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Monday, July 23, 2012
7/23/12 news
Monday, July 23, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. Sign the Banner - Wish Morpheus, ALHAT Well at Building 3 Today
2. Not Too Late to Find Out 'Why It's SOOOOOO Hard to Get to Mars'
3. ISS Update: Science Aboard Kounotori3 - Catch the Video
4. Job Opportunites
5. This Week at Starport - Celebrating 50 Years of Great Services
6. Confined Space Entry 8:30 a.m. and Lockout/Tagout 1 p.m., Sept 7, Building 226N, Room 174
7. General Industry Safety & Health - Aug.13 to 17, Gilruth Longhorn Room
8. Physical & Financial Fitness - The Best of Both
9. OSHA 30-hour Construction Safety & Health - Sept 24 to 28, Building 226N, Room 174
10. Financial Education Seminars
11. JSC Career Exploration Program - Annual Awards and Recognition Ceremony
12. JSC Weight Watchers At Work Open House July 30
13. An Unforgettable Experience Can Be Yours
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ Words are vehicles that can transport us from the drab sands to the dazzling stars. ”
-- M. Robert Syme
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1. Sign the Banner - Wish Morpheus, ALHAT Well at Building 3 Today
Sign the good luck banner for Morpheus/ALHAT team and enjoy barbecue! Yes, barbecue! We actually have a barbecue special. What else would it be? Blackened chicken? Red hot chili? Maybe KSC should prepare for a little Cajun gator special.
It's all in good fun. It really is. Barbecue! It's JSC's little inside joke.
The team has already proven they can take the heat. They got a good laugh when we told them Starport was going to have a barbecue special. So come on out, and help send them off to KSC for more testing.
The lunchtime event will feature the Morpheus and ALHAT team from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m today, July 23, near the Building 3 Cafe. The team and hardware will be on hand by the southwest corner of Building 3 to discuss the upcoming testing.
Don't forget to sign the banner. It will hang at KSC and we DON'T want them to think we don't support OUR TEAM.
In case of rain or inclement weather, the vehicle will not be on display, however Morpheus team members will be available for questions and the banner will be available to sign inside Building 3.
Read more about the planned KSC testing for Morpheus and ALHAT here:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/home/morpheus_feature.html
For more information about the Morpheus lander, visit http://MorpheusLander.jsc.nasa.gov
JSC External Relations, Office of Communication and Public Affairs x35111
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2. Not Too Late to Find Out 'Why It's SOOOOOO Hard to Get to Mars'
Astronaut, physicist and, well, rocket scientist Stan Love presented 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. Love's lecture earlier this month in the Building 30 Auditorium was so popular all available seats filled up with people still waiting in line before the presentation even started. If you were lucky enough to catch it then, share it with your friends and family. If not, you don't have to wait any longer. You can view it online now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fturU0u5KJo&list=UUmheCYT4HlbFi943lpH009Q&feat...
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
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3. ISS Update: Science Aboard Kounotori3 - Catch the Video
See an interview with Pete Hasbrook, associate program scientist, about the experiments traveling to the International Space Station aboard the H-II Transfer Vehicle-3, or HTV3.
To watch the interview, visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=148832691
When the Japan Exploration Agency's HTV3 launches aboard an H-IIB launch vehicle from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, 20 percent of its 3.5 tons of cargo will be experiment-related equipment. The hardware ranges from a remote-controlled Earth-observation camera for environmental research to an aquarium system to allow Japanese scientists to study fish.
HTV3, also known as Kounotori3, or "white stork," is also carrying two student-designed experiments selected from thousands of proposals submitted through YouTube. Expedition 32 Flight Engineer Suni Williams, who announced the winners back in December, will perform the experiments aboard the station.
Not all the cargo aboard HTV3 will be carried inside its pressurized logistics carrier. The Japanese cargo craft also has an exposed pallet for items that never come inside the station. One of those items, the Space Communications and Navigation (SCAN) Testbed, will be removed from the exposed pallet by the station's robotic arm and installed on the exterior of the station where it will demonstrate advanced radio technology.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
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4. Job Opportunites
Where do I find job opportunities?
Both internal Competitive Placement Plan (CPPs) and external JSC job announcements are posted on both the HR Portal and USAJOBS website. Through the HR portal, you can view summaries of all the agency jobs that are currently open at https://hr.nasa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/employees_home/239/job_opportu... To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop down menu and select Johnson Space Center. The "Apply Online" link in the top right hand corner, will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply on-line. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies, please call your Human Resources Representative.
Lisa Pesak x30476
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5. This Week at Starport - Celebrating 50 Years of Great Services
Starport is celebrating 50 years of NASA Exchange service. Join us for Buy One, Get One at 50 percent off on select merchandise at the Building 3 and 11 Gift Shops. Now through Friday.
Tuesday is our birthday, and cake is on us! Free birthday cake tomorrow at the Building 3 and 11 Cafes and the Gilruth Center during lunchtime. Get it while it lasts!
Be sure to stop by the Gilruth Center on Thursday from 3 to 5 p.m. for our open house event. Enjoy free Café and vendor samples, free champagne and other beverages, free Texan training camp tickets, door prizes and Gift Shop offerings! Plus we will be unveiling our new mind/body studio with a ribbon cutting ceremony.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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6. Confined Space Entry 8:30 a.m. and Lockout/Tagout 1 p.m., Sept 7, Building 226N, Room 174
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0806,Confined Space Entry - The purpose of this course is to provide employees with the standards, procedures and requirements necessary for safe entry to and operations in confined spaces. OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.146, "Confined Space," is the basis for this course. The course covers the hazards of working in or around a confined space and the precautions you should take to control these hazards. A comprehensive test will be offered at the end of the class.
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0814,Lockout/Tagout - The purpose of this course is to provide employees with the standards, procedures and requirements necessary for the control of hazardous energy through lockout and tagout of energy-isolating devices. OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.147, "The Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout)," is the basis for this course. A comprehensive test will be offered at the end of the class.
Registration in SATERN is required.
Shirley Robinson x41284
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7. General Industry Safety & Health - Aug.13 to 17, Gilruth Longhorn Room
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-501: This course is intended to provide instruction on general industry safety and health topics at the introductory level. Examples of topics include an introduction to OSHA standards, lockout/tagout, confined space electrical safety and hazard communications. CFR 1910, Occupational Safety and Health Standards, is the primary source document for this course. NASA Headquarters-level safety documentation and NASA mishap examples and experience have been integrated into the OSHA-provided course material. A 30-hour General OSHA card will be issued. There will be a final exam associated with this course that must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit.
Registration in SATERN is required.
Shirley Robinson x41284
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8. Physical & Financial Fitness - The Best of Both
With Exploration Wellness there's more than one way to get fit. Join us for a fitness workout in two ways this week; physical and financial. Learn how to match athletic footwear to your exercise needs and pump up your financial fitness!
Choosing Athletic Footwear, Tue at 11am, B29/115
Running and walking appears simple enough, after all , you have been doing these activities since you were a toddler. With innovations like rocker bottoms, pump-up tongues, and eva midsoles, knowing which pair to buy can seem like an advanced degree may be in order. Choose the wrong shoes and you could end up with a bad case of shin splints or a case of plantar fasciitis. Join us to learn some tips on purchasing the right footwear for your feet.
Tue-Thu: Financial Classes
Retire with Confidence, Levels I & II (NEW)
Estate Planning, Insurance
Maximize Investments
See link for details.
Jessica Vos x41383 http://www.explorationwellness.com/rd/AE107.aspx?July_Signup.pdf
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9. OSHA 30-hour Construction Safety & Health - Sept 24 to 28, Building 226N, Room 174
This four-and-a-half-day course assists the student in effectively conducting construction inspections and oversight. Participants are provided with basic information about construction standards, construction hazards and control, health hazards, trenching and excavation operations, cranes, electrical hazards in construction, steel erection, ladders, scaffolds, concrete and heavy construction equipment. This course is based on the OSHA Training Institute Construction Safety course and is approved for award of the OSHA course completion card. Course may include a field exercise at a construction site if feasible. A 30-hour Construction OSHA card will be issued. There will be a final exam associated with this course that must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit.
Registration in SATERN is required.
Shirley Robinson x41284
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10. Financial Education Seminars
JSC Federal Credit Union's free Financial Education Seminars give you the opportunity to learn everything you should know about two very important topics: homebuying and credit. Each seminar is jam-packed with cohesive, up-to-date information that will help get you and your family on the right track.
Thursday, July 26, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Discovery Room at the Gilruth Center - First Time Homebuyer Seminar - this informative seminar includes the basics on selecting your home, mortgage and realtor. You'll also learn mortgage and real estate 'lingo,' how to choose which mortgage is right for you, plus so much more!
RSVP to bday@jscfcu.org to attend. More information: https://www.jscfcu.org/news/2012-07-26-homebuying-seminar.php
shelly haralson x39168
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11. JSC Career Exploration Program - Annual Awards and Recognition Ceremony
The annual Awards and Recognition Ceremony for JSC's year-long Career Exploration Program (CEP) Interns is Tuesday, July 24, in the Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Please join us for a meet-and-greet at 8:30 a.m.; the program begins promptly at 9 a.m. Interns and mentors are recognized for outstanding achievements. The CEP seeks to meet NASA's mission by developing the critical pool of talented and diverse individuals who will make up the future leaders of NASA's workforce. By providing students with invaluable work experience, project-based tasks in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and business; CEP serves as a mechanism for students to complete their education and embark on a successful career in the space industry. Current students, CEP alumni, mentors, co-workers, teachers, family and friends are invited to attend.
Kayla Lechler x35936 http://www.cep.usra.edu
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12. JSC Weight Watchers At Work Open House July 30
In an effort to keep our Monthly Pass attendance above the required minimums, we will be hosting an Open House at our July 30 meeting. This is a free Information Meeting to reach out to any potential new members who might like to join our At Work Meeting. It is an opportunity to learn more about how the Weight Watchers at Work program can benefit your life. Refreshments will be served!
What: JSC WW @ Work Open House
Date: Monday, July 30
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Building 45, Room 551
Ongoing weekly meetings held every Monday with weigh-in from 11:30 a.m. to noon, meeting from noon to 12:30 pm. Sign up, and purchase your Monthly Pass through the JSC Portal at link below. JSC Company ID 24156, Passcode WW24156.
Don't wait, join today!
Julie Kliesing x31540 https://wellness.weightwatchers.com
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13. An Unforgettable Experience Can Be Yours
Remember as a child how common it was to dream big? You still can, only you don't have to suit up and fly to the moon to do it.
There is still time to enter the 10-question Stay Sharp, Stay Safe campaign contest, and if you're the lucky winner of the drawing from correct answers, you will have the rare opportunity to enjoy a JSC space adventure like none other. Best of all, you can pick the experience you want from several exciting choices.
