Thursday, September 13, 2012

9/13/12 news

        Thursday, September 13, 2012   JSC TODAY HEADLINES 1.            LAST CHANCE TODAY! Tickets Available for 100 YSS Plenary Session 2.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll 3.            NASA to Honor Neil Armstrong Today -- See the Broadcast on NASA TV 4.            See the Expedition 32 Crew Arrive Home on NASA TV 5.            Endeavour Parking Volunteer Opportunity 6.            Parent's Night Out Sept. 28 -- Register Now 7.            NASA Night at Constellation Field 8.            NASA Scientific & Technical Information (STI) Sites Down This Weekend 9.            POWER of One Winners Announced 10.          Crew Health and Performance Improvements and Resource Impacts With Reduced C02 11.          Space Available -- Android Boot Camp Training Course ________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY “ Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them. ”   -- Voltaire ________________________________________ 1.            LAST CHANCE TODAY! Tickets Available for 100 YSS Plenary Session Today is your last chance to get complimentary tickets to the 100 Year Starship Plenary Session Salute to 50 Years of Human Spaceflight and JSC, moderated by well-known space advocate Miles O'Brien. Cutoff for tickets is 10 a.m. today.   The 100 Year Starship 2012 Public Symposium will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Houston from Sept. 13 to 16. The JSC Tribute Plenary Session highlighting the successes and challenges of America's human spaceflight program will be held on Friday, Sept. 14, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.   JSC has secured a limited number of tickets for this event and would like to offer them to the JSC community on a first-come, first-served basis. Limit two tickets per person.   If you would like to reserve a ticket(s), please contact Hallie Frazee at 281-792-7929 or: hallie.frazee@nasa.gov   For more information about the 100 Year Star Ship Symposium, please visit: http://symposium.100yss.org/about-100yss     Hallie Frazee 281-792-7929 http://symposium.100yss.org/about-100yss   [top] 2.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll Email is still a popular way of communicating with a fellow employee according to last week's poll, and individual contact is replacing meetings as your second choice. You think Alice Cooper would have been a better choice to replace Regis Philbin than Michael Strahan on Kelly Ripa's talk show. I wholeheartedly agree.   This week Eric Berger of the "Houston Chronicle" got me thinking about famous explorers. We are in the exploration business, so you should have an opinion on who the greatest explorer of all time is, right? Is it Lewis? Hilary? Cook? You also live in Texas and should have an opinion on country-music singers. I've listed my five favorite ones; pick the Greatest Country Music Singer of All Time in question two.   Tenzing your Norgay on over to get this week's poll.   Joel Walker x30541 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/   [top] 3.            NASA to Honor Neil Armstrong Today -- See the Broadcast on NASA TV NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Deputy Administrator Lori Garver and other dignitaries will attend a public memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral to honor the life and career of astronaut Neil Armstrong today, Sept. 13. The memorial will be broadcast live on NASA TV and streamed online.   JSC employees with TVs on site can view it on channel 4 for standard definition NASA TV and channel 54-1 for HD NASA TV. Those with wired computer network connections can view NASA TV using onsite IPTV on channels 404 (standard definition) or 4541 (HD) at: http://iptv.jsc.nasa.gov/eztv/   If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367.   The service is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. CDT. Dignitaries, community and political leaders, members of the Armstrong family and members of the NASA family, including current and former astronauts, will pay respects to the first man to walk on the moon, who died Aug. 25.   JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111   [top] 4.            See the Expedition 32 Crew Arrive Home on NASA TV Three of the crew members on the International Space Station are scheduled to end four months on the complex the evening of Sunday, Sept. 16 (U.S. time), and NASA TV will provide complete coverage.   Expedition 32 Commander Gennady Padalka of Roscosmos, NASA Flight Engineer Joe Acaba and Russian Flight Engineer Sergei Revin are headed back to Earth after spending 125 days in space and 123 days aboard the space station. They are scheduled to land their Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft in southern Kazakhstan at 9:53 p.m. CDT on Sept. 16.   Coverage on NASA TV for Expedition 32's return to Earth begins at the following times (all times CDT):   Saturday, Sept. 15 1:30 p.m. - Live Expedition 32/33 change-of-command ceremony   Sunday, Sept. 16 2:30 p.m. - Farewells and hatch closure (hatch closure scheduled at 2:55 p.m.) 5:45 p.m. - Undocking (undocking scheduled at 6:09 p.m.) 8:30 p.m. - Deorbit burn and landing (deorbit burn scheduled at 8:56 p.m.; landing scheduled at 9:53 p.m.)   Monday, Sept. 17 9:30 a.m. - Video File of Landing and Post-Landing Activities   JSC employees with wired computer network connections can view NASA TV using onsite IPTV on channels 404 (standard definition) or 4541 (HD) at: http://iptv.jsc.nasa.gov/eztv/   If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367.   JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111 http://www.nasa.gov/station   [top] 5.            Endeavour Parking Volunteer Opportunity As you've probably heard, Space Shuttle Endeavour will be available for public viewing at Ellington Field on Sept. 17 and 18. Volunteers are needed to help direct traffic into the parking areas at Ellington to maximize the available space for visitor parking. You may volunteer for a one-hour parking detail shift from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 17, and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 18. If you are interested in volunteering for this "Endeavour," please contact Dana Wells at x30087.   Dana Wells x30087   [top] 6.            Parent's Night Out Sept. 28 -- Register Now It's our last Parent's Night Out of the year, so don't miss out on this great opportunity to spend an evening on the town! Enjoy a night out while your kids enjoy a night with Starport. We will entertain your children at the Gilruth Center with a night of games, crafts, a bounce house, pizza, a movie and dessert.   When: Sept. 28 from 6 to 10 p.m. Where: Gilruth Center Ages: 5 to 12 Cost: $20/first child and $10/each additional sibling if registered by the Wednesday prior to event. If registered after Wednesday, the fee is $25/first child and $15/additional sibling.   Register at the Gilruth Center front desk. Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Youth/PNO.cfm for more information.   Shericka Phillips x35563 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/   [top] 7.            NASA Night at Constellation Field It's NASA Night with the Skeeters! Join in on the baseball fun with an out-of-this-world experience as the Sugarland Skeeters take on the York Revolution on Sept. 19 at 7:05 p.m. Discounted field box tickets are only $8. Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Events/ for more information and to purchase your tickets.   Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/   [top] 8.            NASA Scientific & Technical Information (STI) Sites Down This Weekend The NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) at http://ntrs.nasa.gov the NASA Aeronautics and Space Database (NA&SD) at http://access.sti.nasa.gov and NASA STI website at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/ will be offline for planned maintenance starting at 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14. We expect the database to be available again the following Monday, Sept. 17.   The STI Program collects, organizes, provides access and preserves NASA's research and development published results. JSC's Information Resources Directorate manages this program at the center level with the agency.   We apologize for any inconvenience, but if you have questions or comments, please contact the NASA STI Information Desk at 443-757-5802 or: help@sti.nasa.gov   JSC IRD Outreach x45257 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/   [top] 9.            POWER of One Winners Announced Congratulations to JSC's newest POWER of One winners:   Gold: David C. Elliott - CC4 Gold: William W. West - XA1 Gold: Sara Zwart - SK Silver: Roger W. Mitchell - IC8 Silver: Steven J. Riley - DX4 Silver: Cory L. Simon - EV3 Bronze: Judith K. Griffith - EA2 Bronze: Natalie D. Martinez - LF6   The POWER of One award was established to award and recognize JSC employees for their exemplary performance and direct contributions to either their organization, JSC or NASA at the agency level. Congratulations and thank you for all your hard work! If you would like to nominate someone for POWER of One award, visit: http://powerofone.jsc.nasa.gov/   For more information on the JSC Awards Program, visit: http://jscpeople.jsc.nasa.gov/benefits/RewardsAndRecog/default.htm   Jessica Ocampo 281-792-7804 http://powerofone.jsc.nasa.gov/   [top] 10.          Crew Health and Performance Improvements and Resource Impacts With Reduced C02 There are reports that International Space Station crews are experiencing adverse health effects from on-orbit exposure to CO2 levels well below the current Spacecraft Maximum Allowable Concentration (SMAC) of 5.3 mmHg for 180 days of exposure. John James, NASA's chief toxicologist, discusses: 1) comparison of reports of headaches by the crew during private medical conferences to cabin CO2 levels to find at what level crews were really at risk; 2) whether neuro-cognitive effects could be associated with CO2 levels; 3) resource utilization to meet various levels of CO2 control if the SMACs were lowered; and 4) potential interactions of intracranial pressure and CO2 levels in eliciting ocular effects.   Today, Sept. 13, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Location: Building 5 South, Room 3102 (corner of Gamma Link/5th Street/third floor)   SATERN Registration: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...   For additional information, contact any EC5 spacesuit knowledge capture point of contact: Cinda Chullen (x38384); Juniper Jairala (281-461-5794); Rose Bitterly (281-461-5795); or Vladenka Oliva (281-461-5681).   Juniper Jairala 281-461-5794   [top] 11.          Space Available -- Android Boot Camp Training Course The Android Boot Camp Training Course is hands-on training for designing and building mobile applications using the Android open-source platform. The Android Boot Camp Course explains the philosophy of developing for Android™ through its main application development building blocks and their interaction with one another.   This complete hands-on course encourages students to learn by building increasingly more sophisticated and meaningful mobile applications for Android.   This course is designed for software developers interested in designing, creating, deploying and testing applications for the Android mobile-phone platform.   This course is open for self-registration in SATERN and is available to civil servants and contractors on a space-available basis.   Dates: Monday through Friday, Sept. 17 to 21 Location: Building 12, Room 144   Zeeaa Quadri x39723 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...   [top]   ________________________________________ 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: ·                     8:45 am Central (9:45 EDT) – NASA Honors Neil Armstrong at the National Cathedral ·                     12:30 pm Central (1:30 EDT) – Expedition 34/35 Crew Training – video playback ·                     1 pm Central (2 EDT) – Expedition 34/35 Crew News Conference ·                     3 pm Central (4 EDT) – Replay of ISS Expedition 32 In-Flight Event with YouTube/Spacelab ·                     4:30 pm Central (5:30 EDT) – E34/35 FE/CDR Chris Hadfield News Conference to CSA   Human Spaceflight News Thursday – September 13, 2012 The “White Stork” – Kounotori 3 – completes its job at the ISS   HEADLINES AND LEADS   Tributes to first moonwalker Neil Armstrong play out on air and at sea   Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log   While the world watches over the Internet, luminaries from the world of space exploration and politics will mix with ordinary people at 10 a.m. ET Thursday to pay tribute to first moonwalker Neil Armstrong at Washington National Cathedral in the nation's capital. But the final farewell to his mortal remains will take place out of the spotlight, during a burial at sea on Friday. U.S. flags will be flying at half-staff on that day, in accordance with the presidential proclamation issued after Armstrong's death. Many of those same flags were lowered in Armstrong's honor on Aug. 31, when the family conducted a private memorial ceremony in Cincinnati. President Barack Obama specified, however, that the "mark of respect" should be given on the day of the astronaut's interment — and Friday is that day. Armstrong is thus coming in for a double helping of half-staff honors, plus Thursday's national memorial service.   