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Monday, August 13, 2012
8/13/12 news
Monday, August 13, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. EVA Development and Verification Testing at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab
2. Closing the Communication Gap: Medical Error Prevention and Physician Behavior
3. 'Summer of Curiosity' Mission To Mars Family Showcase
4. Free Sugarland Skeeters Minor League Tickets
5. Starport's The Inner Space Mind/Body Studio -- Free Demo Classes This Week
6. Starport's Fall 2012 Sport Leagues -- Registration Open
7. Managing Metabolic Syndrome, Fiber Facts and Finances
8. Grocery Store Tour: Aug. 21 at 5 p.m.
9. Job Opportunities
10. Project Asset and Lifecycle Management System (PALMS) Training Available
11. Demolition ViTS: Aug. 24, 8 a.m.
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.”
-- Albert Schweitzer
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1. EVA Development and Verification Testing at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab
Join us tomorrow, Aug. 14, as Juniper Jairala, Crew and Thermal Systems Division project and test engineer on the ExtraVehicular Activity (EVA) Development and Verification test team, describes the requirements and process for performing a neutral buoyancy test, including: typical hardware and support-equipment requirements; personnel and administrative resource requirements; examples of International Space Station systems and operations that are evaluated; and typical operational objectives that NASA evaluates. She will also discuss the new and potential types of uses for the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, including those by non-NASA customers.
Date: Tomorrow, Aug. 14
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Building 5 South, Room 3102 (corner of Gamma Link/5th Street/third floor)
For additional information, contact any spacesuit knowledge capture point of contact: Cinda
Chullen (x38384); J. Jairala (281-461-5794); Vladenka Oliva (281) 461-5681; or Rose Bitterly.
Rose Bitterly 281-461-5795
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2. Closing the Communication Gap: Medical Error Prevention and Physician Behavior
Please join us for the next NASA Human Health and Performance Center (NHHPC) member-to-member connect as Dr. Nate Gross, co-founder of Doximity, presents "Closing the Communication Gap: Medical Error Prevention and Physician Behavior Analysis" on Wednesday, Aug. 15, at 2:30 p.m. All employees are encouraged to attend in Building 15, Conference Room 267.
Medical errors are the fifth leading cause of death in the United States; a majority due to miscommunication or failure to communicate at all. Recent efforts by the U.S. government, such as the Health Data Initiative, have recognized and enabled the potential of entrepreneurship to solve unmet needs in health care with more speed and agility than larger public or private entities. One mobile technology startup in particular, NHHPC member Doximity, is taking a radical approach to modernize the physician communication that contributes to such medical errors. WebEx information can be found at http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov to participate virtually.
Carissa Vidlak 281-212-1409 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov
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3. 'Summer of Curiosity' Mission To Mars Family Showcase
Did your family participate in the "Summer of Curiosity" Mission to Mars Challenge? If so, the JSC Education Office invites you to share your mission designs and creations at the Voyage Back to School event on Aug. 16 at Space Center Houston!
Not only are all JSC families invited to this free celebration, but any family that participated in the "Summer of Curiosity" activities may submit pictures of the process and bring completed projects for display. If your friends or family outside of JSC took part, please let them know they are welcome and encouraged to join in the fun.
If you would like to bring items for display or submit photos, please contact Patricia Moore at x36686 or: patricia.l.moore@nasa.gov
Please visit http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/johnson/student-activities/summ... for more information.
Patricia Moore x36686
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4. Free Sugarland Skeeters Minor League Tickets
Are you a Sugarland SKEETERS fan? If so, we have an offer for you! Come by the Starport Gift Shops in Buildings 3 and 11 to sign up for FREE game tickets. Game dates are Aug. 13, 14 and 15. Gates open at 6 p.m., and the game starts at 7:05 p.m. each day. Limited supply and on a first-come, first-served basis. See store for details.
Lorie Shewell x30308 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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5. Starport's The Inner Space Mind/Body Studio -- Free Demo Classes This Week
Introducing "The Inner Space," the newest addition to Starport's fitness programs. We recently held a ribbon cutting for our new yoga and pilates studio, where we will create an entire mind/body experience with an exciting new program. Membership packages can be purchased for half price through the month of August for the mind/body program set to launch in early September.
This week, we will be holding free demo classes for anyone who would like to experience what we will soon be offering. Space is limited, so please sign up at the Gilruth front desk to participate in the demo classes. Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/MindBody/ for more information on The Inner Space.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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6. Starport's Fall 2012 Sport Leagues -- Registration Open
This fall Starport will be offering EIGHT sports leagues for the NASA workforce and surrounding community!
OPEN Fall 2012 League Registration:
- Closes Aug. 22 -- dodgeball and volleyball
- Closes Aug. 24 -- basketball
- Closes Aug. 30 -- softball (co-ed and men's)
- Closes Sept. 6 -- flag football, kickball, and ultimate frisbee
Upcoming Fall Registration Dates:
- Sept. 6 to 27 -- soccer
Free agent registration now open for all leagues.
All league participants must register at: http://www.IMLeagues.com/NASA-Starport
For more detailed information about each league, please visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/Sports/ or call the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304.
Leagues will fill up fast, so sign your team up today!
Steve Schade x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/Sports/
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7. Managing Metabolic Syndrome, Fiber Facts and Finances
If you're beginning a financial plan, are curious about Metabolic Syndrome or want to know more about fiber and whole grains, Exploration Wellness can help!
Tuesday: Introductory Finance Classes
Basics of investments (stocks, bonds, etc.) and indexes, retirement goals and needs, strategic tax approaches and estate planning.
Wednesday: Metabolic Syndrome and Physical Fitness
Learn about Metabolic Syndrome, associated risk factors, diseases, disorders and prevalence. Discover the positive impact that physical activity and fitness have on prevention and treatment.
Thursday: The Scoop on Fiber and Whole Grains
Learn about the importance of fiber and whole grains, their many vital roles in the body and how much you should incorporate into your diet. Discover how to find fiber-rich foods and learn the difference between fiber and whole grains.
Coming next week! Fitness From Anywhere; Science of Happiness; and advanced financial classes on taxes and retirement.
See link for details.
Jessica Vos x41383 http://www.explorationwellness.com/rd/AE108.aspx?Aug_Signup.pdf
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8. Grocery Store Tour: Aug. 21 at 5 p.m.
Ever wonder why the fresh foods are along the outside areas of the grocery store and the processed foods are in the center isles? Do grocery store marketing tricks really work? Join the JSC Dietitian to learn more about the subtle ways grocery stores focus your attention on the foods they want you to buy. The tour will take approximately one-and-a-half hours. Family members are welcome! Pre-registration is required and registration is limited. Sign up online at the link below. Class details will be provided to participants via email prior to class.
You can sign up for this class and other upcoming nutrition classes online at: http://www.explorationwellness.com/WellnessCSS/CourseCatalogSelection/
If you're working on improving your approach to healthy nutrition but can't attend a class, we offer free one-on-one consultations with Glenda Blaskey, the JSC Registered Dietitian.
Glenda Blaskey x41503 http://www.explorationwellness.com/Web/scripts/Nutrition.aspx
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9. Job Opportunities
Where do I find job opportunities?
Internal Competitive Placement Plan (CPPs) and external JSC job announcements are posted on both the Human Resources (HR) Portal and the USAJOBS website at: http://www.usajobs.gov
Through the HR portal, civil servants 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 JSC HR. The "Jobs link" will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies, please call your HR representative.
Lisa Pesak x30476
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10. Project Asset and Lifecycle Management System (PALMS) Training Available
PALMS is the Engineering Directorate's new Project Management tool for online project planning, scheduling and tracking. Closely integrated with Oasis, PALMS enables Web-based project collaboration, management and publishing of project schedules, resources and associated data products. To register for one of the monthly PALMS classroom training sessions, simply access SATERN and select one of these available courses: PALMS Project Server Training for Team Members and Project Managers, SATERN course ID: PALMS-01. The next session is available for self-registration in SATERN through today, Aug. 13, for all EA civil servants and contractors.
Date: Tuesday, Aug. 14
Location: Building 20, Room 204
Stacey Zapatka x34749
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11. Demolition ViTS: Aug. 24, 8 a.m.
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0068: This three-hour course is based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) CFR 1926.850 through 1926.859 Subpart T: Demolition. The student will cover Preparatory Operations (1926.850), Chutes (1926.852), Material Removal (1926.853), Removal of Walls, Masonry Sections and Chimneys (1926.854), Manual Removal of Floors (1926.855), Storage (1926.857), and Mechanical Demolition (1926.859). During the course, the student will receive an overview of those topics needed to work safely in accomplishing demolition activities and will be shown the working guidelines, training requirements and inspection to be accomplished before demolition is started. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which 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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JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
Human Spaceflight News
Monday – August 13, 2012
ANNIVERSARY
35 years ago yesterday, Enterprise took wing for the first time from the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft over the dry lakebed at Edwards AFB. Eight captive-carry flights preceded the free flight, but Sunday marked the anniversary of Enterprise being pushed out of the nest…
Free Flight One
Date: August 12, 1977
Top Speed: 310 mph
Release Altitude 24,100 ft
Travel Distance: 7,346 miles
Flight Duration: 5 min, 21 sec
Crew: Fred Haise / Gordon Fullerton
Sunrise on Mars from Curiosity – August 9, 2012 . www.nasa.gov/mars
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Florida's Space Coast Claims Commercial Space Missions
Brevard Times
The three American companies building next-generation spacecraft that NASA could call on to carry astronauts into orbit in the future will perform much of their work along Florida's Space Coast, home of the agency's Commercial Crew Program (CCP). Advances made by these companies under newly signed Space Act Agreements (SAAs) through the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative are intended to lead to the availability of commercial human spaceflight services for government and commercial customers. Throughout the next 21 months, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) of Louisville, Colo., Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., and The Boeing Company of Houston will complete their spacecraft and launch vehicle designs, test their hardware, and then showcase how they would operate and manage missions from launch through orbit and landing.
