Friday, September 7, 2012

9/7/12 news

Happy Friday everyone,   have a safe and great weekend.
 
Friday, September 7, 2012
 
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            NASA Night at Constellation Field
2.            Software Design That Spans Desktop PCs to Parallel Super Computers
3.            Training Opportunity: Building Bridges Toward LGBT Inclusion
4.            Control Team/Crew Resource Management: Sept. 18 to 20 - Building 226N, Room 174
5.            OSHA 30-Hour Construction Safety and Health: Sept. 24 to 28 - Building 226N, Room 174
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ The human mind prefers to be spoonfed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking, and may have valuable results.”
 
-- Agatha Christie
________________________________________
1.            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/
 
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2.            Software Design That Spans Desktop PCs to Parallel Super Computers
Date/Time: Sept. 12 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.
 
Location: Building 1, Room 620
 
You are invited to JSC's SAIC and Safety and Mission Assurance (S&MA) Speaker Forum featuring Lee Morris Taylor, Ph.D., vice president, TeraScale division, ANATECH Corporation.
 
Software effectiveness will be illustrated through real-world examples of impact dynamics by the NEi Explicit code distributed by NEi Software of Westminster, Calif. Examples will include 3-D aircraft impact on large pre-stressed concrete structures. The size and complexity of nonlinear analysis models and the necessity to perform multi-physics simulations is a challenge for the mechanics community. The demand from the analyst is for easy-to-use, cost-effective, time-efficient analysis tools for these complex problems. This talk will describe the ANATECH parallel computational framework that facilitates rapid algorithm development and testing.
 
Della Cardona 281-335-2074
 
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3.            Training Opportunity: Building Bridges Toward LGBT Inclusion
The Out & Allied Employee Resource Group (ERG), in conjunction with Human Resources, Equal Opportunity and the Employee Assistance Program, invites you to attend the center's pilot training class entitled "Building Bridges Toward LGBT Inclusion."
 
Building Bridges Toward LGBT Inclusion is designed to help employees increase their level of awareness and understanding of LGBT: co-workers, peers and allies. You will have the option to attend either the 10 to 11:30 a.m. or 1 to 2:30 p.m. session Monday, Sept. 10, in the Building 30 Auditorium. This training is open to all JSC team members, civil servants and contractors. There will be attendance sheets available to those who would like to receive training credit (there is no requirement to pre-register). We look forward to your participation as we strive to achieve excellence through fostering an environment that is inclusive for all.
 
Anthony Santiago x41501
 
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4.            Control Team/Crew Resource Management: Sept. 18 to 20 - Building 226N, Room 174
Two-and-a-half days. This training directly addresses human factors issues that most often cause problems in team and crew interaction. No one working on a team or a crew, especially in high-stress activities, is immune to these effects. The Control Team/Crew Resource Management course deals with interpersonal relations, but doesn't advocate democratic rule or hugging fellow team members to improve personal relations. Rather, this course provides awareness of human factors problems that too often result in mishaps and offers recommendations and procedures for eliminating these problems. The course emphasizes safety risk assessment, crew/team coordination and decision-making in crisis situations. This course is applicable both to those in aircrew-type operations and also to personnel operating consoles for hazardous testing or on-orbit mission operations, or any operation involving teamwork and critical communication. It is preferable that "teams" experience course as a group, if possible. SATERN Registration Required. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
 
Polly Caison x41279
 
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5.            OSHA 30-Hour Construction Safety and Health: Sept. 24 to 28 - Building 226N, Room 174
This four-and-a-half-day course assists the student in effectively conducting construction inspections and oversight. Participants are provided with basic information about construction standards, construction hazards and control, health hazards, trenching and excavation operations, cranes, electrical hazards in construction, steel erection, ladders, scaffolds, concrete and heavy construction equipment. This course is based on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Training Institute Construction Safety course and is approved for award of the OSHA course completion card. Course may include a field exercise at a construction site, if feasible. A 30-hour construction OSHA card will be issued. There is a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit.
 
Registration in SATERN is required.
 
Shirley Robinson x41284
 
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________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
 
 
 
NASA TV: Noon Central SATURDAY (1 pm EDT) – Zero Robotics Kickoff from MIT
 
Human Spaceflight News
Friday – September 7, 2012
 

Curiosity and its tracks, clearly visible from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
 
HEADLINES AND LEADS
 
Neil Armstrong to be buried at sea
 
Associated Press
 
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, will be buried at sea. A family spokesman said Thursday no other details on the timing or the location of the burial were available. Armstrong was a Navy fighter pilot before joining the space program. A public memorial service will be held at the Washington National Cathedral on Sept. 13. The 10 a.m. service will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the websites of the cathedral and space agency. It will be open to the public on a first come, first served basis. But reservations still must be made through NASA. A private service was held in Ohio for Armstrong, who died Aug. 25 at age 82.
(NO FURTHER TEXT)
 
NASA dropped ATK's private space taxi proposal over technical concerns
 
Dan Leone - Space News
 
A design by Alliant Techsystems (ATK) was dropped from NASA’s shortlist of potential space station crew taxis because the company did not present a technically sound plan for combining existing rocket and spacecraft designs into a single transportation system, according to a NASA source selection document released Sept. 4. "I had some significant concerns about the lack of detail in some areas of ATK’s technical approach," William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, wrote in the document. "Basically, 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."
 
Boeing Details Latest Commercial Crew Bid
 
Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com
 
Boeing has provided more detail on the development timeline of its CST-100 capsule for human-rated low Earth orbit transportation under NASA's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) programme, which could earn the company as much as $460 million in funding. Success is defined by successful completion of 19 major programme milestones. The first - the integrated systems test review, worth $50 million - has been certificated as complete. "We tried to be very comprehensive in the layout of our milestones through the base period," says John Mulholland, Boeing's programme manager. The initial stages of the programme will be characterized by "a real focus on integrated reviews and designs", says Mulholland, culminating in an integrated system critical design review in 2014. The CCiCap agreement also lays out 33 optional milestones for post-base period work, contingent on additional NASA funding.
 
Obama Highlights U.S. Space Achievements Ahead of Florida Visit
 
Brevard Times
 
President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is touting America's accomplishments made in space exploration since the President took office just ahead of his visit on Sunday to Florida's Space Coast. "I am 100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future. Because broadening our capabilities in space will continue to serve our society in ways that we can scarcely imagine," President Obama said in a campaign press release.  "Because exploration will once more inspire wonder in a new generation sparking passions and launching careers. And because, ultimately, if we fail to press forward in the pursuit of discovery, we are ceding our future and we are ceding that essential element of the American character."
 
‘Sticky Boom’ Firm Gets NASA Help
 
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aerospace Daily
 
Altius Space Machines, a Colorado-based niche startup developing noncooperative capture technology for spaceflight applications, will work with NASA’s Langley Research Center to develop compact packaging for “long-reach” robotic arms. The Louisville, Colo., firm has entered an unfunded Space Act Agreement with the U.S. space agency to advance its Compactly Stowable Manipulator (CSM) concept, which it says could provide the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle and other compact spacecraft with some of the same capabilities afforded the space shuttle by its Canadian-built robotic arm.
 
NASA’s Historic Giant Crawler Gets a Tune Up for Modern Times
 
Matthew Peddie - TransportationNation.com
 
Retired space shuttles are being readied for museums, but there’s one piece of equipment at the Kennedy Space Center that dates back to before the moon landing and it’s not going anywhere. NASA’s giant crawler transporter is the only machine with enough muscle to move Apollo rockets and space shuttles out to the launch pad, and after nearly 50 years on the job the agency’s decided there’s still no better way to transport heavy loads. It’s about as wide as a six lane highway, higher than a two story building, with huge caterpillar treads at each of its four corners. With the mobile launch platform and a rocket or space shuttle on its back, the crawler en route for the launch pad was like a skyscraper rolling slowly down a highway. Regular roads can’t handle the five and a half million pound weight of the crawler.
 
Ways to say goodbye to space shuttle Endeavour
 
Dewayne Bevil - Orlando Sentinel
 
There's a lot of shuffling of space shuttles going on, and you can watch some of it in action through tours and other opportunities at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Right now, space shuttle Endeavour is parked inside NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, being prepped for a cross-country flight. On Sept. 17, the shuttle will piggyback on a special Boeing 747 to Los Angeles, where it eventually will be displayed at the California Science Center. There are three ways to take a peek at Endeavour, which made 25 space missions in 19 years, before it leaves Florida forever: a tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building; the limited-time-only Endeavour Bus Tour; and fly-out viewing opportunities on Sept. 17.
 
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.
 
Future spacecraft could protect crews with walls made of water
 
Rebecca Boyle - Popular Science
 
Walls of water could protect astronauts from radiation while recycling their bodily waste and purifying the air, under a new NASA concept. The “Water Walls” design takes a page from mother nature and uses water for passive protection. The concept’s formal name is Highly Reliable and Massively Redundant Life Support Architecture, and it’s part of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, meaning it just received funding for further study. It would use a framework of hexagon-shaped polyethylene bags serving as the walls of a spacecraft. They’d be filled with various bacteria, algae and filters to clean and purify water and air and provide food — algae as food may not be tasty, but it would be nutritious — and shield the spacecraft’s occupants from space.
 
Harnessing Solar Energy to Sail to the Stars
The solar system is bathed in solar energy -- can we use it to propel spacecraft to the planets and beyond?
 
Mark Thompson - Discovery News
 
It's interesting when you look back at the history of space exploration and realize that propulsion technology hasn't really changed very much. The earliest rocket prototypes were nothing more than elaborate versions of weapons used during World War 2 and fireworks used during civil celebrations. Even the Space Shuttle made use of solid rocket fuel technology in its pair of solid rocket boosters. But, with the liquid rocket fuel propulsion in the external tank, this combination has proved to be highly effective and launched hundreds of astronauts into space. The approach works -- albeit not very efficiently -- and to get out of the gravitational well of the Earth, it seems for now that the extra punch from exothermic processes is needed.
 
Retired astronaut Mark Kelly describes how wife's ordeal focused him
 
Lou Fancher - San Jose Mercury News
 
The Lesher Center for the Arts' ninth "Newsmakers" Speaker Series soared into orbit on Tuesday with Captain Mark Kelly, the retired American astronaut, Space Shuttle Endeavor commander, best-selling author and husband of U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. In a pre-show interview minutes before delivering a rollicking 60-minute testimony to a lifetime of get-your-hands-dirty hard work, Kelly was like the aircraft he has flown. Through 375 aircraft landings, 39 combat missions, more than 50 days in space and the horrific assassination attempt on his wife on Jan. 8, 2011, his never-give-up spirit has remained impervious to life's g-forces.
 
LA utility crews raising power lines to make way for behemoth Space Shuttle Endeavour
 
Corey Moore - KPCC Radio (Southern California)
 
Los Angeles utility crews are more than halfway done raising power lines to make way for Space Shuttle Endeavour’s trek through South L.A. next month. The five-story high, 78-foot wide shuttle will inch along a 12-mile route from LAX to its final destination at the California Science Center. While workers chop down hundreds of trees to clear the way, other crews are raising power lines at about 40 locations along the path so the massive spacecraft doesn’t clip them.
 
Shuttle trainer is one giant puzzle
 
Jill Drury - WDTN TV (Dayton)
 
Restorers says it's like a giant puzzle. Piece by piece, the space shuttle trainer is coming together at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Riverside. Team Raytheon is teaming up with the museum restorers to re-install interior items of the trainer. Why a puzzle? “First, you have to fully evaluate it and locate all of the pieces and then proceed in a methodical manner so that the pieces are brought into the trainer at the right time in order to make them all fit,” said Clayton Hamm, Team Raytheon Engineer.
 
