Wednesday, August 8, 2012
8/8/12 news
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. Smokey Bear's 68th Birthday in Building 3 Café on Thursday!
2. Deep Space Habitat Project Seeking Subjects for 10-Day Test in September
3. JSC Awarded for Notable Technology Development and Outstanding Laboratory
4. IT Services Impacted by JSC Firewall Outage Saturday, Aug. 11
5. 'Summer of Curiosity' Mission to Mars and JSC
6. Curiosity on Mars, and on the Scientific and Technical Information Site
7. Closing the Communication Gap: Medical Error Prevention and Physician Behavior
8. Today: Learn About NASA/JSC's Approach to Knowledge Management (KM)
9. Shuttle Knowledge Console
10. Safety Information for Parents of High School and College Students
11. Environmental Brown Bag -- Water in Space
12. 'The Greener Side' -- JSC's Environmental Newsletter
13. Starport Summer Camp Extended One More Week
14. Footloose -- Cut Loose and Learn the Dance
15. National Society of Black Engineers JSC Chapter August Meeting
16. POWER of One Award
17. Systems Engineering Reduced Gravity Project Call
18. Facility Managers Training
19. Certified Pressure Systems Operator and Refresher Training
20. Confined Space Entry - 8:30 a.m.; Lockout/Tagout - 1 p.m. -- Sept. 7, Building 226N, Room 174
21. Steel Erection ViTS: Sept. 14, 8 a.m.
22. Excavation and Trenching Safety Seminar ViTS: Sept. 14, Noon
23. Control Team/Crew Resource Management: Sept. 18-20, Building 226N, Room 174
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ Jumping at several small opportunities may get us there more quickly than waiting for one big one to come along. ”
-- Hugh Allen
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1. Smokey Bear's 68th Birthday in Building 3 Café on Thursday!
Smokey Bear will be visiting JSC to celebrate his 68th birthday on Thursday, Aug. 9! Come out and celebrate with him in the Building 3 Café, where there will be cake and an official center greeting by Deputy Director Ellen Ochoa. The event will take place at 11:30 a.m. at the north-facing wall near the Starport Gift Shop. Also, look out for the smoking hot Smokey Bear Birthday Special on the menu!
Michael Hernandez 281-792-7457
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2. Deep Space Habitat Project Seeking Subjects for 10-Day Test in September
The Advanced Exploration Systems Habitat Systems project is seeking test subjects for a 10-day test in September. The test will simulate two points on the return trip home from a Near-Earth Asteroid in a Deep Space Habitat (DSH) located at Building 220. Test subjects would need to support a portion of training week (Aug. 20 to 24) and a dry run (Aug. 27 to 31), in addition to the test itself (Sept. 10 to 14 and Sept. 17 to 21). No overnight stays in the DSH are required until the test, which will cover five days with four overnight stays each week in September. Personnel who are part of the test-subject pool and who have ops experience are preferred.
Ed Walsh 281-792-7947 http://staging.cms.nasa.gov/exploration/technology/deep_space_habitat/in...
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3. JSC Awarded for Notable Technology Development and Outstanding Laboratory
On behalf of the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Mid-Continent Region, JSC is the recipient of the following awards:
Notable Technology Development
- Human Grasp Assist Device/Robotic Glove - NASA JSC/General Motors
Outstanding Laboratory
- NASA JSC
The work done at JSC has truly advanced the mission and goals of the FLC and highlighted how technology transfer can succeed, demonstrating fine examples of excellence within the federal laboratory system -- especially here.
The awards will be celebrated on Thursday, Sept. 6, during the annual regional meeting of the Mid-Continent and Far West from Sept. 4 to 6 at the Hyatt Regency in San Antonio. Additional information can be found on the regional website: http://www.flcmidcontinent.org/meeting/
Arlene M. Andrews x34730
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4. IT Services Impacted by JSC Firewall Outage Saturday, Aug. 11
JSC's Information Resources Directorate (IRD) will perform a firewall upgrade that will impact network connectivity from several onsite and offsite facilities. There will be a total outage from 8 to 8:15 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 11. However, intermittent network outages will take place throughout the day from 8:15 a.m. until 5 p.m. All times are CDT.
Impacts include:
- Network connectivity from JSC to other NASA centers, Russia, other international partners, contractors both around and outside the Clear Lake area, USA, and the public Internet will be disrupted (example: email/NOMAD).
- Network connectivity from other NASA centers, Russia, other international partners, contractors both around and outside the Clear Lake area, and USA to JSC will be disrupted.
- JSC remote access services, including VPN at https://vpn.jsc.nasa.gov and R2S at https://remote.jsc.nasa.gov/ Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) will also be disrupted.
- USA's access to and from JSC internal resources, including access to ESA, JAXA , local-area contractors both around and outside the Clear Lake area connected to the DMZ Firewall, will be disrupted. (USA access to the Internet from offsite will not be disrupted.)
- Onsite JSC users will not be able to update/synchronize their computer's Outlook email/calendaring information.
Impacts include several other facilities such as the Gilruth, SAIC and others. For the full list of facilities impacted, please go to: http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/Lists/wIReD%20in%20The%20Latest%20IRD%20News/DispForm...
JSC IRD Outreach x41334 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/default.aspx
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5. 'Summer of Curiosity' Mission to Mars and JSC
In celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory's arrival to the Red Planet, the External Relations Office is sharing a variety of activities and online resources with JSC employees. JSC families are encouraged to complete the weekly activities that illustrate what's needed for a six-month journey to Mars, a one-year stay and a six-month return trip to Earth.
All JSC families are invited to the Voyage Back to School event at Space Center Houston on Aug. 16 to celebrate their summer STEM experiences and Mars challenge results.
Over the course of the last two months, you and your family have planned, designed and constructed many items needed for a human mission to Mars. JSC will have a crucial role in the planning and implementation of a true human mission to Mars in the next 30 years.
Even though the first human mission is decades away, JSC is developing and testing new methods and technology in preparation of a Mars mission. Our center is equipped with incredible training facilities, laboratories and control centers that have been used in hundreds of human missions.
During week nine, we are going to step away from planning a mission to Mars and focus on how JSC will support future human missions to the Red Planet.
Please visit http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/johnson/student-activities/summ... for more information.
JSC External Relations, Office of Education x36686
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6. Curiosity on Mars, and on the Scientific and Technical Information Site
The Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Program has compiled a repository of technical documents about Curiosity's landing on Mars. The documents can be found at http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp and also via a rotating box on the lower right-hand side of the STI website under "Highlights" at: http://www.sti.nasa.gov
NASA STI is the result of NASA's published research and development (R&D) activities, such as technical reports, conference papers, proceedings, journal articles, books, book chapters and more. The STI Program collects, organizes, disseminates and preserves NASA's STI, in addition to ensuring that it is approved for external release.
For more information or help locating these or other STI documents, visit: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/contact-us/#.UBwux01lTng
You can also email Lynn Heimerl in the NASA STI Program Office at: n.l.heimerl@nasa.gov
JSC IRD Outreach x45257 http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp
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7. Closing the Communication Gap: Medical Error Prevention and Physician Behavior
Please join us for the next NASA Human Health 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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8. Today: Learn About NASA/JSC's Approach to Knowledge Management (KM)
Today from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Building 1, Room 360.
You are invited to JSC's SAIC and Safety and Mission Assurance Speaker Forum featuring Jeanie Engle, JSC Chief Knowledge Officer.
