atlas V that the Dream Chaser would ride has no solid-fuel booster, which is a safety consideration, and is part of a family of rockets that has flown without failure 32 times.
Riding without a fairing on top of the two-stage launch vehicle, the Dream Chaser would rely on its hybrid-propulsion motors to “fly off” the Atlas in the event of a failure on ascent, or use them for in-space propulsion en route to its orbital destination. Virgin Galactic has bought similar motors from Sierra Nevada for its SpaceShipTwo suborbital tourist/researcher vehicle.
Sirangelo brought the hybrid motor technology, which uses a stable rubber compound for fuel, with him to Sierra Nevada from SpaceDev Inc. when, as CEO, he merged with the aviation specialist and took over as head of its new space portfolio.
In addition to the hybrid propulsion technology it acquired from the old American Rocket Co., the new space unit also folded in Starsys Research—a thermal actuator shop that branched into electromechanical actuators, deployable structures and other mechanical spacecraft components—and MicroSat Systems Inc., a smallsat house that played an important role in the U.S. Air Force's Operationally Responsive Space effort.
“As a company we've had 405 missions to space,” says Sirangelo. “We're actually launching something we've built for space about every three weeks.”
A lot of that hardware is at the component level, but some of the components are relatively advanced. The company developed and built the braking mechanism that will lower NASA's Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars from a hovering platform next month in the untried Sky Crane approach. That experience—as well as familiarity with government and commercial players across the space industry—has helped the company put together a team that includes seven NASA field centers and a host of component suppliers as it gathers and tests the pieces that will make up the Dream Chaser. Unlike SpaceX, which has moved as much component fabrication as possible in-house, Sierra Nevada usually goes outside for equipment it does not already manufacture.
That is in keeping with its keep-it-simple philosophy. The spaceplane's thermal protection system, for example, will use upgraded versions of the same materials used on the space shuttle, and its landing gear will come right out of the aviation industry.
Testing of the atmospheric vehicle got underway with captive-carry tests at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near here. The test article will soon be shipped to California for another captive-carry test at Edwards AFB, followed by a drop test from 10,000 ft. that will send it through an autonomous glide and landing.
Subsequent tests will include a high-altitude atmospheric drop and suborbital flight and reentry with an as-yet-undisclosed launch vehicle.
Operational flights will originate at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., where the company has selected a surplus facility at the Kennedy Space Center for vehicle processing. Normally it will return to the shuttle landing strip on KSC, although Sirangelo says it can land elsewhere and return to Florida as airfreight.
For ISS missions, the Dream Chaser will rendezvous and dock much like the space shuttles did, except that its two pilots will back the vehicle up to the pressurized mating adaptor on the Harmony Node, and the crew will enter the station through an aft hatch.
Still to be determined is the makeup of the crew. NASA has considered both the rental-car model for its commercial crew missions, where it leases the whole vehicle and uses its own astronauts to fly it, and the taxi model that uses astronauts hired by the commercial service providers. For Dream Chaser a third possibility might be what Sirangelo calls the harbor-pilot approach. A company pilot would handle launch and reentry, while a NASA astronaut would control the docking.
Sirangelo—and his competitors—will find out what comes next by the end of the summer, when NASA is expected to select three potential commercial crew vehicles for 21-month Commercial Crew Integrated Capacity (CCiCap) Space Act agreements under a deal worked out with Congress. Given the investment the space agency already has made in Dream Chaser, and the capabilities it offers over the capsules the other competitors are offering, there is a good chance Sierra Nevada will be in the winner's circle. If it works out that way, Sirangelo says it will be testimony to the approach his company has taken since—as SpaceDev—it started working on the Dream Chaser concept eight years go.
Space Tourist Trips to the Moon May Fly on Recycled Spaceships
Rob Coppinger - Space.com
Space tourists may soon be able to pay their own way to the moon onboard old Russian spacecraft retrofitted by a company based in the British Isles.
The spaceflight firm Excalibur Almaz estimates that it can sell about 30 seats between 2015 and 2025, for $150 million each, aboard moon-bound missions on a Salyut-class space station driven by electric hall-effect thrusters.
Excalibur Almaz founder and chief executive officer Art Dula estimates it will take 24 to 30 months to develop the remaining technology needed and to refurbish the ex-Soviet spacecraft and space stations the company already owns. It bought four 1970s-era Soviet Almaz program three-crew capsules and two Russian Salyut-class 63,800-pound (29,000 kilograms) space station pressure vessels.
Declaring that he is ready to sell tickets and that a 50 percent return on investment could be achieved in three years, Dula told the Royal Aeronautical Society's third European space tourism conference on June 19, "At $100 million to 150 million [per seat, we can sell] up to 29 seats in the next 10 years, and that is a conservative estimate. We [chose] not to use, for this presentation, the aggressive estimates."
Those conservative and aggressive estimates are from a market study entitled "Market analysis of commercial human orbital and circumlunar spaceflight" carried out for Excalibur Almaz by the management consultancy Futron. In 2009, Excalibur Almaz officials told SPACE.com the company's first flight would be in 2013.
Recycling spacecraft
The architecture for the lunar mission involves a Soviet Almaz Reusable Return Vehicle (RRV), which can carry three people, launched by a Soyuz-FG rocket. This rocket also launches Russia's Soyuz manned capsule. The RRV weighs 6,600 pounds (3,000 kg) and has a habitable volume of 159 cubic feet (4.5 cubic meters). The lunar flight also uses a Salyut-class 63,800-pound (29,000 kg) space station that is launched by a Proton rocket. While Excalibur Almaz intends to use the Soyuz-FG and Proton initially, Dula did not rule out using other rockets, including Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) Falcon 9 in the future. Dula said Excalibur Almaz would wait for the Falcon 9 to accumulate enough flights that it became feasible to insure the space station module aboard the rocket.
"Our customers are private expedition members and I think it is fundamentally different to tourism," Dula said. "What we are offering [with the lunar flight] is more like expeditions."