Udvar-Hazy Center to display parts of Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit
 
Lonnae O'Neal Parker - Washington Post
 
Admirers of the late Neil Armstrong are now able to see parts of the spacesuit he was wearing when he took the historic first steps on the moon at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia. The “extra vehicular” gloves and visor worn by the Apollo 11 astronaut on his July 20, 1969 spacewalk are displayed in the center’s James S. McDonnell space hangar, which also houses the Space Shuttle Discovery, where they will remain for two weeks.
 
Our Take: Hold that shuttle
 
Orlando Sentinel (Editorial)
 
President Obama's campaign recently put out a list of actions he's taken to support the "space community." The president, planning a visit Sunday to Florida's Space Coast, should add another item to his list, and delay the departure of the shuttle Endeavour from Kennedy Space Center. Endeavour is now scheduled to leave KSC en route to its retirement home in Los Angeles atop a 747 on Sept. 17. That's just five days before the start of the Cocoa Beach Air Show, an annual two-day event that normally draws more than 100,000 spectators.
 
Hug the space shuttle, not the trees
The cutting of hundreds of trees so the shuttle Endeavour can move from LAX to Exposition Park is actually a benefit for the cities involved
 
Los Angeles Times (Editorial)
 
There are times when we can hug trees with the best of them. But let's face it: Most of the 400 or so specimens that will be uprooted to ease the final path for the space shuttle Endeavour aren't worth all that passionate an embrace. The California Science Center has aroused deeply rooted sentiment against its plans for shuttling the retired shuttle from Los Angeles International Airport along surface streets in Inglewood and Los Angeles to the museum in Exposition Park. The controversy arose because the move will involve cutting down hundreds of trees along major thoroughfares.
 
With a history in aviation, Brownsville hopes to refuel its image by landing an aerospace role
 
Steve Clark - Brownsville Herald
 
It was a sad day for Brownsville in 1959 when Pan American World Airways pulled up stakes and moved its Western Division headquarters to Miami. The airline, which had set up shop in Brownsville in the late 1920s, was a major employer and a point of pride for the city as Pan Am’s “Gateway to Latin America.” Brownsville was a pioneer in air travel, and Pan Am was part of its identity. It lasted for 30 years, and then it was gone. Today, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, may offer a chance to recapture some of that prestige and the benefits that come with it should the company decide to build a facility in Cameron County to launch its spacecraft.
 
Local Flare: SpaceX launches would create tourism draw
 
Ed Asher - Valley Morning Star
 
Cocoa Beach in Florida, located about 5 miles from the entrance to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, was at one time a small resort community of fewer than 3,000 people and a handful of mom-and-pop hotels. “This used to be just a sleepy little family resort town,” recalls Joseph Morgan, 76, a former Cocoa Beach mayor. Then NASA came to Cape Canaveral. “That changed everything. All of a sudden, this quiet little town became almost a boomtown. It was exciting to all at once see a big bang come to Cocoa Beach with people from all over the country coming here,” said Morgan, chairman of the Brevard County, Fla., Historical Commission. Now South Padre Island stands to become the next Cocoa Beach, poised to reap the benefits of another space program, community and business leaders say.
 
MEANWHILE ON MARS…
 
Visible from space: Curiosity tire tracks on Mars
 
Seth Borenstein - Associated Press
 
NASA's robotic rover Curiosity is making its mark on Mars, in a way so big that it can be seen from space. In just one month, it's driven 368 feet on the red planet, slightly more than the length of a football field. Curiosity's slightly zig-zaggy tire tracks were photographed by a NASA satellite circling Mars and also from the rover's rear-facing cameras. The spacecraft landed on Aug. 5 on a mission to look for ingredients in Martian soil and rocks that could support life.
 
Mars rover pauses for robot arm checkout
 
William Harwood - CBS News
 
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has driven some 357 feet from its landing site on the floor of Gale Crater -- 269 feet as a martian crow might fly -- on its way to an intriguing area about five times farther away where three different types of rock come together. Project officials said Thursday the rover continues to chalk up near perfect scores during extended checkout operations, with detailed robot arm tests on tap over the next week or so. "We've been on the surface of Mars for about a month and Curiosity continues very healthy and continues to surprise us with how well she's doing everything we ask of her," said Mission Manager Mike Watkins. "We've continued to drive a little bit. We are about a football field or so away from the touchdown point."
 
Curiosity leaves its mark on Mars: Tracks photographed from space
 
Deborah Netburn - Los Angeles Times
 
It's only been there for a month, but Curiosity has already left its mark on Mars. On Thursday NASA released a photo that shows tracks made by the car-sized rover on the surface of the Red Planet. The rover is the shiny, light reflecting square in the right portion of the picture; the tracks are the double lines trailing behind it. Curiosity is also responsible for the two dark marks in the center of the photo, NASA explained in a statement: They were formed when the rover landed and blew the red dust that covers much of the planet away, revealing the darker basaltic sand underneath.
 
Warm-up almost over for Curiosity
After final checks, rover will begin Mars science mission
 
Todd Halvorson – Florida Today
 
NASA’s Curiosity rover limbered up its robotic arm on Mars this week, bringing it closer to the start of its scientific mission to measure the planet’s potential for sustaining life. One month after the rover’s arrival, mission managers and scientists said Thursday a critical commissioning phase is coming to a close. Robotic-arm checkouts are expected to be complete within a week. Then Curiosity should be ready to rove. And if all goes well, Curiosity will head toward an area inside Gale Crater where three intriguing types of terrain intersect.
 
Rover Reveals Unexpected Martian Landscapes
 
Guy Norris - Aviation Week (Sept. 3)
 
Less than a month after its touchdown, NASA's Curiosity rover is already revealing a wealth of new detail about Mars—even before driving for any significant distance. Moreover, scientists are confident the startling high-definition images of inclined strata and other significant geological phenomena transmitted late last month from Curiosity are merely the tip of the iceberg as it begins its trek toward the base of nearby Mount Sharp, the central feature of the Gale Crater in which it landed. The rover, which landed on Aug. 5, is tasked with assessing the past and present habitability of Mars. Following two short moves to check its mobility and test bedrock exposed at the landing site by one of the sky crane's thrusters, Curiosity began its first major drive on Aug. 28 to a science destination about a quarter-mile (400 meters) away.
 
Amazing Mars rover shifting into science gear after 1st Martian month
 
Denise Chow - Space.com
 
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has wrapped up its first full month on the Red Planet and is gearing up its robotic arm to reach out and touch Martian rocks for the first time, scientists say. This week, Curiosity has been steadily trekking east toward its first major science destination, a spot called Glenelg, where scientists are keen to investigate three different types of Martian terrain that can be found there. But first, the rover will take a weeklong hiatus from driving to test the instruments on its 7-foot-long (2.1-meter) robotic arm. Mission managers first flexed Curiosity's robot arm on Aug. 20, to make sure the mechanical appendage had survived the journey to the surface of Mars.
__________
 
COMPLETE STORIES
 
NASA dropped ATK's private space taxi proposal over technical concerns
 
Dan Leone - Space News
 
A design by Alliant Techsystems (ATK) was dropped from NASA’s shortlist of potential space station crew taxis because the company did not present a technically sound plan for combining existing rocket and spacecraft designs into a single transportation system, according to a NASA source selection document released Sept. 4.
 
"I had some significant concerns about the lack of detail in some areas of ATK’s technical approach," William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, wrote in the document. "Basically, 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’s comments appeared in a July 31 source selection document detailing his reasons for passing over ATK and three less-known firms to pick Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Sierra Nevada Space Systems for Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) awards totaling $1.1 billion.
 
ATK spokesman George Torres had no immediate comment Sept. 4 on the CCiCap source selections statement.
 
CCiCap is the third round of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program to develop and certify privately operated astronaut taxi systems to restore independent U.S. access to and from the International Space Station by 2017. NASA currently pays Russia for those services.
 
ATK's proposed Liberty Transportation System would combine a launcher made from European and U.S. rocket stages with a composite crew module that was to be built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver. The rocket would use a shuttle-derived ATK-built solid-fuel core stage and the first stage of Europe's Ariane 5 rocket as an upper stage. The Liberty spacecraft would be based on a design once studied at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., to determine whether composite materials could be used in NASA’s Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle instead of aluminum lithium. Orion, also to be built by Lockheed Martin, is the deep-space crew capsule NASA plans to pair with the Space Launch System.
 
NASA also received CCiCap proposals from Space Operations, American Aerospace Inc., and Spacedesign Corp., but quickly rejected them as "unacceptable," according to the source selection document.
 
Of the three winners NASA announced Aug. 3, Boeing and SpaceX received $460 million and $440 million, respectively, while Sierra Nevada received $212.5 million. The awards, which run through May 2014, call for Boeing and SpaceX to complete a critical design review that would clear the way for construction of their competing systems to begin. Sierra Nevada’s award, worth less than half of what Boeing and SpaceX stand to receive, is meant to allow development of the company’s winged DreamChaser spacecraft to continue, albeit at a slower pace than Boeing's and SpaceX's capsule-based systems.
 
Boeing Details Latest Commercial Crew Bid
 
Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com
 
Boeing has provided more detail on the development timeline of its CST-100 capsule for human-rated low Earth orbit transportation under NASA's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) programme, which could earn the company as much as $460 million in funding.
 
Success is defined by successful completion of 19 major programme milestones. The first - the integrated systems test review, worth $50 million - has been certificated as complete.
 
"We tried to be very comprehensive in the layout of our milestones through the base period," says John Mulholland, Boeing's programme manager. The initial stages of the programme will be characterized by "a real focus on integrated reviews and designs", says Mulholland, culminating in an integrated system critical design review in 2014. The CCiCap agreement also lays out 33 optional milestones for post-base period work, contingent on additional NASA funding.
 
"The only real difference between our original bid and the agreement with NASA was in the base period we had proposed completing the build of our integrated structural test article," says Mulholland. "And in negotiation with NASA, based on the capped funding expectations they had, we pushed that milestone - the structural test article build complete - to early in the option period."
 
Although the optional targets are undisclosed in the text of the space act agreement between NASA and Boeing, they have been set. The first optional checkpoint is the phase two safety review, says Mulholland, and the last is a crewed flight test. In between come a variety of major manufacturing and test checkpoints.
 
"We'll have our structural test article, we'll have qualification test articles, and those are really large-scale tests that will verify that our systems will meet all of the operational environments that they're subjected to," says Mulholland. "So it transitions from design to integrated qualification and validation, and, of course, culminates in the two flight tests - an uncrewed flight test and a crewed flight test."
 
Boeing is also beginning discussions with its supply chain to prepare for a programme ramp-up. "We're in the middle right now of finalizing and negotiating agreements with all the suppliers; that's going to be a big shift in our development."
 
Obama Highlights U.S. Space Achievements Ahead of Florida Visit
 
Brevard Times
 
President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is touting America's accomplishments made in space exploration since the President took office just ahead of his visit on Sunday to Florida's Space Coast.
 
"I am 100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future. Because broadening our capabilities in space will continue to serve our society in ways that we can scarcely imagine," President Obama said in a campaign press release.  "Because exploration will once more inspire wonder in a new generation sparking passions and launching careers. And because, ultimately, if we fail to press forward in the pursuit of discovery, we are ceding our future and we are ceding that essential element of the American character."
 
