10/23/12 news

    Tuesday, October 23, 2012   JSC TODAY HEADLINES 1.            Ramp Up Your IT Knowledge at the IRD Expo and Forum This Thursday 2.            Where's Your Oppurtunity to Develop Another? 3.            Human System Integration ERG Meeting Today at Lunchtime 4.            JSC Children's Safety and Health Calendar Contest Now Underway 5.            Spooky Spin at the Gilruth Center -- Register Now 6.            Fire Warden Orientation Course (Four Hours) 7.            Houston Technology Center Presents Tech Link ________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY “ Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”   -- Oliver Wendell Holmes ________________________________________ 1.            Ramp Up Your IT Knowledge at the IRD Expo and Forum This Thursday Mark your calendars for a day of discovery! Find out about new Information Technology (IT) tools, services and resources at this year's Information Resources Directorate (IRD) Expo and Forum from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25. Not sure who to talk to about what IT resources are available to you and your organization or how to get those resources? This is your chance to come out and meet your IRD customer service agent and the rest of your organization's IT support team. You also will find a variety of information-filled exhibits showcasing items like computer hardware, video conferencing capabilities and printing demos, all to be displayed in the Teague lobby and Building 3's Collaboration Center. Take the opportunity to help shape the future of IT at JSC by providing feedback through various channels that day. As part of IRD's commitment to continuous improvement, IRD will use the feedback to enhance processes, products and/or services. You can also submit your additional IT ideas for possible future adoption. We will present the outcomes at a follow-up event in February. For more info, click here. JSC IRD Outreach x41334   [top] 2.            Where's Your Oppurtunity to Develop Another? It's here in the JSC Formal Mentoring Program! Applications are open for the Formal Mentoring Program until Nov. 16. All civil servants of various GS and supervisory levels are encouraged to apply and participate as mentors and protégés. For further details, please visit the Formal Mentoring website. Joseff White x27831 http://mentoring.jsc.nasa.gov   [top] 3.            Human System Integration ERG Meeting Today at Lunchtime Do you work to develop or manage a system that interfaces to a human? Are you interested in learning more about including human considerations into the lifecycle of a design and networking with other like-minded employees at JSC? Then come to the JSC Human System Integration (HSI) Employee Resource Group (ERG) meeting. We will meet today from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Building 1, Room 220. Bring your lunch and hear about the HSI ERG's latest recruiting and professional development activities, including progress on developing an HSI certificate program. Deb Neubek 281-222-3687 http://collaboration.ndc.nasa.gov/iierg/HSI/SitePages/Home.aspx   [top] 4.            JSC Children's Safety and Health Calendar Contest Now Underway Don't miss this great opportunity to teach your kids about safety and health in a creative way. They could be one of 36 winners who will receive their very own T-shirt imprinted with their drawing. And, the most fun of all is the annual award party held in January, to which each winner and his or her family members are invited. Pick up an entry form today at any of the following buildings: 1, 3, 4S, 11, 30, 45, 419, the JSC Child Care Center or Gilruth Center. You can also call x45078 to obtain an entry form. All JSC civil service and contractor employees are eligible to sponsor a child -- their own or an acquaintance's. The deadline for entries is Friday, Nov. 16. Rindy Carmichael x45078   [top] 5.            Spooky Spin at the Gilruth Center -- Register Now Join in on the Halloween fun at the Gilruth Center on Oct. 26 with our Spooky Spin specialty spin ride! Come dressed in costume for this fun and frightful workout on Oct. 26 from 6 to 7 p.m. The fee is $15/person. Register at the Gilruth Center front desk. Plus, there is still time to get your kids tickets to the Fright Fest Bash, which is this Friday. Tickets sold are selling in the Buildings 3 and 11 gift shops, as well as the Gilruth Center. And don't forget to take a tour of our Haunted House -- if you dare! Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/   [top] 6.            Fire Warden Orientation Course (Four Hours) This four-hour course is to satisfy the JSC training requirement for newly assigned Fire Wardens from JSC, the Sonny Carter Training Facility and Ellington Field. This course must be completed before assuming these duties. Topics covered include: duties and responsibilities of a Fire Warden; building evacuation techniques; recognizing and correcting fire hazards; and types and uses of portable fire extinguishers. Fire Wardens who have previously attended this four-hour orientation course and need to satisfy the three-year training requirements may attend the two-hour Fire Warden Refresher Course now available in SATERN for registration. Date/Time: Nov. 28 from 8 a.m. to noon Where: Safety Learning Center, Building 226N, Room 174 Registration via SATERN required: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_... Aundrail Hill x36369   [top] 7.            Houston Technology Center Presents Tech Link Learn about Houston Technology Center's incubation and acceleration clients focused in the energy, life sciences, Information Technology and NASA/aerospace sectors. Open to the community, these meetings allow professionals to be involved with and influence the evolution of emerging technology. When: Friday, Nov. 9 Light breakfast and networking - 7:30 to 8 a.m. Presentations - 8 to 9 a.m. Where: Aerospace Transition Center 16921 El Camino Real To register, click here. Pat Kidwell x37156 http://www.houstontech.org/events/1041/   [top]   ________________________________________ JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.       NASA TV: 9 am Central (10 EDT) – Soyuz pre-launch, launch & post-launch interview highlights   Human Spaceflight News Tuesday – October 23, 2012   Soyuz TMA-06 launched at 6:51:10.934 am EDT. Docking Thursday is at 8:35 am EDT. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)   HEADLINES AND LEADS   US-Russian crew blasts off for space station   Associated Press   A Russian spacecraft has blasted off from a Russian-leased launch pad into a clear Central Asian sky carrying a three-man crew on their way to an orbiting station. The Soyuz lifted off as scheduled Tuesday afternoon to deliver NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russians Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin to the International Space Station. After a two-day journey, they will join U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams, Russia's Yuri Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide of Japan's JAXA agency. Of the three men who blasted off Tuesday, only Ford has been on a space flight before. He spent two weeks in space as pilot of the space shuttle Discovery in 2009 on a mission to transport scientific equipment to the International Space Station. (NO FURTHER TEXT)   Russian-American trio head for space station   Nastassia Astrasheuskaya - Reuters   A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and a American blasted off on Tuesday for the International Space Station (ISS), where the men are to spend five months in orbit. The Russian-built Soyuz TMA-06M lifted off on time from the Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan, according to an announcer at Russia's mission control centre in Korolyov, outside Moscow. The launch had been delayed by eight days because of an equipment problem. U.S. astronaut Kevin Ford is making his second space voyage, while cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin are on their first mission. The trio will join the current ISS crew members, Yuri Malenchenko of Russia, Sunita Williams of the United States and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan, who are to return to Earth on November 12. (NO FURTHER TEXT)   Three-man crew blasts off, heads for space station   William Harwood – CBS News   Two rookie cosmonauts and a NASA shuttle veteran rocketed into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft Tuesday and set off after the International Space Station. Joining them were 32 medaka fish, bound for a zero-gravity research aquarium aboard the lab complex. Under a clear afternoon sky, the workhorse Russian rocket roared to life at 6:51:11 a.m. EDT (GMT-4; 4:51:11 p.m. local time) and smoothly climbed away from its launching pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It was the first manned flight from the remote Site 31 pad since July 1984, a departure from the usual practice of launching station crews from the Site 1 complex used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age.   Soyuz Spacecraft Launches New US-Russian Crew Toward Space Station   Tariq Malik - Space.com   A Soyuz rocket launched an American astronaut, two Russian cosmonauts and 32 small fish into orbit Tuesday, kicking off a five-month mission to the International Space Station for the human and aquatic explorers. The Soyuz rocket roared into a clear blue sky from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day flight to the space station. Liftoff occurred at 6:51 a.m. EDT.   Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin spaceship company aces pad-escape test   Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log     Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket venture notched a blazing success last week when it tested a NASA-backed launch pad escape system for its crew capsule. The Oct. 19 demonstration flight at Blue Origin's West Texas spaceport marked the final milestone for NASA's $22 million agreement with Blue Origin, which was aimed at promoting the development of next-generation spaceships capable of resupplying the International Space Station. Blue Origin, which is based in Kent, Wash., decided not to compete for the next phase of NASA's orbital program — but in a news release issued Monday, Bezos said his company would make use of the "pusher" pad escape system in its suborbital spaceship. Blue Origin showed the blastoff and landing in a video lasting a minute and 45 seconds.   Blue Origin wraps up Commercial Crew work with crew escape system test   Dan Leone - Space News   Blue Origin, the Kent, Wash.-based aerospace startup founded by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, tested an emergency crew escape system Oct. 19 at its launch site near Van Horn, Texas, the company said. In the test, the pusher-style abort system launched Blue Origin’s suborbital crew capsule, one part of the reusable New Shepard suborbital system the company is working on, to an altitude of about 703 meters. The craft then deployed its parachute to come in for a soft landing about 497 meters away from its launch pad, the company said in an Oct. 22 press release.   Jeff Bezos' Secretive Spaceship Project Tests Rocket Escape System   Space.com   The private spaceflight firm owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos launched a suborbital crew capsule on Friday, a major rocket escape system test that brings the secretive company a huge step closer to carrying astronauts. Bezos' Blue Origin company tested its so-called pusher escape system during a launch of its suborbital New Shepard capsule, which reached an altitude of 2,307 feet (703 meters) on Friday. The capsule then descended safely by parachute, making a soft landing 1,630 feet (497 m) away from its West Texas launch pad, NASA officials said.   