Once in orbit, the station and RRV will dock and the station's propulsion system, which is a group of electric hall-effect thrusters, propels the stack out to the moon. Excalibur Almaz is in talks with Natick, Mass.-based Busek Space Propulsion to develop the hall-effect thrusters needed. Dula described an electric system for the station module that would use up to 100,000 watts of power for its thrusters. If a solar or cosmic radiation event threatened a flight's crew and passengers, the company could run power through "electrical lines around the station and keep most of the charged articles away — protons you can keep out with an electrical field." He also said the station would have a refuge area crew and passengers could use to protect against radiation storms.
In addition to electric thrusters to propel a space station to the moon, Excalibur Almaz must pay for the development of digital flight-control computers, life support systems and an in-space propulsion system. Dula indicated that his company has spent about $150 million on the in-orbit space propulsion module.
"The cost is say $250 million; we already have much of the nonrecurring expense [engineering research and development] paid for this," he said. This propulsion system is based on the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle's propulsion module. EADS Astrium is a contractor for Excalibur Almaz. Another contractor is Russian military and industrial joint stock company Mashinostroyenia.
Building on the past
Dula emphasized the investment by the Soviet Union that Excalibur Almaz was able to leverage. "We already have a proven [RRV] emergency escape system that's operated nine times and one time in an actual failure, a real test and it worked," he said. "We have reissued all the drawings for this emergency escape system to modern standards, they are ready to be built and we have a cost estimate for the first ten units."
According to Excalibur Almaz, the Almaz program saw nine unmanned RRV test flights and use of the spacecraft for ferrying equipment and cargo to the Almaz space stations. The RRVs were in orbit for up to 175 days, and while docked with the station they were occupied to validate the life support system. While the RRVs spent time in only low-Earth orbit, the heat shield is designed to cope with the greater heat experienced from a moon-return trajectory.
Dula said that the RRV capsules can be reused up to 15 times each, according to their Russian manufacturer. "We performed technical feasibility studies of the RRV and their subsystems as well as launch vehicle compatibility and the overall program architecture," he told the Society's conference audience.
Dula also said that his space transportation system could be used by individuals, governments and private companies that wanted to conduct research or bring metals back from near earth objects, such as the billionaire backed Planetary Resources firm plans to do. He added that where governments wanted to operate on the moon, Excalibur Almaz could deliver a telecommunications satellite that would serve the moon from a Lagrange point 2 orbit and gave a price of $75 million. The L2 location is 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, away from the sun.
The company also plans to offer other lunar Lagrange point services, such as deep space technology testing for $150 million per mission, and payload delivery to the lunar surface for $350 million. For lunar payload delivery, Excalibur Almaz is researching momentum transfer using tethers. Momentum from the 63,800-pound space station orbiting the Earth would be transferred to the payload using a tether and that payload would then be propelled to the moon.
Wider plans
In terms of Excalibur Almaz's wider business plans, Dula said, "we've got unmanned research missions, human transportation and tourism. We have commissioned market studies. We have never announced these before. We have a complete business plan for cargo deliveries for the International Space Station, we just haven't released it." He added that if NASA reopened bids for supplying International Space Station cargo, he would respond.
For low-Earth orbit missions, Dula said the RRVs and space stations could each be worth about $35 million per year in advertising revenue alone, according to studies paid for by Excalibur Almaz. He also confidently said of his Futron report, "There is a market for commercial dedicated unmanned scientific research missions. One of our capsules may well be dedicated to such missions." He priced this service at $225 million and added that a manned scientific research mission would cost $495 million.
Dula is not the first to offer commercial unmanned spacecraft science missions. SpaceX is planning its DragonLab service, the first of which the company's website launch manifest states will occur in 2014. SpaceX's DragonLab fact sheet does not list any prices. For these missions, Excalibur Almaz would use a new module, which is being developed with the help of EADS Astrium. On its website, Excalibur Almaz describes a service module, which is used for storing consumables and acts as a habitation area, and a cargo module that can deliver up to 22,000 pounds (10,000 kg) of cargo.
Crew transport
For crew transport to low-Earth orbit, Dula said that NASA was distorting the market by paying $63 million per seat, but that his company is still part of NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program with a nonfunded space act agreement. Dula said that Excalibur Almaz had achieved all of its CCDev milestones on time and on budget so far.
Because of the international nature of its work, with Excalibur Almaz based on the British-dependent territory of the Isle of Man, located between Britain and Ireland, using Soviet technology, and European and potentially U.S. expertise, the company has sought the necessary approvals. "We have the state department license required to work with American, European, Russian contractors to refurbish these systems. And we have the export licenses from the Russian Federation," said Dula.
The Isle of Man-headquartered company is subject to the U.K.'s Outer Space Treaty law. The U.K. Space Agency does not have any manned spaceflight rules but has talked about developing them because of suborbital spaceline Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic, owned by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin group, is a U.K. company. Despite its U.S. arm, Virgin Galactic LLC, which conducts the suborbital flights, Branson's firm is still expected to obtain U.K. launch licenses. Of one thing Dula is certain, "If you don't have an escape system, you will never get a license from the British space agency."
Astrium Says Tests Prove Viability Of Liberty Production
Amy Svitak - Space News
Astrium says it has completed a series of tests proving that key design and production processes used to manufacture Europe’s Ariane 5 launcher can support production of the Liberty transportation system, one of a handful of proposals vying for NASA development funding under a third round of commercial crew transportation awards the agency will announce this summer.
Led by Alliant TechSystems (ATK), Liberty is based on a combination of hardware from NASA’s defunct Constellation program, including the five-segment solid-rocket booster developed for the Ares 1 rocket and a composite space capsule based on the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle.
Astrium Space Transportation is providing the Liberty second stage based on the liquid-fueled cryogenic core of the Ariane 5, which is powered by the Snecma-built Vulcain 2 engine. With 48 consecutive successful missions over nearly nine years, the rocket is arguably the world’s most reliable launcher.
