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Tuesday, August 7, 2012
News 8/7/12
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. Tech&Tell Today in Building 3 Collaboration Center
2. Apollo 15's 4-Billion-Year-Old Genesis Rock
3. Starport's Fall 2012 Sport Leagues -- Registration Open
4. This Week at Starport
5. Save Your Seat! RSVP for Aug. 28 NMA Luncheon
6. Caregivers Speaker
7. Engineers Without Borders JSC Chapter: 'What's it All About?'
8. NASA Technical Standards Program Online Training at JSC Library
9. Lean Six Sigma -- Champions Training -- THIS WEEK
10. OCFO Employee Time and Attendance Charging Course
11. Construction (CFR 1926) Safety and Health Provisions ViTS: Aug. 31
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof. ”
-- James Russell Lowell
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1. Tech&Tell Today in Building 3 Collaboration Center
The JSC Technology Working Group is sponsoring the first Tech&Tell -- Internal Research and Development (IR&D) Poster Sessions -- from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today in the Building 3 Collaboration Center. Today's session will feature the center and directorate-level IR&D projects from JSC/White Sands Test Facility; come back at the same time on Thursday to see the fall and spring Innovation Charge Account projects.
Come out and see what your colleagues have done with the funding they were awarded as part of the IR&D calls for proposals, and maybe get a few ideas of your own. The intent of the poster sessions is to provide a forum for exchange between innovators and members of the JSC community. The informal, open-concept layout is designed to promote communication and encourage collaborative work on new technologies that could benefit space exploration and JSC or NASA missions.
Brandi Dean x41403 http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/technologyatjsc/home/index.html
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2. Apollo 15's 4-Billion-Year-Old Genesis Rock
Forty-one years ago, Apollo 15 successfully returned from the moon with an anorthosite sample more than 4 billion years old, nicknamed the "Genesis Rock." This lunar geological field trip took months of careful practice and planning prior to launch. The two astronauts, both former test pilots, worked with field geologists to learn new skills and techniques, including a unique vocabulary for describing the lunar rocks to their dedicated EVA CapCom and the scientists monitoring the mission back on Earth.
Apollo 15 was the "coming together of developing technical capabilities, (while) preparing men to be explorers." For more information on the crew training, traverses and experiences of some of the instructors for Apollo 15, read some selected oral history interview excerpts available on the JSC History Portal: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/special_events/Apollo15.htm
This reminder of NASA's exploration is brought to you by the JSC History Office, a service of JSC's Information Resources Directorate.
JSC IRD Outreach 281-990-0007 http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/special_events/Apollo15.htm
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3. Starport's Fall 2012 Sport Leagues -- Registration Open
This fall Starport will be offering EIGHT sports leagues for the NASA workforce and surrounding community!
OPEN Fall 2012 League Registration:
- Closes Aug. 22 -- dodgeball and volleyball
- Closes Aug. 30 -- softball (co-ed and men's)
- Closes Aug. 24 -- basketball
Upcoming Fall Registration Dates:
- Aug. 13 to Sept. 6 -- flag football, kickball and ultimate frisbee
- Sept. 6 to 27 -- soccer
Free agent registration now open for all leagues.
All league participants must register at: http://www.IMLeagues.com/NASA-Starport
For more detailed information about each league, please visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/Sports/ or call the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304.
Leagues will fill up fast, so sign your team up today!
Steve Schade x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/Sports/
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4. This Week at Starport
Today is First Tuesday. Starport Partners -- get 10 percent off your merchandise purchase in the Starport Gift Shops and 10 percent off your beverage purchase at the coffee cart.
AT&T will be in the Building 3 café on Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for you to visit with representatives.
There is still time to sign up for this Friday's footloose class! Learn the footloose dance routine in one amazing night at the Gilruth Center from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Family and friends are encouraged to participate (ages 12 and up). It's $15/person.
We'll be offering free tickets to next week's Sugarland Skeeter Minor League Baseball games. Game dates are Aug. 13, 14 and 15. Stop by the Buildings 3 or 11 gift shops to sign up for your tickets.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
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5. Save Your Seat! RSVP for Aug. 28 NMA Luncheon
Please join us for this month's JSC National Management Association (NMA) chapter luncheon presentation, "State of the Center," with guest speaker JSC Director Mike Coats.
Date: Aug. 28
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Location: Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom
Seats are filling up fast. Please RSVP by close of business Aug. 21 at: http://www.jscnma.com/Events
For RSVP technical assistance, please contact Lorraine Guerra at lorraine.guerra-1@nasa.gov or 281-483-4262.
Cassandra Miranda x38618
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6. Caregivers Speaker
The Employee Assistance Program is happy to present Diana Jones of The Terrace Senior Living Community. Jones will provide information about the different levels of care and the aging process. Join us to gain information about eldercare options. Still have questions? Time will be allotted for answering your care-giving questions.
Date: Today, Aug. 7
Time: 12 noon to 1 p.m.
Location: Building 32, Conference Room 146
Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130
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7. Engineers Without Borders JSC Chapter: 'What's it All About?'
The JSC Chapter of Engineers Without Borders will provide an introduction session about the chapter and the recent activities and projects that they've been involved in within the developing world. The presentation will be in Building 7, Room 141, from noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 8. No reservations necessary.
Angela Cason x40903 http://ewb-jsc.org/index.html
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8. NASA Technical Standards Program Online Training at JSC Library
Don't miss an opportunity to learn about the NASA Standards and Technical Assistance Resource Tool (START) tomorrow. This tool provides access to specifications and standards by NASA and other organizations such as ASTM, ANSI, ASME, NFPA, MIL and more. Tammy Gattis, a representative from the NASA Technical Standards Program, will instruct users in a webinar tomorrow from 9 to 10:30 a.m. CDT.
To register, click on the "Classroom/WebEx" schedule on the following website: http://library.jsc.nasa.gov/training/default.aspx
The JSC Library is a service provided by the Information Resources Directorate: http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/default.aspx
Ebony Fondren x32490 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov
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9. Lean Six Sigma -- Champions Training -- THIS WEEK
Are you faced with changing requirements and limited resources?
Learn proven methods to boost productivity within allocated budgets using Lean Six Sigma. Champion's training will provide a detailed understanding of how to successfully integrate Lean Six Sigma within and throughout existing operations to achieve greater process improvement effectiveness and efficiency for organizational and operational excellence. This training is limited to NASA GS-14, branch-level or higher, and will emphasize their roles and responsibilities as champions and sponsors in Lean Six Sigma events. The training consists of one day of instructor-led lecture and group activities.
After the training, participants will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with the agency's Lean Six Sigma experts and their assigned JSC LIFT point of contact to discuss specific process improvement opportunities within their organization.
Session 1: Aug. 8, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Regents III, Room 212C. Register: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=REGISTRATI...
Session 2: Aug. 9, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Register: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=REGISTRATI...
Cheryl Andrews x35979
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10. OCFO Employee Time and Attendance Charging Course
As part of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) Subject-Matter Expert course series, Bridget Broussard-Guidry and Joan Johnson will lead an Employee Time and Attendance Charging Course, focusing on all of the leave requirements and special hour types in WebTADS. The course will cover how to charge time under different circumstances and the rules pertaining to each type so that all learners will be in full compliance with agency and JSC policy. An example of a Leave and Earnings Statement, from Employee Express, will be reviewed and explained in detail as well. The course is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 9. There are two offerings: 9 to 10 a.m. and 1 to 2 p.m. -- both in Building 45, Room 251. WebEx for each offering is available also. Please register in SATERN via one of the links below or by searching the catalog for the course title.
Aug. 9, 9 to 10 a.m. class SATERN direct link: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aug. 9, 9 to 10 a.m. WebEx SATERN direct link: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aug. 9, 1 to 2 p.m. class SATERN direct link: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aug. 9, 1 to 2 p.m. WebEx SATERN direct link: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Bridget Broussard-Guidry x34718
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11. Construction (CFR 1926) Safety and Health Provisions ViTS: Aug. 31
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0066: This three-hour course is based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) CFR 1926, Subpart C - 1926.20 - Requirements for General Safety and Health Provisions; OSHA CFR 1926.21 - Safety Training and Education; and OSHA CFR - 1926.25 - Housekeeping. During the course, the student will receive an overview of those topics needed to work safely on a construction site. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit. Registration in SATERN is required.