If you haven't already, just visit the link below to enter the contest. For a quick preview of what you could win, visit https://powerofone.jsc.nasa.gov/experience/?awardLevel=GOLD
Enter today. If you win, you will have the memory of a lifetime. And, your grandkids will want to hear it over and over and over and ...
Stacey Menard x45660 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/safety/WhatsNew/AAC/
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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:
· 10 am Central (11 EDT) – LANDSAT AT 40: The Long View of Earth from Space
· 8:15 pm Central (9:15 EDT) – 47 Progress redocking coverage begins
· 8:57 pm Central (9:57 EDT) – 47P redocks to Russian segment’s Pirs docking compartment
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...
Science aboard Kounotori – the “White Stork”
Pete Hasbrook, associate program scientist, talks about the experiments traveling to the ISS aboard the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV3)
Human Spaceflight News
Monday, July 23, 2012
Kounotori 3 – the “White Stork” – rises from its launch pad on a H-IIB rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Russia Looks To Cut Soyuz, Progress Trip Times To ISS
Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily
Russia is looking at a possible significant reduction in Soyuz crew transport flight times to the International Space Station — a 6-hr. launch to docking as opposed to the current 50-hr. transit. Late on July 17, the European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle boosted the station’s mean altitude by just more than 3 mi., setting up an Aug. 1 trial run of the prospect with an unpiloted 48 Progress mission. If the Progress test is successful, a Soyuz crew may attempt the accelerated trajectory next year.
Glimmers of growth on Florida's Space Coast after shuttle shutdown
Irene Klotz - Reuters
Shuttles Bar & Grill, a once-popular roadside diner a few miles south of the Kennedy Space Center, is shuttered, and a "For Rent" sign is taped to the window of a bagel shop that used to serve space center workers an early-bird breakfast. But a year after NASA ended the space shuttle program, which crippled communities around Cape Canaveral that had grown dependent on government contracts, private spaceflight and other ventures are starting to fill the void.
Enterprises sprout as the economic effects of the shuttle wane
Patrick Peterson – Florida Today
Astronauts and race drivers share a need for fire-resistant clothing that includes a cooling system. So when a Brevard company needed cooling vests for NASCAR drivers, it turned to Deborah Coombs and Kimberly Phillips. The sisters were familiar with the desired material, CarbonX, a soft, fireproof fabric they knew from when they designed and stitched intricate covers, heat-shields and pads for NASA’s space shuttles. Now they were putting their skills toward a CarbonX vest with a system of plastic tubes that circulates cool water to refresh race drivers. “Because of their experience at NASA, I knew they could sew exotic material,” said Jim Cheal, president and founder of Action Circuit Productions Inc. in Indialantic.
Follow the money in the commercial space race
Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log
NASA is closing out one chapter in the multibillion-dollar effort to create new fleets of spaceships, and getting ready to open the next one. Sometime in the next month or two, the space agency will pick up to three teams of companies to receive hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding for their spaceship development efforts. That's a lot of money — but it's important to keep all those expenditures in perspective.
Japanese cargo ship heads for space station
William Harwood – CBS News
An unmanned Japanese rocket carrying more than five tons of space station hardware, scientific gear and crew supplies vaulted away from its scenic seaside launch stand in southern Japan Friday (U.S. time) and set off on weeklong flight to the International Space Station. The powerful H-2B rocket's two hydrogen-fueled first stage engines roared to life as the countdown ticked to zero, followed a few seconds later by ignition of four strap-on solid-fuel boosters at 10:06:18 p.m. EDT (11:06 a.m. Saturday local time), roughly the moment Earth's rotation carried the launch pad into the plane of the space station's orbit. Trailing a plume of fire and a billowing cloud of exhaust, the 186-foot-tall H-2B smoothly climbed skyward through rainy weather and quickly disappeared into a deck of low clouds, arcing out over the Pacific Ocean on a southeasterly trajectory tilted 51.6 degrees to the equator.
Japan Launches Robotic Supply Ship to Space Station
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
An unmanned Japanese spaceship soared into orbit from an island launch site Friday, beginning a weeklong journey to deliver vital supplies to astronauts living on the International Space Station. The H-2 Transfer Vehicle-3 (HTV-3), nicknamed Kounotori 3 (Japanese for "White Stork 3"), is delivering student science projects, a new camera system, as well as food and spare equipment. It is due to arrive at the orbiting laboratory in about a week. Kounotori 3 lifted off atop a Japanese H-2B rocket at 10:06 p.m. EDT (0206 GMT Saturday, or 11:06 a.m. Japan time Saturday) from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. It is the third of its kind to fly, following the flights of HTVs 1 and 2 in September 2009 and January 2011, respectively.
FAA Commercial Space Office Navigates Legal Maze To Start Safety Dialog
Dan Leone - Space News
When suborbital adventure line Virgin Galactic launches the world’s first commercial passenger-carrying spaceflight service next year, the U.S. government will still be barred from policing most of the company’s activities. But federal safety officials here, eager to learn more about the private space companies they will soon regulate, have decided to open talks with industry in August. “We’re going to be setting up monthly public telephone calls to ask [industry] about certain topics,” Pam Melroy, former NASA astronaut and senior technical adviser in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), said in a July 16 interview. “We do plan on having these once a month for the foreseeable future. We really want maximum participation, and we want technical people to really help us understand what the thinking is out there.” The first of these public calls is slated for the first week of August, Melroy said.
What Does Space Smell Like?
Natalie Wolchover - Life's Little Mysteries
Astronauts who have gone on space walks consistently speak of space's extraordinarily peculiar odor. They can't smell it while they're actually bobbing in it, because the interiors of their space suits just smell plastic-y. But upon stepping back into the space station and removing their helmets, they get a strong, distinctive whiff of the final frontier. The odor clings to their suit, helmet, gloves and tools. Fugitives from the near-vacuum — probably atomic oxygen, among other things — the clinging particles have the acrid aroma of seared steak, hot metal and welding fumes. Steven Pearce, a chemist hired by NASA to recreate the space odor on Earth for astronaut training purposes, said the metallic aspect of the scent may come from high-energy vibrations of ions.
Jefferson neuroscientist helping astronauts sleep better
Tom Avril - Philadelphia Inquirer
A new sunrise takes place every 90 minutes. Docking maneuvers sometimes occur at odd hours. Then there's that feeling of apparent weightlessness. No wonder astronauts aboard the International Space Station can have a hard time getting a good night's sleep. Now, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University is among those working on a solution: light.
Get a Look at NASA's Next Spacesuit
Mary Beth Griggs - Popular Mechanics
NASA may not know whether its next destination is an asteroid, Mars, or the moon, but the agency is definitely planning for some kind of journey—and its engineers need to figure out what to pack. "It's like you're trying to go on vacation, but you don't know if you're going to Antarctica, Miami, or Buckingham Palace," says Amy Ross, a spacesuit engineer at Johnson Space Center. The Z-1 prototype—currently being tested in a vacuum chamber—has been designed for versatility: to explore alien surfaces, float outside a space station, and even weather the radiation of deep space.
NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center working on next generation space suit
Mark Whittington - Examiner.com
With the space shuttle program over and NASA’s space exploration program still a work in progress, engineers at Houston’s Johnson Spaceflight Center are working on the next generation space suit, designed for astronauts exploring alien worlds. The problem is that NASA is not quite sure where astronauts will be going. The official line is that an asteroid will be the next destination, followed by Mars. But a return to the moon is still being discussed in certain quarters. So space suit designers are being asked to be “flexible.”
NASA sends 'Portal 2's' Wheatley into space
Todd Kenreck - NBCNews.com
Seems the video game "Portal 2" has a few fans at NASA. According to the official Portal blog this Friday an “anonymous tech at NASA" sent them an image of "Portal 2's" infamous and bungling orb shaped A.I. Wheatley that was laser-engraved onto a panel on the Japanese HTV-3 resupply craft. HTV-3 was launched to the International Space Station on Friday night. "Portal 2" was made by game developer Valve, which said "we weren't kidding" about the need for anonymity. "NASA in no way officially endorses secretly laser-engraving characters from Portal onto their spacecraft," Valve said.
Shuttle trainer heading to Dayton
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
While NASA's space shuttle Full-Fuselage Trainer is settling into its new home at Seattle's Museum of Flight, a smaller trainer has started making its way to Dayton, Ohio. Like the Museum of Flight, Dayton's National Museum of the U.S. Air Force put in a bid to get one of two retiring space shuttle orbiters -- Endeavour or Atlantis -- or the atmospheric test shuttle Enterprise. Those went instead to the California Science Center, in Los Angeles, Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, and Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, in New York. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C., gave up Enterprise in return for the shuttle orbiter Discovery.
Campers take off for outer space
Participants go under water to build station
Mel Flanagan - Toledo Blade
Amidst a crowd of spectators, seven team members carefully constructed an international space station in Toledo on Friday afternoon. The location was an indoor pool on Collingwood Boulevard, and the team members were seven local youths participating in the International Space Station Camp, one of eight summer programs offered by the Challenger Learning Center in Oregon. The week-long camp taught the children the purpose and history of the International Space Station, as well as how to snorkel. The camp culminated in building a 22-foot-by-50-foot-by-12-foot model of the space station underwater.
Neil Armstrong's Longest Landing
Amy Shira Teitel - Discovery News
Since landing on the moon on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong has emphasized that his career extends beyond the Apollo 11 mission. Before he was an astronaut he was a pilot. Not only did he fly, he flew arguably the coolest aircraft of all time, the X-15, on its longest recorded flight. In the 1950s, it looked like aircraft were going to keep flying higher and faster until one went so high and so fast that it entered space. The spaceplane was an attractive concept, in large part because it took advantage of the pilot’s skill. But spaceflight, in a spaceplane or some other vehicle, was largely unknown in the 1950s. Could an aircraft-inspired spaceplane sustain the heat and structural stresses associated with spaceflight? And could the pilot control the vehicle throughout the flight? The X-15 was designed to answer those questions, and Armstrong flew it to the fringes of space and glided to a landing on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base.
What was Posey thinking?
Congressman explains position on space, budget negotiations & Medicare
Matt Reed - Florida Today (Commentary)
You might not like all of Congressman Bill Posey’s votes or positions. But it’s worth knowing his reasons for them. Posey, R-Rockledge, voted to speed NASA’s selection of private contractors to fly astronauts and cargo into orbit — before we see what all the competitors can do. He says he won’t vote to allow any increase in tax revenue unless the federal government eliminates waste (in other words, never). And he voted for a budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan that would turn Medicare into a program that subsidizes future seniors’ private insurance purchases.