His campaign said that "President Obama has pursued an ambitious new direction for NASA, laying the groundwork for a sustainable program of exploration and innovation.  He has extended the life of the International Space Station, forwarded efforts to foster international cooperation in space, supported the growth of America’s commercial space industry, and invested in taking on our pressing scientific challenges while continuing the nation’s commitment to robust human space exploration, science, and aeronautics programs."
 
The Obama campaign lists the following highlights of the U.S. space program made under an Obama administration:
 
Extended the Life of Existing Space Efforts: In his first term, President Obama built on existing NASA programs and projects, continuing our efforts at unmanned exploration, extending the life of the Space Shuttle by two flights, and continuing and expanding the basic scientific research occurring at the International Space Station.
 
Continued Investments In Deep Space Exploration: This August, on the planet Mars, the United States of America made history. The successful landing of Curiosity – the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet – marks an unprecedented feat of technology and exploration that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future. The successful landing both indicates America’s continued preeminence in space, and reminds us of the need to continue the innovation, technology, and basic research investments that have always made our economy the envy of the world.
 
Added Additional Space Shuttle Flights: Shortly after taking office, President Obama sought to delay the end of NASA’s shuttle program, requested funds for the AMS mission, STS-134, in his fiscal year 2010 NASA budget.  In addition, President Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, a law that funded an additional space shuttle flight, STS-135, for 2011.2 3
 
Extended ISS beyond 2016 And Work with international allies on ISS: Following the recommendations of the blue-ribbon Augustine Committee, President Obama extended the life of the International Space Station (ISS) until at least 2020 through the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.  Extending the ISS enables it to continue serving as a framework for international collaboration and enables the U.S. to maintain its ability to lead future international space flight partnerships.
 
Continued The International Space Station Role In Fundamental Biological And Physical Research: Under President Obama’s administration, NASA has continued ongoing biological and physical research experiments and has added many more.
 
Supported Growth Of Commercial Spaceflight: President Obama’s first term accomplishments demonstrate his support for growing America’s commercial space industry while increasing partnerships that unleash private sector innovation in space-borne scientific research.
 
Engaged The Private Sector To Improve Spaceflight: In his first year in office, President Obama’s Recovery Act provided key funding to spur private sector development and demonstration of safe, reliable, and cost effective space transportation vehicles capable of delivering cargo—and eventually crew—to Low-Earth Orbit and the International Space Station.  NASA followed this investment with continued efforts through the Agency’s Commercial Crew Development Program.  This May, one of the program participants, SpaceX, successfully launched the first privately owned, all-American space launch vehicle to the International Space Station.
 
Supported Commercial Access To Space: In the first year of his term, President Obama invited government and private entities, including commercial firms, non-profit entities, and academic institutions, to propose projects in basic and applied research and technology development that could be performed on the International Space Station.
 
Increased Commercialization Benefits From Space Technology: President Obama increased funding for NASA’s partnerships with industry, academic institutions, government agencies, and national laboratories to promote technology investments, as well as its efforts to promote early stage technology development by small businesses for NASA use.
 
Continued Investments in Science: President Obama has continued and further developed NASA’s position as a key investor in science. Under President Obama’s leadership, we have dramatically improved our resources to research climate change, and supported NOAA in its efforts to enhance its Earth mapping resources.
 
Worked Toward Deploying A Global Climate Change Research And Monitoring System: President Obama’s Recovery Act funded new investments in Earth observation and climate science programs, including funds to build and repair National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facilities, ships, and equipment. These investments help address critical gaps in climate modeling and climate data records, allowing continued more accurate research into the causes and effects of climate changes, and assisting research on ways to mitigate climate change.
 
Improved Climate Change Data Records: President Obama’s Recovery Act provided the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with funds to launch a Satellite Climate Data Record Program aimed at developing and implementing a robust, sustainable and scientifically defensible approach to producing and preserving climate records from satellite data.
 
Enhanced Earth Mapping Capacity: Under President Obama, NASA has supported the development of Landsat Data Continuity Mission, a program developing next-generation satellites that will aid numerous government agencies by providing key data for climate research, natural resources management, land development, public safety, homeland security, and disaster recovery. 15 Under President Obama, the program has seen sufficient investment to progress to its final stages, and launches of new satellites are slated for next year.
 
Built Support for Next Generation of Spaceflight: From investments in research on advances in spaceflight technology to expanding our commitment to an education system that prepares our students for space and science achievements, President Obama has invested in strengthening the base for America’s next generation of spaceflight.
 
Increase Spending to Prepare for Longer Space Missions: President Obama’s most recent budget request proposes to raise the budget for NASA’s exploration directorate to $3.9 billion for FY 2013, an increase of more than $200 million dollars over FY 2012 exploration expenditures. These budget investments fund forward looking development of systems and capabilities required for human exploration of space beyond low Earth orbit, to asteroids, Mars, and other deep space destinations. Programs funded under this budget include the Orion MPCV Space Capsule – the passenger module for NASA’s next generation space exploration rocket system.
 
Conduct Robust Research And Development On Future Space Missions: As President, Barack Obama has consistently sought increased support for Research and Development to forward NASA’s Space Exploration mission. His 2013 budget request increased support for R&D by 11% over his 2012 levels. The increases support efforts at expanding permanent human presence beyond low Earth orbit to destinations such as near Earth asteroids, the Moon, and Mars, while maintaining U.S. human space flight capability in low Earth orbit. The administration is on track to spend almost 9% of its space exploration budget on the research and design projects necessary to make our future exploration projects fruitful.
 
Supporting Development Of The Next-Generation Space Vehicle: Upon taking office, President Obama convened an independent commission to review the nation’s plans and programs for human spaceflight. The committee found that the Constellation program that was slated to be the successor manned spaceflight system to the Space Shuttle, would not produce its planned space vehicles in a timely way, and its development could force cuts to the International Space Station and other critical programs, Under President Obama, NASA is developing a new vehicle, the Space Launch System, which will serve as the backbone of its human space exploration program in the post-Shuttle era. Support for the Space Launch System by 1.5% in President Obama’s latest budget request, and the system continues its steady progress – in July, SLS completed its preliminary review, allowing the program to continue ahead to its preliminary design phase.
 
‘Sticky Boom’ Firm Gets NASA Help
 
Frank Morring, Jr. - Aerospace Daily
 
Altius Space Machines, a Colorado-based niche startup developing noncooperative capture technology for spaceflight applications, will work with NASA’s Langley Research Center to develop compact packaging for “long-reach” robotic arms.
 
The Louisville, Colo., firm has entered an unfunded Space Act Agreement with the U.S. space agency to advance its Compactly Stowable Manipulator (CSM) concept, which it says could provide the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle and other compact spacecraft with some of the same capabilities afforded the space shuttle by its Canadian-built robotic arm.
 
“As the name suggests, the CSM will have a very small packaging volume, yet be capable of highly dexterous, long-reach operations,” the company said in announcing the agreement.
 
“When combined with a noncooperative payload capture technology, the CSM would also enable satellite servicing, small-package delivery/return, and rendezvous/capture of nanosat-scale free flyers or sample return canisters.”
 
Altius is developing “sticky boom” spacecraft-attach technology that would use electrostatic adhesion or other phenomena to capture noncooperative objects in space. The company says the technology could allow delivery of payloads to the International Space Station and other orbital destinations without the need for station-keeping, by using long robotic arms to snatch arriving payloads. Other applications include orbital debris removal and satellite servicing.
 
Under a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Altius will provide engineering services to the Phoenix spacecraft-recycling demonstration by working with other companies and the University of Colorado to develop and integrate a composite tubular arm that can be collapsed into a compact storage package. The “storable tubular arm” would be used to carry cameras and lights, and to damp vibrations as the Phoenix spacecraft removes large antennas and other components from a defunct spacecraft in geostationary orbit.
 
NASA’s Historic Giant Crawler Gets a Tune Up for Modern Times
 
Matthew Peddie - TransportationNation.com
 
Retired space shuttles are being readied for museums, but there’s one piece of equipment at the Kennedy Space Center that dates back to before the moon landing and it’s not going anywhere. NASA’s giant crawler transporter is the only machine with enough muscle to move Apollo rockets and space shuttles out to the launch pad, and after nearly 50 years on the job the agency’s decided there’s still no better way to transport heavy loads.
 
It’s about as wide as a six lane highway, higher than a two story building, with huge caterpillar treads at each of its four corners. With the mobile launch platform and a rocket or space shuttle on its back, the crawler en route for the launch pad was like a skyscraper rolling slowly down a highway.
 
Regular roads can’t handle the five and a half million pound weight of the crawler.
 
“If you drive on some of the roads out here where we’ve traversed it’s like riding a roller coaster, because we’ve done some damage to the roads with our weight, especially in the heat of the summer,” says lead system engineer Russell Stoewe.
 
NASA has two crawler transporters.
 
Crawler two is being upgraded from its current lifting capacity of 12 million pounds — the combined weight of the shuttle and mobile launcher — to 18 million pounds, for NASA’s new heavy lift rocket.
 
Mechanic Wilson Williams, who’s worked at the space center since 1968 — nearly as long as the crawler itself –  says it’s the biggest project he’s ever worked on. “It’s a challenge. A lot of new things, new engines, new exhausts, new brakes, new hydraulics, new computers.”
 
Getting inside the crawler is like boarding a battleship — up a ladder, along a walkway and through a low doorway. There are four big diesel engines inside, similar to what you might find on an old Naval ship.
 
The two engines supplying onboard power are being replaced, but the engines powering the generators which drive the caterpillar tracks are staying put. “We baby them,” says Russell Stoewe. He says the manufacturers have looked inside the engines and say they’re in pristine condition.
 
The crawler re-fit is part of a $2 billion plan to modernize the Kennedy Space Center, and as NASA moves to partner with commercial rocket companies it aims to make the center as versatile as possible.
 
The crawlers are listed on a national historic register, but Frank DiBello, the CEO of the economic development agency Space Florida, says it makes sense to keep them going. “We build bridges for far longer than that,” says DiBello.
 
“There is nothing inherent in the basic crawler transporter system that can’t be revitalized over time,” he says.
 
In fact, about seven years ago, NASA was considering whether to trade the crawler in for something new. Russell Stoewe says the agency looked at rubber-tired vehicles but rejected the idea, partly because of storms that hit the cape.
 
“If lightning hits the vehicle would we have to inspect, I don’t know how many tires they had, some of them had 80 tires, some of them had 500 tires,” says Stoewe.
 
“There’s a significant amount of labor that goes into that. All of these things were unknowns that added an unknown cost to an already high cost.”
 
In 1965 NASA spent $14 million to build the transporters. That’s more than $100 million in today’s dollars. Stoewe says it would cost even more now because the U.S. is no longer the industrial powerhouse it was in the 1960s.
 
While the crawlers are indispensible to NASA, they’ve also made their mark on popular culture, appearing in movies like Apollo 13 and Transformers 3.
 
Stoewe says the current transformation project won’t improve its speed or gas mileage at all: one mile an hour and 32 feet to the gallon.
 
But after the work’s complete in 2014, the upgrade will allow this crawler to roll out a new generation of space craft.
 
Ways to say goodbye to space shuttle Endeavour
 
Dewayne Bevil - Orlando Sentinel
 
There's a lot of shuffling of space shuttles going on, and you can watch some of it in action through tours and other opportunities at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
 
Right now, space shuttle Endeavour is parked inside NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, being prepped for a cross-country flight. On Sept. 17, the shuttle will piggyback on a special Boeing 747 to Los Angeles, where it eventually will be displayed at the California Science Center.
 
There are three ways to take a peek at Endeavour, which made 25 space missions in 19 years, before it leaves Florida forever: a tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building; the limited-time-only Endeavour Bus Tour; and fly-out viewing opportunities on Sept. 17.
 
