8/28/12 news

 
 
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
 
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            JSC Safety -- Then and Now: Comparing How We Operated From the 1960s to 2012
2.            Vote Robonaut 2 Into the Robot Hall of Fame
3.            This Week at Starport
4.            Navigating Chronic Illness at Work or School
5.            Exercise Prescriptions Important on Space Station -- See More
6.            Reminder: Center-Level IR&D Call for Proposals (Due This Thursday)
7.            Final Week for Financial Wellness Classes on Site
8.            Recent JSC Announcements
9.            Shuttle Knowledge Console
10.          Houston Technology Center Presents: Innovation Conference and Showcase
11.          Back by Popular Demand: Opening Up Your Organization to Innovative Tools
12.          Fire Warden Orientation Course (Four Hours)
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last. ”
 
-- Winston Churchill
________________________________________
1.            JSC Safety -- Then and Now: Comparing How We Operated From the 1960s to 2012
Remember that NASA story, "Back when I was a young engineer during Apollo, we did it this way ..."
 
On Sept. 6 in Teague Auditorium from 10 to 11:30 a.m., the JSC Safety Action Team will be hosting and moderating a safety panel with the following JSC leaders: Dr. Ellen Ochoa, Milt Heflin, Joel Walker, Bill McArthur, Kirk Shireman, Mark Geyer, Jeff Davis, Jon Olansen and Hank Rotter.
 
You can ask a senior JSC manager a safety-related question about their NASA careers and personal philosophies about safety, or how the agency, center and the programs work every day to engender a culture of organizational and personal safety.
 
Panel members will respond to and discuss subject-matter expert questions of their choice.
 
If your question is selected, you will be invited to stand with the panel members in a group picture on stage after the event.
 
Please email your written questions to Patrick Buzzard by Sept. 3.
 
Patrick Buzzard 713-857-2306 http://jsat.jsc.nasa.gov/
 
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2.            Vote Robonaut 2 Into the Robot Hall of Fame
Robonaut 2 is up for induction into the Robot Hall of Fame, established in 2003 by Carnegie Melon University's School of Computer Science. Three robotic nominees were selected through a survey of 107 robot authorities in each of four categories: education and consumer; entertainment; industrial and service; and research. Now the Robot Hall of Fame is leaving the final selection up to the general public.
 
Robonaut 2 was nominated in the research category and is up against a robotic pack mule for soldiers in rough terrain, called Big Dog, and a research and development platform named PR2. Vote for Robonaut 2 at: http://www.robothalloffame.org
 
Voting closes on Sept. 30, and you're allowed one vote per computer/device. The winners will be inducted into the hall of fame on Oct. 23.
 
Brandi Dean x41403 http://www.robothalloffame.org/
 
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3.            This Week at Starport
Stop by the "SWINTER" event at the Starport Gift Shops now through Sept. 14. Summer inventory is being cleared out for winter merchandise to come in. Sales are limited to stock on hand, with price reductions ranging from 10 to 50 percent.
 
Parent's Night Out at the Gilruth Center is this Friday! Enjoy a night out on the town while we entertain your children. Register now at the Gilruth Center. http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Youth/PNO.cfm
 
Friday is the last day to purchase an Inner Space membership package for our new Mind/Body Studio at half price. http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/MindBody/
 
Let Starport watch your children while you work out at the Gilruth Center! Starting this week, we will begin offering short-term child care to anyone who is participating in a group exercise class or working out in the basketball gym and/or fitness center. http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Youth/ChildCare.cfm
 
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
 
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4.            Navigating Chronic Illness at Work or School
You may already have bought the basic school supplies for sending your child back to school. If your child has a chronic medical condition, you need to make additional preparations for maximizing a good, safe experience. In the workplace, you may have a new assignment or new information about your own medical status. Join Gay Yarbrough, LCSW of the JSC Employee Assistance Program, for a discussion on "Navigating Chronic Illness at Work or School."
 
When: Today, Aug. 28
Where: Building 32, Conference Room 146
Time: 4 p.m.
 
Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130
 
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5.            Exercise Prescriptions Important on Space Station -- See More
In the following video posted to the International Space Station Research and Technology website, Bob Tweedy, NASA countermeasures system instructor, and Lori Ploutz-Snyder, Ph.D., NASA lead exercise physiology scientist, discuss the Integrated Resistance and Aerobic Training Study, or SPRINT. SPRINT uses high-intensity, low-volume exercise training in an effort to minimize the adverse effects of microgravity life for station crew members. See how exercise training not only benefits those on Earth, but those orbiting above it, at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/exercise_video.html
 
JSC External Relations, Communications and Public Affairs x35111
 
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6.            Reminder: Center-Level IR&D Call for Proposals (Due This Thursday)
The JSC Technology Working Group (JTWG) has announced the Fiscal Year 2013 center-level Internal Research & Development (IR&D) call for proposals relating to spaceflight technology needs at JSC. Project period of performance is 12 months with up to 0.5 FTE and $100,000 procurement. Projects may pursue additional funding in the following year's IR&D call. A year-end poster session presentation will be required. An initial quad chart proposal shall concisely describe the project within a one-page limit. Proposals are due this Thursday, Aug. 30, by 5 p.m. CDT in the drop box URL found within the guidelines document. Initial quad chart proposals will be reviewed, and a subset selected for a three-page proposal development and presentation to the JTWG. Final project selections will be announced on Sept. 28.
 
Topic areas, guidelines and requirements are posted in the solicitation file link below.
 
David L. Brown x37426 \\jsc-fs01\apo-strategic-investments\FY'13_Center_Level_IRD\Solicitation...
 
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7.            Final Week for Financial Wellness Classes on Site
Financial fitness is only a few steps away! Join us at lunchtime for personal financial educational classes. Financial Wellness counseling sessions are also available to employees and family members at no charge. Turn education into action by learning the appropriate steps to follow with an expert. Employees who are unable to attend a class are still eligible to meet with a Financial Wellness counselor.
 
Tuesday:
Personal Financial Protection: Learn how to use insurance to your best advantage, including long-term care and cash-value strategies.
Maximize Your Investments: Identify industry risks, determine your risk tolerance and resulting portfolio asset allocation.
 
Thursday:
Estate Planning Intro: Basic terms and concepts of the estate-planning process for you or a loved one.
Estate Planning Advanced: Learn what being the executor of an estate means. A series of planning worksheets will be also reviewed.
 
See link for details and online enrollment.
 
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://www.explorationwellness.com/rd/AE108.aspx?Aug_Signup.pdf
 
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8.            Recent JSC Announcements
Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcements:
 
JSCA 12-024: Communications with Industry Procurement Solicitation for Mission and Program Integration
 
JSCA 12-025: 2012 NASA Honor Awards Ceremony
 
Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page.
 
Linda Turnbough x36246 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/DocumentManagement/announcements/default.aspx
 
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9.            Shuttle Knowledge Console
Hard to believe a year has passed since the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis, the final mission of the Space Shuttle Program (SSP). As part of JSC's ongoing Space Shuttle knowledge-capture process, the JSC Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) and the JSC Engineering Directorate are pleased to announce that many of the systems and subsystems developed and utilized during the program have been captured and retained for JSC users at the new Shuttle Knowledge Console: https://skc.jsc.nasa.gov
 
Systems such as the Shuttle Drawing System, Subsystem Manager, Space Shuttle Flight Software, SSPWeb and many more can be accessed from the console. Questions about the new website can be directed to Howard Wagner in the JSC Engineering Directorate or Brent Fontenot in the CKO office. We would love your feedback on this new site. Click the "Submit Feedback" button located on the top of the site navigation and give us your comments.
 