Kent Rominger, Liberty program manager for Magna, Utah-based ATK, said the tests demonstrate Liberty’s industry team can keep the program on schedule for a planned first test flight in 2014 followed by a crewed flight in 2015.
“To stay on my schedule, I’ve got to do this. If I don’t get a NASA award, my schedule slips way out, but we [at] ATK have been investing, our partners have been investing, because we know one of the things that’s important is we want to start launching astronauts from the United States, rather than sending them over to Baikonur to launch on a Soyuz.”
Silvio Sandrone, vice president of business development for launchers at Astrium Space Transportation, said the trial shows that existing manufacturing processes are capable of machining, forming and welding the thicker, stiffer cryogenic tanks necessary for the Liberty second stage.
The two-stage Liberty rocket was first proposed in 2011 as a contender for NASA’s commercial crew program, an initiative that seeks to privatize astronaut transportation to and from the International Space Station in the post-space shuttle era. Rominger says the ATK and Astrium team could provide astronaut rides to and from the ISS for considerably less than the $62 million per seat that Russia currently charges for crew transportation aboard Soyuz spacecraft. NASA rejected the initial Liberty bid in part because ATK and Astrium had no commitments by crew-vehicle developers interested in launching atop the proposed rocket.
In September 2011, ATK and Astrium said they would continue Liberty’s development under an unfunded Space Act Agreement with NASA. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. space agency provides engineering and other technical support to industry through mid-July, when a third round of commercial-crew development awards is expected to be announced.
Alternative Fuel Rocket Roars to Life in Test
Space.com
A new hybrid rocket motor fired up Friday, demonstrating technology that its builders say could lead to efficient, alternative-fuel launch vehicles down the road.
California-based Space Propulsion Group, Inc. (SPG) test-fired the 22-inch-wide (56-centimeter) liquid oxygen/paraffin motor for about 20 seconds Friday, blasting a streak of bright flame into the air at the company's testing facility in Butte, Mont.
The trial was the fifth for this particular motor, SPG officials said, and it demonstrated a flight-weight version of the design.
The company says future propulsion systems using the motor's hybrid technology have the potential to be five to 10 times cheaper than existing rockets. And the paraffin fuel has the added benefit of being non-toxic, officials said.
"We believe propulsion drives the cost of access to space and that complexity generally drives propulsion system cost," SPG president and chief technical officer Arif Karabeyoglu said in a statement after the test-fire. "By using a commercially available paraffin-based fuel, we have created an economically viable alternative that could significantly reduce the price of space accessibility, as well as help preserve the environment."
Hybrid rocket motors use propellants that are in two different states of matter, as opposed to purely liquid or solid rockets.
Proponents of hybrid technology claim that it combines the advantages of the other two types, offering the simplicity of solid systems and the safety of liquid rockets. (Solid rockets, such as the boosters that helped loft NASA's now-retired space shuttle, generally can't be shut off once they've been lit.)
Hybrid rockets are playing a large role in the burgeoning private spaceflight industry. Virgin Galactic's suborbital SpaceShipTwo vehicle employs hybrid motors, as does Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser, a mini-shuttle that's in the running to transport NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
NASA Brings Plasma Propulsion Engine To Liberia, Costa Rica
Inside Costa Rica
The Ad Astra Rocket Laboratory located in Earth University at La Flor, has a new guest. They are hosting a full sized model of the VF-200 engine, the same Franklin Chang and his team are building to fly to the International Space Station in 2015.
The prototype hangs just above the site that links to a model of the Aurora platform, a structure designed and built in Costa Rica to connect the motor with the Space Station.
It is a stunning image that allows those who see it to make a trip about three years into the future and visualize the plasma propulsion engine designed for flights to Mars and beyond.
The purpose for the construction of these models is to test the transfer and coupling process that these components must perform when making the trip into space.
The model of the engine will be in Costa Rica until early next year. They will build a small interface for each Aurora platform and then both structures will be shipped to another company laboratory located in Houston, Texas.
The model arrived yesterday, Friday 29th, at the Daniel Oduber airport aboard a DC-9 from NASA.
Scientists and engineers of the company were waiting, including Franklin Chang, who immediately approached the aircraft to address and greet the crew.
Kindergarten student, Bernardo Gutierrez Sardinal Carrillo, cheered and celebrated the arrival of the aircraft and the presence of the Costa Rican astronaut. What was first planned as a field trip to the new airport terminal became an even bigger event for these children.
Once they unloaded the model, which weights just over 661 lbs., they transported it to the lab located just a few kilometers from the airport. It was then positioned at it's new temporary home.
The entire process took over three hours. It was not until after 4:30 P.M. that the staff of Ad Astra Rocket and the crew of NASA celebrated the accomplishment of the task.
Over the next several months, experts will design and build an interface that will link the model engine with the Aurora platform.
In the meantime, teams of scientist in Houston and Liberia will coordinate their effort to obtain a stable thermal state that will insure that the motor can operate continuously for long periods of time in space.
The preliminary design of the VF-200 engine will be complete by the end of 2012. The motor is scheduled to be delivered to the space station in 2015.
Astronauts support expansion of space station crew size
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station said this week they would welcome NASA's proposals to expand the lab's crew size from six to seven.
"It would certainly help," said Don Pettit, a flight engineer and one of three crew members working in the U.S. half of the station.
NASA senior leaders have begun talking about expanding the lab's crew size to seven when vehicles built by private contractors, such as SpaceX, come online as expected later this decade.
The space agency currently relies upon Russian Soyuz space capsules to get its astronauts to orbit, but the spacecraft can only carry three people at a time. Dragon is designed to carry up to seven astronauts.
"We would definitely increase the crew size on ISS to seven crew members," said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, during a June 20 hearing before the Senate Commerce science and space subcommittee.