Engle is responsible for the development of an integrated KM plan across JSC, as well as collaborating with other NASA centers and industry to identify and utilize best practices. This program began with the simple concept of identifying, capturing, maintaining, retrieving and sharing of critical knowledge. Existing projects include explicit knowledge capture through lessons learned, case studies, our quality management system and a robust taxonomy/semantic search capability. Under her leadership, JSC KM continues to develop and expand our organizational learning approach to include implicit knowledge capture through JSC storytelling and JSC Voices. Through these varied diverse projects and approaches, JSC KM is inclusive of all technical and administrative disciplines at JSC. To learn more, visit: https://knowledge.jsc.nasa.gov
Joyce Abbey 281-335-2041
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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. 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. Safety Information for Parents of High School and College Students
Come gain the knowledge to not only keep your high school and college students safe, but also to teach them the safety measures that will reduce their risk of involvement in violence and sexual assault. The Employee Assistance Program is happy to present Heather Kerbow, violence prevention coordinator from the Bay Area Turning Point. She will present "Safety Information for Parents of High School and College Students" today, Aug. 8, at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium.
Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130
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11. Environmental Brown Bag -- Water in Space
Come see Laurie Peterson, JSC's sustainability champion, present "Water in Space: From Ingestion to Excretion," at the environmental brown bag. The majority of Peterson's NASA career has been spent working on spacecraft Environmental Control and Life Support Systems, an awesome microcosm to sustainability here on Earth. She'll be reviewing how water is (and has been) stored, recycled, dispensed, used, and ultimately re-collected on every U.S. spacecraft from Mercury to the International Space Station. Bring your lunch to Building 45, Room 751, on Tuesday, Aug. 14, from noon to 1 p.m.
Michelle Fraser-Page x34237
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12. 'The Greener Side' -- JSC's Environmental Newsletter
Every day, members of the JSC community make decisions large and small that have an environmental impact. To learn more, check out JSC's "The Greener Side" environmental newsletter.
Environmental Office x36207 http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/bbs/scripts/files/365/theGreenerSide%20v5n3%20(...
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13. Starport Summer Camp Extended One More Week
We have added one more week onto the summer season for NASA Starport Summer Camp. Session 10 will be held Aug. 13 to 17, but space is limited to 30 campers. Register now at the Gilruth Center to ensure your spot. Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Youth/ for more information.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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14. Footloose -- Cut Loose and Learn the Dance
Footloose dance class/event:
- Friday, Aug. 10, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
- Gilruth Center Gymnasium
Are you ready to cut loose?! Starport and Heather Paul are ready to teach you the footloose dance routine in one amazing night. All family, friends and community members are welcome (12 years and older).
Sign up for this great class before it's too late. Registration still open:
- Ends Aug. 10 -- $15 per person
To register or for more information, please call the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304.
Steve Schade x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/RecreationClasses/RecreationProgram...
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15. National Society of Black Engineers JSC Chapter August Meeting
The Houston Space Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) will hold its first meeting of the 2013 NSBE fiscal year tomorrow, Aug. 9, at noon in Building 1, Conference Room 220. All interested persons are invited join us for our kick-off meeting. You are welcome to bring a lunch. This meeting will provide an orientation to NSBE and upcoming chapter space technology activities. Professional and technical development opportunities available through chapter and national projects will be discussed.
Robert Howard x41007
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16. POWER of One Award
The POWER of One Award has been a great success, but we still need your nominations. We're looking for standouts with specific examples of exceptional or superior performance. Our award criteria below will help guide you in writing the short write-up needed for submittal.
- Single achievement: Truly went above and beyond on a single project or initiative
- Affect and impact: How many were impacted? Who was impacted?
- Category: Which category should nominee be in?
- Gold: Agency impact award level
- Silver: Center impact award level
- Bronze: Organization impact award level
- Effort and time: Was additional time and effort in place?
- Mission and goals: Were goals met?
- Standout: What stands out?
If chosen, the recipient can choose from a list of JSC experiences and have their name and recognition shared on InsideJSC.
Jessica Ocampo 281-792-7804 https://powerofone.jsc.nasa.gov
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17. Systems Engineering Reduced Gravity Project Call
The Systems Engineering Educational Discovery Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program is currently accepting internal project proposals for the 2013 flight season. This project call is for systems-engineering-based or ISS mission-related reduced gravity research in either microgravity and/or lunar gravity that can be tested in the microgravity aircraft at Johnson Space Center in summer 2013. Projects should be able to be run by a team of undergraduate students in colleges and universities around the nation. To submit a project for this program, please visit: http://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov/security/seed/project/post/
Deadline for submission is Aug. 22. This is an internal project call open to technical NASA civil servants and NASA contractors agencywide. For questions, please contact: jsc-reducedgravity@nasa.gov
Thank you.
Sara Malloy x37847 http://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov/security/seed/project/post/
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18. Facility Managers Training
The Safety Learning Center invites you to attend an eight-hour Facility Mangers Training that will provide JSC Facility Managers with insight into the requirements for accomplishing their functions.
- Includes training on facility management, safety, hazard identification and mitigation, legal, security, energy conservation, health and environmental aspects.
- Attendees of this course must also register in SATERN for a half-day Fire Warden Training. *Others that need Fire Warden Training can register through the normal process.
Date/Time: Aug. 22 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center, Building 226N, Room 174
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aundrail Hill x36369
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19. Certified Pressure Systems Operator and Refresher Training
Certified Pressure Systems Operator and Refresher Training covers updated pressure systems requirements, lessons learned and written hazard analysis.
Date: Aug. 10
Location: Safety Learning Center - Building 226N, Room 174
Use these direct links to SATERN for course times and to register.
Certified Pressure Systems Operator, 9 to 11 a.m.
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Certified Pressure Systems Operator and Refresher, 11:01 a.m. to 12:01 p.m.
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aundrail Hill x36369
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20. Confined Space Entry - 8:30 a.m.; Lockout/Tagout - 1 p.m. -- Sept. 7, Building 226N, Room 174
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0806, Confined Space Entry: The purpose of this course is to provide employees with the standards, procedures and requirements necessary for safe entry to and operations in confined spaces. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard 29 CFR 1910.146, "Confined Space," is the basis for this course. The course covers the hazards of working in or around a confined space and the precautions one should take to control these hazards. A comprehensive test will be offered at the end of the class.
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0814, Lockout/Tagout: The purpose of this course is to provide employees with the standards, procedures and requirements necessary for the control of hazardous energy through lockout and tagout of energy-isolating devices. OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.147, "The Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout)," is the basis for this course. A comprehensive test will be offered at the end of the class.
Registration in SATERN is required.
Shirley Robinson x41284
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21. Steel Erection ViTS: Sept. 14, 8 a.m.
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0060: The primary purpose of the course is to provide employees with the standards, procedures and requirements necessary for safe operations involving the erection of steel structures. The course will emphasize safety awareness for steel erectors, supervisors and safety personnel, and will further their understanding of standards and regulations related to such work, including Occupational Safety and Health Administration 1926.750 Subpart R, ANSI standards and NASA requirements. Students are provided with basic information concerning scope and application, definitions, site layout, an erection plan, hoisting and rigging, and structural steel assembly. 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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22. Excavation and Trenching Safety Seminar ViTS: Sept. 14, Noon
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0045: The purpose of this course is to provide employees with the standards, procedures and practices necessary to meet the standards in CFR 1926.650 Subpart P - Excavations and Trenching Construction. Excavation, trenching and soil testing are the fundamental concepts covered in this course. 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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23. Control Team/Crew Resource Management: Sept. 18-20, Building 226N, Room 174
Two-and-a-half days. This training directly addresses the human factors issues that most often cause problems in team and crew interaction. No one working on a team or a crew, especially during high-stress activities, is immune to these effects. The Control Team/Crew Resource Management course deals with interpersonal relations, but doesn't advocate democratic rule or hugging fellow team members to improve personal relations. Rather, this course provides awareness of human factors problems that too often result in mishaps and offers recommendations and procedures for eliminating these problems. It emphasizes safety risk assessment, crew/team coordination and decision-making in crisis situations. This course is applicable both to those in aircrew-type operations and also to personnel operating consoles for hazardous testing or on-orbit mission operations, or any operation involving teamwork and critical communication. It is preferable that "teams" experience course as a group, if possible. SATERN Registration Required. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Polly Caison x41279
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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:
· 8:55 am Central (9:55 EDT) – E32 w/WAPA-TV (San Juan) & Univision’s “Despierta America”
· Noon Central (1 EDT) – MSL/”Curiosity” post-landing briefing - Sol 3 Update
Human Spaceflight News
Wednesday – August 8, 2012
Curiosity puts color view in the context of a computer simulation derived from images acquired from orbiting spacecraft. The view looks north, showing a distant ridge that is the north wall and rim of Gale Crater.