From the Earth to the Moon, and then beyond
Part 5: Could the International Space Station go on a lunar trip? It just might work
Jay Barbree - NBC News (Commentary)
(In a five-part series, Barbree lays out a vision of spaceflight in the 20-teens for the 2012 presidential candidates.)
There’s a house in Earth orbit. It’s called the International Space Station with five bedrooms, two baths, a gym and a 360-degree bay window. It got there thanks to more than a decade of construction flights by America’s space shuttles and Russia’s big Proton rockets and Soyuz spacecraft. It cost $100 billion, and it’s owned by 15 nations. A crew of six live aboard, taking care of maintenance chores, doing science as best they can — passing the days on a fixed orbital track inclined 51.6 degrees with the equator, at heights about 250 miles.
Curious Kazakh gopher not curious about nearby spaceships
Robert Krulwich - National Public Radio's Krulwich Wonders
How he got to live there, I don't know. For one thing he's a gopher, not a cosmonaut or a rocket engineer, just an ordinary Kazhakh rodent who dug himself a hole. The hole, however, is smack in the middle of a rocket launching facility, one of the most active spaceports in the world, called the Cosmodrome. Located in Baikonur, in Kazhakhstan, this is the place that launched Sputnik in 1957, sent Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, services Soyuz with multiple launches ever year. It's busy, noisy and it's dangerous — one would think.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Russia Looks To Cut Soyuz, Progress Trip Times To ISS
Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily
Russia is looking at a possible significant reduction in Soyuz crew transport flight times to the International Space Station — a 6-hr. launch to docking as opposed to the current 50-hr. transit.
Late on July 17, the European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle boosted the station’s mean altitude by just more than 3 mi., setting up an Aug. 1 trial run of the prospect with an unpiloted 48 Progress mission.
If the Progress test is successful, a Soyuz crew may attempt the accelerated trajectory next year.
The two-plus-day trip of the Soyuz with its three-member crews currently requires a regular “barbecue” roll of the tightly quartered transport, alternating exposure of the capsule’s exterior between sunlight and shadow for thermal control.
“That is not the most comfortable thing for the crews,” said Kelly Humphries, a NASA space station program spokesman. “One possible solution is to condense the rendezvous timeline down to four orbits instead of the normal 34. This test with the Progress is going to use an unmanned vehicle to test the trajectory they would use for that.”
ESA’s Edoardo Amaldi Automated Transfer Vehicle, which has been docked at the 252-mi.-high station’s aft docking port since late March, fired its thrusters for nearly 20 min. late Tuesday to set up an Aug. 1 Progress test run.
If Russia proceeds with the test, the automated freighter could lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Aug. 1 at 3:35 p.m. EDT, followed by a rendezvous and docking at 9:24 p.m. EDT the same day. Under the normal resupply strategy, the same mission would launch on Aug. 1 at 3:38 p.m., then rendezvous and dock on Aug. 3 at 6:14 p.m.
Meanwhile, the Progress 47 capsule currently docked to the station’s Russian Pirs module is scheduled to depart the orbital outpost on July 22 for a daylong test of a new KURS automated rendezvous antenna configuration, then redock late on July 23. Progress 47 would depart the station for good on July 30.
Japan’s third unpiloted HTV-II resupply craft awaits a liftoff late July 20 from the Tanegashima Launch Center and a seven-day trip to the space station with 4.6 metric tons of cargo.
Glimmers of growth on Florida's Space Coast after shuttle shutdown
Irene Klotz - Reuters
Shuttles Bar & Grill, a once-popular roadside diner a few miles south of the Kennedy Space Center, is shuttered, and a "For Rent" sign is taped to the window of a bagel shop that used to serve space center workers an early-bird breakfast.
But a year after NASA ended the space shuttle program, which crippled communities around Cape Canaveral that had grown dependent on government contracts, private spaceflight and other ventures are starting to fill the void.
Titusville, Fla., which bore the brunt of the layoff tsunami following the shuttles' retirement, this month landed Utah-based Rocket Crafters, which plans one day to fly supersonic passenger space planes around the globe.
"Bit by bit, we're seeing companies that are technical in nature that are taking advantage of the high-tech workforce," said Marcia Gaedcke, president of the Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce.
Rocket Crafters is developing a hybrid fuel rocket engine with a 7,000-mile (11,265-kilometer) range. Its space planes would take off and land horizontally, like conventional airplanes, but travel above the atmosphere in suborbital space.
"The idea is to go from Titusville to anywhere in the world at about one-sixth of the normal aircraft time," said Michael Powell, who oversees the Titusville airport where Rocket Crafters plans to build a manufacturing plant and operations center.
The company expects to hire 500 to 1,000 employees. That prospect of employment growth is a sign of the times as Kennedy Space Center repositions itself to support a variety of government, commercial and scientific programs after three decades of shuttle operations.
NASA currently employs 8,500 contractors and civil servants at Kennedy Space Center, which is being revamped for launching the agency's new heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and Orion exploration spaceship.
The system is intended to fly astronauts to asteroids, the moon and other destinations beyond the International Space Station, which orbits about 240 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.
'Crater' in the economy
A decade ago, NASA's workforce was nearly twice its current size. But as the shuttle program wound down, about 7,400 contractors were shown the door.
That opened what Sean Snaith, an economist and director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Economic Competitiveness, described as "a pretty big crater" in the region's economy.
"In the beginning, there were numerous jobs for mechanical engineers, but the problem I'm running into is that they're looking for people who have experience in computer-aided design in 3-D, and I don't have that background," said Irwin Minsky, 61, who was laid off by shuttle prime contractor United Space Alliance in April 2011.
Minsky, who holds a master's degree in mechanical engineering, said he had not had any job interviews, but was considering taking classes to update his skills.
Ed Avery, a former launch pad technician and quality inspector, is not waiting any longer. The 51-year-old is recruiting former colleagues to staff work-at-home call centers, a job he says pays between $8.50 and $19 an hour.
That is less than what Avery earned at the space center, but it beats most wages in Titusville and elsewhere in the so-called Space Coast region, where a close association with the U.S. space program is reflected in the 3-2-1 telephone area code.
Brevard Workforce, the county's training and job placement agency, reports that about half of the 5,700 workers it tracks have found jobs, although about 900 had to relocate.
Housing crisis, too
NASA's layoffs coincided with the worst housing crisis to hit central Florida since the shutdown of the Apollo U.S. space program 40 years ago.
But home sales and median prices have been picking up this year, and Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer, which opened its first U.S. assembly plant in Melbourne, Florida, last year, recently announced a 67,000-square-foot (6,225-square-meter) expansion to house an engineering and technology research center.
The company expects to add 200 engineers, with average annual salaries of $70,000, beginning this month.
"Because there is so much in the way of aviation and aircraft industry in Brevard County, we're able to select the right kind of people that will work for Embraer. There's a lot of talent in this area," said Phil Krull, Embraer's managing director in Melbourne.
Overall, the county's unemployment rate is 9 percent, down from a peak of 11.7 percent in August 2011, following the shuttle program layoffs, according to Snaith. The national jobless rate is 8.2 percent.
Political backlash
Much of the local backlash for canceling the shuttle program fell on President Barack Obama, even though the decision to retire the shuttles was made before the Democrat took office in January 2009.
Since space is an integral part of central Florida's economy, that same backlash threatens to hurt Obama in his campaign for re-election on Nov. 6 against Republican rival Mitt Romney.
The so-called I-4 corridor region, spanning the interstate highway that cuts across Florida's midsection, is seen as home to many undecided voters in the battleground state.
"If you're the incumbent when it hits the fan, you take the blame," said Dale Ketcham, a Florida space policy analyst who works with several business development and research agencies. "The I-4 corridor is the most important piece of political real estate in the country."
Enterprises sprout as the economic effects of the shuttle wane
Patrick Peterson – Florida Today
Astronauts and race drivers share a need for fire-resistant clothing that includes a cooling system.
So when a Brevard company needed cooling vests for NASCAR drivers, it turned to Deborah Coombs and Kimberly Phillips. The sisters were familiar with the desired material, CarbonX, a soft, fireproof fabric they knew from when they designed and stitched intricate covers, heat-shields and pads for NASA’s space shuttles.
Now they were putting their skills toward a CarbonX vest with a system of plastic tubes that circulates cool water to refresh race drivers.
“Because of their experience at NASA, I knew they could sew exotic material,” said Jim Cheal, president and founder of Action Circuit Productions Inc. in Indialantic.
Though the fluctuating unemployment rate has been among the focal points of Brevard’s post-shuttle life, which officially began on July 21, 2011, with the final touchdown of Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center, there are a number of signs that, even in the shadow of the spaceport, an economic rebirth is under way.
Businesses are re-inhabiting real estate near the space center. Former shuttle workers are starting the businesses they’ve dreamed of, putting their skills to work in new ways. And entrepreneurs with no connection to the space program are moving forward, undeterred by what has come before and optimistic about the future.
There’s Jim Fletcher, an engineer who is designing a portable solar array that can be used in emergencies. And Scott Simon, a Brevard Community College student who, with 13 employees, is opening a company built around the concept of a financial management system —including a cash register — that operates via the Internet.
Even Space Shirts, the long-standing T-shirt business on Courtenay Parkway, pivoted. The company now prints and sells a line of shirts celebrating space history and shuttle missions past.
A year ago, this was hard to imagine.
When shuttle Atlantis landed, the final batch of more than 8,000 workers at KSC turned in their identification badges. They joined thousands of other unemployed Brevard County residents as the end of the shuttle program, the economic recession and the housing crisis conspired to punish the region’s economy.
The numbers on the Space Coast were gloomy before and after that landing last July. Unemployment approached 12 percent. Thousands of workers fell from the labor pool. Job creation stalled. Foreclosures surged.
Now, those numbers tell a different story. More than half of 5,700 unemployed space industry workers contacted by Brevard Workforce have found jobs, although about a quarter of them left Brevard for their new positions.
In the first five months of 2012, nearly 8,200 jobs have been created in Brevard. Additionally, the unemployment rate has fallen 1.5 percentage points and, after sticking in double digits for 33 consecutive months, fell to under 10 percent in March and has remained there.
Businesses are expanding, said Merritt Island Realtor Jean Starkey, who believes a recovery is finally under way.
“We had to get through this horrible time, which I do think is ending,” she said.
ImprovementDuring the year since the last shuttle flight, Brevard has seen more good economic news than bad.
The Brazilian jetmaker Embraer S.A. is busy and considering further expansion of its aircraft manufacturing operations in Melbourne. Harris Corp., the county’s largest employer, began construction of a $100 million engineering complex in Palm Bay. Premier yacht builder Bertram Yacht moved its manufacturing operation to Merritt Island. And in Titusville, Rocket Crafters just announced an ambitious project for suborbital travel that might some day employ hundreds and usher in a new kind of aerospace renaissance.
