9/16/12 news

          FERRY FLIGHT DELAYED: Endeavour’s departure from KSC has been delayed at least one day due to weather issues. That means one night in Houston at Ellington rather than two if departure is Tuesday. Weather will be briefed again at 10 am Central (11 EDT) Monday.   NASA TV: ·                     2:30 pm Central (3:30 EDT) – E32 Farewell/hatch closure coverage (closes 2:55) ·                     5:45 pm Central (6:45 EDT) – Soyuz TMA-04M undock coverage (undocks 6:09) ·                     8:30 pm Central (9:30 EDT) – Soyuz TMA-04M Deorbit & landing coverage ·                     8:56 pm Central (9:56 EDT) – Soyuz TMA-04M Deorbit burn ·                     9:53 pm Central (10:53 EDT) – Kazakhstan Landing (northern zone near Arkalyk)   Human Spaceflight News Sunday – September 16, 2012 Mated and backed out of the MDD, Endeavour now awaits a weather “go” for Ferry   HEADLINES AND LEADS   Record-Setting Female Astronaut Takes Command of Space Station   Tariq Malik - Space.com   NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who holds the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman, took charge of the International Space Station Saturday, becoming only the second female commander in the orbiting lab's 14-year history. Williams took charge of the space station from Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who is returning to Earth on Sunday after months commanding the outpost's six-person Expedition 32 crew. Williams launched to the station in July and will command its Expedition 33 crew before returning to Earth in November.   After return from ISS, crews take weeks to readjust Former Mel-High teacher rides home from space tonight   Todd Halvorson - Florida Today   U.S. astronaut Joe Acaba is scheduled to return to Earth today after four months in weightlessness, while flight medical officers launch a six-week effort to help him readjust to gravity. Acaba, who taught science at Melbourne High in 1999 and 2000, is scheduled to depart the International Space Station at 7:11 p.m. EDT today. Strapped into a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Acaba and two cosmonaut colleagues are supposed to start a supersonic atmospheric re-entry at 9:57 p.m. The three space explorers will hit the upper fringes of the atmosphere at an altitude of about 400,000 feet, and then they’ll begin feeling the first tugs of gravity after 125 days in space. Landing is slated for 10:53 p.m. in a remote desert in north-central Kazakhstan.   Supply Chain Seen Slowing NASA Capsule, Rocket Development   Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week   Prime contractors on NASA’s next-generation human space exploration vehicles are finding it unusually difficult to obtain the space-qualified electronics and other components they need to stay on schedule, a situation they say will likely get worse if there is instability in the space agency’s out-year funding for the projects. Testifying before the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee, Lockheed Martin Vice President and Orion Program Manager Cleon Lacefield said today that the lead times for radiation-hardened electronic parts and other specialized hardware is a major challenge for meeting schedule.   Space station spinoff could protect Mars-bound astronauts from radiation Superconducting technology developed for the ISS could protect humans on the way to the asteroids or Mars. But will it be worth the cost?   Technology Review (published by MIT)   It's hard to think of many spinoffs from the $100 billion project to build and launch the International Space Station. In fact, there is precious little done on the ISS that isn't focused on just keeping the thing in orbit. One exception is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which is designed, among other things, to determine whether cosmic ray particles are made of matter or antimatter.   Endeavour to head westward into retirement Monday   Justin Ray - SpaceflightNow.com   The space shuttle Endeavour begins her hopscotching trek across the southern United States on a ferryflight into retirement Monday, departing Kennedy Space Center at sunrise on a four-leg trek to reach the busy Los Angeles International Airport at noon Thursday. Along the way, the modified 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft hauling the spaceplane piggyback will stop for a Texas-sized reception in Houston, refuel in El Paso and make one last visit to Edwards Air Force Base, where Endeavour had landed 7 times to conclude spaceflights, before taking an aerial tour of California to fly over Sacramento, San Francisco and LA.   3 Space Station Astronauts to Return to Earth Tonight   Mike Wall - Space.com   Three astronauts are preparing to leave the International Space Station tonight, returning to Earth after a four-month stay aboard the huge orbiting lab. A Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin is slated to undock from the space station at 7:09 p.m. EDT (2309 GMT) tonight and land in the steppes of Kazakhstan nearly four hours later, at 10:53 p.m. EDT (0253 GMT Monday). The astronauts' departure will bring the space station's Expedition 32 to a close. Padalka commands the expedition, while Acaba and Revin serve as flight engineers. Padalka will hand the orbiting lab's reins over to NASA's Sunita Williams, commander of the new Expedition 33.   Shuttle Endeavour's final journey is carefully choreographed The 12-mile trip from LAX to the California Science Center will have more bumps than a flight into space, but crews have worked hard to smooth the path   Mike Anton - Los Angeles Times   A diva requires special handling and an entourage. Whatever the stage, the space shuttle Endeavour gets both. A constellation of engineers and assembly line workers designed and built the shuttle in Southern California. A universe of scientists hurled it into space on 25 missions. And in the coming weeks, after Endeavour is flown from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Los Angeles, a cast of hundreds of engineers, police officers and utility and construction workers will ferry the shuttle over city streets to the California Science Center, where it will be permanently displayed.   