Brent J. Fontenot x36456 https://skc.jsc.nasa.gov/Home.aspx
 
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10.          Houston Technology Center Presents: Innovation Conference and Showcase
Join the Houston Technology Center on Oct. 3 at the Hyatt Regency Houston for the largest presentation of Texas Gulf Coast emerging technology companies and academic and research institutes. Technologies focusing on energy, life sciences, Information Technology, nanotechnology and NASA/aerospace will be presented. This will be an opportunity to network with more than 400 prominent business, academic and community leaders.
 
Register for this event by visiting: http://houstontech.org/events/1028/
 
Civil servants, submit an SF-182 in SATERN.
 
Pat Kidwell x37156 http://houstontech.org/events/1028/
 
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11.          Back by Popular Demand: Opening Up Your Organization to Innovative Tools
The SA Human Systems Academy is pleased to offer "Opening Up Your Organization to Innovative Tools." This is a repeat of the first course in the series, "Collaborative and Open Innovation: Techniques to Increase Your Productivity." This first course focuses on the philosophy that spurs innovation and self-assessment activities to help participants understand how to define where they are in the continuum and identify areas of improvement, as well as tools for support. The goal is to ignite individual responsibility and contribution through self-awareness on the topic. This course will be held Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 9 a.m. in Building 15, Conference Room 267.
 
For registration, please go to: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
 
Cynthia Rando 281-461-2620 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov/
 
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12.          Fire Warden Orientation Course (Four Hours)
This four-hour course will satisfy the JSC training requirement for newly assigned Fire Wardens from JSC, Sonny Carter Training Facility and Ellington Field. This course must be completed before assuming these duties.
 
Topics covered include: Duties and responsibilities of a Fire Warden; building evacuation techniques; recognizing and correcting fire hazards; and types and uses of portable fire extinguishers.
 
Fire Wardens who have previously attended this four-hour orientation course and need to satisfy the three-year training requirements may attend the two-hour Fire Warden Refresher Course now available in SATERN for registration.
 
Date/Time: Sept. 13 from 8 a.m. to noon
 
Where: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom
 
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
 
Aundrail Hill x36369
 
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JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
 
 
 
 
NASA TV: 10:05 am Central (11:05 EDT) – Exp 32 with Wickliffe Progressive Community School in Upper Arlington, OH
 
Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday – August 28, 2012

Base of Mount Sharp – Curiosity’s eventual science destination www.nasa.gov/msl
 
HEADLINES AND LEADS
 
NASA gets set for yearlong stints on space station
Plan would provide practice for deep-space trips and offer new tourist opportunities
 
James Oberg - NBCNews.com
 
NASA will shortly announce plans to double the mission duration of some astronaut expeditions to the International Space Station, NBC News has learned. Beginning as early as 2015, some of the astronauts and cosmonauts sent into orbit will remain there not the usual six months, but for a full year. In Houston last week, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries acknowledged that the project was under study but said it was still only a proposal. "All we can say is that we are exploring possibilities," he said in an Aug. 21 email. "There have been no formal decisions made, and it is premature to speculate what the outcome might be." But sources familiar with NASA's plans say the preparations for such a mission are much more advanced than this description suggests. Specific mission dates and crew candidates are already being assessed. The sources discussed the plans on condition of anonymity because they were not yet due to be announced publicly.
 
NASA: SpaceX Missions to Space Station to Resume in October
The private company is scheduled to fly 12 more times to the International Space Station
 
Jason Koebler - US News & World Report
 
NASA announced late last week that SpaceX, the private company that became the first non-governmental entity to fly to the International Space Station, will launch the first of its 12 planned resupply missions in October. The announcement means NASA is comfortable with SpaceX using its Dragon vehicle for unmanned missions to the station. The agency said SpaceX's progress represents "progress toward a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil in the next five years."
 
How NASA plans to reach deep space
 
Charles Black - Sen.com (Space Exploration Network)
 
Human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit has been brought into focus this weekend following the death of Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the Moon. It is 40 years since a man last walked on the lunar surface and today no government or enterprise operates the technology that can follow in the footsteps of the Apollo astronauts. However, much exploration of space beyond orbiting stations is planned in the coming years, from private companies seeking to land robots on the Moon and asteroids to China aiming for a manned lunar landing. As for NASA, it has been given a target by President Obama to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s. To achieve this the US space agency is designing a new heavy lift rocket that can transport humans to deep space - including the Moon as well as asteroids and the Red Planet.
 
Weightlifting on ISS Mitigating Bone Loss
 
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
 
A new study of 13 International Space Station astronauts suggests a combination of strenuous weightlifting-like exercise and careful attention to diet and nutrition can stave off the bone loss long thought by experts to be an obstacle to long missions by astronauts to deep space destinations. The study of nine men and four women assigned to the orbiting science laboratory between 2006 and 2009 was focused on the addition of the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device in late 2008.
 
The astronaut’s doctor: A toaster-sized ‘miracle box’
 
Charlie Osborne - Smart Planet
 
The astronaut’s ‘miracle box’, the Microflow, is a box that can detect “everything from infections, to stress, blood cells and cancer markers,” and is being tested on board the International Space Station (ISS). Developed by the Quebec-based National Optics Institute External (INO), it may not be the impressive size of the Curiosity Mars rover, but NASA claims that the 10kg box is able to detect a number of ailments in only ten minutes.
 
Astronauts discuss pets, prep from Space Station
 
Lindsey Anderson - Associated Press
 
Audience members sat ready for takeoff in their seats in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Mission Control in Houston appeared on a giant screen, followed by an image from inside the International Space Station. American astronauts Acaba and Suni Williams at the International Space Station answered live, pre-selected questions from the Boston audience via video chat Monday. Nearly 300 children and adults gathered at the library to talk with the astronauts.
 
Private Neil Armstrong service planned for Friday
 
Dan Sewell - Associated Press
 
A private service is planned in Cincinnati on Friday for astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, and President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff. The Ohio native died Saturday in Cincinnati at age 82. No other information was released immediately about the service. Obama on Monday issued a proclamation calling for U.S. flags to be lowered the day of Armstrong's burial, including at the White House, military posts and ships, U.S. embassies and other public buildings "as a mark of respect for the memory of Neil Armstrong."
 
Camp McCool's brief impact
 
USAF Tech. Sgt. Shawn David McCowan - Regional Command East
 
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN - U.S. Marines assigned to Bagram Airfield recently gathered to honor U.S. Navy Commander William C. McCool, and close "Camp McCool" prior to departing Afghanistan. The Marines assigned to Camp McCool assembled around their camp's flag pole in the hot afternoon Afghanistan sun. Their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Adam Musoff, briefly spoke to his Marines about their camp's history, and thanked them for their service with him. Their camp's American flag was lowered for the last time while "Taps" was played by a trumpeter.
 
