Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: CHRISTMAS EVE EDITION: Human Spaceflight News

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 24, 2012 9:29:10 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: CHRISTMAS EVE EDITION: Human Spaceflight News - December 24, 2012

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

Human Spaceflight News
Monday, December 24, 2012

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Soyuz docks with station, boosts crew back to six

William Harwood - CBS News

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft glided to a smooth holiday docking with the International Space Station Friday, bringing three fresh crew members to the lab complex after a two-day orbital chase. Soyuz TMA-07M commander Roman Romanenko, assisted by Canadian flight engineer Chris Hadfield, monitored an automated approach to the station, ready to take over manual control if any problems developed. But the computer-controlled rendezvous went off without a hitch and the docking system in the nose of the spacecraft engaged its counterpart on the Rassvet module at 9:09 a.m. EST (GMT-5) as the two spacecraft sailed 250 miles above Kazakhstan.

Soyuz capsule docks with space Station

Peter Leonard - Associated Press

A Soyuz capsule packed with three astronauts successfully docked Friday with the International Space Station, taking the size of the full crew at the orbiting laboratory to six. American Tom Marshburn, Russian Roman Romanenko and Canadian Chris Hadfield traveled two days in the capsule before linking up with the space station's Russian Rassvet research module. The docking took place around 255 miles (410 kilometers) above the capital of Kazakhstan.

International crew of three reaches orbiting space station

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying a multinational crew of three arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, setting the stage for a Canadian for the first time to take command of the orbital research base. The spacecraft carrying Chris Hadfield from the Canadian Space Agency, NASA's Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko blasted off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday and parked at the station's Rassvet docking module at 9:09 a.m. EST as the ships sailed 255 miles above northern Kazakhstan. "The Soyuz sleigh has pulled into port at the International Space Station with a holiday gift of three new crewmembers," said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

U.S., Canadian, Russian Soyuz Crew Reaches ISS

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

Russia's TMA-07M spacecraft docked with the International Space Station early Dec. 21, delivering a three man crew that included the orbiting science laboratory's prospective first Canadian commander. The capsule carrying Chris Hadfield, a veteran Canadian Space Agency astronaut; Soyuz skipper Roman Romanenko, a Russian Air Force pilot; and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, a former space agency flight surgeon, docked with the station's Russian segment Rassvet module at 9:09 a.m., EST. The three men lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 19 for a five month mission

New crew arrives at space station for the holidays

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

Neither Tom Marshburn, Chris Hadfield nor Roman Romanenko will be home for Christmas. But they've found a spectacular, high-flying alternative. All three arrived Friday at the International Space Station — just in time to celebrate the holiday season from a perch 250 miles above Earth; a perch that circles the globe and has colorful orbital sunrises and sunsets, 16 times a day. "You look like a happy little boy up there," Kyle Hadfield, son of the Canadian Space Agency astronaut, told his father during a space-to-ground phone call from the Russian Mission Control Center in Korolev outside Moscow.

Three spaceflyers arrive at Space Station in time for Christmas

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

The three newest residents of the International Space Station arrived at the high-flying laboratory Friday morning aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, just in time to celebrate an orbital Christmas. At 9:09 a.m. EST (1409 GMT) the capsule delivered Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield — who will become the station's first Canadian commander — as well as Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. The spaceflyers' journey started Wednesday (Dec. 19) when they launched from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:12 a.m. EST (1212 GMT).

Soyuz rocket brings trio to space station

Agence France Presse

A Russian Soyuz capsule with a three-man international crew docked without a hitch to the International Space Station on Friday after spending two days in orbit, Russian space control said. The crew of Russian Roman Romanenko, NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield will join commander Kevin Ford of NASA and Russian flight engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin.

Chris Hadfield and crew enter International Space Station
Canadian astronaut to spend 5 months commanding the space station

CBC News

The Russian space capsule carrying Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and two colleagues docked with the International Space Station on Friday morning. The spacecraft carrying Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko linked up with the space station's Rassvet module at 9:09 a.m. ET after spending two days in orbit The docking took place around 410 kilometres above their point of origin, the Baikonur space port in southern Kazakhstan.

From far above, a proud moment for Canada

Matt Gurney - National Post

On Friday, a Russian Soyuz space capsule docked with the International Space Station, orbiting 400 kilometres above the surface of the Earth. Aboard was a Russian cosmonaut, an American astronaut and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Three other astronauts met them there. They will spend the next five months aboard the orbital laboratory, working almost round-the-clock on dozens of experiments. And, in March, when three of the astronauts return to Earth to be replaced by three more, Col. Hadfield will assume command of the station — the first Canadian to do so. It's a fair bet that most Canadians don't spend a lot of time thinking about International Space Station. But this is a moment we should take pride in.

Drogue Chute Test Brings EFT-1 Launch One Step Closer

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org

In less than two years' time, NASA intends to loft its first unmanned Orion spacecraft on the long-awaited Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 mission atop United Launch Alliance's gigantic Delta IV Heavy booster. The mission, which will rise to a maximum altitude of 3,600 miles—the highest a human-capable vehicle has flown since the end of the Apollo era—will serve to wring out many of Orion's systems in readiness for its first Exploration Mission in late 2017. NASA took one step toward the EFT-1 goal Thursday, by completing the latest in a series of parachute drop tests of a mock-up vehicle at the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The test confirmed that Orion could land safely even if one of its two parachutes failed to open during the critical final stages of descent.

NASA's Space Launch System passes tech hurdle, ready to start construction

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), the new heavy-lift rocket system being created for a mission to Mars, passed a major technical review Thursday at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA says the system is on track to meet its 2017 launch date, and contractor Boeing can now begin building the core stage.

Construction set to begin in New Orleans on NASA's new mega-rocket

Times-Picayune

Construction is ready to begin in eastern New Orleans on the major components of NASA's new mega-rocket, designed to transport astronauts to deep space. The work is expected to bring hundreds of high-paying jobs to the Michoud Assembly Facility when construction on the program, called the Space Launch System, reaches its peak, starting next year and leveling off in 2015.

SLS' Core Stage is Finally Ready for Construction

Amy Teitel - AmericaSpace.org

NASA has passed yet another milestone in the ongoing development of its Space Launch System (SLS)—the rocket that will launch Orion to the Moon and beyond. The rocket's core stage is finally ready to move from concept to construction. SLS is NASA's next big, heavy lift vehicle that will surpass the Saturn V in size and power. And it's sort of like a Saturn V merged with the space shuttle's launch system. The rocket has a central core stage analogous to the Saturn V's first stage with two external boosters reminiscent of the shuttle's. The spacecraft—Orion—will sit on top like the Apollo command module sat atop the Saturn.

Wallops facility's future laid out
Governor reviewing five-year plan

Carol Vaughn - Salisbury Daily Times (Maryland)

The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority has delivered to Gov. Bob McDonnell a five-year strategic plan required by legislation the General Assembly passed during its 2011 session. The plan evaluates the current state of the authority and describes eight strategic objectives for it to pursue during the next five years. Legislation that took effect July 1 reconstituted the space flight authority, reformed its board of directors, amended its powers and duties, and provided it additional funding. The authority "is now poised to become one of the most useable spaceports in the United States. This strategic plan charts the path to achieving that goal, as well as the associated economic development and job creation opportunities resulting from Virginia's position as a leader in a rapidly growing arena," Executive Director Dale K. Nash wrote in a letter to McDonnell accompanying the plan.

SpaceX test Grasshopper - a reusable rocket that lands vertically
Footage of their new reusable rocket successfully launching - and landing again safely

http://www.youtube.com/user/spacexchannel?feature=watch

Telegraph (UK)

The private space engineering company tested the vertical take-off and landing vehicle prototype at their rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas last week. Grasshopper, powered by a Falcon 9 rocket and Merlin 1D engine, rose to a height of 130ft (40m) and hovered in the air before landing safely on the launch pad below, using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control.

Private venture wants to keep its wary eye out for asteroids
Deep-space telescope could be ready in 2018

James Dean - Florida Today

So, the world did not end Friday because of an asteroid blast or any of the other calamities imagined to be predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar. But some say a serious asteroid strike is just a matter of time, and we should be ready. For evidence of what might come, see the 1908 "Tunguska event" in Siberia, said Ed Lu, a former shuttle and International Space Station astronaut who heads the nonprofit B612 Foundation (the name references the asteroid home from "The Little Prince.")

Does NASA know what its goal is, think it's achievable?

John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)

Does anyone at NASA even know what the space agency's top goals are? A couple weeks ago, the National Research Council reported "there is no strong, compelling national vision for the human spaceflight program" beyond the vague concept that, someday, human beings ought to go to Mars. The nearest-term big goal outlined by the White House's official space policy is to send human explorers to an asteroid, an idea that space employees don't support.

When Apollo Died: What of Apollo 18, 19 and 20?

Amy Shira Teitel - Discovery News

Last Wednesday marked the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17's splashdown -- 40 years since men last walked on the moon. But it was never NASA's plan to have the Apollo missions end with 17. The agency had plans -- including crews lined up and landing sites picked out -- for missions through Apollo 20. So what happened to the end of Apollo? Half-way through 1967, NASA had a plan for Apollo. The agency had 15 Saturn V rockets for lunar missions and a plan to methodically break down the tricky task of landing on and exploring the moon's surface.

"Launch Commit" – The Voyage of Apollo 8

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org

Since July 1969, astronaut Mike Collins has achieved fame as 'the other one' on the first lunar landing crew. A year before making that momentous flight, he might have been aboard Apollo 9, shoulder to shoulder with fellow astronauts Frank Borman and Bill Anders, to perform a high-Earth-orbit test of the Moonship's command, service, and lunar modules. That mission changed markedly by the time it eventually flew—renamed 'Apollo 8' and with a very different destination—but for Collins the most significant change of all was that in a matter of weeks he had gone from sitting in the senior pilot's seat…to sitting on the sidelines in Mission Control.

Ding-Dong Merrily On-Orbit: Celebrating Yuletide in Space

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org

Friday's arrival of Soyuz TMA-07M crewmen Roman Romanenko, Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn aboard the International Space Station to join the incumbent Expedition 34 team of Kevin Ford, Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeni Tarelkin continues a long tradition of astronauts and cosmonauts celebrating the festive period in orbit. Beginning with the epic lunar voyage of Apollo 8, recounted in last weekend's History article, the holidays have been commemorated in fine style over the years…and since 1999 every Christmas has seen at least one U.S. astronaut in orbit. America's finest have spacewalked outside Skylab and on the Hubble Space Telescope over Christmas, have welcomed Progress visitors to Mir and have celebrated amidst multi-national crews aboard the ISS.
__________

COMPLETE STORIES

Soyuz docks with station, boosts crew back to six

William Harwood - CBS News

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft glided to a smooth holiday docking with the International Space Station Friday, bringing three fresh crew members to the lab complex after a two-day orbital chase.