Congress mulls over space agency reboot
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle
Mike Coats keeps a list of about two dozen programs NASA has started - and then canceled - since he commanded a pair of space shuttle missions some 20 years ago. "It's just not an efficient use of taxpayer dollars," says Coats, shaking his head. These views aren't held solely by Coats, director of the Johnson Space Center since 2005. He's found allies in two powerful congressmen who want to reboot NASA to make it less susceptible to political winds and remove the year-to-year vagaries of its budget. Both allies are U.S. representatives, Republicans John Culberson of Houston and Frank Wolf of Virginia, who are members of the House Appropriations committee.
Obama campaign to Romney on Space Coast: Where are you on space?
Orlando Sentinel
Space Coast officials including industry leaders got a chance to hear from President Barack Obama’s former top science guy and a Florida campaign official Friday on his space policies and program and are waiting for similar insight from Republican challenger Mitt Romney. To date, Romney’s space policy has essentially been: Obama’s is no good; we’ll get back to you on what ours will be. That’s what he offered in January when then-GOP rival Newt Gingrich was pushing his man-on-the-moon policies. Now the Romney For President campaign appears to be continuing to defer future announcements until after he hears from a space advisory team.
Paul Ryan’s (very thin) space policy dossier
SpacePolitics.com
Saturday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his choice for running mate: Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI). While the decision may, as the Washington Post suggests, offer a “stark choice” on fiscal issues, it sheds little, if any light, on the niche issue of space policy. Ryan has said virtually nothing on space issues, and it’s not a local issue in his southeast Wisconsin district. His House web site is virtually devoid of references to NASA, beyond a link on his “Students and Kids” page to the “NASA Kids’ Club” site. In terms of recent roll-call votes, he did vote against the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 in September 2010, legislation that did pass the House and was signed into law.
Medvedev says space failures cost Russia prestige and cash
Alissa de Carbonnel - Reuters
Moscow is losing prestige and money due to botched space projects, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday after Russia junked two satellites in the latest launch failure to dog the once-pioneering industry. The failure of a workhorse Proton rocket after launch on Monday caused the multimillion-dollar loss of Indonesia's Telkom-3 and Russia's Express-MD2 satellites, according to Russia's space agency.
Russian space industry laden with failures
Lyudmila Alexandrova - Itar-Tass
The Russian space industry is in a deep crisis, the experts noted in comments on another space failure. The launch of the booster Proton-M, which was to orbit the telecommunications satellites Express MD2 and Telkom-3, turned out to be abortive over a breakdown in the operation of the upper stage Briz-M. Finally overnight to Tuesday Russian spacecraft with a total cost from six to eight billion roubles turned in the space garbage. Russian space launches have recently ended in a fiasco regularly. The expert noted that the reason for the failures is the lack of the common quality control system.
American icon Smokey Bear visits NASA
Michael Baruzzini - Petri Dish
In a video available online, Smokey Bear visited Johnson Space Center’s Flight Control Room on the occasion of his 68th anniversary. In May, the Expedition 31 crew aboard the International Space Station chose Smokey Bear as the team’s launch mascot. In the control room, Smokey watched a message from the International Space Station recognizing his 68th birthday, and met engineers and officials working at Johnson Space Center. Smokey the Bear was guided on his tour by veteran astronaut Mike Fossum.
Gabrielle Giffords, husband moving back to Tucson
Associated Press
Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband are moving back to Tucson on Sunday, a year and a half after she moved to Houston to undergo intensive physical and speech therapy after she was wounded by a gunman at an event outside a grocery store. Giffords’ husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, told the Arizona Daily Star that his wife will continue therapy in Tucson but says it’s not going to be the six to eight hours per day she’d been doing in Houston. “You know, it’s time for her to get back to as much of a normal life as possible after this type of catastrophic injury,” Kelly said. “Obviously, a big thing for her is to come home.”
Peace-building through space exploration
George Wolfe - Muncie Star-Press (Opinion)
(Wolfe is the coordinator of outreach programs for the Ball State University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. He is also a trained mediator and the author of “The Spiritual Power of Nonviolence: Interfaith Understanding for a Future Without War.”) The successful landing of the Mars rover Curiosity reminds me of my visit to Titusville, Fla., home to Space Coast Park and the best place to view NASA mission launches outside of Kennedy Space Center.
Returning our attention to space exploration
Denver Post (Editorial)
When the Space Shuttle Atlantis was retired last year, we were among those who lamented what the moment said about the country's aspirations for space. Two events in recent days have buoyed our belief that space exploration — with a significant boost from Colorado — should be a driving ideal for this nation. The first was the energizing and amazing experience of watching the Curiosity rover land on Mars. The other was the announcement that Sierra Nevada Systems Inc. was one of three companies splitting $1.1 billion in federal funding to develop next-generation vehicles to deliver and return astronauts from space.
Let's bring logic to NASA's budget process
Houston Chronicle (Editorial)
It has been a special Houston pleasure to see the fruits of the successful landing of Curiosity on the surface of Mars. The technological virtuosity displayed by NASA's scientists and engineers throughout the Mars rover's journey has been simply wondrous. And did we mention the pictures? We feel as though we've been invited to share in the unraveling of a great mystery that will be brought to us courtesy of Curiosity - now in brilliant color. The Mars rover's mission has also offered a welcome respite from a political season that seems to turn nastier by the moment.
Bear in Space
Smokey Bear (Commentary)
2012 has been a year of fantastic achievements in space exploration. From the recent landing of Curiosity on Mars to Space X's Dragon successful docking with the International Space Station, humankind has done what it hasn't done before. 2012 has also seen an unfortunate amount of damage from both lightning and human caused wildfires. We can't prevent lightning fires, but we can all do our part especially when record drought conditions affect much of the country. Be extra careful when using fire or equipment that could cause sparks. Besides everyone doing what they can to help prevent human caused wildfires, we just got some extra help from NASA right here on Earth and from space. NASA and the U.S. Forest Service signed a Space Act Agreement that unites the two agencies in raising awareness about the importance of wildfire prevention, research, and materials science.
Successful SpaceShipTwo Glide Test on Saturday Morning
Doug Messier - Parabolic Arc
SpaceShipTwo made another successful glide flight at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California on Saturday morning. The space plane took off under its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft at 6:57 a.m. PDT. It glided to a landing about an hour later after a brief glide flight. WhiteKnightTwo conducted touch-and-gos on the runway for about a half hour before touching down at around 8:27 a.m. PDT. This test marked the 93rd flight for WhiteKnightTwo and the 22nd glide flight for SpaceShipTwo. Conditions at the spaceport were smoky due to a wildfire in the nearby mountains that began burning on Friday afternoon. This partly accounts for the different colors of the sky in photos of the drop test. (NO FURTHER TEXT)
Launch Minus Nine Days: The Space Rescue That Never Was
Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org
In the high heat of a Houston summer, in early August 1973, controllers at the Johnson Space Center were faced with the very real possibility of orchestrating the rescue of three astronauts from the Skylab orbital station. Commander Al Bean, Science Pilot Owen Garriott and Pilot Jack Lousma had launched safely on 28 July and, after several uncomfortable days suffering the effects of space sickness, were beginning to hit their stride as they prepared to break the world endurance record by spending two months off the planet. Then, on the morning of 2 August, as Lousma prepared breakfast in the galley, he saw something strange through the window. He called Garriott over to take a look…and the two men were astonished to behold what looked like a snowstorm brewing outside!
MEANWHILE, ON MARS…
Curiosity's computer built for the rigors of Mars
William Harwood – CBS News
The electronic brain controlling NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has far less horsepower than the microchips typically found in a modern smart phone. But the RAD750 PowerPC microprocessor built into the rover's redundant flight computers has one enormous advantage: It was engineered to be virtually impervious to high-energy cosmic rays that would quickly cripple an iPhone or laptop computer. The radiation-hardened single-card computers, built by BAE Systems in Manassas, Va., are designed to withstand charged ions and protons in interplanetary space or on the surface of Mars that can physically damage integrated circuits or trigger so-called "bit flips" in which the logic of the computer can be temporarily, or even permanently, disrupted.
NASA's mega-rover landed on Mars. What's next?
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
After a spectacular landing on Mars, the rover Curiosity wasted no time embracing its inner shutterbug, delighting scientists with vistas of Gale Crater complete with sand dunes, mountain views and even haze. Now what? The nuclear-powered, six-wheel Curiosity is on a quest to learn whether the Martian environment could have been favorable for microbial life. Before it can drive, it has to slog through weeks of health checkups. Since it's the most complex spacecraft ever sent to the red planet, engineers want to make sure it's in tip-top shape before they hand over the keys to scientists. It already has done a cursory check of its 10 science tools, but more tests are needed. This weekend, its computers get a software update — a process that will last several days.