Japanese resupply craft on track for re-entry after station departure   Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com   Japan's third HTV cargo freighter is on track to plunge back into Earth's atmosphere as scheduled Friday after an unknown problem on Wednesday triggered an expedited departure from the International Space Station, according to a NASA spokesperson. The barrel-shaped resupply craft was released from the space station's robotic arm at 11:50 a.m. EDT (1550 GMT). A few minutes later, the H-2 Transfer Vehicle pulsed its thrusters and quickly flew away from the complex.   Japan's Robotic Cargo Ship Leaves Space Station   Tariq Malik - Space.com   Astronauts on the International Space Station bade farewell to a Japanese cargo ship Wednesday, ending Japan's latest delivery flight to the orbiting lab. Japan's unmanned H-2 Transfer Vehicle 3 (HTV-3) left the space station at 11:50 a.m. EDT (1350 GMT) after station astronauts used a robotic arm to detach the spacecraft from its docking port and set it free. The orbiting lab's robotic arm released the cargo ship, which is now filled with trash and unneeded items, as both spacecraft were sailing 235 miles (378 kilometers) above Canada, NASA officials said.   Mission to Mars may be pricey NASA on track, but lawmakers hedge on costs   Ledyard King - Florida Today   A top NASA official told lawmakers Wednesday the agency is on track with its next crewed mission into deep space: A trip to an asteroid and then to Mars. But lawmakers and outside experts raised concerns during the congressional hearing about the program’s cost, particularly the $30 billion price tag connected to the “heavy lift” rocket, and the relatively few test flights planned before embarking on a key deep space mission.   NASA's Huge New Rocket May Cost $500 Million Per Launch   Mike Wall - Space.com   The giant rocket NASA is building to carry astronauts to Mars and other destinations in deep space may cost $500 million per launch when it's flying regularly, space agency officials said Tuesday. NASA is eyeing $500 million as a target right now for the Space Launch System (SLS) when it begins making roughly one flight per year, which could begin happening after 2023. But things could change as the SLS program — which was just announced in September 2011 — matures, officials said.   NASA dishes on its 3 space taxi picks Report tells why firms won funds - and one did not   James Dean – Florida Today   SpaceX has the cheapest plan for developing a commercial space taxi, while The Boeing Co. has the strongest technical approach, according to a NASA evaluation of their proposals. Sierra Nevada Corp.’s mini-shuttle offers a promising alternative to the two capsules but must overcome the most technical challenges, NASA determined. In a 13-page report released recently, the agency explained why it awarded those three firms up to $1.1 billion to complete designs of private rockets and spacecraft that could fly astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017.   Space Florida approves funds to work KSC sites   James Dean - Florida Today   Space Florida’s board on Wednesday approved funding to modernize a former shuttle hangar for use by The Boeing Co. and for work that could lead to the acquisition of the shuttle runway and other Kennedy Space Center property to support commercial space operations. “We have several specific sites in mind that we want to pursue, one of which I don’t mind commenting on, is the Shuttle Landing Facility,” said Space Florida President Frank DiBello.   Countdown to Endeavour: Tickets for final takeoff going for $90   Richard Simon - Los Angeles Times   The countdown has begun for delivery of the retired space shuttle Endeavour to Los Angeles, the last orbiter that will fly out of Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a jet. L.A.’s welcome of the Endeavour is shaping up as splashier than Kennedy Space Center’s farewell. L.A. is promising a marching band, among other fanfare, fitting for the spectacle of a space shuttle traveling through the city streets; the program at Kennedy Space Center (expect speeches) is still being put together.   Space shuttle Endeavour stops in El Paso next week   Daniel Borunda - El Paso Times   The space shuttle Endeavour, riding on a modified 747, will make a stop in El Paso before flying low over the White Sands area and Las Cruces on Wednesday during the historic final shuttle ferry flight across the country, NASA officials said. The shuttle's flight over the El Paso-Las Cruces region is part of the farewell flight for the space shuttle program.   Flags Flown on 3 Spacecraft Set for Ceremonial Return   Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com   Hundreds of small flags that launched into space twice and flew aboard crewed spacecraft from three different countries, as well as two space stations, will be returned to the organization for which they were flown during an international ceremony held in Berlin. On Friday, astronauts from Europe and China will join officials from their respective space agencies and from the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) for the handover of 300 flags that most recently returned from orbit  aboard China's Shenzhou 9 mission in June. The ceremony will take place during the ILA Berlin Air Show at Germany's Berlin Brandenburg Airport.   Russia May Seek Moon Base for Exploration, Deputy Premier Says   Henry Meyer - Bloomberg News   Russia should set up a permanent moon base as a launch-pad for space exploration, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said. “Russian astronauts learned how to function in conditions of zero gravity, work in orbit and carry out necessary experiments there,” Rogozin, who is in charge of industry, defense and the space sector, told state-run Vesti-FM radio today. “Why not set up a large base on the moon as a launch-pad for further leaps in science?”   Shuttle pilots at Reno Air Races recall Neil Armstrong   Guy Clifton - Reno Gazette-Journal   Even as pilots Hoot Gibson and Curt Brown focus on racing at the Reno National Championship Air Races today, a piece of their heart will be at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where the nation will say a public goodbye to astronaut Neil Armstrong. Gibson and Brown, who are competing this week in the Unlimited Class, are among the nation’s few aviators to go into space, each as space shuttle astronauts. Each reflected this week on what Armstrong meant to them personally and to aviation in general.   50 years ago, Kennedy reached for stars in historic Rice address   Douglas Brinkley - Houston Chronicle (Commentary)   (Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University and author of "Cronkite.")   What a glorious day it was when President John F. Kennedy took the podium at Rice University at 10 a.m. on Sept. 12, 1962, 50 years ago this week, to thunderous applause from over 40,000 enthusiastic spectators. Although the humidity was doing its stuffy best to tamp down the fun, attendees madly fanning themselves while wiping perspiration from their brows with handkerchiefs, hopes were high that Kennedy would inspire a new generation to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. Days before the Rice visit, Kennedy had visited the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and the NASA Launch Operations Center on Merritt Island in Florida. The press had called it - including his all-important stopover in Houston - Kennedy's Space Tour. He came to Houston to shift the space race from low to high gear. "NASA had great hopes that the Rice speech would generate a frenzied public demand to go to the moon," former director of the Johnson Space Center George Abbey said. "The stakes - congressional appropriation of funds - were high."   Will America produce future Neil Armstrongs?   Chris Carberry - Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star (Commentary)   (Carberry is executive director of Explore Mars Inc., which promotes science and technology with Mars-exploration applications)   In the days after his Aug. 25 passing, praises for Neil Armstrong flooded newspapers, blogs, social media sites, TV screens, and radio stations. Both President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney extolled the life of the first man to step on the moon. But would either Obama or Romney enable future Americans to follow in Neil Armstrong's footsteps?   Mars' Children: Who will be the first human to walk on Mars?   Zahaan Bharmal - The Guardian (Commentary)   (Bharmal works for Google in London and is the founder of www.youtube.com/spacelab)   There comes a day in a man's life, a sad day, when he realises he will never fulfil his childhood ambition of becoming an astronaut.  For me, that day was August 6th this year, as I watched in awe as Curiosity touched down on Mars. Curiosity will, I hope, not be the last rocket to travel to Mars. It will lead to another rocket, and another, that will eventually lead to the first manned mission to Mars. The first human footprint on another planet.   Find better rocket launch site on Texas Gulf coast   Beaumont Enterprise (Editorial)   The Texas Gulf coast has miles and miles of acreage with few people - or plants and animals. Unfortunately, however, a private space company has decided it wants to launch rockets from a site surrounded by a wildlife refuge and almost adjacent to a beach where endangered sea turtles nest. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's wrong with that. If SpaceX won't reconsider its proposed site on Boca Chica Beach, between Padre Island and the mouth of the Rio Grande, the Federal Aviation Administration should do it for them.   MEANWHILE ON MARS...   Robot arm tests nearly complete, Curiosity set to resume roving   William Harwood - CBS News   Engineers testing the Curiosity Mars rover are wrapping up a series of robot arm calibration and motion tests before resuming a slow trek toward a nearby rock formation this weekend, on the lookout for a suitable stone to reach out and touch in an initial round of "contact science," officials said Wednesday. The goal is to make sure the arm can precisely position a sensitive camera and an X-ray spectrometer as required for "hands on" geological observations, including eventual operations with a sample scoop and a compact drill. With the tests nearly complete, the arm has performed in near flawless fashion.   Mars rover Curiosity wrapping up health checkups   Associated Press   The Mars rover Curiosity is preparing to roll again after it completes its health checkups this week, project managers said Wednesday. Since landing in an ancient crater near the Martian equator Aug. 5, the car-size rover has trekked more than the length of a football field, leaving wheel tracks in the soil that could be spied from space.   Not so moist Mars: Clays may come from lava, not lakes   Lisa Grossman - New Scientist   Hunting for Martians may be a tougher task than predicted. Clays, long thought to be a sure sign of a warmer and wetter past on the Red Planet, could merely signal earlier volcanic activity – which would have made some regions on Mars less favourable for life. Clay layers found across Mars suggest that during the Noachian period, from about 4.2 billion to 3.5 billion years ago, the planet was warm enough to host liquid water – necessary for life as we know it.   Early Mars Maybe Not So Wet New study could impact the odds that life had a chance to take hold on the Red Planet   Irene Klotz - Discovery News   Early Mars may not have been as warm or wet as scientists suspect, a finding which could impact the likelihood that the Red Planet was capable of evolving life at the time when it was getting started on Earth. A new study presents an alternative explanation for the prevalence of Mars' ancient clay minerals, which on Earth most often result from water chemically reacting with rock over long periods of time. The process is believed to be a starting point for life.   