At KSC, NASA is continuing development of a human space capsule, Orion. Additionally, SpaceX launched the first private spaceship from KSC to the International Space Station. And United Launch Alliance has maintained a steady rate of launches of military, science and intelligence missions for the U.S. government.
“Another year and we’ll be pulling out of this thing almost in its entirety,” said Space Florida President Frank DiBello, who leads the agency through which the state works to retain and grow its aerospace industry. “There clearly is a sense of momentum out there in the market, and we are winning a bunch of new companies to the area.”
DiBello estimates up to 8,600 space-related workers left KSC in the past few years. About one-third were old enough to retire. But another third returned to work as new companies came to town.
And high-tech companies, attracted in part by the availability of the aerospace work force, remain interested in coming to Brevard, he said.
“This area will emerge healthy and diversified,” DiBello said.
Attractive potentialThat work force and its potential can be appealing to home-grown businesspeople, too, who are opting to stick around as they develop companies. That’s another testament to the waning impact of the shuttle conclusion.
Scott Simon is a hard-working 21-year-old who has set up a cloud-based financial management system for businesses at a North Courtenay Parkway office. Space Coast IT Solutions helps businesses manage their finances by storing the information on servers in a secure location, rather than on personal computers in their locations. It also provides information technology expertise, networking and website building services.
The company’s 13 employees frequently work around the clock.
Simon is not grieving the end of the shuttle program. He’s planning for the next big thing.
“It’s going to grow different types of businesses,” he said.
Simon has found that because of the space program, Brevard has many experienced engineers, technicians and other highly skilled workers. Those are the people, he believes, who are going to create a new economy.
Count Jim Fletcher among that group.
Fletcher, 64, by adapting some of the technology he worked with at Kennedy Space Center, plans to bring a product into the commercial marketplace. The engineer who worked with United Space Alliance hopes to develop, manufacture and market a truss that stores an array of solar panels and opens up quickly to power an emergency operations center.
The deployable truss resembles those in operation on the International Space Station.
“It’s designed more for industrial or commercial use,” he said from his North Courtenay Parkway facility. “It could be used for solar farms. They’d just roll them out and open them up.”
Fletcher plans to improve the design to increase the electricity output and reduce the cost, so the device can be sold at a profit.
“That’s the kicker,” he said. “I’m spending my own money so far. But I didn’t want to leave the area, and I didn’t want to work for anyone else. So, it was a fairly easy decision for me.”
Simon, the young entrepreneur, believes there are more Jim Fletchers out there, and that they will help lead Brevard’s turnaround.
“There are a lot very qualified professionals,” he said. “I think it’s only going to be rough for a little bit as the area transitions from one major source of income to a bunch of others.”
No surpriseThe end of the shuttle program didn’t catch Space Shirts owners Gerry and Brenda Mulberry by surprise.
“We started the business 29 years ago, in case my husband, Gerry, got laid off, which he did,” Brenda Mulberry said.
An engineer at KSC, Mulberry is, as his wife said, “a quality engineer for T-shirt machinery now and doing quite well. I’m glad to have him.”
When Mulberry went to work as an engineer at KSC, the couple’s T-shirt company produced souvenirs of shuttle launches. The shop flourished.
Now, reflecting what’s happened, the Courtenay Parkway shop prints shirts with historic images.
Space Shirts’ best-selling T-shirt these days bears the image of three historic rockets and a shuttle, a view of the space program’s illustrious history. But, with eight workers, the company employs half as many people as at its peak.
The Mulberrys have twins, age 17, and plan to remain in Cocoa Beach. Brenda is working to expand sales to local businesses that might find T-shirts an effective form of advertisement.
“We’re working one shift, and working like crazy,” she said.
Follow the money in the commercial space race
Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log
NASA is closing out one chapter in the multibillion-dollar effort to create new fleets of spaceships, and getting ready to open the next one. Sometime in the next month or two, the space agency will pick up to three teams of companies to receive hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding for their spaceship development efforts. That's a lot of money — but it's important to keep all those expenditures in perspective.
As an accompaniment to this week's series of commentaries about the commercial space race, here's a guide to what's gone on before and what's coming up:
Cargo transports
NASA's push to commercialize transportation services to low Earth orbit began in 2006, a couple of years after the White House decided that the space shuttle fleet had to be retired, when SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler were awarded almost half a billion dollars to support the development of robotic cargo spacecraft capable of resupplying the space station in the post-shuttle era. "If it doesn't work, I've frankly made the wrong bet," said Mike Griffin, who was NASA's administrator at the time.
In Rocketplane Kistler's case, the bet didn't pay off. NASA paid the company $32.1 million, but Rocketplane failed to win enough private backing to keep going. The company lost its NASA funding and ended up declaring bankruptcy. Orbital Sciences Corp. was selected as a replacement.
With May's successful demonstration flight of the Dragon cargo capsule, SpaceX has virtually completed all its objectives for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS. It should soon get the last of the $396 million in COTS money that NASA has set aside for the company. Orbital Sciences, meanwhile, is gearing up for key flight tests of its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule, and at last report has received $266.5 million of its $288 million in COTS money.
Even as the development program nears its end, SpaceX and Orbital are getting ready to begin routine cargo flights to the space station under a follow-on program known as Commercial Resupply Services, or CRS. SpaceX is due to get $1.6 billion for 12 flights scheduled through 2015, while Orbital gets $1.9 billion for eight flights. Citing NASA figures, NBC News' Jay Barbree says SpaceX and Orbital have each received $337.6 million in preparation for the CRS flights.
Space taxis
So far, we've been talking about unmanned flights to the space station, but NASA also needs U.S. spaceships capable of carrying astronauts to and from the station. Because these "space taxis" will be carrying people rather than mere stuff, the safety standards will have to be higher than they are for cargo craft. In 2010, NASA started setting aside funds to support the development of such spacecraft by private-sector partners. In the first phase of the program, NASA awarded $50 million to five companies for work on future spaceships or safety systems: $3.7 million to Blue Origin, $18 million to the Boeing Co., $1.4 million to Paragon Space Development Corp., $20 million to Sierra Nevada Corp., and $6.7 million to United Launch Alliance.
Last year, four companies won funding for the development of potential crew vehicles: SpaceX is getting $75 million for work on a crew-capable version of the Dragon. Boeing is getting $112.9 million for its CST-100 capsule. Sierra Nevada is getting $105.6 million for its Dream Chaser space plane, and Blue Origin is getting $22 million for its Orbital Space Vehicle. Three other companies are getting technical advice from NASA, but no money. Those three are ATK, Excalibur Almaz and United Launch Alliance.
Over the past few weeks, NASA has been making a string of announcements to the effect that the companies are meeting their milestones for the current phase of development. Just this week, for instance, the space agency said that it's wrapped up reviews with ATK and United Launch Alliance.
The next phase of the program will extend until May 2014. During this phase — known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or CCiCap — NASA is expected to provide support for up to three teams that are offering complete systems for human spaceflight, including the launch vehicle, the space taxi and the infrastructure for ground and recovery operations. "By the end of the base period, you need to have an integrated design that you have talked with the government about," Ed Mango, program manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, told me.
Mango said NASA will announce who gets the CCiCap money sometime in the next 30 to 60 days. Exactly how much money is at stake? Mango won't say until the announcement is made, in part because negotiations are in progress. Each of the teams in the competition was asked to submit a confidential proposal for $300 million to $500 million in support, but NASA has been working with the teams to pare down the price tags if possible.
"It's similar to if you want modifications done to your house," Mango explained. "You can either buy the estimate as is, or you can negotiate on that estimate."
Last month, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., worked out a deal under which two teams would get a full award, while a third backup team would get a partial award. The Obama administration requested $830 million for CCiCap in fiscal 2013, but it looks as if Congress is instead focusing on a funding level around $525 million.
The 2013 funding will be supplemented by extra money that NASA has been holding onto in the current fiscal year, as well as funding yet to be proposed for fiscal 2014, Mango said.
"The plan in fiscal year 2012, when we put our budget together, was always to use a large amount of the funds from fiscal year 2012 to be used for the next activity," he said. "There are hundreds of millions of dollars for FY12 that we will be putting into CCiCap once CCiCap is awarded."
There may be bonuses as well. "We have asked companies to give us optional milestones that we may or may not approve on the government side, that will bring each of the partners all the way through a crew demonstration mission," Mango said.
He doesn't any U.S. commercial spaceship to be ready to fly astronauts by mid-2014. "The state of the industry today is not ready to go through that in that amount of time," he said. But if a team is nearing the point at which it can send people safely into space — say, in 2015 or 2016 — there'd be an incentive for them to go for the optional milestone as part of the CCiCap phase of the program.
SpaceX and Boeing, as well as the team behind the Liberty launch system (which includes ATK, Astrium and Lockheed Martin), have said they could have their spacecraft ready for manned flights by late 2015, assuming that adequate funding is available. Sierra Nevada Corp. has said the Dream Chaser could send people into orbit in 2016, and Blue Origin is aiming for a similar time frame.
NASA wants to have U.S. commercial vehicles flying to the space station by 2017. In the meantime, the space agency will be paying the Russians as much as $63 million a seat for orbital rides. The teams vying for CCiCap money say they can beat that price. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, for example, has been quoted as saying the target launch price for crewed Dragon flights is $140 million, which works out to $20 million per seat for seven astronauts.
Mango emphasized that flying astronauts into space isn't just a question of dollars and cents: "Our No. 1 mission is to create a safe capability," he said.
He also noted that the Commercial Crew Program had two "separate but equal" goals. "We have a public need to create a U.S. capability to get folks to low Earth orbit ... and to the International Space Station," he said. The first goal could conceivably encompass scientific research flights or voyages to private-sector space station, while the second goal is focused specifically on NASA's obligation to support space station operations through at least 2020.
"It's similar to when you look for a car," Mango said. "You buy a car, and then you decide where you want to go with it."
Exploration vehicles
When you count up all the money that NASA has set aside for commercial spaceships, the total comes to several billion dollars over the course of several years. That may sound like a lot of money, but it's far less than what's being spent on NASA's more ambitious effort to build space vehicles for exploration beyond Earth orbit.
As of 2010, roughly $10 billion was spent on Constellation, NASA's now-canceled project to send astronauts back to the moon. Another $2.5 billion was allocated to close out the Constellation contracts. The expenditures included $455 million for a suborbital Ares 1-X test flight that wasn't followed up on, and $500 million for the construction of an Ares 1 Mobile Launcher that was never used and now sits idle at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
That launch platform could still get a workout from the Liberty launch system, which incorporates elements of the Ares 1 rocket. It could also serve as the liftoff point for NASA's Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket that's being developed to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid in the mid-2020s, and perhaps to Mars and its moons sometime in the 2030s.