Shirley Robinson x41284
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JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
NASA TV: Noon Central (1 EDT) – MSL/”Curiosity” post-landing Brief - Sol 2 Update
Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday – August 7, 2012
Curiosity shows what lies ahead for the rover -- its main science target, Mount Sharp
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Technology Testbed Flight Supports Exploration
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
NASA's open-ended technology-development program has logged its first major flight test, sending an inflatable heat shield through a suborbital parabola that subjected it to 1,000F temperatures as it plunged back into the atmosphere. The flight of the third Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) could help pave the way for future exploration missions to the surface of Mars by lowering the weight needed to shield robotic and eventually human explorers from the heat of entry into the planet's thin atmosphere. Nearer term, IRVE could also shape commercial vehicles designed to return scientific samples and failed hardware from the International Space Station to Earth for analysis.
NASA tech chiefs spotlights connection between deep sea, space
Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily
Oceaneering Space Systems, the aerospace arm of the global oilfield engineering services provider Oceaneering International, Inc., drew positive reviews from NASA chief technologist Mason Peck this week for the company’s success at delivering and leveraging technologies beneficial to deepwater and space applications. The association, which dates back to 1978, has brought an estimated $1 billion in revenues to the company from the space agency in exchange for its role in developing a range of new technologies. The advances include tools with a deep-sea heritage used by astronauts to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope and assemble the International Space Station; portable instrumentation for the characterization of protein crystals cultured in weightlessness for new medications; and the fabrication of advanced thermal protection materials that may help humans land on Mars.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin loses out to Boeing Co., two others in NASA's space taxi funding race
Rick Anderson - Seattle Weekly
It was a happy weekend for NASA, with the federal space agency's successful landing of its Mars rover Sunday and its Friday agreements with three American companies - Boeing among them - to design and develop the next generation of U.S. human spaceflights. Less happy is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose commercial venture, Kent-based Blue Origin, was scratched from the funding race to build a space taxi - having lost its test vehicle at 45,000 feet during an experimental flight last year.
Preparations for shuttle Endeavour's trip to California near end
James Dean - Florida Today
Kennedy Space Center crews this morning attached a tail cone to the orbiter Endeavour, one of the last major preparations for its planned ferry flight to California next month. Endeavour is expected to depart its processing hangar for the final time to move into the Vehicle Assembly Building on Aug. 16, swapping places with Atlantis. A multi-day ferry flight to Los Angeles International Airport is officially still planned for mid-September, but tentatively targeting a Sept. 17 start. Based on that plan, the orbiter would be rolled to the Shuttle Landing Facility on Sept. 14 to be hoisted atop a 747 carrier aircraft.
Can NASA keep public's curiosity piqued?
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle
NASA's engineers have shown the world yet again their capacity to be great. Their plan to deliver the 1-ton rover Curiosity to the surface of Mars was bold, audacious, unprecedented - and, early on Monday, successful. It garnered well-deserved kudos from all around, including the top: "It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination," President Barack Obama said. While it's clear NASA can still do great things, what's less clear is how much greatness the agency has left. On Friday the space agency took a big step toward ceding low-Earth orbit to commercial spaceflight companies, providing $1.1 billion to SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada to develop spacecraft to fly humans into space. This was widely viewed as an important step in bringing NASA out of its post-shuttle hangover, during which it has had to rely on Russian transport to and from its International Space Station.
Camp led by local astronaut Suni Williams’ former teacher
Flossie Neale - Needham Times (MA)
The children are mesmerized by the video, which streamed live from the International Space Station. Some wriggle in their seats, but everyone is focused on the screen. They observe astronauts conducting research and learn about the importance of their work. These young astronauts-in-training are hooked on space exploration. Every year, hundreds of Needham children sign up for classes with the Needham Community Education Summer Explorations program. Youngsters learn photography, hone their math skills, or become expert Lego builders. They are given the opportunity to follow their passions and, in the case of Angie Dinapoli’s “Astronaut Training Course,” reach for the stars.
MEANWHILE, ON MARS…
Curiosity's Descent (NASA Video)
This stop-motion video shows 297 frames from the Mars Descent Imager on the Curiosity rover as it descended to the surface of Mars. These thumbnail images were received on Earth on Aug. 6, 2012, and cover the last two and a half minutes of descent. (NO FURTHER TEXT)
Mars rover healthy; descent photographed by orbiter
William Harwood - CBS News
The nuclear-powered Curiosity Mars rover survived its nail-biting plunge to a pinpoint landing on the floor of Gale Crater in remarkably good shape, engineers said Monday, setting down on a flat, wind-swept plain littered with uniform gravel-like rocks and firm soil. In a low-resolution view from a hazard avoidance camera on Curiosity's back fender the rim of Gale Crater can be seen some 12 miles away to the northwest while a view from a front hazcam shows the blurry dust-mottled outline of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high mound of layered rocks to the southeast that the rover will attempt to climb later in its two-year mission.
With NASA Mars rover Curiosity safely on surface, time to take inventory
Marc Kaufman - Washington Post
With the rover Curiosity’s dramatic landing accomplished, testing of its communication and power systems began Monday as NASA worked to understand exactly where its vehicle had landed and how it withstood its 354 million-mile journey to Mars. NASA scientists believe the one-ton rover landed on bedrock in the 3.5 billion-year-old Gale Crater and is facing the distant crater wall, believed to be about three miles high. A mountain in the crater will be the focus of the mission because its exposed rock faces are expected to provide clues about the area’s physical history and whether life’s building blocks ever existed there. In the aftermath of the high-precision landing, space-exploration advocates embraced Curiosity as proof of American ambition and prowess.
'Touchdown confirmed'
NASA rover Curiosity lands on Mars, beams back photo of own shadow
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
The robotic explorer Curiosity's daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, said a NASA scientist, describing the first images of its mechanical gymnastics. Hours after NASA learned the rover had arrived on target, engineers and scientists got the first glimpses of the intricate maneuvers it made to hit the Martian soil safely. "It's a spectacular image," said NASA research scientist Luther Beegle. The photo, taken from an orbiting Mars spacecraft, shows Curiosity dangling from its supersonic parachute as it descended.
After Safe Landing, Rover Sends Images From Mars
Kenneth Chang - New York Times
NASA followed up its picture-perfect landing of a plutonium-powered rover Sunday night with a picture of the balletic Mars landing — as well as some well-earned self-congratulation about what the accomplishment says about NASA’s ingenuity. “There are many out in the community who say NASA has lost its way, that we don’t know how to explore — we’ve lost our moxie,” John M. Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, said at a post-landing news conference, where beaming members of the landing team, all clad in blue polo shirts, crammed in next to the reporters. “I want you to look around tonight, at those folks with the blue shirts and think about what we’ve achieved.” That achievement, in the early hours of Monday morning Eastern time, was indeed dramatic: with the eyes of the world watching, the car-size craft called Curiosity was lowered at the end of 25-foot cables from a hovering rocket stage, successfully touching down on a gravelly Martian plain.
Rover Probes Secrets of Mars
Robert Lee Hotz - Wall Street Journal
NASA's Curiosity rover began transmitting photos to Earth even before the red dust from its flawless landing on Mars had cleared Monday, a warm-up for its two-year trek across a rugged crater that could reveal whether the planet ever was hospitable to life. Cheers erupted here in the control room of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the $2.5 billion mission. Elated that the rover's daring and never-tested landing technique had worked, ebullient engineers and scientists pumped their fists in the air and whooped. Several wept. Still, the celebrating couldn't mask the new reality of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has been forced to scale back its once-vast ambitions in the face of slimmer budgets and questions about its relevance.
How many jobs did the Mars landing create?
Aaron Smith - CNN
As the new rover that just landed on Mars looks for signs of life there, the NASA program that runs it is supporting life here on Earth -- with jobs. NASA spokesman Guy Webster said the rover, named Curiosity, is currently supporting about 700 people, but has supported 7,000 jobs at various times over the last eight years. The Curiosity project and its $2.5 billion budget has generated jobs not just at NASA but at companies ranging from Lockheed Martin to a bicycle manufacturer in Chattanooga, Tenn. "People wonder about throwing money at Mars, [but] no money was spent on Mars," said Webster. "There are no ATMs up there. All the money was spent here on Earth."