New Mars Theory Questions Red Planet's Watery Past   Nola Taylor Redd - Space.com   In the past decade, astronomers have observed clay materials on Mars that seem to indicate large bodies of water once filled the Martian surface. But new research suggests that magma could form some of these slick deposits rapidly, and ancient Mars may not have been as wet as we thought. A region of French Polynesia has similar deposits of these strange clays, which scientists found were formed by cooling magma rather than water. __________   COMPLETE STORIES   Tributes to first moonwalker Neil Armstrong play out on air and at sea   Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log   While the world watches over the Internet, luminaries from the world of space exploration and politics will mix with ordinary people at 10 a.m. ET Thursday to pay tribute to first moonwalker Neil Armstrong at Washington National Cathedral in the nation's capital. But the final farewell to his mortal remains will take place out of the spotlight, during a burial at sea on Friday.   U.S. flags will be flying at half-staff on that day, in accordance with the presidential proclamation issued after Armstrong's death. Many of those same flags were lowered in Armstrong's honor on Aug. 31, when the family conducted a private memorial ceremony in Cincinnati. President Barack Obama specified, however, that the "mark of respect" should be given on the day of the astronaut's interment — and Friday is that day. Armstrong is thus coming in for a double helping of half-staff honors, plus Thursday's national memorial service.   Armstrong passed away on Aug. 25, less than three weeks after celebrating his 82nd birthday and undergoing quadruple-bypass heart surgery. If people told him while he was alive that he would be in for three widely publicized tributes to his life and legacy, he might have asked them to turn the dial down a notch. After all, the man who took "one giant step for a man ... one giant leap for mankind" in 1969 was famously wary of fame. Even the family's announcement of his death called him "a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job."   Thursday's memorial ceremony isn't just about one man, however: It's also a memorial for an age when mankind made its first moves beyond its home planet. Eleven other NASA astronauts walked on the moon after Armstrong took his one small step as part of the Apollo 11 mission, but that age ended 40 years ago when Apollo 17's Gene Cernan climbed up the ladder to the Challenger lunar module.   "We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return: with peace and hope for all mankind," Cernan, who is due to speak at Thursday's service, said in 1972. No one has returned to the moon since.    The evocation of NASA's golden age is one of the reasons why the space agency is airing the service on television and streaming it on the Internet. (The cathedral will be streaming the service as well, along with various media outlets. You can watch NBC News' video stream here.)   In fact, NASA is providing live coverage on three channels, starting at 9:45 a.m. ET. NASA TV's Public Channel will carry the service in HD with on-screen identification of the participants. The Media Channel will broadcast a "clean feed" in HD without on-screen legends. The Education Channel will carry the complete service in standard definition. All three streams are available via the NASA TV website.   NASA says the agency's chief historian, Bill Barry, will conduct an online chat on UStream, supplementing the video coverage with background information about the speakers and their connection to Armstrong and the space effort.   On the NASA website, you can see the full program for the service (PDF file), including hymns and readings. One of Armstrong's Apollo 11 crewmates, Michael Collins, will lead prayers. In addition to Cernan, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and former Treasury Secretary John Snow are due to deliver tributes. The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Washington, will give the homily. Jazz singer-songwriter Diana Krall will sing Frank Sinatra's arrangement of "Fly Me to the Moon." Other musicians include the U.S. Navy Band "Sea Chanters," the Cathedral Choir and the Metropolitan Opera Brass.   NASA said the guest list for the service includes Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, who joined Armstrong on that first moonwalk; Mercury astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter; and Apollo 7's Walt Cunningham, along with other astronauts from the Apollo era and space shuttle era. NASA's deputy administrator, Lori Garver, and other agency officials will be there. Lawmakers on the list include U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio); House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi; and U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and other Obama administration officials are due to attend, space agency representatives said.   In addition to the tickets set aside for VIPs, family members, friends and journalists, NASA made tickets to the ceremony available to members of the general public. Those tickets were quickly swept up, and the cathedral says "all passes have now been allocated."   The cathedral was chosen for the public service because it's "a historic landmark symbolizing the role of faith in America, and its iconography tells the stories that have shaped the nation's identity," NASA said. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins presented the cathedral with a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission on July 21, 1974, during a service commemorating the fifth anniversary of the first moon landing. That rock was later incorporated into the cathedral's Space Window — which is in the spotlight due to Thursday's service.   After the service, there's one more ceremony to perform: Armstrong's burial at sea, which was organized in accordance with his wishes. In addition to being the first man to walk on the moon, Armstrong was a U.S. Navy aviator who served with distinction during combat in the Korean War — and had the right to choose a sea burial over, say, a grave at Arlington National Cemetery. When Armstrong died, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus issued a statement noting that Armstrong "never wanted to be a living memorial, and yet to generations the world over his epic courage and quiet humility stands as the best of all examples."   NASA spokesman Michael Cabbage confirmed that the at-sea ceremony would take place Friday, on the same day as the half-staff tribute. The arrangements mean that Armstrong's remains will never lie under an earthly shrine — which may be the most fitting end for a man whose voyages ranged from the sea, to the air, to "this new ocean" of outer space.   Japanese resupply craft on track for re-entry after station departure   Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com   Japan's third HTV cargo freighter is on track to plunge back into Earth's atmosphere as scheduled Friday after an unknown problem on Wednesday triggered an expedited departure from the International Space Station, according to a NASA spokesperson.   The barrel-shaped resupply craft was released from the space station's robotic arm at 11:50 a.m. EDT (1550 GMT). A few minutes later, the H-2 Transfer Vehicle pulsed its thrusters and quickly flew away from the complex.   According to Kelly Humphries, a spokesperson at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the HTV executed an abort maneuver.   Like other spacecraft visiting the space station, the HTV is designed to autonomously command an abort in the event of a major problem to avoid colliding with the 450-ton orbiting outpost.   "The abort system did what it was supposed to do and took the HTV safely away from the station, and it's on track to re-enter as scheduled," Humphries told Spaceflight Now.   A daily space station status report posted on a NASA website said the abort was triggered by a drop-out of In/Out Computer 2. The maneuver placed the HTV well away from the space station, according to the status report.   Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency flight controllers in Tsukuba, Japan, restored full telemetry from the HTV through another computer, and the root cause of the anomaly is under investigation, NASA officials wrote in the report.   The Japanese cargo vehicle is scheduled to conduct a final de-orbit burn at 12:51 a.m. EDT (0451 GMT) Friday, and the spacecraft will drop back into the atmosphere at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT).   The HTV is designed to dispose of trash from the space station during re-entry, when the craft and its cargo will break up and fall into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.   Two data recorders, one provided by JAXA and another by the Aerospace Corp., will log data on the re-entry conditions, such as position, acceleration, temperature and imagery.   Engineers will incorporate the data in the design and operations of future spacecraft, yielding more accurate re-entry predictions, casualty expectations, and potentially leading to a "black box" for spacecraft similar to devices on airliners.   The HTV is wrapping up a 47-day stay at the space station, in which the craft delivered food and clothing, an aquatic habitat experiment, an Earth observation camera, and other supplies.   The cargo craft also delivered five small CubeSat satellites and a Japanese-built deployer apparatus. The CubeSats will be released outside the space station beginning this fall.   The spacecraft, which is dubbed Kounotori 3, carried two research payloads mounted outside the space station.   A NASA-led communications experiment launched aboard the HTV could lead to more capable and less complex spacecraft radios, and a Japanese experiment package includes a set of investigations probing plasma and lightning in Earth's atmosphere, collecting data on inflatable space structures and robotics systems, and testing commercial off-the-shelf HDTV video equipment in the harsh environment of space.   The Kounotori 3 cargo freighter is the third of at least seven HTVs planned by JAXA to resupply the space station. Japan provides the HTV cargo service to pay for its share of the station's operating costs.   NASA and JAXA expect to negotiate for further HTV missions to cover the lab's supply needs and Japan's cost obligations through 2020, the currently planned end-of-life for the space station.   Japan's Robotic Cargo Ship Leaves Space Station   Tariq Malik - Space.com   Astronauts on the International Space Station bade farewell to a Japanese cargo ship Wednesday, ending Japan's latest delivery flight to the orbiting lab.   Japan's unmanned H-2 Transfer Vehicle 3 (HTV-3) left the space station at 11:50 a.m. EDT (1350 GMT) after station astronauts used a robotic arm to detach the spacecraft from its docking port and set it free. The orbiting lab's robotic arm released the cargo ship, which is now filled with trash and unneeded items, as both spacecraft were sailing 235 miles (378 kilometers) above Canada, NASA officials said.   The HTV-3 spacecraft is expected to be intentionally destroyed early Friday (Sept. 14), when it fires its rocket engines for the last time to leave orbit and burn up in Earth's atmosphere somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. That de-orbit maneuver is scheduled for about 12:50 a.m. EDT (0450 GMT) on Friday, NASA officials said.   Japan's HTV cargo ships are cylindrical vessels capable of hauling tons of supplies and new equipment for astronauts living on the International Space Station. The spacecraft were developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and are also called Kounotori, which is Japanese for "White Stork."   Japan launched HTV-3 to the space station on July 20, and the cargo ship arrived at the orbiting laboratory a week later. NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide used the station's robotic arm to capture the craft and attach it to an available docking port. The same two astronauts performed the detach-and-release procedure for HTV-3 today.   The HTV-3 spacecraft delivered nearly 8,000 pounds (3,600 kilograms) of cargo to the space station, including care packages of food, clothes and other gear for the outpost's six-person crew. The cargo ship also delivered an aquatic habitat that will eventually house fish for a future science experiment, two student experiments for a YouTube Space Lab contest, and external experiments that were moved to a porch-like platform on the station's Japanese Kibo laboratory module.   