Last year, Congress and the White House agreed on a plan that calls for spending $18 billion on the SLS rocket and the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle through 2017. That's when the first unmanned test flight is scheduled. About $10 billion would go to designing and building the rocket; $6 billion would go to the Orion development effort, led by Lockheed Martin; and the other $2 billion would go to launch pad construction at Kennedy Space Center.
After 2017, NASA projects that spending on SLS and Orion would amount to $3 billion a year, with the first crewed launch scheduled to take place in 2021. The further out you go, the squishier the numbers get.
The initial rocket flights would be powered by shuttle-style RS-25 engines, plus an updated Saturn-style J-2X for the upper stage, plus an extended version of the solid-rocket boosters that were used on the space shuttle. Last week, NASA announced that four companies were in the running to share $200 million in funding for the development of heftier SLS boosters.
In coming years, new rockets such as SpaceX's Falcon Heavy will probably be in the mix as well, and may even be flying commercial payloads to the moon and Mars. It'll be interesting to see how the next chapters of the spaceship saga play out. Do you have any guesses about future plot twists?
Japanese cargo ship heads for space station
William Harwood – CBS News
An unmanned Japanese rocket carrying more than five tons of space station hardware, scientific gear and crew supplies vaulted away from its scenic seaside launch stand in southern Japan Friday (U.S. time) and set off on weeklong flight to the International Space Station.
The powerful H-2B rocket's two hydrogen-fueled first stage engines roared to life as the countdown ticked to zero, followed a few seconds later by ignition of four strap-on solid-fuel boosters at 10:06:18 p.m. EDT (11:06 a.m. Saturday local time), roughly the moment Earth's rotation carried the launch pad into the plane of the space station's orbit.
Trailing a plume of fire and a billowing cloud of exhaust, the 186-foot-tall H-2B smoothly climbed skyward through rainy weather and quickly disappeared into a deck of low clouds, arcing out over the Pacific Ocean on a southeasterly trajectory tilted 51.6 degrees to the equator.
Flight controllers said the strap-on boosters burned out and fell away in pairs as planned about two minutes after liftoff, followed four minutes later by the first stage. The second stage then ignited and continued the push to orbit.
There were no apparent problems and 15 minutes after liftoff from launch pad No. 2 at the Tanegashima Space Center, the HTV-3 cargo ship, nicknamed Kounotori, or "white stork," was released into its planned preliminary orbit with a low point, or perigee, of about 124 miles and an apogee, or high point, of around 186 miles.
"The flight of the HTV-3 went true and as expected," said Josh Byerly, NASA's mission control commentator in Houston. "Everything now set up for the arrival of the HTV-3 coming up next week."
If all goes well, the 17.5-ton spacecraft will carry out a series of carefully orchestrated rocket firings to catch up with the space station next Friday, pulling to within about 30 feet and then stationkeeping while astronaut Joseph Acaba, operating the station's robot arm, locks onto a grapple fixture.
Japanese flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide then plans to take over, moving the HTV-3 spacecraft to the Earth-facing port of the station's forward Harmony module where it will be locked into place with a common berthing mechanism. Hatches will be opened the next day.
Developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, as a contribution to the space station program, the HTV is 32 feet long and 14.4 feet wide. It is designed to carry both pressurized and unpressurized cargo, including equipment too big to pass through the space station's hatches.
For it's third flight, the HTV is loaded with 3.9 tons of pressurized cargo, including an aquatic habitat, five small "CubeSats" and a satellite launcher, a catalytic reactor for the station's water processing system and a water pump. Also on board: Japanese food, beverages and crew clothing.
The high-tech aquarium can be used to house small fish for up to 90 days.
"As a result, aquatic breeding over three generations, from fish parents to grandkids, previously impossible in space shuttle experiments, has become a reality," NASA said in a press kit. "This allows, for example, viewing of the birth of space aquatic creatures that have never experienced the gravity force of Earth, and helps us understand how the space environment affects animals beyond generations in preparation for potential long-term space travel in future."
The five CubeSats and their deployment mechanism will be placed in an airlock at the far end of the Kibo lab module. The pallet will be extended into open space and the lab's Japanese robot arm -- a smaller version of the Canadian arm used for station assembly and maintenance -- will be used to properly position the satellites for release. The idea is to perfect the technology needed to launch small satellites from the space station without requiring a spacewalk.
The HTV is carrying another 1.2 tons of gear in its unpressurized section, including experimental NASA communications hardware and a common housing carrying instruments and sensors that will be mounted outside the Japanese Kibo lab module. Those experiments include a visible and infrared spectral imager, a sensor to characterize lightning and enigmatic "sprites" in the upper atmosphere and an off-the-shelf high-definition TV camera.
The HTV is also carrying two recorders designed to capture data on how the spacecraft breaks apart when it falls back into the atmosphere in September.
"The objective of data acquisition is, by specifying the breakup phenomenon of a spacecraft during re-entry, to narrow the splashdown warning areas based on improved prediction accuracy for the rocket's fall and to gather data that is useful for designing the heating rates of future re-entry vehicles," NASA said in its press kit.
The HTV-3 launch and berthing are sandwiched between multiple operations involving Russian Progress supply ships.
On Sunday, the Progress M-15M spacecraft will be undocked for tests of a new rendezvous antenna, moving away to a distance of 100 miles before beginning an autonomous re-rendezvous and docking at the Pirs module.
If the test goes well, Russian engineers may be able to replace multiple antennas on future spacecraft and improve rendezvous efficiency. The M-15M re-docking is planned for Monday night U.S. time.
Three days after the HTV-3 is captured, the Progress M-15M will be jettisoned for good, clearing the way for launch of another Progress, loaded with a fresh load of supplies, on Aug. 1.
In yet another test, the Progress M-16M spacecraft is scheduled to dock at the Pirs module four orbits after launch instead of the usual 34 orbit rendezvous, which takes two days to complete. Russian flight controllers are evaluating the possibility of using the launch-day docking procedure for crews aboard Soyuz ferry craft, sparing them two days cooped up in the cramped capsules.
Following the Progress operations, two spacewalks are planned, one by Padalka and Malenchenko around Aug. 16 and a NASA excursion by Williams and Hoshide on Aug. 30. The HTV-3 spacecraft will remain berthed until Sept. 6 when it will be detached for re-entry.
Japan Launches Robotic Supply Ship to Space Station
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
An unmanned Japanese spaceship soared into orbit from an island launch site Friday, beginning a weeklong journey to deliver vital supplies to astronauts living on the International Space Station.
The H-2 Transfer Vehicle-3 (HTV-3), nicknamed Kounotori 3 (Japanese for "White Stork 3"), is delivering student science projects, a new camera system, as well as food and spare equipment. It is due to arrive at the orbiting laboratory in about a week.
Kounotori 3 lifted off atop a Japanese H-2B rocket at 10:06 p.m. EDT (0206 GMT Saturday, or 11:06 a.m. Japan time Saturday) from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. It is the third of its kind to fly, following the flights of HTVs 1 and 2 in September 2009 and January 2011, respectively.
On July 27, the spaceship will fly to within 40 feet away from the space station, where it will be plucked from orbit by astronauts steering the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. Controlling the arm, astronauts Joe Acaba of NASA and Aki Hoshide of JAXA (the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) will move Kounotori 3 to the station's Earth-facing docking port on its Harmony node. The maneuver is scheduled for around 7 a.m. EDT.
Among the spaceship's 4 tons (3,600 kg) of cargo are two science experiments designed by the student winners of the YouTube Space Lab competition. Students from around the world between the ages of 14 and 18 were invited to design space station experiments and describe them in videos submitted to YouTube. Then public users of the site voted on their favorites.
The winners, Amr Mohamed, 18, of Alexandria, Egypt, and Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma, both 16, of Troy, Mich., designed projects to study how microgravity affects the hunting strategy of zebra spiders, and to investigate how different nutrients and compounds affect the growth and virulence of bacteria grown in space.
Chen and Ma were on-site at the Tanegashima Space Center to watch the launch of their experiment, while Mohamed elected to travel to the cosmonaut training center in Star City, Russia, for his prize.
The Japanese cargo freighter is also carrying a new camera for the space station, called the ISERV (International Space Station SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System), which will observe disaster sites on Earth and other areas of interest for environmental studies. Scientists on the ground will be able to direct the camera via remote control.
Friday's launch was the second space station-bound voyage in a week. A Russian Soyuz space capsule launched on Saturday (July 15) to ferry three new space station crewmembers to orbit.
But the space station action won't stop there.
On Sunday (July 22), a robotic Russian Progress cargo ship already parked at the space station will undock from the orbiting lab as part of a two-day test of rendezvous systems on the outpost's Russian segment. It will redock at the station on Monday.
Then on Aug. 1, a new Russian cargo ship will launch toward the space station and -- for the first time -- dock on the same day. The acclerated docking plan will test new methods to cut down Russia's typical two-day flight time to the station for Progress and Soyuz spacecraft.
The $100 billion, football field-size laboratory is currently home to six astronauts from three countries: the United States, Russia and Japan.
Japan's robotic spaceship is one of a fleet of similar unmanned vehicles that service the space station, including spacecraft built by Russia, Europe and a new entrant from the commercial U.S. company SpaceX. The only vehicle currently capable of flying humans to the lab is Russia's Soyuz, though SpaceX's Dragon is designed to eventually carry astronauts as well.
FAA Commercial Space Office Navigates Legal Maze To Start Safety Dialog
Dan Leone - Space News
When suborbital adventure line Virgin Galactic launches the world’s first commercial passenger-carrying spaceflight service next year, the U.S. government will still be barred from policing most of the company’s activities. But federal safety officials here, eager to learn more about the private space companies they will soon regulate, have decided to open talks with industry in August.
“We’re going to be setting up monthly public telephone calls to ask [industry] about certain topics,” Pam Melroy, former NASA astronaut and senior technical adviser in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), said in a July 16 interview. “We do plan on having these once a month for the foreseeable future. We really want maximum participation, and we want technical people to really help us understand what the thinking is out there.”
The first of these public calls is slated for the first week of August, Melroy said.
Just to open talks with industry, the AST has had to navigate a legal labyrinth. The massive FAA reauthorization bill Congress passed in January bars AST from writing human spaceflight safety regulations until October 2015 unless there is a serious accident or mishap involving a commercial flight before then.
But a report accompanying that legislation, the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, also noted that “nothing in this provision is intended to prohibit the FAA and industry stakeholders from entering into discussions intended to prepare the FAA for its role in appropriately regulating the commercial space flight industry when this provision expires.”
Further complicating things for Melroy and AST, the Administrative Procedures Act, longstanding federal law that governs the process by which federal agencies make rules for the industries they regulate, is very strict about when and how officials may share their thinking about future regulations.