Should We Send Humans to Mars?
A land rover is blazing trails for human exploration of Mars, but opponents of space exploration say it is a waste of money
Teresa Welsh - US News & World Report
On Monday the United States successfully landed the Curiosity land rover on Mars, more than eight months after its launch in November. The land rover weights 1,000 pounds and cost $2.5 billion, and scientists hope it will help them learn more about the red planet before humans are sent there. The successful landing, which involved a parachute and rocket pack, is an important step for NASA. In recent years, the space agency has faced budget cuts and the elimination of its flagship space shuttle program. Curiosity's two-year exploration of Mars will search for signs that the planet once had the capability of supporting microbial life. The rover has already beamed back three photos of Mars's surface.
A political 'Curiosity,' selling space at a time of lost jobs
James Rainey - Los Angeles Times
The landing of the Curiosity spacecraft on Mars created a moment of singular American triumph, the kind politicians seemingly love to own. But in a nation suffering high unemployment and economic trepidation, no one expected Sunday’s emotionally charged landing on the Red Planet to recharge the muted national conversation about space exploration. Mitt Romney, who is yet to outline a detailed program for space, did not comment about Curiosity. President Obama — whose program calls for doing more with less, including funding cuts for planetary missions — trumpeted the historic moment in a prepared statement. “I suspect we will get through this entire campaign and three presidential debates without any serious conversation about NASA,” said one veteran space watcher, who asked not to be named because his federal agency had not authorized him to speak on the matter.
Pols hope rover helps NASA funding
Kevin Cirilli - Politico.com
The successful landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars was hailed Monday by lawmakers, some of whom hope the wheeled explorer will reinvigorate funding for space exploration. The one-ton, $2.5 billion rover sped into Mars’s orbit at about 1:30 a.m., arriving after an eight-month journey — and at an uncertain time for NASA. President Barack Obama has proposed keeping the agency’s overall budget at $17.7 billion for next year but decreasing NASA’s Mars exploration program budget from $587 million to $360 million next year.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Technology Testbed Flight Supports Exploration
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week
NASA's open-ended technology-development program has logged its first major flight test, sending an inflatable heat shield through a suborbital parabola that subjected it to 1,000F temperatures as it plunged back into the atmosphere. The flight of the third Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) could help pave the way for future exploration missions to the surface of Mars by lowering the weight needed to shield robotic and eventually human explorers from the heat of entry into the planet's thin atmosphere.
Nearer term, IRVE could also shape commercial vehicles designed to return scientific samples and failed hardware from the International Space Station to Earth for analysis.
“Potential applications also include recovering launch vehicle assets,” says Neil Cheatwood of NASA's Langley Research Center, the IRVE-3 principal investigator. “We have actually had conversations with more than one of the vendors about looking at whether this could help there.”
The 680-lb. flight demonstration payload lifted off at 7:01 a.m. EDT July 23 from Wallops Flight Facility, Va., atop a three-stage Black Brant sounding rocket that carried it to an altitude of 253 nm. The payload's onboard control system flipped it over and inflated its concentric-ring structure with nitrogen into a 10-ft.-dia. aeroshell covered with a four-layer thermal blanket (see photo).
The blanket—an outer layer of ceramic-fiber Nextel, two layers of silica Pyrogel and a gas barrier to prevent burnthrough—protected the inflated structure as it reentered the atmosphere at speeds on the order of Mach 10, which generated outer temperatures of about 1,000F and mechanical loading of about 20g.
“We saw a more energetic entry than we were expecting,” Cheatwood said in a post-flight press conference. “We saw about 15 watts per centimeter squared of heating. But our thermocouples actually showed a little bit lower temperatures than we would expect in response to that.”
The testbed splashed down about 20 min. after launch off the North Carolina coast, where it was spotted from the air floating on the ocean surface. A U.S. Navy high-speed Stiletto boat was dispatched to locate and retrieve the experiment for analysis, but the equipment apparently sank before the Navy arrived. A NASA spokesman says no data were lost with the testbed, beyond a chance to inspect it for wear and tear. Cheatwood says telemetry data were solid, at least on an initial look.
So far there have been no formal expressions of interest in the technology for scientific space probes or recovery of samples and hardware from the ISS, although Cheatwood says NASA may offer it in future announcements of competitions for New Frontiers and Discovery missions. Meanwhile, the IRVE team will continue working on the ground to find better thermal-protection materials in an effort to raise its capability while lowering the payload weight.
At present there are no more flight tests planned in the nine-year-old project. If that changes, Cheatwood says one concept would involve using ISS garbage as ballast for a test of an inflatable heat shield returning from the station.
NASA was limited by the 22-in. diameter of the Black Brant nose cone, and also would like to increase the diameter of the inflated heat shield to gain more drag on reentry. At Mars, the more drag an aeroshell can provide on entry, the more surface is opened up to landings because an entry vehicle could be slowed more rapidly to the point where parachutes can be deployed in the thin atmosphere.
Beyond the data collected for future exploration and perhaps commercial operations, the test flight begins a process of developing enabling technologies before they are actually needed, an approach favored by President Barack Obama's NASA appointees over the mission-driven technology-pull approach used in the past.
“We're going to be doing many more tests just like this over the coming months and years,” says James Reuther, deputy director of NASA's Space Technology Program.
NASA tech chiefs spotlights connection between deep sea, space
Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily
Oceaneering Space Systems, the aerospace arm of the global oilfield engineering services provider Oceaneering International, Inc., drew positive reviews from NASA chief technologist Mason Peck this week for the company’s success at delivering and leveraging technologies beneficial to deepwater and space applications.
The association, which dates back to 1978, has brought an estimated $1 billion in revenues to the company from the space agency in exchange for its role in developing a range of new technologies. The advances include tools with a deep-sea heritage used by astronauts to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope and assemble the International Space Station; portable instrumentation for the characterization of protein crystals cultured in weightlessness for new medications; and the fabrication of advanced thermal protection materials that may help humans land on Mars.
“We’ve come here to understand better this kind of connection between the technology developed for the space program and the products that end up spinning off into the larger economy,” Peck during an Aug. 1 visit to Oceaneering’s 250-person space systems engineering lab. He was accompanied by Michael Gazarik, NASA’s space technology program director.
“We like to think of ourselves as building hardware that can be used in harsh environments,” said Mike Bloomfield, a former NASA shuttle astronaut who serves as vice president and general manager of Oceaneering’s space systems division.
Increasingly, global energy exploration and production companies have turned to Oceaneering with an interest in the application of aerospace safety and quality assurance practices to prevent oil spills, injury and environmental damage.
“It’s not a product as much as a process,” Bloomfield says. “They are very interested in taking what NASA has learned over the years as a result of the Challenger and Columbia [accidents], for instance, and applying that to oil and gas.”
Peck and Gazarik also focused on Oceaneering’s collaboration with GM and NASA on Robonaut 2, the two-armed humanoid robot placed aboard the International Space Station in 2011 to pioneer safe, effective teamwork between astronauts and machines outside as well as inside the orbiting science lab. Those lessons learned in space are destined for the factory floor on Earth as well.
They were also drawn to the ACTOR Robotic Crystal Placement System, a proprietary collaboration with Rigaku/Molecular Structures Corp., for a small protein crystal X-ray diffraction device. ACTOR was developed for the orbital analysis of fragile protein crystals cultured on the space station, an alternative to risking damage to the molecular structures by returning them to Earth for study. ACTOR is now finding a market among pharmaceutical companies for use in their labs.
“This is the classic formula we are trying to follow in the space technology program,” Gazarik says. “We provide workers with challenging problems. If you can solve that challenging problem, then innovation really comes to the forefront.”
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin loses out to Boeing Co., two others in NASA's space taxi funding race
Rick Anderson - Seattle Weekly
It was a happy weekend for NASA, with the federal space agency's successful landing of its Mars rover Sunday and its Friday agreements with three American companies - Boeing among them - to design and develop the next generation of U.S. human spaceflights. Less happy is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose commercial venture, Kent-based Blue Origin, was scratched from the funding race to build a space taxi - having lost its test vehicle at 45,000 feet during an experimental flight last year.