International cooperation in space must be expanded
 
Aviation Week (Opinion)
 
To most people, the term “international space cooperation” involves national governments or their agencies, as exemplified by the International Space Station. But transnational commercial cooperation has been a driving force in space from the beginning of the Space Age. It has become more and more important as national budgets have tightened. Indeed, for over two decades, annual revenues from commercial space activities have far outstripped the total of government space budgets, both civil and military. Governments have been slow to capitalize on this trend. There are still a number of initiatives that involve interaction among space agencies, with companies serving only as contractors. However, some recent roadblocks could seriously impede the pursuit of intergovernmental space programs. The most visible was the budget-motivated withdrawal of the U.S. from the ambitious European ExoMars missions and the subsequent financial difficulty the European Space Agency has experienced, even with the entry of the Russians.
 
MEANWHILE ON MARS…
 
Curiosity beams back stunning views of Mount Sharp
 
William Harwood – CBS News
 
NASA's Curiosity rover, giving earthlings a glimpse of its ultimate target, has beamed back spectacular high-resolution photos of the rugged foothills of Mount Sharp, showing a khaki-colored landscape marked by towering hills, gaping canyons and sand dunes reminiscent of the American southwest, scientists said Monday. In one view, the rover photographed a scientifically intriguing transition from relatively flat rock beds made up of water-influenced minerals to steeply inclined unhydrated layers marking a dramatic, geologically sudden discontinuity that signals a major change in martian history.
 
Can Curiosity Mars mission inspire like Apollo?
 
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
 
Neil Armstrong inspired millions with his moonwalk. Can a feisty robotic rover exploring Mars do the same for another generation? With manned missions beyond the International Space Station on hold, the spotlight has turned on machines. While it did not rise to Armstrong's "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," interest was so high in the rover Curiosity's "seven minutes of terror" approach to the red planet earlier this month that NASA's website crashed after receiving nearly 2 billion hits. The rover last week beamed home photographs of its first wheel tracks on the Martian soil since its daredevil landing.
 
Curiosity beams back first human voice transmission from another planet
 
Todd Halvorson - Florida Today
 
An American robotic field geologist on Mars beamed back the first human voice transmission from another planet on Monday as NASA looked forward to sending U.S. astronauts to the red planet. Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, who died Saturday at age 82, was the first human to transmit a message from a natural planetary satellite on July 20, 1969.
 
NASA to Broadcast 1st Song from Mars Tuesday
 
Space.com
 
A song called "Reach for the Stars" will make its debut, appropriately, from space. NASA plans to broadcast the tune, written by rapper and songwriter will.i.am, from its Curiosity rover, newly landed on the surface of Mars. Though Curiosity has no speakers, it will transmit the song via radio waves back to Earth to be received at 1 p.m. PDT (4 p.m. EDT) Tuesday, Aug. 28 during an educational event at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
 
Mars rover tracks akin to Neil Armstrong's Moon bootprints, scientist says
 
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
 
NASA's newest Mars rover Curiosity is making tracks on the Red Planet that call to mind the groundbreaking footprints left on the moon by Neil Armstrong more than 40 years ago, a rover scientist said Monday. Neil Armstrong, who became the first person to walk on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, died Saturday (Aug. 25) at the age of 82. He and his Apollo 11 crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, left the first human imprints on the moon in the form of bootprints indented into the lunar dust everywhere they walked (or hopped, since the moon has one-sixth Earth's gravity).
__________
 
COMPLETE STORIES
 
NASA gets set for yearlong stints on space station
Plan would provide practice for deep-space trips and offer new tourist opportunities
 
James Oberg - NBCNews.com
 
NASA will shortly announce plans to double the mission duration of some astronaut expeditions to the International Space Station, NBC News has learned. Beginning as early as 2015, some of the astronauts and cosmonauts sent into orbit will remain there not the usual six months, but for a full year.
 
In Houston last week, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries acknowledged that the project was under study but said it was still only a proposal. "All we can say is that we are exploring possibilities," he said in an Aug. 21 email. "There have been no formal decisions made, and it is premature to speculate what the outcome might be."
 
But sources familiar with NASA's plans say the preparations for such a mission are much more advanced than this description suggests. Specific mission dates and crew candidates are already being assessed. The sources discussed the plans on condition of anonymity because they were not yet due to be announced publicly.
 
Speculation about the specifics as well as the general mission overview is entirely justified, due to its potential significance to the future of human space activity. That is because the extension of zero-G exposure will be aimed mainly at measuring the potential physiological impacts of spaceflights long enough to accomplish the human interplanetary missions envisaged beginning in the 2020s.
 
It is this new mission that will coincidentally open up the opportunity for the Russian space program to resume selling "space tourist" tickets into orbit, as reflected by the recent reports about a potential flight for British singer Sarah Brightman .
 
The Russians halted these space passenger missions three years ago as the International Space Station crew size increased from three to six and NASA space shuttle missions drew to a close. Due to the retirement of the shuttle fleet, every ticket on every three-seat Soyuz launch had to be used by a long-term station resident. There were no longer any spare tickets for visitors, even though there are now four Soyuz launches per year instead of the previous two per year.
 
Having some station residents "stay over" their normal rotation to Earth will again open a spare seat, perhaps two. The Russians are said to be enthusiastic about the idea, with tickets going at a price upwards of $35 million each.
 
Vitaly Lopota — the president of Russia's Energia rocket company, which is in charge of building the Soyuz craft for Russia's Roskosmos space agency — confirmed on Monday that there have been requests for space passenger seats. "If there is a team, we'll start work, but besides a team, funds are needed," Russia's Interfax-AVN news service quoted Lopota as saying. "We need the resources before the end of the year."
 
Lopota said the short-term tourist trips would be easier to organize if the 12-month mission plan was put into effect.
 
On the American side, the plan could have election-year significance. It could help the White House underscore the seriousness of its commitment to American leadership in human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit, where the space station operates.
 
So far, NASA's strategy for exploration beyond Earth orbit has been mostly just talk and long-range planning for bigger rockets. Battles over booster designs and budgets, and even an unresolved issue as basic as selecting an actual destination in space for future astronauts, have contributed to the impression that little or nothing is happening.
 
That may change. Although NASA turned down the idea of staging 12-month orbital missions eight years ago , the enthusiasm over the recent success of NASA's Curiosity lander on Mars has now created a public atmosphere supportive of such bold projects, sources within NASA have told NBC News.
 
Base motives for idealistic missions
 
Justifying this major advance in human space exploration through appeals to cash flows and election-year politicking may seem a bit tawdry, but it’s really more the rule than the exception in history.
 
After all, the greatest exploratory expeditions of human history have often been motivated at least in part by the quest for wealth and power. Whether it was the Columbus voyages, or the “Corps of Discovery” of Lewis and Clark, or Project Apollo, the primary motivating factor that led to getting the funds was "What’s in it for me?"
 
But whatever the base desire for short-term benefits — many of which never actually materialized — such activities have delivered profound and widespread gains in acquired knowledge and cultural inspiration. Usually, the results more than justified any short-term financing deals.
 
So it should come as no surprise — and should be no cause for shame — that as Russia and the United States together gather their energies to launch forth on long space endurance runs, the motives foremost in their governments’ minds are all too mundane.
 
So what? These flights, first to 12 months and then conceivably to 18 or even 24 months or longer over the next decade, are the first practical steps on the ladder of capabilities rising toward human interplanetary flight. Together with life-support hardware already in advanced testing on the space station, such a program is critical for finally getting out of low Earth orbit.
 
Long-term precedents
 
Yearlong spaceflights have been made before, with no indication of significant medical issues. One Russian crew in 1987 spent 366 days in space, and in 1994-1995, Valery Polyakov spent a total of 14 months aboard Mir. But these were record-seeking one-offs with no follow-up.
 