"We think that will increase the research capability onboard station and allow us to do more national lab research and be more effective in utilizing space station."
The expansion is contingent on Congress increasing funding for commercial spaceflight companies, Gerstenmaier said. NASA sought annual funding of $800 million in the years 2014 through 2017 to bring private spacecraft to the launch pad by 2017.
Instead Congress has only agreed to provide a little more than half of that.
Pettit and the five other astronauts presently aboard the station had a front row seat when SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft docked in late May, becoming the first private company to fly to the orbiting laboratory.
"We trained for all kinds of difficult situations, and in reality it went very smooth," said André Kuipers. "Everyone was tense the first time over how it would behave, and we realize it was a special moment. This will be the future of spaceflight, commercial companies taking over low-Earth orbit, and the agencies will continue to go further and explore. It was a great first step in a new era."
The space station program is managed by the Johnson Space Center. With the retirement of the space shuttle it is Houston's most significant space project, and it forecast to remain in orbit until at least 2021.
Along with fellow crew members Oleg Kononenko and Kuipers, Pettit is scheduled to depart the station this evening to return home. While not exactly enthusiastic about reports of Houston's 105-degree day this month, Pettit said he will welcome at least some variation in temperature.
It's a constant 70 degrees aboard the station.
Catching up with the space station crew before they fly home
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
After six months in space astronauts Oleg Kononenko, Don Pettit and André Kuipers, whose tour of duty began two days before Christmas, will leave the space station Saturday evening to return home.
Before their departure I had a chance to speak on Thursday morning with Pettit, Kuipers and Joe Acaba, who arrived on the station in mid-May. Here’s a transcript of that interview, which hits upon a variety of topics including expansion of the space station crew, taking photos from space and the personification of vegetables.
It was 105 degrees in Houston this week. Andre and Don, are you guys looking forward to coming home to that?
Pettit: Well, it’s a nice 21 degrees Centigrade (70 F) up here and it’s been that way ever since we showed up. So we’re living in an isothermal environment. There are some locations hotter by a few degrees or cooler, but pretty much it’s isothermal. It sounds nice, but when you’re used to temperature swings on Earth it’s interesting how much you miss having a bit of cold or hot when the temperatures are the same every single day.
What other things like that have you noticed while you’ve been up there?
Kuipers: I’ve noticed that, after a while, microgravity becomes so normal, the special aspect of it is lost. But then, all of a sudden, if I have a pen floating in front of me I think this is strange. Even after 190 days sometimes I still get surprised by it.
Down here on the ground there’s been talk about possibly adding a seventh member to the crew. What do you think of that?
Acaba: We’ve heard a little bit about that. The resources we’ll have available, you get used to having three people here on the U.S.O.S. (U.S. Orbital Segment) side of the space station, and I’ll be alone here shortly when these two gentlemen take off on Saturday (today). If they want to send a fourth person up here to work with us, that would be great.
Would there be the ability to do a lot more science with an extra person?
Pettit: It would certainly help. The more bodies we have up here the more we can distribute the work and specialize in some respects, so that some folks focus on science and some folks focus on fixing the systems, and you can get that kind of specialization when the crew size gets larger. What’s interesting is, what crew size would you need to have a full time cook? It’s interesting to look at scientific expeditions going out, and at what point do you need a full time cook so that everyone else can concentrate on getting the science mission done?
I was blown away by a photo Andre recently took of the Himalayas from space. How did that look from orbit?
Kuipers: I have to say the Earth is amazing every day. Every time I look out the window it’s fantastic. I try to do my best to capture that feeling, that sensation you have. I’m glad that was such a nice picture, but there are plenty more pictures taken by the crew here on the space station because every time you look at the planet it’s awesome.
What’s the most amazing thing you’ve seen up there Don?
Pettit: Gosh, that’s sort of like asking what your favorite food is. It kind of depends upon your mood. But probably the transit of Venus ranks pretty high on the list. The solar eclipse was fantastic, this is the second one I’ve seen from space. The aurora borealis and aurora australis are amazing, each display is different and fantastic.
There was a lot of attention with the SpaceX docking. From your perspective how smoothly did it go?
Kuipers: Yeah, it was a great moment. As you know we trained for all kinds of difficult situations, and in reality it went very smooth. It was a great moment. Everyone was tense the first time over how it would behave, and we realize it was a special moment. This will be the future of spaceflight, commercial companies taking over low-Earth orbit, and the agencies will continue to go further and explore. It was a great first step in a new era.
Pettit: I hope in the future that these things become so routine that journalists just go ho-hum, another visiting commercial spacecraft docks with the space station, and that they’ll hardly take note. I think that would be the sign of the technology moving in the right direction.
Did any of you think you might be flying on one of these things one day?
Acaba: I think we’ve all thought about that, and I think we all would like to come back to the space station. It’s a wonderful place to live and to work, and to see Dragon come up here was a great success. If we can utilize that service to get astronauts up here to continue the work, and even get more people up here, it would be a good thing. If more people can experience that, the better.
Finally, I wanted to ask Don about his Diary of a Space Zucchini. Do you feel that the personification of vegetables is a spaceflight-related disorder?
Pettit: You know it may very well be, that among other various disorders. That’s an interesting thought. It’s probably space dementia.
NASA celebrates Kennedy Space Center’s 50th year
Rick Neale - Florida Today
Though NASA relies on Russia to transport astronauts into orbit, retired astronaut Winston Scott remains optimistic about the next half-century of American spaceflight.
Monday, NASA will show off its new Orion crew capsule at Kennedy Space Center in advance of an unmanned 2014 orbital test flight. This deep-space exploration program may ultimately send humans to the moon, asteroids and Mars.
And on a parallel path, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule splashed down in May in the Pacific Ocean, pushing commercial spacecraft closer to servicing the International Space Station.
“We’re moving forward. We’re just moving forward very slow,” Scott said Sunday during ceremonies marking KSC’s 50th anniversary.