Japan's HTV spaceships are part of an international fleet of unmanned spacecraft used to send regular cargo deliveries to the space station. The fleet includes Russia's Progress spacecraft, Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicles and the private Dragon space capsules built by the private U.S. spaceflight company SpaceX.   SpaceX's first Dragon spacecraft flew a test flight to the space station in May, with the first operational delivery flight scheduled to launch in October.  Another American company, the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., is building an unmanned space cargo ship for NASA called Cygnus. The spacecraft's Antares rocket is expected to make its first test flight later this year.   SpaceX and Orbital Sciences each have contracts with NASA to provide regular cargo delivery flights to the space station.   Mission to Mars may be pricey NASA on track, but lawmakers hedge on costs   Ledyard King - Florida Today   A top NASA official told lawmakers Wednesday the agency is on track with its next crewed mission into deep space: A trip to an asteroid and then to Mars.   But lawmakers and outside experts raised concerns during the congressional hearing about the program’s cost, particularly the $30 billion price tag connected to the “heavy lift” rocket, and the relatively few test flights planned before embarking on a key deep space mission.   “We wish you luck,” said Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, R-Calif. “We want you to succeed. (But) we’ve been through a number of these in the past where we have budget problems on this end and we end up losing billions of dollars.”   Dan Dumbacher, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development, told members of a House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee that NASA and its team of private contractors are “making excellent progress” toward launching an unmanned test flight in 2017 in preparation for the real mission by 2025.   Tests measuring water impact, acoustics, vibrations and parachute landings of the Orion crew vehicle are either under way or nearly complete, and the manufacturing of its heat shield has begun, he said. Design work is under way on the $30 billion “heavy lift” rocket known as the Space Launch System that will carry Orion, Dumbacher said.   His comments Wednesday came nearly a year after NASA unveiled the design of the rocket, which is billed as the most powerful U.S. rocket since the Saturn V that took Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.   If the timeline holds, a manned test flight of the Space Launch System and Orion capsule will take place in 2021. If that’s successful, an asteroid landing would be targeted by 2025, followed by a landing on Mars sometime in the 2030s.   A 20-year wait to reach Earth’s neighbor sounds agonizingly distant given the successful Mars landing earlier this year by Curiosity, a car-sized science lab currently roving the Martian surface for clues to life.   But space exploration remains delicate and expensive, and NASA has had to navigate the priorities of changing administrations. President Barack Obama called for the manned Mars mission after scrapping a moon mission sought by President George W. Bush.   Even if the engineering goes well, there’s a question of money. At a time when Congress is contemplating deep cuts in discretionary programs such as space exploration, NASA might not have the budget it needs over time to sustain the program as currently designed.   The project’s requested fiscal 2013 budget alone is nearly $2.8 billion: $969 million for Orion, $1.3 billion for the Space Launch System, and $405 million for Kennedy Space Center to prepare for the eventual launch.   “That’s a lot of money,” Rohrbacher said.   He suggested NASA explore cheaper rockets — or risk making the mission too pricey for future congressional support.   NASA's Huge New Rocket May Cost $500 Million Per Launch   Mike Wall - Space.com   The giant rocket NASA is building to carry astronauts to Mars and other destinations in deep space may cost $500 million per launch when it's flying regularly, space agency officials said Tuesday.   NASA is eyeing $500 million as a target right now for the Space Launch System (SLS) when it begins making roughly one flight per year, which could begin happening after 2023. But things could change as the SLS program — which was just announced in September 2011 — matures, officials said.   "We've estimated somewhere around the $500 million number is what an average cost per flight is," SLS deputy project manager Jody Singer, of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said Tuesday during a presentation at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ SPACE 2012 conference in Pasadena, Calif.   "But again, I'd caution you, because we still are working on our contracts and where we're going," Singer added. "Plus we're in the development phase, and you really have to have a little bit more of a steady-state flight launch to be able to get the more efficient launch rate. But that's the number we're using right now."   NASA's next big rocket   NASA unveiled the SLS just two months after the last flight of its venerable space shuttle program, which was grounded in July 2011 after 30 years of orbital service.   But the giant rocket and the capsule it will loft — known as the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle — are not a replacement for the space shuttle. That space-taxi role will be filled by private American spaceships, which NASA is grooming to be ready to carry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit by 2017.   The SLS-Orion combo, on the other hand, is a deep space transportation system. In 2010, President Barack Obama charged NASA with getting astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s, and SLS-Orion is how NASA will try to make that happen.   The first test flight of the SLS is slated for 2017, and NASA hopes the rocket will begin lofting astronauts in 2021.   If the SLS is able to meet the $500 million target, it would end up being cheaper to fly than the space shuttle. The shuttle program cost about $209 billion (in 2010 dollars) over its lifetime and made a total of 135 flights, yielding an average cost per launch of more than $1.5 billion.   Two or three flights per year   In its initial incarnation, the SLS will be capable of lifting 70 metric tons of payload. But NASA eventually plans to build several variants of the rocket, allowing it to carry 105 tons in one configuration and 130 tons in another.   "We can move from one configuration to the other configuration with not a lot of cost," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said Tuesday at the SPACE 2012 conference.   "It's clear for the Mars missions that we talk about, we're going to need the 130 metric ton capability," Gerstenmaier added. "For a lot of other missions — from the science missions, et cetera — they can really be supported well with the 105 metric ton capability rocket."   NASA is also aiming to launch the SLS-Orion combo two or three times per year eventually, Gerstenmaier said. That rate should be sufficient to take care of the agency's human spaceflight business beyond Earth orbit, and it will help keep costs down.   "We don't want to build a huge infrastructure that supports a very high flight rate — then it'd cost us a lot if we're at substantially less than that flight rate," Gerstenmaier said.   NASA dishes on its 3 space taxi picks Report tells why firms won funds - and one did not   James Dean – Florida Today   SpaceX has the cheapest plan for developing a commercial space taxi, while The Boeing Co. has the strongest technical approach, according to a NASA evaluation of their proposals.   Sierra Nevada Corp.’s mini-shuttle offers a promising alternative to the two capsules but must overcome the most technical challenges, NASA determined.   In a 13-page report released recently, the agency explained why it awarded those three firms up to $1.1 billion to complete designs of private rockets and spacecraft that could fly astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017.   “In short, Boeing and SpaceX had the best proposals, followed by SNC,” wrote Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA’s human space program, who signed off on the selections July 31.   NASA announced Aug. 3 that it had awarded Boeing $460 million, SpaceX $440 million and Sierra Nevada $212.5 million for work to be performed through May 2014.   ATK, the only other firm considered from a pool of seven applicants, made the weakest proposal technically and received no funding.   “The proposal lacked enough detail to determine if a safe crew transportation system could be developed in a timely and cost effective manner out of the heritage components ATK selected for this concept,” Gerstenmaier wrote.   An evaluation panel found SpaceX’s technical plan also lacked detail, warranting only a “medium” confidence rating. But Gerstenmaier said the company’s experience flying cargo to the International Space Station under a NASA contract would give it an advantage when upgrading its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for crewed flight.   Gerstenmaier credited Boeing for a comprehensive, step-by-step design approach that effectively integrates heritage subsystems into its CST-100 capsule, while noting that the company had proposed the least private investment.   NASA has not disclosed how much each company plans to invest in the development effort, but said “Boeing as a corporation contributed less to this activity than any offeror.”   Sierra Nevada received “medium” confidence ratings for both its business case and technical approach. Gerstenmaier said the greater design complexity of its winged Dream Chaser presented “significant risks” —including its heat shield, weight, abort capabilities and use of non-toxic propellants — that could impact costs.   At the same time, the vehicle would give crews and sensitive cargo a gentler ride through the atmosphere and softer landing that could help attract more customers.   NASA did not have enough funding to make major awards to three companies. So Gerstenmaier weighed whether a smaller award for Sierra Nevada would limit the other two companies’ progress. He decided that keeping a third option in play preserved a potentially valuable capability and supported a more open competition in case Boeing or SpaceX encountered a significant setback.   The approach, he said, “allows for the development of fundamentally different concepts with distinct advantages in a cost-effective manner.”   Space Florida approves funds to work KSC sites   James Dean - Florida Today   Space Florida’s board on Wednesday approved funding to modernize a former shuttle hangar for use by The Boeing Co. and for work that could lead to the acquisition of the shuttle runway and other Kennedy Space Center property to support commercial space operations.   “We have several specific sites in mind that we want to pursue, one of which I don’t mind commenting on, is the Shuttle Landing Facility,” said Space Florida President Frank DiBello.   Under a unanimously approved resolution, up to $2.3 million could be spent to perform environmental reviews, land surveys, title searches and other activity that DiBello said could expedite or encourage the transfer of U.S. government property to the state to advance commercial space opportunities.   Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, the head of Space Florida’s board, said such work would increase the state’s flexibility to attract new commercial business, as it did when it acquired a shuttle hangar, Orbiter Processing Facility-3, where Boeing plans to assemble a private space capsule.   The board had previously approved $5 million to demolish old infrastructure inside the hangar, work that has just begun.   On Wednesday, it approved another $5 million for the project’s second modernization phase. The funding comes from the Florida Department of Transportation’s budget for space-related infrastructure improvements.   Explaining the benefit of the $2.3 million for environmental and other surveys, Carroll said it might help, for example, a company seeking a launch pad exclusively for commercial missions that would not be delayed by military and other government launches.   No specific company was named, but the scenario fits SpaceX, which is assessing the suitability of a location on Texas’ Gulf Coast for a commercial launch site that would complement its existing Cape Canaveral pad.   KSC has been seeking commercial and government partners to take over facilities it no longer needs.   DiBello must submit a proposal to NASA and the U.S. Department of Transportation detailing sites it is interested in acquiring and the benefits to the federal government.   