The test was part of Blue Origin's work under a funded agreement with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which aims to spur the development of private American vehicles to fill the void left by the retirement of the space shuttle fleet.   Next Station Crew Heads “Off the Earth...For the Earth”   Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org   One Sunday afternoon, in the none too distant future, Kevin Ford hopes to spend a few hours floating inside the International Space Station’s cupola, watching the ever-changing orb of Earth and its iridescence of life. It is one of the things the veteran astronaut is most excited about in his five-month mission to the multi-national outpost– which will involve around 200 scientific experiments and visits from several dedicated cargo craft, including SpaceX’s second Dragon and Orbital Sciences’ first Cygnus under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract. In anticipation of a packed mission, Ford and his crew designed their mission patch for Expedition 34 in the shape of a generic resupply vehicle, with a possible future Beyond Earth Orbit lander superimposed atop it. In Ford’s own words, this is an exciting time for the space programme. Humans have continuously occupied the station for more than a decade and in the first few weeks of his mission, plans will be announced for the first year-long expedition in 2015.   Obama, Romney camps fighting over U.S. space policy   Lee Roop - Huntsville Times   Space policy is getting its 15 minutes as the presidential campaign heads toward the final weeks. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan recently talked space in swing-state Florida, and the two campaign camps are swapping visions about where NASA has been and where it's going. Speaking in Ocala, Fla., four days ago, Ryan accused President Obama of abandoning a functioning space program when he came into office. "The Obama administration came in and they inherited a plan for NASA from the Bush administration. They had a plan for space. They jettisoned that plan," Ryan said, according to press reports. "They put it on, basically got rid of that plan. Now we have effectively no plan. We are not putting people in space anymore." We did inherit a program, but it was a mess, Obama's team replies in a two-part debate on space posted online Monday. The Obama team's essay was titled, "Mitt Romney: Lost in Space..."   Space station commander reflects on 100 days in orbit   Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com   There's no place like home, even in space. For NASA astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams, who Monday evening marked her 100th day in space since lifting off in July, the International Space Station (ISS) has become her and her two Expedition 33 crewmates' home. "It's definitely our home at this point in time," Williams told collectSPACE.com in a televised interview from on board the station. "We have our little things scattered here and there and we know where they are."   Astronaut Photo Contest Puts Canadian Spaceflyer in Far-Out Spots   Elizabeth Howell - Space.com   It's hard to say if astronaut Chris Hadfield is prepared to kiss a codfish to publicize his upcoming mission on the International Space Station. However, a group of sixth-graders found a way to make that Newfoundland tradition possible. On the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) website, they posted a picture of themselves, an image of Hadfield, and a rather large cod. The image is just one of more than 240 entries made so far as part of a CSA photo contest. The agency is inviting Canadians to take pictures of Hadfield with them around the world, challenging them to snap the two-time astronaut in a location he has never visited.   Is This the Spaceship That Will Take Us to Mars?   Jesus Diaz - Gizmodo.com Somewhere deep in the Marshall Space Center, in an unmarked beige hangar, NASA is building a spaceship. A spaceship built with spare parts, scrap hardware from the International Space Stations, a left-over aluminum-lithium cylinder and even museum mockups. One day, it may become the vessel that takes humans to Mars. NASA engineers lead by Paul Bookout are talking about it at the the Fifth Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium, happening now in Huntsville, Alabama. Bookout's team is working with a team from the Johnson Space Center in Houston led by astronaut Benjamin Alvin Drew, a USAF Colonel who's been to space twice, including on the last mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery.   SpaceShipTwo Fitted With Rocket Propulsion System   Guy Norris - Aerospace Daily   Scaled Composites is moving closer to the start of powered flight tests of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo with the installation of major elements of the rocket system, including the main oxidizer tank, at Mojave, Calif. Photographs released by Virgin Galactic on Oct. 19, show the large nitrous oxide tank being lowered into position in the center of the SS2. The tank will feed the Sierra Nevada-developed RM2 hybrid rocket motor that will power the vehicle to suborbital altitudes at speeds in excess of Mach 3.   Astronaut items being offered at N.H. auction   Associated Press   A lunar dust-coated checklist from one astronaut's trip to the moon and handwritten notes by Neil Armstrong are among more than 600 items of space and aviation memorabilia being offered by a New Hampshire auction house. The spiral-bound, 20-page checklist was worn by Apollo 15 mission commander David Scott in 1971 on the outside of his spacesuit, on his wrist. The book is 3.75 inches by 3.5 inches and comes with an aluminum arm brace with Velcro wristband to hold it in place. The item is estimated to fetch about $250,000 at the auction, which starts Nov. 21. Such lunar checklists, which give step-by-step instructions on activities planned at the landing site, "are the rarest and most desirable of all flown space memorabilia," said Bobby Livingston, a vice president of RR Auction in Amherst.   Fading skepticism of commercial spaceflight?   Jeff Foust - The Space Review (Commentary)   (Foust is the editor and publisher of The Space Review)   For many years, an entrepreneurs and enthusiasts promised a bright future for commercial spaceflight, both orbital and suborbital, there’s been a significant amount of healthy—and, perhaps, unhealthy as well—skepticism about the industry. People noted the failed promises of past commercial space efforts, slipped schedules, unproven technologies and business cases, and so on, and wondered if the new crop of companies promising low-cost access to space for applications from space tourism to International Space Station resupply could really carry out their plans. That skepticism was, in many cases, both understandable and even warranted, given that many NewSpace companies struggled to deliver on their promises. For example, eight years ago this month, SpaceShipOne won the $10-million Ansari X PRIZE, for example, and appeared to usher in a new era of suborbital spaceflight. Yet the prize-winning flight remains the last commercial suborbital human spaceflight to date. However, as companies start to finally deliver on their promises, or at least offer concrete evidence of doing, some of that past skepticism of commercial spaceflight shows signs of fading away.   Mitt Romney: Lost in Space...   Jim Kohlenberger - Space News (Commentary)   (Kohlenberger is a former White House science & technology policy adviser to two Presidents)   We are fortunate to be entering a new and exciting chapter of American space exploration, one that will see more discoveries, more scientific breakthroughs, more Americans in space and ultimately more American astronauts pioneering farther into the solar system than humans have ever gone before. This upward trajectory is being fueled by an ambitious plan laid out by President Barack Obama that enables NASA to blaze a new trail of innovation and discovery. The president is focused on ensuring not only that we maintain our leadership in space, but also that we advance it by cranking up the American innovation engine once again with a bigger vision, and bolder action, for a brighter space future. These efforts are essential for both our economic and national security. __________   COMPLETE STORIES   Three-man crew blasts off, heads for space station   William Harwood – CBS News   Two rookie cosmonauts and a NASA shuttle veteran rocketed into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft Tuesday and set off after the International Space Station. Joining them were 32 medaka fish, bound for a zero-gravity research aquarium aboard the lab complex.   Under a clear afternoon sky, the workhorse Russian rocket roared to life at 6:51:11 a.m. EDT (GMT-4; 4:51:11 p.m. local time) and smoothly climbed away from its launching pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.   It was the first manned flight from the remote Site 31 pad since July 1984, a departure from the usual practice of launching station crews from the Site 1 complex used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age.   Liftoff was timed for roughly the moment Earth's rotation carried the pad into the plane of the space station's orbit and the climb to orbit appeared to go off without a hitch as the green-and-white rocket thundered away atop a torrent of fiery exhaust.   Live television from inside the Soyuz TMA-06M command module showed commander Oleg Novitskiy monitoring the automated ascent from the center seat, flanked on the left by light engineer Evgeny Tarelkin and on the right by NASA astronaut Kevin Ford.   Novitskiy and Tarelkin are making their first space flights while Ford piloted a space shuttle during a 2009 flight to the space station.   All three appeared relaxed and in good spirits as the Soyuz booster accelerated toward orbit. One of the cosmonauts reported an alarm of some sort shortly after launch, but there were no indications of anything amiss. Flight controllers later said there were no signs of any trouble with the spacecraft.   The liquid-fueled core stages and strap-on boosters fired and fell away as planned and eight minutes and 45 seconds after launch, the Soyuz spacecraft was released into its planned preliminary orbit. A few moments later, the ferry craft's two solar arrays and communications antennas unfolded as planned.   "We congratulate you," a Russian flight controller radioed.   "Thank you very much," Novitskiy replied. "All crew members feel good."   "Our congratulations to all of you," mission control repeated a few moments later. "Launch was nominal."   Over the next two days, the crew will carry out a series of rendezvous rocket firings to fine-tune their approach to the space station, setting up an automated docking at the Zvezda command module's upper Poisk compartment around 8:35 a.m. Thursday.   Standing by to welcome them on board will be Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, who were launched to the lab complex July 15. They've had the station to themselves since Sept. 16 when the Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft brought outgoing station commander Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin and Joseph Acaba back to Earth.   Space station managers typically schedule light duty when a new crew arrives to give them a chance to learn the ropes and familiarize themselves with station systems and procedures. But this time around, the new comers will face a busy first week in space with the departure of a U.S. cargo craft, the arrival of a Russian supply ship and a NASA spacewalk to fix a coolant system leak.   On Sunday, three days after the new crew's arrival, Williams and Hoshide will use the station's robot arm to unberth a commercial cargo ship from the forward Harmony module, releasing it into open space for a fiery plunge back to Earth and a splashdown off the coast of California.   