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Multinational ISS robot arm ops Install external U.S., Japanese experiments
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
Using carefully choreographed Canadian and Japanese robot arm operations this week, ground-based flight control teams and astronauts aboard the International Space Station have extracted a pair of external experiment packages from Japan's recently docked unpiloted HTV-3 supply ship and positioned them outside the orbiting science lab. On Tuesday, NASA's Space Communications and Navigation Testbed -- in the grasp of Canada's Multi-purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or DEXTRE, and the longer Canadarm2 -- was headed for its permanent home on the External Logistics Carrier 3 on the port side of the station's vaulting solar power truss.
NASA hopes successes will boost its support in Congress
Ledyard King - Florida Today
The Curiosity rover's impressive arrival on Mars couldn't have come at a better time for NASA. The agency, facing budget cuts, increased congressional scrutiny and questions about its direction since the shuttle program ended last year, has worked to remind skeptics the U.S. space program deserves continued support and investment. Now NASA has two high-profile triumphs to back up those words: Curiosity's perfectly choreographed landing on Monday, and May's successful berthing of a SpaceX vehicle at the International Space Station, a first for a commercial company.
Space station astronaut likes Curiosity, but says humans are also key to exploring space
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
Even NASA's astronauts are wowed by the Curiosity Mars rover, but they say space exploration needs people, too. "An amazing mission, an amazing success story," astronaut Ron Garan said in Huntsville Tuesday. "We have a laboratory on the surface of Mars." "Yesterday, I had this excuse all day long," Garan said. "I'm sorry, I was up all night downloading pictures from a robot that was lowered to the surface from the air by a sky crane." Garan was in Huntsville to thank science controllers at Marshall Space Flight Center. They guide the experiments aboard the International Space Station and worked with Garan in the 164 days he was there in 2011. Garan said experience has shown that exploration works best when both robots and humans do it.
NanoRacks is the UPS of outer space shipping
Neal Ungerleider - FastCompany.com
Private companies, educational institutions, and other organizations who send experiments aboard the International Space Station face a challenge: Each experiment sent aboard the ISS requires extensive safety and security checks--and about 1,000 pages of documentation. In the past few years, a handful of companies worldwide have started handling all those details for space entrepreneurs. They're the FedExes and DHLs for posting packages beyond Earth. NanoRacks, one of the first companies to enter the field, operates the first commercial laboratory in space aboard the ISS and a panel laboratory that's attached to the space station. For the price of $30,000 for educational institutions or $60,000 for commercial entities, NanoRacks handles all the logistics related to sending experiments into space.
Another Monty Tech experiment chosen for launch into space
Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg, MA)
A Monty Tech student-designed science experiment focusing on the effect microgravity has on synthetic blood hemoglobin has been selected to fly to the International Space Station this fall. This is the third time in just over a year that a Monty Tech student experiment has been selected to fly into space. Officials from the national Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, based in Washington, D.C., recently announced the winners for the next student-designed science experiment to fly to the International Space Station aboard the first operational flight of the SpaceX Dragon rocket, scheduled for launch in September.
Russia suffers another embarrassing failure in space
Los Angeles Times
A few hours after the U.S. robot explorer Curiosity successfully landed on Mars and began transmitting images of the Red Planet, America’s Russian collaborators in the International Space Station project suffered another setback in their battered space program with the potential of endangering the station itself. A Russian Proton-M booster rocket launched Tuesday morning from Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan failed to deliver Indonesian and Russian telecommunication satellites into orbit, instead adding $2 million worth of space junk into Earth’s orbit.
Prototype NASA lander's engine shuts down during test
James Dean - Florida Today
A prototype NASA lander’s engine automatically shut down shortly after igniting this morning at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility, aborting a first attempt at a free flight. “We had good ignition, but an automatic engine shutdown occurred before liftoff due to an on-board software trigger,” project staff said in a Twitter message. It wasn’t immediately clear when a next attempt would be made.
Russian astronauts to begin survival test in desert near Baikonur
Itar-Tass
Russian astronauts will spend two days in a desert with a minimal ration of drinking water and food. The survival test will be taken near Baikonur. “Three three-men crews – astronauts and prospective astronauts – will have to live on scanty supplies for two days before rescuers arrive,” Cosmonaut Training Center press secretary Irina Rogova told Itar-Tass.
NASA Is the Government's One True Viral Hit Factory
John Hudson – The Atlantic
NASA may only consume 0.5 percent of the federal budget, but it generates practically all of Uncle Sam's viral marketing buzz. Never was that more apparent than on Monday morning following the successful Mars landing of Curiosity, the biggest and most advanced spacecraft ever dispatched to another planet. In an explosion of tweets, Tumbls, status updates, and blog posts, the Internet showed its love of NASA in a way other parts of the government could only dream of. So what's NASA's secret?
Famous Astronaut Interred in Santa Monica
Jenna Chandler - Patch.com
Sally Ride, who soared into history as the first American woman in space, was buried in an intimate ceremony Monday at Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica. Her interment at the local cemetery was announced by the city's manager's office Tuesday evening. Ride was laid to rest with a small private gathering for family and friends. "The city of Santa Monica is honored that the family chose Santa Monica as Dr. Ride’s final resting place," Mayor Richard Bloom said in a statement. "The community will forever treasure our National hero."
Last section of Space Shuttle Trainer arriving at Boeing Field Thursday
Tacoma News Tribune
The last section of the Space Shuttle Trainer will arrive at the Museum of Flight Thursday morning, the museum said Wednesday. The forward portion of the trainer's payload bay will arrive aboard NASA's Super Guppy aircraft. The Super Guppy is a rarity itself.
MEANWHILE, ON MARS…
NASA mission gives a peek of rover's Mars journey
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
NASA's latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape. It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views — of Mars and the journey there — are yet to come. "Spectacular," mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. "We've not had that before."
NASA shows first 'crime scene' photo of Mars landing
Kerry Sheridan - Agence France Presse
About 36 hours after NASA landed its $2.5 billion rover on Mars, it released what it jokingly dubbed a "crime scene" aerial shot of where the parachute, heat shield and vehicle came down. The touchdown on August 6 of the Mars Science Laboratory involved the most elaborate attempt yet to drop a robotic car on the surface of the Red Planet, and required a heat shield, supersonic parachute and rocket-powered sky crane.