What's more, space medicine specialists around the world have long questioned the quality of the Russian medical data from those flights. Cosmonauts later admitted faking a lot of the test results, for sport on boring missions. In the 1980s, even the Soviet space medicine establishment relied on heavily instrumented Skylab medical baselines, even though their own missions had flown twice as long, then even longer.
 
Even the current standard "duty tour" of six months in space is an operational accident with no rational medical basis. NASA doctors preferred about 4 months as the optimal mission duration, when station astronauts were transported on shuttle flights. Cosmonauts agreed. They reported growing fatigue in the final month or two of their half-year space sojourns.
 
A six-month tour is purely a result of the design lifetime of the Russian Soyuz ferry craft, with the limit flexible enough to push up to seven months in a pinch. After that, chemical decomposition of propellants in the landing capsule could potentially reach levels rendering the fuel unusable for guiding the craft's re-entry.
 
In addition, NASA doctors have developed another arbitrary stick-in-the-spokes for serious long-term missions. An arbitrary upper limit on cancer threat from radiation exposure essentially limits American astronauts to no more than about a year total spaceflight time.
 
An American astronaut who was yanked off a space station flight due to "excessive" radiation exposure from a ground medical procedure bitterly told NBC News: "It’s a sham standard." He explained: "It doesn’t reduce the cumulative health impact, since cancer threat is linear with duration. It only redistributes it."
 
The astronaut expressed the opinion that crew candidates be given the option of accepting or declining the hazard, balanced against their own individual medical histories and career plans. And to make these longer flights, his advice will need to be taken by NASA doctors, although it would be too late to be of any help to himself.
 
Commuting the Earth-space route
 
The actual scheduling of a 12-month mission onto the existing traffic pattern to and from Earth orbit is surprising complex. The pattern of the current crew transport to the space station is well-established, and there is little likelihood of any significant modification to it before the beginning of commercial crew transport in 2016 or so.
 
Four Soyuz spacecraft are launched every year, each carrying three crew members. The commander is always a Russian cosmonaut, and one crew member is always an American astronaut. The choice for the third crew member alternates between a Russian cosmonaut and an "international partner" such as a Japanese, Canadian or European astronaut.
 
With six people aboard the space station, crew rotation occurs when the three members of a returning crew get into their own Soyuz and head back to Earth. This leaves only three crew members on the station for several weeks. The staffing returns to six when a new crew is launched.
 
That full staffing reflects a careful plan worked out by the international partnership to allocate three seats to Russia and three to the "U.S. segment." NASA allocates one of those three seats to the astronaut from Japan, Canada or Europe.
 
What this means is that Russia has a second Soyuz seat — the one they are allowed to "sell" — only every other Soyuz launch. And when they do, the third seat is occupied by an American astronaut.
 
To send one Russian and one American on a 12-month mission requires careful planning. The crucial choice is dictated by the fact that the six-months-along mission, the one that would normally be used for the rotation of the original crew, must have had two Russian seats on it. One would be for the pilot, and one would be available for Russia to sell to a paying customer. That means that the third seat would, by rights, be occupied by an American astronaut.
 
This “stayover” mission cannot wait for the previous six-month Soyuz to land — since two of the previous Soyuz's crew members intend to remain in orbit. So the Soyuz must launch while the earlier two Soyuzes are both still docked to the station.
 
There are four docking ports for Russian spacecraft, so mechanically this isn’t too difficult. It was already done once, in 2009, for the first crew rotation after the station permanent crew size went from three to six. But there are tricky issues with three docked Soyuzes, including safe emergency evacuation procedures for all three spacecraft. These issues need to be thoroughly worked out.
 
Who gets the short straw?
 
An even trickier issue has to do with the fact that the Russian pilot of the "stayover" Soyuz will be replacing the Russian pilot of the Soyuz-before-last, so that the pilot on the station can return after six months. But the two crew members who accompanied that pilot into space six months earlier will be staying aboard, headed for their full-year tour. So, two of the crew members of the "stayover Soyuz" will switch over and accompany the departing pilot on the earthbound Soyuz.
 
Now here’s the tricky part. One of those two short-term fliers, in what normally would be the "Russian seat," can be the cash customer. But the other would have to be an American astronaut. That astronaut would be forced to return to Earth after only a short mission, perhaps spending less than two weeks in orbit.
 
Why should NASA have to pay full launch price — around $65 million — for a mission that will last only a tenth as long as the standard duty tour?
 
If the Russians let NASA out of its contracted plan to use the seat and offer it to a commercial space passenger, the revenue from that seat would be around $35 million — half of the rate that NASA would be charged. That would represent a financial loss for Russia that could be as nearly great as the entire profit from the first ticket sale.
 
It would end up being a wash. It would mean selling one seat to NASA for $65 million, or two seats to two commercial space travelers for around $35 million each. From the Russian point of view, the American side must pay full price for its truncated space stay, or Russia makes virtually no money at all for the entire deal.
 
There is a variety of alternative seating schemes, as well as the possibility of staggering the Russian and American long-termers on successive launches. NBC News has learned that the "staggering" option is being seriously considered. It will be interesting to observe how both sides dance around these practical matters in designing the actual mission.
 
Whatever the arrangements turn out to be, the rationalizations and compromises will soon be forgotten as part of the nitty-gritty, real-world wheeling and dealing to extract maximum national benefits from the opportunity. What won’t be forgotten is the result: the first major sustained advance in human spaceflight endurance in two decades, an advance that will finally dispel enough dragons and "unknown unknowns" to open the door to deep-space journeys.
 
Best of all, the opening will have been achieved methodically and prudently, without reliance on the gung-ho adventurism and deliriously wishful thinking of "Mars mission" crusaders of the past. The odds of avoiding disaster are so much better this way.
 
NASA: SpaceX Missions to Space Station to Resume in October
The private company is scheduled to fly 12 more times to the International Space Station
 
Jason Koebler - US News & World Report
 
NASA announced late last week that SpaceX, the private company that became the first non-governmental entity to fly to the International Space Station, will launch the first of its 12 planned resupply missions in October.
 
The announcement means NASA is comfortable with SpaceX using its Dragon vehicle for unmanned missions to the station. The agency said SpaceX's progress represents "progress toward a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil in the next five years."
 
"We're working to open a new frontier for commercial opportunities in space and create job opportunities in Florida and across the United States," Charles Bolden, NASA's administrator, said in a statement.
 
Bolden said if SpaceX is successful, the company will bring manned space flights "back here to the U.S. where it belongs."
 
In a May test mission, SpaceX became the first company to successfully fly to the space station. It will fulfill its 12-flight contract with NASA over the next few years. This winter, another company, Orbital Sciences Corp., will make its first test flight.
 
How NASA plans to reach deep space
 
Charles Black - Sen.com (Space Exploration Network)
 
Human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit has been brought into focus this weekend following the death of Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the Moon. It is 40 years since a man last walked on the lunar surface and today no government or enterprise operates the technology that can follow in the footsteps of the Apollo astronauts.
 
However, much exploration of space beyond orbiting stations is planned in the coming years, from private companies seeking to land robots on the Moon and asteroids to China aiming for a manned lunar landing. As for NASA, it has been given a target by President Obama to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s. To achieve this the US space agency is designing a new heavy lift rocket that can transport humans to deep space - including the Moon as well as asteroids and the Red Planet.
 