Discussing the Mars landing with my 137-year-old grandfather
Robert Krulwich - National Public Radio
Yes, it was an amazing landing, an engineering triumph, a 150-million-mile slam dunk, spectacular in every way, except ... I think my grandpa would be disappointed. I'm not sure of this, since he died 50 years ago, but I have a hunch. It starts with a handwritten letter he wrote back in 1907. He was a travelling salesman. He sold men's hats, and his job was to visit retailers all over the country. "One evening," he wrote, "train riding between Chicago and Kansas City or St. Louis, sitting the club car, I read a magazine, The Century..." An article caught his eye. It was written by "Dr. Percival Lowell, Harvard, in charge of the Flagstaff Observatory". It was about Mars, and whatever Lowell said, my grandfather was wowed. It "opened my eyes," he writes.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Florida's Space Coast Claims Commercial Space Missions
Brevard Times
The three American companies building next-generation spacecraft that NASA could call on to carry astronauts into orbit in the future will perform much of their work along Florida's Space Coast, home of the agency's Commercial Crew Program (CCP).
Advances made by these companies under newly signed Space Act Agreements (SAAs) through the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative are intended to lead to the availability of commercial human spaceflight services for government and commercial customers.
"Our commercial crew and cargo efforts are based on a simple but powerful principle," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden during the CCiCap announcement. "By investing in American companies and American ingenuity, we're spurring free-market competition to give taxpayers more bang for the buck while enabling NASA to do what we do best, reach for the heavens."
Throughout the next 21 months, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) of Louisville, Colo., Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., and The Boeing Company of Houston will complete their spacecraft and launch vehicle designs, test their hardware, and then showcase how they would operate and manage missions from launch through orbit and landing.
"We have selected three companies that will help keep us on track to end the outsourcing of human spaceflight and create high-paying jobs in Florida and elsewhere across the country," Bolden said.
The proposals submitted by these three companies include processing and launching from Kennedy or the center's adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), which could equal new jobs along Florida's Space Coast.
"The KSC team has the human capital expertise, unique facilities and specialized equipment to propel the agency into the next phase of space exploration," said Kennedy Center Director Bob Cabana, "and the Commercial Crew Program is a key part of that."
Sierra Nevada Corporation
SNC will receive up to $212.5 million to further advance its Dream Chaser spacecraft, which resembles NASA's space shuttle but is smaller and based on improvements to the agency's HL-20 lifting-body design.
During two previous development rounds with CCP, the company matured the spacecraft's guidance, navigation and control system and tested its hybrid propellant propulsion system. It also built an engineering test article for approach-and- landing tests that are scheduled for later this year as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement with the company.
SNC has partnered with United Launch Alliance (ULA) of Centennial, Colo., to launch its spacecraft atop an Atlas V rocket. As progress is made with SNC's spacecraft, ULA will be working to outfit its launch pad at CCAFS's Space Launch Complex-41 with the structures and systems necessary to support crewed missions, such as crew access walkways and emergency escape systems.
As the only lifting-body spacecraft under development for crew transportation, the Dream Chaser will utilize Kennedy's unique Shuttle Landing Facility for traditional runway landings.
Space Exploration Technologies
SpaceX will receive up to $440 million for its crewed Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket combination. The next-generation Falcon rocket will feature the company's Merlin1D engine to provide greater lift capability to support the heavier weight of an astronaut crew plus cargo.
The uncrewed version of Dragon made history in May as the first commercially built spacecraft to rendezvous and then berth with the International Space Station.
SpaceX's mission control will be at its headquarters facility in Hawthorne, while launches will take place from Space Launch Complex-40 at CCAFS. The company is working to outfit its Dragon capsule with the capability to land on dry land, rather than the ocean's corrosive salt water, and a targeted landing site is still in work.
During the previous partnership with CCP, the company provided details about its side-mounted launch abort system that will employ SuperDraco engines as well as conceptual modifications to its launch pads to support crewed missions. The company also outlined crew living arrangements in its capsule, such as environmental control and life support equipment, initial displays and controls.
The Boeing Company
Boeing will receive up to $460 million to continue to develop its CST-100 spacecraft, which underwent rigorous testing during two previous development phases with CCP. The spacecraft's engines, orbital maneuvering system thrusters, and parachute landing and thermal protection systems were initially designed and tested.
Plans already are in work for the CST-100 to be manufactured and assembled in Orbiter Processing Facility-3 at Kennedy. The center also will be the home of the company's mission control facility.
An Atlas V, using the rocket's dual-engine Centaur upper stage, will loft Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft to low Earth orbit from CCAFS. "I am very confident in the ability and capability of our three partners under iCap," said CCP Manager Ed Mango. "I believe that we can make great progress with these three partners."
The new CCiCap agreements follow two previous commercial endeavors by NASA to spur the development of transportation systems and subsystems. Four funded and three unfunded partners worked to meet 62 complex milestones during CCDev2, which should be completed by the end of this year.
"In just over a year, our CCDev2 partners made steady progress in the design and development of their systems," Mango said. "As we wrap up those partnerships under CCDev2, we commend the teams for their hard work and dedication, and we look forward to possibly working with them again in the future."
The creativity of NASA's industry partners during CCiCap will set the stage for a crewed orbital demonstration mission around the middle of the decade. Future development initiatives will eventually lead to the availability of human spaceflight services for the agency to send its crews to the International Space Station, where critical research is taking place daily to benefit all of humanity. It could also make space more accessible and open for business for other government and commercial customers.
Congress mulls over space agency reboot
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle
Mike Coats keeps a list of about two dozen programs NASA has started - and then canceled - since he commanded a pair of space shuttle missions some 20 years ago.
"It's just not an efficient use of taxpayer dollars," says Coats, shaking his head.
These views aren't held solely by Coats, director of the Johnson Space Center since 2005. He's found allies in two powerful congressmen who want to reboot NASA to make it less susceptible to political winds and remove the year-to-year vagaries of its budget.
Both allies are U.S. representatives, Republicans John Culberson of Houston and Frank Wolf of Virginia, who are members of the House Appropriations committee.
"We're working on a bill," said Wolf, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that has jurisdiction over NASA. "We're trying to take the politics out of NASA with legislation that would create continuity in the space agency."
Still in draft form, the legislation would restructure NASA's management and funding to make it more professional than political, advocates say. They envision creating a management style more like the FBI, in which the president appoints the director to a 10-year term.
Under the proposal, NASA's budget would be developed with less input from the president's Office of Management and Budget. This independence would allow NASA to plan contracts across multiple years and use a process known as multi-year procurement, which saves money, allowing it to do more with less.
The bill should be filed later this year, and Texas Republican Ralph Hall, chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, has agreed to hold a hearing.
Coats said he fully endorses the concept proposed by Culberson and Wolf.
"We could be so much more efficient, and accomplish so much more with the budget we have," he said. "If we could plan out what we're going to have in four or five years, it would be amazing what we could do with our team."
One space policy expert familiar with Washington politics has a difficult time believing a president would sign such a bill, even if it passed Congress.
"The Office of Management and Budget isn't some independent rogue agency, it's part of the Executive Office of the President," said the source, who asked not to be named. "No president is going to sign away his or her authority to review an agency budget."
Still, something must be done, say Wolf and Culberson.
Culberson, who visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory last week following the successful Curiosity rover landing, noted that project cancellations are not limited to the human exploration program.
As brilliant as Curiosity's landing was, he noted, NASA's planetary science program doesn't have much to offer for an encore.
President Barack Obama's budget request for 2013 cuts the planetary science budget from $1.5 billion this year to $1.2 billion, and to $1.1 billion in the following three years.
If those cuts endure the budgetary process they would have a significant effect on NASA's ability to build probes and send them into the solar system, Culberson said.
"The worst part of the president's budget is that it shuts down the flagship missions program," Culberson said.
NASA confirmed that there is no funding in the president's proposed budget for new flagship missions and that smaller, less expensive missions would also be flown less often.
All of this means that tentative plans to return a sample from the surface of Mars, or send a probe to Jupiter's ice encrusted moon Europa, where life may live in oxygen-rich oceans of water beneath the surface, would have to be shelved indefinitely.
These two missions recently received the highest recommendation from a prestigious panel of scientists that established priorities for exploring the solar system.
Obama campaign to Romney on Space Coast: Where are you on space?
Orlando Sentinel
Space Coast officials including industry leaders got a chance to hear from President Barack Obama’s former top science guy and a Florida campaign official Friday on his space policies and program and are waiting for similar insight from Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
To date, Romney’s space policy has essentially been: Obama’s is no good; we’ll get back to you on what ours will be. That’s what he offered in January when then-GOP rival Newt Gingrich was pushing his man-on-the-moon policies. Now the Romney For President campaign appears to be continuing to defer future announcements until after he hears from a space advisory team.
On Friday the Obama campaign sent representatives to the Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast. The EDC invited the Romney campaign to speak at that or a future space coast business round-table, and has not heard back, one official said.
That left the door wide open Friday for one-sided assessments from Jim Kohlenberger, former chief of staff, of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Laurie Watkins, Florida Policy Director, Obama for America, who spoke to area officials from the EDC, Space Florida, United Rocket Alliance, SpaceX, Lockheed-Martin and others.