Soyuz TMA-07M commander Roman Romanenko, assisted by Canadian flight engineer Chris Hadfield, monitored an automated approach to the station, ready to take over manual control if any problems developed.

But the computer-controlled rendezvous went off without a hitch and the docking system in the nose of the spacecraft engaged its counterpart on the Rassvet module at 9:09 a.m. EST (GMT-5) as the two spacecraft sailed 250 miles above Kazakhstan.

"Docking confirmed," said NASA commentator Rob Navias, relaying updates from the Russian mission control center near Moscow. "The Soyuz sleigh has pulled into port at the International Space Station with a holiday gift of three new crew members. ... A picture-perfect rendezvous, approach and docking for the Soyuz spacecraft."

Romanenko, a second-generation cosmonaut making his second trip to the space station, shuttle veteran Hadfield, making his third spaceflight, and NASA physician-astronaut Thomas Marshburn, making his second, blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, enjoying a problem-free climb to space to kick off a two-day rendezvous with the station.

During final approach Friday, television views from the space station showed the Soyuz on final approach against the blue-and-white backdrop of Earth while a camera in the TMA-07M spacecraft showed the sprawling station against the black of deep space.

There were no problems and about 10 minutes of docking, hooks and latches fully engaged to pull the Soyuz firmly into place. After extensive leak checks, Romanenko, Hadfield and Marshburn planned to open the forward hatch and float into the space station, welcomed by Expedition 34 commander Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy, who were launched to the lab complex Oct. 23.

Following a standard safety briefing, the crew will settle in for a relatively light schedule and a break for Christmas, complete with gifts and a holiday meal. A second break to celebrate the Russian Christmas holiday is planned for the first week in January.

But soon enough, the pace will pick up with a busy schedule of scientific research, routine station maintenance, preparations for a Russian spacewalk and the arrival of Russian and European Space Agency cargo ships. Two commercially developed U.S. supply craft also are expected in March and April.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin will return to Earth on March 15 aboard their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft. At that point, Hadfield will become commander of Expedition 35, the first Canadian to serve as leader of a space station expedition.

Soyuz capsule docks with space Station

Peter Leonard - Associated Press

A Soyuz capsule packed with three astronauts successfully docked Friday with the International Space Station, taking the size of the full crew at the orbiting laboratory to six.

American Tom Marshburn, Russian Roman Romanenko and Canadian Chris Hadfield traveled two days in the capsule before linking up with the space station's Russian Rassvet research module.

The docking took place around 255 miles (410 kilometers) above the capital of Kazakhstan.

Almost three hours passed before pressure was equalized between the capsule and the space station, allowing for safe entrance.

As the hatches were unlocked, the arriving trio was welcomed by NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russian colleagues Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin.

The six colleagues exchanged hugs and posed for photos as they floated in the weightless atmosphere of the station.

Minutes after entry, Hadfield could be heard saying in English: "I love what you've done with the place."

Hadfield flew to the space station in 2001, when he spent 11 days at the facility and performed two spacewalks. He will take over as the space station's first ever Canadian commander in its fourteen year history when the crew now onboard prepares to leave in March.

Family members spoke for the first since the launch with the astronauts in a linkup from the Korolyov space center outside Moscow.

"It was just a heck of a ride for the three of us. It's like being on a crazy dragster, just a fun, crazy zip up to space," Hadfield said, speaking to his son.

The incoming crew will spend nearly five months at the space station before returning to earth.

Their mission began with a launch from the Russian-leased Baikonur space port in southern Kazakhstan.

The International Space Station is the biggest orbiting outpost ever built and can sometimes be seen from the Earth with the naked eye. It consists of more than a dozen modules built by the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency.

The astronauts will conduct some 50 scientific experiments including a test for a system aimed at predicting natural calamities.

International crew of three reaches orbiting space station

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying a multinational crew of three arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, setting the stage for a Canadian for the first time to take command of the orbital research base.

The spacecraft carrying Chris Hadfield from the Canadian Space Agency, NASA's Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko blasted off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday and parked at the station's Rassvet docking module at 9:09 a.m. EST as the ships sailed 255 miles above northern Kazakhstan.

"The Soyuz sleigh has pulled into port at the International Space Station with a holiday gift of three new crewmembers," said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

The trio joined station commander Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeni Tarelkin, who are two months into a planned six-month mission.

Ford is due to turn over command of the $100 billion research complex, a project of 15 nations, in mid-March to Hadfield, who will become the first Canadian to lead a space expedition.

"This is a big event for me personally," Hadfield said in a preflight interview. "It takes a lot of work, a lot of focus. It's something that I can look back on as an accomplishment and a threshold of my life."

Command of the station, which has been continuously occupied since November 2000, typically rotates between an American and a Russian crewmember.

In 2009, Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne broke that cycle to become the first European Space Agency commander. Japan's Koichi Wakata is training to lead the Expedition 39 crew in March 2014.

All three of the station's new residents have made previous spaceflights. Hadfield, 53, is a veteran of two space shuttle missions. Marshburn, 52, has one previous shuttle mission and Roman Romanenko, 41, a second-generation cosmonaut, served as a flight engineer aboard the space station in 2009.

The station crew will have some time off to celebrate several winter holidays in orbit - Christmas, the New Year and then Orthodox Christmas - before tackling a list of about 150 science experiments and station maintenance, including two spacewalks.

Among the studies will be medical research into how the human cardiovascular system changes in microgravity.

"When you live in an environment like that, the heart actually shrinks. Your blood vessel response changes. It actually sets us up to cardiovascular problems," Hadfield said. "We have a sequence of experiments that's taking blood samples and monitoring our body while we're exercising and doing different things to try and understand what's going on with our cardiovascular system," he said.

The research is expected to help doctors unravel the aging process on Earth, which is similar in many respects to what happens to the human body in weightlessness.

In addition to medical research, the space station serves as a laboratory for fluid physics and other microgravity sciences, a platform for several astronomical observatories and a testbed for robotics and other technologies.

U.S., Canadian, Russian Soyuz Crew Reaches ISS

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

Russia's TMA-07M spacecraft docked with the International Space Station early Dec. 21, delivering a three man crew that included the orbiting science laboratory's prospective first Canadian commander.

The capsule carrying Chris Hadfield, a veteran Canadian Space Agency astronaut; Soyuz skipper Roman Romanenko, a Russian Air Force pilot; and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, a former space agency flight surgeon, docked with the station's Russian segment Rassvet module at 9:09 a.m., EST.

The three men lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 19 for a five month mission

Hadfield has trained to move up from station flight engineer to commander in mid-March, leading Expedition 35 through the end of the latest Soyuz crew's stay.

The trio trained 2 ½ years for their tour of duty, which will include the arrival of up to five Russian, U. S. and European re-supply vessels as well as supervision of or participation in 130 science experiments and technology demonstrations.

The U. S. resupply craft could include the April arrival of the first Orbital Sciences Corp. Cygnus capsule mission carried out under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems
program.

The newcomers were greeted by U. S. astronaut Kevin Ford, the station's expedition 34commander; and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin.

The link up restored the station to six person operations for the first time since Nov. 19.

New crew arrives at space station for the holidays

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

Neither Tom Marshburn, Chris Hadfield nor Roman Romanenko will be home for Christmas. But they've found a spectacular, high-flying alternative.

All three arrived Friday at the International Space Station — just in time to celebrate the holiday season from a perch 250 miles above Earth; a perch that circles the globe and has colorful orbital sunrises and sunsets, 16 times a day. "You look like a happy little boy up there," Kyle Hadfield, son of the Canadian Space Agency astronaut, told his father during a space-to-ground phone call from the Russian Mission Control Center in Korolev outside Moscow.

"Yeah, there's a good reason for that. Who wouldn't be happy? We just rode a spaceship, well, I guess about 30 times around the Earth, and now we're on the space station," Hadfield said. "It's just magic."

Flying in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Romanenko, Marshburn and Hadfield capped a two-day trip from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with a textbook docking at the outpost.

The launch Wednesday and the flight to the station is a huge deal in Canada. Hadfield will assume command of the station in March, becoming the first Canadian to lead the station — or any other spaceship for that matter. "Two days ago, all of Canada, Canadians coast-to-coast-to-coast, tuned in to watch that absolutely picture-perfect launch," said Canadian Space Agency executive Paul Engel. "And today, two days later, a flawless rendezvous approach and docking — an absolutely extraordinary start to a fantastic mission."

The station now is back to a full staff of six. U.S. astronaut Kevin Ford and two Russian cosmonauts — Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin — boarded in October and will live and work on the outpost through mid-March.

The joined crews will celebrate Christmas next Tuesday with a special dinner. On Jan. 7, they'll observe the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday.

Then comes a busy time with dozens of scientific experiments and the arrivals of European, Russian, and American cargo carriers. Romanenko is ready. He's a second-generation cosmonaut. His father, Yury Viktorovich Romanenko, accumulated more than a year in space — 430 days — during three missions in the 1970s and 1980s.

Romanenko, Marshburn and Hadfield are scheduled to return to Earth in mid-May.

Three spaceflyers arrive at Space Station in time for Christmas

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

The three newest residents of the International Space Station arrived at the high-flying laboratory Friday morning aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, just in time to celebrate an orbital Christmas.

At 9:09 a.m. EST (1409 GMT) the capsule delivered Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield — who will become the station's first Canadian commander — as well as Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. The spaceflyers' journey started Wednesday (Dec. 19) when they launched from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:12 a.m. EST (1212 GMT).

After docking, the astronauts performed leak checks on the seal between their Soyuz TMA-07M capsule and the space station's docking port on the Rassvet module before opening the hatches between the two vehicles at 11:37 a.m. EST (1637 GMT). Shortly thereafter, the new arrivals floated inside the station that is to become their home for the next five months.

"All of Canada tuned in to watch that absolutely picture-perfect launch," Paul Engel, director of communications for the Canadian Space Agency, told the astronauts from Mission Control in Moscow after the three new crewmembers arrived. "Absolutely extraordinary. Good luck with the mission."

The spaceflyers each got to speak to members of their families gathered at Mission Control.

"Your face looks a bit puffed up. Have you been smilling a lot?" Hadfield's son Evan asked his father, whom he watched via a live video stream from the space station.

"Yeah, we've been smiling a lot," Hadfield replied. "It was just a heck of a ride for the three of us. It's like being on a crazy dragster."

Then Marshburn's daughter asked him to demonstrate a somersault in microgravity, and the astronaut happily obliged.

Complete crew

Three crewmembers are already living onboard the space station awaiting the new arrivals: commander Kevin Ford of NASA, and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, both flight engineers for the station's Expedition 34 mission. Now that the new trio has joined them, the Expedition 34 team is complete, bringing the orbiting laboratory back up to its usual six-person crew complement.

Romanenko, who has flown to the space station once before, said that a six-person team is key for the kind of work they want to do in the lab.