“Under the Administrative Procedures Act, we cannot discuss what a proposed regulation might look like, and so that kind of hinders us in talking to industry,” Melroy said.
So even as AST prepares to tap industry experts for their take on launch, flight and passenger safety, the office has set certain ground rules to avoid running afoul of the law.
“We can’t propose anything, we can’t tell people what we think the answer is, or anything like that,” Melroy said. “But we can tee up a subject and then let people talk to us, and that will help us understand if we’re on the right track or not.”
Periodically, AST will summarize its findings from these monthly dialogues and share the summary with the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, a group of industry experts that makes policy recommendations to AST. Melroy said the first such “roll up” of AST findings will be shared with the committee in October.
AST’s plan drew an enthusiastic response from the head of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a Washington trade group whose membership is stacked with entrepreneurial space companies such as Blue Origin, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Virgin Galactic.
“We enthusiastically welcome the dialogue that AST has initiated with the commercial spaceflight industry about a framework for discussing safety issues and sharing safety learning with and among industry,” said Commercial Spaceflight Federation President Michael López-Alegría, also a former astronaut. He and Melroy flew together aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on an October 2000 mission to the international space station. “We look forward to an active partnership to rapidly improve safety as we gain experience while avoiding imprudent regulation that could slow innovation and harm safety.”
James Muncy, an Alexandria, Va.-based space policy and legislative consultant who has lobbied on behalf of some of López-Alegría’s members and who pushed AST officials to begin a dialogue with industry right away, said the office’s approach “is proof that AST can creatively work with [industry] to advance safety much faster than bureaucratic paperwork can move in Washington. I’m glad we were able to help the Office of Commercial Space Transportation gain more flexibility to discuss key safety issues with our industry today, instead of fixating on when they can start writing formal regulations.”
Although Virgin Galactic is expected to be the first company to fly passengers on a commercial basis, it is not expected to be the last. XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, Calif., said the week of July 9 that it plans to start launching suborbital spaceflights with its Lynx rocket plane as soon as the third quarter of 2013.
Moreover, all of the companies competing to provide NASA with privately operated astronaut taxi services to the international space station by 2017 plan to use the spacecraft they are developing to fly paying passengers to orbit. These companies include Alliant Techsystems, Boeing Space Exploration, Sierra Nevada Space Systems and SpaceX.
The idea that astronaut taxis might also be used to carry private passengers has raised questions — and sometimes hackles — about which government agency, the FAA or NASA, would have jurisdiction over safety issues.
That issue was at the heart of a memorandum of understanding that the FAA and NASA signed in June. The memo set out the roles of each agency in human spaceflight operations. Essentially, the FAA will continue to regulate the launch and re-entry of commercially operated spacecraft, as it has since 1989. That authority extends to NASA missions launched by commercial operators, according to the memo. However, NASA will be allowed to set safety standards for any spacecraft that carry astronauts or visit NASA destinations such as the international space station.
For flights that do not have a NASA component, the FAA will have complete jurisdiction — once the moratorium on issuing human spaceflight regulations ends.
Whenever AST gets the go-ahead to begin a rulemaking process, Melroy said it could take a year or more before the office gathers the technical input it needs to write a rule.
“Theoretically, we could issue a notice of proposed rulemaking after October 2015, and it would still be probably 2017 before we had anything that was in a final rule,” Melroy said.
What Does Space Smell Like?
Natalie Wolchover - Life's Little Mysteries
Astronauts who have gone on space walks consistently speak of space's extraordinarily peculiar odor.
They can't smell it while they're actually bobbing in it, because the interiors of their space suits just smell plastic-y. But upon stepping back into the space station and removing their helmets, they get a strong, distinctive whiff of the final frontier. The odor clings to their suit, helmet, gloves and tools.
Fugitives from the near-vacuum — probably atomic oxygen, among other things — the clinging particles have the acrid aroma of seared steak, hot metal and welding fumes. Steven Pearce, a chemist hired by NASA to recreate the space odor on Earth for astronaut training purposes, said the metallic aspect of the scent may come from high-energy vibrations of ions.
"It's like something I haven't ever smelled before, but I'll never forget it," NASA astronaut Kevin Ford said from orbit in 2009.
But astronauts don't dislike the sharp smell of space, necessarily. NASA astronaut Don Pettit described it this way after a mission back in 2003:
"It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as 'tastes like chicken.' The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space."
The interior of the International Space Station smells a little more mundane. Pettit, who recently returned from a second six-month-long mission on the ISS, told SPACE.com, "[The ISS] smells like half machine-shop-engine-room-laboratory, and then when you're cooking dinner and you rip open a pouch of stew or something, you can smell a little roast beef."
Jefferson neuroscientist helping astronauts sleep better
Tom Avril - Philadelphia Inquirer
A new sunrise takes place every 90 minutes. Docking maneuvers sometimes occur at odd hours. Then there's that feeling of apparent weightlessness.
No wonder astronauts aboard the International Space Station can have a hard time getting a good night's sleep.
Now, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University is among those working on a solution: light.
George C. Brainard is advising NASA as it prepares to replace the aging fluorescent lights on the station with high-tech LED fixtures. The lights, which received the agency's go-ahead earlier this year, can be adjusted to enhance or relax an astronaut's state of alertness at the appropriate time of day.
The plan is the outgrowth of research by Brainard and others that has established how light plays a powerful role in regulating our various biological clocks. Changes in light exposure can affect sleep, digestion, cognitive performance, and mood — a phenomenon known to people who experience jet lag, night-shift work, or the seasonal blahs associated with the shorter days of winter.
Initially, NASA planned to replace the lights on the space station with LED fixtures purely because they last much longer than fluorescents and are energy efficient. But when Brainard heard about the plan, he and a handful of other experts urged the agency to modify the specifications so that the lights could be a tool for maintaining astronaut health.
"Bud was instrumental" in making the case for the adjustable lights, said NASA flight surgeon Smith Johnston, referring to Brainard by his nickname.
Aboard the station, astronauts average as little as six hours of sleep during a 24-hour period, even though they are allotted 8.5 hours, Johnston said.
Sleep becomes even harder with disruptions, such as the occasional emergency or a docking procedure that may require the crew to get up in the middle of their sleep time. Some astronauts take short-acting sleeping pills, but the addition of adjustable lights will be welcome, Johnston said.
"If you're chronically sleep-deprived, you don't perform as well," the NASA physician said. "You're moody. You don't have as good coping mechanisms."
It's a cause for concern during a six-month stay aboard the space station, let alone for an eventual Mars mission that could last three years, Brainard said.
"Every one of us has probably done an all-nighter or two in our lives," Brainard said. "You feel crummy the next day, but you bounce back. And you also get your recovery sleep. They [the astronauts] are not getting their recovery sleep. That's the problem. Day in, day out, they're missing the ingredients for best health and best behavioral regulation."
The specs call for the new fixtures to fit precisely into the 7-by-26-inch rectangular sockets now occupied by fluorescent bulbs, said Debbie Sharp, a senior manager at Boeing, which is overseeing the project. The first of 100 new LED lamps will be delivered to NASA in mid-2015, she said. A variety of tests are needed first, including an evaluation to ensure that the lights can handle the rigors of space travel.
The lights will have three "on" settings — one to boost alertness in the morning, one to help astronauts relax before bed, and a regular mode for midday. All of them appear white, more or less, but the morning setting is brighter and is "enriched" with cool, bluish tones, while the evening setting is heavier on warmer, reddish hues.
Some of the science behind these color choices was conducted by Brainard, a professor of neurology at Jefferson Medical College. He discovered more than a decade ago that a specific shade of blue light was most effective at tamping down the body's production of the hormone melatonin, which helps regulate sleep.
His research continues, funded both by NASA and by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. To that end, Brainard hired a carpenter to build replicas of the tiny sleeping quarters that crew members use on the space station.
He hires research volunteers to spend hours at a time inside these quarters, which are about the size of a closet, and tests their melatonin levels after exposure to various hues of light.
Melatonin by itself is not a powerful sleep-inducer, contrary to what some marketers suggest in ads. But it does play a role in regulating the circadian rhythm. Echoing his original research, Brainard has found that pure blue light is more effective than white at suppressing melatonin levels.
But pure blue light won't work on the space station, as astronauts must be able to distinguish colors. Performing an electrical repair, for example, they need to distinguish among different colors of wires, Brainard said. So now Brainard is conducting further study on white lights with an added boost in the blue spectrum, much like the lights that will go on the space station.
Astronaut Mike Fincke, who has spent a total of 381 days aboard the station, said he was looking forward to the new lights.
"It'll help us to maintain our rhythm so we can max-perform every day," said Fincke, a native of the Pittsburgh area.
One reason it can be hard to sleep is pure excitement, fueled by the view of Earth's blue sphere from 250 miles above, Fincke said.
Brainard said it wasn't just the excitement keeping Fincke awake, but the sunlight reflected off the Earth's surface.
Though it is a challenge for some to get enough sleep on the station, Fincke says he likes the floating sensation. And space holds one other advantage over sleeping on the ground.
"I have three little kids at home," Fincke said. "I don't get much sleep."
Get a Look at NASA's Next Spacesuit
American Astronauts aren't sure where they might be going next. So NASA is building them a do-it-all spacesuit that could handle a trip to the moon, Mars, or an asteroid.
Mary Beth Griggs - Popular Mechanics
NASA may not know whether its next destination is an asteroid, Mars, or the moon, but the agency is definitely planning for some kind of journey—and its engineers need to figure out what to pack.
"It's like you're trying to go on vacation, but you don't know if you're going to Antarctica, Miami, or Buckingham Palace," says Amy Ross, a spacesuit engineer at Johnson Space Center.
The Z-1 prototype—currently being tested in a vacuum chamber—has been designed for versatility: to explore alien surfaces, float outside a space station, and even weather the radiation of deep space.
"We're building a lot of tools for the toolbox," Ross says. "Right now we're asked to be very flexible."
1. Port
Astronauts step into the full suit through the back port. This port will mate with the spacecraft, enabling an astronaut to enter the suit from inside the craft for extravehicular activity. Another advantage: When used in low to no atmosphere, the port conserves more air than a conventional air lock.
2. Mobility
The Z-1 has bearings at the waist, hips, upper legs, and ankles to allow an astronaut greater mobility—essential for retrieving soil and rock samples in tough terrain.
3. Material
This provisional outer covering conceals a heavily engineered inner suit; a layer of urethane-coated nylon retains air, and a polyester layer allows the suit to hold its shape.
NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center working on next generation space suit
Mark Whittington - Examiner.com
With the space shuttle program over and NASA’s space exploration program still a work in progress, engineers at Houston’s Johnson Spaceflight Center are working on the next generation space suit, designed for astronauts exploring alien worlds.