The Dragon cargo capsule, built, launched and operated by Space Exploration Technologies as part of a $1.6 billion commercial resupply contract, will bring about a ton of equipment, experiment samples and other gear back to waiting scientists and engineers, restoring a capability that was lost with the shuttle's retirement last year.   Three days after Dragon's departure, on Oct. 31, an unmanned Progress supply ship is scheduled for launch from Site 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Flying a single-day rendezvous, the spacecraft is scheduled to dock at the Zvezda module's aft port around 9:40 a.m. that morning.   The day after the Progress launch and docking, Williams and Hoshide plan to carry out a complex spacewalk Nov. 1 to fix a leak in the coolant system of the station's far left-side solar array. The system circulates ammonia through a large radiator to dissipate heat, and if the leak isn't resolved soon, the station could lose one of its power channels.   "The tasks just kind of fall into a place where they need to be," Ford said of the crew's schedule. "We need to take care of our problem outside, so that's why we'll have to get the spacewalk in, and of course, the Dragon is on board and needs to come home on time as well."   Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko plan to return to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft on Nov. 12, closing out Expedition 33. Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin then will form the nucleus of the Expedition 34 crew, with Ford taking over as commander.   They will have the station to themselves until Dec. 21 when second-generation cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and NASA shuttle veteran Thomas Marshburn arrive aboard the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft.   For their part, Novitskiy, Tarelkin and Ford plan to spend 143 days in space, returning to Earth March 15, 2013.   Soyuz Spacecraft Launches New US-Russian Crew Toward Space Station   Tariq Malik - Space.com   A Soyuz rocket launched an American astronaut, two Russian cosmonauts and 32 small fish into orbit Tuesday, kicking off a five-month mission to the International Space Station for the human and aquatic explorers.   The Soyuz rocket roared into a clear blue sky from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day flight to the space station. Liftoff occurred at 6:51 a.m. EDT.   Riding aboard the rocket's Soyuz TMA-06M space capsule are NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonaut s Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin. The three men are due to dock at the station on Thursday (Oct. 25) at 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT), and join three other crewmates already aboard the orbiting lab. Novitskiy is commanding the Soyuz flight.   "I think it's going to be something special, and I will get unforgettable memories," Novitskiy said in a NASA briefing before the mission. Novitskiy picked a small toy hippo, a gift from his teenage daughter Yana, to use an indicator of when the Soyuz reached the weightless environment of space.   Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin are the second half of the Expedition 33 crew on the InternationalSpace Station. Their mission marks the second spaceflight for Ford, a veteran NASA shuttle pilot, and the first trip to space for Novitskiy and Tarelkin.   The 32 medaka fish also hitching a ride to the space station on Novitskiy's Soyuz capsule are part of an experiment to study how fish adapt to the absence of gravity. The fish will live inside a space age fish tank, called the Aquatic Habitat, which was delivered to the space station on an earlier flight.   "I've got training on these fish…they're a bit larger than guppies," Ford said before flight.  "It's 32 fish, plus the three of us."   While most crewed Soyuz launches have lifted off from the historic launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin, who made the first manned spaceflight in 1961. But that pad is being renovated, so Tuesday's launch blasted off from a different pad called Site 31 in the first manned launch from the site in 28 years, NASA officials said.   The new U.S.-Russian crew will join NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, who have been living on the station since July. Williams is commanding the station's Expedition 33 crew.   Tuesday's Soyuz launch comes at a busy time for the space station crew.   On Sunday (Oct. 28), a robotic Dragon space capsule built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX will depart the space station to wrap up the debut cargo delivery flight for NASA under a $1.6 billion commercial resupply contract. Days later, on Wednesday (Oct. 31), an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft will launch and dock at the space station within six hours to deliver tons of more cargo.   Then on Thursday (Nov. 1), Williams and Hoshide will venture outside the space station in a spacewalk to fix an ammonia leak in the orbiting laboratory's cooling system.   Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko are due to return to Earth on Nov. 19. Ford will then take command of the space station's Expedition 34 mission at that time.   Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin spaceship company aces pad-escape test   Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log     Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket venture notched a blazing success last week when it tested a NASA-backed launch pad escape system for its crew capsule.   The Oct. 19 demonstration flight at Blue Origin's West Texas spaceport marked the final milestone for NASA's $22 million agreement with Blue Origin, which was aimed at promoting the development of next-generation spaceships capable of resupplying the International Space Station. Blue Origin, which is based in Kent, Wash., decided not to compete for the next phase of NASA's orbital program — but in a news release issued today, Bezos said his company would make use of the "pusher" pad escape system in its suborbital spaceship.   "The first test of our suborbital Crew Capsule is a big step on the way to safe, affordable space travel," he said. "This wouldn’t have been possible without NASA’s help, and the Blue Origin team worked hard and smart to design this system, build it, and pull off this test. Lots of smiles around here today. Gradatim Ferociter!"   That last phrase is Blue Origin's motto, which is Latin for "Step by Step, Courageously."   The latest step   The pad-escape test was the latest step in Bezos' decade-long effort to create a launch system suitable for space tourists as well as researchers and, eventually, orbit-bound astronauts. The 48-year-old Amazon.com founder, whose net worth is estimated at more than $23 billion, created Blue Origin in 2000 to follow through on his childhood dream of space travel.   "Blue Origin's goal is to work steadily toward developing human spaceflight capabilities," Brett Alexander, the company's director of business development and strategy, told me today. "Our goal is to lower the cost and increase the safety of human spaceflight to enable more people to fly."   Alexander said last week's pad-escape test in Texas and this month's successful test firing of Blue Origin's BE-3 liquid-hydrogen rocket engine at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi ranked among the biggest steps taken to date toward the company's goal. "This is a very big deal. ... Propulsion and crew escape are two of the fundamental building blocks of our system," Alexander said. "Those are the cornerstones, if you will."   Blue Origin is working toward the development of a New Shepard suborbital launch system with a propulsion module that can launch the crew capsule to an altitude beyond the 100-kilometer (62-mile) boundary of outer space. From that height, passengers can get a few minutes of weightlessness amid a view of the black sky above a curving Earth, while researchers can conduct useful experiments on the effects of the space environment.   Blue Origin hasn't laid out a specific schedule for commercial operations — nor has the company said anything about its pricing plan for spaceflights. But in order to be financially viable, the venture would probably have to be competitive with other suborbital spaceship companies, such as Space Adventures, Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace. Those companies are offering flights in the range of $95,000 to $200,000 per seat.   Alexander said "the key to both safety and affordability is reusability of the launch vehicle and a lot of practice — a high flight rate."   End-to-end tryout   The pad-escape test served as an end-to-end tryout for Blue Origin's crew capsule: A center-mounted solid-rocket engine from Aerojet lofted the capsule to a height of 2,307 feet (703 meters) under active thrust vector control. Then the capsule descended by parachute to a soft landing 1,630 feet (496 meters) downrange, at the company's test facility on ranchland owned by Bezos, near Van Horn, Texas.   Blue Origin showed the blastoff and landing in a video lasting a minute and 45 seconds.   Ed Mango, the manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in a space agency statement that "it was awesome to see a spacecraft NASA played a role in developing take flight."   "The progress Blue Origin has made on its suborbital and orbital capabilities really is encouraging for the overall future of human spaceflight," Mango said.   In an actual flight scenario, the escape system would be lit up only if Blue Origin's propulsion module experienced a problem serious enough to abort the flight. The passengers inside the crew capsule would be rocketed away to safety. If the flight proceeded normally, the crew capsule would separate from the propulsion module, coast to the edge of space, re-enter the atmosphere and descend to a parachute landing. The propulsion module, meanwhile, would autonomously perform its own rocket-powered vertical landing.   In August 2011, a prototype propulsion module went supersonic and rose to an altitude of 45,000 feet during a test flight — but when the vehicle became unstable, the flight had to be aborted and the rocket ship crashed to its doom. That's the kind of scenario that would bring the pad-escape system into play.   Alexander said Blue Origin was still working on the next version of the propulsion module. The old version used five kerosene-fueled engines, but the next-generation propulsion module will use a single hydrogen-fueled engine, he said. "It'll look a little different, but it's essentially the same size," he said.   In the past, Blue Origin has been somewhat reticent to talk about its activities  but in light of the past month's successes, Alexander seemed to emphasize the sentiment behind the company's motto: step by step, courageously.   "Our overall development path certainly doesn't stop with suborbital," he said.   Blue Origin wraps up Commercial Crew work with crew escape system test   Dan Leone - Space News   Blue Origin, the Kent, Wash.-based aerospace startup founded by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, tested an emergency crew escape system Oct. 19 at its launch site near Van Horn, Texas, the company said.   In the test, the pusher-style abort system launched Blue Origin’s suborbital crew capsule, one part of the reusable New Shepard suborbital system the company is working on, to an altitude of about 703 meters. The craft then deployed its parachute to come in for a soft landing about 497 meters away from its launch pad, the company said in an Oct. 22 press release.   The pusher escape system is designed to send the crew capsule into a safe, controlled flight in the event of an off-nominal launch event, according to Blue Origin’s press release.   The Oct. 19 pad abort test was the final milestone in Blue Origin’s $22 million Commercial Crew Development (CCDev)-2 Space Act Agreement with NASA. The company stands to receive $1.9 million for completing this milestone, according to the terms of the company’s 2011 agreement with NASA.   