"I think we need to continue as we've been doing, six people per increment," Romanenko, a veteran of one previous trip to space, said in a preflight interview with NASA. "I think this will again maximize the number of experiments that we do on station. Also, this will facilitate the process of adapting to space. It will help us develop skills that we'll be able to use when flying people to other planets."

While working and living in orbit, the spaceflyers will be responsible for monitoring the 110 experiments onboard, as well as keeping their bodies in shape, and performing maintenance to keep the station running smoothly.

First Canadian commander

In March 2013, Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin will head back to Earth, leaving Marshburn, Romanenko and Hadfield alone on the space station to begin the Expedition 35 mission. At this point, Hadfield will take over for Ford as mission commander, making him the first Canadian astronaut to hold that position on the orbiting complex.

"It's a big deal for me, but also it's a big deal for my country, for my space agency and for where I'm from, and I'm happy that people are interested in it," Hadfield said in a preflight NASA interview.

This flight marks Hadfield's third trip to space, and second visit to the International Space Station.

"I'm really looking forward to not just visiting space but moving to Earth orbit and having all of the internal changes, the understanding and the revelation that comes with that," Hadfield said during a preflight interview with NASA. "I'm really looking forward to it."

Before joining the astronaut corps in 2004, Marshburn worked as a flight surgeon for NASA. He flew to the space station once before, in 2009, on the STS-127 space shuttle mission.

"I've experienced 11 days docked at the space station, 16 days in space on my last flight, so getting back to life in zero gravity, that is never boring, everything from putting on your clothes to brushing your teeth to working to transfer of hardware, all of its fun in zero-g," Marshburn told NASA before the launch. "I can't wait to do that again."

Soyuz rocket brings trio to space station

Agence France Presse

A Russian Soyuz capsule with a three-man international crew docked without a hitch to the International Space Station on Friday after spending two days in orbit, Russian space control said.

The crew of Russian Roman Romanenko, NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield will join commander Kevin Ford of NASA and Russian flight engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin.

The six will stay in space together until March, when Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin return to Earth. The three newcomers are due back in May.

The ISS is an orbiting lab that was launched as a scientific cooperation project at a time of continued space rivalry between Moscow and Washington.

Based on Soviet technology, the Soyuz rocket became the only vehicle capable of ferrying humans to space following last year's termination of the US shuttle programme.

Chris Hadfield and crew enter International Space Station
Canadian astronaut to spend 5 months commanding the space station

CBC News

The Russian space capsule carrying Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and two colleagues docked with the International Space Station on Friday morning.

The spacecraft carrying Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko linked up with the space station's Rassvet module at 9:09 a.m. ET after spending two days in orbit

The docking took place around 410 kilometres above their point of origin, the Baikonur space port in southern Kazakhstan.

The trio will join NASA astronaut Cmdr. Kevin Ford and flight engineers and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who have been residing at the orbital laboratory since Oct. 26.

A welcome ceremony began once the hatch opened at 11:37 a.m. ET Friday, 2½ hours after the shuttle docked with the space station.

Hadfield was the first to float through the hatch. The new trio exchanged hugs and greetings with the existing crew upon entering the station, then fielded congratulatory calls from family and Mission Control officials.

"It's like going up to an attic and discovering a treasure you've forgotten about," said Hadfield on the phone with his family. "It's just magic."

Each newcomer spoke to members of their families from Mission Control in Moscow. Marshburn's daughter asked him to do a flip in the zero-gravity space station, which he did, much to the amusement of the audience in Moscow and the new crew.

Hadfield's son commented that his father's face was puffy and wondered if it was from smiling too much.

"Yeah, we've been smiling a lot," Hadfield said. "It was just a heck of a ride for the three of us. It's like being on a crazy dragster."

Hadfield also spoke with Paul Engel, director of communications for the Canadian Space Agency.

"All of Canada tuned in to watch that absolutely picture-perfect launch," said Engel. "Absolutely extraordinary. Good luck with the mission."

During his five-month visit, Hadfield will become the first Canadian to command the giant orbiting space laboratory in its 14-year history when he takes over in mid-March. Once Hadfield takes command, Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin will return home.

It's a task that former Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk says will be challenging.

He says the 53-year-old Hadfield will have to maintain crew morale and make sure the crew paces itself, adding that the long duration stay is a marathon, not a sprint

Thirsk spent six months on the space station in 2009 — a record for a Canadian astronaut.

He also says that being away from family can be tough on astronauts who spend a long period of time on the space station.

This is Hadfield's third space journey.

His first space trip was in November 1995 when he visited the Russian Space Station Mir.

His second voyage was a visit to the International Space Station in April 2001, when he also performed two spacewalks.

Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko return home in May.

From far above, a proud moment for Canada

Matt Gurney - National Post

On Friday, a Russian Soyuz space capsule docked with the International Space Station, orbiting 400 kilometres above the surface of the Earth. Aboard was a Russian cosmonaut, an American astronaut and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Three other astronauts met them there.

They will spend the next five months aboard the orbital laboratory, working almost round-the-clock on dozens of experiments. And, in March, when three of the astronauts return to Earth to be replaced by three more, Col. Hadfield will assume command of the station — the first Canadian to do so.

It's a fair bet that most Canadians don't spend a lot of time thinking about International Space Station. But this is a moment we should take pride in. The station is a technological marvel — home to as many as six astronauts on a permanent basis, with new crew replacing old in a constant cycle, the $100-billion multi-national outpost is not only testing new technologies and scientific theories, but studying the effects of long-duration space travel on human beings. If mankind is ever to embark on any significant exploration of our solar system (and perhaps, one day, beyond), an understanding of the physiological effects of spending significant amounts of time outside the familiar environment of Earth is essential.

Canada was involved with the project from the beginning. Building upon our robotics expertise developed during our construction of the Canadarm for NASA's now retired space shuttle fleet, Canada designed a yet more advanced robotic arm, dubbed Canadarm2, to assist in constructing and maintaining the station. We later built another robot, dubbed "Dextre" or the "Canada hand" to assist the station's crew in the vacuum of space. In space as much as on Earth, Canada punches above its weight.

Hadfield's selection as station commander isn't entirely due to our robotic expertise, of course. He earned his berth aboard the space station, and his selection as mission commander. Hadfield is a space veteran, having flown in space twice before. He's been equally busy back on Earth, advancing through the ranks of NASA's astronaut corps to hold several high-profile positions in the American space program. The quality of our robotic tools notwithstanding, Hadfield will take command because NASA trusts him.

That's a boost for Canada, and for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in particular, at a time when a boost is very badly needed. A recently report by federal cabinet minister David Emerson painted a bleak picture for the CSA and the Canadian aerospace industry in general. More than 80,000 people work for the aerospace industry in this country, and these are clearly high-tech jobs. But Emerson's report was not wrong to note that, too often of late, the entire sector has been hobbled by declining budgets, lack of government interest and frequently shifting priorities.

Some of the blame for that lies beyond our borders — the CSA, Canada's premier aerospace brain trust, is inextricably linked with NASA. And the last decade has not been kind to the American space program, with the loss of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, the cancellation (and then partial resurrection) of the Constellation Program to develop new space vehicles and the difficulty faced by the agency due to the U.S. government's fiscal crunch.

But that's no excuse for disorganization in the Canadian efforts. Yes, we cannot provide the same leadership as the Americans can, but we owe it to ourselves to at least do a proper job of our international collaborative efforts and home-grown research projects. CSA is not immune from the federal government's austerity measures, and should not be, but it should certainly be a valued part of our economy. (The importance of space to Canada's economic and physical security was demonstrated last week when Prime Minister Stephen Harper personally intervened to preserve a Canadian satellite program that will provide real-time surveillance of our territory.)

Hadfield's turn as commander of the space station is a good opportunity for Canadians to remember our many proud contributions to space exploration, and what role we might play going forward. It's a big universe out there. We should make sure that Canadians like Chris Hadfield are just the first of many who will make their mark in the final frontier.

Drogue Chute Test Brings EFT-1 Launch One Step Closer

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org

In less than two years' time, NASA intends to loft its first unmanned Orion spacecraft on the long-awaited Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 mission atop United Launch Alliance's gigantic Delta IV Heavy booster. The mission, which will rise to a maximum altitude of 3,600 miles—the highest a human-capable vehicle has flown since the end of the Apollo era—will serve to wring out many of Orion's systems in readiness for its first Exploration Mission in late 2017.

NASA took one step toward the EFT-1 goal Thursday, by completing the latest in a series of parachute drop tests of a mock-up vehicle at the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The test confirmed that Orion could land safely even if one of its two parachutes failed to open during the critical final stages of descent.

"The mock-up vehicle landed safely in the desert and everything went as planned," said Chris Johnson, one of NASA's project managers for the Orion parachute assembly system. "We designed the parachute system so nothing will go wrong, but plan and test as though something will so we can make sure Orion is the safest vehicle ever to take humans to space." Although the 21,000-pound Orion capsule will be fitted with a total of five parachutes—two 23-foot-wide drogues and three 116-foot-wide main canopies—it requires only a single drogue and only two mains to return safely. The others provide a backup capability in the event of a primary failure.

Thursday's test encompassed airdropping the Orion mock-up from 25,000 feet and running a simulated failure of one of the drogues. Approximately 30 seconds into the free-fall, the second drogue successfully opened and slowed the vehicle sufficiently for its three main chutes to control the remainder of the descent. But that is not all. When the next parachute test takes place in February, it will run through a simulated failure of one of Orion's main canopies. And by the time that test takes place, EFT-1 will be a little more than 18 months away from actual realisation.

Tentatively set for September 2014, the unmanned mission has already moved more than a year to the right. It was originally scheduled for next July, but was postponed until December 2013, then the following spring, and now seems to have stabilized with a spot in the third quarter of 2014. Although no specific reasons have been given to explain the slippage, it seems likely that spreading program costs over a longer term were a key factor in the joint decision between NASA and Orion's prime contractor, Lockheed Martin.

The spacecraft arrived at the Kennedy Space Center's Operations and Checkout Building from the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, La. last July, and engineers are presently stepping through a 17-month process to ready it for flight. The EFT-1 mission will begin from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and is expected to consist of a two-orbit test of the Orion crew capsule—powered on this occasion by internal batteries, rather than photovoltaic arrays—with an apogee of 3,600 miles on the second orbit. This will produce a lunar-return re-entry velocity in excess of 20,000 mph to wring out Orion's heat shield, avionics, and the performance of its parachutes.

This velocity is several thousand miles per hour faster than any human-capable vehicle in the last four decades, and Orion will descend from a peak orbit 15 times higher than the International Space Station. Such high altitude and energy will run its complex heat shield—comprising a thermal protection material known as an Avcoat and Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator on the base of the spacecraft and several hundred tiles, bonded to composite laminate face-sheets on a titanium honeycomb core, on its main backshell.