The problem is that NASA is not quite sure where astronauts will be going. The official line is that an asteroid will be the next destination, followed by Mars. But a return to the moon is still being discussed in certain quarters. So space suit designers are being asked to be “flexible.”
According to Popular Mechanics, NASA is working on the Z-1 prototype, which will incorporate a number of innovative features.
The most interesting new feature of the new space suit is the ease of which astronauts will be able to put them on. The space suits would be stored outside a spacecraft, habitat, or surface rover. The astronaut would be able to enter the spacesuit through a back port, which would be sealed up behind him. In that manner, an airlock would be rendered moot. There is less prep time, allowing the astronaut more time to explore.
Advanced materials would render greater flexibility for the astronaut that has been the case for space shuttle/space station EVA suits and especially Apollo era moon suits.
NASA is also working on the Portable Life Support System (PLSS) that astronaut explorers will wear as a backpack and will sustain them on their exploration missions. According to a report by Johnson Spaceflight Center engineers Colin Campbell, Gretchen Thomas, and Carly Watts, the PLSS 2.0 will be a light weight backpack that will provide oxygen and thermal control for astronauts performing EVAs, either on a planet’s surface or in deep space.
Eventually a version of the spacesuit prototype will be matched to a version of the PLSS for integrated testing in advance of the first expeditions beyond low Earth orbit sometime in the 2020s.
NASA sends 'Portal 2's' Wheatley into space
Todd Kenreck - NBCNews.com
Seems the video game "Portal 2" has a few fans at NASA. According to the official Portal blog this Friday an “anonymous tech at NASA" sent them an image of "Portal 2's" infamous and bungling orb shaped A.I. Wheatley that was laser-engraved onto a panel on the Japanese HTV-3 resupply craft. HTV-3 was launched to the International Space Station on Friday night.
"Portal 2" was made by game developer Valve, which said "we weren't kidding" about the need for anonymity.
"NASA in no way officially endorses secretly laser-engraving characters from Portal onto their spacecraft," Valve said.
Those of you who are fans of "Portal 2," I know you get the joke. Let's not ruin it for the rest of the readers, though. The video game "Portal 2" is about a woman named Chell who is trapped in a massive human testing facility known as the "Aperture Science Enrichment Center." There the player must participate in puzzle after puzzle using a portal gun and testing their brain power against the A.I. GLaDOS.
"Portal 2" received a well-deserved 9/10 from myself, and Wheatley (laser-engraved above, "in spaaaaaaace!") is counted among our top five video game robots of all time. So yeah, we are very happy to see Wheatley take his real place amongst the stars.
Shuttle trainer heading to Dayton
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
While NASA's space shuttle Full-Fuselage Trainer is settling into its new home at Seattle's Museum of Flight, a smaller trainer has started making its way to Dayton, Ohio.
Like the Museum of Flight, Dayton's National Museum of the U.S. Air Force put in a bid to get one of two retiring space shuttle orbiters -- Endeavour or Atlantis -- or the atmospheric test shuttle Enterprise. Those went instead to the California Science Center, in Los Angeles, Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, and Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, in New York. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C., gave up Enterprise in return for the shuttle orbiter Discovery.
The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force was given a consolation prize: NASA's first Shuttle Crew Compartment Trainer. NASA also had a second Crew Compartment Trainer and, of course, the Full-Fuselage Trainer.
"Here, astronauts learned how to operate many of the orbiter sub-systems in more than 20 different classes," the museum said in a writeup about the start of preparations for move the first Crew Compartment Trainer to Dayton later this summer.
Workers in Houston removed all of the items from the inside of more than 24,000-pound trainer, for shipment separately, then shrink-wrapped the trainer to protect it from the elements. It is scheduled to be trucked soon to the nearby Light Manufacturing Facility, for temporary storage, and then on to Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base, where it will be mounted in a specially designed adaptor, loaded into NASA's Super Guppy aircraft and flown on Dayton. The Super Guppy brought the crew compartment of the Full-Fuselage Trainer to Seattle earlier this month.
The Dayton museum plans to display the trainer at first in its the Cold War Gallery and then move it into a new Space Gallery in its planned fourth building. Plans call for a payload-bay mockup that will let visitors peek into the cockpit and mid-deck areas.
"Visitors will actually be able to walk up inside the payload bay mockup and see everything up close, and also really get an idea what the crew station was like, how big it was and how it was designed," museum Director Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jack Hudson said in the writeup.
Campers take off for outer space
Participants go under water to build station
Mel Flanagan - Toledo Blade
Amidst a crowd of spectators, seven team members carefully constructed an international space station in Toledo on Friday afternoon.
The location was an indoor pool on Collingwood Boulevard, and the team members were seven local youths participating in the International Space Station Camp, one of eight summer programs offered by the Challenger Learning Center in Oregon.
The week-long camp taught the children the purpose and history of the International Space Station, as well as how to snorkel. The camp culminated in building a 22-foot-by-50-foot-by-12-foot model of the space station underwater.
"We do this [underwater] because this is the way astronauts train," program coordinator Reed Steele said. "It gives us that feeling of floating in space."
The space station camp is offered annually to area youth who are entering seventh grade or above.
J.T. Langdon, who will be a seventh grader at Toledo School for the Arts, said he has been attending Challenger camps since he was in third grade.
"This is the first year I could be in this one, and I was looking forward to it," J.T. said. "It's fun, and I get to learn stuff over the summer."
Pam Langdon, J.T.'s mother, said she appreciates her son's passion for Challenger camps as well.
"I love that there's so much hands-on activity, and it really gets the science to come to life," Ms. Langdon of Toledo said.
The group built the space station in three rotations so each participant experienced every position. The roles included mission specialists who put the structure together underwater, life support officers who held breathing tubes for those underwater, and public relations officers who described what was happening.
During his time as the public relations officer, Wisler Coulter, a 12-year-old from Toledo, said he particularly enjoyed acting as mission specialist.
"Then I get to go underwater and put all the pieces together," Wisler said.
Wisler, a first-time camp attendee, said his favorite portion was learning how to snorkel.
Mr. Steele, who played the role of simulation supervisor, said all the participants were eagerly anticipating the camp's final project.
"They're very concerned, like 'I want to make sure my part is right,' like astronauts when they go up there, they think 'I don't want to screw up this mission,' because it also affects everybody else," Mr. Steele said.
The Challenger Learning Camps give local students opportunities to pursue science education fields which might not be covered in the classroom, Mr. Steele said. Each camp focuses on different grade levels and tailors the experience in order to best capture the children's interest.
"It also has a tendency to help students during the school year," he said. "If you go to school then aren't doing anything for the summertime you have a tendency to forget a lot of things, but if your mind is sharp during the summer you have a tendency to pick things up quicker during the school year."
Ketlove Coulter, Wisler's sister and a student at Washington Junior High, said the camp made learning fun.
"We had a competition of who can do the most tricks and stuff underwater with our snorkels on," Ketlove, 13, said. "I'll probably do the camp again."
Neil Armstrong's Longest Landing
Amy Shira Teitel - Discovery News
Since landing on the moon on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong has emphasized that his career extends beyond the Apollo 11 mission. Before he was an astronaut he was a pilot. Not only did he fly, he flew arguably the coolest aircraft of all time, the X-15, on its longest recorded flight.
In the 1950s, it looked like aircraft were going to keep flying higher and faster until one went so high and so fast that it entered space. The spaceplane was an attractive concept, in large part because it took advantage of the pilot’s skill. But spaceflight, in a spaceplane or some other vehicle, was largely unknown in the 1950s. Could an aircraft-inspired spaceplane sustain the heat and structural stresses associated with spaceflight? And could the pilot control the vehicle throughout the flight?
The X-15 was designed to answer those questions, and Armstrong flew it to the fringes of space and glided to a landing on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base. The X-15 was small, just 50 feet long with a wing span a little over 23 feet, and solid. The wings were constructed of Inconel X skins over titanium frames bolted to the fuselage. Driving down the highway towed behind a truck, an X-15 sliced the roof off an unsuspecting driver’s camper without sustaining so much as a scratch.
The X-15 was also almost all fuel tank, but it was too small to reach the upper atmosphere. To compensate, it began it’s flight at about 30,000 feet (about the average cruise height for a cross country flight). It was released from underneath the wing of a B-52 bomber, the the X-15 pilot would fire its engine and shoot upwards faster than the speed of sound until he ran out of fuel. Momentum would carry it over the top of an arcing flight path where, in the thin upper atmosphere, rockets in the aircraft’s nose gave him directional control.
Having used up all his fuel, the X-15 pilot made a completely unpowered descent meaning he had one shot to land. The aircraft became a glider, a very unlikely glider with a wingspan shorter than its body (gliders are typically the opposite). This configuration made the X-15 great during it’s powered ascent but it glided about as well as a stone. Falling to Earth, the pilot traced out large circles above the runway to slow his speed to a manageable 230 miles per hour at landing.
Individual X-15 flights varied in terms of speed and maximum altitude, but they all followed this same basic flight plan. And they were short flights, typically less than ten minutes. Armstrong, inadvertently, set the duration record for the program on April 20, 1962.
The purpose of this flight was to evaluate a new control system designed to give the pilot better control of the X-15 throughout its different flight phases. Jumping from subsonic (slower than sound) speeds to hypersonic speeds up to five time the speed of sound can bring on sudden and serious control problems, something this new control system hoped to eliminate.
Armstrong separated from his B-52 launch plane and accelerated past Mach 5 with ease and in control of the aircraft. An unexpected problem developed when he tried to aim the aircraft back towards the runway at Edwards. He was in the thin upper atmosphere, and with the X-15 nose angled upwards, he bounced off the atmosphere instead of pitching his nose down to make the turn. The X-15 skipped off the atmosphere like a stone on water, carrying him further from Edwards. Gravity eventually took over and he was able to set himself back on track for landing. The only problem was that he was 50 miles south of where he wanted to be, and he didn’t have an engine to light to get him any closer.
Making his situation worse, there weren’t any safe lakebeds for an emergency landing between him and Edwards; all the emergency lakes were too far north to reach. He thought briefly of a small airport in Palmdale, California, but it wasn’t an attractive solution. He had no power so couldn’t work into the landing schedule at a busy airport. The runway at Palmdale was concrete and the X-15 had metal skids instead of wheels for landing gear. Skids were great for landing on dry mud, they acted as brakes. Landing with skids on a runway would likely be a disaster.
There weren’t any good options. He was going to have to try and make it back to Edwards.
And make it he did, reaching the southern edge of the lakebed with just feet to spare. One of the pilots following him in an F-104 chase plane saw Armstrong in the X-15 flying level with the surrounding trees he was so low coming in to land. But he managed a safe landing.