Blue Origin is working on a reusable suborbital vehicle and a biconic-shaped orbital craft dubbed Space Vehicle. The pusher escape system tested Oct. 19 would be used only on the suborbital vehicle, but Blue Origin plans to use a similar system on its orbital Space Vehicle, according to the press release. The orbital Space Vehicle would initially launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, which would later be replaced with a rocket Blue Origin is developing internally, according to the company’s current plan.   After winning awards in the first two rounds of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, the agency’s initiative to fund development of privately operated crew transportation systems, Blue Origin opted not to apply for funding in the program’s third round, which is known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability.   In August, NASA announced that Boeing Space Exploration, Sierra Nevada Space Systems and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. would split $1.2 billion of third-round commercial crew funding. NASA wants at least one of these three companies to be ready to fly astronauts to the international space station in 2017.   Jeff Bezos' Secretive Spaceship Project Tests Rocket Escape System   Space.com   The private spaceflight firm owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos launched a suborbital crew capsule on Friday, a major rocket escape system test that brings the secretive company a huge step closer to carrying astronauts.   Bezos' Blue Origin company tested its so-called pusher escape system during a launch of its suborbital New Shepard capsule, which reached an altitude of 2,307 feet (703 meters) on Friday. The capsule then descended safely by parachute, making a soft landing 1,630 feet (497 m) away from its West Texas launch pad, NASA officials said.   The test was part of Blue Origin's work under a funded agreement with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which aims to spur the development of private American vehicles to fill the void left by the retirement of the space shuttle fleet.   While the pusher escape system was designed for New Shepard, the results of Friday's test will aid the development of a similar system for Blue Origin's orbital, crew-carrying Space Vehicle, NASA officials said.   "The progress Blue Origin has made on its suborbital and orbital capabilities really is encouraging for the overall future of human spaceflight," CCP manager Ed Mango said in a statement. "It was awesome to see a spacecraft NASA played a role in developing take flight."   The pusher system is expected to enable full reusability of Blue Origin's launch vehicle. It's different from previous NASA launch escape systems, which pulled a spacecraft away from its rocket before reaching orbit.   "The use of a pusher configuration marks a significant departure from the traditional towed-tractor escape tower concepts of Mercury and Apollo," said Rob Meyerson, president and program manager of Blue Origin. "Providing crew escape without the need to jettison the unused escape system gets us closer to our goal of safe and affordable human spaceflight."   Friday's launch follows closely on the heels of another milestone for Washington-based Blue Origin. Earlier this month, the company conducted a test of the rocket engine that will blast the Space Vehicle to orbit, powering it up to its maximum 100,000 pounds of thrust on a stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.   NASA has awarded money to private spaceflight firms in three rounds, one each in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Blue Origin received a total of about $26 million in the first two rounds, but it did not receive funding in the most recent selection round earlier this year.   Other companies such as SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada are also developing their own crewed spaceships with some funding help from NASA. The space agency hopes at least two American vehicles will be ready to fly by 2017. Until then, the United States will remain dependent on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station.   Next Station Crew Heads “Off the Earth...For the Earth”   Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org   One Sunday afternoon, in the none too distant future, Kevin Ford hopes to spend a few hours floating inside the International Space Station’s cupola, watching the ever-changing orb of Earth and its iridescence of life. It is one of the things the veteran astronaut is most excited about in his five-month mission to the multi-national outpost– which will involve around 200 scientific experiments and visits from several dedicated cargo craft, including SpaceX’s second Dragon and Orbital Sciences’ first Cygnus under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.   In anticipation of a packed mission, Ford and his crew designed their mission patch for Expedition 34 in the shape of a generic resupply vehicle, with a possible future Beyond Earth Orbit lander superimposed atop it. In Ford’s own words, this is an exciting time for the space programme. Humans have continuously occupied the station for more than a decade and in the first few weeks of his mission, plans will be announced for the first year-long expedition in 2015.   Ford’s patch proudly declares that it is devoted to work “Off the Earth…For the Earth”, an indicator of the sensitivity of himself and his men to the enormous responsibility which has been placed upon their shoulders. He will rise from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan tomorrow, shoulder to shoulder with rookie cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeni Tarelkin, and in so doing will kick off the final part of the station’s Expedition 33. At 7:35 am CDT on Thursday, Novitsky will guide the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft in for a docking at the space-facing (‘zenith’) Poisk module, thus restoring the Expedition 33 crew to its full, six-person strength. “I was a test pilot before coming to NASA,” Ford explained in an interview, earlier in 2012, “and it was fantastic to get to experience the Space Shuttle, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the way a Soyuz operates. It’s a whole different way to skin the cat, to get you to space station and get you home.”   At present, the station houses three residents: Commander Sunita Williams and Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide, who have been aboard since July. For the first few weeks of their mission, the new arrivals will serve as Flight Engineers, but upon the departure of Williams’ crew a traditional ceremony will see Ford take command and herald the official start of Expedition 34. “I don’t think we’ll change station operations one little bit when Suni leaves,” he said. “My crewmates could be commanders themselves. They’re all self-starters and very motivated and excellent, technically. I don’t really have a big job to do in terms of running the shop. My primary goal would just be to monitor the crew, make sure everybody’s happy with  the tasks that they have, things run smoothly with the ground and make things run smoothly on-board.”   Particularly exciting to Ford is the greater emphasis upon science now that the station has virtually reached completion and Expedition 34 has a full plate of around 200 experiments to follow. These involve more than 400 worldwide investigators and cover human research, biological and physical sciences, technology, Earth observation and education. Japan’s Aquatic Habitat arrived aboard the most recent H-II Transfer Vehicle, Kounotori-3, in late July and will encompasses studies of bone and muscle atrophy of Medaka fish in a freshwater aquarium. The fish “happen to have a bone similar to mammals,” said Ford, “the way their bone is created and lost, and we’ll be looking at these fish in the microgravity environment and it’ll be really great information for osteoporosis research.”   Elsewhere, the Canadian Space Agency has supplied a miniature flow cytometer, known as ‘Microflow1’, for cell analysis with potential applications in the diagnosis of health problems, whilst NASA’s Advanced Colloids Experiment will employ a light microscope to examine the crystallisation and phase separation of colloidal particles. Possible benefits of this research includes extending the shelf-life of products used on Earth and aboard long-duration space missions. The European Space Agency has supplied a battery of investigations looking at circadian rhythms – the human body’s 24-hour light-dark cycle – to understand and address the crew’s physical and emotional wellbeing.   With a PhD in aerospace engineering, in addition to his test-piloting credentials, Ford will participate fully in the scientific work. “I’ve had probably tens of hours in MRI machines and characterising my musculoskeletal system – bone structure, spacing between vertebrae – and those kinds of things,” he said. “Then we’ll look at those again when we come back.” As part of the European experiment, he will will wear a holter monitor to measure his heart rhythms and an Actiwatch to record his levels of activity and investigate the impact of the new environment upon his circadian routine.   Ford’s assertion that this is a “big transition for NASA” is borne out by another experiment, the International Space Station Test Bed for Analog Research (I-STAR) Earth Departure Communications Delay Study (COMM Delay), which will study the lengthy communication delays likely to be encountered during future human voyages to Mars or elsewhere, beyond Earth orbit. Researchers are keen to understand impacts upon crew behaviour and performance, including the critical effects of the communication delays upon time-critical mission events. A full voice communications delay test is presently planned for Expedition 36 in the summer of 2013.   That transition has been nowhere more apparent than last year’s retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle fleet and the current dependency of the agency upon the Russian Soyuz as the primary transport vehicle for its astronauts. Commercial partners SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Boeing are presently working on the end-to-end design and systems testing of their respective DragonRider, DreamChaser and CST-100 crew vehicles, but the first piloted flights are not anticipated until at least the end of 2015.   And 2015 is shaping up to be a truly significant year.   Only two weeks ago, English soprano Sarah Brightman – famed for her roles in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and Phantom of the Opera, as well as a highly successful career as a solo artist – announced her intent to participate in a flight to the International Space Station in 2015. In so doing, she will become the station’s first commercial ‘tourist’ since Canadian Cirque du Soleil billionaire Guy Laliberté returned to Earth in October 2009. Russia halted its tourism programme the following year, due to the increase in station crew size from three to six, and the need to fill all Soyuz seats with expedition members, but a possible increase from four to five launches per year in 2013 was expected to herald a restoration of the capability.   At the present time, this ‘fifth Soyuz’ option has not materialised and it seems that Russia’s preference is to extend the duration of an expedition from six months to a full year. This would free up as many as two Soyuz seats, with Brightman and perhaps another tourist flying to the station, alongside a Russian cosmonaut, in October 2015. Brightman, who accepted a UNESCO nomination as Artist for Peace earlier this year, will participate in a world tour in 2013 in support of her new album, ‘Dreamchaser’ – an apt title, in view of the hoped destination of the singer.   