Statesville native eager to return to space   Preston Spencer - Winston-Salem Journal   It's only September, but Thomas Marshburn, a NASA astronaut, is already anticipating the holidays. The Statesville native is nearing the end of 2½ years of training at Johnson Space Center in Houston, prepping for a nearly half-year stay at the International Space Station. Marshburn graduated from Wake Forest University's Bowman Gray School of Medicine in 1989 and decided to pursue his interest in space. He became a flight surgeon at Johnson Space Center in Houston, and, in 2004, he was among 11 applicants chosen to be NASA astronauts.   Canadian ready to take helm of space station Countless hours of training and a zen-like perspective keep Chris Hadfield focused   Max Harrold - Montreal Gazette   How exactly does one train to be in charge of the $100-billion International Space Station, the most elaborate multinational engineering and scientific vehicle in history? Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who is to become the first Canadian to command the space station during the last half of a six month stint to begin on Dec. 5, gave reporters a good idea Thursday during a news conference broadcast from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, Texas, to the Canadian Space Agency in Longueuil.   Widow Says Spacey Attorney Took Her for $300,000   Cameron Langford - Courthouse News Service   An attorney defrauded a woman of $300,000 by claiming his company had a "special rocket engine" to "travel in space to a distant asteroid and mine precious metals," the woman claims in court.      Donna Beck sued Houston patent attorney Arthur Dula, his companies Excalibur Exploration Limited, Excalibur Limited, Excalibur Almaz Limited and Excalibur Almaz USA Inc., and Excalibur directors J. Buckner Hightower and Christopher Stott, in Harris County Court.      "Dula defrauded Beck by inducing her and her husband (since deceased) to advance $300,000, and later purchase an investment in Excalibur Exploration Limited, one of the Excalibur entities, with the fundamental false representation that the company had the technical expertise and associations to develop a business to fly the first commercial prospecting space flight to an asteroid," the complaint states.   Don't miss the chance for a last look at Endeavour   John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)   If all goes as planned, Monday will be the last time we see a space shuttle take off from Kennedy Space Center. Endeavour is set to leave the Shuttle Landing Facility at sunrise Monday riding piggyback on a modified 747 bound for its final resting place in Los Angeles. It's a last chance to see one of the intrepid spaceships aloft, another sentimental day in a seemingly years-long stretch of poignant moments for those of us who love the space shuttles. __________   COMPLETE STORIES   Record-Setting Female Astronaut Takes Command of Space Station   Tariq Malik - Space.com   NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who holds the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman, took charge of the International Space Station Saturday, becoming only the second female commander in the orbiting lab's 14-year history.   Williams took charge of the space station from Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who is returning to Earth on Sunday after months commanding the outpost's six-person Expedition 32 crew. Williams launched to the station in July and will command its Expedition 33 crew before returning to Earth in November.   "I would like to thank our [Expedition] 32 crewmates here who have taught us how to live and work in space, and of course to have a lot of fun up in space," Williams told Padalka during a change of command ceremony. She will officially take charge of the station on Sunday, after Padalka and two crewmates board their Soyuz spacecraft for the trip home.   Padalka, NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and cosmonaut Sergei Revin are scheduled to undock from the space station Sunday at 7:09 p.m. EDT (2309 GMT) and land in the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 10:53 p.m. EDT (0253 on Sept. 17). The trio is wrapping up a five-month mission to the space station and Padalka thanked his crewmates and flight controllers on the ground for their help during the flight.   Sunita Williams arrived at the space station on July 17 on a Soyuz spacecraft with two crewmates: Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko. They will be joined by three new crewmembers in October.   Williams, 46, is a captain in the U.S. Navy and flying on her second long-duration space mission. She first launched into space in 2007 and spent 195 consecutive days in space, setting a record for the longest single spaceflight by a female astronaut. On Wednesday (Sept. 19), she'll celebrate her birthday in space.   In a NASA interview before launch, Williams said a friend asked her if she was nervous about commanding the space station. She said no, adding that the more than two years of training alongside her Expedition 32 and 33 crewmates, as well as the Mission Control team, prepared all the space station crewmembers for life in space.   "When you get up on the space station, you know what to do, so I’m not nervous about it all," Williams said. "I’m psyched."   The first female commander of the International Space Station was NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who commanded the orbiting lab's Expedition 16 mission between fall 2007 and spring 2008. Whitson later served as NASA's chief astronaut and recently stepped down from the post to rejoin the Astronaut Corps' spaceflying ranks. Two other female astronauts, Eileen Collins and Pam Melroy, commanded NASA space shuttles.   Mission Control sent Williams a few words to mark her new role as space station skipper.   "Congratulations on the promotion to your new position," a flight controller told Williams after the ceremony. "We know you'll run a fine ship up there."   After return from ISS, crews take weeks to readjust Former Mel-High teacher rides home from space tonight   Todd Halvorson - Florida Today   U.S. astronaut Joe Acaba is scheduled to return to Earth today after four months in weightlessness, while flight medical officers launch a six-week effort to help him readjust to gravity.   Acaba, who taught science at Melbourne High in 1999 and 2000, is scheduled to depart the International Space Station at 7:11 p.m. EDT today.   