Up close, big time
 
The "up-close tour" of the VAB lives up to its name. Endeavour seems unbelievably close, 12 feet or so from the public walkway. The shuttle is sitting in its landing position, like it just rolled in from space for the night.
 
The craft looks like it would enjoy having a nose rub, but my arms aren't that long.
 
When I dropped in last week, a former shuttle worker was there sharing memories. She talked about the hand-stitching in various parts of Endeavour, including on blankets that served as thermal barriers. We could see the blankets right there, steps away on the VAB. It's amazing that such a high-tech wonder was assisted by old-school quilting.
 
Another stitch story: The thread was so sensitive that it could not stand the rigors of a sewing machine, yet so sturdy that it could stand temperatures of up to 1,200 degrees.
 
The VAB, which dates to construction of Saturn V rockets in the 1960s, is crane-your-neck ginormous. But there are smaller details like the banners that team members signed for individual shuttle missions. They were displayed on a fence for astronauts to see on the way to the launch pad. Now many hang in the VAB's rafters.
 
The VAB tour is a $25 "add-on" ($19 ages 3-11) to the standard KSC tour that comes with admission, and it leaves every 30 minutes. It frequently sells out by noon, I'm told, so reservations are suggested. Endeavour will be in the VAB through Sept. 13, but the tours will continue after it leaves the building.
 
Date, mate, match
 
On Sept.14 and 15, the visitor complex will offer the Endeavour Bus Tour, which will include a drive-by viewing of the craft as it's being attached to the 747. This is accomplished with the cleverly named mechanism known as the "mate-demate device."
 
The tour includes a swing by Launch Pad 39-A, site of many shuttle launches, and it costs $20 per person ($14 for ages 3-11) in addition to regular visitor-center admission.
 
Up, up and away
 
Endeavour will take off from the Shuttle Landing Facility on Sept. 17, and a limited number of guests will be bused out there for the event. The price is $40 (plus admission) per person.
 
Other folks can watch from the attraction's Rocket Garden as the shuttle-747 combo flies 300 feet overhead. That viewing is included in regular admission. Takeoff is expected around 7:30 a.m.
 
Awaiting Atlantis
 
Although Endeavour is flying off to the left coast, Floridians will get to hang onto its sister ship Atlantis. The vessel is being prepped for display at Kennedy Space Center, which is constructing a new exhibit set to open in July. Watch for special Atlantis-based ventures, including a special roll-over event, in coming months.
 
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.
 
Future spacecraft could protect crews with walls made of water
 
Rebecca Boyle - Popular Science
 
Walls of water could protect astronauts from radiation while recycling their bodily waste and purifying the air, under a new NASA concept. The “Water Walls” design takes a page from mother nature and uses water for passive protection.
 
The concept’s formal name is Highly Reliable and Massively Redundant Life Support Architecture, and it’s part of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, meaning it just received funding for further study. It would use a framework of hexagon-shaped polyethylene bags serving as the walls of a spacecraft. They’d be filled with various bacteria, algae and filters to clean and purify water and air and provide food — algae as food may not be tasty, but it would be nutritious — and shield the spacecraft’s occupants from space. The concept is by Michael Flynn at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
 
“Nature uses no compressors, evaporators, lithium hydroxide canisters, oxygen candles, or urine processors,” Flynn points out. Earth’s atmosphere and water are instead renewed through passive processes, and this is what he proposes for future spacecraft.
 
The only mechanical element would be the pumps required to move water into the appropriate places. The system would contain at least five separate elements: Gray water processing, for urine and shower water; black water processing for solid waste; air processing to remove CO2 and restore oxygen; food growth using algae; and radiation protection. Water has been proposed in the past for the latter, but this system is unique because it integrates water’s other uses, too.
 
Spacecraft would carry spare bags to replace used or depleted ones, and the whole thing is massively redundant, to use Flynn’s phrase — a far cry from current life-support systems, which rely on mechanical instruments and can fail. NASA approved $100,000 for further development of this concept.
 
Harnessing Solar Energy to Sail to the Stars
The solar system is bathed in solar energy -- can we use it to propel spacecraft to the planets and beyond?
 
Mark Thompson - Discovery News
 
It's interesting when you look back at the history of space exploration and realize that propulsion technology hasn't really changed very much.
 
The earliest rocket prototypes were nothing more than elaborate versions of weapons used during World War 2 and fireworks used during civil celebrations. Even the Space Shuttle made use of solid rocket fuel technology in its pair of solid rocket boosters. But, with the liquid rocket fuel propulsion in the external tank, this combination has proved to be highly effective and launched hundreds of astronauts into space.
 
The approach works -- albeit not very efficiently -- and to get out of the gravitational well of the Earth, it seems for now that the extra punch from exothermic processes is needed.
 
In deep space, however, there are alternatives receiving very serious consideration -- such as the "eco-friendly" solar sail.
 
The solar sail concept is simple: any surface exposed to electromagnetic radiation 'feels' a pressure known as radiation pressure and it's this pressure that exerts a tiny pushing force against the surface. If the surface happens to be a spacecraft or part of a spacecraft, it could act against it to provide propulsion through space.
 
The concept of radiation pressure isn't particularly new. The idea was first alluded to by Johannes Kepler in 1610 when he suggested the reason why the tail of a comet points away from the sun was in some way caused by the sun. Kepler even made reference to using this unknown force for exploration when he wrote in a letter: 'Provide ships or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will brave even that void.'
 
By 1864, it was accepted that the light carried momentum and would exert a pressure on anything it meets. A great demonstration of this can be seen in the Nichols radiometer, which is a sealed bulb with tiny silvered glass mirrors attached by a very thin wire inside the glass. On being exposed to light the mirrors start to rotate, driven by radiation pressure excerted by photons from the bulb filament.
 
The technique is already being used in space exploration to for course corrections and fuel savings. For example, NASA's Mercury MESSENGER probe successfully used solar radiation pressure to make small course corrections during its journey to the innermost planet.
 
To make the most out of radiation pressure for space exploration every bit of solar energy needs to be eked out. For any useful form of propulsion, giant solar sails need to be used and exposed to as much light as possible.
 
The first interplanetary test of a solar sail was conducted by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency in May 2010 with the launch of Ikaros. This was the first time a solar sail was deployed and tested in space and used as its primary propulsion. NASA also launched the orbital solar sail prototype Nanosail-D in November 2010, successfully completing its mission after 240 days in Earth orbit. Ikaros, on the other hand, continues its journey around the sun after passing Venus in December 2010.
 
With Ikaros' 27 square meter sail deployed, the full effect of radiation pressure from the sun on the sail produces about 0.0002 pounds of force, thats equal to about 0.1 grams -- less than the average goose feather! The acceleration offered by this method of propulsion is small but over a long period of time, incredible speeds could be reached.
 
The downside to this mode of transportation is that heavier craft will take longer to accelerate, so larger sails would need to be manufacturered. Ikaros' sail was impregnated with solar cells to power the electronic equipment and a matrix of liquid crystals around the outside whose reflectivity could be altered to change the attitude of the spacecraft.
 
Future missions will take these tests further from the sun. The challenge here is that the further away from the sun you go, the weaker the radiation pressure, so acceleration through interstellar space will be limited. Innovations in laser technology may extend the range of solar sails.
 
The technology is no doubt in its infancy, but new ideas of rotating solar sails in various configurations shows great promise.
 
Retired astronaut Mark Kelly describes how wife's ordeal focused him
 
Lou Fancher - San Jose Mercury News
 
The Lesher Center for the Arts' ninth "Newsmakers" Speaker Series soared into orbit on Tuesday with Captain Mark Kelly, the retired American astronaut, Space Shuttle Endeavor commander, best-selling author and husband of U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
 
In a pre-show interview minutes before delivering a rollicking 60-minute testimony to a lifetime of get-your-hands-dirty hard work, Kelly was like the aircraft he has flown.
 
Through 375 aircraft landings, 39 combat missions, more than 50 days in space and the horrific assassination attempt on his wife on Jan. 8, 2011, his never-give-up spirit has remained impervious to life's g-forces.
 
"Especially in the beginning, I was just being focused," he said, describing how he emerged from a surreal, mental fog after receiving the call telling him his wife had been shot in the head.
 
At the hospital, he used the practical, ask-questions approach that had served him well. He was guided by words posted in a NASA decision-making room: "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
 
"She had been shot through the middle of the left side of her forehead, but they had to operate on the right orbital area. The day of the surgery, they change their minds about what they were going to do," he said, his eyes widening in disbelief at the recollection. Kelly skirted "group think" by asking the most junior resident in the ICU her opinion first.
 
"I didn't even know where things were in the brain," he admitted. "I had heard music was on the right hand side, speech is on the left. Turns out, it's true. Gabby struggles with speech, but when it comes to music, she can belt out a song, just like before."
 
During his public comments to a nearly sold out Hoffman Theatre audience, Kelly said he learned what "primary caregiver" really meant.
 
"The first person I would have gone to for these decisions was Gabby," he said. "The second was my brother, but he was commanding the space station and wasn't even on the planet."
 
Kelly's twin brother Scott is also an astronaut and Space Shuttle commander.
 
Growing up as the children of "a tough, New Jersey Irish cop" father and a mother who was a secretary-turned-police-officer, the Kelly boys saw their parents give daily demonstrations of perseverance.
 
"For a woman to become a cop in 1970's New Jersey was ... " Kelly began, leaving the sentence open-ended before describing how his 4-foot, 3-inch mother scaled a 7-foot, 4-inch wall in 4.5 seconds, besting the police department's 9-second requirement and earning her a badge.
 
Hard work arose repeatedly as a theme. From his arrival in 1986 at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola with what he called "the cheesy music from the movie Top Gun" playing on his radio and a plan to walk on Mars, through a career choice with surprising challenges -- "I found out I wasn't a particularly good pilot," he confessed easily -- to the arduous journey of recovery he is sharing with Giffords, Kelly has followed a mantra: "Deny the acceptance of failure."
 
"How good you are at the beginning of something is no predictor of how good you can become," he told the audience.
 
After the shooting, Kelly said the thought of caring for Giffords -- "a woman who spoke Spanish, rode a motorcycle, became a member of Congress and seemed like 10 women at once" but now required unfathomable patience and support -- was overwhelming.
 
Giffords suffers from aphasia, a debilitating, isolating communication impairment typically caused by a stroke. The gunshot wound left her with intact intelligence, but difficulty in speaking. Aphasia can also impact the ability to read, write or comprehend language.
 
The evening's non-profit partner, Oakland-based Aphasia Center of California, provides pioneering therapy for people with Aphasia through a community-centered approach.
 
"A lot of people get isolated, but Gabby doesn't have that problem," Kelly said, explaining why she had not attended similar clinics in Tucson and Houston. "She's always giving talks, meeting people, very public. She's had a community, but a lot of people with aphasia don't."
 
Audience questions followed Kelly's reading of a note from Giffords, which advised the East Bay audience to "be passionate, be courageous, be strong, and be your best."
 
Kelly said sitting between John Glenn and Neil Armstrong at a dinner last year was a highlight of his career.
 
Alternatively, packing his wife's suitcase for a recent business trip was "perhaps the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life," he joked.
 
Electing moderates who are willing to work for bi-partisan positions is the goal of "Gabby PAC," the political action committee he and Giffords had just announced on Twitter. The future of NASA, he predicted, lay in collaborative partnerships with private companies like Southern California's Space X.
 
And his favorite planet? The one he described as a big blue marble, floating in a black sky: Earth.
 