“Many of us would like to see America accelerate — let’s get back in the game quickly. But it’s slow. And we are making progress,” Scott said.
KSC opened July 1, 1962, as NASA’s Launch Operations Center during the Space Race with the Soviet Union. The Merritt Island complex was renamed Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 29, 1963, one week after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, said Stephen Smith, KSC Visitor Complex spokesman.
Constructed amid mosquito-infested marshland, the facility later hosted the historic Apollo 11 lunar launch and 135 shuttle missions.
Scott flew aboard Shuttles Endeavour and Columbia as a mission specialist in 1996-97. Sunday, he shared photos, videos and personal anecdotes — including a primer on how astronauts use strap-in space toilets — with spectators at the KSC Visitor Complex. He also signed autographs and posed for photos.
Scott said astronauts should have set foot on Mars by now — but the federal government has lacked political will and economic incentive to even return to the moon in recent decades.
Carol Scott, NASA commercial crew program manager, said the final shuttle flight last July has caused confusion among the general public
“Even though the shuttle’s retired, NASA’s not retired. NASA’s not closing. Kennedy Space Center’s not closing,” Carol Scott said.
“This whole area’s going to become a spaceport, just like an airport out of Orlando would be. This will now be the next gateway for you to go and get a ride on a rocket and go to whatever your destination is in space,” Carol Scott said of KSC’s next 50 years.
The Orion crew module arrived Friday at KSC from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, La. Engineers will begin installing hardware and components in advance of the 2014 test flight, said Stu McClung, Orion crew module landing and recovery system manager.
Atlantis makes familiar trip one more time
Justin Ray – SpaceflightNow.com
Mere minutes after the Delta 4-Heavy rocket's thunderous roar reverberated across Florida's Space Coast on its successful trek to space Friday morning, the retired space shuttle Atlantis made a brief appearance outdoors as she moved from the hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building.
Looking almost like she was headed for another spaceflight, now fitted with three main engines, the nose thruster piece and twin rocket pods on the tail, Atlantis' transfer proved looks can be deceiving. The engines are replicas, the maneuvering pods are only shells and the spaceplane is going to the VAB to sit in storage for six weeks.
The shuffle was necessary so technicians can move forward with shutting down Orbiter Processing Facility bay 1 that had housed Atlantis.
"The reason we're bringing Atlantis over to the Vehicle Assembly Building is we need to free up OPF bay 1 because we're going through the process of safing, securing and being able to transition that facility over to a future customer. We have a schedule to have that work done by the end of the year, so by moving Atlantis over the VAB allows us to do work that cannot be done with a vehicle in the bay," said Stephanie Stilson, NASA's manager of all the orbiters' retirement activities.
The so-called "rollover" in NASA-speak began at 9:15 and was completed at 10:05 a.m. EDT.
Sistership Endeavour is inside the neighboring OPF bay 2 finishing preparations for ferryflight to Los Angeles and delivery to the California Science Center.
Plans call for the two spaceships to swap locations in mid-August, with Endeavour going to the VAB to await departure for California in September and Atlantis resuming her display preps at the OPF in advance of handover to the KSC Vistor Complex final resting place in early November.
Work left to be accomplished on Endeavour in the coming few weeks include installing the three replica main engines and making the orbiter's crew module look that way it did on the final flight last year, Stilson said.
For Atlantis, work is nearly complete for her transition to museum display piece.
"Atlantis is fully safed at this point in time. The only work remaining is display work, putting the final touches on it that's going to make it look the way the visitor center wants it to," Stilson said.
"The visitor center wants to show an airlock inside the midbody. They don't have an airlock, NASA retained the airlock for future use. So Delaware North, the contractor for the visitor center, is going mock up an airlock and we're going to have to install that," Stilson said. "Then on the outside of the vehicle, we just recently installed the replica main engines...and we need to close out the area around the engines and get the outside of the vehicle looking like it just landed."
The 76-wheeled Orbiter Transport System will be used to haul Atlantis down the road to the Visitor Complex where a new building is being constructed to show off the spacecraft. Since the museum will display the orbiter in a manner depicting the vehicle in orbit, the landing gear won't be deployed.
Super Guppy, with shuttle trainer aboard, touches down at Boeing Field
Jack Broom - Seattle Times
Watching the chained and shrouded space shuttle mock-up being slowly moved toward its permanent home at the Museum of Flight Saturday, astronaut Greg Johnson was thinking how much he'll miss it.
"It's like watching a kid go off to college," said Johnson, a West Seattle native. "You hate to see them go, but you know they're going to do great things."
Johnson, deputy chief of aircraft operations at Houston's Johnson Space Center, knows the Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT) inside and out. It helped prepare him for his 2009 mission aboard the Shuttle Atlantis, as it helped astronauts on each of the shuttle program's 135 missions.
This weekend, Johnson's role was different. He was second in command of NASA's Super Guppy cargo plane that completed a 3-½-day journey from Houston to deliver the crew compartment of the FFT to Seattle.
And even though it was the FFT that triggered the mission, it was — for Saturday, at least — the Super Guppy that stole the show.
As the plane's bulging form came into view in the cloudy sky north of Boeing Field, Johnson's dad and stepmom, Raleigh and Patsy Johnson, of Mukilteo, were among the more than 1,000 people watching outside the Museum of Flight.
"It's EEE-NORM-OUS," said Patsy Johnson, accenting each syllable. She had seen pictures of the Super Guppy and had heard her stepson describe it, but seeing it in person was something else entirely.
Visitors can also see the unwrapped FFT section, which was moved across East Marginal Way by a 60K Tunner, an Air Force cargo loader, to the museum's $12 million Charles Simonyi Space Gallery.
The turboprop Super Guppy is 143 feet long, but what sets it apart is its girth: It can carry objects up to 25 feet in diameter.
It's the last plane of its kind still flying. The Guppy aircraft date back to the early 1960s, when a company called Aero Spacelines converted a few Boeing Stratocruisers into supersize cargo planes — essentially flying aluminum canisters.