NASA awarded most of the latest funding to Boeing's Houston-based Space Exploration operation, granting $460 million towards the aerospace giant's development of a craft to launch astronauts from U.S. soil in the next five years.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of Hawthorne, Calif. - which is partnering with billionaire Paul Allen in another commercial space venture and hired ex-U.S. Senator Slade Gorton to lobby on its behalf - was awarded $440 million towards its craft development. Sierra Nevada Corporation, of Louisville, Colo., was awarded $212.5 million.
Bezos' venture ran out of the money, though it had been in competition with the other three through last year. In 2011, NASA doled out $270 million to the four companies, with $22 million going to Blue Origin.
Billionaire Bezos will now have to continue his space venture independently, its future less clear. The company rarely publicly speaks about its progress and its Update page on the firm's website hasn't been updated since last November, following announcement of the in-flight loss (explosion?) of its second test vehicle at Mach 1.2 speed and an altitude of 45,000 feet.
Blue Origin continues to offer job openings, however, for engineers and developers as it focuses in part on developing reusable launch vehicles utilizing Vertical Take-off and Vertical Landing (VTVL) technology, according to the website. Its long-term goal is to make space travel possible "at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability."
Preparations for shuttle Endeavour's trip to California near end
James Dean - Florida Today
Kennedy Space Center crews this morning attached a tail cone to the orbiter Endeavour, one of the last major preparations for its planned ferry flight to California next month.
Endeavour is expected to depart its processing hangar for the final time to move into the Vehicle Assembly Building on Aug. 16, swapping places with Atlantis.
A multi-day ferry flight to Los Angeles International Airport is officially still planned for mid-September, but tentatively targeting a Sept. 17 start.
Based on that plan, the orbiter would be rolled to the Shuttle Landing Facility on Sept. 14 to be hoisted atop a 747 carrier aircraft.
Endeavour is bound for public display at the California Science Center. The shuttle program’s youngest orbiter, Endeavour flew 25 times between 1992 and 2011.
NASA has already delivered Discovery to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., and Enterprise to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. Atlantis could be moved to the KSC Visitor Complex in November.
Endeavour’s tail cone was moved into Orbiter Processing Facility-2 on Friday and installation began this morning. The operation will be completed Tuesday.
Can NASA keep public's curiosity piqued?
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle
NASA's engineers have shown the world yet again their capacity to be great.
Their plan to deliver the 1-ton rover Curiosity to the surface of Mars was bold, audacious, unprecedented - and, early on Monday, successful.
It garnered well-deserved kudos from all around, including the top: "It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination," President Barack Obama said.
While it's clear NASA can still do great things, what's less clear is how much greatness the agency has left.
On Friday the space agency took a big step toward ceding low-Earth orbit to commercial spaceflight companies, providing $1.1 billion to SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada to develop spacecraft to fly humans into space. This was widely viewed as an important step in bringing NASA out of its post-shuttle hangover, during which it has had to rely on Russian transport to and from its International Space Station.
What's next?
Yet after Curiosity's success, NASA itself has few major events planned - its new Orion spacecraft could launch an unmanned test flight in 2014, but it will fly on a commercial rocket. And even if NASA's own larger rocket, now on the drawing board, survives a decade of political change, it won't fly until at least 2021.
"It's always a good thing when NASA pulls off an incredibly complex and difficult challenge," said Jim Muncy, a space consultant who runs PoliSpace. But, he noted, there's not many major, attention-grabbing missions coming for awhile, during which time it may be difficult to maintain broad political support for the agency.
The need to find funding in NASA's budget for the James Webb Space Telescope, the cost of which has risen from $1.6 billion a decade ago to $8.7 billion, has caused NASA to delay or cancel other interesting projects.
"The problem is that the James Webb Space Telescope costs so much that we're not going back to Mars anytime soon," he said. "NASA's big programs tend to eat their young."
Few dispute that NASA can do great things. The issue, for many, is that they're not sure what NASA is going to do - it has yet to articulate a destination for humans beyond low-Earth-orbit or say when it will get there.
Just last week, very senior Apollo program leaders were passing around a Yogi Berra quote, by email, that expressed their frustration with the space agency: "If you don't know where you are going, you might not get there."
In the meantime there's a belief that commercial companies might pass NASA by. Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, says he'd like to land humans on Mars in 12 to 15 years.
Experts to weigh in
With some of these concerns about NASA's future in mind, the prestigious National Research Council has appointed a blue-ribbon committee to assess whether the strategic direction of NASA remains viable.
The group's charge is simple: "Do the agency's activities and organization efficiently and effectively support that direction in light of the potential for constrained budgets for the foreseeable future?"
Paul Spudis, a senior scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, said Curiosity's success doesn't change the fact that the agency is still looking for a vision.
"It's tangential to the agency's fundamental problem - where is it going and why?" Spudis asked. "Since (2010) NASA has been floundering in strategic aimlessness and national irrelevance. Only the momentum of existing programs started long ago, like the International Space Station and Mars Science Laboratory, are keeping it alive at all."
True believers
That view wasn't universally held, however, as some NASA supporters dispute the idea that Curiosity represents a peak for the space agency.
They say the agency is in the midst of a difficult transition from the long space shuttle era to a time when NASA will be partners with commercial providers. And they believe this partnership will allow America to go further than ever before.
"The spectacular success of the Curiosity landing reinforces the reality that NASA remains a truly excellent organization," said space historian John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
"Coupled with the recent SpaceX/NASA Dragon mission to the International Space Station, NASA is demonstrating its status as the global leader in space."
Many inside the space agency also viewed Monday's feathery landing of Curiosity on Mars as an indication that spaceflight can still be bold.
Stan Love, an astronaut and planetary scientist, said NASA gets a bad rap for being too conservative, for not daring as much as it did in the Apollo era. Of the high-risk Curiosity landing, Love said, "NASA takes a lot of criticism for being timid and unwilling to undergo risks."
"Well, this puts that criticism to bed."
Camp led by local astronaut Suni Williams’ former teacher
Flossie Neale - Needham Times (MA)
The children are mesmerized by the video, which streamed live from the International Space Station. Some wriggle in their seats, but everyone is focused on the screen. They observe astronauts conducting research and learn about the importance of their work. These young astronauts-in-training are hooked on space exploration.
Every year, hundreds of Needham children sign up for classes with the Needham Community Education Summer Explorations program. Youngsters learn photography, hone their math skills, or become expert Lego builders. They are given the opportunity to follow their passions and, in the case of Angie Dinapoli’s “Astronaut Training Course,” reach for the stars.
This past week, the longtime Needham teacher held a camp at the High Rock School for children entering fourth through sixth grades. The students learned about life on Earth, magnets, how a space shuttle works and basic astronaut exercises.
Dinapoli has been fascinated with NASA and space travel since childhood. While teaching, she was invited to attend three successful space launches and has spent many hours at various NASA space centers in Colorado and Alabama. Dinapoli worked with other educators on ways to include the study of space travel into the school curriculum. But some of her most special visits, including a private tour of the astronaut-training center, have come as a result of her close friendship with Needham’s own Sunita “Sunni” Williams. Williams is currently a serving astronaut on the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth. Williams will work and live on the International Space Station from July 17, 2012 to January of 2013.
Williams was a student of Dinapoli’s when she was in the sixth grade in Needham, and the two reconnected during Williams’ application process into the NASA program. Dinapoli is happy to say that the two of them continually keep in contact via e-mail and, when possible, video chat.
In fact, Dinapoli was once able to take her fifth-grade class to Babson College for a forty-five minute video chat with Williams while she was in space. Dinapoli attended Williams’ first space launch, and told the students at the summer camp, “It was awesome.”
Students watched updates of what Williams and the other members of the Expedition 32 crew were working on in the International Space Station. As they watched, they filled out a journal with photos and a brief summary of what they had learned each day. Dinapoli explained how a space shuttle launches and injected her experiences with NASA into the lesson. The kids also learned through demonstrations and hands-on projects; they even made their own paper space shuttle and pinwheel rocket.