Although the first Exploration Mission of Orion atop the mammoth Space Launch System (SLS) rocket—presently baselined as an unmanned circumlunar jaunt in December 2017—remains half a decade into the future, the success of EFT-1 is expected to provide significant data to support its more ambitious later voyages. According to NASA's EFT-1 Fact Sheet, the inaugural mission will enable engineers to better understand the functionality of systems whilst on the launch pad, including fuelling and vehicle stacking, together with the retrieval of the crew module from the Pacific Ocean after splashdown. Moreover, the effort to build the EFT-1 Orion has enabled the space agency to "refine its production and co-ordination processes" as part of what is almost universally acknowledged to be "the world's most cutting-edge spacecraft".

NASA's Space Launch System passes tech hurdle, ready to start construction

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), the new heavy-lift rocket system being created for a mission to Mars, passed a major technical review Thursday at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA says the system is on track to meet its 2017 launch date, and contractor Boeing can now begin building the core stage.

The core stage preliminary design review (PDR) was held Thursday at NASA Marshall and included representatives from the agency and Boeing. Boeing's Exploration Launch Systems in Huntsville is the prime contractor for the core stage and its avionics. Marshall manages the SLS Program.

"Passing a preliminary design review within 12 months of bringing Boeing on contract shows we are on track toward meeting a 2017 launch date," said Tony Lavoie, manager of the SLS stages at Marshall. "We can now allow those time-critical areas of design to move forward with initial fabrication and proceed toward the final design phase -- culminating in a critical design review in 2014 -- with confidence."

The review was to make sure the core stage design met the requirements of the launch system "within acceptable risk and fell within schedule and budget constraints," a NASA statement said. It did that. The core stage will be built at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

Construction set to begin in New Orleans on NASA's new mega-rocket

Times-Picayune

Construction is ready to begin in eastern New Orleans on the major components of NASA's new mega-rocket, designed to transport astronauts to deep space.

The work is expected to bring hundreds of high-paying jobs to the Michoud Assembly Facility when construction on the program, called the Space Launch System, reaches its peak, starting next year and leveling off in 2015.

The heavy-lift rock's massive core stage will be built at Michoud, and the engines that will power the vehicle beyond low-Earth orbit and into deep space will be test-fired at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

The Space Launch System is designed to transport astronauts to far-off destinations like asteroids and Mars over the next decade-and-a-half, an Obama administration goal. An unmanned test mission for the mega-rocket is slated for 2017.

The program's design team completed a major technical review of the core stage Thursday at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the agency said in a statement Friday.

SLS' Core Stage is Finally Ready for Construction

Amy Teitel - AmericaSpace.org

NASA has passed yet another milestone in the ongoing development of its Space Launch System (SLS)—the rocket that will launch Orion to the Moon and beyond. The rocket's core stage is finally ready to move from concept to construction.

SLS is NASA's next big, heavy lift vehicle that will surpass the Saturn V in size and power. And it's sort of like a Saturn V merged with the space shuttle's launch system. The rocket has a central core stage analogous to the Saturn V's first stage with two external boosters reminiscent of the shuttle's. The spacecraft—Orion—will sit on top like the Apollo command module sat atop the Saturn.

This latest SLS' preliminary design review was held on Thursday, December 20, at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. In attendance were agency representatives as well as representatives from Boeing; the aerospace company's Exploration Launch Systems in Huntsville will build the core stage. The review was held at Marshall as it's managing the whole SLS program.

This review was designed to verify that the core stage's design meets the necessary system requirements—within acceptable risk levels, budget constraints, and schedules, of course. Specifically, it was designed to make sure that the core stage will be able to integrate safely with other elements, like the rocket's main engines, solid rocket boosters, the crew capsule, and the launch facilities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. To prove its design is sound, the core stage's designers provided an in-depth assessment to a board of engineers—largely propulsion and design experts—from across the aerospace industry.

And the core stage passed; it's finally cleared to be built. Passing this latest review is significant not only because it means SLS can move forward, but also because of how fast the process has been. "Passing a preliminary design review within 12 months of bringing Boeing on contract shows we are on track toward meeting a 2017 launch date," said Tony Lavoie, manager of the SLS Stages Element at Marshall. "We can now allow those time-critical areas of design to move forward with initial fabrication and proceed toward the final design phase—culminating in a critical design review in 2014—with confidence."

Right now, the Orion spacecraft is further along in its development than SLS. There's a test model already built, and boilerplate spacecraft have gone through splashdown and parachute tests. But it's important that the spacecraft doesn't get too far ahead of its rocket. "Each individual element of this program has to be at the same level of maturity before we can move the program as a whole to the next step," said SLS Program Manager Todd May. "The core stage is the rocket's central propulsion element and will be an optimized blend of new and existing hardware design. We're building it with longer tanks, longer feed lines, and advanced manufacturing processes. We are running ahead of schedule and will leverage that schedule margin to ensure a safe and affordable rocket for our first flight in 2017."

The core stage will be built at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The centre has modified its facilities and ordered new materials to bring cutting edge technology into SLS' construction. Building rockets is a long-standing tradition at Michoud; the centre has built components for NASA's spacecraft and rockets for decades, most notably the space shuttle's external tanks.

With this latest review milestone passed, things are looking good for SLS to fly on schedule. The first flight, which will have the rocket configured for a 70-metric-ton launch, will take an unmanned Orion spacecraft past the Moon. Subsequent launches will see the rocket send men and machines even further.

Wallops facility's future laid out
Governor reviewing five-year plan

Carol Vaughn - Salisbury Daily Times (Maryland)

The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority has delivered to Gov. Bob McDonnell a five-year strategic plan required by legislation the General Assembly passed during its 2011 session.

The plan evaluates the current state of the authority and describes eight strategic objectives for it to pursue during the next five years.

Legislation that took effect July 1 reconstituted the space flight authority, reformed its board of directors, amended its powers and duties, and provided it additional funding.

The authority "is now poised to become one of the most useable spaceports in the United States. This strategic plan charts the path to achieving that goal, as well as the associated economic development and job creation opportunities resulting from Virginia's position as a leader in a rapidly growing arena," Executive Director Dale K. Nash wrote in a letter to McDonnell accompanying the plan.

The first objective, according to the plan, is to provide a framework for Orbital Sciences Corporation's success as the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's initial launch customer by developing a contract with the company "that provides an appropriate level of support for the current ISS contract and future missions," and by understanding Orbital's business objectives beyond that contract, "with a view to providing the necessary support and balance with requirements of a multi-user environment."

The target date for that objective is mid-2013.

Orbital, headquartered in Virginia, is among the top 10 largest space system and launch vehicle manufacturers in the United States and has provided more than 1,000 rockets, launch vehicles and satellites.

Its 2012 revenues are projected to increase 12 percent over last year, to $1.5 billion, the plan states.

The company estimates it will contribute more than $18 billion to Virginia's gross state product and $261 million of tax revenue between 2006 and 2015.

Orbital is readying its Antares rocket for its first launch and estimates the Antares program could produce overall economic activity of $4.25 billion in incremental gross state product over 15 years.

The company forecasts the Antares class of launch vehicle could add more than $200 million in new capital investment, about 1,300 jobs and tax revenue of $64 million to Virginia over a 15 year period.

Additional goals targeted for 2014 in the strategic plan include developing infrastructure at the spaceport with a view to making MARS a multi-user facility, as well as positioning the authority as a leading launch service provider by focusing on small and medium-lift launches, creating a competitive cost structure, increasing launch preparation efficiency and expanding customer service.

Longer-range goals include making the authority a self-sustaining entity with reduced dependence on state funding, sustainable revenue streams from new and existing customers and partnerships developed with other states and educational institutions to share the costs and benefits of the spaceport facilities.

Additional objectives include developing an efficient and competitive organization; establishing partnerships to promote research and commercial opportunities; exploring space tourism; and stimulating economic growth in Virginia by developing the state as "an industrial hub," creating skilled jobs in the aerospace sector, and enhancing aerospace education in the state by fostering relationships between the authority and educational institutions.

The plan notes the FAA forecasts growth in the commercial space industry — the FAA and the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee forecast an average demand of about 29 commercial launches per year over the next decade.

According to the plan, the aerospace industry already had a total economic impact of $7.6 billion and supported more than 28,000 jobs in Virginia in 2009 — accounting for nearly 2 percent of total spending and 0.8 percent of total employment in the state and making the industry more productive than the average industry in Virginia.

SpaceX test Grasshopper - a reusable rocket that lands vertically
Footage of their new reusable rocket successfully launching - and landing again safely

http://www.youtube.com/user/spacexchannel?feature=watch

Telegraph (UK)

The private space engineering company tested the vertical take-off and landing vehicle prototype at their rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas last week.

Grasshopper, powered by a Falcon 9 rocket and Merlin 1D engine, rose to a height of 130ft (40m) and hovered in the air before landing safely on the launch pad below, using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control.

The latest effort was one giant leap for the Grasshopper compared to its previous two test flights which have seen the rocket hover at six feet and 17 feet off the ground respectively before landing.

SpaceX are developing a new generation of reusable rockets that can launch, fly and land, in order to cut down on the expense of commercial space travel. US space agency Nasa have been without reusable spacecraft since their shuttle fleet were formally retired earlier this year.

Further tests are planned for the new year.

Private venture wants to keep its wary eye out for asteroids
Deep-space telescope could be ready in 2018

James Dean - Florida Today

So, the world did not end Friday because of an asteroid blast or any of the other calamities imagined to be predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar.

But some say a serious asteroid strike is just a matter of time, and we should be ready.

For evidence of what might come, see the 1908 "Tunguska event" in Siberia, said Ed Lu, a former shuttle and International Space Station astronaut who heads the nonprofit B612 Foundation (the name references the asteroid home from "The Little Prince.")

A relatively small comet or asteroid that exploded before hitting the ground wiped out that unpopulated area of Siberia in 1908 with a force 1,000 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, leveling forests, photographs later showed.

"These hit the Earth about every 100 to 200 years," Lu said this fall. "So flip a coin. That's the odds that somewhere on Earth during your lifetime it's going to happen again. Random spot. Most of the world is unpopulated. But wouldn't it be a shame if it was a populated area?"

No such strike is imminent, but the Mountain View, Calif.-based foundation has embarked on a privately funded mission, called Sentinel, that it believes could save humanity from going the way of the dinosaurs.

The mission plans to catalog 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids at least 460 feet wide that could cause devastating damage, plus many more as small as 100 feet, to provide the notice needed to deflect any threats.

Deflecting an asteroid is relatively easy with enough warning, because its velocity need only be tweaked very slightly to turn a hit into a miss, Lu said. A spacecraft could impact an asteroid or act as a "gravity tractor" to pull that off.

The problem, Lu said, is that we know the locations of only a fraction of the asteroids that whiz through Earth's vicinity.