The proposed rocket, known as Space Launch System (SLS), passed a major review of its requirements last month, as reported by Sen. SLS is being desgined to launch the Orion spacecraft, also being developed by NASA, to the Moon and beyond.
 
The core stage of the launch vehicle will measure 200 feet (61 metres) by 27.5 feet (8.4 metres) and will contain liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to feed the rocket's RS-25 engines. The launcher will also be powered by two solid rocket boosters. RS-25 engines from the retired Space Shuttle fleet will be used for the first flew flights.
 
The SLS is being designed with two configurations, one that can lift 70 metric tons and a larger configuration with a second stage that will be capable of lifting 130 metric tons. In its larger configuration its lift capacity and - at 384 feet tall - its height will exceed the capabilities and size of the Dr Wernher von Braun designed Saturn V rocket that took the Apollo craft to the Moon. The Saturn V rocket stood 363 feet tall (110 metres) and could lift 120 metric tons to Low Earth Orbit.
 
The first test flight for SLS is scheduled for 2017. This week the space agency reported on the extensive wind tunnel tests that have been taking place in recent months at the Marshall Space Flight Center and Langley Research Center. At Marshall's Trisonic Wind Tunnel over 900 tests have been conducted on scaled down models of the SLS in various crew and cargo configurations to test the flight stability of SLS.
 
Further tests on larger models to understand the rocket's aerodynamics will take place at the agency's Langley Research Center wind tunnel, as well as that of Boeing, a prime contractor for the rocket build.
 
The biggest SLS wind tunnel model test to date is scheduled for mid-September. Langley's Transonic Dynamics Tunnel will test a 12 foot long model to evaluate the vehicle's aerodynamics.
 
A NASA statement on the wind tunnel testing said: "Each test moves the agency closer to giving the nation a launch capability to take humans farther than ever before. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, including NASA's Orion multipurpose vehicle, SLS will enable NASA to meet the president's goal of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s."
 
Meanwhile the spacecraft that SLS will launch into space, the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, has been undergoing parachute drop tests and drop tests into water, as the spacecraft is being designed to land in the ocean like the Apollo capsules that returned astronauts from the Moon.
 
The first unmanned test flight for Orion is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in 2014. The spacecraft will be blasted 3,600 miles into space - 15 times farther than the orbit of the space station. The test flight should see Orion reach speeds of more than 20,000 mph before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. This test will provide engineers with data on Orion’s performance during launch, re-entry and landing. The re-entry will enable NASA to assess the performance of its heat shield.
 
In 2017 NASA plan to launch Orion atop the Space Launch System rocket.
 
Whilst NASA concentrates on the Space Launch System rocket and Orion for deep space missions, its strategy for transporting crew and cargo to Low Earth Orbit and the International Space Station is to use private space companies including SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Boeing.
 
Weightlifting on ISS Mitigating Bone Loss
 
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
 
A new study of 13 International Space Station astronauts suggests a combination of strenuous weightlifting-like exercise and careful attention to diet and nutrition can stave off the bone loss long thought by experts to be an obstacle to long missions by astronauts to deep space destinations.
 
The study of nine men and four women assigned to the orbiting science laboratory between 2006 and 2009 was focused on the addition of the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device in late 2008.
 
The ARED joined a treadmill, bicycle ergometer and the less physically taxing Interim Resistive Exercise Device as the primary workout equipment used by station astronauts for more than two hours each day to maintain muscle and bone strength in the absence of gravity.
 
The ARED doubled the resistive force of the IRAD -- up to 600 pounds -- available to astronauts and increased from eight to 17 the kinds of weightlifting exercises they can perform, including squats, dead lifts, bench presses and curls.
 
The study compared results from pre and post-flight measurements of bone mineral density and bone mineral content in the eight astronauts who used the IRAD and five who used the ARED as part of their assigned daily exercise regimes. ARED use demonstrated a marked improvement, most noticeable in the pelvic, hip and lumbar spine regions of the skeletal system.
 
"After 51 years of human spaceflight, these data mark the first significant progress in protecting bone through diet and exercise," said Scott M. Smith, NASA nutritionist at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston and lead author of the 11-page study published in the September edition of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.
 
Prior to the ISS, medical specialists focused their efforts primarily on the use of aerobic exercise using treadmills, cycle ergometers and elastic expanders to mitigate bone and muscle loss.
 
Smith and a team that included five other researchers from the U.S. and Germany also found that daily diet and vitamin D supplements were an essential part of facilitating the normal rebuilding of bone strength, also called remodeling.
 
The research team urged further work in several key areas, including refinements in the optical exercise protocols and nutritional requirements as well as assessments of whether the remodeled bone is as strong as pre-flight skeletal tissue.
 
The study results were gathered using X-ray densitometry, blood and urine samples and a dietary log recorded by the astronauts.
 
The astronaut’s doctor: A toaster-sized ‘miracle box’
 
Charlie Osborne - Smart Planet
 
The astronaut’s ‘miracle box’, the Microflow, is a box that can detect “everything from infections, to stress, blood cells and cancer markers,” and is being tested on board the International Space Station (ISS).
 
Developed by the Quebec-based National Optics Institute External (INO), it may not be the impressive size of the Curiosity Mars rover, but NASA claims that the 10kg box is able to detect a number of ailments in only ten minutes.
 
The Microflow is a miniature version of a flow cytometer — a device which is used to diagnose medical conditions — which is usually not portable and weigh several hundred pounds. The machine uses fiber-optic technology to detect cell markers, blood cells and biological matter through a liquid sample within only ten minutes.
 
It is hoped that the Microflow could be a portable solution which offers real-time medical diagnosis for astronauts, those in rural communities and where medical equipment is not often available.
 
As well as detecting biological markers, the Microflow may prove useful to test the quality of food on Earth. Weighing in at less than 22lb (10kg), the device takes up about the same amount of space as a toaster.
 
In conjunction with NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will be running a pilot project on the ISS. However, due to the weightlessness of space, the CSA first had to develop a method to prevent fluid test samples from becoming unfocused. As a result, the designers — led by Dr Ozzy Mermut from INO and Dr Luchino Cohen from the CSA — built Microflow to tackle this issue. The stream of liquid which contains test particles doesn’t loose focus without gravity, and afterwards, data is sent via a USB key for later study.
 
The machine will be put through its paces during astronaut Chris Hadfield’s six month mission on the ISS.
 
Astronauts discuss pets, prep from Space Station
 
Lindsey Anderson - Associated Press
 
Audience members sat ready for takeoff in their seats in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Mission Control in Houston appeared on a giant screen, followed by an image from inside the International Space Station.
 
"This is Houston. Are you ready for the event?" a voice asked.
 
"We are ready for the event," astronaut Joe Acaba replied from the station, circling 220 miles above Earth.
 
American astronauts Acaba and Suni Williams at the International Space Station answered live, pre-selected questions from the Boston audience via video chat Monday. Nearly 300 children and adults gathered at the library to talk with the astronauts.
 
In polo shirts and pants, Williams and Acaba floated centimeters off the floor and demonstrated zero-gravity flips from the station, which orbits Earth in 1 1/2 hours, 16 times a day.
 
When a young boy asked Williams why she couldn't bring her terrier, Gorby, aboard, she showed off a toy version of the dog and flipped him through the air.
 
"I miss him probably because he represents those cool things on Earth that you don't have up here, like wind in your face, walking on the beach," Williams said.
 