Setting aside any political aspirations he might have, Kelly left the audience with one promise -- that the woman whose strong, non-vindictive attitude shines like a missile on his radar will someday return, in some form, to public service.
 
LA utility crews raising power lines to make way for behemoth Space Shuttle Endeavour
 
Corey Moore - KPCC Radio (Southern California)
 
Los Angeles utility crews are more than halfway done raising power lines to make way for Space Shuttle Endeavour’s trek through South L.A. next month.
 
The five-story high, 78-foot wide shuttle will inch along a 12-mile route from LAX to its final destination at the California Science Center.
 
While workers chop down hundreds of trees to clear the way, other crews are raising power lines at about 40 locations along the path so the massive spacecraft doesn’t clip them.
 
“What we’re able to do in a lot of these cases is actually raise our conductors up to get them out of the area," explains Daryl Buckley, a director with the L.A. Department of Water and Power. "And we’re doing that by installing the taller poles and then once the project is completed and the Endeavour’s gone through, we’ll be able to come back down... we can lower our conductors down to a more reasonable height.”
 
Buckley says workers, on average, will raise lines about 30 feet from their current height. He estimates crews should finish the job in about three more weeks.
 
During the process, crews will also replace more than 70 older poles — some of which have stood since the early 1900s.
 
LADWP authorities say they don’t expect customers to lose power while they do the work.
 
The California Science Center is paying for the project.
 
Shuttle trainer is one giant puzzle
 
Jill Drury - WDTN TV (Dayton)
 
Restorers says it's like a giant puzzle. Piece by piece, the space shuttle trainer is coming together at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Riverside.
 
Team Raytheon is teaming up with the museum restorers to re-install interior items of the trainer.
 
Why a puzzle? “First, you have to fully evaluate it and locate all of the pieces and then proceed in a methodical manner so that the pieces are brought into the trainer at the right time in order to make them all fit,” said Clayton Hamm, Team Raytheon Engineer. “Once everything is organized, things tend to move along smoothly, but once in a while something will surprise you or require extra time to install.”
 
The interior items include seats, lockers and monitors. They were all removed when the trainer was moved from Dallas to Dayton in a Super Guppy aircraft last month.
 
The CCT-1 exhibit is more than what's on the inside. The museum plans to build a full-scale mock-up of the payload bay and design other exhibits related to the shuttle program.
 
Once complete, you will get a firsthand look at how the astronauts trained for missions.
 
The CCT-1 itself should be complete by September 29, 2012. The entire exhibit does not have a firm completion date just yet.
 
Udvar-Hazy Center to display parts of Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit
 
Lonnae O'Neal Parker - Washington Post
 
Admirers of the late Neil Armstrong are now able to see parts of the spacesuit he was wearing when he took the historic first steps on the moon at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia.
 
The “extra vehicular” gloves and visor worn by the Apollo 11 astronaut on his July 20, 1969 spacewalk are displayed in the center’s James S. McDonnell space hangar, which also houses the Space Shuttle Discovery, where they will remain for two weeks.
 
Armstrong’s spacesuit had been on display at the Air and Space Museum location in the District from 1973 until 2001, when it was put into storage because of preservation concerns. “These are the three items that are not going to suffer any further damage until we find a better display situation,” says Cathy Lewis, curator of the National Air and Space Museum’s international space programs and spacesuits.
 
The gloves were hand-sewn. “Save the overshoes, they are the most obvious iconic images of Armstrong on the moon — the big white sun bonnet on top of helmet and bulky gloves with characteristic blue silicone rubber fingertips .?.?. I remember as a child, even in the grainy black and white TV broadcast you could make those out in the image,” she says.
 
Lewis says the museum wanted the memorial to go up in advance of NASA’s public memorial for Armstrong at the National Cathedral on Sept. 13.
 
The Armstrong memorial will be on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly until Sept. 18.
 
Our Take: Hold that shuttle
 
Orlando Sentinel (Editorial)
 
President Obama's campaign recently put out a list of actions he's taken to support the "space community." The president, planning a visit Sunday to Florida's Space Coast, should add another item to his list, and delay the departure of the shuttle Endeavour from Kennedy Space Center.
 
Endeavour is now scheduled to leave KSC en route to its retirement home in Los Angeles atop a 747 on Sept. 17. That's just five days before the start of the Cocoa Beach Air Show, an annual two-day event that normally draws more than 100,000 spectators.
 
Community leaders rescheduled this year's air show from late October to mid-September, hoping it would coincide with Endeavour's last exit and final flyover. They first asked NASA months ago to coordinate the events, but the agency has refused. NASA even rebuffed an appeal from Florida's two U.S. senators.
 
So Endeavour is due to leave KSC on a Monday at 7:30 a.m. — not the following weekend, when its flyover could add tens of thousands of spectators to the crowds on the Space Coast for the air show. That would give a badly needed economic boost to a region still struggling from the end of the shuttle program. It also would be easier for shuttle workers to pay their last respects.
 
NASA insists delaying Endeavour's farewell even for a few days would be too costly and complicated. But there would still be plenty of time to meet the shuttle's mid-October delivery date at the California Science Center.
 
The president needs to pull rank on this matter to make sure the Space Coast gets to give a proper send-off to Endeavour.
 
Hug the space shuttle, not the trees
The cutting of hundreds of trees so the shuttle Endeavour can move from LAX to Exposition Park is actually a benefit for the cities involved
 
Los Angeles Times (Editorial)
 
There are times when we can hug trees with the best of them. But let's face it: Most of the 400 or so specimens that will be uprooted to ease the final path for the space shuttle Endeavour aren't worth all that passionate an embrace.
 
The California Science Center has aroused deeply rooted sentiment against its plans for shuttling the retired shuttle from Los Angeles International Airport along surface streets in Inglewood and Los Angeles to the museum in Exposition Park. The controversy arose because the move will involve cutting down hundreds of trees along major thoroughfares.
 
Better to look at it another way: This is progress, and not just in the sense of a shiny high-tech behemoth mowing down nature. For all the talk about these historic shade-giving symbols of nature, only about 50 of the 265 or so trees that will be sacrificed in Los Angeles are taller than 15 feet. Of those 50, 20 are nuisance trees that are tearing up sidewalks or causing similar problems; the city wants those gone.
 
For each tree it cuts down, the museum will plant two trees of the species most favored by the individual neighborhoods, along the same streets. Museum officials promise that in two to five years, the new trees will rival the originals in size. They're even throwing in two years of arborist work to ensure that the trees become established. All this will cost $2 million to $3 million.
 
The city of Inglewood, where about 130 trees will be cut down, is delighted. That city has a master plan for trees, and none of the species that will be removed — many of them pavement-busting ficus — are in it. All the replacement specimens will be in the plan, and along with the repair work the museum will fund on deteriorating medians and so forth, the city will be left with $500,000 worth of improvements.
 
Science Center President Jeffrey Rudolph makes a persuasive case that dismantling the shuttle for transport would irreparably damage such awe-inspiring features as the delicate tiles that protected astronauts from the heat of reentry. Meanwhile, the museum has taken extreme measures to remove as few trees as possible. The equipment used to move the shuttle can make 90-degree turns to dodge obstacles, but there's no maneuvering room when two trees stand on opposite sides of the street. Broken heat-shield tiles could not be replaced because they're not made anymore, but trees are an ever-renewable resource, and Los Angeles will soon have 250 or so more of them.
 
With a history in aviation, Brownsville hopes to refuel its image by landing an aerospace role
 
Steve Clark - Brownsville Herald
 
It was a sad day for Brownsville in 1959 when Pan American World Airways pulled up stakes and moved its Western Division headquarters to Miami.
 
The airline, which had set up shop in Brownsville in the late 1920s, was a major employer and a point of pride for the city as Pan Am’s “Gateway to Latin America.” Brownsville was a pioneer in air travel, and Pan Am was part of its identity. It lasted for 30 years, and then it was gone.
 
Today, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, may offer a chance to recapture some of that prestige and the benefits that come with it should the company decide to build a facility in Cameron County to launch its spacecraft.
 
Gilberto Salinas, vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Council, which has been in talks with SpaceX since March 2011, said the city’s aviation legacy was not lost on the company’s management.
 
“SpaceX is aware of that,” he said of Pan Am’s legacy here. “They brought it up. They use our airport as an example. They said what they’re trying to do is what a handful of cities did: All of the airports were owned by the military, then slowly they started building private airports and Brownsville was one of the first ones, they said.”
 
If SpaceX does get federal clearance and opts to build its $80 million facility here, it would make the southern tip of Texas home to the first commercial rocket launch site in history. That would put us squarely in the “pioneer” category once again.
 
SpaceX and Elon Musk, the company’s founder, CEO and chief designer, are already there. The company made history May 25 when its Dragon spacecraft became the first privately developed vehicle to successfully dock with the International Space Station — a feat only the U.S., Russian and Japanese space programs, and the European Space Agency, had managed to pull off.
 
Musk started in 2002 with 10 employees and now has about 1,800 at his headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., and at the testing facility in McGregor, Texas.
 
SpaceX has a launch pad at Cape Canaveral and has broken ground on a second one at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California from which it can launch the 22-story “Falcon Heavy” rocket now under development. It will be the world’s most powerful rocket. On July 16, SpaceX announced its selection by NASA for an $82 million contract to launch the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Jason-3 spacecraft; the launch is scheduled to take place at Vandenberg in December 2014.
 
Given those accomplishments, it is not difficult to imagine the economic benefits of having a SpaceX facility here, and it is just as tempting to wonder whether a SpaceX launch facility near Brownsville would spawn a larger aerospace industry here. Some point to Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Huntsville, Ala., also known as “Rocket City,” where the Redstone rocket was developed in the 1950s.
 
“Since they’re privatizing this, it’s wide open right now,” Salinas said. “Who knows? You might be look-ing at the southern tip of the Texas coast as a place to launch rockets from. Or not – it might be just this one.”
 
BENEFITS
 
The seeds of Huntsville’s aerospace industry were planted during World War II, when the Army established chemical weapons facilities there. Cape Canaveral was chosen for its proximity to the equator, a factor in rocket launches. The first launch took place there in 1950.
 
Even McGregor, where SpaceX established its rocket development facility nearly seven years ago, was home to an Army weapons base during World War II. The base eventually was transferred to the Navy and subsequently was occupied by a series of large industrial interests. So the basics essentially were in place when SpaceX came calling, said McGregor City Manager Kevin Evans.
 
As a general rule, an industry in a particular cluster attracts similar industries, he said, and McGregor has had inquiries from other aerospace interests since SpaceX came to town, though maybe even more inquiries from unrelated industries.
 
With Brownsville, it’s hard to tell where SpaceX could lead, he said.
 
“You’re really kind of in uncharted ground because it’s going to be first private launch facility,” Evans said. “If Brownsville is successful, that would be good for all of Texas and would be good for us. I think it would be great for the company, too. The closer, the better.”
 
SpaceX, which also has a small personnel office in Houston, makes a point of concentrating its operations in a given area once it’s established something there.
 
“They’re great corporate partners,” he said. “You can’t have a better corporate family than these folks.”
 
Besides the high-paying jobs associated with the company, and despite the fact that McGregor boasts other successful corporations, there is a certain cachet to having SpaceX in your town, Evans said.
 
“It steps up the image up quite a bit when you’re involved with the most successful private space operation there is,” he said. “Brownsville better hope they get them. They don’t want this one to be the one that got away.”
 
Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez said he thinks the community’s effort to land SpaceX is firing on all cylinders.
 
“I don’t know anything else that we can do extra at this particular point, but if there is, we’ll do it,” he said. “We’ve got to be willing to move fast, to be diligent.”
 