Curiosity rover hit the perfect spot on Mars, scientists say
Scott Gold - Los Angeles Times
NASA's Curiosity robot not only survived its elaborate landing on Mars but also wound up in the most scientifically exciting pocket of its 48-square-mile target area on the floor of an ancient crater, space scientists said Monday. Engineers pored over data to figure out precisely where the spacecraft landed Sunday — and determined that Curiosity's science, which has the potential to transform deep-space exploration, won't start at the base of a mountain four miles away, but right under its nose.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Multinational ISS robot arm ops Install external U.S., Japanese experiments
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
Using carefully choreographed Canadian and Japanese robot arm operations this week, ground-based flight control teams and astronauts aboard the International Space Station have extracted a pair of external experiment packages from Japan's recently docked unpiloted HTV-3 supply ship and positioned them outside the orbiting science lab.
On Tuesday, NASA's Space Communications and Navigation Testbed -- in the grasp of Canada's Multi-purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or DEXTRE, and the longer Canadarm2 -- was headed for its permanent home on the External Logistics Carrier 3 on the port side of the station's vaulting solar power truss.
SCAN, the centerpiece for a long running engineering evaluation of reconfigurable software defined radios for future spacecraft communications and navigation architectures, reached the station aboard Japan's HTV-3 on July 27. Japan's Multi-Mission Consolidated Equipment platform, which accompanied SCAN as an unpressurized payload on the HTV-3, is headed for a permanent home on Japan's Kibo experiment module exposed facility later this week.
MCE holds five smaller experiments, two for atmospheric observation and others for the evaluation of inflatable structures, robot tether movement and high definition television.
After rendezvousing with the station, the HTV-3 and its 4.6 metric ton cargo assortment was grappled and berthed to the station's U. S. segment Harmony module by astronauts Joe Acaba and Akihiko Hoshide using the 58-foot long Canadarm 2. After the berthing operation, the
Canadian arm was fastened by ground controllers to the HTV-3's external payloads platform upon which SCAN and MCE were secured for the July 20 HTV-3 launching.
Ground controllers then used the Canadarm2 to extract the external platform from HTV-3 and hand it to Japan's Remote Manipulator System, a 33-foot robot arm anchored to Kibo. Hoshide and Acaba handled the Japanese arm operations to secure the HTV-3 external payloads platform to Kibo's exposed facility – an open station structure for science experiments.
NASA ground controllers then placed DEXTRE, the 11.5 foot long robot hand, in the grasp of Canadarm 2 to move SCAN from the Kibo exposed facility to its port truss home.
A similar operation will lift the MCE from its HTV-3 platform and plant the Japanese experiment platform a few feet away on one of 10 external science ports on the Kibo exposed facility.
NASA hopes successes will boost its support in Congress
Ledyard King - Florida Today
The Curiosity rover's impressive arrival on Mars couldn't have come at a better time for NASA.
The agency, facing budget cuts, increased congressional scrutiny and questions about its direction since the shuttle program ended last year, has worked to remind skeptics the U.S. space program deserves continued support and investment.
Now NASA has two high-profile triumphs to back up those words: Curiosity's perfectly choreographed landing on Monday, and May's successful berthing of a SpaceX vehicle at the International Space Station, a first for a commercial company.
"Clearly the success of Curiosity got a lot of people's attention," said Roger Launius, a senior curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington and a former NASA historian. "Having now done it, they have a lot of right to say, 'Look, we can really accomplish the things we've been asked to do by the American public.'"
But Launius and other space experts caution NASA's recent successes, remarkable as they are, don't change the fiscal climate that is compelling President Obama and Congress to constrain the size of the federal government.
If lawmakers are unable to agree on a deal to reduce the deficit cut at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years, automatic spending cuts at almost every federal program will take effect in January.
NASA has done relatively well in recent budgets, considering how much other programs have been slashed.
Lawmakers are expected to approve about $17 billion for the agency in fiscal 2013, which is about what NASA got this year. The new budget should include money for NASA's top priorities: a manned mission to Mars powered by a heavy-lift rocket, the launch of a powerful new space telescope, and the Commercial Crew Program designed to replace the shuttle with privately developed vehicles.
But lawmakers are focused more closely than ever on making sure NASA spends that money as they say it should.
Last year, Congress authorized an independent commission to review the agency's strategic direction. The findings are expected by the end of this year.
Republican Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, said in a June 27 letter to commission chairman Albert Carnesale that the agency's direction had reached "a new low" under the Obama administration. He asked the panel to consider whether structural changes are needed at the agency.
Wolf has been critical of the agency's management, notably its handling of the Commercial Crew Program.
John Logsdon, founder and former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said NASA has done a remarkable job, considering it's been "jerked around a lot over the past decade" by the shifting priorities of different administrations and tough choices made to accommodate limited budgets.
And recent scientific successes won't shield the agency from criticism, he said.
"Faith in the agency in terms of its technical competence is different than faith in the agency in terms of knowing where it's going," he said. "The successes reinforce that NASA's a very competent organization, but they don't have much to do with the broader debate of the future direction of the U.S. space program."
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., one of NASA's most ardent supporters, said the agency's critics have always questioned why money is spent on space exploration when the nation has so many needs.
He said congressional lawmakers recognize the program's myriad benefits for humans, but it doesn't hurt that NASA can point to the recent breakthroughs represented by the SpaceX docking and Curiosity's landing on Mars.
"The successes in the space program certainly give a great deal of impetus and enthusiasm to our space program," Nelson said. He said that makes it much easier to justify NASA's funding.
Launius said Curiosity's landing might help boost support for the Mars science mission, which has had to sacrifice due to cost overruns associated with the James Webb Space Telescope. But he doesn't expect NASA to escape the budgetary pain other parts of the government could face later this year.
"I kind of have a hard time seeing how that would (happen) just because you have a couple of admittedly quite excellent successes," he said. "But it's certainly realistic to think that most (lawmakers) are going to be positively affected by this stuff."
Space station astronaut likes Curiosity, but says humans are also key to exploring space
Lee Roop - Huntsville Times
Even NASA's astronauts are wowed by the Curiosity Mars rover, but they say space exploration needs people, too. "An amazing mission, an amazing success story," astronaut Ron Garan said in Huntsville Tuesday. "We have a laboratory on the surface of Mars."
"Yesterday, I had this excuse all day long," Garan said. "I'm sorry, I was up all night downloading pictures from a robot that was lowered to the surface from the air by a sky crane."
Garan was in Huntsville to thank science controllers at Marshall Space Flight Center. They guide the experiments aboard the International Space Station and worked with Garan in the 164 days he was there in 2011.
Garan said experience has shown that exploration works best when both robots and humans do it.
"When you put the two together, you don't just double your capability, it really is a very synergistic effect," Garan said. Robots are "the scouts," he said, but "we need humans in the loop. We need living, feeling, thinking beings to do a lot of the type of exploration we want to do in the future."
Garan said the controllers in Huntsville are a big part of the space station's research success. "The most important thing we're getting out of the station is the scientific research," Garan said, "and for the most part, that's controlled right here. We have technology, we have machines, but when it comes right down to it, it's person to person where we get the true science out of it, and that's controlled right here."
While in Huntsville, Garan also signed a mission plaque to hang in the control room and showed a video of mission highlights to Marshall workers. Garan was on the station when the April 27 tornadoes hit Huntsville, knocking out power to all of the Marshall center. Emergency generators and procedures kept the control room online, however, and managers told Garan the team worked hard to keep communications links open.
NanoRacks is the UPS of outer space shipping
Need to send a package beyond Earth? This "concierge to the stars" and others will handle the logistics. Stamps start at $30,000.
Neal Ungerleider - FastCompany.com
Private companies, educational institutions, and other organizations who send experiments aboard the International Space Station face a challenge: Each experiment sent aboard the ISS requires extensive safety and security checks--and about 1,000 pages of documentation.