As for the year-long expedition itself, a start date of “spring 2015” – most likely sometime in March – was recently announced by NASA, with the agency declaring that it would enable a clearer understanding of the physiological and other changes inherent in the human body on longer space missions. “We have gained new knowledge about the effects of spaceflight on the human body from the scientific research conducted on the space station and it is the perfect time to test a one-year expedition aboard the orbital laboratory,” said NASA ISS Program Scientist Julie Robinson. “What we will gain from this expedition will influence the way we structure our human research plans in the future.”   The names of the US astronaut and Russian cosmonaut destined to participate in the year-long expedition are expected to be formally revealed in around three weeks’ time, with Peggy Whitson – who stepped down as chief of the astronaut office in July – widely tipped for the NASA seat. However, in recent days, unverified speculation has abounded that a “medical issue”, perhaps related to cumulative radiation exposure across Whitson’s two previous long-duration missions, might rule her out of the flight. Other possible candidates for the flight include physician-astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Mike Barratt. Lindgren is presently training for launch in March 2015 on Expedition 43/44, although his current status as a ‘rookie’ astronaut may raise eyebrows for the Russians, who are believed to have insisted that both year-long crew members should be flight-experienced. Barratt, who flew a 199-day mission to the station in March-October 2009, presently manages the Human Research Program at the Johnson Space Center. As for the Russian crew member, one name which has garnered much speculation in recent weeks has been veteran cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka.   Undoubtedly, the coming weeks will prove exceptionally exciting, as the station moves from the post-Shuttle era into one which can at last be termed the pre-BEO era, for much of NASA’s research seems to be heading in the direction of preparing for humanity’s first exploratory voyages beyond Earth orbit in more than five decades. Cynics have argued that Russia’s support for the year-long expedition has little to do with future exploration, or even human life science, but is purely engineered to rake in profit from jumpstarting its Soyuz tourism programme. Still, the fact remains that if Sarah Brightman flies in 2015 hers will be added to the other influential voices which have spoken so eloquently about space in recent years. She will become the first professional singer to enter space and arguably the first instantly recognisable celebrity to do so. Significantly, her support for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education is expected to pay enormous dividends.   Almost three years remain to be crossed before the flight occurs, and during that time much can change to alter its progress. Certainly, 2012 has turned into an interesting year in terms of EVAs, with one originally planned – and performed – by Sunita Williams and Aki Hoshide in late August, quickly followed by a second and current expectations that as many as two more will occur in early November. Both will be conducted by Williams and Hoshide, owing to their currency in preparedness and recent EVA expertise. The need for these additional EVAs centres on an ammonia coolant leak in one of the power channels of the station’s port-side P-6 solar array.   Launched in November 2000 with 52 pounds of ammonia, the P-6 system has exhibited a leak of around 1.5 pounds per year since December 2006, prompting a topping-up by the STS-134 EVA crew in May of last year. Projections at the time suggested that the system would not need further attention until 2015, but the leak has returned and accelerated from its previous rate to around 5.2 pounds per year. With this alarming trend, P-6’s critical 2B power channel – which carries significant electrical loads across the station – could be rendered out of service before the end of this year. The next EVA crew, Expedition 34/35 astronauts Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn, are not expected to arrive until 21 December and NASA has expressed preference to attend to the problem with a team already established in orbit and with recent spacewalking experience.   Present plans call for Williams and Hoshide to venture outside the station’s Quest airlock at 7:15 am CDT on 1 November, for an EVA which should last for six and a half hours. They will probably not refill the ammonia supply, because analysis has indicated that the leak seems to originate from the P-6’s photovoltaic radiator, but will instead extend one of its retracted Early External Thermal Control System (EETCS) radiators. They will connect jumper cables to bypass the leaking photovoltaic radiator and activate the EETCS in its place. A spare photovoltaic radiator is located on the ExPrESS Logistics Carrier (ELC-4), launched in February 2011, although that is the only spare device at the station and it is NASA’s desire to seek an alternative workaround option.   Williams, Hoshide and Expedition 33 crewmate Yuri Malenchenko’s return to Earth has already been postponed from 12 November until the 19th – not due to the EVA demands, but to decrease the amount of time at three-person capability before the arrival of Hadfield, Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko in late December – and the scope for another spacewalk is becoming increasingly likely to replace a Sequential Shunt Unit. A date for this EVA has not been announced, although Williams and Hoshide have participated in procedural reviews during the course of the last week. According to NASA’s ISS Status Report of 17 October, the pair configured tools, hardware and bags, reviewed training materials on dealing with fluid quick disconnect hardware carrying toxic ammonia and participated in an audio teleconference with ground-based EVA specialists.   With the arrival of Ford, Novitsky and Tarelkin, the two crews will work together for around three weeks, before Williams, Malenchenko and Hoshide return home, shortly before Thanksgiving. The next team of Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are due to launch on 19 December and will dock at the station two days later. This will bring Expedition 34 to its full six-man strength – “which sometimes we call ‘34-6’,” said Ford, “the new lingo” – and prime the outpost for the arrival of the second SpaceX Dragon cargo craft under its $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. This mission is presently scheduled for launch in January 2013, although the engine-out experienced on the recent CRS-1 ascent may force this target date to the right. Also planned for around the same time is the first demo flight of Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus vehicle, preparatory to a series of voyages under its own $1.9 billion CRS contract. The flight of Cygnus, however, is dependent upon a satisfactory maiden launch of Orbital’s Antares booster, later this year. Ford has trained extensively to capture and berth the craft at the station’s Harmony node, using the Canadarm2 robotic arm.   With Ford, Novitsky and Tarelkin’s Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft and its booster already ‘hard-down’ on the Baikonur launch pad, only hours now remain before their launch on Tuesday. They are scheduled to remain in orbit until mid-March 2013, whereupon they will be replaced by another crew, which includes Pavel Vinogradov – due to become the oldest Russian cosmonaut ever to enter orbit, aged 59 – and which may feature the first same-day docking of a manned craft at the International Space Station. At present, crews spend two days in transit to the outpost, but the successful test of a six-hour ‘fast rendezvous’ profile by the unmanned Progress 48P last August raised optimism that this procedure could soon be extended to manned missions.   Obama, Romney camps fighting over U.S. space policy   Lee Roop - Huntsville Times   Space policy is getting its 15 minutes as the presidential campaign heads toward the final weeks. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan recently talked space in swing-state Florida, and the two campaign camps are swapping visions about where NASA has been and where it's going.   Speaking in Ocala, Fla., four days ago, Ryan accused President Obama of abandoning a functioning space program when he came into office. "The Obama administration came in and they inherited a plan for NASA from the Bush administration. They had a plan for space. They jettisoned that plan," Ryan said, according to press reports. "They put it on, basically got rid of that plan. Now we have effectively no plan. We are not putting people in space anymore."   We did inherit a program, but it was a mess, Obama's team replies in a two-part debate on space posted online Monday. The Obama team's essay was titled, "Mitt Romney: Lost in Space..." "In 2008, the U.S. Government Accountability Office had identified poor planning around the looming space shuttle retirement and its follow-on program as one of 13 'urgent issues' that any new president would have to confront when they came into office in 2009," writes Jim Kohlenberger, a science adviser to two White Houses. "Because of years of mismatch between vision and resources, the independent Augustine commission found that the Constellation program was not viable under any feasible budget scenario. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle agreed."   Ryan told the Florida audience that Republicans believe the president doesn't understand NASA's key role in America's security. That same theme leads off the online pro-Romney counterpoint to Kohlenberger's essay titled, "... Or Ready To Restore Lost U.S. Leadership in Space? It is authored by Scott Pace and Eric Anderson, the chairman and a member, respectively, of Romney's Space Policy Advisory Group.     "President Barack Obama has put us on a path that cedes our global position as the unequivocal leader in space," write Pace and Anderson. "For the first time since the dawn of the Space Age, America has chosen to forgo its own capabilities for putting astronauts into space and instead relies on the Russians."   Some longtime space program observers, like Keith Cowing of the website NASA Watch, point out that the plan to retire the shuttle began in the White House of President George W. Bush, where Pace worked as a space adviser. But Pace and Anderson write that, "The space shuttle's planned retirement was known on the day President Obama took office, yet the earliest that Americans will again ride American rockets into space is 2016 -- a stretch longer than the one between President John F. Kennedy's famous speech and the first steps on the Moon. Because of the president's policies, engineers are moving on. Companies are turning their attention elsewhere. Graduates are aiming for different careers."   NASA has been "whipsawed" by the Obama White House, Anderson and Pace say. Not really, Kohenlberger writes. "The president's plan, passed with bipartisan support in Congress, builds on America's unrivaled space leadership to take us farther, faster and deeper into space than humans have ever gone before," he says. "It is spurring the creation of new technologies, industries and jobs."   Space station commander reflects on 100 days in orbit   Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com   There's no place like home, even in space.   For NASA astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams, who Monday evening marked her 100th day in space since lifting off in July, the International Space Station (ISS) has become her and her two Expedition 33 crewmates' home.   "It's definitely our home at this point in time," Williams told collectSPACE.com in a televised interview from on board the station. "We have our little things scattered here and there and we know where they are."   "I think we need to clean up before the next crew comes here, like when you have visitors at your house, you want to take this weekend or the weekend before they arrive to clean up," she said while floating inside the "Destiny" U.S. laboratory module.   Williams is the space station's 33rd commander and only the second woman to lead the outpost since the first crew took up residency on the outpost in 2000. She currently shares the ISS with flight engineers Yuri Malenchenko of Russia and Japan's Akihiko "Aki" Hoshide.   By their mission elapsed time, their 100th day in flight will begin 10:40 p.m. EDT on Monday.   Their three new crew members, astronaut Kevin Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, are set to arrive at the space station later this week.   "Well, it's sort of quiet up here, which is sort of nice, with just three — but we are really seriously looking forward to the next crew coming up here. It always adds a little more dynamic an atmosphere when people are flying around," Williams described. "Being a crew of three was really nice also, of course, sort of calmed everything down, made things a little more relaxed, even though we still had some dynamic ops."   "But we're ready for our guests and the new residents of the International Space Station, Kevin, Oleg and Evgeny," she added. "It is going to be great to have them up here and like I said, we're cleaning house and making sure it is all ready for them."   At home in zero-g   Expedition 33 is Williams' second stay on the International Space Station. She previously lived there for more than six months during Expedition 14 from December 2006 to June 2007.   She told collectSPACE.com that 100 days into her current mission, she's not missing gravity.   "I love being up here and I love floating around," Williams said. "I think the mindset really is you know it is not going to last forever, so I think you take an advantage of flying around as much as possible."   Sometimes her mindset reverts however, to how she'd do things on Earth.   "It took a little while to get used to falling asleep without laying down on a bed or having a pillow," Williams shared. "Still, every now and then, you take a bag of nuts and go like this, holding it up in the air to have them fall in your mouth, and that's not going to work."   "Some of those small unconscious things catch you off guard but but being in microgravity and flying around in space is priceless. I think we're cherishing every moment we have of it," she said.   Williams will return from space next month, which may not be enough time to shake of all her subconscious gravity ingrained cues. Future space station crews however, may truly find themselves immersed in weightlessness as they spend a year away from Earth to gather the data needed for even longer missions into the solar system.   "The International Space Station is a great place to live for a year," Williams stated. "There's lots to do here: there's science experiments' there's working on the 'house' — every now and then something breaks; there's crews and it's dynamic, you know, changing crews; so it would really be a good place to do that."   "And if we're looking for the biological, human-side of it — what happens to the human body over that length of a time — this is the perfect place to do that. We have all the monitoring here to figure out every step of the way what happens," she continued.   Williams said there is no shortage of interest by potential crew members for the yearlong mission, which according to NASA is targeted to launch in 2015.   "I would love to do it. I know other folks in the [astronaut] office who would love to do it. There are folks all over the world who would love to do it," she said. "Staying in space and looking at the planet over a year this close would be perfect."   Home for humans   Although a yearlong mission is still a few years to come, crews aboard the station have logged 12 continuous years aboard. Since Nov. 2, 2000 when the Expedition 1 crew arrived, there has always been a multi-national crew of at least two people aboard the orbiting laboratory.   To Williams, the past dozen years and 33 crews serve as a model for working together on Earth and moving further out into space.   "I was lucky enough to be there at the launch of the first expedition crew to the International Space Station, so I can tell you just from personal relationships with people and partners from all the different agencies, we've come a long way," she told collectSPACE.com. "Of course we've trusted in each other before building the space station and throughout the whole process while it was being built, that has just been capitalized on throughout the past decade."   "As crew members, we've gotten to know each other really well as international partners for sharing information and engineering ideas and learning from each other about how other people tackle problems. I think that has just been accelerated throughout this program.   "I think it is a role model program for many, many other international programs on the ground," Williams said.   "And with that, one of my own personal feelings is that when you leave the planet, you sort of leave the planet as a human being. You don't necessarily leave it as a guy from this country or that country. So hopefully when we are going to other planets a little bit away from Earth, we'll be leaving as human beings."   Astronaut Photo Contest Puts Canadian Spaceflyer in Far-Out Spots   Elizabeth Howell - Space.com   It's hard to say if astronaut Chris Hadfield is prepared to kiss a codfish to publicize his upcoming mission on the International Space Station.   However, a group of sixth-graders found a way to make that Newfoundland tradition possible. On the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) website, they posted a picture of themselves, an image of Hadfield, and a rather large cod.   The image is just one of more than 240 entries made so far as part of a CSA photo contest. The agency is inviting Canadians to take pictures of Hadfield with them around the world, challenging them to snap the two-time astronaut in a location he has never visited.   Entrants have the choice of inserting a digital Hadfield into an already completed image, or taking a snapshot with a physical version of Hadfield's likeness that can be downloaded from the website or found (in larger form) at a list of participating museums.   Entries show 2-D Hadfield in locations ranging from a red carpet beside Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, to an Icelandic geothermal plant, to the Anne of Green Gables house on Prince Edward Island.   Behind the fun snapshots, the Canadian Space Agency has a serious purpose: To promote Hadfield's mission to the International Space Station this December.   "Obviously, the Canadian Space Agency wishes to raise the awareness of the Canadian space program," said spokesperson Carole Duval. "This [mission] is the ideal time to try and promote what we do in Canada."   Anyone in the public who is a Canada citizen can vote for their favorite photo posted to the CSA website. The grand winner with the most votes will have the chance to talk to Hadfield himself after he lands.   Support from Captain Kirk   The photo contest is a first for the CSA. As such, employees are eagerly using their own time and resources to generate clicks for publicity.   One intrepid employee lined up for hours at a Montreal comic convention, 2-D Hadfield image in hand, to meet William Shatner. The legendary Captain Kirk from "Star Trek" granted a few moments for a stern-looking photo with Hadfield's likeness.   "You should have seen the exchange of e-mails over the weekend," Duval said with a laugh. "We were so eager to come in the office on Monday to see it. We have a few gems in our collection so far. It's a lot of fun."   The light-hearted contest comes at a serious time for the CSA, which is struggling with declining budgets amid a round of government cost-cutting this year. The agency faces a 25-percent cut in funding for fiscal year 2013 and is doing an internal review to determine where best to allocate funds.   When an astronaut flies into space, though, it brings a round of goodwill to the CSA from the media and the public. Hadfield in particular is well-known to Canadians due to previous "firsts" in space, including the first spacewalk by a Canadian and being the only Canadian visitor to the Mir space station.   Hadfield, a former test pilot who has been an astronaut for 20 years, is an old pro at publicity and eager to raise awareness for Canadian space activities, Duval said.   "He's a great speaker. He really is the best person to talk about the Canadian space program," Duval said.  "When we propose activities like this, he says, 'Yes. This is great. Let's get people involved, and let's have fun as we learn.'"   Science contest on the station   Canadian students who prefer a more practical way of getting involved in the Hadfield mission can submit a science experiment idea for consideration. Hadfield will conduct the winning experiment (these will also be voted on online) on board the station in 2013.   Students are provided with a list of items that Hadfield has on board the station, and asked to devise an experiment using these tools only. Available tools include anything from an athletic headband and electric tape (specified in red, green and blue) to limited amounts of water and condiments.   The science-experiment contest runs until Dec. 31. A panel of scientists will then review the submissions and pick the top 10, which will be publicized on the CSA's YouTube page where viewers can vote for their favorite experiment.   Entries will also be put through a strict safety review that NASA has for all experiments on board the station, Duval noted. CSA will announce the winner in February.   To enter the Hadfield photo contest and view entries, visit the CSA's site here. The contest runs until Chris is scheduled to land on May 16, 2013.   Is This the Spaceship That Will Take Us to Mars?   Jesus Diaz - Gizmodo.com Somewhere deep in the Marshall Space Center, in an unmarked beige hangar, NASA is building a spaceship. A spaceship built with spare parts, scrap hardware from the International Space Stations, a left-over aluminum-lithium cylinder and even museum mockups. One day, it may become the vessel that takes humans to Mars.   NASA engineers lead by Paul Bookout are talking about it at the the Fifth Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium, happening now in Huntsville, Alabama. Bookout's team is working with a team from the Johnson Space Center in Houston led by astronaut Benjamin Alvin Drew, a USAF Colonel who's been to space twice, including on the last mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery.   According to Bookout, the team is using its spaceship habitat to look at volume studies: "Are the crew quarters going to be the right size, the waste and hygiene compartment, the wardroom, the exercise area—we're looking at all those for this extended stay."   The spaceship model that Bookout and his colleagues are building is a medium-fidelity version of the habitat that may shelter the astronauts that go to Mars for the first time. It includes crew quarters that are two times as big as the crew space in the ISS, with everything they need to survive, including food storage.   There's also a science bay that also serves as a greenhouse in which they will be able to grow plants during their trip. You know, just like in the movies.   Water shields and the Star Trek-ish 3D replicator   The Mars spaceship habitat is surrounded by a wall of water, which will protect the astronauts against radiation. Water is a great insulator against the dangerous galactic cosmic rays and solar flares that may otherwise kill the astronauts after such an extended period of time in space.   