"It's cool. I didn't know it would be hollow," said 8-year-old Evan Bissett, of Des Moines, as the Super Guppy's nose section swung away. Evan was slightly disappointed it didn't have a full shuttle inside — just the trainer's 28-foot-long crew compartment.
Evan had a good view along a fence line with his parents, Paul and Molly, and his 5-year-old triplet brothers, Ryan, Kyle and John. The Bissetts are Museum of Flight members and frequent visitors.
"What's great," Molly Bissett said, "is that the boys will remember this and they can tell their kids they saw it unloaded."
In a welcome ceremony, Gov. Chris Gregoire acknowledged Seattle's museum didn't get an actual retired space shuttle. Those went to museums in New York, Los Angeles, Florida and the Washington, D.C., area. Still, Gregoire said she expects acquisition of the trainer to have far-reaching benefits.
"We want the aerospace leaders of tomorrow to be inspired right here," Gregoire said. Former governors Dan Evans and Mike Lowry were also on hand Saturday
The Museum of Flight is paying NASA $2 million to deliver the FFT, which agency administrator Charles Bolden awarded to the museum last year.
Chris Mailander, the museum's director of exhibits, envisions a display completed by the end of September that will have patrons enter near one end of the cargo bay and exit the other, with interpretive material to see and experience along the way.
Access to the trainer's crew compartment, which is more difficult to enter and move around in, is likely to be restricted to occasional guided tours.
NASA space shuttle trainer lands at Seattle's Museum of Flight
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
Seattle's The Museum of Flight on Saturday moved a nose closer to exhibiting a full-size mockup of the space shuttle with the delivery of the front section of a retired astronaut trainer by a large NASA cargo plane.
Thousands of spectators gathered for a "Shuttlefest" in the museum's parking lot to see the Super Guppy aircraft deliver NASA's Full Fuselage Trainer's (FFT) crew compartment from Johnson Space Center in Houston. Before landing at Boeing Field, the bulbous cargo plane circled the Seattle area — including flying by the city's landmark Space Needle — and then made a low pass over The Museum of Flight to the delight of the waiting crowd.
Once the aircraft was on the ground and towed into place, the Guppy's flight crew began the process of swinging open the plane's unique hinged nose to reveal and offload the nose of the mockup shuttle.
"I think I can speak for all Washingtonians, when I say I am honored that such a critical part of our nation's history will be right here in Washington state at The Museum of Flight," Governor Christine Gregoire said during an arrival ceremony staged in front of the Super Guppy.
Staged for Flight
The Full Fuselage Trainer was used for more than 30 years to train every person who flew on the space shuttle. Astronauts used the mockup to learn how to exit the vehicle after emergency landings and to gain familiarity with the lighting inside the orbiter's payload bay.
The crew compartment, which is approximately the same size as the observation deck of the Space Needle, is a mostly wooden but detailed replica of the shuttle's iconic black and white nose section with its interior, dual level cockpit and living area. It was the first and most recognizable of the mockup's three large segments to arrive at the museum.
Smaller parts, at least in relation to the crew cabin, were shipped to the museum earlier, including the FFT's three mock main engines. Still to be delivered by the Super Guppy are the trainer's 60 foot (18 meter) payload bay and the shuttle's aft section that supports the vertical stabilizer, or tail, and twin maneuvering engine pods.
Once all the parts have arrived in Seattle later this summer, the museum plans to reassemble the wingless FFT in its Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, a 15,500 sq. foot exhibition hall that was originally built to display a space-flown shuttle. Unlike the real orbiters' displays however, visitors to The Museum of Flight will be able to go inside and tour the trainer.
No better space on Earth
"Of course we went to bat, we wanted the shuttle. But I got to tell you, we got something much more unique," Gregoire said. "Imagine what the kids will do when they get a chance to come to this museum, see the history and be a part of this trainer. We'll be able to inspire a new generation of those who want to get involved in space."
The Simonyi Gallery was named for the Hungarian-born self-funded astronaut and billionaire software developer after he donated $3 million to the museum's building fund. He also loaned the institution one of the two Russian Soyuz capsules that took him twice on space tourism trips to the International Space Station.
The FFT's crew cabin, which was shrink-wrapped in plastic and padded in foam before being loaded onto the Super Guppy, was secured for its flight atop a metal carrier. The 33,000 pound (73,000 kilograms) total assembly was offloaded from the aircraft using a Tunner, a military cargo loader, which in turn was used to position the cabin for cranes to hoist the mockup onto a wheeled steel base. The shuttle nose was then rolled into the Simonyi Gallery, where the public could view it beginning Sunday.
"As you walk you through our space exhibit, with the addition of the space trainer in the new Simonyi Space Gallery, I think you'll agree that there's no better space on Earth to tell the story of the last 50 years of space exploration," said Michael Hallman, chairman of The Museum of Flight's board of trustees.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Shuffles Operations, Managers
Warren Ferster - Space News
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. of Denver, the world’s biggest space company, is realigning and shuffling senior management in a move billed as the latest in its effort to enhance competitiveness.
The realignment consolidates Lockheed Martin’s military and civil space businesses, while creating a separate commercial operation, the company said in a June 28 press release. The changes are effective July 2, Lockheed Martin spokesman Charles Manor said.
Richard Ambrose will return to Lockheed Martin Space Systems as vice president and deputy, reporting directly to Executive Vice President Joanne Maguire, the company said. Ambrose currently is vice president of Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions-National, but previously managed Space Systems’ Surveillance & Navigation Systems business.
That surveillance and navigation operation will be combined with the company’s Global Communications Systems business to form the Military Space division. Military Space will be led by Mark Valerio, who currently runs Surveillance & Navigation Systems, with Mark Pasquale, currently vice president for the Mobile User Objective System naval satellite program, serving as vice president and deputy.