The Obama officials touted the president’s space agenda, which has led to several recent milestones: SpaceX’s successful mission to send a capsule to the International Space Station in May; the announcement of a heavy-lift rocket that will be available before the end of the decade; developments toward a private U.S. astronaut space taxi service by 2015; extension of the International Space Station’s mission; and this week’s landing of the Curiosity Mars Rover on Mars.
After Obama campaign spokesman Eric Jotkoff stated, “it becomes increasingly clear that Mitt Romney has no clear vision for NASA,” Political Pulse asked the Romney campaign for clearer definition of his space program.
The Romney campaign offered a possible interview with a high Romney official — which The Pulse did not pursue — but in lieu of that, Jeff Bechdel, Florida communications director for Romney for President, offered the following:
“Governor Romney recognizes the exciting opportunity that the commercial space industry offers for technological innovation and commerce. But while President Obama is allowing our national capabilities to erode, Governor Romney will provide the clear, decisive, and steadfast leadership the space program requires. As President, Romney will bring together leading officials, researchers, and entrepreneurs to establish clear goals and missions for NASA that fulfill its objectives of spurring innovation, pursuing exploration, and symbolizing American exceptionalism.”
Speaking to The Pulse after the EDC meeting, which was not open to the public or press, Kohlenberger said the president’s vision is to turn over most of lower-Earth orbit activities to the private sector so NASA can work on deep-space exploration, what he calls “the hard things.” One objective he pledged is to get as much of the private sector work done at or around Kennedy Space Center as possible, to try to generate jobs to replace the thousands lost when the space shuttle program retired last year.
He noted several announcements this year of private space programs Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada committing to do so, though their job prospects generally have numbered in the dozens or hundreds so far, not thousands. Still, Kohlenberger said the transition is under way toward more industry, and said it’s more than what could be expected in the reduced NASA budgets he said Romney is expected to propose.
“We’re seeing some great progress on both the commercial side and the hard things,” Kohlenberger said. “What’s really exciting is that the Space Coast isn’t just a launching pad for our new NASA space flights. It’s also a launching pad for new jobs, new industry and diversity of industry on the Space Coast to help build an economy that will last.
“As we go forward, space workers trying hard to put food on the table, they deserve an answer on what Mitt Romney will do to put forth a space program,” he challenged.
Dale Ketcham of the EDC said the Romney campaign has been invited to address the EDC-Space Coast about his space vision, but has not responded.
”There’s always a standing invitation from the EDC and this community. We did it for past presidential candidates and candidates for governor, senator, congress. There’s been a tradition and expectation of the candidates coming to this district and talking about their vision for space,” Ketcham said. “There’s certainly time for them, but it would be a little puzzling if they don’t. They’re certainly handing the president a chance to beat them over the head.”
Paul Ryan’s (very thin) space policy dossier
SpacePolitics.com
Saturday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his choice for running mate: Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI). While the decision may, as the Washington Post suggests, offer a “stark choice” on fiscal issues, it sheds little, if any light, on the niche issue of space policy. Ryan has said virtually nothing on space issues, and it’s not a local issue in his southeast Wisconsin district. His House web site is virtually devoid of references to NASA, beyond a link on his “Students and Kids” page to the “NASA Kids’ Club” site.
In terms of recent roll-call votes, he did vote against the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 in September 2010, legislation that did pass the House and was signed into law.
Ryan is better known as chairman of the House Budget Committee, and in that role he has offered budget proposals that included significant cuts in non-defense discretionary spending. The Ryan budget does not go down into the details about specific agencies, like NASA, but instead is at the “account” level, which can cut across not only the usual divisions of the appropriations process but also across agencies.
As SpacePolicyOnline.com noted earlier this year, most of NASA, as well as NOAA, are accounted for within account 250, “General science, space, and technology”, but NASA’s aeronautics program is part of account 400, “Transportation”.
What the Ryan budget does show is a modest decrease in science and space spending in his budget. His ten-year (fiscal years 2013-2022) budget would spend about 6.5 percent less on that account versus the administration’s own ten-year budget, which you can compare by looking at the charts at the end of the House budget resolution with this table from the Office of Management and Budget. (This Excel file compares the two budgets on that one particular account.)
This doesn’t necessarily mean he would cut NASA’s budget by this amount: he could choose to spare it and cut other programs by a correspondingly greater amount, or vice versa. And, of course, it doesn’t mean that a Romney Administration would necessarily adopt something like this in its budgets for FY 2014 and beyond.
Medvedev says space failures cost Russia prestige and cash
Alissa de Carbonnel - Reuters
Moscow is losing prestige and money due to botched space projects, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday after Russia junked two satellites in the latest launch failure to dog the once-pioneering industry.
The failure of a workhorse Proton rocket after launch on Monday caused the multimillion-dollar loss of Indonesia's Telkom-3 and Russia's Express-MD2 satellites, according to Russia's space agency.
Russian space agency Roskosmos said an engine failure in the rocket's upper stage, called the Briz-M, meant the craft went into the wrong orbit. A similar problem caused the loss of a $265 million communications satellite last year.
"I don't know the reason for the loss of our satellites - whether it is the upper stage, mechanical damage, elementary negligence or everything together - but we cannot stand this any longer," Medvedev said at a televised government meeting.
"We are losing our authority and billions of roubles."
Medvedev said he would hold a meeting on the subject next week and ordered government officials to look into recent failures. "They must report their recommendations on who to punish and what to do further."
Moscow is struggling to restore confidence in its space industry after a series of mishaps last year, including the failure of a mission to return samples from the Martian moon Phobos.
Such failures for Russia, which conducts 40 percent of global space launches, may undermine its standing in the market, strengthening competitors such as Europe's Ariane rocket.
Telkom-3 was the first satellite Jakarta had purchased from Moscow, built by Russia's ISS-Reshetnev with communication equipment made by French-led satellite maker Thales Alenia Space. Express-MD2 was a small communication satellite, made for the Russian Satellite Communications Company.
Russian space industry laden with failures
Lyudmila Alexandrova - Itar-Tass
The Russian space industry is in a deep crisis, the experts noted in comments on another space failure. The launch of the booster Proton-M, which was to orbit the telecommunications satellites Express MD2 and Telkom-3, turned out to be abortive over a breakdown in the operation of the upper stage Briz-M. Finally overnight to Tuesday Russian spacecraft with a total cost from six to eight billion roubles turned in the space garbage.
Russian space launches have recently ended in a fiasco regularly. The expert noted that the reason for the failures is the lack of the common quality control system.
Proton-M with the upper stage Briz-M, which the Khrunichev State Research-and-Production Space Centre had produced and which was carrying the satellites Express-MD2 and Telkom-3, was launched from the Baikonur spaceport last Monday. The launch vehicle blasted off as scheduled, but at the stage of orbiting the satellites the failure occurred in the third activation of the cruise engine of the upper stage, as it had been running only for seven seconds. Finally the satellites did not get on the target orbit.
This is not the first problem with the operation of the upper stage Briz-M. In August 2011 the telecommunications satellite Express-AM4 was lost over technical malfunctions in its operation.
The specialists have put forward the first versions for possible reasons behind the space crash. The error in the creation of the flight sequence, malfunctions in the control system of the upper stage and the breaking of its engine unit are among the main reasons behind the space incident, a Kommersant source in the interdepartmental committee said.
According to preliminary estimates, the damages from the latest space crash reached from six to eight billion roubles. The lost satellites will be reproduced.
However, Russia is losing not only money, but also the reputation of the country. Telkom-3 was produced by the Information Satellite Systems Company in cooperation with Russian and foreign enterprises on the order from the Indonesian telecommunications company PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk. The satellite was to provide the telecommunication and television broadcasting services in Indonesia and Indochina. This spacecraft was produced in Russia, which had won an international tender for its creation.
The telecommunications satellite Express-MD2 was created in the Khrunichev Space Centre together with the Italian branch of the Thales Alenia Space joint venture. The satellite was designed for the non-stop, round-the-clock transmission of information flows in Russia. Under the federal targeted program for the development of the television and radio broadcasting in Russia in 2009-2015 the satellite was to provide the digital broadcasting for remote Russian regions.
For the last two years the failures have literally burdened the Russian space industry. A string of abortive launches began on December 5, 2010, when the Proton rocket with three Glonass satellites was launched from the Baikonur spaceport. Over the excessive fuel stock in the upper stage DM-3 the satellites failed to be orbited and dropped in the Pacific. In February 2011 the military satellite Geo-IK-2 was put on the off-target orbit, so failed to reach the target altitude, and in August 2011the satellite Express-AM4, which the booster Proton-M launched, failed to get on the line. Meanwhile, the space freighter Progress M-12M failed to reach the International Space Station in August 2011. Last November the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) failed to launch the unmanned interplanetary probe Phobos-Grunt to the Mars that dealt a particularly strong blow on the space prestige of the country.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin already warned to do blamestorming for the space officials over the recent space failure. Next week Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will convene a special meeting, at which the current tense situation in the Russian space industry will be discussed in detail, Rogozin said.
On Tuesday, some allegations were made public about the dismissal of the leadership of the Khrunichev Space Centre, which had designed the crashed spacecraft. Until recently the leadership of the Space Centre managed to avoid punishment, despite the fact that the reason for two out of five space crashes in the previous year was the malfunctions of spacecraft, which were designed in the centre.
The responsibility of Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin will be discussed as well. The space breakdown occurred after Roscosmos introduced its final inspections of spacecraft at the enterprises of the space industry and tightened the requirements to the pre-launch tests.