Countdown to Endeavour: Tickets for final takeoff going for $90   Richard Simon - Los Angeles Times   The countdown has begun for delivery of the retired space shuttle Endeavour to Los Angeles, the last orbiter that will fly out of Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a jet.   L.A.’s welcome of the Endeavour is shaping up as splashier than Kennedy Space Center’s farewell. L.A. is promising a marching band, among other fanfare, fitting for the spectacle of a space shuttle traveling through the city streets; the program at Kennedy Space Center (expect speeches) is still being put together.   Still, Kennedy Space Center’s visitors complex is selling tickets -- $90 for adults, including admission to the visitor complex -- to view the Endeavour’s final departure Sept. 17 from near where shuttles landed after completing their missions. Or, visitors who pay the complex’s $50 admission charge can watch the modified 747 carrying the shuttle fly 300 feet over their heads from the complex’s rocket garden.   The plane carrying the shuttle is due to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport on Sept. 20, weather permitting, after a flyover of the region.   NASA is now considering flying the Endeavour over other cities on its way to L.A.; the space shuttle Discovery's flyover of Washington -- en route to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum -- drew big crowds in April. The space agency is expected to announce the route later this week for Endeavour’s cross-country journey.   The plane carrying the shuttle is scheduled to land Sept. 19 at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, home of NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center and a place where the Endeavour often landed on its own.  But no public events are planned there.   A NASA team and others involved in delivering 170,000-pound shuttles to New York  and Washington will be on hand at LAX to prepare the orbiter for the slow 12-mile trip through city streets to the  California  Science  Center; that journey will begin on the morning of Oct. 12.   The shuttle is due to arrive at the science center in Exposition Park on the night of Oct. 13. It will go on public display on Oct. 30.   The science center won the prized space artifact after a fierce nationwide competition.   The space shuttle Discovery and the test shuttle  Enterprise  are already drawing crowds at the National Air and Space Museum annex in northern Virginia and at New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, respectively.  The shuttle Atlantis, already at the Kennedy Space Center, will be towed a short distance in November to the visitor complex there and put on public display in July.   Since Discovery’s arrival, 655,239 people have visited the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center, about a 30% increase from the same period a year ago, according to the National Air and Space Museum spokeswoman.   Since the Space Shuttle Pavilion opened at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in mid-July, the museum has seen a nearly 59% increase in attendance for July and August compared to the same period a year ago, a spokesman said.   Space shuttle Endeavour stops in El Paso next week   Daniel Borunda - El Paso Times   The space shuttle Endeavour, riding on a modified 747, will make a stop in El Paso before flying low over the White Sands area and Las Cruces on Wednesday during the historic final shuttle ferry flight across the country, NASA officials said.   The shuttle's flight over the El Paso-Las Cruces region is part of the farewell flight for the space shuttle program.   Endeavour will ride piggyback on the 747 over NASA facilities on a journey from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Los Angeles, where the retired spaceship will go on display at its new home at the California Science Center.   The El Paso region has a lengthy history with the space shuttle program, including the landing of the space shuttle Columbia on the Alkali Flats at White Sands Space Harbor in 1982.   Over the decades, thousands of El Pasoans got to view space shuttles making travel stops at Biggs Army Airfield.   "I'm kind of sad to see the fleet being retired," said Richard Lopez, a former NASA electrical engineer who sits on the board of Insights El Paso Science Center.   Lopez plans to try to get a glimpse of the shuttle when it flies over El Paso in what he described as a bittersweet end to the shuttle program.   The shuttles "sure were workhorses," said Lopez, who worked for NASA for 25 years in Houston and White Sands. "They provided a lot of flights with a lot of good work from the crews. Now, we will rely on rockets going up with the Russians."   The shuttle's final cross-country flight will begin at sunrise Monday when the shuttle leaves the Kennedy Space Center.   The shuttle will fly over NASA sites on the Gulf Coast before landing at Ellington Field near the Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA, in a news release, said the shuttle will stay in Houston for a day and leave at sunrise on Wednesday.   Later that morning, the shuttle flight will make a refueling stop at Biggs Army Airfield.   The shuttle is expected to arrive in El Paso about 8:30 a.m., said Robert M. Cort, spokesman for the NASA White Sands Test Facility. The shuttle is expected to leave Biggs about 11 a.m., but times may change due to weather or delays.   Between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., the shuttle will fly north from Biggs Army Airfield and pass over White Sands Missile Range.   It will turn west over San Augustin Pass, fly over other NASA facilities and then fly along U.S. 70 over Las Cruces before gaining altitude and heading toward California.   "People seem to be very excited to see it one last time," Cort said.   The shuttle, which will stop for the night at Edwards Air Force Base in California, is scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport on Sept. 20.   Lopez, who helped the Insights children's science museum get its current space exhibit, was among the spectators when the shuttle landed at White Sands.   "It was an awesome sight," Lopez recalled. "The way it came in for the north to the landing strip, you could hear the sonic boom. You could see a little speck and it got bigger and bigger as the orbiter got closer. And it made a perfect landing.   "It is something that always stays with you," he said.   Flags Flown on 3 Spacecraft Set for Ceremonial Return   Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com   Hundreds of small flags that launched into space twice and flew aboard crewed spacecraft from three different countries, as well as two space stations, will be returned to the organization for which they were flown during an international ceremony held in Berlin.   On Friday, astronauts from Europe and China will join officials from their respective space agencies and from the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) for the handover of 300 flags that most recently returned from orbit  aboard China's Shenzhou 9 mission in June. The ceremony will take place during the ILA Berlin Air Show at Germany's Berlin Brandenburg Airport.   The blue and gold flags, which are unique for having flown on "all types of active manned spacecrafts in the world," traveled in Earth orbit for 444 days over the course of two extended missions. The flags' multi-vehicle journey, which began two years ago, before the United States retired its space shuttle fleet, commemorated the Federation's 60th anniversary.   "We started this initiative in line with IAF's mission to promote international cooperation for the advancement of human space activities," Federation president Berndt Feuerbacher said. "Our much and so well-traveled IAF flags are the perfect illustration of the truly global reach of our organization."   Around the world in three ways   The flags were first launched on Russia's Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft on Dec. 15, 2010, with Russian cosmonaut Dmitri Kondratyev of Roscosmos, NASA's Cady Coleman and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Paolo Nespoli. The three crewmates then brought the flags aboard the International Space Station (ISS), where they remained for five months.   The cloth banners then returned to Earth aboard NASA's space shuttle Endeavour, landing on the spacecraft's final mission, STS-134, on June 1, 2011. The same day that the flags are returned to the IAF in Berlin, Endeavour will be mounted to a jumbo jet in Florida for its delivery to Los Angeles and the California Science Center for display.   The flags, soon after their first landing from space, were flown on board a French space agency (CNES) organized parabolic flight, which exposed them to lunar and Martian gravity for brief periods, as well as weightlessness. ESA astronaut Jean-Fraçois Clervoy and Romanian astronaut Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu flew and floated with the flags on the Airbus A300 aircraft.   The IAF pennants' second journey in space began with the Sept. 29, 2011, liftoff of China's unmanned Tiangong 1 lab module. The flags were packed on the prototype space station, and orbited the Earth unattended while waiting for the arrival of China's fourth piloted capsule and the first to include a female astronaut on the crew, Shenzhou 9.   The Shenzhou 9 mission made Chinese history with the docking of the piloted capsule with Tiangong 1. The nearly 13-day flight was another first for the nation's burgeoning human spaceflight program.   Last stop   Liu Wang, who lived on board the Tiangong 1 module with Shenzhou 9's commander Jing Haipeng and China's first woman in space Liu Yang, will attend the Berlin ceremony to present the flown flags back to Feuerbacher.   The ceremony will be the flags' last stop before they are distributed to IAF member organizations to thank them for their support of the federation. Their final handover will be during the International Astronautical Congress to be held next month in Naples, Italy.   Founded in 1951 to re-establish communications between scientists on both sides of the Cold War, the International Astronautical Federation is now the world's leading space advocacy organization with 226 members in 59 countries, including members in leading agencies, space companies, societies, associations and institutes worldwide.   Russia May Seek Moon Base for Exploration, Deputy Premier Says   Henry Meyer - Bloomberg News   Russia should set up a permanent moon base as a launch-pad for space exploration, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said.   “Russian astronauts learned how to function in conditions of zero gravity, work in orbit and carry out necessary experiments there,” Rogozin, who is in charge of industry, defense and the space sector, told state-run Vesti-FM radio today. “Why not set up a large base on the moon as a launch-pad for further leaps in science?”   The Russian government is planning to spend 650 billion rubles ($20.5 billion) between 2012 and 2015 to develop the country’s space program. Russia is talking to NASA and the European Space Agency about participating in two Mars expeditions in 2016 and 2018, the Russian space agency chief, Vladimir Popovkin, said in November.   Over the next decade, Russia will focus on the moon, with a manned mission planned for 2020-2025, Popovkin said. A manned Mars expedition may be possible after 2030, he added.   Newt Gingrich, who lost his bid for the Republican nomination for U.S. president this year, had promised to set up a permament moon base by the end of his second term if elected to the White House.   Shuttle pilots at Reno Air Races recall Neil Armstrong   Guy Clifton - Reno Gazette-Journal   Even as pilots Hoot Gibson and Curt Brown focus on racing at the Reno National Championship Air Races today, a piece of their heart will be at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where the nation will say a public goodbye to astronaut Neil Armstrong.   Gibson and Brown, who are competing this week in the Unlimited Class, are among the nation’s few aviators to go into space, each as space shuttle astronauts. Each reflected this week on what Armstrong meant to them personally and to aviation in general.   Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and the man who uttered the iconic phrase, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” died Aug. 25 at age 82.   “I feel really fortunate that I got to know Neil really well and to spend quite a bit of time with him,” said Gibson, who was part of the first class of space shuttle astronauts in 1978. “I’ll never forget one of the things they did for us was bring in virtually every prior crew and have them brief us. So we had a briefing with Neil and Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin.   “Then over the years, I had a number of times I bumped into him. He would come by to see me at Reno every time he was out here.”   Gibson said Armstrong, a very private person, often came to the Reno Air Races unannounced. “He’d be wearing a ballcap and sunglasses, and people didn’t generally recognize him,” Gibson said. “He would make a point of coming by to say hi to me.”   Brown, who was part of six space shuttle missions into space, said Armstrong was an unselfish person and “the perfect role model” as both an astronaut and a professional.   “He didn’t do all his accomplishments to get his name in lights,” Brown said. “He did them because he thought they were important. He was the first one to say it takes a team to do all that. It takes a team to go to the moon. It takes a team to go into space. He wanted all the team to get the credit, not him.”   Brown became acquainted with Armstrong in 1998, when Brown commanded the shuttle mission that returned astronaut John Glenn to space, making him, at age 77, the oldest person to go into space.   “Neil was my secret hero,” Brown said. “He was the kind of guy you want to emulate.”   Gibson agreed: “Neil meant so much to the space program because I think he was the perfect man to be the first man to walk on the moon. He handled that in a way that was very dignified and very helpful to the space program. It never went to his head. Nothing he ever did went to his head. He was just a very down-to-earth person.”   On Sunday, seven past inductees in the National Aviation Hall of Fame will be at the air races to assist in renaming the National Aviation Heritage Invitational Trophy in honor of Armstrong. They include World War II ace Bud Anderson, legendary test pilot Bob Hoover, Southwest Airlines founder and former CEO Herb Kelleher, business aviation icon Clay Lacy, record-setting pilot Dick Rutan and aerobatic champions and air show performers Sean Tucker and Patty Wagstaff.   Armstrong, a former Navy fighter pilot, test pilot and engineer in addition to being an astronaut, was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1979.   “Going way back to the Heritage Invitational’s founding some 14 years ago, Neil often returned to Reno to assist his fellow Hall of Fame enshrinees in personally handing the winning aircraft owners’ their awards,” said Ron Kaplan, hall of fame enshrinement director and deputy director of the invitational. “We’re gratified to unveil this prestigious and very appropriately renamed trophy in honor of such a hero of flight, at an aviation event Neil loved to be a part of. It’s certainly bittersweet, but I know he will be with us in spirit.”   50 years ago, Kennedy reached for stars in historic Rice address   Douglas Brinkley - Houston Chronicle (Commentary)   (Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University and author of "Cronkite.")   What a glorious day it was when President John F. Kennedy took the podium at Rice University at 10 a.m. on Sept. 12, 1962, 50 years ago this week, to thunderous applause from over 40,000 enthusiastic spectators. Although the humidity was doing its stuffy best to tamp down the fun, attendees madly fanning themselves while wiping perspiration from their brows with handkerchiefs, hopes were high that Kennedy would inspire a new generation to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. The success of Mercury astronauts - Alan Shepard on Freedom 7, Gus Grissom on Liberty Bell 7, John Glenn on Friendship 7, and Scott Carpenter on Atlas 7 - had fueled a public mania for all things NASA. Days before the Rice visit, Kennedy had visited the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and the NASA Launch Operations Center on Merritt Island in Florida. The press had called it - including his all-important stopover in Houston - Kennedy's Space Tour. He came to Houston to shift the space race from low to high gear. "NASA had great hopes that the Rice speech would generate a frenzied public demand to go to the moon," former director of the Johnson Space Center George Abbey said. "The stakes - congressional appropriation of funds - were high."   For NASA, Kennedy was the right president at the right time. Yet his decision to prioritize space exploration was surprising. As a U.S. senator from Massachusetts from 1953 to 1960, Kennedy seldom mentioned space. It wasn't his bailiwick. His primary national security concern was the missile gap with the Soviets. But when on April 12, 1961, the Kremlin announced that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had successfully orbited Earth, Kennedy - fueled with hubristic determination - grew defiant. He instructed his advisers to develop a space program that would guarantee "dramatic results" that could be rubbed in Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's face.   A few weeks later, NASA handed Kennedy a doable initiative that would shout U.S. space superiority so loudly that Lenin's bones would rattle from the grave: a lunar landing program. The successful orbits of U.S. astronaut John Glenn on Friendship 7 fueled Kennedy's ambition. Kennedy, an avatar of American exceptionalism, latched with zeal onto the mammoth idea of landing on the moon. His historic visit to Rice University would be the sell-job to the American public. "I think (Kennedy) became convinced that space was the symbol of the 20th century," White House science adviser Jerome Wiesner posited. "It was a decision he made cold-bloodedly. He thought it was good for the country."   Houston was the great beneficiary of Kennedy's decision to prioritize NASA's Project Apollo, which ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers $25.4 billion (about $150 billion today). How Houston won the NASA bid lays squarely on the shoulders of Rep. Albert Thomas. Anxious to bring pork dollars to Houston, he mercilessly lobbied the Kennedy administration for the Manned Spacecraft Center to come to his 8th Congressional District. Even before Kennedy's May 25, 1961, address to Congress where he famously said "I believe we should go to the moon," Thomas had invited key NASA officials to Houston to cut a deal. George Brown, of Houston's Brown & Root construction company, also made an irresistible pitch for the new manned spacecraft center. Cognizant that NASA coming to Houston would be a local jobs engine, Brown, chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees, offered NASA 1,000 acres of wildlife-rich pasture at Clear Lake that Humble Oil had recently donated to the university. NASA's key location requirement was that the space center had to have a "mild climate permitting year-round, ice-free water transportation; and permitting out-of-door work for most of the year." Houston, a gateway to the Gulf of Mexico, easily fit this criterion.   Brown, a huge Houston booster, had been a longtime financial supporter of Vice President Lyndon Johnson. That gave the Houstonian an inside track with the Kennedy administration. The president owed Texas something, it seemed, for delivering 24 electoral votes to him in his razor-close 1960 White House race against Republican nominee Richard Nixon. Without Texas, it's safe to say, JFK wouldn't have been president. Rep. Thomas, a master Capitol Hill operator, saw how to close the deal. Throughout 1962, Thomas refused to support a few Kennedy-backed bills pending before Congress. A quid pro quo was in the offing. In full Machiavelli mode, Kennedy casually told the congressman that NASA head James Webb was "thinking of building a manned space center, perhaps - only perhaps - in Houston." But Kennedy it seemed first needed support for his pending bills. With a calculated change of heart, Rep. Thomas supported Kennedy's bills, and in return Kennedy rewarded Houston with the Manned Spacecraft Center (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center after LBJ died in 1973).   The stage was set for Kennedy to come to Rice University, which had donated the Clear Lake land to NASA, to deliver a motivational speech about space exploration. The most frequently quoted line from the address -"We choose to go to the moon!" - caused the stadium to erupt in raucous cheers, as if the Owls had scored a touchdown. A copy of the speech is now on display at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. The document is particularly interesting because of Kennedy's handwritten additions, including his famous rationale for moon exploration: "Why does Rice play Texas?"   Kennedy's oration was front-page news around the country. Pundits saw it as another Ted Sorenson-penned speech drenched in terrestrial aspiration. But for all of its soaring rhetoric, the Rice address was grounded in pragmatism. Kennedy made the case to taxpayers that NASA needed a $5.4 billion budget. Kennedy also did a tremendous job of connecting the moonshot to Houston in ways that thrilled locals. "We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength," he said. "And we stand in awe of all three." What Kennedy did so brilliantly that day was frame the moonshot as being instrumental for U.S. security reasons.   The Rice speech has lived on in history because in it Kennedy threw down the gauntlet that America would land on the moon before the decade's end. And he posed an exciting challenge to the nation. "Many years ago, the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it," Kennedy concluded. "He said, 'Because it is there.' Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."   Following the Rice speech, Kennedy toured the new Manned Spacecraft Center site in Houston. Within months, the address grew in stature. Clips from it have been played so many times on TV that many people are tricked into thinking they remembered the speech's importance at the time it was given. In 2001, I was lucky enough to interview Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong about the impact Kennedy's words had on him personally. He offered a cautionary quote. "I certainly remember it," he said of the Rice speech, "but it's a bit hazy because I've heard recordings of it so many times since, that you're not certain whether you're remembering or you're remembering what you're remembering. … And, of course, it's been colored by the fact I read so many stories of how that process actually occurred and what led to his conclusion to do that."   Historian Daniel J. Boorstin has correctly written that Kennedy championed "public discovery" via NASA. Kennedy's Rice address represents the oratorical high mark of this outreach. On the very day that Kennedy was killed in November 1963, he was preparing to deliver a major address at Dallas Trade Mart about the need to fund lunar exploration.   The magnitude of the Rice speech only hit home on July 24, 1969, when the Apollo 11 command module Columbia successfully splashed into the Pacific, making Kennedy a can-do visionary. At Apollo Mission Control in Houston, on the big electronic board, just after the astronauts were retrieved from sea, was posted Kennedy's goal for the world to read. It was mission accomplished. As a last tribute, Cape Canaveral was renamed, at Jackie Kennedy's request, the John F. Kennedy Space Center.   Will America produce future Neil Armstrongs?   Chris Carberry - Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star (Commentary)   (Carberry is executive director of Explore Mars Inc., which promotes science and technology with Mars-exploration applications)   In the days after his Aug. 25 passing, praises for Neil Armstrong flooded newspapers, blogs, social media sites, TV screens, and radio stations. Both President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney extolled the life of the first man to step on the moon.   But would either Obama or Romney enable future Americans to follow in Neil Armstrong's footsteps?   That question is particularly relevant today, the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's "moon speech" at Houston's Rice University. There, he famously proclaimed, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ." Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that we did land astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade in which JFK spoke.   Now, we live in very different times. The motivating force behind the Apollo program--beating the Soviet Union to the moon--no longer exists, and a presidential speech will not suffice to provide the political support required to go back to the moon or to send astronauts to Mars.   After all, we have had several presidents since JFK propose returning to the moon or venturing to Mars, including George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Obama. These programs lacked (or lack) the political will and/or budgetary support--never mind the mission focus--to succeed.   