When asked if she wants to pursue a career as an astronaut, student Alessia Fucentese shakes her head.
“I’m not sure I want to be an astronaut. It’s a lot of work,” she said. “I’m just doing this for fun.”
Since Dinapoli’s passion and vast personal experience with NASA was evident to every child in the room, it seemed that fun was exactly what this class had been.
MEANWHILE, ON MARS…
Mars rover healthy; descent photographed by orbiter
William Harwood - CBS News
The nuclear-powered Curiosity Mars rover survived its nail-biting plunge to a pinpoint landing on the floor of Gale Crater in remarkably good shape, engineers said Monday, setting down on a flat, wind-swept plain littered with uniform gravel-like rocks and firm soil.
In a low-resolution view from a hazard avoidance camera on Curiosity's back fender the rim of Gale Crater can be seen some 12 miles away to the northwest while a view from a front hazcam shows the blurry dust-mottled outline of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high mound of layered rocks to the southeast that the rover will attempt to climb later in its two-year mission.
The forward view was obscured by dusty debris on a transparent lens cap that was kicked up by the rocket-powered sky crane that lowered Curiosity to the surface late Sunday. The dust cover was to be folded back out of the way later Monday and despite the initially low-resolution views black-and-white views, scientists and engineers were elated.
"To me, it's representative of a successful landing on Mars, it's representative of a new home for the rover, it's representative of a new Mars that we've never seen before," said mission manager Mike Watkins. "And so every one of those pictures is the most beautiful picture I've ever seen."
Later Monday, engineers expected the rover's high-gain antenna to deploy, allowing direct-to-Earth communications, and on Tuesday, Curiosity's main camera mast will be erected, setting the stage for the start of what will eventually be a flood of high-resolution imagery.
"A day or so from now, we're then going to deploy the remote sensing mast so we can take these beautiful panoramas that we've all been waiting to see," Watkins said. "But as for now, the first order of business is to make sure the communications to the Earth are healthy and that's the prime activity upcoming for today."
Along with the thumbnail hazcam images, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team released a stunning photograph taken from orbit showing Curiosity descending toward the surface under its 70-foot-wide parachute six minutes after atmospheric entry, just before the rover and its rocket-powered sky crane dropped away for the final descent. MRO was 211 miles from Curiosity as it flew almost directly overhead, but the parachute and the spacecraft's backshell were clearly visible.
Additional pictures are planned by the MRO team to photograph Curiosity on the floor of Gale Crater and to look for its discarded parachute, backshell and sky crane descent stage.
But the near term focus is to thoroughly check out Curiosity's complex systems, scientific instruments, cameras and other equipment to make sure the remotely operated robot geologist is ready for a planned two-year science mission.
Watkins said telemetry from the rover relayed to Earth by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter showed the spacecraft landed in good condition and successfully transitioned from entry, descent and landing mode to "surface nominal" mode with no major anomalies.
"I think we all believed it would land successfully," he said. "It's a very complex vehicle and we were a little bit concerned we would land in a safe mode or something like that and it would take us a little while to get out of it. We might not get a comm pass ... and so we'd have to sit and worry and just wait.
"The fact that it went straight into surface nominal, didn't safe, we got great telecom performance, the orbiters performed beautifully, this very complicated avionics with redundant computers and redundant avionics modules have all been fine," he said. "I think we're pleasantly surprised with how smooth that part is going."
The goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to explore the landing zone, where an alluvial fan visible from orbit indicates the flow of water into the crater in the distant past and the transport of rocky debris. Later, the rover will make its way to the base of Mount Sharp a mile and a half or so away for an attempt to climb up through rock layers that represent a trek through the geologic history of the red planet.
The goal is to search for carbon compounds that are critical to life as it is known on Earth and to determine whether Mars was ever habitable.
"The surface mission of Curiosity has now begun," Watkins said. "We built this rover not just to be launched or not just to land on Mars, but to actually drive on Mars and execute a very complex and beautiful science mission.
"We have ended one phase of the mission, much to our enjoyment, but another part has just begun. And it's really the fundamental reason we built the rover. We're just starting that mission."
Preliminary data indicates Curiosity set down a bit more than a mile downrange of its target in the center of a 12-mile-long landing target ellipse -- a bullseye compared to earlier landings. The rover is essentially level and hazcam images show the wheels did not sink into the soil, indicating a firm footing.
"You've heard us speaking about the alluvial fan that we think we've landed very close to the end of and this is the source area, so this is bringing materials in from the rim," said Project Scientist John Grotzinger. "In the foreground, you see a scene that's very familiar to you from other images of Mars, what is undoubtedly a windswept plain with coarse fragments left behind."
The landing site is interesting scientifically "because one of the things we're going to want to do after the commissioning period is over is scoop up some of the soil and analyze it," Grotzinger said. "And what we would really like to do is analyze something that we feel is very representative of Mars. ... We then have a sample of what could be the most global sample of Mars we could measure."
With NASA Mars rover Curiosity safely on surface, time to take inventory
Marc Kaufman - Washington Post
With the rover Curiosity’s dramatic landing accomplished, testing of its communication and power systems began Monday as NASA worked to understand exactly where its vehicle had landed and how it withstood its 354 million-mile journey to Mars.
NASA scientists believe the one-ton rover landed on bedrock in the 3.5 billion-year-old Gale Crater and is facing the distant crater wall, believed to be about three miles high. A mountain in the crater will be the focus of the mission because its exposed rock faces are expected to provide clues about the area’s physical history and whether life’s building blocks ever existed there.
In the aftermath of the high-precision landing, space-exploration advocates embraced Curiosity as proof of American ambition and prowess.
“If anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of U.S. leadership in space, well, there’s a one-ton, automobile-size piece of American ingenuity, and it’s sitting on the surface of Mars right now,” presidential science adviser John P. Holdren said at a news conference after the landing.
Curiosity, called “the mission of the decade” by NASA officials, will search for the building blocks of extraterrestrial life and investigate how Mars turned from a wet and warm planet into a dry and cold one. The sophisticated instruments used on the mission could hasten the day when humans fly to Mars.
And the two-year mission could draw interest for years, inspiring young people to go into science the way the Apollo moon program did in the 1960s and 1970s, officials said.
“Experiencing that remarkably complex but perfect landing, and then watching the rover in the months ahead, can’t help but excite young people,” said Jean-Lou Chameau, president of the California Institute of Technology, which operates NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL is managing the mission.
President Obama hailed the landing as “an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future. It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination.”
There have been seven successful landings on Mars, all by NASA, but Curiosity is by far the most technically sophisticated — and expensive. Its $2.5 billion price tag has drawn some criticism.
But after nailing the most difficult planetary landing ever, NASA and Obama administration officials appear to believe the dynamic has changed. After the landing, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told a cheering crowd that the mission as a whole cost the equivalent of a single movie ticket for everyone in the United States. “And this is a movie I think people want to see,” he said.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) called the first images “breathtaking.”
“The soft landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars is a testament to NASA’s engineering superiority,” she said. “More importantly, it serves as the most recent and best example of why it is so important for us to continue to invest in deep-space exploration. By committing to expand the horizons of exploration, we guarantee new discoveries and new applications from all we learn.”
The landing could not come at a more opportune time for NASA, which is facing significant budget cuts. Some of the largest budget hits are to the Mars and planetary sciences programs, cuts that many now say could and should be scaled back.
The United States now has two active rovers on the planet and two orbiters, a high point for the nation’s presence on or around Mars.
While the landing provided high drama and a look at the highest-quality, made-in-America technology and expertise, the mission has only begun, and soon the scientists will begin their work. More than 300 of them gathered at JPL for the landing, as anxious as the engineers about the rover’s fate.
Curiosity’s overall mission is to search for the building blocks of extraterrestrial life on Mars and to identify habitats where it may once have flourished. The Gale Crater landing site was selected because orbiting satellites have determined it was once covered in water and still shows a large “alluvial fan,” where river water or meltwater once ran.
In addition, it is known to contain clays and minerals that can be formed only in water — the kind of terrain that could house and preserve the carbon-based organic compounds that are essential to life as we know it.