"We're driving around the solar system with our eyes closed, essentially, and that seems kind of crazy, right?" he said. "Because these things do hit the Earth."

To open Earth's eyes, the B612 Foundation has partnered with Boulder, Colo.-based Ball Aerospace to design and build a roughly $500 million infrared space telescope able to spot hundreds of thousands of asteroids.

The proposed spacecraft, which has passed a preliminary technical review, is the size of a FedEx van . The foundation hopes to launch it on a SpaceX rocket by 2018, possibly from Cape Canaveral.

Sentinel would launch into a Venus-like orbit around the sun, repeatedly taking pictures as it scans the sky.

"As the sun shines on these asteroids, they warm up and they glow, and we're putting the night vision goggles together in Sentinel that can see that object," said John Troeltzsch, the project manager at Ball, in a recent interview.

Comparing images of the same patches of sky will reveal objects that have moved — asteroids. Further analysis will determine their orbits or identify objects for follow-up.

Lu said Sentinel would discover 10,000 asteroids a month — about as many as have been cataloged to date. The mission will last at least five-and-a-half years.

Aside from its scientific goals, Sentinel is notable because it seeks to raise a huge sum to fly what Troeltzsch called the "first privately funded deep space mission."

The foundation reasoned that the cost is similar to what some organizations raise to build a new wing on an art museum. So why not pursue such an important mission on their own if cash-strapped governments wouldn't?

"It's almost a litmus test for a civilization to figure out whether or not they can figure out how to do something about (an asteroid) before they get smacked, right?" Troeltzsch said. "And we're at a point in time now where we can raise the money, we have the technology to do it, we have the concepts, the data analysis. It all comes together. We could change the evolution of the Earth."

On its website, the foundation solicits donations as small as $25, asking, "Do you want to help map the great unknown and protect life on Earth?"

Said Lu: "We are going to find and track threatening asteroids before they find us."

Does NASA know what its goal is, think it's achievable?

John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)

Does anyone at NASA even know what the space agency's top goals are?

A couple weeks ago, the National Research Council reported "there is no strong, compelling national vision for the human spaceflight program" beyond the vague concept that, someday, human beings ought to go to Mars. The nearest-term big goal outlined by the White House's official space policy is to send human explorers to an asteroid, an idea that space employees don't support.

Perhaps it's no wonder. This week, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden appeared before yet another human space flight review committee (this is the second such panel convened over the past four years). He gave a less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of Obama's targeted mission to an asteroid. He didn't say NASA ought not do it, but he loaded up on caveats and qualifiers.

Bolden stressed that the president's goal of going to an asteroid, as a way to learn lessons that might advance our capability to ultimately send people on the longer and more difficult journey to Mars, did not mean that the space agency need launch a human spacecraft to an asteroid's current location. He told the NRC panel that the only way NASA could achieve the goal of a mission to an asteroid by 2025 is if the asteroid were somehow brought closer to Earth, an idea that is getting some discussion in various space policy analysts and even some astronauts.

Keep in mind, 2025 is 13 years from now and eight years past the time when NASA is supposed to, under current space policy, be ready to launch astronauts aboard its planned Orion human exploration spacecraft using a still-in-development super rocket. While many space pundits are focusing on the idea of bringing the asteroid closer, perhaps the more alarming questions center around the space agency's progress on Orion and the Space Launch System rocket development project.

If that rocket and spacecraft, presumably being designed for missions beyond low-Earth orbit, is not likely to be capable of flying a human mission to an intermediate destination such as an asteroid by 2025, then what is the plan for the multi-billion dollar projects? Are SLS and Orion severely behind schedule? Are the rocket and spacecraft going to be flying test missions only, in Earth's orbit, for more than eight years?

Furthermore, if NASA has leadership that believes the agency incapable of flying to an asteroid 13 years from now, when is the agency going to adapt its timelines and long-term budgets?

In a time when the nation has to make hard decisions about its priorities, further uncertainty is not good. NASA leadership appearing to be "adrift" on goals and timelines is not a sign of strength.

Nervous Congressional budget leaders, already less than confident in NASA's ability to deliver what it promises for the money it's provided, are not likely to feel more supportive if the agency can't show that its staff and its top leaders know the goals, agree with the goals and feel confident they're able to achieve the goals.

Somewhere at the top of the agency, or perhaps even at the White House, someone needs to spell out what NASA is supposed to be doing and making sure that the troops know the goal.

When Apollo Died: What of Apollo 18, 19 and 20?

Amy Shira Teitel - Discovery News

Last Wednesday marked the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17's splashdown -- 40 years since men last walked on the moon. But it was never NASA's plan to have the Apollo missions end with 17. The agency had plans -- including crews lined up and landing sites picked out -- for missions through Apollo 20. So what happened to the end of Apollo?

Half-way through 1967, NASA had a plan for Apollo. The agency had 15 Saturn V rockets for lunar missions and a plan to methodically break down the tricky task of landing on and exploring the moon's surface.

Each mission was assigned a letter from A to J that designated its type. Two Saturn Vs were tested on the unmanned Apollos 4 and 6, making up the A missions. The unmanned flight test of the Lunar Module (LM) on Apollo 5 was the one B mission. Apollo 7's shakedown cruise of the Command and Service Module (CSM) was the C mission. Apollo 8, which threw the sequence out of order by going to the Moon with just a CSM, was dubbed the C-prime mission; this made the high-Earth orbit CSM test E mission unnecessary. Apollo 9 tested the CSM and LM in Earth orbit on the D mission, and Apollo 10's lunar landing dress rehearsal was the F mission. The first landing on Apollo 11 was the G mission.

After Apollo 11, NASA had nine Saturn V's still available for its extended lunar missions -- enough to get the agency through its planned Apollo 20. The remaining rockets were assigned to missions NASA hoped to launch roughly every four months between Just 1969 and July 1972. Under the original plan, Apollos 12 through 15 were classified as H missions. There were precision landing that would stay on the Moon for two days with crews that would perform two EVAs -- Moonwalks.

I missions, long duration missions with orbital surveys done from an instrument module aboard the orbiting CSM, were cancelled and merged into the J missions that used extended LMs to increase the surface stay to three days and had crews perform three EVAs. Apollos 16 though 20 were classified as J missions.

But things changed in 1970. NASA started looked forward to its post-Apollo goals. Namely to the Skylab program, which needed a Saturn V to launch the actual dry workshop that would be constructed on the ground; crews would follow riding the smaller Saturn 1B into orbit. Apollo 20 was cancelled to free up one Saturn V and the final three moon landings were pushed back to 1973 and 1974 to give Skylab a window to fly.

The near loss of Apollo 13 in April 1970 saw the mission's landing site and surface activities were reassigned to Apollo 14. NASA also canceled its fourth H and J-missions -- what would have been Apollos 15 and 19. Apollo 15 was upgraded to a J mission and Apollos 18 and 19 were flat out cancelled. Apollo 17 became the end of the Apollo program.

It was bad, but things could have been worse. In August 1971, President Nixon proposed canceling Apollos 16 and 17 -- his reason, at least publicly, was that Apollo 15 had been such a success why not move forward with Skylab and the Space Shuttle right away? Nixon's advisors persuaded him to let Apollo run its course.

Had the Apollo program gone all the way though to Apollo 20, crews might have explored the Marius Hills volcanic domes as well as the Copernicus, Tycho, and Censorinus craters -- these were all planned landing areas under NASA original plan.

As for the crews, some patient astronauts would have finally left the Earth. Normal crew rotation, which saw a backup crew serve as prime crew three missions later, sheds some light on who would have flown when. Apollo 18 would have seen Dick Gordon, Apollo 12's command module pilot (CMP), fly to the Moon again as commander along with Vance Brand as CMP and Jack Schmitt as Lunar Module Pilot (LMP). Apollo 13's LMP Fred Haise would have commanded Apollo 19 with Bill Pogue as CMP and Gerry Carr as LMP. And Apollo 20 would have Pete Conrad in command of his second lunar mission with Paul Weitz as CMP and Jack Lousma as LMP.

But this might not have actually come to pass. Conrad, already having commanded a lunar mission, might have been passed over for Apollo 14's CMP Stu Roosa. Jack Schmitt, of course, was bumped up from Apollo 18 to 17. He replaced Joe Engle who had served as Apollo 14's backup LMP, meaning Engle might have had his chance on 18.

Even though these missions never flew, there was one Apollo mission after 17. In 1975, NASA launched the Apollo half of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which was internally designated Apollo 18. Still, this Earth-orbital mission was far from another trip to the moon.

"Launch Commit" – The Voyage of Apollo 8

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org

Since July 1969, astronaut Mike Collins has achieved fame as 'the other one' on the first lunar landing crew. A year before making that momentous flight, he might have been aboard Apollo 9, shoulder to shoulder with fellow astronauts Frank Borman and Bill Anders, to perform a high-Earth-orbit test of the Moonship's command, service, and lunar modules. That mission changed markedly by the time it eventually flew—renamed 'Apollo 8' and with a very different destination—but for Collins the most significant change of all was that in a matter of weeks he had gone from sitting in the senior pilot's seat…to sitting on the sidelines in Mission Control.

NASA's original line-up for the Apollo lunar effort envisaged a seven-step process, labelled 'A' to 'G'. First would have come the unmanned test flights ('A') of the command and service modules, achieved by Apollo 4 in November 1967 and Apollo 6 in April 1968. Next, the 'B' mission—completed by Apollo 5—would perform an unmanned test of the lunar module, a spidery machine which would one day enable men to touch down on the Moon. A manned 'C' flight, involving the command and service modules in Earth orbit, was executed by Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham on Apollo 7 in October 1968, and final strides focused on four increasingly more complex voyages: 'D' (a manned demo of the entire spacecraft in Earth orbit), 'E' (a repeat of D, albeit in a high elliptical orbit with an apogee of about 4,000 miles), 'F' (a full dress-rehearsal in lunar orbit) and 'G' (the long-awaited landing itself).

It was to the 'E' mission that Borman, Collins, and Anders were assigned. By the end of 1967, with the successful first flight of the mammoth Saturn V rocket, an increased wave of optimism spread through NASA that a manned lunar landing was achievable before the end of the decade. In August 1968, as described in a previous History article, some senior managers were talking of expediting Borman's mission from high Earth orbit to a full circumnavigation of the Moon. By this time, Collins had been abruptly removed from the crew. One day in July, during a game of handball, he became aware that his legs did not seem to be functioning as they should, a phenomenon which progressively worsened: as he walked down stairs, his knees would buckle and he would feel peculiar tingling and numbness.

Eventually, Collins sought the flight surgeon's advice and was referred to a Houston neurologist. The diagnosis was that a bony growth between his fifth and sixth cervical vertibrae was pushing against his spinal column and relief of the pressure demanded surgery. A few days later, Collins underwent an 'anterior cervical fusion' procedure, whereby the offending spur and some adjoining bone was removed and the two vertibrae fused together with a small dowel of bone from the astronaut's hip. Several months of convalescence followed, during which time Collins' backup, Jim Lovell, took his seat on the mission…and something else happened. The mission was renamed Apollo 8 and it would no longer fly a basic circumlunar jaunt, but would actually enter orbit around the Moon.