Strapped into a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Acaba and two cosmonaut colleagues are supposed to start a supersonic atmospheric re-entry at 9:57 p.m. The three space explorers will hit the upper fringes of the atmosphere at an altitude of about 400,000 feet, and then they’ll begin feeling the first tugs of gravity after 125 days in space.   Landing is slated for 10:53 p.m. in a remote desert in north-central Kazakhstan.   Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin might feel weak, woozy and clumsy. They could have difficulty concentrating. They could be nauseous. They could have trouble walking a straight line.   All three are in for lengthy physical rehabilitation programs.   “The goal is to get their strength and all their function back to their preflight baseline,” said NASA Flight Medical Officer Steve Gilmore. “And in 45 days, with folks working hard, typically we get people to where they were before they launched.”   Data from decades of long-duration human spaceflight show space explorers who live and work in weightlessness go through physically difficult returns to normal gravity.   Muscles have atrophied in a weightless environment where astronauts and cosmonauts can float and fly like Superman. Bone loss is significant. Lung function is reduced. The immune system is weakened. The heart suddenly has to work a lot harder to pump blood. The inner ear is affected, and balance is difficult if not unachievable.   “During re-adaptation to earth gravity, three physiological systems are significantly compromised,” NASA astronaut and physician Michael Barratt wrote in Principals of Clinical Medicine for Space Flight with co-editor Sam Pool, chief of the Medical Sciences Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.   The musculoskeletal, neurovestibular and cardiovascular systems are so degraded that a return to normal gravity produces “serious functional and performance limitations for returning deconditioned crewmembers.”   So Russian recovery forces augmented by NASA flight surgeons will flock to the landing site north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan.   Whether the spacecraft is upright or on its side, specialists will extract Acaba and his cosmonaut colleagues from the Soyuz one at a time, and then carry them to seats that have been set up nearby.   Sometimes the returning space explorers are given floral bouquets. Satellite telephones are nearby so they can call loved ones back home.   Their next stop will be an inflatable medical tent, where flight surgeons will start post-flight medical tests that document the condition of the astronauts and cosmonauts just after landing.   An hour later, Acaba, Padalka and Revin will head off from the landing site and soon thereafter, part ways. The two cosmonauts will be flown to Moscow, and Acaba will take a 20-hour flight back to Houston, with a couple of stops along the way.   The stops will allow Acaba to stretch his legs, and, after four months of sponge baths, perhaps take a shower.   Flight surgeon Gilmore said that’s not as big a deal as advertised.   Many returning astronauts “have commented that you just don’t miss it as much as you might think,” Gilmore said, “which I find a little hard to believe.”   Supply Chain Seen Slowing NASA Capsule, Rocket Development   Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week   Prime contractors on NASA’s next-generation human space exploration vehicles are finding it unusually difficult to obtain the space-qualified electronics and other components they need to stay on schedule, a situation they say will likely get worse if there is instability in the space agency’s out-year funding for the projects.   Testifying before the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee, Lockheed Martin Vice President and Orion Program Manager Cleon Lacefield said today that the lead times for radiation-hardened electronic parts and other specialized hardware is a major challenge for meeting schedule.   “I think our supply chain in the United States is very fragile,” Lacefield said. “When we look at the triple-e parts needed for avionics, all the electronic components, in the environment that we see, which is a radiation environment in deep space, those components are very hard to find in the United States right now.”   Lacefield’s remarks were echoed by Jim Chilton, exploration vice president at Boeing , who is responsible for Space Launch System (SLS) stage development. Chilton told Aviation Week his company, too, is finding it difficult to purchase needed parts in the small lots needed for civil space development when the dwindling list of suppliers of all types of space-qualified hardware is hard-pressed to keep up with demand from customers that order in larger quantities.   Both programs have flight test schedules to meet, beginning with Lockheed Martin . NASA plans to fly an Orion testbed on a Delta IV launch vehicle in 2014 to evaluate how well its thermal protection system performs in a planetary return simulated by a two-orbit, high-apogee trajectory. Lacefield said the supply chain problem extends beyond electronic components able to withstand the environment outside the Van Allen Belts, and include the weight-saving composite parts that make up about 40% of the Orion capsule ’s structure.   “We have outsourced those composites across the country so that we would be able to meet the schedules of the 2014 flight,” he said, adding that the supply chain issue threatens pre-flight checkouts as early as next year. “We have outsourced across all of the electrical components to get the parts that we need by the time that we need to do the vehicle checkout on the pad next March, the electrical checkout, and we are waiting on those parts to enable us to do the vehicle checkout on the pad in Florida,” Lacefield said.   Boeing is working toward a 2017 first flight of the initial SLS version, with a new core stage, space shuttle/Ares I-heritage five-segment solid-fuel strap-on boosters, and a modified Delta IV upper stage . Like Lacefield, Chilton said the supply-chain issue will be a challenge in meeting that flight schedule .   Both men, and Dan Dumbacher, NASA ’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development , argued for steady funding from Congress to give space-component suppliers the business stability they need to keep the problem from getting worse.   “We are seeing lead times that we have never seen before,” Lacefield said.   Space station spinoff could protect Mars-bound astronauts from radiation Superconducting technology developed for the ISS could protect humans on the way to the asteroids or Mars. But will it be worth the cost?   Technology Review (published by MIT)   It's hard to think of many spinoffs from the $100 billion project to build and launch the International Space Station. In fact, there is precious little done on the ISS that isn't focused on just keeping the thing in orbit.   One exception is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which is designed, among other things, to determine whether cosmic ray particles are made of matter or antimatter.   The spectrometer consists of a giant magnet that deflects charged particles and a number of detectors that characterize the mass and energy of these particles. It was bolted to the ISS last year and is currently bombarded by about 1000 cosmic rays per second.   Today, Roberto Battiston at the University of Perugia in Italy and a few pals say that the technology developed for the spectrometer could be used for protecting astronauts from radiation during the long duration spaceflights in future.   The journey to the asteroids, Mars or beyond is plagued with technological problems. Among the most challenging is finding a way to protect humans from the high energy particles that would otherwise raise radiation levels to unacceptable levels.   On Earth, humans are protected by the atmosphere, the mass of the Earth itself and the Earth's magnetic field. In low earth orbit, astronauts loose the protection of the atmosphere and radiation levels are consequently higher by two orders of magnitude.   In deep space, astronauts loose the protecting effect of the Earth's mass and its magnetic field, raising levels a further five times and beyond the acceptable limits that humans can withstand over the 18 months or so it would take to get to Mars or the asteroids.   An obvious way to protect astronauts is with an artificial magnetic field that would steer charged particles away. But previous studies have concluded that ordinary magnets would be too big and heavy to be practical on a space mission.   However, superconducting magnets are more powerful, more efficient and less massive. They are much better candidates for protecting humans.   The only problem is that nobody has built and tested a superconducting magnet in space.   That's where the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer comes in. This machine was designed and built with a superconducting magnet that can operate in space.   Now Battiston and co have used the knowledge and experience from building this machine to study how it could be put to use on a deep space mission for humans. For example, they use the software developed to simulate the behavior of the superconducting magnets on the spectrometer to study how a human-rated system might work.   This simulates not only the magnetic field but also the forces it generates and how they are distributed, an important consideration in superconducting systems.   In particular, they compare two different designs for the way wires are wound onto the magnet--one using ordinary torroidal windings and another using a double helix-type winding.   Their conclusion is that the double helix offers significant advantages because of the way the forces are distributed within it. These would require less external support, which would reduce the mass of the entire system.   That's a potentially interesting project--the International Space Station has always been thought of as a stepping stone to the Solar System so it is appropriate that its technology could provide a foundation for future missions.   However, this isn't the whole story. What Battiston and co fail to mention is that after 15 years of design and testing at a cost of a cool $2 billion,  the superconducting magnet system allegedly could not be made reliable enough to fly in space. In the end, it had to be hastily replaced with permanent magnets just a few months before the Space Shuttle carted it into space last year.   NASA and other space agencies have always known that sending humans into space is hard and expensive. What they've failed to grasp is that they are having to spend more and more to do less and less.   The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a case in point. The only significant science being done on the $100 billion ISS is with the spectrometer. And the only reason it is attached to the ISS is because of the power it was supposed to need for its original superconducting design: only the solar panels on the ISS could provide enough, we were told. The presence of humans is more or less irrelevant.   Maybe future systems could be made reliable enough to protect humans. They might even be made light enough to be launched into space. But it doesn't look likely that they can be made cheap enough to be justifiable in the short to medium term.   Here's the bottom line: humans are an expensive cargo that add little if any value when it comes to science in space.   So the message is clear--if we want the best return from our space-bound bucks, we'll be better of sending robots for the foreseeable future. And they don't need any kind of magnetic protection--superconducting or otherwise.   Endeavour to head westward into retirement Monday   Justin Ray - SpaceflightNow.com   The space shuttle Endeavour begins her hopscotching trek across the southern United States on a ferryflight into retirement Monday, departing Kennedy Space Center at sunrise on a four-leg trek to reach the busy Los Angeles International Airport at noon Thursday.   Along the way, the modified 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft hauling the spaceplane piggyback will stop for a Texas-sized reception in Houston, refuel in El Paso and make one last visit to Edwards Air Force Base, where Endeavour had landed 7 times to conclude spaceflights, before taking an aerial tour of California to fly over Sacramento, San Francisco and LA.   "This last flight is exciting because a lot of the nation will get to see it. It is sad to see the end of the program. I'm not sure when it is going to hit me the hardest, when we get to LA or when we take the airplane back to Edwards," said Shuttle Carrier Aircraft flight engineer Henry Taylor.   