“It is impossible to repair for six months the situation, which had emerged in the industry for many years,” the Novye Izvestia daily quoted Director of the Centre for Analysis of World Arms Trade Igor Korotchenko as saying. Reshuffles in the staff cannot settle the problem. “The control over the industry should be established, the quality should be raised, and redundant mediators should be cut,” he believes.
“For the last few years the space industry has not been reformed yet. The corruption is reigning in it. The prices are growing, but the quality is falling. There is no tough control over the quality of component parts, which are delivered by the subcontractors, which had mushroomed around the enterprises of the space industry. The transparency of pricing lacks that resulted in multibillion budgetary injections to be wasted,” head of the international security centre in the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexei Arbatov stated.
Director for development and marketing of the company of space security systems Autolocator Gleb Slavutsky agreed with this opinion as well. “The failures went one after another. In my view, the lack of money is not so acute, as for instance, in the nineties of the previous century. The main problem consists in the lack of a clear organizing procedure and quality control. Meanwhile, the quality control lacks at all stages. This problem is aggravated with the lack of qualified personnel,” he acknowledged.
“The Khrunichev Space Centre, which produces the upper stages Briz-M, should primarily focus on the quality control system,” the former space chief specialist of the Russian Armed Forces Vladimir Uvarov told the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily. The latest space crash resulted from the collapse of that powerful structure, which had been created for the development of the national space program some time ago. “The control system was ruined in the civil life and in the armed forces,” Uvarov said.
“Roscosmos has abolished the agency, which was specialized in launch vehicles and upper stages, and now the whole scope of required measures is not taken in the pre-launch testing,” former Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov told Itar-Tass. The responsibility became vague, it is quite hard to find those guilty in case of any emergency situation, he explained.
Meanwhile, some media reports were made public that the launches of the Proton-M-type boosters with the upper stages Briz-M will be suspended, until the reasons for the crash of the satellites Express-MD2 and Telkom-3 are found. Scheduled future Proton launches were delayed for later dates.
American icon Smokey Bear visits NASA
Michael Baruzzini - Petri Dish
In a video available online, Smokey Bear visited Johnson Space Center’s Flight Control Room on the occasion of his 68th anniversary. In May, the Expedition 31 crew aboard the International Space Station chose Smokey Bear as the team’s launch mascot. In the control room, Smokey watched a message from the International Space Station recognizing his 68th birthday, and met engineers and officials working at Johnson Space Center. Smokey the Bear was guided on his tour by veteran astronaut Mike Fossum.
Smokey Bear, the animal mascot of the U. S. Forest Service, first appeared in a poster on Aug. 9, 1944, cautioning American citizens that carelessness could lead to dangerous wildfires. At the time, a shortage of manpower in U. S. fire fighting abilities, due to World War II, led to increased efforts to prevent forest fires from starting in the first place. Since then, Smokey has appeared in numerous posters and television ads educating the public about the dangers of uncontrolled forest fires, always wearing his now iconic Forest Service hat. Many of these ads have also featured his now well-known catchphrase, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”
A statement on the U.S. Forest Service website honored Smokey, noting, that Smokey is “the star of the longest running public service campaign in American history. The Forest Fire Prevention campaign has helped reduce the number of acres burned annually from 22 million to 8.4 million in 2000. Smokey’s message changed in 2001 to ‘Remember, Only You Can Prevent Wildfires’ to remind everyone to be careful with fire in all outdoor areas – grasslands, rangelands, as well as forests.”
The Forest Service also cared for a live black bear cub named Smokey who was rescued from the Capitan Gap fire in New Mexico in 1950. The cub was raised in the National Zoo for 26 years, before being buried in Smokey Bear historical park in 1976. Smokey’s latest incarnation is as a computerized version who appears as a concerned neighbor cautioning about the danger of leaving burning leaves unattended.
During Smokey’s visit to the Johnson Space Center, special birthday wishes from astronaut Joe Acaba were sent down to the ground. Acaba noted Smokey’s role in conservation and fire-prevention efforts and discussed the role the ISS played in supporting conservation efforts on the ground. Acaba also displayed a small plush version of Smokey floating in the microgravity of the station.
Gabrielle Giffords, husband moving back to Tucson
Associated Press
Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband are moving back to Tucson on Sunday, a year and a half after she moved to Houston to undergo intensive physical and speech therapy after she was wounded by a gunman at an event outside a grocery store.
Giffords’ husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, told the Arizona Daily Star that his wife will continue therapy in Tucson but says it’s not going to be the six to eight hours per day she’d been doing in Houston.
“You know, it’s time for her to get back to as much of a normal life as possible after this type of catastrophic injury,” Kelly said. “Obviously, a big thing for her is to come home.”
Giffords was among 19 people who were shot in the attack. She and 12 others survived, while six people died.
Jared Lee Loughner pleaded guilty on Aug. 2 to the shooting rampage as part of an agreement with prosecutors that will send him to prison for life and spare him a possible death sentence. His sentencing is set for Nov. 15.
Kelly told the Daily Star that Giffords has barely any memory of those first weeks after her injury, but after she was moved to Houston and realized she wasn’t in Arizona, she kept talking about returning home.
Kelly said “it was very important for her to be in Houston, where she was able to get very specific therapy for this type of injury. She did that for a year and a half, and the second we realized that was going to start winding down, it was time for us to start looking forward to how we could get to Tucson.”
In Tucson, Giffords has some things she’ll be involved in, but Kelly said he couldn’t go into any detail right now.
When asked whether Giffords will be up to making a speech or doing interviews in the future, he said he’s confident that she will. But he doesn’t want to put any kind of a timeline on when.
“She does continue to get better, and I think she will for years and years,” he said. “I have heard anecdotally from other people who have had these kind of injuries, if you remain focused and do the hard work, you will keep improving.”
Peace-building through space exploration
George Wolfe - Muncie Star-Press (Opinion)
(Wolfe is the coordinator of outreach programs for the Ball State University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. He is also a trained mediator and the author of “The Spiritual Power of Nonviolence: Interfaith Understanding for a Future Without War.”)
The successful landing of the Mars rover Curiosity reminds me of my visit to Titusville, Fla., home to Space Coast Park and the best place to view NASA mission launches outside of Kennedy Space Center.
I was there on Feb. 24, 2011. It was an all-day affair, as a crowd several hundred strong waited within the park for the final launch of the space shuttle Discovery. The time spent anticipating the scheduled 4:50 p.m. lift-off left me time to reflect on the complex technological achievement I was about to witness. The integration of human and artificial intelligence, combined with the complicated systems that go into the entire international space exploration effort are truly a modern-day marvel.
In the 1980s, Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan spoke of space exploration as an opportunity for international cooperation and the potential it held for building peace between the community of nations. The completion of the International Space Station now orbiting the earth, as well as the joint United States and Russian missions to Mir space station in previous decades, are certainly significant manifestations of his vision.
The technological and economic challenges that go into space exploration are immense, but their complexity is perhaps a great blessing to humanity.
Throughout human social and technological evolution, many advances that were made required communities to work together in cooperation. Today, the complexity and financial cost of establishing a colony on the moon and searching for life elsewhere in our solar system require a united world with access to a quantity of energy that is well beyond our present-day capabilities.
To create the infrastructure necessary to sustain our engineering and technological advancement as well as our economic growth, we must build a world where educational institutions throughout the world can train personnel in the skills needed to contribute to a global space effort.
Unfortunately, some politicians are not hearing Carl Sagan’s visionary message calling for international cooperation in space. When Newt Gingrich proposed establishing a permanent base on the moon during the Republican presidential primary campaign, he specifically called for it to be an “American base,” not an international one.
Given the expense of ferrying humans and resources to and from the moon, the commercial value is beyond what any one country’s economy can afford and sustain.
Our goal should be to phase out spending for costly wars and instead, provide funding that supports education, and extends international manned space exploration well beyond earth orbit.
What is needed is not an American base on the moon or an American mission to Mars, but shared international missions to the moon and beyond that humanity, as a whole, can speak of with pride and call its own.
Returning our attention to space exploration
Two recent events boost our belief that space exploration should be a driving ideal for both Colorado and the nation
Denver Post (Editorial)
When the Space Shuttle Atlantis was retired last year, we were among those who lamented what the moment said about the country's aspirations for space.
Two events in recent days have buoyed our belief that space exploration — with a significant boost from Colorado — should be a driving ideal for this nation.
The first was the energizing and amazing experience of watching the Curiosity rover land on Mars.
The other was the announcement that Sierra Nevada Systems Inc. was one of three companies splitting $1.1 billion in federal funding to develop next-generation vehicles to deliver and return astronauts from space.
The Louisville-based company's $212.5 million grant for its Dream Chaser spacecraft will benefit a company that already employs more than 800 people for 10 to 20 years, company head Mike Sirangelo told The Post.
It will have other local economic impacts as well, given that the Dream Chaser plans to use the Centennial-based United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rockets.
That's a localized reason to relish space exploration.
The successful landing on Mars of the 1-ton Curiosity rover is one that has seemingly refocused a nation's eyes on space.
True, we've landed rovers on Mars before. But never rovers of this size and with this precision.
And again, some of the credit goes to Colorado aerospace experts and engineers, as The Post's Kristen Leigh Painter detailed last week.