But the awesomerest detail may actually be the onboard replicator. It will not be a Star Trek device, but rather a 3D printer that will make tools and parts as the crew demands, recycling old tools, food containers and any other discarded material.   It's good to know that Mars plans are still advancing, even while NASA's future budget depends on yet another election and faces perhaps yet another round of financial cuts. It's still a move forward, even if it's made of scraps and museum mockups.   SpaceShipTwo Fitted With Rocket Propulsion System   Guy Norris - Aerospace Daily   Scaled Composites is moving closer to the start of powered flight tests of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo with the installation of major elements of the rocket system, including the main oxidizer tank, at Mojave, Calif.   Photographs released by Virgin Galactic on Oct. 19, show the large nitrous oxide tank being lowered into position in the center of the SS2. The tank will feed the Sierra Nevada-developed RM2 hybrid rocket motor that will power the vehicle to suborbital altitudes at speeds in excess of Mach 3.   Virgin Founder Richard Branson also tweeted on Oct. 19 that “space doesn’t look too far away,” and in his blog referred to the extended build-up approach to the start of flight tests that are widely expected to begin later this quarter. “The greatest successful adventures are always built on meticulous preparation, which is why we’re leaving no stone unturned as we approach the first supersonic, rocket-powered flights of SpaceShipTwo.”   He adds, “Test flights of our vehicles have gone incredibly well so far and we want to keep it that way. Our amazing engineers and pilots are preparing right now for the first powered spaceship flight, which should be followed with a fairly quick build-up to Virgin’s first proper step across the final frontier.”   Installation of the tank, with the RM2 presumably not far behind, follows a 17th full-scale hot-fire test of the RM2 on Sept. 20. Scaled Composites says the test “continued evaluation of all systems and components, including pressurization, valve/injector, fuel formulation and geometry, nozzle, structure and performance. All objectives were completed.” The test log entry says the RM2 performed a “targeted 45-sec. hot fire as planned.” It adds the duration of the run was designed to allow examination of the motor’s “internal geometry.”   The start of RM2 installation follows the completion of aerodynamic tests of the unpowered SS2 earlier this summer. That milestone, which was achieved by late August, effectively kept the suborbital spacecraft on track for the start of rocket-powered flights by November/December.   Virgin Galactic hopes that, pending a successful powered test campaign, it will be able to start passenger flights by the end of 2013. Flight envelope clearance for airspeed, angle-of-attack, center-of-gravity and structural loads was completed during a final round of six flights from late June through mid-August.   Scaled Composites retested the glide flight envelope after modifying the tails of SS2 for additional stall margin at low angles of attack. The changes, which came in the wake of a tail stall during a flight in September 2011, included replacing a pair of smaller strakes on the inboard side of each vertical tail with a larger, one-piece, horizontal strake.   Astronaut items being offered at N.H. auction   Associated Press   A lunar dust-coated checklist from one astronaut's trip to the moon and handwritten notes by Neil Armstrong are among more than 600 items of space and aviation memorabilia being offered by a New Hampshire auction house.   The spiral-bound, 20-page checklist was worn by Apollo 15 mission commander David Scott in 1971 on the outside of his spacesuit, on his wrist. The book is 3.75 inches by 3.5 inches and comes with an aluminum arm brace with Velcro wristband to hold it in place.   The item is estimated to fetch about $250,000 at the auction, which starts Nov. 21. Such lunar checklists, which give step-by-step instructions on activities planned at the landing site, "are the rarest and most desirable of all flown space memorabilia," said Bobby Livingston, a vice president of RR Auction in Amherst.   "Rarely offered for sale, most cuff checklists reside in museums or in the private space collections of the moonwalkers themselves," Livingston said.   Robert Pearlman, editor of the online publication for space enthusiasts, collectSPACE.com, said Scott's list is of particular historical note, given that it was the first mission to use the lunar roving vehicle.   Armstrong's notes in pencil, written between the mid-1970s to early 1980s, appear to list various items. They include the words "One small step," among the iconic words Armstrong spoke when he became the first man to walk on the moon: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."   In this case, though, the words appear to be a reference to a limited edition silkscreen print of his lunar landing by an artist, Sandra Lawrence. Also on his list, Armstrong mentions U.S. Geological Survey lunar surface maps, Russian lunar maps, and a lunar module cockpit panel drawing.   The auction also features a photo autographed by Armstrong caught from NASA's original video transmission of his first steps on the moon on July 20, 1969. The notes are estimated to fetch at least $3,000 and the image about $5,000, but could go for more.   Another item is a photo of the moon's surface with lunar rover tracks autographed in 1972 by astronaut Alan Shepard. Shepard, who golfed on the moon, wrote a note to a golf pro, saying "this trap needs raking." Also featured is a note from Concord High School teacher Christa McAuliffe ordering materials such as booklets and tax forms for a class on understanding taxes. McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, was aboard the spacecraft Challenger when it exploded on liftoff in January 1986.   Fading skepticism of commercial spaceflight?   Jeff Foust - The Space Review (Commentary)   (Foust is the editor and publisher of The Space Review)   For many years, an entrepreneurs and enthusiasts promised a bright future for commercial spaceflight, both orbital and suborbital, there’s been a significant amount of healthy—and, perhaps, unhealthy as well—skepticism about the industry. People noted the failed promises of past commercial space efforts, slipped schedules, unproven technologies and business cases, and so on, and wondered if the new crop of companies promising low-cost access to space for applications from space tourism to International Space Station resupply could really carry out their plans.   That skepticism was, in many cases, both understandable and even warranted, given that many NewSpace companies struggled to deliver on their promises. For example, eight years ago this month, SpaceShipOne won the $10-million Ansari X PRIZE, for example, and appeared to usher in a new era of suborbital spaceflight. Yet the prize-winning flight remains the last commercial suborbital human spaceflight to date. However, as companies start to finally deliver on their promises, or at least offer concrete evidence of doing, some of that past skepticism of commercial spaceflight shows signs of fading away.   Recent and upcoming achievements   One of the biggest milestones that has reshaped perceptions of the emerging commercial spaceflight industry has been the successful flights this year by SpaceX, sending a Dragon cargo spacecraft to the ISS on a demonstration mission in May and, earlier this month, the first operational cargo flight to the station (see “Commercial spaceflight gets down to business”, The Space Review, October 8, 2012). Those flights have quieted at least some of the skeptics of company’s ability to perform those missions, skepticism that had been fueled by significant delays from the company’s original plans for performing those missions.   “It’s truly a seminal moment, I think, for commercial spaceflight, and it really helped change the way people perceive us, both within the industry and outside of it,” said Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former NASA astronaut who is now president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), of the SpaceX missions. He was speaking last week at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a conference that gathered several hundred people to discuss the current state and future plans of commercial spaceflight efforts.   That most recent Dragon mission, still in progress—the spacecraft will remain berthed to the station until late this month, when it will return cargo to Earth—was not without its problems, most notably the failure of one of the Falcon 9 rocket’s nine first stage engines. Speaking at ISPCS, Garrett Reisman, commercial crew project manager at SpaceX, said the engine was shut down after experiencing low chamber pressure. “That was a very serious failure, and we’re taking it very seriously,” he said. That anomaly is under investigation, he added, “and I’m confident that we’re going to get to the root cause and have corrective measures.”   The other company involved in commercial cargo transportation to the ISS, Orbital Sciences, is also showing signs of progress towards its first missions of its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft. Late last month, Orbital took possession of the new launch facility for Antares at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Island, Virginia, a long-delayed milestone due to difficulties in completing the launch pad. Orbital has rolled out an Antares first stage to the pad for tests, including an upcoming static fire test. The inaugural Antares launch, carrying a demonstration payload, is planned for late this year, although company officials said last week that the following mission, one that will send a Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS, had been pushed back to the spring of 2013.   In addition to its commercial cargo efforts, SpaceX is working on commercial crew development in competition with two other companies, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corporation. The three are starting work on the latest round of the NASA’s overall commercial crew effort, the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) awards made in August (see “Commercial crew’s winners and losers”, The Space Review, August 6, 2012).   “We are on track, we are on schedule, we are performing, as is our industrial team,” said Roger Krone, president of Network and Space Systems at Boeing, in a talk at ISPCS. He said the company was on track to be able to begin crewed flights using its CST-100 spacecraft in 2016.   Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada’s space systems division, said the company was starting work on its second prototype Dream Chaser spaceplane and would start glide tests of the vehicle in the next couple of months. “My progress is marked by going out the back door to the assembly bay and actually touching the hardware,” he said.   On the suborbital side of the commercial spaceflight industry, the long gap in crewed spaceflights since the final SpaceShipOne flight may finally be approaching its end. Last week Virgin Galactic released images showing the main oxidizer tank being installed in SpaceShipTwo, a key milestone towards the beginning of powered test flights. The tank is a major element of the spacecraft’s hybrid propulsion system, which uses nitrous oxide as a liquid oxidizer along with a solid fuel.   “[W]e’re leaving no stone unturned as we approach the first supersonic, rocket-powered flights of SpaceShipTwo,” wrote Sir Richard Branson in a blog post about the milestone on the corporate Virgin website. “Our amazing engineers and pilots are preparing right now for the first powered spaceship flight, which should be followed with a fairly quick build up to Virgin’s first proper step across the final frontier!”   