Both Williams and Acaba served in the military; Williams a helicopter commander in the Navy and Acaba in the Marine Corps Reserves.
 
Not all astronauts have military training, the two said, but Acaba reminded young audience members all astronauts have backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math.
 
"Your dreams can come true," Williams said. "Just do the best that you can at what you like. Somehow it seems to all line up, and you'll become what you want to become."
 
When time with the astronauts ended, Rich Varner, a NASA aerospace education specialist who led the discussion, answered the remaining questions, including one from a young girl who asked whether astronauts' thoughts are different in space.
 
"Imagine seeing auroras on a regular basis from the north and south, just seeing the world at night and day every 90 minutes, the signs that people live here," Varner said. "It has to be one of those significant emotional events in your life if you get a chance to do it."
 
The space station can be seen at night. The times when the station is visible can be found at nasa.gov/mission-pages/station.
 
Private Neil Armstrong service planned for Friday
 
Dan Sewell - Associated Press
 
A private service is planned in Cincinnati on Friday for astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, and President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff.
 
The Ohio native died Saturday in Cincinnati at age 82. No other information was released immediately about the service.
 
Obama on Monday issued a proclamation calling for U.S. flags to be lowered the day of Armstrong's burial, including at the White House, military posts and ships, U.S. embassies and other public buildings "as a mark of respect for the memory of Neil Armstrong."
 
Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Monday had Ohio flags on all public buildings and grounds flown at half-staff through Friday.
 
There have been preliminary discussions about a national memorial service for Armstrong, who often shunned publicity in the decades after his historic mission, but a family spokesman said there were no details yet.
 
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, who is from Ohio and has called Armstrong "a good friend and adviser," will eulogize him at Friday's service.
 
Portman is in Tampa, Fla., for the Republican National Convention, where he is scheduled to speak Wednesday night. Spokeswoman Caitlin Dunn said his office is working on travel arrangements to get him back to Cincinnati in time for the service. The convention schedule has already been changed this week and could be further disrupted as Tropical Storm Isaac bears down on the Gulf Coast.
 
Portman called Armstrong humble and gracious and on Monday he recounted for Ohioans at the convention an anecdote demonstrating Armstrong's compassion for veterans and his desire to keep a low profile: Several years ago, the former astronaut accepted Portman's request to help dedicate a veterans memorial in Mason, Ohio, but asked that his participation not be announced in advance. The crowd quickly rose in standing ovation when Armstrong was introduced, Portman recalled.
 
The Museum of Natural History & Science of the Cincinnati Museum Center has an exhibit that includes a moon rock and replicas of Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit and tools used on the moon. It is offering free admission through Labor Day to honor Armstrong, and more than 2,000 people visited Sunday.
 
Armstrong, who commanded the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, was born in Wapakoneta, in western Ohio. He is celebrated there at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, which is planning a memorial tribute Wednesday night.
 
The tribute is called "Wink at the Moon." The statement Armstrong's family released upon his death requested that the public honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, adding "and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."
 
The Armstrong family released another statement Monday evening saying that "the outpouring of condolences and kind wishes from around the world overwhelms us and we appreciate it more than words can express."
 
The statement suggested that instead of flowers, memorial contributions could be made to the Neil Armstrong New Frontiers Initiative at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center or to the Neil Armstrong Scholarship Fund at the Telluride Foundation in Telluride, Colo.
 
Camp McCool's brief impact
 
USAF Tech. Sgt. Shawn David McCowan - Regional Command East
 
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN - U.S. Marines assigned to Bagram Airfield recently gathered to honor U.S. Navy Commander William C. McCool, and close "Camp McCool" prior to departing Afghanistan.
 
The Marines assigned to Camp McCool assembled around their camp's flag pole in the hot afternoon Afghanistan sun. Their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Adam Musoff, briefly spoke to his Marines about their camp's history, and thanked them for their service with him. Their camp's American flag was lowered for the last time while "Taps" was played by a trumpeter.
 
A makeshift Honor Guard detail folded the flag and presented it to Musoff. Moments later, the camp was officially closed, and its brief existence sealed for history.
 
The camp was first occupied by Navy Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 142, a Prowler squadron, in December 2003. Since 2009, the camp had been occupied by Bagram's Marine Prowler community. Since the camp's opening, over 3,600 Marines and Sailors have lived and worked there while deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
 
Camp McCool became a significant part of Bagram history when insurgents attacked the base in May 2010, attempting to invade by entering the base through the camp. The Marines of "VMAQ-2" repelled the attack, with the ensuing firefight resulting in two Marines being wounded. All of the insurgents who attempted to breach the camp were killed.
 
Camp McCool was named in honor of U.S. Navy Commander William C. McCool. The San Diego, Cal., native graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1983, ranked number two out of 1,083 students.
 
McCool was the pilot for Space Shuttle Columbia's mission STS-107, which broke apart while returning to earth, 16 minutes before their scheduled land time on February 1, 2003.
 
International cooperation in space must be expanded
 
Aviation Week (Opinion)
 
To most people, the term “international space cooperation” involves national governments or their agencies, as exemplified by the International Space Station. But transnational commercial cooperation has been a driving force in space from the beginning of the Space Age. It has become more and more important as national budgets have tightened. Indeed, for over two decades, annual revenues from commercial space activities have far outstripped the total of government space budgets, both civil and military.
 
Governments have been slow to capitalize on this trend. There are still a number of initiatives that involve interaction among space agencies, with companies serving only as contractors. However, some recent roadblocks could seriously impede the pursuit of intergovernmental space programs. The most visible was the budget-motivated withdrawal of the U.S. from the ambitious European ExoMars missions and the subsequent financial difficulty the European Space Agency has experienced, even with the entry of the Russians.
 
Moreover, there are other, more subtle but perhaps more serious concerns. Most notable is the divergence of opinions on the next steps in human space exploration. The U.S.'s stated goals are a mission to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and a voyage to Mars in the 2030s. Europe and Russia have set their sights on extensive development of the Moon, as have Japan and India. Indeed, Russian space agency Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin has stated unequivocally that Russia should not be doing anything in the area of Mars or asteroid exploration. He wants to develop the Moon as a long-term permanent base from which to launch further exploration of the Solar System.
 
Another serious hindrance is the recent U.S. congressional edict that bars NASA from spending to cooperate with China in space. This is in direct conflict with the views of virtually all other spacefaring nations, all of which want to include China in such efforts. One more potential concern, though not as critical, is the difficulty in achieving long-term agreement among nations. It took more than five years to reach agreement on the space station. In contrast, transnational commercial cooperation is much easier. The primary goal is simply to make a profit and thereby increase the partners' ownership value.
 
The first successful instance of multinational commercial activity, and by far still the largest, was in delivering communications services via satellite. Revenues have far exceeded government space budgets worldwide for decades. Other areas of multinational commercial space development involve public-private partnerships. In position-location and navigation, governments developed and now operate the satellite networks, while the private sector did the same for all the ground equipment required for their commercial use. Similarly, the information from government-developed and -operated weather satellites, transmitted by commercial local, national and international news media, is of great financial significance to commercial industries worldwide.
 
In space transportation, at least three of the world's space launch providers are themselves multinational: Sea Launch, International Launch Services and Eurorockot. Moreover, among older launch providers, Arianespace is a French company whose Ariane stages are built by different nations; Europe's other two launchers, Soyuz and Vega, are designed and built by Russia and Italy, respectively, and all lift off from either South America or Kazakhstan.
 