The correct trajectory was achieved using the ULA's Atlas 5 rocket. The "aeroshell" that allowed the craft to soar through the Martian atmosphere unscathed was built by Lockheed Martin in Jefferson County. The Southwest Research Institute's office in Boulder developed a radiation assessment detector that will analyze the planet's radioactive characteristics. And the first black-and-white images were courtesy of a camera designed by Boulder's Ball Aerospace & Technologies.
There are many other notable projects underway in the state, including Lockheed Martin's development of the Orion spacecraft — for deep-space travel — in Jefferson County and the MAVEN Mars mission spacecraft that is scheduled for launch next year.
Taken together, these stories serve as a reminder of John F. Kennedy's exhortation that space exploration should be attempted for the very reason that it is difficult, and a goal "that will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills."
Those words ring especially true in Colorado, which ranks in the top three states nationally as far as aerospace industry employment.
Space exploration lets us dream big and then forces us to figure out — as many Coloradans do every day — how to realize that dream.
Let's bring logic to NASA's budget process
Houston Chronicle (Editorial)
It has been a special Houston pleasure to see the fruits of the successful landing of Curiosity on the surface of Mars. The technological virtuosity displayed by NASA's scientists and engineers throughout the Mars rover's journey has been simply wondrous.
And did we mention the pictures? We feel as though we've been invited to share in the unraveling of a great mystery that will be brought to us courtesy of Curiosity - now in brilliant color.
The Mars rover's mission has also offered a welcome respite from a political season that seems to turn nastier by the moment.
Alas, it is impossible to wholly separate the space agency from the bumps and bruises of politics, but we commend the effort by two congressmen to move NASA a little further away from the political fray when it comes to budgeting.
The effort is being made by Houston Congressman John Culberson, along with fellow Republican, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia.
The goal of the bill being drafted by the two congressmen, according to Wolf, is " to take the politics out of NASA … and create continuity in the space agency."
Playing politics with the space budget wreaks havoc. As NASA Director Mike Coats recently told the Chronicle's Eric Berger, about two dozen programs have had to be canceled on his seven-year watch because of budget shifts. "It's just not an efficient use of taxpayer dollars," Coats said. Amen.
Culberson's and Wolf's bill would model NASA's budget process after that used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Doing so would make the agency less political and more professional. It calls for the president to appoint the NASA director to a 10-year term and would make the budget cycle multiyear rather than annual.
The notion has Coats' endorsement. He notes that if they were able to plan out four or five years "it would be amazing what we could do with our team."
The success of Curiosity has brought the nation a welcome taste of amazing from NASA. We'd like to see more.
The logical next step is to align the agency's budget cycle with its projects, which tend to be long term in nature. Culberson is right when he says we have to stop "whipsawing" NASA and its people with politically driven budget changes year to year.
Now, while the nation's attention is being captured by the success of Curiosity, is a perfect time to push in a high-profile way for these needed changes.
To honor the success of Curiosity, and for the sake of all the other wonders of space that could be ahead, let's do NASA's budget in a more sensible way.
Bear in Space
Smokey Bear (Commentary)
2012 has been a year of fantastic achievements in space exploration. From the recent landing of Curiosity on Mars to Space X's Dragon successful docking with the International Space Station, humankind has done what it hasn't done before.
2012 has also seen an unfortunate amount of damage from both lightning and human caused wildfires. We can't prevent lightning fires, but we can all do our part especially when record drought conditions affect much of the country. Be extra careful when using fire or equipment that could cause sparks.
Besides everyone doing what they can to help prevent human caused wildfires, we just got some extra help from NASA right here on Earth and from space. NASA and the U.S. Forest Service signed a Space Act Agreement that unites the two agencies in raising awareness about the importance of wildfire prevention, research, and materials science.
We got another boost when astronaut Joe Acaba selected me, Smokey Bear, to be the talisman for his Soyuz flight to the International Space Station. From 240 miles above the Earth, Joe and I recorded high-resolution video and photographs of the wildfires in Colorado and Utah where you can see plumes of wildfire smoke and recently burned areas. This follows on a journey I took into near space last year.
And I'm about to get a personal boost: I'm spending my 68th birthday, August 9, at NASA's Johnson Space Center Mission Control. I'm excited to see how human exploration of the galaxy helps prevent wildfires and protect life here on Earth.
When you hear that nationwide 9 out of 10 wildfires are caused by humans, it's a potent reminder that even interplanetary support can only do so much. It takes ordinary people like you to make extraordinary things happen.
Step in if you see a child playing with matches or lighters and introduce them to my message. Step in if you see an unattended campfire and douse it out cold. Step in if you see anyone in danger of starting a wildfire and help them stop it before it starts. I'm asking you to take one small step for wildfire prevention, and one giant leap for all humankind.
Remember, only you can prevent wildfires.
Read more about astronaut Joe Acaba's journey in the International Space Station here.
Some of the fires were lightning caused; not all human caused.
Launch Minus Nine Days: The Space Rescue That Never Was
Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org
In the high heat of a Houston summer, in early August 1973, controllers at the Johnson Space Center were faced with the very real possibility of orchestrating the rescue of three astronauts from the Skylab orbital station. Commander Al Bean, Science Pilot Owen Garriott and Pilot Jack Lousma had launched safely on 28 July and, after several uncomfortable days suffering the effects of space sickness, were beginning to hit their stride as they prepared to break the world endurance record by spending two months off the planet.
Then, on the morning of 2 August, as Lousma prepared breakfast in the galley, he saw something strange through the window. He called Garriott over to take a look…and the two men were astonished to behold what looked like a snowstorm brewing outside! At first, Garriott thought he was seeing a beautiful auroral display – they were, after all, flying over New Zealand and through the southern auroral area at the time – but he was left open-mouthed as a flurry of snowflake-like particles (“a real blizzard”, he said later) flooded past the window. It did not take long to ascertain the cause.
Shortly after launch, the crew had experienced problems with one of their four ‘quads’ of manoeuvring thrusters, spaced at 90-degree intervals around the circumference of the Apollo spacecraft’s service module. The troublesome unit (known as ‘Quad B’) had been shut down, but now as Bean and Lousma floated to the command module to check its systems they noticed that Quad D – directly opposite Quad B – was displaying erratic data.
Temperatures were plunging rapidly and the crew activated the quad’s backup heaters. An hour later, a further drop in temperature and pressure signified that the astronauts had a second leak on their hands. Garriott and Lousma’s visual observations confirmed this fact. In his NASA oral history, Lousma recalled seeing the oxidiser quantity readings falling on the meters and began shutting off the relevant valves, closing up the plumbing and ensuring that all was secure. But with two of their four quad sets now out of action, Bean and his men were left with only two functional quads…and at this stage the situation turned ugly, for the thrusters sets were a critical manoeuvrability asset and half of them were gone, less than a week into an eight-week mission.
The rate of oxidiser was low – around ten percent of the quad’s nitrogen tetroxide had gone – but Mission Control had no idea how quickly it might increase. Although the crew could use two, or even one, quads to get home, this was not an acceptable condition for re-entry, without further investigation. The questions came thick and fast in the next few hours. Was it a systemic flaw? Would there be a continuous string of failures? Or was it a purely random failure? No one knew. If the entire batch of nitrogen tetroxide used for the mission had been contaminated, a cloud of uncertainty lingered over the other two sets of thrusters, Quads A and C. And if the leak worsened, internal circuits inside the service module might make the entire spacecraft unusable. In a conversation with JSC Director Chris Kraft, Al Bean implored him to allow the mission to continue, but was told that a rescue mission – with a modified Apollo craft – might be attempted if the situation deteriorated. Rescue missions for Skylab had been extensively planned for more than two years; indeed, astronauts Vance Brand and Don Lind had undergone specific training to accomplish it.
On 13 August, Time magazine told its readers the unsettling news: that one of the service module’s four thruster quads had sprung a leak shortly after launch and another quad had proven inoperable a few days later. Not only was Mission Control concerned that all four quads were of similar design, but their fuel – and the fuel for the big Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine – originated from the same batch. If that batch was contaminated, NASA could have a ‘generic’ problem on its hands which might affect the whole spacecraft and prevent Bean, Garriott and Lousma from returning home safely. In theory, Apollo could be controlled with just one quad or even using the thrusters on the command module itself, but the risk of further deterioration prompted the space agency to take steps to implement a rescue. Of course, Skylab’s multiple docking adaptor carried two ports, which might permit a rescue craft to visit. Yet the effort itself to orchestrate a real rescue was an audacious endeavour and called for a second Apollo to be outfitted with five seats; two for its own pilots and three others for Bean, Garriott and Lousma. The stranded crew could then transfer from the station to the rescue vehicle and return to Earth. Assessments of the practicability of such a plan were first made in April 1971 and it was considered possible for NASA and its workforce to launch the mission at any time between ten and 45 days after being given the go-ahead. It was not a simple ‘paper’ exercise: by March 1972, NASA had committed itself firmly to having a rescue capability and sea-based trials, supported by Navy and Air Force helicopters, were undertaken later that year.
With Garriott focused on the scientific side of the mission, Bean and Lousma had been intimately involved in designing the rescue craft. In fact, said Lousma, they provided a rescue capability for the previous Skylab crew and would have ferried Pete Conrad, Joe Kerwin and Paul Weitz home in the event of unsurmountable problems with their own craft. “Al and I worked with Rockwell and the NASA engineers,” Lousma told the NASA oral historian, “in configuring a command module that had two flat couches underneath the three couches on top and that would handle five people. In the centre, between the two people on the very bottom floor, there was enough room to put some of the experimental data and other kinds of things you’d want to bring back for data reduction.”