Curiosity also will be providing images and videos of a type and quality never seen before. The first photos were primitive black-and-white fisheye images taken by the hazard cameras at the bottom of the vehicle, used to look for potentially harmful boulders. But future pictures will be in high-definition color, and some will be taken from Mount Sharp — the three-mile-high mountain in the center of the crater that Curiosity will climb in the months ahead.
The image of Curiosity’s descent was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In the photo, the Curiosity rover was still connected to its 51-foot-wide parachute as it descended toward its landing site at Gale Crater.
“If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at an empty Martian landscape,” said Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist at JPL. She said the team had been preparing to take the photo since March and finally uploaded commands to the satellite only 72 hours prior to the landing.
At a JPL news conference Monday, mission manager Mike Watkins said “we are a ‘go’ for all plans” for first-day activities. He described them as “kind of boring,” including system checks to make sure the rover is fully operational. The first order of business: making sure communications back to Earth are healthy.
Quite a change after the jubilation and triumph of the early Monday landing but necessary for the next steps forward.
'Touchdown confirmed'
NASA rover Curiosity lands on Mars, beams back photo of own shadow
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
The robotic explorer Curiosity's daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, said a NASA scientist, describing the first images of its mechanical gymnastics.
Hours after NASA learned the rover had arrived on target, engineers and scientists got the first glimpses of the intricate maneuvers it made to hit the Martian soil safely.
"It's a spectacular image," said NASA research scientist Luther Beegle. The photo, taken from an orbiting Mars spacecraft, shows Curiosity dangling from its supersonic parachute as it descended.
Extraordinary efforts were needed for the landing because the rover weighs one ton, and the Martian atmosphere is very thin, not offering much friction to slow the spacecraft down.
More images, including video of the landing and beautiful color shots of Mars, will follow in days to come. It will be weeks before Curiosity starts digging into the red planet's past.
Cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory late Sunday after signals from space indicated Curiosity had survived the harrowing plunge.
"Touchdown confirmed," said engineer Allen Chen. "We're safe on Mars."
Minutes after the landing signal reached Earth at 10:32 p.m. PDT, Curiosity beamed back the first black-and-white pictures from inside the crater showing its wheel and its shadow, cast by the afternoon sun.
"We landed in a nice flat spot. Beautiful, really beautiful," said engineer Adam Steltzner, who led the team that devised the tricky landing routine.
It was NASA's seventh landing on Earth's neighbor; many other attempts by the U.S. and other countries to zip past, circle or set down on Mars have gone awry.
The arrival was an engineering tour de force, debuting never-before-tried acrobatics packed into "seven minutes of terror" as Curiosity sliced through the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph.
In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground at a snail-paced 2 mph. A video camera was set to capture the most dramatic moments — which would give Earthlings their first glimpse of a touchdown on another world.
JPL Director Charles Elachi compared the team to Olympic athletes.
"This team came back with the gold," he said.
The extraterrestrial feat injected a much-needed boost to NASA, which is debating whether it can afford another robotic Mars landing this decade. At a budget-busting $2.5 billion, Curiosity is the priciest gamble yet, which scientists hope will pay off with a bonanza of discoveries and pave the way for astronaut landings.
"The wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars," said NASA chief Charles Bolden.
President Barack Obama lauded the landing in a statement, calling it "an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future."
Over the next two years, Curiosity will drive over to a mountain rising from the crater floor, poke into rocks and scoop up rust-tinted soil to see if the region ever had the right environment for microscopic organisms to thrive. It's the latest chapter in the long-running quest to find out whether primitive life arose early in the planet's history.
The voyage to Mars took more than eight months and spanned 352 million miles.
NASA's last Mars rovers, twins Spirit and Opportunity, weighed much less and were easier to land back in 2004, cocooned in air bags.
Curiosity relied on a series of braking tricks, similar to those used by the space shuttle, a heat shield and a supersonic parachute to slow down as it punched through the atmosphere.
And in a new twist, engineers came up with a way to lower the rover by cable from a hovering rocket-powered backpack. At touchdown, the cords cut and the rocket stage crashed a distance away.
The nuclear-powered Curiosity, the size of a small car, is packed with scientific tools, cameras and a weather station. It sports a robotic arm with a power drill, a laser that can zap distant rocks, a chemistry lab to sniff for the chemical building blocks of life and a detector to measure dangerous radiation on the surface.
It also tracked radiation levels during the journey to help NASA better understand the risks astronauts could face on a future manned trip.
There will be several weeks of health checkups before the six-wheel rover takes its first short drive and flexes its robotic arm.
The landing site near Mars' equator was picked because there are signs of past water everywhere, meeting one of the requirements for life as we know it. Inside Gale Crater is a 3-mile-high mountain, and images from space show the base appears rich in minerals that formed in the presence of water.
Previous trips to Mars have uncovered ice near the Martian north pole and evidence that water once flowed when the planet was wetter and toastier unlike today's harsh, frigid desert environment.
Curiosity's goal: to scour for basic ingredients essential for life including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and oxygen. It's not equipped to search for living or fossil microorganisms.
The mission comes as NASA retools its Mars exploration strategy. Faced with tough economic times, the space agency pulled out of partnership with the European Space Agency to land a rock-collecting rover in 2018. The Europeans have since teamed with the Russians as NASA decides on a new roadmap.
Despite Mars' reputation as a spacecraft graveyard, humans continue their love affair with the planet, lobbing spacecraft in search of clues about its early history. Out of more than three dozen attempts — flybys, orbiters and landings — by the U.S., Soviet Union, Europe and Japan since the 1960s, more than half have ended disastrously.
One NASA rover that defied expectations is Opportunity, which is still busy wheeling around the rim of a crater in the Martian southern hemisphere eight years later.
After Safe Landing, Rover Sends Images From Mars
Kenneth Chang - New York Times
NASA followed up its picture-perfect landing of a plutonium-powered rover Sunday night with a picture of the balletic Mars landing — as well as some well-earned self-congratulation about what the accomplishment says about NASA’s ingenuity.
“There are many out in the community who say NASA has lost its way, that we don’t know how to explore — we’ve lost our moxie,” John M. Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, said at a post-landing news conference, where beaming members of the landing team, all clad in blue polo shirts, crammed in next to the reporters. “I want you to look around tonight, at those folks with the blue shirts and think about what we’ve achieved.”
That achievement, in the early hours of Monday morning Eastern time, was indeed dramatic: with the eyes of the world watching, the car-size craft called Curiosity was lowered at the end of 25-foot cables from a hovering rocket stage, successfully touching down on a gravelly Martian plain.
For the world of science, it was the second slam-dunk this summer — the first one being the announcement last month that the Higgs boson, a long-sought particle theorized by physicists, had likely been found. But while the focus of high-energy physics world has shifted overseas to CERN, the European laboratory, the United States remains the center of the universe for space, ahead of Russia, Europe and China, and for NASA, it was a chance to parry accusations of being slow, bloated and rudderless.
“If anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of U.S. leadership in space,” John P. Holdren, the president’s science adviser, said at the news conference, “well, there’s a one-ton automobile-size piece of American ingenuity. And it’s sitting on the surface of Mars right now.”
Now that it has reached Mars, Curiosity ushers in a new era of exploration that could turn up evidence that the Red Planet once had the necessary ingredients for life — or might even still harbor life today. Far larger than earlier rovers, Curiosity is packed with the most sophisticated movable laboratory that has ever been sent to another planet. It is to spend at least two years examining rocks within the 96-mile crater it landed in, looking for carbon-based molecules and other evidence that early Mars had conditions friendly for life.
On Monday, NASA released a photograph taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing Curiosity still encased in the descent capsule as it sailed under a parachute 210 miles below.
“You can see the lines on the parachute,” said Sarah Milkovich, a NASA scientist who works with the orbiter camera.
NASA officials were working to give Dr. Holdren a framed print of the photograph to show President Obama.
Only one other country, the Soviet Union, has successfully landed anything on Mars, and that spacecraft, Mars 3 in 1971, fell silent shortly after landing. So far, this rover appears to be healthy.
“There’s a lot ahead of us, but so far we are just ecstatic about the performance of the vehicle,” said Jennifer Trosper, one of the mission managers.As the spacecraft sped toward its destination on Sunday, the pull of Mars’s gravity accelerating it to more than 13,000 miles per hour, officials tried to tamp down concerns that a crash would entirely derail future plans.