In the past few years, a handful of companies worldwide have started handling all those details for space entrepreneurs. They're the FedExes and DHLs for posting packages beyond Earth.
NanoRacks, one of the first companies to enter the field, operates the first commercial laboratory in space aboard the ISS and a panel laboratory that's attached to the space station. For the price of $30,000 for educational institutions or $60,000 for commercial entities, NanoRacks handles all the logistics related to sending experiments into space.
The small, for-profit company will handle the paperwork, find transportation among the many vehicles headed to the ISS, install the experiment, and take care of all governmental relations for would-be space experimenters. The standard NanoRack experiment stays in space for 30 days.
The company has delivered 41 payloads to the ISS so far and has another 80 under contract, Jeffrey Mamber, NanoRacks' managing director, tells Fast Company. NanoRacks “formed in late 2009, and recognized that utilization of the Space Station could be used as a commercial pathway. If we could market commercial services for the International Space Station, we'd find a market. We signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA on September 9, 2009 and self-financed everything for the first two years, to show there is a market. We are the world's first private laboratory in space, and we created a pathway and infrastructure that didn't exist before.”
Besides NanoRacks, several other companies also offer outer space logistics solutions for international clients. According to the managers of the United States' lab aboard the ISS, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), organizations sending payloads to the space station have multiple logistics options. These companies, such as Astrium, Astrotech, Bionetics, and Thales Alenia Space, form part of a tightly knit ecosystem of space logistics experts. Employees at the firms help clients with the highly complicated space travel process, as well as navigating the byzantine bureaucracies of NASA and its worldwide counterparts.
According to Mamber, NanoRacks wants to be a “concierge to the stars” for its clients that “streamlines the NASA integration process [...] It takes nine months from contract signing to launch. We take care of everything with NASA—access to laboratory space, the launch vehicle, deployment, everything. NASA doesn't want to deal with consumer payloads, but we do.”
The primary NanoRacks lab, one of two turnkey commercial labs on the ISS, consists of proprietary equipment based around a series of plug-and-play modules. The second lab is actually located on a small external platform attached to the ISS, which gives experimenters access to outer space itself. The company's clients have included a variety of American educational institutions (including many high schools recruited through the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program), the Israeli Air Force's Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, plus numerous commercial clients. Although manifests are available online, Mamber said that many private clients are circumspect about making details of their experiments public--many involve trade secrets as well as sensitive information.
However, sometimes information about experiments is promoted to the public. Scotland's Ardbeg whisky distillery worked with NanoRacks to conduct space experiments on their signature product. Using NanoRacks' facility, the distillery tested the behavior of flavor-altering organic compounds called terpenes in zero gravity.
Most companies working in for-profit space travel coordinate their activities, Esther Dyson, an early investor in NanoRacks, tells Fast Company. "Almost all of us work together via the Commercial Space Federation on common issues, such as regulations, raising investor interest (though we compete when it comes to actually raising the money!), encouraging space ports and the like.”
NanoRacks primarily sends clients' experiments into space via government space vehicles, but recently hitched a ride aboard the private SpaceX Dragon (where an error caused students' payloads to lose critical refrigeration during the transportation process). Shipping space is booked via NASA and the company works extensively with the space agency's staff and various space centers. Next up for NanoRacks is an iPhone-based space research platform.
Another Monty Tech experiment chosen for launch into space
Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg, MA)
A Monty Tech student-designed science experiment focusing on the effect microgravity has on synthetic blood hemoglobin has been selected to fly to the International Space Station this fall.
This is the third time in just over a year that a Monty Tech student experiment has been selected to fly into space.
Officials from the national Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, based in Washington, D.C., recently announced the winners for the next student-designed science experiment to fly to the International Space Station aboard the first operational flight of the SpaceX Dragon rocket, scheduled for launch in September.
A total of 11 experiments submitted from schools in nine states throughout the country were chosen from over 1,100 submitted proposals.
Of the winning teams, Monty Tech is the only one to be selected for a total of three space flights.
Launched in 2010, the SSEP is the first pre-college STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education program that is both a U.S. national initiative and an on-orbit commercial space venture.
The program is designed to give thousands of students in grades 5 through 14 the opportunity to design and propose real science experiments to fly in low-Earth orbit, first aboard the final flights of the Space Shuttle program, and then on to the International Space Station, America's newest national laboratory.
Members of Monty Tech's most recent student-scientist team include seniors Nadia Machado Prates and Yeniffer Araujo, both of Fitchburg, Tiffany Nguyen, of Gardner, and Ryan Swift, of Ashby. Their experiment will test the effects of microgravity on synthetic hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers used in emergency medical conditions where it is difficult to get donated human blood.
According to Paula deDiego, Monty Tech science teacher and SSEP Community Program Director, the student spaceflight program is about "immersing and engaging students and teachers in real science. It provides the vehicle whereby students have the chance to be scientists and experience science firsthand."
Although not selected for the upcoming space flight, two Monty Tech experiment proposals received honorable mention. They were submitted by the team of Gage Butler and Jacklyn White, both of Gardner, and Jessica Shattuck, of Fitchburg; and team members Russell Holbert and Brittany Velez, both of Fitchburg, Emily Westerback, of Holden, and Marissa Arsenau, of East Templeton.
Kendell Hyre, of Ashburnham, a graphic communications major, won the design contest for the official space mission patch, which will fly aboard the rocket along with one designed by Ayvri Gagne from John R. Briggs Elementary School in Ashburnham.
Monty Tech's most recent science experiment, its second space venture, recently returned to earth after spending six weeks collecting data on the International Space Station. That experiment focused on the effect of soil bacteria on plastic degradation in microgravity. The data will be sent to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Falmouth for analysis.
When developing their proposal, students contacted Dr. Tracy Mincer, a scientist at the institute who is recognized as an authority on the type of bacteria used in the experiment. Mincer assisted the students with their research and other aspects of the project.
Russell and Victoria Holbert and Miguel and Brittany Velez of Fitchburg were selected as team members for that trip.
In May, students and deDiego traveled to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to witness the historic launch. However, due to mechanical problems, the flight was delayed to later in the month. While in the area, they attended a STEM workshop sponsored by SSEP. They also toured the Kennedy Space Center and had their picture taken in an anti-gravity simulator.
The school's first foray into space took place a year ago when a team of students, accompanied by deDiego and Principal Nicholas DeSimone, were on hand in Florida for the historic launch of the final space shuttle in the Atlantis program. Their experiment focused on the effect of microgravity on tooth decay.
Data collected while in space supported the theory that the bacteria that causes tooth decay produces more rapidly in microgravity than on earth.
deDiego recently accompanied members of that first space team to a SSEP conference, held at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., to present their findings from that mission.
Funds for the school's participation in the upcoming flight have been donated from corporate sponsors, including the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium, Nypro, NyproMold, the North Central Massachusetts Workforce Investment Board, OPK Biotech and Micron Integrated Technologies.
Russia suffers another embarrassing failure in space
Los Angeles Times
A few hours after the U.S. robot explorer Curiosity successfully landed on Mars and began transmitting images of the Red Planet, America’s Russian collaborators in the International Space Station project suffered another setback in their battered space program with the potential of endangering the station itself.
A Russian Proton-M booster rocket launched Tuesday morning from Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan failed to deliver Indonesian and Russian telecommunication satellites into orbit, instead adding $2 million worth of space junk into Earth’s orbit.
The launch proceeded normally until the acceleration engine block Briz-M switched off by itself only seven seconds after its third ignition instead of the more than 18 minutes required to put the Russian Express-MD2 and the Indonesian Telcom 3 satellites into their orbits, Russian space officials said.