However, budgetary reality and growing commercial competition have created what could be a unique opportunity to revitalize America's human space-flight program. Several well-regarded mission concepts are under discussion in the space community that could get us back to the moon or to other destinations--an asteroid, the moons of Mars, or even the Martian surface--within the next two decades. Many of these plans aim to maximize efficiency and keep down costs.   Our government may be unable to agree on tax policy, Medicare, Social Security reform, social issues, foreign policy, or much of anything, but at a modest portion of the budget (less than half of 1 percent) Congress and the president could, in a bipartisan gesture, commit to something inspirational. If whoever is inaugurated in January 2013 were to work with GOP and Democratic legislators, a sustainable plan for getting humans to Mars by 2030 could be launched.   Such a mission would represent more than a scientific, technological, economic, and educational boost; it also could provide something equally important.   The United States seems to have been psychologically and emotionally adrift for several years. We lack big dreams, and this has affected our national outlook. Past achievements do not resonate as before. The heroes of Neil Armstrong's Apollo are not nearly as relevant to students today as even a decade ago. Apollo is something from a different time--seemingly irrelevant to young people's lives.   This is very sad, and at the same time revealing of what ails the country. The individuals whom we look up to as national heroes reflect our aspirations. Whom do we see as heroes today? While celebrities and sports figures have always been revered, in the past we had another set of heroes--real heroes who symbolized a positive and limitless future.   Such people seem absent today. While generating national heroes is not the primary purpose or benefit of manned Mars missions, it would be a byproduct of such missions.   We must decide what we want to be as a nation.   Another milestone is occurring this year. Dec. 14 is the 40th anniversary of the day that our final lunar crew, on Apollo 17, ascended from the surface of the moon. I passionately hope that this date will not represent the end of America's human exploration of other worlds.   If it does, Neil Armstrong's accomplishments will be relegated to the glories of the past rather than standing as an inspirational symbol of the future.   Mars' Children: Who will be the first human to walk on Mars?   Zahaan Bharmal - The Guardian (Commentary)   (Bharmal works for Google in London and is the founder of www.youtube.com/spacelab)   There comes a day in a man's life, a sad day, when he realises he will never fulfil his childhood ambition of becoming an astronaut.  For me, that day was August 6th this year, as I watched in awe as Curiosity touched down on Mars.   Curiosity will, I hope, not be the last rocket to travel to Mars. It will lead to another rocket, and another, that will eventually lead to the first manned mission to Mars. The first human footprint on another planet.   The sad truth, that struck me watching Curiosity land, is that these footprints will never be mine. I am too old.  The first man or woman to one day walk on Mars is, today, a child. They are a young boy or girl, most likely a teenager sitting in a classroom somewhere in the world.   Their journey to Mars will not be easy. After years of budget cuts and waning political will, the future of manned space travel hangs perilously. This year marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17, the last time a human being stood on another celestial body. As the world mourns Neil Armstrong, it is hard not to feel pessimistic.   There are, however, two powerful forces at play that may help these children get to Mars. The first is the increasing democratisation of space, a new space economy where the private sector is giving more people access to space. The second is an increasingly connected world, with unparalleled opportunities for learning, collaborating and the sharing of ideas online.   These two forces, when harnessed and combined, have tremendous potential as demonstrated by a recent Google initiative called YouTube Space Lab – a global competition giving teenagers the opportunity to design a science experiment that could be carried out on board the International Space Station.   Thousands of students, from 80 different countries around the world, submitted their experiment ideas for microgravity in the form of short videos uploaded on YouTube. Professor Stephen Hawking and other world-renowned scientists, along with astronauts, educators and millions of people on YouTube watched and voted for their favourite ideas – the two winning experiments have now been sent to space.   Amr Mohammed is 18 and from Alexandria, Egypt. He wants to see whether the Zebra jumping spider will be able to adapt to microgravity to catch its prey, overcoming millions of years of evolutionary instinct. This may one day help us better understand how our own bodies can adapt to the rigours of inter-planetary travel.   Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma are both 16 and from Troy, Michigan. They want to know whether the probiotic bacterium, Bacillus subtilis, will become more virulent in space. This kind of research could help us develop new ways to fight superbugs on Earth.   This Thursday from 3:30pm BST – as the ISS soars through space, 250 miles above the Earth – the results of these two experiments will be broadcast live on YouTube, for you and the whole world to see.   Amr, Dorothy and Sara - as well as the thousands who entered Space Lab - represent the future of the space programme. Their potential was always there. But they have been now given an opportunity to begin a journey that may well lead to new worlds beyond our own. Space, and its future, can be for them.   I will never get to Mars. But there are children out there today who, with a little inspiration, one day just might.   Find better rocket launch site on Texas Gulf coast   Beaumont Enterprise (Editorial)   The Texas Gulf coast has miles and miles of acreage with few people - or plants and animals. Unfortunately, however, a private space company has decided it wants to launch rockets from a site surrounded by a wildlife refuge and almost adjacent to a beach where endangered sea turtles nest.   It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's wrong with that. If SpaceX won't reconsider its proposed site on Boca Chica Beach, between Padre Island and the mouth of the Rio Grande, the Federal Aviation Administration should do it for them.   Innovative companies like SpaceX should be encouraged by state officials in every realistic way. But the welcome mat doesn't have to cover basic environmental protections.   A wildlife refuge simply should not be subjected to the noise, fumes and potential accidents or fuel spills from rocket launches.   There are more acceptable sites on our coast, and SpaceX needs to start looking for them and fair resolution of this dispute.   MEANWHILE ON MARS...   Robot arm tests nearly complete, Curiosity set to resume roving   William Harwood - CBS News   Engineers testing the Curiosity Mars rover are wrapping up a series of robot arm calibration and motion tests before resuming a slow trek toward a nearby rock formation this weekend, on the lookout for a suitable stone to reach out and touch in an initial round of "contact science," officials said Wednesday.   The goal is to make sure the arm can precisely position a sensitive camera and an X-ray spectrometer as required for "hands on" geological observations, including eventual operations with a sample scoop and a compact drill. With the tests nearly complete, the arm has performed in near flawless fashion.   "It's sol (martian day) 37 on Curiosity on Mars and she is currently sleeping but is very healthy and preparing to complete her absolute final day of characterization activity," Mission Manager Jennifer Trosper told reporters Wednesday afternoon.   "We've been talking about these characterization activities since we landed. (These are) early mission checkouts we use to incrementally test out the capabilities of the rover and that checkout period is for the purpose of fully commissioning Curiosity for the science mission. The success so far of these activities has been outstanding. Throughout every phase of the checkouts, Curiosity has performed almost flawlessly."   Curiosity landed on the floor of Gale Crater on Aug. 6. Engineers spent the first 16 days of the mission deploying various appendages, testing the rover's communications systems, updating its operating system software and checking out its instruments and updated motor control software.   Curiosity then began remotely inspecting rocks at its landing site before beginning a short, but time-consuming, drive to an area known as Glenelg where three different types of rocks come together. After covering the length of a football field or so, the rover paused last week for a series of robot arm tests. If the final checks go well, commands will be uplinked to resume the 1,300-foot trip to Glenelg.   "Over the last week, we have essentially completed all but one of the robotic arm checkout activities," Trosper said. "From an engineering perspective, we were able to confirm our ability to move the arm to all our calibration targets as well as ... key locations on the rover where we need to move the arm in order to perform operations, particularly sampling."   Assuming a final test Thursday goes well, the plan Friday is to "drive, drive, drive until the science team finds the desired rock where we want to perform the first contact science observations with MAHLI and the APXS instrument," she said, referring to the Mars Hand Lens Imager and the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, both mounted in a turret on the end of the robot arm.   Engineers initially predicted it would take 25 sols to complete the initial checkouts "and it's taken us 26," Trosper said. "So, not bad.   Compared to earlier rovers, Curiosity initial progress is especially promising. For the Pathfinder mission, engineers typically lost about one in three sols where "we wouldn't accomplish what we intended to for some reason or another," Trosper said. "On Spirit and Opportunity, during the prime mission our loss-of-sol rate was about one in 10 sols.   "Now on (Curiosity), we're doing even better than that, being only one sol behind our original plan after 36 sols of operations," Trosper said. "So, I think this is a great indication of the enormous amount of science exploration this rover's going to be able to do over the course of its two-year lifetime."   NASA unveiled striking new photographs Wednesday, including a panorama shot by the MAHLI camera at near ground level showing the undercarriage of the rover with its eventual target -- Mount Sharp -- rising in the background. Other photos showed covers opening and closing on the rover's upper deck exposing inlets where soil samples eventually will be deposited into a sophisticated analytical instrument.   The MAHLI camera also captured an extreme closeup view of a 1909 penny that serves as a calibration target. Tiny dust grains blown up onto the spacecraft by its landing rockets are clearly visible. The resolution of the closeup image is 25 microns per pixel. If the camera can be positioned close enough to a potential target, that resolution could improve to 14 microns per pixel.   With the robot arm tests virtually complete, "we're headed towards Glenelg and we're trying to get to a location where we would find a rock to do contact science on," Trosper said. "So we will drive until the science team finds that rock, then we will stop and position the rover to do the contract science with APXS and MAHLI.   "Then we will continue to drive to another location, hopefully a sandy location where we can begin to scoop. That would be a few weeks after we get to the location for contact science and that's kind of our first sampling experience."   After initial scoop tests and sample collection runs, the final remaining hurdle will be to check out Curiosity's arm-mounted rock drill, which will be used to collect samples from the interiors of targeted rocks.   Mars rover Curiosity wrapping up health checkups   Associated Press   The Mars rover Curiosity is preparing to roll again after it completes its health checkups this week, project managers said Wednesday.   Since landing in an ancient crater near the Martian equator Aug. 5, the car-size rover has trekked more than the length of a football field, leaving wheel tracks in the soil that could be spied from space.   