Branson didn’t indicate exactly when those initial flights may begin, but in a talk last month at the AIAA Space 2012 conference in Pasadena, California, Steve Isakowitz, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Virgin Galactic, said the company had set an “aggressive” goal of an initial powered flight by the end of the year. That, however, he added that schedule would be paced on how things were coming together.   Another suborbital vehicle developer also marked an achievement last week. At ISPCS, XCOR COO Andrew Nelson announced that the company had completed another major test just Wednesday: firing the liquid oxygen and kerosene engines while mounted in a “flight-weight fuselage” with “real” pumps. The engines were “spewing out fire at our test site in Mojave,” he said. “It was an exciting day for XCOR.” Video of the engine test, he said, should be released in the next week.   XCOR had previously indicated they had a goal to start low-level (“air under the gear”) flight tests, part of a larger series of incremental tests of the Lynx, by late this year. Those flights appear to have slipped into early next year, based on Nelson’s comments at ISPCS. “We are progressing quickly on building and fielding the Lynx and flying it in the new year,” he said.   Even mysterious Blue Origin has been announcing some achievements in the development of suborbital and orbital vehicles. On Monday the company announced it had carried out a successful test last week of an escape motor system designed to safely carry a crew capsule away from its launch vehicle. The system is signed for use on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle but will also “inform the design of the escape system for its orbital Space Vehicle,” the company noted in a statement.   “We’re focused on delivering safe, affordable human spaceflight,” said Erika Wagner, business development manager at Blue Origin, at ISPCS. The company has been working “relentlessly” towards that goal since 2000, she said. “Slowly but surely, we’re moving from low-altitude test flights” to full-fledged suborbital and orbital systems, without giving any specific timelines for the latter systems’ development.   From disdain to belief   The recent accomplishments of the industry, in particular SpaceX’s flights to the ISS but also including the milestones by other orbital and suborbital companies, are reshaping perceptions about the industry. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that 2012 has really been an inflection point,” said Lopez-Alegria. “I really think there is a sea change going on with what’s happened in the industry and the perceptions from the outside world.”   “I couldn’t be more excited,” said Krone. He said he expects that, in ten years’ time, people will look back at this month’s Dragon flight to the ISS, as well as Orbital’s upcoming Cygnus mission there, “as really the first true commercial spaceflight missions, then followed by many, many more—dozens and then hundreds and then thousands—that actually created a viable, sustainable commercial spaceflight industry.”   Robert Dickman, the retiring executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), said in an ISPCS speech that he believed the achievements of various companies had altered perceptions of the capabilities of the broader commercial spaceflight industry. “As recently as two years ago, many naysayers were very vocal, doubting than any commercial firm would demonstrate the necessary reliability and safety to carry astronauts for many years, perhaps as long as the entire decade,” he said. “Not so much any more, thanks in large part to the Dragon mission last May and the one that launched last week.”   Elsewhere in his ISPCS address, he gave a blunter assessment of the achievement of the recent Dragon missions to the ISS: “Doubters, go home.”   Mitt Romney: Lost in Space...   Jim Kohlenberger - Space News (Commentary)   (Kohlenberger is a former White House science & technology policy adviser to two Presidents)   We are fortunate to be entering a new and exciting chapter of American space exploration, one that will see more discoveries, more scientific breakthroughs, more Americans in space and ultimately more American astronauts pioneering farther into the solar system than humans have ever gone before. This upward trajectory is being fueled by an ambitious plan laid out by President Barack Obama that enables NASA to blaze a new trail of innovation and discovery. The president is focused on ensuring not only that we maintain our leadership in space, but also that we advance it by cranking up the American innovation engine once again with a bigger vision, and bolder action, for a brighter space future. These efforts are essential for both our economic and national security.   Extraordinary progress is being made despite the fact that the president inherited a space program in disarray. In 2008, the U.S. Government Accountability Office had identified poor planning around the looming space shuttle retirement and its follow-on program as one of 13 “urgent issues” that any new president would have to confront when they came into office in 2009. Because of years of mismatch between vision and resources, the independent Augustine commission found that the Constellation program was not viable under any feasible budget scenario. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle agreed. Rather than walking away, President Obama knew we had to do better and laid out an ambitious new agenda of human and scientific missions that promise to take NASA and America’s space program to historic new heights.   The president’s plan, passed with bipartisan support in Congress, builds on America’s unrivaled space leadership to take us farther, faster and deeper into space than humans have ever gone before. It is spurring the creation of new technologies, industries and jobs. The key features of this plan include:   ·         Extending the life of the international space station (ISS) to at least 2020 to maximize the benefits from this remarkable orbiting laboratory. ·         Substantially increasing our investment in transformative technologies that can expand the reach and reduce the costs of human exploration into deep space while spurring private sector spinoffs on Earth to improve lives and create jobs. ·         Pursuing a series of increasingly demanding human exploration missions, including a mission to an asteroid by 2025 and an orbital Mars mission in the mid-2030s. ·         Increasing robotic explorations of the solar system as precursors to human trips and to conduct Earth observations necessary to improve our understanding of changing weather patterns and natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. ·         Closing the spaceflight gap by harnessing American entrepreneurship and ingenuity to competitively fund the fastest possible development of safe, affordable and made-in-America vehicles, while ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments — creating thousands of good American jobs in the process.   The Obama administration has worked with Congress over the last three years to advance this forward-leaning trajectory for NASA that maximizes our opportunities in space while pushing the boundaries of inspiration and discovery. And now we are seeing extraordinary progress and tangible results — possible only in America — that are expanding the realm of what’s possible in space.   ·         This year, for the first time in history, a private U.S. company built, launched, docked, delivered and recovered a capsule to and from the ISS — and this system’s second historic mission is at the ISS right now. By investing in American companies and ingenuity, we’re spurring free-market competition to give taxpayers more bang for the buck while enabling NASA to do what it does best — reach for the heavens. ·         To reach for the heavens, NASA is now advancing a flexible launch system to propel Americans farther out into the solar system — going beyond the Moon to asteroids and eventually to Mars. ·         To help unlock the secrets of the universe, NASA is building the world’s most advanced space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will allow us to see deeper into space and further back in time than ever before. ·         NASA’s budget supports a plethora of additional science missions that enable us to further push the frontiers of exploration. NASA spacecraft are now on their way to Jupiter, the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto, and beyond the solar system itself. ·         Earlier this year the whole world saw evidence of NASA’s scientific prowess when its engineers put the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars using the most audacious of all landing systems. If anyone had doubts about our technological leadership in space, there’s now a one-ton, plutonium-powered, laser-wielding piece of American ingenuity cruising around Mars that demonstrates that even the longest of odds are no match for America’s unique blend of technical acumen and gutsy determination.   Under President Obama’s leadership, America’s space program is once again on the move — pushing boundaries and helping to achieve our boldest aspirations. This progress comes not just because the president has tapped into the talent and tenacity of our aerospace workers, but because he also has harnessed the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit that has always made America great so that NASA can focus on doing the hard things.   I was fortunate to grow up around Apollo-era engineers, who taught me that nothing is impossible if we set our sights high enough. But they also taught me that if you don’t have your facts straight and arithmetic in order, rockets just won’t fly. And unfortunately, the space plan offered by the president’s opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, just doesn’t fly. His trajectory would take our space program far off course.   For example, Romney’s budget plans would require slashing important investments in our space future, and could force the deepest cuts to the space program in almost 40 years. These cuts could devastate the critical investments we need to close the spaceflight gap, continue unlocking the secrets of the universe and ensure a bright future in space.   Rather than outlining the areas of the space budget it would cut, the Romney campaign seems more bent on convincing the American people that we are a nation in decline. The Romney campaign made that point again in September when it released a space policy white paper that conceded American leadership in space to the Russians, discounted the upward trajectory that has taken us to the recent historic landing on Mars and cribbed much of what is already in the Obama plan. Romney’s central point seems to be an echo of the erroneous claim that NASA and America’s space program are adrift with no clear strategy or goals, while he fails to outline his own strategy, commitment, goals, dates or destinations for anything beyond low Earth orbit. America’s economy, national security and sense of discovery deserve better.   I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with President Obama in the White House and see firsthand his extraordinary commitment to NASA and our space program. He is determined that our endeavors in space continue to be engines of economic progress, national pride, national security and high-tech job creation. Unlike Governor Romney, the president has confidence in America’s continued ability to lead the world in space. By contrast, Governor Romney’s rather petite space plan mistakenly claims that “the United States has no clear plan for putting its own astronauts into space,” but then goes on to embrace the president’s own plans for partnering with U.S. industry to do just that. The governor has not only offered a plan that is void of details, he’s also hopelessly lost in space.   END