There is “not a chance” at this point to do anything to correct the error, said Alexei Kuznetsov, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency.
Kuznetsov didn’t rule out a possibility that the now-useless satellites and the engine block may pose danger to the International Space Station but said it was “very unlikely.”
“A special group is studying the situation now to warn the station crew in time if such a possibility becomes real so that the crew can maneuver the station away from the collision course,” Kuznetsov said in a phone interview. “In a situation where the time is limited the crew can always hide themselves inside the Soyuz spaceship docked into the station.”
The three objects will continue to float in space only for a month or two before reentering the Earth’s atmosphere and burning up, given that their perigee orbit at 187 miles “is literally scratching the atmosphere now,” said Igor Marinin, editor-in-chief of the News of Cosmonautics, a Russian monthly journal.
“With the International Space Station low orbit of 250 miles these satellites and the engine block become theoretically dangerous,” Marinin said in an interview. “But we should also pray that in that period of time the fuel tank of the engine block wouldn’t explode due to overheating from solar exposure because then we will have to deal with thousands of smaller objects in unpredictable orbits.”
The Russian space industry, which was afflicted with insufficient funding in the late 1980s and early 1990s and subsequent loss of highly trained personnel, is desperately trying to recover from a series of space accidents and launch failures, including the loss in November of the $167-million Mars-bound probe Phobos-Ground shortly after launch due to a programming error. The probe finally fell into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile in mid-January.
“This is the first emergency situation this year,” Kuznetsov said. “We thought that the situation [in the space industry] began to improve but you know there is always a risk there that something may go wrong.”
“Basically all our problems today still stem from the long years of our space industry poverty in the late ’80s and early ’90s when our workers were not paid their salaries for months and many quit,” space expert Marinin said.
“When we reduced the production and thus saved the workforce in the late ’90s we began experiencing a bad want of designers and engineers because young people were not interested in space research anymore.”
Russian space research has lost over two generations of young specialists who have been choosing business and trade rather than space exploration, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Laveikin complained.
“Today’s failure is very embarrassing especially against the backdrop of the success of the U.S. exploration of Mars,” Laveikin, also the deputy director of the Memorial Museum of Russian Cosmonautics, said in an interview. “Our people have lost all interest in space research and most of them don’t even know or care what crew is on board of the International Space Station now and what they are doing there.”
Russia needs to promote its space program and make it a key element in the patriotic upbringing of Russian youth, Laveikin said.
Prototype NASA lander's engine shuts down during test
James Dean - Florida Today
A prototype NASA lander’s engine automatically shut down shortly after igniting this morning at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility, aborting a first attempt at a free flight.
“We had good ignition, but an automatic engine shutdown occurred before liftoff due to an on-board software trigger,” project staff said in a Twitter message.
It wasn’t immediately clear when a next attempt would be made.
The flight is one of more than a dozen planned over the next several months by the Johnson Space Center-based Project Morpheus. It follows 20 tethered tests, with the vehicle suspended from a crane, including one last Friday shortly after Morpheus’ arrival at KSC.
The series of tests hopes to culminate in a roughly half-mile hop to a landing site within a hazard field mimicking a lunar landscape that has been constructed at the north end of Kennedy’s shuttle runway.
The small Morpheus team is developing an engine powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane, a non-toxic fuel that could offer advantages for a lander or in-space propulsion system.
It will also testing sensors designed to help a spacecraft autonomously identify and avoid hazards and select safe landing sites. The sensors won’t be added to Morpheus, which measures 10 feet in diameter and weighs about 2,300 pounds without fuel, until it has demonstrated a series of successful free flights.
Morpheus is one of 20 projects in NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems program, part of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. It’s funded with about $2 million this fiscal year.
Russian astronauts to begin survival test in desert near Baikonur
Itar-Tass
Russian astronauts will spend two days in a desert with a minimal ration of drinking water and food. The survival test will be taken near Baikonur.
“Three three-men crews – astronauts and prospective astronauts – will have to live on scanty supplies for two days before rescuers arrive,” Cosmonaut Training Center press secretary Irina Rogova told Itar-Tass.
A few days ago the survival test takers had a theoretical course, and practice started on Tuesday. The astronauts are supposed to leave the landing module unaided, to make a tent from the parachute for protecting themselves from heat and wind and to get in touch with rescuers on the radio. They carry a six-liter keg of drinking water, a small food ration, clothes, a first aid kit, a radio set, flares and tools. The survival kit was designed 47 years ago after Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyayev spent two days in the Perm taiga, an unplanned landing site, before rescuers arrived on March 19, 1965.
The survival test will begin for astronauts Sergei Prokopyev and Ivan Vagner and prospective astronaut Alexei Khomenchuk on Wednesday. The crew of astronauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Denis Matveyev and prospective astronaut Andrei Babkin will start taking the test on August 10, and the third crew – astronaut Nikolai Tikhonov and two instructors of the Cosmonaut Training Center – will fight for survival on August 12.
The physical condition of the astronauts will be monitored from Baikonur. Apart from desert training, astronauts practice survival in a winter forest and on water.
NASA Is the Government's One True Viral Hit Factory
John Hudson – The Atlantic
NASA may only consume 0.5 percent of the federal budget, but it generates practically all of Uncle Sam's viral marketing buzz. Never was that more apparent than on Monday morning following the successful Mars landing of Curiosity, the biggest and most advanced spacecraft ever dispatched to another planet. In an explosion of tweets, Tumbls, status updates, and blog posts, the Internet showed its love of NASA in a way other parts of the government could only dream of. So what's NASA's secret?
The personalities
Obviously NASA gets to go to space, so that kind of puts them at an advantage to, say, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but that's not its only strong suit! Those geeky, industrious, short-sleeve shirt-wearing scientists are a huge factor. And who could anticipate the surprise role of Bobak Ferdowsi (nee "Mohawk Guy"), NASA's activity lead who gets a new hairdo for each mission? As millions tuned into the live stream and saw his wild do, Ferdowsi became an instant symbol of rebellious nerd cool, a vibe that turned into a meme as The Atlantic's Megan Garber pointed out this morning:
But while, Ferdowsi deserves style points for his do, his colleagues deserve props for their unadulterated enthusiasm following those two sacred words "touchdown confirmed." Nothing greases the wheels of viral momentum than a little self congratulatory fist-pumping, high-fiving and bro-slaps to get the ball rolling. The video ricochetted across the Internet hundreds of thousands of times over.
The viral web strategy
So you've got the best cast and crew you could ask for, but you still need a top notch delivery system. This is where NASA really excelled. With scarcely few problems, the NASA live stream provided a window for the entire world to see its success. That's easier said than done, as Gigaom's Derrick Harris reports. NASA battle-tested its live stream with an application-testing specialist called SOASTA which ensured that the stream would continue despite demand spikes and server fails.
"SOASTA tests the traffic load applications can handle by generating cloud-computing-based resources that mimic the traffic generated by potentially millions of simultaneous real-world users," Harris writes. As a result of a lot of tweaking, they were able to ensure that even a single implementation of its application stack could handle 25 Gigabits per second of web traffic. That meant that you could watch it from the comforts of your own home or in the middle of Times Square without any problems:
In addition to the live feed, NASA's own social media team was killing it last night, tweeting out fun facts, observations and photos of the red planet captured by Curiosity. Kudos to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's @NASAJPL, @MarsCuriosity and social media editor Veronica McGregor (@VeronicaMcG). Here's the team bringing their A-game:
The mission
Obviously, other arms of government draw viral attention for incidents now and again (think the U.S. soldiers spoofing Lady Gaga), but that's a routine-breaking stunt. Last night, NASA was just doing its job. And for an arm of government, doing your job is either thankless (when was the last time anyone celebrated the Congressional Budget Office's timely scoring of a House budget bill?) or worse (TSA agents groping you at the airport). But the nature of NASA's mission, exploring the unknown, has a distinctly unifying quality to it.