The flight, which lasted 12 and a half minutes, was jokingly referred to as Armstrong’s cross country flight.
What was Posey thinking?
Congressman explains position on space, budget negotiations & Medicare
Matt Reed - Florida Today (Commentary)
You might not like all of Congressman Bill Posey’s votes or positions. But it’s worth knowing his reasons for them.
Posey, R-Rockledge, voted to speed NASA’s selection of private contractors to fly astronauts and cargo into orbit — before we see what all the competitors can do. He says he won’t vote to allow any increase in tax revenue unless the federal government eliminates waste (in other words, never). And he voted for a budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan that would turn Medicare into a program that subsidizes future seniors’ private insurance purchases.
Excerpts from our TV interview this week.
Question: Companies like Space X are competing to launch people and supplies to the space station. But you voted to cut short the demonstrations and pick two out of the eight. Why?
Posey: We’ll, there’s a finite amount of money for space. And there should be a minimal number of goals. Going to the moon should be a goal.
I look at it like building a house. Let’s say you have $100,000. Do you hire one contractor to build your $100,000 house? Or do you hire four contractors and say, see how far you can go for $25,000 each?
Q: But don’t we want to see if the machines can fly?
Posey: Yes, but everything’s relative. Do we want to fund 100 companies and see what they can do? You can spend too much time shopping and not enough time building.
Q: Why do you think it’s so important for the United States to return to the moon?
Posey: The moon, first and primarily, is the military high ground. We know the Russians want to colonize the moon. The Chinese are going to colonize the moon — they’ve said so.
In the (Republican presidential) debate, Gingrich said he wanted to colonize the moon. Romney said he’d fire someone who recommended that. Ron Paul, at least, mentioned national security before saying we should send politicians to the moon.
The very next day, they had to move the International Space Station to avoid space debris, which we know came from an 8,000-pound Chinese satellite that they took target practice on and blew to smithereens.
Q: Brevard defense contractors worry if Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on a budget by January, we’ll get deep automatic cuts programmed by Congress. What are prospects for agreement?
Posey: It’ll probably be after the elections.
This stems from the fact that the Senate hasn’t passed a budget in over three years. The normal process is, the House passes a budget, the Senate passes a budget, they reject each others’ budgets, and then you have a conference committee that makes them fit.
When the Senate won’t do a budget, you have nothing to negotiate.
Q: The Ryan plan, which you voted for, makes me think, “No Democrat will ever go for this.” You’re saying that’s an opening offer?
Posey: Your insight is good.
Q:Is there a principal on which you won’t bend? For example, the anti-tax pledge so many Republicans signed?
Posey: We have a federal government that overpaid unemployment benefits to people by $14 billion … that gave $4 billion in tax credits and refunds to illegals who claimed bogus child credits. There is so much dysfunction in this government, I’m not going to give it any more money until they start getting more responsible.
Q: The biggest driver of deficits is Medicare. How would you cut spending on Medicare without hurting care?
Posey: When Medicare was enacted, there were 19 people working for each beneficiary. Now, there’s less than three working. People used to live just past the age of 60, now they’re living past 80. The costs are higher, and people are incurring them longer. Obviously, there need to be some changes.
A lot of people are well off. One simple solution is to say, “You don’t have to sign up for Medicare.” It’s like giving welfare to people who don’t want it or don’t need it.
You’ve got to change the trend line. If you’re under 55, there’s going to have to be a year longer before you’re eligible.
Q: The Ryan plan would pay a stipend toward retirees’ choice of private insurance instead of paying their medical bills. You’re comfortable with that?
Posey: Yes. There are gross inefficiencies in the system.
Q: Republicans say they want to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. Replace it with what?
Posey: With component legislation that addresses the three biggest problems where Democrats and Republicans agree: The gap in coverage for children after they graduate from high school but before they’re employed. People who can’t get coverage because of pre-existing conditions. And companies that drop people as soon as they get a claim.
From the Earth to the Moon, and then beyond
Part 5: Could the International Space Station go on a lunar trip? It just might work
Jay Barbree - NBC News (Commentary)
(In a five-part series, Barbree lays out a vision of spaceflight in the 20-teens for the 2012 presidential candidates.)
There’s a house in Earth orbit.
It’s called the International Space Station with five bedrooms, two baths, a gym and a 360-degree bay window.
It got there thanks to more than a decade of construction flights by America’s space shuttles and Russia’s big Proton rockets and Soyuz spacecraft.
It cost $100 billion, and it’s owned by 15 nations. A crew of six live aboard, taking care of maintenance chores, doing science as best they can — passing the days on a fixed orbital track inclined 51.6 degrees with the equator, at heights about 250 miles.
For the past decade this international orbiting outpost has been teaching us how to live in space, doing it within hours of Earth’s safety. It’s akin to learning how to stand clinging to the rails of one’s crib. As members of the Earth-moon system, we are not yet free of our cradle.
If we wish to be free, we should start by moving about our entire home.
The fact is that Earth and the moon make up one celestial system. Neither world could survive without the other. It is the center of this dual system, rather than the center of Earth itself, that describes an elliptical orbit around the sun in accordance with Kepler’s laws. It is also more accurate to say that Earth and moon together revolve about their common center of mass, rather than to say the moon revolves about Earth. This common center of mass lies beneath Earth’s surface, about 3,000 miles from our planet’s central point.
The Hubble Space Telescope has detailed a long-anticipated galactic smash-up between our neighboring galaxy Andromeda and our Milky Way. But not to worry, say astronomers — our sun and Earth-moon system should easily survive what will be a galactic merger proceeding at 1.2 million miles per hour.
If the Earth-moon system is our home, shouldn’t we be caretakers of both worlds? You wouldn’t manicure your front yard and leave your back to become overgrown with weeds. Shouldn’t exploration of our own place and the Earth-moon system’s Lagrange points (all five of them) be our baby steps? Wouldn’t it be silly to go trotting off to asteroids and Mars, millions of miles away, before we knew our way around our own neighborhood?
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden was asked, “When are we going to Mars?” He answered, “I don’t know how to get to Mars.”
Everyone laughed, knowing that one day we would know.
For now, as Neil Armstrong says, “The lunar vicinity is an exceptional location to learn about traveling to more distant places.”
From the Earth to the Moon?
Wouldn’t it be great if we could use the International Space Station to chart a new orbit stretching from Earth to the moon? The simple answer is that we are fast approaching having the technology — technology we can afford. The costs could be covered by the 15 nations supporting what might well become the International Space Vehicle. Turning the ISS into the ISV could recoup much of the group’s $100 billion investment. Even more members could join, reducing the costs for all — promoting harmony, keeping disagreements at a minimum among many of Earth’s people.
You may say that moving the station can’t be done. You might think the rocket power needed would rip the fragile space station apart. That’s correct, if you use rocketry from the space shuttle era.
Gene McCall, retired chief scientist for the Air Force Space Command, suggests a different way to do it.
"Low thrust systems applied continuously for days, or even months, can move the space station to the moon without disturbing a crew member’s drink," McCall told me in an email. "The Ad Astra VASMIR engine is, for example, an initial step in the right direction. A constant thrust only 10 times that achieved so far by Astronaut Hall Of Fame Member Dr. Franklin R. Chang Diaz could move the ISS to the moon. It is truly amazing an engine with only 11 pounds of thrust can move a million-pound object over a distance of 240,000 miles. The key is that space is not only airless, it is also frictionless.
"The station is an ideal structure for accommodating people and cargo in a slow trip from the Earth to the moon. The house-size space platform could, after scouting the best places for humans to live on the lunar landscape, be used to help establish scientific outposts and to supply goods and people while teaching us how to go into, and how to live in space.
"And within a few years when we have the SLS heavy-lift rockets and the big Orion spacecraft we can go farther – as Neil Armstrong says, ‘Learning how to fly to, and remain at, the Earth-moon Lagrangian points would be a superb precursor to flying to, and remaining at, much farther distances.’”
“The naysayers will surface immediately," McCall said, "but perhaps there will be enough qualified and competent forward thinkers to study the problems in a positive way and to accomplish one of the great future goals of humankind."
McCall pointed out that the Russians are already thinking about trips to the moon, and building a new six-person spaceship called the Advanced Crew Vehicle for the task. That just goes to show that Americans aren't the only ones thinking about the Earth-moon system.
Once we know how to live and care for our own system, once we’ve established an affordable, science-driven method of learning, moving steadily outward in logical increments, we will have taught ourselves how to reach Mars.
The question will be who should go? Will it be a global effort, or a task for Earth’s leading nation?
It’s likely the first Martians are already here. They are our sons and daughters, our grandsons and granddaughters, even our great-grandsons and great-granddaughters in their first years of school. They will grow up thinking about deep-space travel, and in the 2030s or 2040s they will decide to take the flight.
Will it be a return or a one-way trip? Will they establish a basic colony, being joined later by others, or will they return to family and friends on mother Earth?
God, what an exciting time it will be!
What a future for those who will live it!
How the Armstrongs, the Aldrins, the Glenns — all of us who were here for Mercury, Gemini and Apollo — would like to be around for the 21st century’s greatest adventure!
Our mortality says we can’t, but our spirits won’t be far away.
'Spaceflight in the 20-teens':
· Part 1: Space needs a place on to-do list
· Part 2: It's decision time for future spaceflight
· Part 3: Handicapping the commercial space race
· Part 4: Neil Armstrong still chooses to go to the moon
· Part 5: Small steps toward a giant leap in space
Curious Kazakh gopher not curious about nearby spaceships
Robert Krulwich - National Public Radio's Krulwich Wonders
How he got to live there, I don't know. For one thing he's a gopher, not a cosmonaut or a rocket engineer, just an ordinary Kazhakh rodent who dug himself a hole. The hole, however, is smack in the middle of a rocket launching facility, one of the most active spaceports in the world, called the Cosmodrome.
Located in Baikonur, in Kazhakhstan, this is the place that launched Sputnik in 1957, sent Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, services Soyuz with multiple launches ever year. It's busy, noisy and it's dangerous — one would think.
But take a look at this gopher. He (she?) seems more than comfortable. Giant platforms roll overhead — not a problem. Huge tall things loom nearby — so what? People come close. Does he care? No. But when someone sets a camera at the entrance of his home, suddenly he's Mr. Curious.
He sticks his eyeball against the lens. He tries to chew the glass. He sniffs everywhere. Looking at him, I can't help but think "this is exactly the kind of Earthling I'd want to send to a nearby planet." He's compact. He digs. He's careful (often standing stock still, to make himself invisible), and he inspects everything.
Plus, being smaller, his spacecraft, space suit and space diet (sunflower seeds in a large bag) represent a significant cost savings...if he'd go. But he seems so happy in his hole, I wonder: Do ground-dwelling rodents ever dream of the stars?
END
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