The plan was officially set in motion by NASA on 19 August, although some managers remained nervous about making such a bold move before Apollo 7. Officially, until that mission had flown successfully, the 'new' Apollo 8 would represent "an expansion of Apollo7", whose "exact content…had not been decided". The content of the mission may not have been decided, but the crew certainly had been. On 10 August, Deke Slayton told Jim McDivitt that the flight order was being switched: that his 'D' mission with the lunar module would now become Apollo 9, preceded by Borman's expedition (redesignated 'C-Prime') around the Moon.

Privately, Frank Borman was pleased with his lot when he received command of 'C-Prime'. He was at North American's Downey plant in California, working on tests of Spacecraft 104—the command module for the E mission—when he was summoned to take a call from Deke Slayton, the head of Flight Crew Operations. Shortly afterwards, he was back in Houston, in Slayton's office, hearing about the C-Prime plan, together with disturbing CIA reports that the Soviet Union might be only weeks away from staging their own manned circumlunar flight. When Slayton asked Borman if he would command Apollo 8 to the Moon, it was essentially a question with only one answer: Yes.

Also pleased with the decision was Jim Lovell, Borman's new senior pilot, who had been drafted in only weeks earlier to replace Mike Collins. The pair had already flown together on Gemini VII and were a good match. Lovell had been planning to take his family—his wife Marilyn and their three children—to Acapulco for Christmas, but was now forced to tell her instead that his destination had a more extraterrestrial flavour. One evening, flying cross-country with Borman in a T-38 jet, he sketched a design for Apollo 8's crew patch onto his kneeboard: a figure-eight emblem, with Earth in one circle and the Moon in the other.

That August, around the time that the 'E' mission was beginning its change into 'C-Prime', Apollo command module 103 arrived at Cape Kennedy for testing. Its mission, unofficially, ranged from circumlunar to fully orbital, with around ten circuits of the Moon planned. During the translunar coast, the large Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine in the service module would be test-fired for a few seconds. If it refused to work, the astronauts could still be brought home safely, thanks to a safety feature built into Apollo 8's trajectory design. Known as the 'free return', it would allow the crew to essentially loop around the Moon and use its gravitational influence to 'slingshot' them back to Earth without using the SPS. In fact, if Borman, Lovell, and Anders did find themselves with a useless engine, they would only need to perform a couple of mid-course correction burns, using the service module's thruster quads, to keep them on track for home.

Aside from the chance of an SPS failure, a host of other concerns worried Borman. One of them surrounded Apollo 8's splashdown in the Pacific at the end of the six-day mission. To achieve a splashdown in daylight hours would require a trajectory design which included at least 12 lunar orbits. Borman, though, could not care less whether he landed in daylight or darkness. "Frank didn't want to spend any more time in lunar orbit than was absolutely necessary," wrote Deke Slayton, "and pushed for—and got—approval of a splashdown in the early morning, before dawn." Apollo 8 would stick at ten orbits.

To understand Borman's reluctance to do more than was necessary is to understand part of his character and military bearing: he was wholly committed to 'The Mission', whatever it might be. On Apollo 8, that mission was to reach the Moon and bring his crew home safely. Nothing else mattered. All non-essential, 'irrelevant' requests irritated him. "Some idiot had the idea that on the way to the Moon, we'd do an EVA," he recounted years later in a NASA oral history. "What do you want to do? What's the main objective? The main objective was to go to the Moon, do enough orbits so that they could do the tracking, be the pathfinders for Apollo 11 and get your ass home. Why complicate it?"

The four months leading up to the mission were conducted at a break-neck pace. The lunar launch window opened on 21 December 1968, at which time Mare Tranquillitatis (the Sea of Tranquillity, a low, relatively flat plain tipped as a possible first landing site) would be experiencing lunar sunrise and its landscape would be thrown into stark relief, allowing Borman, Lovell and Anders to photograph and analyse it. In the final six weeks before launch, the crew regularly put in ten-hour workdays, with weekends existing only to wade through piles of mail. At the end of November, outgoing President Lyndon Johnson threw them a bon voyage party in Washington, DC. Then, on the evening of 20 December, the legendary Charles Lindbergh, first to fly solo across the Atlantic, visited their quarters at Cape Kennedy. During their meal, the topic of conversation turned to the Saturn V rocket, which would burn nearly 40,000 pounds of propellant in its first second of firing.

Lindbergh was astounded.

"In the first second of your flight tomorrow," he told them, "you'll burn ten times more fuel than I did all the way to Paris!"

Shortly after 2:30 am EST on launch morning, Deke Slayton woke them in Cape Kennedy's crew quarters and joined them for the ritual breakfast of steak and eggs. Also in attendance were Chief Astronaut Al Shepard and Apollo 8 backup crewmen Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. (The third backup crew member, Fred Haise, was busily setting switch positions inside the command module at Pad 39A.) Shortly thereafter, clad in their snow-white space suits and bubble helmets, they arrived at the brilliantly-floodlit pad, where their 360-foot-tall Saturn V awaited. First Borman, then Anders and finally Lovell took their seats in the command module, joining Haise, who had by now finished his job of checking switches. After offering them his hand in solidarity and farewell, Haise crawled out of the cabin and the heavy unified hatch slammed shut at 5:34 am.

Years later, Bill Anders told Andrew Chaikin that he glanced over at a window in the boost-protective cover and saw a hornet fluttering around outside. "She's building a nest," he thought, "and did she pick the wrong place to build it!"

As their 7:51 am launch time drew closer, a sense of unreal calm pervaded Apollo 8's cabin. With five minutes to go, the white room and its access arm rotated away from the spacecraft and, shortly thereafter, the launch pad's automatic sequencer took charge of the countdown, monitoring the final topping-off of propellants needed by the Saturn V to reach space. Sixty seconds before launch, the giant rocket was declared fully pressurised and it transferred its systems to internal battery power as four of the nine servicing arms linking it to utilities on Pad 39A were disconnected.

"T-50 seconds and counting," intoned public affairs commentator Jack King in the Launch Control Center. "We have the power transfer. We're now on the flight batteries within the launch vehicle."

The seconds ticked away.

At seventeen seconds came the final alignment of the Saturn's guidance computer and it was transferred to internal power.

"T-15, 14, 13, 12, 11, ten, nine…"

It was at this stage that the ignition sequence of the largest and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status began and pressurised propellants flooded into the five F-1 engines on the Saturn's first stage. Despite being cocooned inside their space suits, Borman, Lovell, and Anders could faintly hear the sound of fuel pouring into the combustion chambers, thirty-six stories below them.

"We have ignition sequence start. The engines are armed…"

Within those engines, internal turbines built up the supply of propellants to full flow and brought the first stage up to near-full power. As the final seconds of the countdown evaporated, all five engines were running at 90 percent of their rated performance, consuming thousands of pounds of propellant every second. When the clock inside the command module read 'T-3 seconds', the faint gushing sound of propellants was replaced by a distant, thunder-like rumbling.

"Four, three, two, one, zero…"

Finally, as Pad 39A's deluge system unleashed a torrent of water onto the launch platform to reduce the reflected energy, the Saturn's internal computer carried out its final checks. All was well. "We have Commit…"

The Launch Commit signal released a series of clamps securing the rocket to the pad and the monster began its rise for the heavens. From the astronauts' couches in the command module, it was hard to discern—other than from the clock in front of their eyes—when they precisely left Earth, but at some point in the commotion, the first Saturn V ever trusted with human passengers took flight.

"We have a liftoff," exulted Jack King. "We have liftoff at 7:51 am Eastern Standard Time…"

"Liftoff," radioed Borman, gazing at the clock on his instrument panel. "The clock is running." After the mission, all three men would have their own recollections of what it was like to launch atop the Saturn, but Chaikin summed it up best in his landmark book A Man on the Moon when he quoted Bill Anders: they felt as if they were helpless prey in the mouth of a giant, angry dog.

Forty seconds into the climb, the rocket burst through the sound barrier and the 'G' loads on the three astronauts climbed steadily—three, then four, and still climbing—but when they hit 4.5 the uncomfortable feeling of intense acceleration ended as the Saturn's S-IC first stage burned out and separated. "The staging," Borman recounted, "from the first to the second stage, as we went from S-IC cutoff to S-II ignition, was a violent manoeuvre: we were thrown forward against our straps and smashed back into the seat." So violent, in fact, was the motion that Anders felt he was being hurled headlong into the instrument panel. Seconds later, the now-unneeded escape tower and the command module's boost-protective cover were jettisoned, flooding the cabin with daylight as windows were uncovered. For Anders, his first glimpse of Earth from space—clouds, ocean, and a black sky—was electrifying.

A little under nine minutes after launch, the S-II finally expired and the S-IVB picked up the remainder of the thrust needed to achieve orbit. "The smoothest ride in the world" was how Borman described riding the Saturn's restartable third stage, before it, too, shut down, at 8:02 am. Barely 11 minutes had passed since leaving Cape Kennedy and the astronauts were in orbit. In less than three hours' time, assuming that their spacecraft checked out satisfactorily, they would relight the S-IVB for six minutes to begin the Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) burn and set themselves on an appropriate path for the Moon. However, if Apollo 8 did not pass its tests with flying colours and the lunar shot was called off, they would be consigned to what had been called 'the alternate mission': an Apollo 7-type jaunt for ten long days in Earth orbit, with little to do.

Borman could think of nothing worse. Indeed, at one stage, Jim Lovell, working under one of the couches to adjust a valve, accidentally inflated his space suit's life vest and Borman gave him a dirty look. In true Frank Borman fashion, nothing would be permitted to interfere with The Mission. At length, it was Capcom Mike Collins, who had been recovered from his neck surgery since early November and had even fruitlessly approached Deke Slayton with a view to staying on the crew, who gave them the news they so badly needed to hear: "Apollo 8, you are Go for TLI!"

Drifting high above the Pacific Ocean at the time, the astronauts knew that the six-minute burn would be entirely controlled by the computers and, with ten seconds to go, a flashing number '99' appeared on the command module's display panel. In essence, it asked them to confirm that they wanted to go ahead with the specific manoeuvre. Lovell punched the 'Proceed' button and at 10:38 am, some two hours and 47 minutes into the mission, the third stage ignited with a long, slow push.