Sure, NASA may be subject to partisan budget battles, but following last night's landing, liberals and conservatives were one as both the Center for American Progress and the Heritage Foundation passed along the good news. The fact of the matter is, in NASA, the feds have their one true well-oiled viral hit factory, and last night, they didn't let us down.
Famous Astronaut Interred in Santa Monica
Santa Monica chosen as the final resting place for the first American woman in space, but the grave isn't easy to find yet
Jenna Chandler - Patch.com
Sally Ride, who soared into history as the first American woman in space, was buried in an intimate ceremony Monday at Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica.
Her interment at the local cemetery was announced by the city's manager's office Tuesday evening. Ride was laid to rest with a small private gathering for family and friends.
"The city of Santa Monica is honored that the family chose Santa Monica as Dr. Ride’s final resting place," Mayor Richard Bloom said in a statement. "The community will forever treasure our National hero."
The grave, while open to public viewing, won't be easy to find right away, said acting cemetery administrator Benjamin M. Steers.
"There is no marker specifying where she is yet," he said. "The family purchases the marker from a monument company and we pour the concrete border and install it. Depending on the company this can take several weeks."
Ride died July 23 in La Jolla after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer.
She was 61.
Her first trip into space was June 18, 1983 aboard the shuttle Challenger six years after she responded to an advertisement from NASA, which was looking for applicants to its astronaut program. She was earning her doctoral degree in physics at Stanford University when she joined 8,000 others in applying. She was one of only 35 who were chosen.
She worked as a member of the ground crew for two missions of the space shuttle Columbia before being chosen as a member of the crew for the historic Challenger flight. She eventually flew once more aboard the Challenger.
A third assignment was suspended when the Challenger exploded shortly after launch in January 1986. Ride served on the presidential commission that investigated the explosion.
Even before her death, she was considered a national hero and role model.
"As the first American woman in space, she broke through barriers and inspired the nation by her courage as an astronaut and by her commitment to educating future generations," Mayor Bloom said.
Her father Dale B. Ride worked for four decades at Santa Monica College, first as a political science instructor before becoming assistant to the superintendent. He died in 1987 at the age of 67 after prostate surgery in Santa Monica Hospital, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Woodlawn Cemetery, Mausoleum and Mortuary is owned and operated by the city of Santa Monica. The cemetery is at 1847 14th St. across the street from the college.
Last section of Space Shuttle Trainer arriving at Boeing Field Thursday
Tacoma News Tribune
The last section of the Space Shuttle Trainer will arrive at the Museum of Flight Thursday morning, the museum said Wednesday.
The forward portion of the trainer's payload bay will arrive aboard NASA's Super Guppy aircraft. The Super Guppy is a rarity itself.
The plane is a greatly enlarged version of Boeing's Stratocruiser designed to carry outsized loads. The Super Guppy is bringing the Shuttle Trainer section from Houston, where the trainer was used to educate Shuttle pilots and astronauts how to operate the reusable spacecraft.
The Super Guppy has made two previous flights to Boeing Field to bring other sections of the trainer to Seattle this summer. The trainer will be reassembled in a new gallery at the museum.
The Museum of Flight had sought one of the four remaining Space Shuttles, but other museums in larger cities or with closer ties to the Shuttle program were selected to receive those spacecraft. The Space Shuttle Trainer, which duplicates the Shuttles except for their wings, was the museum's consolation prize.
In some ways, it will offer museum visitors a better experience because museum patrons will be allowed inside the trainer to see the payload bay, the living quarters and cockpit. On the real Shuttles, visitors will only be able to view the outside of the spacecraft.
The museum said the unloading process will be visible to visitors at 10 am in the museum's east parking lot.
MEANWHILE, ON MARS…
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of Curiosity & the components that helped it survive to its location in Gale Crater
NASA mission gives a peek of rover's Mars journey
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
NASA's latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.
It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views — of Mars and the journey there — are yet to come.
"Spectacular," mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. "We've not had that before."
Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, the Curiosity rover has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first color picture Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.
Locale aside, Curiosity is giving scientists an unprecedented sense of what it took to reach its Martian destination. The roving laboratory sent back nearly 300 thumbnails that NASA processed into a low-quality video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the thin Martian atmosphere.
In the video, the protective heat shield pops off and tumbles away. The footage gets jumpy as Curiosity rides on a parachute. In the last scene, dust billows up just before landing.
NASA twice tried to record a Mars landing. In 1999, the Mars Polar Lander carried similar gear, but it slammed into the south pole after prematurely shutting off its engines. Another effort was aborted in 2008 during the Phoenix lander's mission to the northern plains when mission managers decided not to turn it on for fear it would interfere with the landing.
"It's too emotional for me," said Ken Edgett of the Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the video camera. "It's been a long journey and it's really awesome."
The full high-resolution video will be downloaded when time allows and should give the first peek of a landing on another planet.
Curiosity's journey to Mars spanned eight months and 352 million miles. The rover gently touched down Sunday night after executing an elaborate and untested landing routine. The size of a compact car, it was too heavy to land using air bags. Instead, it relied on a heat shield, parachute, rockets and cables to lower it to the ground.
During its seven-minute plunge through the atmosphere, Curiosity shed the spacecraft parts. On Tuesday, scientists got their first view of the castoffs. The eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had circled over the landing site and spotted Curiosity and the scattered parts.
"It's like a crime scene photo," said Sarah Milkovich, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist.
The parachute appeared to be inflated, and the rocket stage that unspooled the cables crashed 2,100 feet from the landing site.
Earlier this week, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught Curiosity sailing through the Martian skies under a parachute. It was only the second time a spacecraft has been photographed on a parachute; the first was Phoenix during its descent to the surface.
The nuclear-powered, six-wheel Curiosity will spend the next two years chiseling into rocks and scooping up soil at Gale Crater to determine whether the environment ever had the right conditions for microbes to thrive. It will spend a chunk of its time driving to Mount Sharp where images from space reveal signs of past water on the lower flanks.
It'll be several weeks before it takes its first drive and flexes its robotic arm. Since landing, engineers have been busy performing health checkups on its systems and instruments. Over the next several days, it was poised to send back crisper pictures of its surroundings including a panorama.
The rover was "still in great shape," mission manager Michael Watkins said.
NASA shows first 'crime scene' photo of Mars landing
Kerry Sheridan - Agence France Presse
About 36 hours after NASA landed its $2.5 billion rover on Mars, it released what it jokingly dubbed a "crime scene" aerial shot of where the parachute, heat shield and vehicle came down.
The touchdown on August 6 of the Mars Science Laboratory involved the most elaborate attempt yet to drop a robotic car on the surface of the Red Planet, and required a heat shield, supersonic parachute and rocket-powered sky crane.
The process, known as entry, descent and landing, or EDL, was referred to as "Seven Minutes of Terror" by NASA, but went off without a hitch, in what US President Barack Obama called an "unprecedented feat of technology."
On approach, a heat shield protected the Curiosity rover's fiery entry into Mars' atmosphere, a supersonic parachute deployed to slow it down, and the spacecraft back shell separated.
Then, a rocket powered backpack was fired to power the one-ton rover downward before it was lowered by nylon tethers. The sky crane was designed to detach and fly away to crash somewhere to the north.