The Human Space Flight and Sensing and Exploration units will be combined into a Civil Space division led by Jim Crocker, currently the head of sensing and exploration systems. Wanda Sigur, currently vice president of engineering, will become Crocker’s deputy.
Lockheed Martin’s commercial satellite communications business, previously part of Global Communications Systems, will be combined with wind energy programs in a newly created division called Commercial Ventures. Linda Reiners will become vice president of this division, with Charlie Krisch serving as vice president of operations.
John Karas, currently vice president and general manager of Human Space Flight, will become Lockheed Martin Space Systems vice president for business development, replacing Reiners.
Kevin Bilger, currently vice president and general manager of Global Communications Systems, will become vice president of programs and quality.
John Holly, vice president of Missile Defense Systems, will continue to serve in that capacity while also becoming deputy for Strategic & Missile Defense Systems.
Manor said no specific layoffs are planned as part of the realignment. “We can never promise there will not be layoffs,” he said via email June 28. “However, any of a small number of personnel impacted by consolidation of support staffs will have opportunities to explore other positions within Lockheed Martin.”
In a prepared statement, Maguire said the realignment will enable Lockheed Martin Space Systems to “present a more focused voice to our customers; gain efficiencies and enhanced synergies; optimize our business portfolio; and strengthen our competitive posture for new business pursuits.”
Former astronaut Jemison to campaign for Obama on Monday
SpacePolitics.com
The Florida campaign for President Barack Obama announced Sunday that former astronaut Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, will campaign for the president’s reelection on Florida’s Space Coast on Monday.
Jemison, according to the media advisory, will tour Advanced Magnet Lab, a small business in Palm Bay, Florida, that “embodies the importance of President Obama’s space exploration policies for Florida,” in the words of the statement. After the tour, Jemison and Mark Santi, the president of Advanced Magnet Lab, will speak to the media “to discuss how President Obama’s policies ensure that Kennedy Space Center will continue to make history as America’s spaceport during the new chapter in space exploration that our nation is embarking upon.”
While Advanced Magnet Lab may embody “the importance of President Obama’s space exploration policies for Florida,” space appears to be only a small part of its overall portfolio. The company mentions that superconducting magnets offer “many attractive attributes for space exploration”, but its space-related business appears to be limited to a contract with NASA to develop a model for high-power superconducting machines and a partnership with a NASA/JSC researcher on a NIAC grant to study the use of superconducting magnets in radiation shielding systems.
Jemison, as a NASA astronaut, flew on the STS-47 shuttle mission in 1992, her sole spaceflight. Her current activities include serving as the leader of the 100 Year Starship Initiative as part of the team that won the $500,000 grant from DARPA earlier this year to help start the effort.
Space junk diplomacy
Jamie Crawford - CNN
Imagine waking up to a world where your cell phone doesn't work, you can't fill your car's tank using a credit card, and you cannot monitor the day's news or watch your favorite program on television. Sound farfetched? Perhaps - but the U.S. government is leading the charge with other nations to keep one possible catalyst for that scenario from unfolding.
Earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the United States would join the European Union and other nations to develop the "International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities" that would establish an international framework for the responsible use of space. In a statement announcing the initiative, Clinton said the United States was committed to "reversing the troubling trends that are damaging our space environment."
Eleven countries have space-launch capacity and over 60 own and operate more than 1,100 satellites that play an unseen role in our daily lives, or serve military or intelligence-gathering dimensions for the governments who oversee their use.
The problem of space debris, or "space junk" as it is known, has become an increasing impediment to the effective management of outer space, with several near misses in recent years of both commercial and official assets for many space-faring nations.
"Unless we take action soon, if there are a number of other collisions, we could be in a situation 10 or 15 years from now where low Earth orbit is just too difficult to maneuver, which would have a dramatic impact on people's daily lives," Frank Rose, deputy assistant secretary of state for space and defense policy, told CNN's Security Clearance.
"Every aspect of our lives is dependent on space, and how if we were denied that access and those capabilities it would dramatically affect our lives."
For Rose, the amount of debris currently in space - much it either the natural remnants of satellites whose fuel cycle has come to an end or the result of military testing - is a collective disaster waiting to happen.
The Department of Defense is able to track the approximately 22,000 objects in space that are larger than 10 centimeters. But there are hundreds of thousands of pieces, traveling at speeds of 17,500 miles per hour, that are smaller and are not easily tracked - but that could cause problems in space.
A paint chip came close to partially shattering a window on a space shuttle during a mission in the '90s, and earlier this year a piece of debris that came close to hitting the International Space Station forced the four astronauts then on board to shelter in the craft's escape module until the danger passed.
Concerns over space safety were raised even further in 2007 after China, as part of a military test, destroyed a weather satellite that had become disabled. The anti-satellite test created a huge cloud of orbital debris that led many to question whether the long-term sustainability of space use was at "serious risk from space debris and irresponsible actors," as Clinton said earlier this year.
The United States already plays an active role in working to prevent collisions with space debris.
The U.S. Joint Space Operation Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California provides notifications to other governments or commercial satellite operators when a piece of debris gets too close, so the satellite can be moved out of the path of debris.
And China is many times on of the receiving end of those notifications - most recently with its latest manned space mission in June.
"As has been the case for the previous Chinese human space launches, the U.S. government, working through the U.S. Department of State, offered China routine collision avoidance support to identify potential hazards to the Shenzhou spacecraft while in orbit," a U.S. official, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject, told Security Clearance. "This support is routinely provided for all human spaceflight activities (U.S., Russian and Chinese) to compare their location to any of the more than 22,000 known objects in orbit."
With no central governing architecture for its use, outer space is governed by a patchwork of informal industry standards, and certain bilateral agreements between governments that seek to mitigate the possibility of collisions. The United States is in the early stages of working with allies to create a code of conduct that would obligate countries from intentionally creating space debris.
Critics of the proposed code say such a proposed framework unnecessarily ties the hands of the United States in its development of possible future space-based weapons systems.