“A failure is a setback,” said Doug McCuistion, the Mars exploration program director. “It’s not a disaster.”
The Curiosity landing seemed particularly risky. Engineers chose not to use the tried-and-true systems used in the six previous successful landings, neither the landing legs of the Viking missions in 1976 nor the cocoons of air bags that cushioned the two rovers that NASA placed on Mars in 2004. Those approaches, they said, would not work for a one-ton vehicle.
Instead, for the final landing step, they came up with what they called the sky crane maneuver. The rover would be gently winched to the surface from a hovering rocket stage.
As the drama of the landing unfolded, each step proceeded without flaw. The capsule entered the atmosphere at the appointed time, with thrusters guiding it toward the crater. The parachute deployed. Then the rover and rocket stage dropped away from the parachute and began a powered descent toward the surface, and the sky crane maneuver worked as designed.
“Touchdown confirmed,” Allen Chen, an engineer in the control room here, said at 10:32 p.m. Sunday. “We’re safe on Mars.” The room erupted with cheers, hugs, handshakes and high-fives.
Two minutes later, the first image popped onto video screens — a grainy, 64-pixel-by-64-pixel black-and-white image that showed one of the rover’s wheels and the Martian horizon. A few minutes later, a clearer version appeared, then an image from the other side of the rover.
“That’s the shadow of the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars,” Robert Manning, the chief engineer for the project, gushed.
More photos followed. One image showed the rover’s destination, a three-mile-high mound at the center of the crater informally known as Mount Sharp.
NASA also released a series of photographs that the rover snapped as it descended, showing the heat shield falling away and later a plume of dust kicked up by the rocket engines.
Over the first week, Curiosity is to deploy its main antenna, raise a mast containing cameras, a rock-vaporizing laser and other instruments, and take its first panoramic shot of its surroundings. NASA will spend the first weeks checking out Curiosity before embarking on the first drive.
The successful landing helps wash away the mission’s troubled beginnings. Originally it was to cost $1.6 billion and was scheduled to launch in fall 2009, but technical hurdles and cost overruns led NASA to wait more than two years for the next time that Mars and Earth lined up in the proper positions. The project’s cost will now be $2.5 billion.
Charles Elachi, director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which operates Curiosity and many other planetary missions, said it was well worth the money and compared the night’s exhilaration to an adventure movie.
“This movie cost you less than seven bucks per American citizen, and look at the excitement we got,” Dr. Elachi exulted.
Even at the late hour, NASA’s Web sites collapsed as throngs of people across the Internet tried to look at the new Mars photos.
Rover Probes Secrets of Mars
Robert Lee Hotz - Wall Street Journal
NASA's Curiosity rover began transmitting photos to Earth even before the red dust from its flawless landing on Mars had cleared Monday, a warm-up for its two-year trek across a rugged crater that could reveal whether the planet ever was hospitable to life.
Cheers erupted here in the control room of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the $2.5 billion mission. Elated that the rover's daring and never-tested landing technique had worked, ebullient engineers and scientists pumped their fists in the air and whooped. Several wept.
Still, the celebrating couldn't mask the new reality of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has been forced to scale back its once-vast ambitions in the face of slimmer budgets and questions about its relevance.
Next year, NASA plans to launch a probe to study the upper atmosphere of Mars, but planners this month are debating what future Mars landings—if any—the space agency can afford. Earlier this year, NASA pulled out of an ambitious, joint U.S.-European effort to land a next-generation rover on Mars and eventually return some samples to Earth.
While Curiosity's landing is bound to burnish NASA's image and improve its employee morale, the mission may provide only a temporary political boost for an agency that has struggled to chart a new course amid spending constraints, persistent legislative fights and last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet.
NASA chief Charles Bolden has said that NASA is determined to pursue less-expensive unmanned exploration plans for Mars and the rest of the solar system. He also has said that international cooperation is essential to any hope of ultimately putting astronauts on the surface of the red planet.
Despite the uncertainties, Monday was a day to savor for the hundreds of mission engineers and scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Flying on automatic pilot, the one-ton Curiosity—the largest and most complex mobile laboratory ever landed on another planet—touched down perfectly at about 1:32 a.m. Eastern time Monday. Its first grainy, wide-angle images showed its own left rear wheel parked on the surface of Gale Crater near the equator of Mars, close to the foot of a three-mile-high mountain it aims to explore in months to come.
Passing over the landing site early Monday, the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a dramatic image of Curiosity plunging toward the surface, dangling from its fully deployed, 51-foot-wide parachute. But for mission operations manager Michael Watkins, the most powerful image was among the simplest: the shadow of Curiosity looming over the Martian soil.
"It's beautiful to us because of what it means," Mr. Watkins said. "It is representative of a new Mars we have never seen before."
In the months ahead, scientists expect to probe beneath the planet's surface crust for evidence of chemistry favorable to microbial life, using the robot rover's unique high-speed drill. In all, the plutonium-powered, six-wheeled Curiosity carries 10 scientific instruments, including an analytical laboratory, to process mineral and sediment samples.
Curiosity is twice as long, five times as heavy and vastly better equipped than two previous NASA Mars rovers that landed in 2004. A rover named Opportunity has been driving along the rim of a crater called Endeavor. Mired in sand, the Spirit rover, meantime, stopped sending communications in March 2010. But both discovered suggestive evidence that water might have once flowed on the surface of the planet.
The initial images transmitted Monday by Curiosity were taken through the vehicle's hazard-avoidance cameras, before their transparent but dusty lens covers had been removed. But mission controllers soon expect to be taking sharp, full-color images in 3-D, panoramas and high-definition videos of Gale Crater.
The Mars landing was a high-profile gamble by NASA on a novel landing procedure. Too big to rely on air bags to cushion its fall as with previous Mars landers, Curiosity landed through an automated system of high-speed maneuvers, a supersonic parachute, eight retro-rockets and a set of "sky-crane" tethers that lowered the vehicle gently the last few feet to the ground.
"This is an amazing achievement," said Mr. Bolden, the NASA administrator.
Steady electronic "heartbeat" tones relayed from Curiosity across space to Earth indicated a successful landing to the control room at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "That rocked," said deputy project manager Richard Cook, his face flushed with emotion.
"If anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of U.S. leadership in space, well, there's a one-ton, automobile-size piece of American ingenuity, and it's sitting on the surface of Mars right now," said White House science adviser John P. Holdren at a news conference after the landing.
Mr. Holdren called the landing "an unprecedented technological tour de force."
After its 352-million-mile voyage from Earth, the Curiosity craft touched down in Gale Crater—about a mile from the center of the targeted landing zone—late in the afternoon by Martian time, plunging through pink skies sprinkled with high-altitude ice clouds. A dust storm earlier had threatened to buffet the craft off course during its descent but by landing time it had dissipated.
"It was a beautiful clear day when we landed," said mission scientist John Grotzinger.
The descent was so smooth, and required so few corrective bursts of its eight, hydrazine-fueled retro rockets, that the rover touched down with almost one-third of its fuel still in reserve, JPL flight controllers said.
Based on their preliminary analysis, mission managers believe Curiosity survived the landing unscathed, coming to rest on a relatively flat part of the crater floor. It will be a while, however, before mission operations engineers have tested all of the rover's electronics and mechanical systems for possible damage during the descent and are ready to begin steering the vehicle around the crater and the nearby mountain, known as Mount Sharp.
"We have weeks, if not months, of check-out, before we are completely confident," said Mr. Watkins.
In the next few days, JPL's mission operations team expects to deploy Curiosity's antenna for high-speed transmissions to NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth, and its "Mastcam" flexible photo arm, which has side-by-side cameras for stereoscopic, or three-dimension, imaging, as well as cameras for wide-angle panoramas and video.
The rover may venture on its first test drive in early September, mission managers said. By October, it could be ready to analyze its first scoop of Martian soil. In November, it likely will start to drill into the surface and extract mineral samples.
"We want to make sure we are running on all cylinders before blazing across the plain there," said Mr. Grotzinger. "The mission is about patience."
How many jobs did the Mars landing create?