The latest black and white picture released Tuesday was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it flew about 300 kilometers (185 miles) above the landing site of Gale Crater, near Mars' equator.
It shows the Mars Science Laboratory rover, nicknamed Curiosity, with the now defunct sky crane about 650 meters (yards) away to the northwest.
The parachute and backshell of the spacecraft that separated before it lowered down landed about 615 meters away from the rover to the southwest.
The heat shield appears to be about 1,200 meters from the rover to the southeast.
"This is like a crime scene photo here," said Sarah Milkovich, a NASA scientist who is the lead investigator of the HiRISE camera on the Mars orbiter.
"Hopefully in our future images we be able to get even better, more detail," she said, adding that the dark areas in the photo show where dust was kicked up during the landing.
The EDL team has reviewed the latest photos and said "the layout looks kind of the way they expected," according to mission manager Mike Watkins.
The pieces will likely stay on Mars. There are no plans to recover them to bring back to Earth.
NASA is continuing to run tests on the various instruments on board the rover, which aim to help hunt for signs that life may once have existed on Earth's neighbor planet, once believed to be a wetter place than it is today.
So far most of the checks have gone well and the rover appears to be in good shape.
On Wednesday, NASA plans to lift the rover's remote sensing mast for the first time. More images, including color high-resolution shots, are expected to arrive in the coming days.
But the rover is not expected to start moving for several more weeks, and it may be a year before it reaches its scientific target of Mount Sharp.
Deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said the latest analysis shows that the rover is 6.5 kilometers from the base of the mountain, if it were to travel straight there.
However, scientists have warned it is difficult to estimate the exact start of the base and they have no plans to drive to it directly, but will likely take a more meandering route.
The Mars Science Laboratory is a nuclear-powered vehicle that is designed for a two-year robotic mission on Mars, though scientists hope it will last as least twice its original design life.
Curiosity rover hit the perfect spot on Mars, scientists say
Scott Gold - Los Angeles Times
NASA's Curiosity robot not only survived its elaborate landing on Mars but also wound up in the most scientifically exciting pocket of its 48-square-mile target area on the floor of an ancient crater, space scientists said Monday.
Engineers pored over data to figure out precisely where the spacecraft landed Sunday — and determined that Curiosity's science, which has the potential to transform deep-space exploration, won't start at the base of a mountain four miles away, but right under its nose.
Curiosity landed in a geological feature called an alluvial fan, a plain of rocks and dirt likely deposited by a river during Mars' ancient, watery past. When it comes to Curiosity's primary mission, the search for evidence that Mars is or was able to foster life, the fan could be "a jackpot," said Caltech geologist John Grotzinger, the mission's lead scientist.
"This place is awesome," Grotzinger said in an interview at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, which is managing the $2.5-billion mission for NASA. "We really don't want to blow out of there."
Curiosity, a six-wheeled geochemistry lab and the most sophisticated machine ever sent to another planet, landed in Gale Crater on Sunday night — a crisp, late-winter afternoon on Mars.
Much of the discussion about Curiosity had focused on its intricate landing sequence, which had never been attempted and could never be vetted on Earth because of atmospheric differences.
When it worked, a cascade of joy and relief washed over the JPL campus. But scientists took pains to point out Monday that the moment of triumph was not a climax, or an ending. Curiosity was not built to put on a splashy, one-night show, said mission systems manager Michael Watkins, "but to drive over Mars and execute a beautiful science mission."
After a few weeks of tests to make sure Curiosity's instruments are working, a significant order of business will be to figure out where to drive first.
Curiosity is known in engineer-speak as a "go-to" mission, meaning it was designed to land in one place and then go to another.
The ultimate target, and the reason Gale Crater was selected as a landing zone, is the towering and unusual mountain in the center of the crater. Known as Mt. Sharp, it is taller than any in the Lower 48 United States, and scientists believe its walls were eroded over millions of years, either by wind or water, and contain a preserved record of Mars' history and evolution.
Curiosity could have wound up anywhere in its landing target, an ellipse measuring 12 miles by 4 miles. Scientists had long been attracted to the fan in addition to the mountain, but there were no guarantees that Curiosity would land on or even near the fan.
Now, Curiosity doesn't have to "go-to" much of anywhere any time soon because there's too much science to do right in the neighborhood, where running water appears to have swept debris from the northern rim of the crater into its bowl. The spot is at about the 11 o'clock position in the crater, a little more than a mile east of the center of the landing ellipse, and about 14 miles from the north wall of the crater.
Space scientists are so fascinated by the possibility of taking a close look at an alluvial fan on Mars that they very nearly chose a different spot — a site that appeared to be the petrified remnants of a river delta, similar to where the Mississippi River spills into the Gulf of Mexico.
"We get a free sample," Grotzinger said. "The place we landed looks pretty darn interesting. We want to check it out."
Curiosity will explore the alluvial fan and then "head for the hills," Watkins said.
Curiosity's primary mission is expected to last for at least one Martian year, or 687 Earth days, a luxury compared with primary missions of previous Mars projects that lasted months. What's more, the nuclear-powered rover could easily operate for twice that long — four years — officials said Monday.
Still, the presence of solid science within arm's reach was something of a relief for senior space officials, who knew that Curiosity would otherwise face pressure to "blaze out across the plains," as Grotzinger put it.
"We're in no hurry," said Pete Theisinger, Curiosity's project manager. "We have a priceless national asset here. And we are not going to — pardon the French — screw it up."
Also Monday, scientists said their initial reviews of Curiosity indicated that its suite of geochemistry instruments — lasers that can vaporize rock, scoops that can ingest dirt to test for the presence of minerals — survived the landing and would operate properly.
The spacecraft could have survived landing on a slope steeper than many expert ski runs. But it found a far gentler angle, landing with its nose pointed down at less than 4 degrees.
"We landed pretty much on this table right here," said Watkins, patting his palm on a briefing-room table.
Scientists also released an extraordinary photograph taken during Curiosity's landing sequence by a passing satellite. The photo clearly showed Curiosity in its final seconds of flight, headed toward Mars beneath a fully inflated parachute.
The image was captured by a camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter known as HiRISE, which also played a key role in NASA's choice of Gale Crater.
"HiRISE has taken over 120 pictures of Gale," said JPL scientist Sarah Milkovich. She smiled broadly. "But I think this is the coolest one."
By Monday, Curiosity's success — so widely followed that NASA's websites crashed in the minutes after the landing — had instantly reinvigorated proponents of deep-space, planetary exploration.
NASA, like many government agencies, faces an uncertain financial future. President Obama's proposed NASA budget for the 2013 fiscal year, $17.7 billion, was fairly flat. But it prompted the space agency to make difficult decisions, including a $300-million cut to planetary science, JPL's specialty.
The cut bewildered critics because it was made in what is viewed as a golden age in robotic space exploration, with the Mars program NASA's crown jewel. Proponents of robotic exploration have worked to restore $100 million and pledged to seize on the enthusiasm generated by Curiosity to fight for the rest.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) said in an interview that deep-space backers would also try to get canceled Mars missions "back on track." NASA, for example, had pulled out of two partnerships with the European Space Agency to explore Mars. Those missions are viewed as important because they could lead to technology allowing for soil samples to be returned from Mars to Earth — a crucial next step in the search for signs of life.
"I hope NASA will be infected by the enthusiasm and will reconsider," Schiff said. "It's what the public wants. We owe a lot to the Mars program. NASA should not forget that."
Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau agreed that Curiosity was "energizing public support" for space exploration. "We're going to work very hard to ensure that there is sufficient funding and that the U.S. stays on the leading edge of space exploration," he said.
END
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