Although Borman kept a keen eye on his instruments in the event that he had to assume manual control, Collins relayed updates from the trajectory specialists that Apollo 8 was in perfect shape. It did not feel that way to Borman, who was convinced from the intense shaking and rattling that he might be forced to abort the burn. Steadily, as Anders watched the third stage's propellant temperatures and pressures, they turned from 'Earth-orbiting' astronauts to 'Moon-bound' adventurers. By the time the S-IVB finally shut down after five minutes and 18 seconds, their velocity had increased from 17,500 mph to 23,200 mph – the 'escape velocity' needed to depart Earth's gravitational well and chart a course to the Moon. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders were travelling faster than any human beings had ever flown before.

Surprisingly, though, with no outside point of reference, there was not the slightest sense of the tremendous speed at which Apollo 8 was moving. Then, when Borman separated the command and service module from the now-spent S-IVB and manoeuvred around to face the third stage, they saw the effect of TLI: the Home Planet was no longer a seemingly-flat expanse of land and sea and cloud 'below' them, but spherical, its curvature obvious in the black void. They could actually see it receding from them as they continued travelling outwards. At length, as their altitude increased, Earth grew so small that it seemed to fit neatly inside the frame of one of the command module's windows. They quickly broke the 850-mile altitude record set by Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon on Gemini XI in September 1966. "Tell Conrad he lost his record," Borman radioed. Jim Lovell promptly launched into a geography lesson and even asked Mike Collins to warn the people of Tierra del Fuego to put on their raincoats, as a storm was approaching.

Manoeuvring Apollo 8 with its nose pointed toward Earth and the S-IVB had not been done simply for sightseeing: Borman's next task was to rendezvous with it, just as future crews would need to do in order to extract their lunar modules from the enormous 'garage' atop the S-IVB. After completing this demonstration, he pulled away for the final time and Apollo 8 set sail for the Moon. Five hours into the flight, after finally removing his space suit, Lovell set to work taking star sightings with the 28-power sextant and navigation telescopes. If they lost contact with Earth, he might have to measure the angles between target stars and the home planet and punch the data into the computer to figure out their position. He would do the same in lunar orbit, measuring craters and landmarks to refine their flight path.

Shortly after 6:00 pm, the first test firing of the SPS engine was performed, lasting just two seconds, which satisfied the astronauts and ground controllers that it could operate as advertised. As the first workday of Apollo 8 drew to a close, Lovell and Anders watched the instruments whilst Borman, unsuccessfully, tried to sleep.

Heading across the vast cislunar gulf, more than a quarter of a million miles wide, the astronauts awakened the first sensations of space sickness. Borman, it seemed, suffered the most. A number of cases of gastroenteritis had plagued Cape Kennedy in the days before launch and it was suggested that this '24-hour intestinal flu' could have triggered the malady; alternatively, Borman had taken a Seconal tablet to help him sleep and blamed the medication for his discomfort. Upon awakening to begin his second day aloft, he suffered vomiting and diarrhoea, but recovered sufficiently by the third day to tell Mission Control that "nobody is sick". Unknown to Borman, his case had caused much consternation among the flight surgeons and even led to suggestions that the mission might have to be terminated. Fortunately, all three men were indeed fine and, even if they were ill, the SPS could not be fired to about-face them back to Earth.

They were heading for the Moon, whether they liked it or not.

"There Is A Santa Claus"

Almost half a century ago, on 21 December 1968, three men were launched atop the most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status—the Saturn V—to begin a mission more adventurous, more audacious, more challenging, and far more dangerous than had ever been attempted in two million years of human evolution. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders roared away from their Home Planet and re-lit the third stage of their launch vehicle in an event somewhat innocuously described as 'Trans-Lunar Injection' (TLI). That six-minute firing propelled them out of Earth's gravitational clutches for the first time in history and set them on course to visit our closest celestial neighbor, the Moon.

Strangely, in the hours after TLI, none of the men could see much of the Moon at all. It was barely a crescent from their perspective and they would not really see it in its entirety until they arrived in orbit around it on Christmas Eve. "I saw it several times in the optics as I was doing some sightings," admitted Lovell, but "by and large, the body that we were rendezvousing with—that was coming from one direction as we were going to another—we never saw…and we took it on faith that the Moon would be there, which says quite a bit for ground control." As they headed towards their target, Apollo 8 slowly rotated on its axis in a so-called 'barbecue roll', to even out thermal extremes of blistering heat and frigid cold across its metallic surfaces.

One hundred and forty thousand miles from Earth, and 31 hours after launch, the astronauts began their first live telecast from the mysterious 'cislunar' environment, betwist Earth and the Moon. Borman had tried to have the camera removed from the mission, but had been overruled, and now found himself using it to film Lovell in the command module's lower equipment bay, preparing a chocolate pudding for dessert. Next there was a shot of Bill Anders, twirling his weightless toothbrush. "This transmission," Borman commenced for his terrestrial audience, "is coming to you approximately halfway between the Moon and the Earth. We have about less than 40 hours to go to the Moon…I certainly wish we could show you the Earth. Very, very beautiful."

Unfortunately, a telephoto lens fitted to the camera by Anders did not work and when they switched back to the interior lens it resolved the Home Planet as little more than a white blob, giving away little of its splendour. Borman was disappointed that he had been unable to show viewers the "beautiful, beautiful view, with blue background and just huge covers of white clouds". Lovell closed out the transmission by wishing his mother a happy birthday, after which Borman placed Apollo 8 back into its barbecue roll, which took the high-gain antenna off Earth. A day later, their second telecast allowed Lovell to describe for his spellbound audience the appearance of the western hemisphere: the blues of the deep ocean trenches, the browns of the landmasses, and the whites of the cloud structures.

Lovell was an explorer at heart. His excitement in wanting to fly Apollo 8 was motivated equally as much, if not more so, by the simple urge to explore new places than by a desire to carry out scientific investigations. The science was important, but Lovell's sentiment could perhaps be best tied to a statement made three years later by Apollo 15 commander Dave Scott: that going to the Moon was "exploration at its greatest". At one stage in the flight, Lovell turned to Borman and wondered aloud what alien travellers might think as they approached Earth. Would they believe it to be inhabited or not? Would they decide to land on the blue or the brown part of its surface?

"You better hope that we land on the blue part," deadpanned Anders.

By the afternoon of 23 December, almost 60 hours since their Saturn V left Earth, the gravitational influence of their home planet was finally overcome by that of the Moon. At this point, Apollo 8 was 190,000 miles from Earth and just over 40,000 miles from its target, and the spacecraft's velocity had slowed to 2,700 mph as it moved farther into the Moon's gravitational 'well'. As they sailed towards Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI), their trajectory was near-perfect: only two of four planned mid-course correction burns had been needed to keep Apollo 8 locked into its free return trajectory. At 3:55 am EST on Christmas Eve, Capcom Gerry Carr told Borman that they were "Go for LOI".

The three astronauts had still not seen the Moon, despite their close proximity to it, since their angle of approach caused it to be lost in the Sun's glare. At length, Carr asked them what they could see. "Nothing," replied Anders gloomily, adding "it's like being on the inside of a submarine". Less than an hour later, at 4:49 am, Apollo 8 passed behind the Moon, with Lovell telling Carr that "we'll see you on the other side". Eleven minutes later, they fired the service module's large Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine for four minutes to reduce their speed and brake themselves into an orbit of 69 x 193 miles. The burn was flawless, although Lovell admitted that it was "the longest four minutes I ever spent". Had the engine burned too long or too short, they could have ended up either crashing into the Moon or vanishing into some errant orbit. Just to be sure, Borman hit the shutdown button as soon as the clock touched zero.

Back on Earth, a tense world—nearly a billion people were listening in, NASA estimated, scattered across 64 different countries—waited for word of their insertion into lunar orbit. If Apollo 8 had not achieved orbit, then Borman, Lovell, and Anders would come back into communications range ten minutes sooner than planned. At length, right on time, following a 45-minute blackout, public affairs officer Paul Haney announced with joy: "We got it! We got it!" Fifteen minutes later, the astronauts' first close-range descriptions of the Moon came across a quarter of a million miles of emptiness. "The Moon," Lovell began, "is essentially grey; no colour; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a greyish deep sand. We can see quite a bit of detail. The Sea of Fertility doesn't stand out as well here as it does back on Earth. There's not as much contrast between that and the surrounding craters. The craters are all rounded off. There's quite a few of them; some of them are newer. Many of them—especially the round ones—look like hits by meteorites or projectiles of some sort…"

The lack of even the slightest vestiges of an atmosphere lent a weird clarity to what was, in effect, a scene of the utmost desolation, silence, and stillness. Only weeks earlier, the film of Arthur C. Clarke's, 2001: A Space Odyssey, had premiered and even the astronauts imagined the lunar terrain to be composed of dramatic mountains and jagged cliffs. Instead they were presented with an essentially dead place, ubiquitous in its blandness. Anders, tasked with the bulk of the lunar photography, had spent hours before launch with the only geologist-astronaut, Jack Schmitt, discussing the features of the surface, and had his own flight plan to plough through, but found it hard because of dirty windows. In fact, only the command module's two small rendezvous windows remained reasonably clear.

For Anders, the far side of the Moon, never seen from Earth or ever by human eyes, resembled "a sand pile my kids have been playing in for a long time…all beat up, no definition, just a lot of bumps and holes". He considered the lunar surface to be unappealing, but with a "stark beauty" of its own, and all three men found pleasure in giving temporary names to some of the craters to honour their colleagues and managers: Low, Gilruth, Shea, Grissom, White, Webb, Chaffee, Kraft, See, and Bassett. "These," said Borman, "were all the giants who made it work." At one stage during the excitement, when flight controller John Aaron noticed that the command module's environmental control system needed adjustment, they responded by naming a crater for him, too. (Before the flight, Lovell had even given his wife, Marilyn, a photograph of a mountain, near the edge of the Sea of Tranquillity, which he had unofficially named for her: Mount Marilyn.)

Four hours after entering orbit, another SPS burn—this time thankfully shorter at just 11 seconds—adjusted Apollo 8's path around the Moon into a near-perfect 69-mile circle. Then, at 10:37 am EST on 24 December, the astronauts became the first humans to witness 'Earthrise' from behind the lunar limb. Borman was in the process of turning the spacecraft to permit Lovell to take some sextant readings, when all at once Anders yelled: "Oh my God! Look at that picture over there." It would become a running, though light-hearted, competition among the crew over who took the 'Earthrise Picture', which has since become world-famous: a shot of the Home Planet, a pretty blue-and-white marble, rising in the void above the Moon's grey-brown surface. With Lovell in attendance, it was Anders who, after fitting the colour magazine and aiming the telephoto lens, snapped one of the most iconic images of the Space Age. In perhaps no other image has the beauty, fragility, and loneliness of Earth been captured with more meaning.

Years later, Anders would win praise from environmentalists for his assertion that Apollo 8's goal was to explore the Moon…and what it really did was discover the Earth!