"This is an unnecessary constraint that we would inflict on ourselves," Dean Cheng with the Heritage Foundation told Security Clearance. "Are you willing to go into a conflict with systems you haven't tested?"
An article by John Bolton and John Yoo, two senior national security officials in the George W. Bush administration, said working with the Europeans on a space code of conduct was nothing more than a dangerous end run around Congress's role of approving international treaties.
"Since there is little our friends across the pond don't want to regulate, it is no surprise that they are now reaching for space," Bolton and Yoo wrote in The New York Times earlier this year. "Taken literally, the European Union code would interfere with our ability to develop anti-ballistic missile systems in space, test anti-satellite weapons and gather intelligence."
"It is important to clarify several points with respect to the code," Rose Gottemoeller, acting under-secretary for arms control and international security, wrote in a response that also appeared in The Times. "It is still under development, we would not subscribe to any code unless it protects and enhances our national security, and the code would not be legally binding."
Administration officials say the multi-lateral negotiations over the code of conduct is still in the very early stages and any final text is still a few years away.
Delays, overruns leave space program in crisis
John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)
In case you wonder sometimes the practical impact of the United States space program's inability to deliver its projects on time and within budget, here is one that hits close to home: We are short on satellites that help forecast hurricanes.
For a decade or so now, scientists have warned about a potential gap in forecasting capability because of the epidemic of delays and cost overruns on satellites to replace aging ones in orbit. The cycle is a vicious one, with cost overruns forcing cancellations and postponements and lagging delivery of spacecraft gobbling up more tax dollars.
The troubling news bubbled up again in Washington this week, with an audit delivered to Congress saying that the best case scenario now is a 17-month gap in some space-based weather forecasting capability, assuming that the agencies and contractors who are working on replacement satellites have finally gotten their act together.
If they have not solved the problems, the Government Accountability Office says the gap could last 4½ years.
To be sure, the gaps have been threatened for years with varying levels of breathlessness by scientists, weather forecasters and budget hawks in Congress and the White House who are growing ever more frustrated by repeated failures to fix this.
And they could be overstated. The estimates are based on the lives of existing spacecraft in orbit. Those often have a capability to serve beyond their engineering design life, though counting on that falls into the “hope is not a plan” category.
Truth be told, the issue here is a team effort on inaction. Congress and the White House have yelled, but not done much in the way of action and cynics might suggest it’s because they don't want to upset the big aerospace contractors who helped make this mess because those same companies donate millions to election campaigns.
Agencies such as NOAA and NASA, who each have some share of responsibility for management of the weather satellite programs, promise year after year that they're making progress on fixing problems. Then a new audit comes out showing they're not, and they promise again that they're trying really hard and making progress. And that story repeats itself for years and years.
Our Washington correspondent, Ledyard King, reported earlier this week that a previous analysis five years ago predicted there would be eight of these satellites in orbit by 2012, tracking a variety of conditions. Only three are in orbit.
King reported that public records indicate the other five included two that failed, one that was canceled and two more that are not even scheduled to launch until next year, at best. He said the auditors project that of 18 missions recommended in the report for launch through the end of the decade, just two are far along enough for managers to project launch dates.
If we are going to save the U.S. space program, someone is going to first have to solve the worsening crisis of confidence in the cost and schedule estimates of the programs. It's one thing to say, “This stuff is hard.” That would explain being a little off, sometimes, but not being way off the mark almost every time.
Congress and the White House are going to become increasingly skeptical of funding space programs if they can't believe that what is promised is likely to be delivered for the taxpayer money they are investing.
A vibrant future
KSC bustling with activity, lofty goals as it marks 50 years
Robert Cabana - Florida Today (Commentary)
(Cabana is director of the Kennedy Space Center and a former astronaut)
Fifty years after NASA established a spaceport to launch men to the moon and probes to explore the far reaches of our solar system, Kennedy Space Center’s mission has not wavered.
This week, our team is celebrating five decades of extraordinary accomplishments and unprecedented abilities. We’re also gearing up for a vibrant future full of processing, testing and launching the most complex machines ever built.
When the spaceport commenced on July 1, 1962, as the Launch Operations Center, its founders knew the complex would be a national resource capable of supporting a wide array of vehicles. During this decade, we’re going back to those roots with the help of the Ground Systems Development and Operations Program by revamping existing infrastructure and facilities to give us the flexibility to host a variety of vehicles as we transition to the launch complex of the future.
As our namesake, President John F. Kennedy, stated many years ago when he challenged the country to send astronauts to the lunar surface, this business is hard. But this team was up to the challenge then, and we will rise above it again as we reach even greater heights during the years ahead.
We have learned so much about exploring new horizons. In our endeavors, we’ve also come to realize there is so much out there for us to discover. I often tell my team Kennedy Space Center is the linchpin to NASA’s new undertakings because we are, and always have been, the nation’s premier launch site. This complex still is a national resource, but it will take the continued support of this community to take bold new steps in space.
It was difficult to say farewell to our beloved space shuttles and the many folks who dedicated their lives to that phenomenal program. I hope each one of you gets the opportunity to visit the shuttle Atlantis once it’s on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. It might help you understand the sheer magnitude of what can be accomplished when you combine tenacity with innovative thinking and the ability to adapt.
The agency recently entrusted us with its newest human spaceflight program, a first for the center. In partnership with the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Commercial Crew Program at KSC is spurring the innovation and development of commercial spacecraft and launch vehicles to transport our astronauts to and from low Earth orbit and the International Space Station.
We’ll also be the starting point for NASA’s Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, which will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Our Launch Services Program is as busy as ever, too, gearing up for at least 25 missions to study places, such as Mars, Pluto and our sun.
It’s hard to convey everything our center is working on right now, but rest assured we are busier than ever. Our lights are still on, our doors are still open and the list of extraordinary things we plan to accomplish in this lifetime is long.
END
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