The upper stage of India's Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle has been powered by a Russian rocket engine. The main stage of the U.S.'s Atlas, one of the country's two biggest legacy launchers, is boosted by a Russian RD-180 whose manufacture is now moving to Amross, a joint venture of Russia's Energomash and America's Pratt & Whitney. The large majority of the world's commercial satellites are launched by rockets designed and built in another nation, often from sites in third countries.
 
Some of the newest commercial space launchers involve multinational collaboration. Orbital Sciences Corp's new Antares rocket uses a Yuzhnoye (Ukraine) first stage powered by a Russian NK-33 engine modified by Aerojet (U.S.), and a Castor-30 upper stage built by ATK (U.S.). The Liberty launcher is a joint venture between ATK and Astrium (Europe). The U.K. company Virgin Galactic employs a spaceship and carrier aircraft designed, developed and tested by Scaled Composites (U.S.) and built by their joint venture, the Spacecraft Co. Virgin Galactic launch sites are in the U.S., Sweden and Curacao. The space tourism system planned by the Astrium division of Europe's EADS involves the U.K., Germany, France, Spain and Australia.
 
So, although international space cooperation may be in the doldrums, the vision of a global commercial space industry is still very much alive.
 
MEANWHILE ON MARS…
 
Curiosity beams back stunning views of Mount Sharp
 
William Harwood – CBS News
 
NASA's Curiosity rover, giving earthlings a glimpse of its ultimate target, has beamed back spectacular high-resolution photos of the rugged foothills of Mount Sharp, showing a khaki-colored landscape marked by towering hills, gaping canyons and sand dunes reminiscent of the American southwest, scientists said Monday.
 
In one view, the rover photographed a scientifically intriguing transition from relatively flat rock beds made up of water-influenced minerals to steeply inclined unhydrated layers marking a dramatic, geologically sudden discontinuity that signals a major change in martian history.
 
But for sheer visual impact, it was a zoomed in view of the Mount Sharp foothills that provided the most stunning vista, showing the nearby gravel-strewn field, a sudden drop off into a partially hidden impact crater, dark dunes and then gaping canyons between hills and mesa-like features making up the lower slopes of the towering 3-mile-tall mound of layered terrain.
 
"When those of us on the science team looked at that image for the first time you get this feeling, 'that's what I'm talking about,'" said Project Scientist John Grotzinger. "That is why we picked this landing site. Although the anticipated scenic beauty was not something that was at the top of the list for reasons to select it, it was certainly one thing we were hoping would come through one day. It's awesome to see this."
 
All of the discernible layers in the zoomed-in image "are the layers from orbit that contain the hydrated phyllosilicates and sulfates," Grotzinger said, referring to clay-like minerals that formed in the presence of water. "So everything in that image there is a science target for us. And again, the goal here is to drive up (the side of Mount Sharp) eventually (and) when we do, there's a very systematic approach to exploring, moving around through this terrain that looks like it was something that comes out of a John Ford movie."
 
Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on Aug. 6 and since then, engineers have been methodically checking out its complex systems and science instruments. So far, no major problems have been found, with the latest tests showing one of the rover's critical sample analysis laboratories -- the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAMS instrument -- is working as expected.
 
Curiosity currently is poised to study rocks that were exposed when the rover's sky crane landing rockets blasted topsoil away during the final seconds of the descent. Its first major scientific target is an area known as Glenelg, about 1,300 feet away to the east, where three types of terrain come together. The rover is expected to remain near Glenelg for the rest of the year before striking out toward Mount Sharp sometime in early 2013.
 
Despite the rugged nature of the terrain seen Monday, engineers believe the rover eventually will be able to safety climb up into the foothills of Mount Sharp.
 
"We're going to be driving the rover around in these valleys and looking up at these hills and finding the places where the strata come down and intersect the topography that the rover can drive through," Grotzinger said. "We know it can, because there's so much great data from orbit that allowed us to simulate the drives before we chose this landing site to demonstrate that we could make it up through this terrain."
 
The image in question was "white balanced," said camera designer Mike Malin, "with a little less blue than normally comes in with white balance. I do this because it looks pretty to me, and it's also a geologically interpretable image. I like to look at things as they would look like on the Earth. On Mars it's a little more khaki color, also a little pink on top of that."
 
The science team was especially exited by shots showing the transition from relatively level to steeply inclined beds.
 
"What you see in this image (is) a transition from the strata that are almost flat line, not quite, and they're full of the hydrated minerals, to strata above them, which do not obviously contain the hydrated (water-infused) minerals," Grotzinger said. "Now we don't know from orbit whether they are absent those spectral responses because they're covered with dust or because they're truly absent. But the striking thing about it, everything above that (transition) is steeply inclined with respect to everything that's below it."
 
"This is a spectacular feature that we're seeing very early on that you only had the slightest hint from orbit. ... This kind of relationship is something that can help us understand the origin of these strata, that clearly are the result of the exhumation of the larger sequence of strata that created Mount Sharp."
 
Studying the images from orbit and the latest photos from Curiosity, the science team senses "a big change up Mount Sharp and one day we hope, towards the end of our mission, to get up and go across that (transition) to check it out," Grotzinger said.
 
Malin provided labeled images showing the distances to the foothills and a zoomed-in view showing a boulder about five miles away that is roughly the same size as Curiosity.
 
"That gives you an idea of the scale of the hills and the canyons we'll be driving on," he said. "Basically, this is the ultimate goal, this is where we want to get in the next year and a half or two years, this is the place we want to be. This is 10 kilometers away, and it would take the rover, even if the rover were driving flat out, a hundred days to get there.
 
"We're not going to drive flat out because we have science to do as well. So it's going to take us a while to get over there."
 
Can Curiosity Mars mission inspire like Apollo?
 
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
 
Neil Armstrong inspired millions with his moonwalk. Can a feisty robotic rover exploring Mars do the same for another generation? With manned missions beyond the International Space Station on hold, the spotlight has turned on machines.
 
While it did not rise to Armstrong's "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," interest was so high in the rover Curiosity's "seven minutes of terror" approach to the red planet earlier this month that NASA's website crashed after receiving nearly 2 billion hits. The rover last week beamed home photographs of its first wheel tracks on the Martian soil since its daredevil landing.
 
"There's something exciting about reaching another place in the solar system. If you think about the kind of interest the landing of Curiosity had, you get a sense of that," said Smithsonian Institution space curator Roger Launius. It wasn't on the same level as Armstrong's feat, "but it was pretty darn exciting," he said.
 
When Armstrong, then fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin, stepped on the moon on July 20, 1969, an estimated 600 million people watched and listened. "Virtually the entire world took that memorable journey with us," recalled Buzz Aldrin after Armstrong's death Saturday.
 
Early in the Space Age, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts were the public face of NASA's space endeavor while the unmanned lunar missions that paved the way were in the shadows. The public craved adventure and the manned missions delivered. Aiming for the moon was new and exciting — not to mention dangerous — and the U.S. was locked in a Cold War space race with the Soviets.
 
Next, the space shuttle ferried a new crop of astronauts to low-Earth orbit, but after three decades of service, it became routine. And the Cold War thawed with the Russians and Americans cooperating on the Russian space station Mir and the International Space Station.
 
With the space shuttle fleet retired, the space station is all that's left. Its crew of six for the most part quietly goes about doing its job about 250 miles above the Earth. President Barack Obama nixed plans for returning astronauts to the moon in favor of landing on an asteroid and eventually Mars.
 