The most high-tech rover sent to the red planet, it spent the past month testing its instruments before embarking on a mission to examine whether the environment could have been hospitable to microbial life.   Mission manager Jennifer Trosper said the six-wheel Curiosity has "performed almost flawlessly" so far.   It still has to do a final check of its robotic arm and aim its camera to track one of Mars' moons, Phobos, passing in front of the sun before hitting the road Friday night.   "The plan is to drive, drive, drive," said Trosper of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission.   Curiosity is headed toward a spot called Glenelg where three types of terrain meet. Along the way, it will select rocks to study up close and scoop up soil. So far, the rover has used its laser to zap at rocks several feet away. Within a month or so, it plans to use its robotic arm to drill into rocks.   The rover's ultimate destination is Mount Sharp, a mountain rising from the crater floor, but it was not expected to journey there until the end of the year. From orbit, the base appeared to contain signs of past water, providing a starting point to search for the chemical building blocks of life.   Not so moist Mars: Clays may come from lava, not lakes   Lisa Grossman - New Scientist   Hunting for Martians may be a tougher task than predicted. Clays, long thought to be a sure sign of a warmer and wetter past on the Red Planet, could merely signal earlier volcanic activity – which would have made some regions on Mars less favourable for life.   Clay layers found across Mars suggest that during the Noachian period, from about 4.2 billion to 3.5 billion years ago, the planet was warm enough to host liquid water – necessary for life as we know it.   Scientists thought Mars clays could have formed in one of two ways: through soil interacting with standing water on the surface, or from water bubbling up from below via hydrothermal vents.   "Both of those would have created habitats that would have supported microbes," says study co-author Bethany Ehlmann of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "On Earth, microbes would have been thriving away, enjoying themselves."   Thick history   But a new analysis of Martian meteorites hints that some clays may not have formed the way we think.   Alain Meunier of the University of Poitiers in France has found that some Mars minerals from the Noachian period are a good chemical match to clays at the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, which formed from cooling of water-rich lava.   What's more, these ancient Martian clays can be up to hundreds of metres thick, which is more likely to be associated with lava flows than soil interacting with water.   "Such a result would imply that early Mars may not have been as habitable as previously thought at the time when Earth's life was taking hold," wrote Brian Hynek of the University of Colorado in Boulder, who was not involved in the new work, in an accompanying commentary.   Tastes of lava   One way to confirm where Mars clays came from is to check the soil texture with a high-resolution microscope.   "Under each of those scenarios, there are particular characteristics of texture," Ehlmann says.   NASA's Curiosity rover has spent about a month in Gale Crater near the Martian equator, which holds a wealth of clay minerals. Curiosity has an onboard microscope, but it's not quite good enough to make the distinction.   Another option would be to do chemical analyses and look for certain rare-earth elements. But that would require a mission capable of returning pristine samples to Earth.   Still, Ehlmann is not worried about Curiosity's chances of finding clays made by liquid water. Gale Crater's morphology – the fact that "it was a big deep hole in the ground" – fits better with the theory that it was a lake, not a volcano.   "I think Gale is a different flavour of Mars," Ehlmann says. "If we wanted to test out this hypothesis, we'd head elsewhere."   Early Mars Maybe Not So Wet New study could impact the odds that life had a chance to take hold on the Red Planet   Irene Klotz - Discovery News   Early Mars may not have been as warm or wet as scientists suspect, a finding which could impact the likelihood that the Red Planet was capable of evolving life at the time when it was getting started on Earth.   A new study presents an alternative explanation for the prevalence of Mars' ancient clay minerals, which on Earth most often result from water chemically reacting with rock over long periods of time. The process is believed to be a starting point for life.   The clays, also known as phyllosilocates, are among the strongest pieces of evidence for a Mars that once was warmer, wetter and much more like Earth than the cold, dry, acidic desert which appears today.   Data collected by orbiting spacecraft show Mars' clay minerals may instead trace their origin to water-rich volcanic magma, similar to how clays formed on the Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia and in the Parana basin in Brazil. That process doesn't need standing bodies of liquid water.   "The infrared spectra we got in the lab (on Mururoa clays) using a reflected beam are astonishingly similar to that obtained on Mars by the orbiters," lead researcher Alain Meunier, with the University of Poitiers in France, wrote in an email to Discovery News.   The team also points out that some of the Mars meteorites recovered on Earth do not have a chemistry history that supports standing liquid water.   But even if Mars was not as warm or wet as scientists have theorized, that doesn't close the door on the possibility of life.   The clays, for example, could have still hosted the early chemical reactions for life, even if they did not themselves form from standing bodies of water.   "On Earth, we think clay minerals were pretty important in the origin of life because the structure of them and the water they hold and the elements that are within them seem to be good things to develop RNA and we get to DNA from that," planetary scientist Brian Hynek, with the University of Colorado at Boulder, told Discovery News.   "Since we find clays all over Mars from the same time period, it's been thought that these are important for the question of habitability, and they certainly are. But the clays are just one piece of the puzzle," he said.   For example, the fingerprints of water have been found in other minerals on Mars, though that water seems to have been more acidic.   "That's a challenge for life, but we certainly have a lot of examples of life living in very acidic places on Earth," Hynek said.   The first direct measurements of clay minerals on Mars are expected soon. NASA's Opportunity rover is making its way to suspected clays on the rim of a crater, while on the other side of the planet the roving chemistry lab Curiosity is beginning a two-year mission that will head to Martian clays near the foot of a mountain next year.   The research appears in this week's Nature Geoscience.   New Mars Theory Questions Red Planet's Watery Past   Nola Taylor Redd - Space.com   In the past decade, astronomers have observed clay materials on Mars that seem to indicate large bodies of water once filled the Martian surface. But new research suggests that magma could form some of these slick deposits rapidly, and ancient Mars may not have been as wet as we thought.   A region of French Polynesia has similar deposits of these strange clays, which scientists found were formed by cooling magma rather than water.   "It was the first time that clays were shown to originate from another process than aqueous alteration," researcher Alain Meunier, of the Université de Poitiers in France, told SPACE.com by email. "The consequence was that, even if clays need water to be formed, this does not mean that they need liquid water."   Since water is thought to be essential for all life, the Martian clay findings complicate the question of whether early Mars was likely to have been hospitable to life.   Water vs. magma   Along riverbeds, near glaciers, and near oceans, clays on Earth tend to appear near sources of water. Layers of rock gradually weather away, their chemicals transported and mixing to form clay. The process takes time, and so the presence of clays on Mars would seem to indicate relatively long-standing bodies of water, such as oceans, lakes, and streams.   But four years ago, Meunier, working with a group of geologists, found that clays at the Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia formed quickly with cooling magma rather than slowly with cold ocean water. As the magma cooled, small voids inside of the solidifying lava behaved as tiny pressure-cookers, forming the last generation of minerals, including clays. The iron-rich clays found at this Pacific Ocean atoll are similar in composition to some Martian mineral mixes.   The only samples on Earth that originated on the Martian surface come from rocks blown from the Red Planet long ago that traveled through space to our world. One such sample is the Lafayette Meteorite, a rock of unknown origin that was found in the archives of Purdue University and not identified as of Martian origin until 1931. Studying the meteorite with an eye toward the formation processes at Moruroa, Meunier's team, which included several geologists from the French-Polynesian group, found a number of similarities.   "The authors demonstrate pretty convincing evidence that some of the water that led to clay formation was derived from the magmatic gases," Brian Hynek of the University of Colorado told SPACE.com. Hynek, who was not involved in the research, wrote a commentary piece that appeared alongside the results, which were published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday (Sept. 9).   Drier surface conditions   The slick deposits on Mars provided a peek into the state of the surface early in the planet's history.   "Considering that clays witness the presence of liquid water, they implied that the physical conditions prevailing at the surface of the young planet were compatible with the liquid state," Meunier said.   Although Mars today is too cold for liquid water, with too thin of an atmosphere to hold onto it, the water-related formation of clays has been one of the indicators that early Mars was warmer and wetter.   "The possibility of a magmatic origin for clays changes these considerations," Meunier said.   But the results don't mean that early Mars was a barren desert. There are other signs that the young planet had water on its crust, including extensive river systems, lakes, and oceans.   Hyneck pointed out that that not all Martian meteorites show evidence of a magma-related formation. Furthermore, only a handful of samples have traveled to Earth from the Red Planet, and they only come from a narrow range of times and locations on Mars.   "I don't think this new research changes our general picture of early Mars," Hyneck said. "It just provides an additional mechanism for forming clay minerals."   A "stepping stone" for life   Because water is considered essential for living organisms to evolve, scientists think areas boasting clays could be good sites to search for life on Mars. But areas with magma-formed clays would be less ideal for hosting life.   "[This] clay formation process would have been quick and hot, and thus not good for biology," Hyneck said.   However, it's unlikely that all clays on Mars were created by the same process.   "As on Earth, clays probably formed in many different ways across the planet, and some of those are more favorable for biology."   Even in the unlikely scenario that all clays across Mars were created by cooling magma, the minerals they contain have been implicated in the early biochemical processes that led to RNA and DNA, the backbone of life as we know it. Their presence alone could be considered an important stepping stone for the earliest biological and chemical processes, according to Hyneck.   At the same time, early Mars was not the only time water lay on the surface.   "Liquid water has undoubtedly existed on Mars at a later epoch," Meunier said.   There are two NASA rovers currently exploring the Red Planet that are well situated to help further scientists' understanding of how the clays evolved. The Opportunity rover landed with its now-defunct sister rover Spirit in 2004, and continues to study Mars. The Mars rover Curiosity, which landed in August of 2012, is preparing to delve into the geological history of Mars.   "The Gale Crater, which will be explored by Curiosity, is a wonderful place to research the traces of the pre-biotic chemistry," Meunier said.   END    

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