Martinez said having SpaceX here would go a long way toward proving what he already knows about Brownsville — that the city has as much talent and capability as anywhere else. And that kind of self-image could play a role in leveraging further economic success.
 
“It could be contagious,” Martinez said. “Success begets success.”
 
Capturing even a small piece of the nascent private space cargo industry would represent a major stride away from Cameron County’s historical agricultural roots and an evolution toward a nontraditional industrial economic pursuit.
 
The BEDC’s Salinas said Keppel AmFELS currently is the county’s largest private employer. Employment at the offshore rig yard is currently about at 3,000, though it fluctuates between 2,000 and 4,000, he said.
 
The three other main engines driving the Brownsville economy are the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College; transportation logistics serving the maquiladoras in Matamoros, Mexico; and, to a smaller but vital extent, the Brownsville South Padre Island International Air-port, he said.
 
“These guys would probably also become an economic engine for Brownsville,” Salinas said. “We’ve got four big ones. This could be our fifth one.”
 
Salinas grew up in Brownsville in the 1980s, and he remembers an unemployment rate and economic conditions that make today’s local economy seem sunny by comparison. So it is difficult to imagine that, just a few decades later, elementary school students in Brownsville may be able to dream about, not to mention have a shot at, working in the aerospace industry in their hometown, Salinas said.
 
It is estimated that SpaceX would inject $50 million in annual salaries into the Brownsville economy, and perhaps another $20 million to $30 million in added impact associated with the operation.
 
The facility would depend on physicists, engineers, programmers, accountants, managers and support staff — all jobs paying in the range of $50,000 a year, according to officials.
 
SpaceX has said 600 new jobs would be created if it locates here, though many of those will be people brought in, Salinas said.
 
“It’s not like they’re going to introduce 600 new people into the town,” he said. “It’s no different from other big projects. They’ll bring anywhere between 20 to 30 percent of their workforce. And usually, they’ll come in to either train the local workforce, or stay and train somebody to replace them.”
 
The economic and employment impact could be even greater in the future, if the launch site attracts suppliers, though it is not possible to tabulate such an impact at this point, Salinas said.
 
BEDC is trying to hold to conservative projections, Salinas said, and not oversell the project. That said, he admits to “quite a few sleepless nights” trying to make sure the deal goes down.
 
Brownsville still is competing with Puerto Rico and Florida for the launch site. The company originally considered 12 sites in South Texas from Brownsville to north of Raymondville before setting its sights on Boca Chica Beach.
 
“We’re under a lot of pressure to make this project happen,” Salinas said. “I’m pretty optimistic. I think we have a very good and solid shot at it. That doesn’t mean our competition isn’t brewing something up, something creative.”
 
If Brownsville does win out, the boon to the city’s sense of identity, and the region’s, is hard to overestimate.
 
“Now, we’re no longer ‘that city on the border,’” Salinas said. “We’re Space City. We’re Space City, Texas.”
 
In practical terms, it also would mean opportunities for Brownsville’s “best and brightest,” Salinas said. It would mean that a Brownsville elementary school student could dream of working in aerospace in Brownsville, and then make that dream come true.
 
“When you retain your youngest and brightest, that’s where true wealth is generated in your community,” Salinas said.
 
Musk, whose dreams of space flight were inspired by the “Star Wars” films, is not content to merely shoot satellites into space and supply space stations.
 
His goal, according to the company, is to “revolutionize space transportation and ultimately make it possible for people to live on other planets.”
 
Now that the shuttle program is history and the way has been cleared for private space transport — with SpaceX leading the way — NASA has more time to spend on exploring Mars and beyond.
 
“What’s funny is that Elon Musk wants to do the same thing,” Salinas said. “It’s just a matter of who you think is going to get there first. Imagine, if we could do that from here.”
 
Local Flare: SpaceX launches would create tourism draw
 
Ed Asher - Valley Morning Star
 
Cocoa Beach in Florida, located about 5 miles from the entrance to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, was at one time a small resort community of fewer than 3,000 people and a handful of mom-and-pop hotels.
 
“This used to be just a sleepy little family resort town,” recalls Joseph Morgan, 76, a former Cocoa Beach mayor.
 
Then NASA came to Cape Canaveral.
 
“That changed everything. All of a sudden, this quiet little town became almost a boomtown. It was exciting to all at once see a big bang come to Cocoa Beach with people from all over the country coming here,” said Morgan, chairman of the Brevard County, Fla., Historical Commission.
 
Now South Padre Island stands to become the next Cocoa Beach, poised to reap the benefits of another space program, community and business leaders say. Space Exploration Technologies, a private California-based company, is eyeing the Boca Chica Beach area as a possible site for launching rockets into space.
 
If that happens, the Island would become a year-round destination as tourists flock here to witness the spectacle of a rocket launch, business leaders say. And it would mean an influx of high-paying jobs, creating a spillover of cash into the Island economy as engineers and technicians spend their money on Island attractions, creating even more jobs.
 
Some are predicting that, like Cocoa Beach, the Island would become a boomtown.
 
The boost to the Cocoa Beach economy in the early 1960s seemed to happen almost overnight, Morgan said. Young engineers, technicians and scientists arrived with a lot of discretionary income. That meant new jobs for everyone from carpenters to barbers. Local businesses exploded with activity, he said, and not the least to benefit was the tourism industry.
 
“People would come here by the thousands to watch a spacecraft launch. We have a couple causeways and people would line the causeways by the thousands,” Morgan said.
 
“It was bumper to bumper, people in RVs, cars, to watch a launch. It was spectacular.
 
“The first thing they would do is go out to where they could get a good place to watch it go up and they’d line the beaches.”
 
Local merchants thrived on the cash from those early Space Age curiosity seekers.
 
“A lot of times, the tourists would come here to watch a launch and they would stay to enjoy the beach, stay in the hotels and eat in the restaurants,” Morgan said.
 
GAME CHANGER
 
Space has named the Boca Chico Beach area one of three finalists for a rocket launch site. The company, which already has completed one mission to the International Space Station, is planning to launch 12 rockets a year. Like Cocoa Beach to Cape Canaveral, South Padre Island would be about 5 miles from the launch site if Boca Chico Beach is chosen.
 
Many people say that would be a game changer for the Island. One prediction is that at least 10,000 visitors would travel here to watch a rocket launch, which would have a direct and immediate impact on the Island tourism industry, which now experiences an off-season after Labor Day.
 
Beyond tourism, Island businesses would benefit from a spillover effect from hundreds of engineers, technicians and support staff who, just as Cocoa Beach’s Morgan says, would have a lot of discretionary income to spend on a resort community like the Island. That translates into more businesses and more jobs, business leaders say. And as Morgan says, those engineers and technicians will have families looking for a home.
 
What some on the Island are saying is, what better place for a new home than South Padre Island? Even decades after NASA’s first launches from Cape Canaveral, 40,000 visitors still travel to watch an unmanned spacecraft launch.
 
Gilbert Salinas, executive vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Council, is working with SpaceX on its proposal to build the rocket launch facility at Boca Chica Beach. While not predicting that many people for a SpaceX launch, Salinas believes 10,000 to 15,000 tourists would come to see a launch here.
 
SpaceX would add another holiday to the Island calendar, he says, and that actually would mean 12 added holidays a year, one for each launch, which would continue through the Island’s off-season.
 
“I think South Padre Island is going to benefit significantly in tourism,” he says. “Right now, when we think of South Padre Island we think of Spring Break, Semana Santa, Memorial Day weekend, Fourth of July and Labor Day weekend.
 
“Well, now you’re looking at a SpaceX launch. When a project alone can add a holiday to a tourist destination, which shows you just how significant a project can be.”
 
Salinas recently delivered that message to a gathering of about 100 people at the Sea Ranch Restaurant on the Island, where second-story windows overlook boats docked along the bay. Business owners and workers, government officials and community leaders had come to the luncheon, sponsored by a committee of the South Padre Island Chamber of Commerce, to hear about SpaceX and its proposal could mean to them. Cameron County commissioners Sofia Benavides and Dan Sanchez were there to pump up support for the project. Both the Island and the proposed launch site are located in Benavides’ Precinct 1.
 
FIRST-HAND OBSERVATION
 
Sanchez, who represents Precinct 4, says he is convinced the tourists would come. He was lucky enough to witness SpaceX’s first launch of a spacecraft to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral in late May. After that experience, he says, he has no doubts.
 
Just by chance, Sanchez and his wife and son were on a trip to Disney World in Orlando the weekend of the scheduled launch, and were able to get last-minute passes to watch it. He rented a car and drove his family the 80 miles from Orlando and was at the site by about 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 19, ready to take a bus from Kennedy Space Center to Cape Canaveral.
 
“We got ready to watch this historic launch,” Sanchez said. “We were standing out there on the observation deck, the countdown was going, it got down to one, and then … it just kind of stopped. What happened? They got to zero and it stopped; nothing happened.”
 
A glitch had stopped the launch. But it was reset for the following Tuesday, the next window of opportunity for a launch. And again, Sanchez wanted to be there.
 
“I convinced my wife. Hey, this is historical. Our 2-year-old son can say he was there when the first private company launched into space,” he said.
 
So they drove back for a launch that would happen in the dead of night.
 
“I had never been to anything like that and it was just so amazing to watch it,” he said. “That rocket is 5 miles away, 7 miles away, and with the naked eye you just kind of see lights. But when that thing lit up, the whole sky lit up and I was amazed at what was going on.”
 
He says he saw for himself how much interest there is in watching a rocket launch. For one thing, an elderly couple had driven more than four hours to see it. Unfortunately, they were turned away at Kennedy Space Center because the general public wasn’t allowed; they would have to watch it from somewhere else.
 
“But this is an elderly couple, probably in their mid- to late-70s, who had driven four and a half hours just to go watch this launch,” Sanchez said.
 
He didn’t see Cocoa Beach, but a colleague told him that “all along Cocoa Beach, there was just car, after car, after car, parked, waiting just to watch this launch.”
 
“So when you’re talking about these 40,000 people, he (Salinas) is not embellishing. That’s what it is. Because everybody comes out, because those are things that don’t happen every day,” he said.
 
South Padre Island, Sanchez suggests, could be just like Cocoa Beach and become a boomtown.
 
“Let’s consider here in Texas. When have you ever seen that in Texas? Never,” he said.
 
“Now we say we have the opportunity to have space launches here and what do we have to watch them from? South Padre Island. What does that mean it will do to this community? It’s going to boom.”
 
SpaceX launches would mean that Island businesses would no longer have to rely on the “heavy season,” he said.
 
“With 12 missions, once a month, guess what?” he said. “Even in the off-season you’re going to have people come in, fill the hotels, fill the restaurants, fill the shops. Because they’re not going to just come and watch the launch and leave, they’re going to make a weekend out of it.”
 
“It’s going to raise the bar,” he said.
 
The tourists will come, the tourists themselves say. As it is, they line the beaches and pack charter boats every Friday night during the summer, when the city of South Padre Island and local merchants sponsor a fireworks show. A rocket launch, tourists say, would be an even bigger spectacle.
 
Scarlet Johnson, a professor at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., who was vacationing on the Island this summer and shopping at a souvenir store, said she would be one of those in line.
 
“That still fascinates people,” she said of a rocket blastoff. “They still go to fireworks. So you don’t think I wouldn’t go see a rocket launched? You bet I would.”
 
Shopping at the same store, Barbara Gross, from Kalamazoo, Mich., said, “Now, that would be an attraction. I think that would be something I would want to take a look at, as a tourist.”
 