These days, space exploration is carried out by robotic spacecraft — commanded by human handlers on Earth. Advances in technology have allowed unmanned spacecraft to go farther and peer deeper, with craft circling Mercury, Saturn, asteroid Vesta and others headed for Jupiter and dwarf planet Pluto. The twin Voyager craft are still going strong at the fringes of the solar system 35 years after their launch in 1977.
 
American University space policy analyst Howard McCurdy said today's generation of explorers was raised on technology and tends to get more jazzed about delivering a car-size rover to Mars.
 
"Robotic exploration has taken more of a center stage," he said. "It gets more publicity now than the International Space Station."
 
When the first Mars rover Sojourner landed in 1997, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke rephrased Armstrong's famous line and said the event was "one small step for the rover."
 
Three other rovers have followed including Curiosity, which landed Aug. 5 by executing an intricate routine that ended with it being lowered by cables to the surface. Curiosity's acrobatics proved so popular that its Twitter followers surged from 120,000 the eve of landing to more than a million (the tweets are being written by the public affairs office at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission.)
 
Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger said Monday the wheel prints on Mars may turn out to be an iconic image just like those first boot prints on the lunar surface.
 
"Instead of a human, it's a robot pretty much doing the same thing," he said.
 
Henry Lambright, a professor of public policy and space scholar at Syracuse University, said while Curiosity is inspiring, the world still needs to send humans beyond low-Earth orbit.
 
"It can't inspire to the degree that Apollo did because a robot can't inspire the way a man can," Lambright said.
 
On Monday, NASA played a recording from Administrator Charles Bolden that had been sent up to the rover on Mars and relayed back to Earth. In it, he thanked scientists and engineers for their achievement.
 
David Lavery of NASA headquarters said the hope is that someone will be inspired by Bolden's message and become the first human to stand on Mars.
 
"Like the great Neil Armstrong, they'll be able to speak aloud — the first person at that point, of the next giant leap in human exploration," he said.
 
Curiosity beams back first human voice transmission from another planet
 
Todd Halvorson - Florida Today
 
An American robotic field geologist on Mars beamed back the first human voice transmission from another planet on Monday as NASA looked forward to sending U.S. astronauts to the red planet.
 
Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, who died Saturday at age 82, was the first human to transmit a message from a natural planetary satellite on July 20, 1969.
 
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong told Mission Control after a harrowing moon landing during which the highly regarded test pilot nearly ran out of gas.
 
The first human voice transmission from an actual planet was decidedly less dramatic. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, introduced himself.
 
His message had been beamed up to Curiosity. Then it was send back, and Bolden noted that he was “speaking to you via the broadcast capabilities of the Curiosity rover,” which landed Aug. 6.
 
Amidst an ancient Martian crater and near a mountain taller than any in the lower 48 states, Curiosity is capable of beaming back data directly or through three manmade satellites orbiting the planet.
 
NASA’s Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft comprise a communications network capable of relaying data from Curiosity back to Earth.
 
In his verbal missive, Bolden congratulated the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory team that pulled off Curiosity’s 154 million-mile voyage and its death-defying seven-minute atmospheric entry, descent and landing.
 
“This is an extraordinary achievement. Landing on Mars is not easy. Others have tried. Only America has fully succeeded,” Bolden said.
 
The 10 scientific instruments on Curiosity “will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars,” Bolden said.
 
“Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation of scientists and explorers as it prepares the way for a human mission in the not-to-distant future.”
 
President Obama in 2010 challenged NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars by the mid-2030s.
 
Launched last November aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover survived a dangerous dive into Gale Crater, a bowl-shaped depression that is about 100 miles wide.
 
In its midst is Mount Sharp, an 18,000-foot-tall mountain is geologically comparable to the Grand Canyon. Layer after layer of sedimentary strata exposes an epoch by epoch geological history of the planet.
 
Instruments aboard Curiosity also are capable of determining whether Mars is, or ever was, habitable; whether the planet does, or ever did, host all the building blocks required for the formation of microbial life.
 
An extensive checkout of Curiosity engineering systems and instruments is continuing, and mission managers are prepping for the rover’s first trek toward a target of scientific interest.
 
That drive should start within the next week or so. But Curiosity already has returned data to satisfy three of five human senses.
 
“It’s the first time we have the sounds, the sights, the smells of Mars,” said Dave Lavery, Mars Science Laboratory Program Executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
 
And there’s more to come.
 
NASA’s $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission and the Curiosity rover are expected to operate at least two years.
 
NASA to Broadcast 1st Song from Mars Tuesday
 
Space.com
 
A song called "Reach for the Stars" will make its debut, appropriately, from space.
 
NASA plans to broadcast the tune, written by rapper and songwriter will.i.am, from its Curiosity rover, newly landed on the surface of Mars.
 
Though Curiosity has no speakers, it will transmit the song via radio waves back to Earth to be received at 1 p.m. PDT (4 p.m. EDT) Tuesday, Aug. 28 during an educational event at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. 
 
"Members of the team that successfully landed the rover on Mars earlier this month will explain to students the mission and the technology behind the song's interplanetary transmission," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "will.i.am will then premiere 'Reach for the Stars,' a new composition about the singer's passion for science, technology and space exploration.
 
During the event, NASA scientists and mission managers will talk about the Curiosity mission and explain the technology behind the broadcast to students. It won't be the first broadcast from space—NASA used the Mars rover to broadcast a spoken message from the space agency's chief, Charles Bolden, today (Aug. 17).
 
The musician will.i.am, a member of hip-hop group The Black-Eyed Peas, was onsite at JPL Aug. 5 (PDT) to watch Curiosity land on Mars. The car-size, $2.5 billion rover is beginning a two-year mission to investigate whether Mars ever had the conditions necessary to support microbial life.
 
Mars rover tracks akin to Neil Armstrong's Moon bootprints, scientist says
 
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
 
NASA's newest Mars rover Curiosity is making tracks on the Red Planet that call to mind the groundbreaking footprints left on the moon by Neil Armstrong more than 40 years ago, a rover scientist said Monday.
 
Neil Armstrong, who became the first person to walk on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, died Saturday at the age of 82. He and his Apollo 11 crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, left the first human imprints on the moon in the form of bootprints indented into the lunar dust everywhere they walked (or hopped, since the moon has one-sixth Earth's gravity).
 
Now, one of NASA's latest endeavors, the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, is making a similar impression on another planetary body. The rover landed on Mars Aug. 5 (PDT) and made its first test drive on Aug. 22.
 
"An iconic image of the mission" shows "four scour marks with wheel tracks," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said today during a news briefing. He compared that photo to images of the footprints left by Armstrong on the moon. "I think instead of a human, it's a robot pretty much doing the same thing."
 
Grotzinger was asked by a journalist whether the Curiosity mission bore any resemblance to the Apollo 11 journey taken by Armstrong, along with Aldrin and the mission's Command Module pilot Michael Collins.
 
"The analogy is a terrific one," Grotzinger replied.
 
Curiosity, a car-size rover that cost $2.5 billion to build and operate, is beginning a two-year mission to explore Mars' Gale Crater for hints that the Red Planet may have ever been habitable to microbial life. The project is NASA's most audacious robotic mission to another world — just as ambitious, in some ways — as the Apollo flight that put Armstrong on the moon.
 
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