The biggest concern, he added, was the potential ‘stroking’ of the upper deck of couches. Normally, the standard three couches were designed to ‘stroke’, or have their supports compress, like a shock absorber, in the event of a rough landing. If that happened to the returning rescue craft, the supports might compress…onto the astronaut in the couch below! However, since no couch had ever stroked during any of the previous dozen Apollo splashdowns, NASA considered the risk a minimal one.
Now, in the first half of August 1973, it seemed that a rescue mission might really happen. Preparations at the Kennedy Space Center now shifted into high gear, with efforts to ready Pad 39B for its second Saturn 1B launch in a few days. The spacecraft and booster to be used were those already earmarked to transport the third Skylab crew into orbit in November. On 3 August, the processing schedule was accelerated, with technicians and engineers working around the clock to ready the vehicle for a possible new role. The Apollo (known as ‘Skylab-Rescue’ or ‘SL-R’) would be stripped of stowage lockers in its lower equipment bay to accommodate the three couches and ‘ballasted’ with lead to compensate for centre-of-gravity offsets. Upon receipt of ‘the call’, the ‘field modification kit’ to turn a three-man command module into a five-man expanded ship would commence.
According to NASA documentation from the time, aside from safely returning both crews to Earth, the main objectives were to bring back ‘selected’ experiment data, perform a diagnosis of the failure of the original Apollo craft and configure Skylab for a revisit. In terms of experiments returned to Earth – “ironically”, said Al Bean – frozen urine specimens and dried faeces were of primary interest from a medical perspective, although Earth resources and Apollo Telescope Mount film tapes would also be brought home. Launch of SL-R was scheduled for 5 September, three-quarters of the way through Bean, Garriott and Lousma’s 59-day mission. On 10 August, the SL-R spacecraft was moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building for checkout.
By necessity, this work was abbreviated and it was expected that the spacecraft could be readied for installation onto the Saturn 1B booster and rolled out to the pad in just three days. Flight readiness checks would then be accomplished by 24 August, propellant loading would commence on the 27th and launch would occur a week later. The SL-R mission was expected to last no more than five days, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific on 10 September.
Of course, no daring rescue could possibly go ahead without a heroic team of astronauts. Since January 1972, Vance Brand and Don Lind had been in dedicated training, along with Bill Lenoir, as backups to the second and third Skylan crews. Additionally, Brand and Lind would pull double duty as the SL-R standby crew for both missions, though Lenoir had also trained for the role and was considered equally qualified. (“I was not in the discussion that selected the crew,” Brand told the NASA oral historian. “We just found out. Both were capable of doing that job. Bill was a scientist, but also an excellent engineer and pilot. Everybody cross-trained for everything.”)
However, as the commander of the rescue flight, Brand had his doubts. He had become very familiar with the schedule of launch preparations for both the spacecraft and its Saturn 1B booster and felt that the ‘long pole’ to achieving their 5 September target was getting the vehicle ready within a month. “I think we would have been lucky to be off 30 days after that,” he recalled, “but we were talking about that, aiming for that.”
When the trouble with Bean, Garriott and Lousma’s ship became clear, Brand and Lind spent most of August 1973 “figuring out how to rendezvous with them, where we would dock, outfitting our command module so that it had…padding on the aft bulkhead where people could lie…[to] get five people in the spacecraft”. In addition to the risk of stroking of the couches, the number of bodies inside the command module might also have posed difficulties after splashdown; if the spacecraft entered its ‘Stable 2’ orientation (nose-down in the water) it could prove disorientating for the crew.
On one occasion, Brand and Lind undertook training in the Gulf of Mexico in a mock-up of the command module. For the purposes of the five-man exercise, three other astronauts, including Bill Lenoir, joined them.
“Now,” Lind told Lenoir, “if we get in Stable 2, remember you’re on top of the vehicle, so when you unstrap, make sure you have a hold of a stanchion someplace.”
Lenoir gave him an incredulous look, which read: How dumb do you think I am?
Shortly afterwards, the command module entered the Stable 2 orientation. Lenoir was instructed to unstrap. Without thinking, he released his belt and – wham – fell several feet. He glared at Lind. “If you say one word,” he mouthed, “I’ll kill you!”
Many within NASA, including the astronauts themselves, believed that the rescue would most likely go ahead. The mood was lightened a little when further investigation confirmed that none of the oxidiser batches were contaminated and had not contributed to the leak. It also appeared that Quads A and C were unaffected and a subsequent investigation attributed the failure to undetected loose fittings in oxidiser lines.
Moreover, by identifying work-around procedures, Brand and Lind succeeded in developing an ability for Bean to undock from Skylab and complete re-entry without Quads B and D. The men also worked out a method of running both translational hand controllers simultaneously, and in opposite directions, to achieve translation capability and execute a de-orbit burn with only the command module’s attitude thrusters. “We were so clever as the backup crew,” said Lind, “that we worked ourselves out of a flight! You really didn’t want to have to go rescue them. You really wanted to bring them back safely with all their equipment.” Their workaround, together with the engineering expertise of others on the ground and of the crew in orbit, ensured that Bean’s crew could complete their scheduled 59-day mission. Rather than making a two-stage SPS burn for re-entry, it was decided that the men would perform a single burn, and that if there were no more quad leaks in the meantime the SL-R mission could be stood down.
As the situation began to improve, with the workarounds and the relief that the leaks did not highlight a systemic flaw and the oxidiser batches were not contaminated, plans changed quickly. For the men in space, there was little risk: they had no increased chance of fire or pressure loss aboard Skylab, they had plenty of food stores – even with a voracious eater like Lousma among them – and their only worry was the risk of having to come home early and curtail a mission which had already started later than expected due to space sickness.
The decision to remove SL-R from consideration changed virtually overnight. On 14 August, only days after the transfer of the spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building, NASA announced that the launch vehicle was being retasked for launch no earlier than 25 September; effectively, the agency was removing it from immediate rescue duty, since Bean, Garriott and Lousma were already scheduled to land at around that time. This decision ties in with Lousma’s assertion to the NASA oral historian that “after about ten days or so” into the crisis, the crew was advised that they could stay aboard Skylab and continue their mission. On that same day, 14 August, the Saturn – now reassigned to its original purpose of launching the final Skylab crew – was transferred to Pad 39B to begin its own preparations. Still, when technicians finished loading hypergolic propellants aboard the rocket on 10 September, it remained in a ‘Launch Minus Nine Days’ standby status until Bean’s crew were safely back on Earth.
For Vance Brand and Don Lind, it was a bittersweet experience. “You really feel not just a professional obligation, but also a personal obligation,” Lind remembered, “to the fellows on the crew that you know so well to do that job very well. We did the best job we could and were able to convince management that we had enough redundancy to bring the guys home with the quad problems.” For Brand, who flew aboard Apollo-Soyuz less than two years later, given the choice, he would have preferred the joint flight with the Soviets, rather than having to lead the hairy SL-R mission. Still, commanding the world’s first-ever fully-fledged space rescue would have stood as an intensely rewarding achievement for the rest of his life. Today, almost four decades later, whilst it would have been ‘interesting’ to see Brand and Lind fly their mission, we should perhaps be thankful that they did not have to.
MEANWHILE, ON MARS…
Curiosity's computer built for the rigors of Mars
William Harwood – CBS News
The electronic brain controlling NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has far less horsepower than the microchips typically found in a modern smart phone.
But the RAD750 PowerPC microprocessor built into the rover's redundant flight computers has one enormous advantage: It was engineered to be virtually impervious to high-energy cosmic rays that would quickly cripple an iPhone or laptop computer.
The radiation-hardened single-card computers, built by BAE Systems in Manassas, Va., are designed to withstand charged ions and protons in interplanetary space or on the surface of Mars that can physically damage integrated circuits or trigger so-called "bit flips" in which the logic of the computer can be temporarily, or even permanently, disrupted.
The RAD750s also meet lifetime dosage standards that are up to a million times more extreme than those considered fatal for a human being. As a result, over a 15-year period, the RAD750 chips aboard Curiosity would not be expected to suffer more than one external event requiring intervention from Earth.
"The RAD750 card is designed to accommodate all those single event effects and survive them," Vic Scuderi, BAE business manager for satellite electronics, said in an interview. "The ultimate goal is one upset is allowed in 15 years. An upset means an intervention from Earth -- one 'blue screen of death' in 15 years. We typically have contracts that (specify) that."
Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., plan to spend the next four days loading a major software update into Curiosity's redundant flight computers, flushing out the no-longer-needed entry, descent and landing application and replacing it with software optimized for surface operations.
The R10 update includes programming to operate the rover's sample acquisition instruments, its robot arm and its six-wheel drive system.
The new flight software was uplinked to Curiosity while the spacecraft was on the way to Mars. Starting late Friday, engineers will begin installing the R10 update in stepwise fashion, first on one computer and then on the other, testing as they go along to make sure all is well.
"Right now, we have the capability of just our basic surface software to check out the health of the instruments, but we don't really have the capability to go and make the full use of all this great hardware we shipped to Mars," said Ben Cichy, a senior software engineer at JPL.
"So the R10 software gives us the capability to use the robotic arm fully, to use the drill, to use the dust removal tool, to use the whole sampling chain, all this exciting stuff."