‘PRETTY AWESOME’
 
Boat Capt. Russell Robinson, owner of R and R Bait Stand in Port Isabel, sees the potential. He makes a living from tourists who come to fish. But a rocket launch, he says, would be a whole other ballgame.
 
“That would be pretty awesome for us here on the coast to watch spaceflight rockets,” he said. “There’s only one way of looking at it, it would have to be positive for business.”
 
Robinson recalls when the Ocean Tower condominium building was imploded on the north side of town in December 2009. “There were tens of thousands of people coming to watch a building being imploded,” he said. “My gosh, we had people chartering captains to get a bird’s-eye view to watch the implosion. Compare that to a rocket going up, there’s no comparison.”
 
Charter boat captains already see a boost in business every time the Island puts on its fireworks show.
 
“Like tonight,” Robinson said on a recent Friday, “every boat here on the Island will be out right at sunset filled with tourists and local people to watch the fireworks, just packed with people. Every business, from little to big, everybody’s got a little something from it.
 
“That would be the same situation with watching a rocket.”
 
Skipper Ray, a fishing guide and retail store owner on the Island, sees the same thing happening.
 
“All these dolphin boats will be running rocket launch trips. They’ll be loading them up to watch rockets,” Ray said.
 
“While they’re here, they’ll be eating at the restaurants and staying in the motels, and maybe, they’ll want to go fishing,” he added with a chuckle.
 
SPILLOVER EFFECT
 
Not everyone is convinced SpaceX would have the kind of impact on the tourist industry here that some are predicting. One of them is Tim O’Leary, CEO of American Diving and Marine Salvage, which offers, among other ventures, ecotourism, diving and dolphin watch trips out of the Island. There would be some tourists, he says, but he can’t imagine many people would drive down from, say, San Antonio, to watch a rocket launch when they can watch it on television.
 
But make no mistake, O’Leary says, SpaceX would be “huge” for the whole county.
 
The biggest impact, would come from the trickle-down effect of hundreds of high-tech professionals earning “huge salaries,” he said.
 
“The big picture is the huge financial imprint, as it were, that SpaceX would bring here,” he said. “These engineers and scientists — and I imagine it will be quite a few of them — will be making six figures. With those high-paying jobs you have a trickle-down effect. Because of the discretionary income, because they can spend the money, they can afford to come out to the Island, they can afford the condos; they can afford the hotels out here. And by them spending money, they will affect everyone’s income in Brownsville and Cameron County.
 
“To me,” he adds, “that is more dominant than the few tourists that it would bring to watch the spaceships take off. That’s so important for Cameron County; it would be one of the greatest steps forward this area has seen in a long time.”
 
Dennis Franke, a developer and partner in an Island real estate firm, agrees there would be a spillover effect for the Island, particularly from the discretionary spending power that would trickle out to the Island. One potential benefit would be that high-paid workers might want to make a home on the Island, he said.
 
“If you have that much employment, you’re going to have a certain demand for housing. … Some of those people possibly would want to live on the Island or have a condominium,” he said.
 
When it comes to housing, why not the Island? says Diana Delgado, with Stuart Title company, one of those 100 or so who attended the Chamber of Commerce luncheon at Sea Ranch Restaurant. She is another who predicts that these new workers would want to live on the Island.
 
“Most definitely, South Padre Island will really see a boast to the real estate industry,” Delgado said.
 
Carol Schmitt, a certified public accountant who also was at the luncheon, agrees.
 
“It’s a beautiful place, a wonderful, comfortable place. I think people would love to come here and live,” she said.
 
Morgan, the former Cocoa Beach mayor, predicts SpaceX would bring change.
 
“They (SPI) would be like a boom area,” he said. “They would see a lot of new people in the area, most of them high-tech types like engineers with a lot of discretionary income,” he said. “That means they will see a lot of new jobs, lots of people like builders, educators, everything from carpenters to carpet cleaners, car washers to barbers. It would just explode.”
 
Still, there are many skeptics. And Salinas, the economic development executive in Brownsville who has been working on the project for nearly a year and a half, is the first to say that SpaceX is not a done deal for Cameron County.
 
“It’s one thing to hook it, but it’s another thing to land it,” Salinas says. “Yeah, it’s on the hook, but we haven’t closed this deal,” he told the Chamber of Commerce crowd.
 
Dewitt Thomas, a boat captain and fishing guide out of Port Isabel, is one of those who say he’s skeptical that SpaceX will ever happen, “because somebody down here will screw it up.”
 
But if it does happen, it would be good not only for his business, but for every other business in the Laguna Madre area, he says.
 
“The most important word in the dictionary is if,” Thomas said. “If they came down here, and if they did it, it would be good. How could it not be?”
 
MEANWHILE ON MARS…
 
Visible from space: Curiosity tire tracks on Mars
 
Seth Borenstein - Associated Press
 
NASA's robotic rover Curiosity is making its mark on Mars, in a way so big that it can be seen from space.
 
In just one month, it's driven 368 feet on the red planet, slightly more than the length of a football field. Curiosity's slightly zig-zaggy tire tracks were photographed by a NASA satellite circling Mars and also from the rover's rear-facing cameras.
 
The spacecraft landed on Aug. 5 on a mission to look for ingredients in Martian soil and rocks that could support life.
 
When the images from the Martian satellite showed the rover tracks, "there was much high-fiving," mission manager Michael Watkins said Thursday. He said engineers were thrilled by the idea that "we left tracks on Mars that we can see from orbit" because it gave them a visible sense of accomplishment.
 
Other rovers have left tracks on Mars, but not as deep or wide as Curiosity's, Watkins said.
 
Curiosity won't be traveling any more for several days. Engineers will spend the next week checking out its crucial robotic arm. At the end of that arm is a "Swiss Army knife" of scientific instruments designed to test rocks and the chemicals in the soil, Watkins said.
 
After the arm and its tools are given clean bills of health, the rover will continue on a trek of more than a week to its first destination, a point called Glenelg, where three types of terrain meet. The rover will likely stop on the way to test its first rocks.
 
Mars rover pauses for robot arm checkout
 
William Harwood - CBS News
 
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has driven some 357 feet from its landing site on the floor of Gale Crater -- 269 feet as a martian crow might fly -- on its way to an intriguing area about five times farther away where three different types of rock come together. Project officials said Thursday the rover continues to chalk up near perfect scores during extended checkout operations, with detailed robot arm tests on tap over the next week or so.
 
"We've been on the surface of Mars for about a month and Curiosity continues very healthy and continues to surprise us with how well she's doing everything we ask of her," said Mission Manager Mike Watkins. "We've continued to drive a little bit. We are about a football field or so away from the touchdown point."
 
Curiosity is slowly making its way toward an area known as Glenelg, where orbital photographs show three different rock types come together. A new photograph from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the rover with its tire tracks stretching behind it, a clearly visible sign of the vehicle's slow-but-steady progress across the floor of Gale Crater.
 
But flight controllers are pausing the trip for about a week to thoroughly test the rover's robot arm and its turret of instruments and sample collection tools.
 
During its first few weeks on Mars, Curiosity has collected spectacular pictures of the area around the landing site along with valuable scientific data from a laser-firing spectrometer known as ChemCam, a radiation monitor, a compact weather station and a Russian instrument that remotely probes the ground below the rover.
 
At the same time, engineers have put the rover's electrical and mechanical systems through their paces in what they call characterization phase 1. CAP-2 is primarily devoted to testing and calibrating the robot arm and a turret of tools and instruments on its end, including a rock drill, a sample scoop, a dust removal tool, an X-ray spectrometer known as APXS and a high-power camera known as the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI.
 
Engineers will spend the next week or so testing the robot arm systems before Curiosity resumes its trek toward Glenelg. Along the way, the science team will be looking for suitable rocks to serve as targets for the X-ray spectrometer and ChemCam instruments, as well as fine-grained soil that can be scooped up by the arm and into two analytical instruments for detailed examination.
 
"Everything but the arm and sampling systems is already operational," Watkins said. "In that sense, a lot of the vehicle is checked out -- the cameras, ChemCam, the environmental instruments, all of that stuff is now checked out. They've all been in use ... and we're getting a lot of science out of that.
 
"At the end of CAP-2, we believe all the contact science (will be) cleared, meaning APXS and MAHLI. That will take us about a week to complete. And then we'll start driving again and look for the right science targets to use those capabilities on."
 
He said the team wants to get a bit of practice with the arm before attempting to scoop up any soil samples.
 
"That's kind of the last thing we have to do to fully certify all the capabilities of the rover, and I think that that first sampling is probably a month away, or something like that."
 
As with everything, the rover will walk before it runs, testing soils before attempting to drill into rocks.
 
"Probably sometime maybe a month from now, maybe little bit before that, we're going to try to scoop first because scooping its a little easier than drilling," Watkins said. "And so the first soil sample will be scooping some soil from Mars and putting tat through our instruments. I think drilling will probably be weeks after that, more than one month from now and maybe a little longer than that."
 
Curiosity's long-range goal is Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high mound of layered terrain in the center of Gale Crater about five miles south of Glenelg that represents a time capsule of sorts capturing hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of years of martian history. The rover will attempt to climb up into the foothills of Mount Sharp to study the transition between clays and soils that likely formed in the presence of water and overlying, more recent layers that represent drier environments.
 
But Curiosity won't get there anytime soon.
 
"When we start actually going to Mount Sharp from Glenelg, we'll use our full driving mode and might be able to drive up around a hundred meters a day or so, assuming the terrain is safe terrain," Watkins said. "Driving a hundred meters a day ... that would say it would only take three months to drive to Mount Sharp.
 
"Of course, we expect to have some terrain there where we don't make that kind of progress. But more importantly, I think we'll stop and do some sampling and do some other science along the way. So we might actually be driving one third to one half the time. It really depends on how interesting the science is along the way."
 
Joy Crisp, the Mars Science Laboratory deputy project scientist, said there's little doubt it will be interesting, raising the prospect of frequent stops and starts.
 
"There are two main things that have intrigued me (so far) and, I think, most of the team," she said. "One would be the imaging of Mount Sharp and seeing the structures and layers. We're not sure what it all means, but it's pretty spectacular and not something we've ever seen before on Mars.
 
"The other would be the rocks nearby. Some of them are showing quite amazing textures that we've not seen before on Mars, some that look like they might have big mineral grains in them that are light in tone in a dark matrix. Just eye popping, but we don't know what it means. We need to examine rocks like that more thoroughly, close up, to get at how those rocks formed."
 
Curiosity leaves its mark on Mars: Tracks photographed from space
 
Deborah Netburn - Los Angeles Times
 
It's only been there for a month, but Curiosity has already left its mark on Mars.
 
On Thursday NASA released a photo that shows tracks made by the car-sized rover on the surface of the Red Planet. The rover is the shiny, light reflecting square in the right portion of the picture; the tracks are the double lines trailing behind it.
 
Curiosity is also responsible for the two dark marks in the center of the photo, NASA explained in a statement: They were formed when the rover landed and blew the red dust that covers much of the planet away, revealing the darker basaltic sand underneath.
 
The photo was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), a camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance orbiter. So in other words, this picture was taken from space.
If you find these pictures thrilling, you are not alone. The Associated Press reports that there was "much high-fiving" among NASA scientists when they first saw the images. Mission manager Michael Watkins explained that the tracks gave the scientists a visual sense of accomplishment.
NASA said the tracks can serve a scientific purpose as well. "Observing the tracks over time will provide information on how the surface changes as dust is deposited and eroded," the space agency wrote in a statement.
Curiosity hasn't gone too far since it landed on Mars on Aug. 5. NASA reports that the rover has driven just 358 feet.
NASA scientists will spend the next several days testing out the rover's robotic arm. Then the team will drive Curiosity to its first destination on the planet -- the awesomely named Glenelg Intrigue, where scientists plan to put Curiosity's drill to work.
 