The coast-to-coast trek, the final ferryflight for a space shuttle, begins Monday 7:15 a.m. EDT from the three-mile-long runway at the Florida spaceport. Over the next half-hour, the flying duo will head southward over the beaches of Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach and Patrick Air Force Base before making a U-turn and traverse up the river to buzz the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and spaceport itself before flying away forever.   The aircraft, under the control of Jeff Moultrie, then plots a coastal course towards NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where the space shuttle main engines were tested, and the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the external fuel tanks were manufactured, for thrilling, 1,500-foot altitude overpasses.   The trek then heads for Houston, the home of NASA's Mission Control Center that has directed all manned spaceflights since 1965, for ceremonial flyovers of the region before landing at Ellington Field outside the Johnson Space Center around 10:45 a.m. local time (1545 GMT).   Houston, Clear Lake and Galveston will get flyovers between 9 and 10:30 a.m. Central as Endeavour passes by such landmarks as George Bush Intercontinental, William P. Hobby and Ellington airports, plus the Houston skyline and the San Jacinto Monument. The Johnson Space Center expects to get a close encounter too.   NASA officials caution that the precise flight path and timing will be dictated by the weather and operational constraints.   After safely on the ground at Ellington, the site where the astronauts departed in T-38 jets bound for the Cape to begin their launch countdowns, the 747 with Endeavour will park near the NASA Hangar 990 pedestrian gate for public viewing on Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday. Viewing within about 100 feet of the vehicle begins 30 minutes after the 747 is parked and secured by ground personnel.   Monday's viewing will continue until 7 p.m. local time. Airport gates will reopen to the public from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. Tuesday.   The ferryflight resumes at sunrise Wednesday, Sept. 19 for a short jaunt to Biggs Army Airfield to El Paso for refueling. The journey continues later in the morning, doing a low flyby of White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico that served as an alternate landing site throughout the shuttle program, as the ferryflight continues en route to Edwards Air Force Base in California for a mid-day local time touchdown there to spend the night.   The final leg of the final space shuttle ferryflight starts at dawn Thursday, Sept. 20 with departure from Edwards and plots a course to make more low-altitude flyovers of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field and landmarks in San Francisco and Sacramento before looping back toward Los Angeles to treat the locals and welcome Endeavour home before setting down on the runway at LAX, the international airport there at about 11 a.m.   "Endeavour's flight over Los Angeles' most picturesque landmarks will be a sight to inspire Angelenos for generations," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. "Witnessing the shuttle's final flight over the Griffith Observatory, Hollywood Hills and our historic City Hall will be a sight to behold. I am proud to welcome this world-class landmark to its new home in the City of Angels."   Endeavour will be offloaded early Friday and the 747 will make its final flight back to Edwards Air Force Base on Sept. 25 for retirement.   3 Space Station Astronauts to Return to Earth Tonight   Mike Wall - Space.com   Three astronauts are preparing to leave the International Space Station tonight, returning to Earth after a four-month stay aboard the huge orbiting lab.   A Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin is slated to undock from the space station at 7:09 p.m. EDT (2309 GMT) tonight and land in the steppes of Kazakhstan nearly four hours later, at 10:53 p.m. EDT (0253 GMT Monday).   The astronauts' departure will bring the space station's Expedition 32 to a close. Padalka commands the expedition, while Acaba and Revin serve as flight engineers. Padalka will hand the orbiting lab's reins over to NASA's Sunita Williams, commander of the new Expedition 33.   Expedition 33 will be a three-person operation for about a month. Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Japanese spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide will have the station to themselves until mid-October, when the arrival of three new astronauts will bring the $100 billion orbiting complex back up to its full complement of six crewmates.   Acaba, Padalka and Revin launched toward the station on May 14 and arrived three days later. They were originally scheduled to blast off in late March, but a botched pressure test cracked their Soyuz capsule, forcing a six-week delay while a new spacecraft was prepared.   The astronauts' four-month stint marked the first long-term stay aboard the orbiting lab for both Acaba and Revin. Padalka, however, had lived on the station for long durations during two previous missions.   Acaba, Padalka and Revin got to be part of history shortly after they first floated through the space station's hatch. They were there to welcome SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule, which on May 25 became the first private spacecraft ever to visit the 430-ton orbiting complex.   Dragon's historic flight was a demonstration mission, to see if the capsule and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket are ready to begin a series of 12 contracted supply runs to the station for NASA. Everything went well, and the first of these bona fide cargo missions is likely to blast off next month.   Shuttle Endeavour's final journey is carefully choreographed The 12-mile trip from LAX to the California Science Center will have more bumps than a flight into space, but crews have worked hard to smooth the path   Mike Anton - Los Angeles Times   A diva requires special handling and an entourage. Whatever the stage, the space shuttle Endeavour gets both.   