Curiosity is a "martian megarover," Cichy said. "Curiosity was born to drive, and so the R10 software includes the capability for Curiosity to really get out and stretch her wheels on the surface of Mars. So the R10 software gives us the autonomous driving capability, the ability for the rover to drive using on-board images to detect hazards that are around the rover and to drive safely across the surface of Mars."
The rover is equipped with two computers, but only one is active at a time. Both are built around a radiation-hardened BAE RAD750 microchip operating at up to 200 megahertz. Each computer is equipped with 2 gigabytes of flash memory, 256 megabytes of random access memory and 256 kilobytes of erasable programmable read-only memory.
The BAE-provided RAD6000-based computers aboard the Mars Odyssey orbiter and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are 10 times slower and feature eight times less memory than the RAD750 cards aboard Curiosity. The more powerful microchip also is used by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and will be integrated into the James Webb Space Telescope.
While their technical specifications appear to lag well behind the chips used in readily available consumer electronics, those devices don't require anywhere near the rigorous design work, testing and qualification that goes into a space-rated processor.
"First, you have to develop the radiation hardening techniques and actually implement them in the design," said Scott Doyle, a BAE systems engineer for satellite electronics. "The next step is you have to qualify each of those individual components and that qualification is normally a year, a year-and-a-half, just to do that.
"Then they get integrated on the board, and that board has to go through qualification activity to prove out the board. Then once that board gets integrated into the satellite at the system level, there's several years worth of qualification testing that goes in at the satellite level. You add all that up, you're talking five to eight years of qualification work."
The resulting computers can cost anywhere from $200,000 to a half-million dollars. While all that might seem like overkill to an outsider, space-based computers simply have to work.
"There's no repair man in space," Doyle said.
But given the unavoidable limitations in processing speed and memory, Curiosity's programmers face a daunting task when it comes to writing software.
"What's hard about this, my phone has a processor that's 10 times as fast as the processor that's on Curiosity and it has 16 times as much storage as Curiosity has and my phone doesn't have to land anything on Mars," Cichy said. "All my phone has to do is follow (a friend's) Twitter feed.
"So the challenging part about this is that my phone wouldn't survive the journey to Mars, so we have to build computers that are robust enough to survive the harsh (environment of) interplanetary space. And when we do that, there are certain limitations we have and some of those limitations include the size of the flight software image that we have, and that forces us every now and then to update the flight software to add new capabilities."
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If all goes well, the R10 software update will be complete early next week.
Looking down the road to future spacecraft, BAE Systems is developing a quad-core processor for space-based applications that will run at gigahertz speeds and be capable of an enormous number of calculations, or instructions, per second. The new computers will be especially useful for image processing.
"It's really going to be a matter of MIPS, that's million instructions per second," Scuderi said. "For the RAD750 today, the MIPS can get as high as 500. We'll go into the gigabit, or gigamip, or gip, I guess will be the next (unit). Billions and gazillions how about that?" he joked.
NASA's mega-rover landed on Mars. What's next?
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
After a spectacular landing on Mars, the rover Curiosity wasted no time embracing its inner shutterbug, delighting scientists with vistas of Gale Crater complete with sand dunes, mountain views and even haze.
Now what?
The nuclear-powered, six-wheel Curiosity is on a quest to learn whether the Martian environment could have been favorable for microbial life. Before it can drive, it has to slog through weeks of health checkups.
Since it's the most complex spacecraft ever sent to the red planet, engineers want to make sure it's in tip-top shape before they hand over the keys to scientists. It already has done a cursory check of its 10 science tools, but more tests are needed. This weekend, its computers get a software update — a process that will last several days.
When can we watch a movie of the touchdown?
The footage is recorded and stored on board Curiosity and will be downloaded as time allows. It sent back a low-quality video and several high-resolution frames that captured the last few minutes of the descent, providing a sense of a spacecraft landing on another planet. In the video, the protective heat shield pops off and tumbles away. It ends with billowing plumes of dust as Curiosity was safely delivered to the surface.
What are the first impressions of Gale Crater?
The mission's chief scientist John Grotzinger said it was like staring at California's Mojave Desert. The landing site is pebbly with sand dunes nearby and mountains off in the distance. A curtain of haze hung over the site. Curiosity's destination is Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high mountain rising from the center of the crater floor near the equator. Observations from space reveal the base of the mountain shows signs of past water — a good place to hunt for the chemical ingredients of life.
How did the last Sunday's landing go?
Curiosity's performance was pretty much on target with expectations. Because it weighed nearly 2,000 pounds, it had to be gently lowered to the surface — a routine NASA had never tried before. A preliminary reconstruction indicates it landed 1 1/2 miles downrange from the bull's-eye.
How many rovers are now on Mars?
Curiosity joins the long-running Opportunity, which has been exploring craters in Mars' southern hemisphere since 2004. Opportunity's twin, Spirit, fell silent in 2010 after getting stuck in a sand trap. Curiosity's prime mission lasts two years.
Discussing the Mars landing with my 137-year-old grandfather
Robert Krulwich - National Public Radio
Yes, it was an amazing landing, an engineering triumph, a 150-million-mile slam dunk, spectacular in every way, except ... I think my grandpa would be disappointed. I'm not sure of this, since he died 50 years ago, but I have a hunch.
It starts with a handwritten letter he wrote back in 1907. He was a travelling salesman. He sold men's hats, and his job was to visit retailers all over the country. "One evening," he wrote, "train riding between Chicago and Kansas City or St. Louis, sitting the club car, I read a magazine, The Century..."
An article caught his eye. It was written by "Dr. Percival Lowell, Harvard, in charge of the Flagstaff Observatory". It was about Mars, and whatever Lowell said, my grandfather was wowed. It "opened my eyes," he writes.
Hmmm. I figured it shouldn't be hard to read what my grandpa was reading, so I put "Percival Lowell", "The Century" and "1907" into a browser up it popped: "Mars as the Abode of Life," yes, written by Lowell, and oh wow! What a story he told my grandfather!
Lowell had built an observatory in Arizona, had spent his nights surveying the red planet, had found evidence of some enormous construction project visible on Mars with lines of "surprising straightness," "amazing uniformity," and "immense length" that persisted over the months.
Lowell was more storyteller than scientist. He ignored technical issues like the thinness of the Martian atmosphere, the different chemistry of its air, and concentrated instead on the drama building in his head.
Lowell decided that creatures on Mars — he didn't call them human, all he would say is that they could plan, organize and build on a global scale, were running shy of water, and getting increasingly thirsty. The planet, he said, showed evidence of drying, and these entities, to stay alive, had built a series of structures to move water from the melting poles to inhabited regions near the Martian equator.
He called them "canals" — this at a time when engineers on Earth had just built the Suez canal, and were still building the Panama canal. Canal building was hot, hot, hot technology in the early 20th century, and these Martians were designing on a scale that dwarfed human accomplishment, suggesting to him that not only is "Mars at this moment inhabited," but these canal builders were "of an order whose acquaintance was worth the making" — if we could get to them in time, before they perished.
From what he could tell, he told his readers, Martian life was at that very moment winking out, that these canal builders would soon die of thirst, there was no present way to span the distance between the two planets, so these remarkable neighbors he had just discovered would, "cosmically speaking, soon ... pass away." Civilization on Mars, Lowell thought, "...has not long to last," and all we could do is watch them contend with their fate across the void — and perish.
I don't know if my grandfather believed all of Lowell's narrative, but from the rest of his letter, I can tell he didn't overtly challenge the premise, that there were other intelligent creatures in the solar system, not mentioned in the Bible (that was, for my grandfather, a sore point) and that all this had "opened his eyes."
That was 1907. More than a hundred years have passed. Today, the stories we tell about Mars have gotten, or seem to have gotten, umm, smaller.
Lowell's canals turned out to be illusions. Two probes in 1976 found no convincing sign of Martian life, at least not on the planet surface. There remains the possibility that there is life under the ground on Mars, or failing that, that there was once life there, millions of years ago. The life we're imagining now is not a tool-making, canal building intelligence, but something more modest: a one celled carbon-based critter that lived in water and then died. Or maybe a methanogen, a bacteria that pooped (or still poops) gas.
A one ton machine has been plopped onto a low plain where water would have once been, and as my NPR colleague Joe Palca carefully and elegantly points out (when I grow up, I want to be Joe Palca), our goal is not to find Martian life, but rather to find building blocks of life, to see if life on Mars is or was possible.
We're not hunting for a Martian. We're not looking for a live body (or even a dead one). We are hunting for chemical traces that might have once supported the existence of a single-celled Martian — maybe.
Ah, the difference a century makes.
What's The Point?
But if my grandfather were to lean across the seat in his club car and say, "Why bother?" I'd say to him with the same breathlessness of Percival Lowell, we still want to know what you wanted to know: Are we alone? Are we the only ones? Is there life anywhere else? Even if we can't talk to it, pity it, admire it or fear it, still, any "it" would be a revelation.
"It" may have been our ancestor. Some "Its" from Mars might have bounced to Earth and become the seed of us. "It" may have started there, stayed there, died there, but at least we know it was there, which means life can happen in more than one place. "It" may have a different chemistry, a different logic than we do, in which case, we have evidence of truly alien life forms.
"It's" story may be less operatic than Lowell's version, but if there ever was an "It", no matter how simple, how small, I want to know. We all do. Even (if he doesn't know already wherever he may be) my Grandpa.
END
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