Warm-up almost over for Curiosity
After final checks, rover will begin Mars science mission
 
Todd Halvorson – Florida Today
 
NASA’s Curiosity rover limbered up its robotic arm on Mars this week, bringing it closer to the start of its scientific mission to measure the planet’s potential for sustaining life.
 
One month after the rover’s arrival, mission managers and scientists said Thursday a critical commissioning phase is coming to a close.
 
Robotic-arm checkouts are expected to be complete within a week. Then Curiosity should be ready to rove.
 
And if all goes well, Curiosity will head toward an area inside Gale Crater where three intriguing types of terrain intersect.
 
But scientists expect to make a few stops along the way. They’ll be looking for fine-grained rocks that can be zapped by the rover’s high-powered laser to determine their chemical composition. Or scientifically interesting spots of soil that can be scooped up and baked in the rover’s nuclear-powered stoves.
 
“Whichever comes first,” said Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for NASA’s $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission. “The eventual goal is to get over to Glenelg, where we may end up drilling into rock for the first time. We’ll see.”
 
Located about a third of a mile east of Curiosity’s landing site, Glenelg was named after a geologically important site in Canada.
 
Scientists and engineers thought the name was clever because it is a palindrome – a word that reads the same backward and forward.
 
It’s also scientifically interesting because three types of terrain come together at the site. Geologists want to determine the composition of rocks found there, and they want to know how the material was laid down.
 
Curiosity is about a quarter of the way to Glenelg. During the first phase of its commissioning, the rover rolled 368 feet. It’s about a football field away from its touchdown point inside Gale Crater, a gaping depression that is almost 100 miles wide.
 
The rover’s ultimate destination is the base of Mount Sharp. A three-mile-high mountain, Mount Sharp stands in the center of the crater and is taller than any mountain in the contiguous United States.
 
Like the Grand Canyon, Mount Sharp comprises layer after layer of sedimentary strata – material deposited over the last 3 billion to 4 billion years.
 
Scientists think the layers might reveal the epoch-by-epoch geological history of the planet. Stunning images beamed back by Curiosity so far have been intriguing.
 
“It’s pretty spectacular and not something we’ve ever seen before on Mars,” Crisp said. “That’s what’s been exciting — to see things that we’ve not seen on Mars before.”
 
Launched last Nov. 26 aboard an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover arrived at the red planet Aug. 6.
 
The size of a subcompact car, the rover is equipped with instruments designed to determine whether Mars does, or ever did, harbor all the ingredients required for the formation of bacterial life.
 
Mount Sharp is about five miles from Glenelg. Curiosity is expected to reach its base in about a year. The rover is designed to operate on the planet’s surface for at least two years.
 
Rover Reveals Unexpected Martian Landscapes
 
Guy Norris - Aviation Week (Sept. 3)
 
Less than a month after its touchdown, NASA's Curiosity rover is already revealing a wealth of new detail about Mars—even before driving for any significant distance.
 
Moreover, scientists are confident the startling high-definition images of inclined strata and other significant geological phenomena transmitted late last month from Curiosity are merely the tip of the iceberg as it begins its trek toward the base of nearby Mount Sharp, the central feature of the Gale Crater in which it landed. The rover, which landed on Aug. 5, is tasked with assessing the past and present habitability of Mars.
 
Following two short moves to check its mobility and test bedrock exposed at the landing site by one of the sky crane's thrusters, Curiosity began its first major drive on Aug. 28 to a science destination about a quarter-mile (400 meters) away. Covering approximately 52 ft. on its 22nd sol (Martian day) after landing, the first leg of Curiosity's journey will terminate several weeks from now at a spot named Glenelg, where operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., have spotted a promising conjunction of three terrain types.
 
The target-rich zone will mark the first significant opportunity for the rover's 7-ft.-long robotic arm and drill to study sedimentary rocks for signs of organics. The arm supports a 73-lb. turret, which houses a percussive drill as well as an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer and a sample processing Collection for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis subsystem. Also mounted is a dust-removal tool for brushing the surfaces of sample rocks, and a close-up Mars Hand Lens Imager.
 
The study of accumulated rock-forming sediments is among the key targets for the mission, which hopes to interpret the planet's environmental record preserved within the layers. Clues to climate change, and the possible transitions from habitable to non-habitable conditions, are expected to be found in these layers.
 
This was all the more reason for the excitement caused on Aug. 27 when JPL unveiled a newly processed mosaic of high-definition images from Curiosity that showed “unexpected” geological features including multiple sequences of exposed, tilted strata of a sort never before seen on Mars.
 
“The cool thing is the cameras have discovered something we were unaware of,” says mission chief scientist John Grotzinger. “This thing jumped out at us as being very different to what we expected,” he adds. Situated in the low-lying foothills beyond the dune field between the rover and the base of Mount Sharp, the inclined layers are a “spectacular feature” that could only be viewed clearly from low angles.
 
NASA says it is too early to comment on the mechanics of the processes that created the landform, which Grotzinger describes as a type of clinoform. On Earth such features are typically driven by or related to tectonic, volcanic, sub-aqueous or wind-driven processes (sand dunes and the like).
 
Mission scientists are particularly intrigued by images from the same feature that appear to show an unconformity, or a missing piece in the geological record, where a sedimentary layer does not line up with those above it. The image shows “a transition from the strata that are . . . full of the hydrated minerals, to strata above them, which do not obviously contain the hydrated (formed in the presence of water) minerals,” says Grotzinger.
 
“The striking thing about it, [is that] everything above that is steeply inclined with respect to everything below it. This is a spectacular feature that we are seeing very early on that you only had the slightest hint [of] from orbit,” Grotzinger says. The features “clearly are the result of the exhumation of the larger sequence of strata that created Mount Sharp. One day we hope—toward the end of our mission—to get up and go across that to check it out,” he adds.
 
The precise angles of the strata will be measured through triangulation by comparing the first set of images captured by Curiosity's stereoscopic mast cameras (Mastcam) with a new set taken from a few meters away on Aug. 28. The images were collected by the rover's 100-mm telephoto lens and 34-mm wide-angle lens, and will also provide a three-dimensional guide to the rover's navigators.
 
The following day, “We will execute a series of increasingly long drives in excess of 100 meters,” Grotzinger adds. This will be “well away from the area we think was affected by the thrusters, and then we will head east as quickly as possible.” Prior to starting off on the longer drive, the rover demonstrated its ability to maneuver during a series of short moves around its present site—dubbed 'Bradbury Landing' by NASA as a tribute to the late science fiction author Ray Bradbury, who died in June.
 
On Aug. 27, mission planners also conducted the first science drive to study the bedrock exposed by the impingement made by one of the sky-crane's thrusters as it lowered the rover to the surface. Although the science team was concerned about potential contamination from rocket chemical and heating effects, the scoured-out depression was sampled with Curiosity's Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument. It fired neutrons into the ground to a measurable depth of around 20 in. below the rover in search of hydrogen atoms, and indicating signs of water. The results will be compared with readings already taken by the DAN over soil-covered areas in Bradbury Landing.
 
Preparations also continue for taking the first sample of the Martian atmosphere. “We are the nose of Curiosity” says SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) principal investigator Paul Mahaffy. During initial check-out tests of SAM, scientists discovered the amount of air from Earth's atmosphere remaining in the instrument after launch was more than expected. As a result, a difference in pressure on either side of the tiny pumps led SAM operators to stop pumping out the remaining air as a precaution. The pumps subsequently worked, and a chemical analysis was completed on a sample of Earth air.
 
The inadvertent air sample provided an unscheduled test of the instrument, but was “a beautiful confirmation of the sensitivities for identifying the gases present,” says Mahaffy. The initial indication of methane sparked a brief flurry of excitement until the terrestrial origins of the gas were recognized, he noted from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where he is based. “A few sols down the road we're looking forward to getting our first sniff of Mars atmosphere,” he adds.
 
The SAM system is a key tool in Curiosity's search for signs of life and is more sensitive and sophisticated than the sensors on the Viking landers in the 1970s, which failed to confirm any organic traces. The system is designed, for example, to examine a wider range of organic compounds and can therefore check a recent hypothesis that perchlorate—a reactive chemical discovered by the Phoenix Mars Mission—may have masked organics in soil samples taken by Viking.
 
Amazing Mars rover shifting into science gear after 1st Martian month
 
Denise Chow - Space.com
 
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has wrapped up its first full month on the Red Planet and is gearing up its robotic arm to reach out and touch Martian rocks for the first time, scientists say.
 
This week, Curiosity has been steadily trekking east toward its first major science destination, a spot called Glenelg, where scientists are keen to investigate three different types of Martian terrain that can be found there.
 
But first, the rover will take a weeklong hiatus from driving to test the instruments on its 7-foot-long (2.1-meter) robotic arm. Mission managers first flexed Curiosity's robot arm on Aug. 20, to make sure the mechanical appendage had survived the journey to the surface of Mars.
 
Now, the rover will spend roughly a week testing and characterizing the various instruments attached to its arm, NASA officials said.
 
"We've reached a point where we want to initiate a more detailed set of arm — and the tool kit at the end of the arm — checkouts," Mike Watkins, Curiosity's mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., told reporters in a news briefing Thursday.
 
Curiosity's robotic arm holds some of the mission's most sophisticated tools, all mounted on a 66-pound (30-kilogram) turret that spans nearly 2 feet (60 centimeters) across.
 
The rover's hand-like turret carries five different devices, including a drill that can dig 1 inch (2.5 cm) into rocks, a sample collector and a scoop. The turret also houses a powerful camera, called the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), that is designed to make microscopic observations, and an instrument, called the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), that will be used to analyze the composition of Martian rocks and soil.
 
During the instrument checkouts, MAHLI and APXS will be calibrated to prepare them for the science activities planned once Curiosity reaches Glenelg. For instance, mission managers will train MAHLI's eyes on a control sample, one whose material type is known, so that scientists can gauge the accuracy of the instrument.
 
MAHLI will also be maneuvered around to take a panned set of images of Curiosity's underside.
 
"This will be the first time that we use the MAHLI imager to take images of the belly of the rover," said Matt Robinson, lead engineer for Curiosity's robotic arm testing and operations at JPL.
 
So far, Curiosity has driven a total of 358 feet (109 meters) on Mars, and the rover is currently positioned roughly 269 feet (82 meters) away from its touchdown point, which has been named Bradbury Landing in honor of science fiction author Ray Bradbury, who died in June.
 
After the instruments on Curiosity's robotic arm have undergone their calibrations, Curiosity will continue on to Glenelg, which is still weeks away, Watkins explained. Along the way, mission managers are planning to make one or two stops to perform chemical and atmospheric observations, and, if the rover encounters suitable terrain, to try scooping some of the Martian soil.
 
When Curiosity reaches Glenelg, the rover may begin using its drill for the first time, said Joy Crisp, Curiosity's deputy project scientist at JPL.
 
Still, with NASA's most ambitious planetary expedition passing its one-month mark, mission managers are pleased to report that it has been a very smooth ride so far.
 
"Actually there have not been any significant wild cards come up — maybe the wild card is how well it works," Watkins said. "It's actually gone surprisingly well."
 
The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover touched down on Mars on Aug. 5 and is expected to spend at least two years exploring its landing site at Gale Crater. The rover is designed to determine whether the Martian environment can, or ever could, support microbial life.
 
END
 
 

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