A constellation of engineers and assembly line workers designed and built the shuttle in Southern California. A universe of scientists hurled it into space on 25 missions.   And in the coming weeks, after Endeavour is flown from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Los Angeles, a cast of hundreds of engineers, police officers and utility and construction workers will ferry the shuttle over city streets to the California Science Center, where it will be permanently displayed.   Endeavour's Sept. 20 arrival at Los Angeles International Airport atop a modified 747 airliner — and the spectacle of its ultra-slow-motion, 12-mile crawl through Inglewood and Los Angeles to the science center in October — are expected to draw huge crowds and become a cultural meme for a region defined by its epic commutes.   It's a homecoming for Endeavour. The nation's shuttle fleet was built and maintained in Downey, Canoga Park and Palmdale by the region's once-titanic aerospace industry — Rockwell International, Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Rocketdyne. Edwards Air Force Base was the shuttle's second home and alternate landing site if bad weather ruled out landing in Florida.   Endeavour's move to Los Angeles marks an end to NASA's space shuttle program, which flew its final flight last year after three decades. The three other shuttles are already in their permanent resting places: Enterprise was delivered to a New York City museum by barge up the Hudson River, Discovery was flown to a Smithsonian annex at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, and Atlantis will be displayed at the Kennedy Space Center.   Moving Endeavour through the streets of L.A. presents a logistical challenge worthy of the most technologically complex vehicle ever built.   "It's not a once-in-a lifetime event. It's a once event," said Marty Fabrick, who is managing the move for the science center. "No one is ever going to move a space shuttle through the middle of a congested urban area ever again."   Moving Endeavour isn't like transporting a house on a flatbed truck. It's more like hauling a five-story apartment building across L.A. — a unique job that will cost the science center millions of dollars.   In the predawn dark of Oct. 12, the Endeavour will creep out of LAX on top of a specialized vehicle typically used in massive construction projects. The self-propelled modular transporter is a 160-wheel beast with the precision of a ballerina. It's able to carry 15,000 tons and turn 360 degrees in its own footprint. Such transporters are typically used to move bridges, ships and oil drilling platforms.   The 170,000-pound Endeavour will give it a light workout.   Endeavour will make its way along Manchester Avenue and Crenshaw and Martin Luther King boulevards. Maximum speed: 2 mph. It will journey through tidy residential neighborhoods and past schools, churches and sun-baked apartments that look as though they haven't been painted since the Apollo program.   Endeavour has circled the globe at more than 17,000 mph. But it has never inched past the giant pastry on top of Randy's Donuts on Manchester Avenue near the 405 Freeway.   "It'll be a lot of fun," said Larry Weintraub, 71, who has been slinging doughnuts at his iconic shop for 34 years. "I'm sure all the merchants in the area are hoping the people who come down to see it trickle into their stores."   Weintraub said that to celebrate, Randy's "might try something like a space shuttle doughnut."   Planning has been going on for nearly a year. Multiple routes from LAX to the science center were considered. But the list quickly narrowed because, at 57 feet tall and with a 78-foot wingspan, Endeavour can't go under the 405. It has to go over.   The urban canopy was mapped in detail — every tree, utility line, traffic signal, light pole and street sign. Where underground utilities run close to the street surface, steel plates will be placed to protect them.   In recent weeks, crews have removed about 400 trees in Endeavour's path and trimmed many others. Removed trees will be replaced 2 for 1 by the science center out of $200 million it is raising from private sources to move the shuttle to L.A., display it temporarily and build a permanent exhibit space.   Statesville native eager to return to space   Preston Spencer - Winston-Salem Journal   It's only September, but Thomas Marshburn, a NASA astronaut, is already anticipating the holidays.   The Statesville native is nearing the end of 2½ years of training at Johnson Space Center in Houston, prepping for a nearly half-year stay at the International Space Station.   Marshburn graduated from Wake Forest University's Bowman Gray School of Medicine in 1989 and decided to pursue his interest in space. He became a flight surgeon at Johnson Space Center in Houston, and, in 2004, he was among 11 applicants chosen to be NASA astronauts.   In 2009, a few months after a voyage to the International Space Station, Marshburn came back to Winston-Salem to talk about his adventures.   Of walking in space, he said, "I kept thinking, 'I hope I don't mess up.' There are 1,000 steps you have to do. But when you first step out, it's breathtaking."   The voyage into space will be Marshburn's second, but the coming trip will be 10 times longer. Nevertheless, he's eager to blast off.   "The prospect of getting there is so exciting," Marshburn said by phone Thursday. "I'm looking forward to being there again. It's a magical place to live and work every day. … It's kind of like waiting for Christmas."   Along with five others, Marshburn will be conducting experiments inside the station.   The mission is scheduled for 11:55 p.m. on Dec. 5, launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The planned return date is May 15.   A Russian and Canadian will join the Americans on the trip.   "English is the official language," Marshburn said. "Space life brings us together. We rely on each other to stay alive up there. It's a great way to knock down international barriers. … We have no women on this flight. All my crewmates are like brothers to me. It's enriched the mission quite a bit."   Canadian ready to take helm of space station Countless hours of training and a zen-like perspective keep Chris Hadfield focused   Max Harrold - Montreal Gazette   How exactly does one train to be in charge of the $100-billion International Space Station, the most elaborate multinational engineering and scientific vehicle in history?   Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who is to become the first Canadian to command the space station during the last half of a six month stint to begin on Dec. 5, gave reporters a good idea Thursday during a news conference broadcast from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, Texas, to the Canadian Space Agency in Longueuil.   What will he do if there's a meteorite spinning toward the space lab, or if there's a fire? What if a crew member goes nuts?   Hadfield's readiness seems to come from a blend of his countless repetitions of space survival skills and a zen-like perspective about where he is headed and what it all means.   "The three leading dangers that we (face on the space station) are a depressurization, a fire or a toxic atmosphere caused by some other cause," Hadfield, 53, explained in a perfectly calm voice as his crew mates, Roman Romanenko of Russia and Tom Marshburn of the United States, sat next to him.   "We train in great detail as well as with enough repetition (so) that it becomes sort of automatic."   In another Canadian first, Hadfield, a former jet fighter pilot and a veteran of two space missions on the nowdefunct U.S. space shuttle, will be the co-pilot on the Soyuz, a cramped but reliable spacecraft whose original design dates to 1967. Hadfield has learned a fair amount of Russian since the controls on the spacecraft are in that language.   "Things can happen the quickest (in the Soyuz) and we really have to be able to react to" them, he said.   Hadfield said he and his crewmates have been working together for the past nine months after "years" of separate preparations in underwater simulators and hightech mock-ups of the space station in different places around the world.   The Soyuz simulators the crew has worked on in Russia fill up with smoke to simulate a fire, Hadfield said. "We're wearing our pressure suits and smoke starts pouring out of our instrument panel. You immediately have to react, and shut off all your power sources, get your masks to get on the ship's oxygen. The smoke is so thick you can't even see the instrument panel in front of you. It's a really high fidelity simulation so that we end up (developing) all the right responses."   Hadfield said he has a lot of "one-pager" notes with mental reminders. "It's true for the Canadarm2 and spacewalking. (You try) to keep it all in your brain for that length of time so that when the moment comes you can remember what that instructor told you that day in Sevastopol, Ukraine that makes all the difference between success, failure or life or death."   Hadfield, who was raised on a farm in Milton, Ont., said it is "hugely exciting and a great honour to be asked to be the commander of the International Space Station, from this Canadian kid's point of view. It's just a dream come true."   He added that this month marks the 50th anniversary of Canada's first satellite in space. "We were the third nation on Earth to have an indigenous satellite." His mission is an evolution of Canada's contribution to space exploration, he said.   Hadfield paid homage to U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong - the first human to set foot on the moon, in 1969 - and noted that it was Armstrong's memorial on Thursday in Washington.   Hadfield was 9 years old when he watched the moon landing on TV. "To see something that was not only really hard, but also completely optional" was truly inspiring for humanity, he said.   "We weren't doing this because (we) were forced to," he said. "We were doing this because we just barely could for the very first time. It took us right to the limits and brought out the very best of what people can do."   Hadfield like many others decided that night he wanted to become an astronaut.   Asked by The Gazette if his training for the mission gives him a different take on certain earthly issues, such as violence in Libya and or the prospect of separatism in Quebec, Hadfield said it's important to look at the big picture.   "I try not to overreact or to under-react," he said. "That's true for political events, for people misbehaving (and) doing things that people just shouldn't do or natural disasters that happen or the wonderful achievements that happen."   "One of the great benefits that we have of leaving the Earth and going around our entire planet in about the time it takes to run this press conference is that it does give you a different perspective. You see the world as one place.   "You're all the same family and you need to figure out how to make it all work together."   Widow Says Spacey Attorney Took Her for $300,000   Cameron Langford - Courthouse News Service   An attorney defrauded a woman of $300,000 by claiming his company had a "special rocket engine" to "travel in space to a distant asteroid and mine precious metals," the woman claims in court.        Donna Beck sued Houston patent attorney Arthur Dula, his companies Excalibur Exploration Limited, Excalibur Limited, Excalibur Almaz Limited and Excalibur Almaz USA Inc., and Excalibur directors J. Buckner Hightower and Christopher Stott, in Harris County Court.        "Dula defrauded Beck by inducing her and her husband (since deceased) to advance $300,000, and later purchase an investment in Excalibur Exploration Limited, one of the Excalibur entities, with the fundamental false representation that the company had the technical expertise and associations to develop a business to fly the first commercial prospecting space flight to an asteroid," the complaint states.        "Dula bolstered his lies by representing that his other companies had the spacecraft to accomplish the job, as well as associations with other necessary contractors.        "In fact, the entire operation was a sham and never accomplished anything of substance.        "Dula spent Beck's money even before Excalibur Exploration Limited was formed to pay for a project that Dula and his associates had previously earmarked as an expense for another related company, until they got lucky and got Beck's check and switched the obligation to her.        "Moreover, none of the promises made in Dula's solicitation letter were performed or even attempted: the initial stock share splits were never honors, no attempt to raise capital was ever undertaken, no business plans were ever developed, and the spacecraft that Dula said were available have not undergone any of the required modifications for flight. In fact, Dula even refused to provide the contracts to show his minority shareholder Beck that he or his companies owned the spacecraft that he had originally toured as an advantage to induce her investment."        Beck claims that she and her husband met Dula, Hightower and Stott in May 2006 during a commercial space flight convention on a cruise ship.        "Dula had given a talk at the event and was eager to meet prospective investors in his commercial space companies," the complaint states. "After the event, Dula kept in touch with Beck and her husband, and soon follow-on meetings were arranged, including some when Dula invited former NASA astronauts to attend to lend credibility to his effort.        "Beck and her husband were hooked by Dula's charm and the plan presented by all the defendants to mine asteroids for precious metals and the profits it would bring. Beck and her husband were open to making an investment."        Beck says Dula sent her a solicitation telling her to write him a $300,000 check for his company, and promising that with the investment she and her husband would be "founders" of his enterprise.        "Dula also represented to Beck that he had already raised '$50 million' for his Excalibur Almaz Limited operations, which included 'Almaz spacecraft' that would be used to test the operation of a special rocket engine needed to travel to asteroids," the complaint states.        "Dula also represented that this special rocket engine - VASMIR - was developed by a company with which he had close ties, and that they would sell Excalibur Mines 'the 'right of first refusal' to use the VASMIR rocket engine for commercial asteroid prospecting and mining.'"        Beck says though they were interested, she and her husband did not immediately give Dula any money. But she claims Dula persuaded them to invest by falsely claiming he had financed acquisition of the VASMIR engine.        Beck says Dula, Hightower and Stott won them over by hosting them at a dinner honoring science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, which many former NASA astronauts and officials attended.        "The dinner included Dula awarding the First Heinlein Prize of a $500,000 check to Peter Diamandis for his work in advancing commercial space opportunities," the complaint states. "Beck and her husband were impressed with the contacts in the aerospace industry the defendants appeared to have, as well as their apparent success to substantial amounts of money."        Beck claims that after she and her husband forked over the $300,000 in 2006, Dula never formed Excalibur Mines, the company in which she thought she would be shareholder.        Instead, Beck says, Dula issued her and her husband 3,000 shares of Excalibur Exploration Limited, a company he formed in 2007 in the Isle of Man, an offshore tax haven.        "In June 2011, before which no meetings, or board minutes, or status reports, or progress had been reported for many months, Beck tendered her resignation from the Board and told Dula she wanted to sell her Excalibur Exploration Limited shares back to the company," the complaint states.        Beck says that when she could not get any answers from Dula about what happened to her money, she had her lawyer remove her from the Excalibur Exploration Limited Board of Directors.        "To this day, no explanation has been provided as to the use of Beck's initial funds advanced to EA USA," Beck claims.        Beck says that Dula and his colleagues have a habit of "preying on wealthy people by promising that they would be part of a grand new adventure in order to get their money."        In reality, Beck says, Dula and company spend investors' money to fund their own international travel to aerospace conferences, and perpetuate their schemes.        Beck seeks damages for negligence, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, Texas Securities Act violations and breach of contract.        She is represented by Scott Clearman with ClearmanPrebeg in Houston.   Don't miss the chance for a last look at Endeavour   John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)   If all goes as planned, Monday will be the last time we see a space shuttle take off from Kennedy Space Center.   Endeavour is set to leave the Shuttle Landing Facility at sunrise Monday riding piggyback on a modified 747 bound for its final resting place in Los Angeles. It's a last chance to see one of the intrepid spaceships aloft, another sentimental day in a seemingly years-long stretch of poignant moments for those of us who love the space shuttles.   The post-shuttle life here on the Space Coast is a little more than a year old. Many local space shuttle workers have moved on, to new jobs here in Brevard County, or new adventures elsewhere. Some retired. Others are at various points of their transitions. A smaller portion still are suffering and struggling to recover from the shutdown of a program that was their livelihood.   For the rest of us, who followed the shuttle program from varying distances, these goodbye events are more about embracing history and honoring the hard work of tens of thousands who made the incredible space shuttle program possible.   So let's turn out, in salute, Monday morning in a big way. Let's give a proper send off to the space shuttle Endeavour, as we did sistership Discovery during her magnificent pre-retirement victory lap over the Space Coast earlier this year. Everyone should get one last look at the most incredible flying machine ever, soaring over us on the first leg of what promises to be a well-watched cross country journey.   Final preparations are happening today at the Shuttle Landing Facility at KSC and you can find out the latest on the progress at floridatoday.com today and Monday morning as Endeavour and her ride lift off.   The next, and final move of a space shuttle orbiter, won't be in the air. But it will be special for a different reason. Atlantis will remain our shuttle, housed for all to see at the visitor center. Plans for a celebratory parade along State Road 405 are being made, and that should be an event for the ages.   END