Aaron Smith - CNN
As the new rover that just landed on Mars looks for signs of life there, the NASA program that runs it is supporting life here on Earth -- with jobs.
NASA spokesman Guy Webster said the rover, named Curiosity, is currently supporting about 700 people, but has supported 7,000 jobs at various times over the last eight years. The Curiosity project and its $2.5 billion budget has generated jobs not just at NASA but at companies ranging from Lockheed Martin to a bicycle manufacturer in Chattanooga, Tenn.
"People wonder about throwing money at Mars, [but] no money was spent on Mars," said Webster. "There are no ATMs up there. All the money was spent here on Earth."
He said there are currently up to 400 NASA employees working on the project, in addition to 300 scientists outsourced by the government agency.
The purpose of Curiosity is to study the red planet and send information back to Earth. Unlike earlier Mars rovers, Webster said that Curiosity is equipped with chemical analysis technology "to accomplish very bold science goals to asses whether Mars ever offered conditions favorable to microbial life."
NASA is currently downsizing and laying off thousands of workers. But since the inception of Curiosity eight years ago, Webster said that about 3,000 NASA employees have worked on the project, in addition to about 4,000 non-government workers from various companies.
Rocket design company United Launch Alliance has benefited the most in terms of job creation, said Webster. Some 1,500 jobs were supported by the creation of Curiosity's launch vehicle, which is what propelled it into space.
Other large companies involved in the process include Lockheed Martin Corp. and Alliant Techsystems, which specialize in aerospace projects and well as military weapons technology.
Webster said that Aerojet of GenCorp. in Sacramento, Calif., made the engines that will lower the rover during the final seconds before landing.
General Dynamics made the deep space transponder allowing the rover to communicate with NASA, while Pioneer Aerospace Corp. made the parachute that helps the craft descend for landing through the Martian atmosphere.
Should We Send Humans to Mars?
A land rover is blazing trails for human exploration of Mars, but opponents of space exploration say it is a waste of money
Teresa Welsh - US News & World Report
On Monday the United States successfully landed the Curiosity land rover on Mars, more than eight months after its launch in November. The land rover weights 1,000 pounds and cost $2.5 billion, and scientists hope it will help them learn more about the red planet before humans are sent there.
The successful landing, which involved a parachute and rocket pack, is an important step for NASA. In recent years, the space agency has faced budget cuts and the elimination of its flagship space shuttle program. Curiosity's two-year exploration of Mars will search for signs that the planet once had the capability of supporting microbial life. The rover has already beamed back three photos of Mars's surface.
"There are many out in the community who say that NASA has lost its way, that we don't know how to explore, that we've lost our moxie. I think it's fair to say that NASA knows how to explore, we've been exploring and we're on Mars," former astronaut and NASA's associate administrator for science John Grunsfeld said after the touchdown.
The Obama administration has supported NASA despite the end of the shuttle program, and wants to send humans to orbit Mars and eventually land on it.
"By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow," President Barack Obama said in a 2010 speech laying out his space policy. "And I expect to be around to see it."
Opponents of space exploration say NASA and its programs are a waste of money and provide no practical value. They say the United States can't afford to be spending billions on programs that do nothing to decrease the federal budget deficit, create jobs, or improve our education and healthcare systems.
A political 'Curiosity,' selling space at a time of lost jobs
James Rainey - Los Angeles Times
The landing of the Curiosity spacecraft on Mars created a moment of singular American triumph, the kind politicians seemingly love to own. But in a nation suffering high unemployment and economic trepidation, no one expected Sunday’s emotionally charged landing on the Red Planet to recharge the muted national conversation about space exploration.
Mitt Romney, who is yet to outline a detailed program for space, did not comment about Curiosity. President Obama — whose program calls for doing more with less, including funding cuts for planetary missions — trumpeted the historic moment in a prepared statement.
“I suspect we will get through this entire campaign and three presidential debates without any serious conversation about NASA,” said one veteran space watcher, who asked not to be named because his federal agency had not authorized him to speak on the matter.
A longtime space journalist also did not expect much space talk in the presidential race, despite the effusive mood at the mission headquarters at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“I think personally, if you are turning your back on five decades of space activity and a leadership role that began with the space race, that is unfortunate,” said Leonard David, a veteran writer for Space.com and many publications. “This is the kind of endeavor that stirs up high-tech jobs and keeps Americans on the forefront of automation and robotics. Any president would be a little suspect to turn their back entirely on that legacy of leadership.”
In a visit to Cape Canaveral, Fla., in January, Romney talked about some of the general goals he would pursue in space, but declined to get into specifics, such as how much funding he would designate for NASA. Romney set four objectives: studying conditions in the universe that would dramatically affect Earth, supporting commercial endeavors, improving the health and well-being of Americans via research and promoting national defense.
But appearing too spacey about space can be a danger. Romney joined conservatives who belittled rival Newt Gingrich’s plan for developing a permanent colony on the moon. The conservative National Review put a cartoonish spaceman Gingrich on its cover. Presumed Republican nominee Romney criticized other candidates who have visited Florida’s “Space Coast,” seeking votes with promises of billions of dollars of new spending.
Obama’s statement praised Curiosity as “an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future.” He added: “ It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination.”
The success of the mission so far might bolster the administration’s case for doing more with less. That’s essentially what’s called for in a budget worked out jointly between the administration and NASA for the 2013 fiscal year, which includes a $300-million cut to planetary science, the JPL specialty in the limelight this week. That’s potentially a 20% reduction that could cause hundreds of job losses at JPL.
Veteran space journalist David called Sunday’s landing “very much a flag-waving moment for the country, which succeeded in doing something very, very difficult.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) hoped Curiosity’s landing would "reinvigorate" efforts to restore funding for exploration of the plants, including future Mars missions.
But even a space-ophile like David said he expected other issues to quickly knock space out of the political conversation.
“Within the agency [NASA] there is a lot of thrashing about to determine what exactly the mission should be,” David said. “At a time of home foreclosures and with jobs scarce you get this whiplash from the public. They say, 'We’re talking about going to Mars but, hey, I just lost my job.'”
Pols hope rover helps NASA funding
Kevin Cirilli - Politico.com
The successful landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars was hailed Monday by lawmakers, some of whom hope the wheeled explorer will reinvigorate funding for space exploration.
The one-ton, $2.5 billion rover sped into Mars’s orbit at about 1:30 a.m., arriving after an eight-month journey — and at an uncertain time for NASA. President Barack Obama has proposed keeping the agency’s overall budget at $17.7 billion for next year but decreasing NASA’s Mars exploration program budget from $587 million to $360 million next year.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a critic of proposed cuts to the program, watched Curiosity’s 13,000-mph descent into Mars’s Gale Crater from inside NASA’s Pasadena, Calif.-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“My daughter, Alexa, and I are crossing our fingers,” he tweeted as the rover began its descent, and after its landing: “Awesome! JPL did the miraculous again! What a wonderful achievement.” He later said in a statement, “This success must reinvigorate our efforts to restore funding for planetary science and future Mars missions.”
Though the mission was controlled from Pasadena, Curiosity blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., last November. Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), whose district includes Cape Canaveral, said the rover shows that NASA can achieve its goals when it has a clear mission.
“For the scientists who have been diligently working on this mission for nearly a decade, this is a great day and my hat’s off to them,” he told POLITICO in an email.
Even the rover’s official Twitter account celebrated, declaring just after touchdown: “I’m safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!” Moments later, it updated Neil Armstrong’s famous words: “It once was one small step … now it’s six big wheels.”
For now, anyway. A manned mission to Mars has long been a goal of space exploration enthusiasts, and Obama has said he thinks humans can orbit Mars by the mid-2030s.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), ranking member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, and Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), ranking member of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, said in a joint statement: “This is a monumental achievement and a huge step for planetary science.”
Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), whose district relies heavily on NASA for jobs, also offered his congratulations, tweeting, “Congratulations to the Jet Propulsion Lab and NASA for the successful landing of MSL in Gale Crater on Mars! JPL is a national treasure!”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), meanwhile, tweeted: “The soft landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars is a testament to #NASA’s engineering superiority.”
Curiosity will gather soil samples to measure Mars’s habitability.
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