The astronauts' intense workload during their 20 hours in orbit was getting the better of them, with tiredness causing them to make mistakes. On occasion, Lovell had punched the wrong code into the command module's computer, triggering warning alarms, and Anders was overcome with his own schedule: stereo imagery, dim-light photography, and filter work. At length, clearly irritated that the timeline was too full, Borman snapped at Capcom Mike Collins that he was taking an executive decision for his two crewmates to get some rest. "I'll stay up and keep the spacecraft vertical," he told Collins, "and take some automatic pictures." With some difficulty, he had to force Lovell and Anders to pry their eyes away from the windows and get some sleep.

It seemed inevitable, after thousands of years of watching and wondering about the Moon, that humanity's first visit would be commemorated in a religious, spiritual, or symbolic way. Before the launch, Borman, Lovell, and Anders had discussed this issue at length with friends and concluded that they would read the story of Creation from the first ten verses of Genesis. During their ninth orbit, on their second live telecast from the Moon, they read it. Anders spoke first, then Lovell, and finally Borman closed with "Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you…all of you on the good Earth".

Eight minutes into Christmas morning, three days and 17 hours after launch, the return home got underway when the SPS engine was ignited to increase their speed by 2,300 mph. As they rounded the Moon for the last time, Lovell told Capcom Ken Mattingly, who was just coming on duty in Houston, "Please be informed there is a Santa Claus". Mattingly replied that they were the best ones to know.

The return journey proved uneventful, with fogged windows, puddling water, and clattering cabin fans creating mere annoyances. A final televised tour of Apollo 8 showed Anders preparing a freeze-dried meal…and, when the camera stopped rolling, they found a treat in their food locker: real turkey and real cranberry sauce, wrapped in foil with red and green ribbons. It turned out to be their best meal of the entire flight, although Borman was annoyed that Deke Slayton had slipped three small bottles of brandy aboard as well. Why, if anything went wrong on the flight, the overly zealous Borman fumed, the press and public would have a field day and blame it on the 'drunk' astronauts. Lovell and Anders, who have admitted that they had no intention of touching the brandy, felt that Borman had gone a little too far. Christmas spirit returned, however, with festive presents: pairs of cufflinks and a man-in-the-Moon tie pin from Susan Borman and Marilyn Lovell, and a gold 'figure 8' tie pin from Valerie Anders.

Only one minor trajectory correction burn was needed and early on 27 December, the astronauts fired pyrotechnics to jettison the service module and plunged into Earth's atmosphere at almost 22,000 mph. During re-entry, which carried them over north-eastern China, then brought the command module in a long slanting path towards the south-east, Borman, Lovell and Anders were subjected to deceleration forces as high as 7 G. Splashdown came as Cape Kennedy clocks read 10:51 am, but still in pre-dawn darkness over the western Pacific, completing a mission of just over six days. At Mission Control in Houston, sheer pandemonium broke out, in the traditional American back-slapping way, and the smell of celebratory cigars scented the air for hours.

Among the cheering NASA throng was an overjoyed, though dispirited, Mike Collins. "For me personally, the moment was a conglomeration of emotions and memories," he wrote. "I was a basket case, emotionally wrung out. I had seen this flight evolve in the white room at Downey, in the interminable series of meetings at Houston…into an epic voyage. I had helped it grow. I had two years invested in it—it was my flight. Yet it was not my flight; I was but one of a hundred packed into a noisy room."

A quarter of a world away, in the Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles south-south-west of Hawaii, water came flooding through an open vent in the command module, drenching Borman and giving Anders the mistaken impression that the hull had cracked on impact. The ship overturned onto its nose, but quickly righted itself when Borman inflated the three airbags. It did not stop him from being sick. This time, Lovell and Anders, both of whom had served in the Navy, showed no mercy on their Air Force commander: "What do you expect from a West Point ground-pounder?"

Amidst the radio chatter from a rescue helicopter despatched by the aircraft carrier Yorktown came an age-old question which the world now wanted answered. "Apollo 8, is the Moon made from Limburger cheese?"

"Nope," replied Bill Anders. "It's made from American cheese!"

Ding-Dong Merrily On-Orbit: Celebrating Yuletide in Space

Ben Evans - AmericaSpace.org

Friday's arrival of Soyuz TMA-07M crewmen Roman Romanenko, Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn aboard the International Space Station to join the incumbent Expedition 34 team of Kevin Ford, Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeni Tarelkin continues a long tradition of astronauts and cosmonauts celebrating the festive period in orbit. Beginning with the epic lunar voyage of Apollo 8, recounted in last weekend's History article, the holidays have been commemorated in fine style over the years…and since 1999 every Christmas has seen at least one U.S. astronaut in orbit. America's finest have spacewalked outside Skylab and on the Hubble Space Telescope over Christmas, have welcomed Progress visitors to Mir and have celebrated amidst multi-national crews aboard the ISS.

It all began in the early hours of Christmas Eve 1968, when Apollo 8 and its crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders slipped into orbit around the Moon for the first time in human history. Over the coming hours, they relayed to an awe-struck Planet Earth a very different celestial body from that previously seen as a glimmering lamp in the night sky: for the astronauts saw a grey and forbidding place, battered by millions of years of meteorite and other bombardment, which looked to Anders like a sandpit beaten up by his kids. By mid-morning on the 24th, they were established in a 69-mile circular orbit and beheld the electrifying event of 'Earthrise' for the first time, as their home world peeked above the lunar horizon. Few other images from the Space Age have so enthralled us than the 'Earthrise Picture', which encapsulated the beauty, fragility and loneliness of our planet in the vastness of the Universe. The astronauts won deserved praise for their assertion that, whilst Apollo 8's goal was to visit the Moon, it actually served to discover the Earth.

The symbolism of men being away from the planet of their species' origin for the first time, and doing so over the most important holiday in the Christian calendar, could not be overlooked. Before launch, Borman, Lovell and Anders arranged to read the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis to the listening world. It was a reading which prompted both profound thanks and bitter criticism, notably from atheists such as Madalyn Murray O'Hair, but whatever one's conviction the sound of Frank Borman wishing the Home Planet "Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you on the good Earth" carried a message which conveyed the spirit of the season.

Five years later, Americans and Russians spent Christmas – at least, Christmas according to the newer Gregorian Calendar – in orbit, with astronauts Gerry Carr, Ed Gibson and Bill Pogue aboard Skylab and cosmonauts Pyotr Klimuk and Valentin Lebedev flying a solo mission on Soyuz 13. Russian Orthodox Christmas, of course, occurs on 7 January, under the traditions of the older Julian Calendar, but within the Soviet Union its observance was officially suppressed by the Communist authorities and little has come to light over whether Klimuk or Lebedev made any reference to the Gregorian festivities. Nor was it possible for the Skylab and Soyuz crews to speak via radio during their respective missions.

Aboard Skylab, the three astronauts were six weeks into a record-breaking 84-day flight and had crafted a makeshift Christmas tree from packing material, food containers and crude ornaments. They even made a small, long-tailed star from silver foil and put in pride of place atop the tree, to honor the arrival of Comet Kohoutek, which made an appearance in Earth's skies during late 1973 and early 1974. On Christmas Day itself, Carr and Pogue performed a spacewalk outside Skylab, one of whose objectives was to photograph Kohoutek. In his interview for the NASA oral historian, Pogue remembered floating in the station's airlock, surrounded by his cameras, two large film magazines for the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) and other tools. "Gerry went hand-over-hand to the end of the solar observatory," Pogue related, "while I got the replacement film magazines ready. I operated an extendable boom to transfer the first film canister to Gerry; he removed it and loaded the exposed canister to the boom; I retracted the boom while Gerry loaded the fresh canister to replace the one he had just removed and when he gave me the okay, I sent the second canister out. We repeated the procedure and were finished in record time."

Then came the photography of the comet itself. Pogue carefully set up his camera, mounting it onto a strut and positioning it such that one of Skylab's ATM solar arrays just barely blocked the Sun. He could not physically see the comet, but Mission Control had earlier sent him a diagram on the station's teleprinter. "The instructions were clear and it was a fairly easy job," he recalled. "I turned on the camera and I was finished." The child in Pogue suddenly took over. "I decided to make the most of it. I crawled all over the accessible parts of Skylab. It reminded me of when I was a kid, doing a mud-crawl in a four-foot-deep stock tank used for watering cows and horses." His adventure ended at the solar 'end' of the ATM, offering him a stunning and unobstructed view of Earth; it felt like Pogue was doing a swan-like dive through space. When the two men returned inside the airlock, they were advised that they had set a new world record for the longest spacewalk to date, at six hours and 54 minutes.

Over the next two decades, several cosmonaut crews were in orbit for both the Gregorian and Julian Christmases, beginning with Soyuz 26, crewed by Yuri Romanenko – father of Roman Romanenko, who boarded the ISS yesterday – and Georgi Grechko. They launched from Baikonur on 10 December 1977 and returned to Earth in mid-March of the following year, surpassing the record of Carr's crew by spending no less than 96 days in orbit. Less than a week after Russian Orthodox Christmas, they welcomed their first human visitors, the Soyuz 27 team of Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Oleg Makarov. And ten years after that, in December 1987, Yuri Romanenko became the first person to spend two Christmases (Gregorian, at least) in orbit, as he entered the homestretch of his 326-day voyage aboard the Mir space station. Joining him were fellow cosmonauts Aleksandr Aleksandrov, Anatoli Levchenko, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov. From Christmas 1987 onwards, at least one human being would be off the planet during each festive period. Therefore, this year's holiday marks a quarter-century of continuous Christmases enjoyed in space.

At the end of 1988, Titov and Manarov departed Mir just four days before the Gregorian Christmas – completing a record-setting 366-day mission – and left Soyuz TM-7 cosmonauts Aleksandr Volkov, Sergei Krikalev and Valeri Polyakov in orbit over the Christmas period. These three men returned to Earth in April 1989, leaving Mir unoccupied for several months, until the Soyuz TM-8 crew of Aleksandr Viktorenko and Aleksandr Serebrov arrived in September. They spent Christmas 1989 in orbit, followed by:

·         Viktor Afanasyev and Musa Manarov at Christmas 1990
·         Aleksandr Volkov and Sergei Krikalev at Christmas 1991
·         Anatoli Solovyov and Sergei Andreyev at Christmas 1992
·         Vasili Tsibliyev and Aleksandr Serebrov at Christmas 1993
·         Aleksandr Viktorenko, Yelena Kondakova and Valeri Polyakov at Christmas 1994
·         Yuri Gidzenko, Sergei Avdeyev and Germany's Thomas Reiter at Christmas 1995
·         Valeri Korzun, Aleksandr Kaleri and NASA's John Blaha at Christmas 1996
·         Anatoli Solovyov, Pavel Vinogradov and NASA's Dave Wolf at Christmas 1997
·         Gennadi Padalka and Sergei Avdeyev at Christmas 1998

During this decade of festive periods in space, Musa Manarov – a Muslim by religious conviction – became the first person to spend two Julian and Gregorian Christmases aloft, whilst Yelena Kondakova became the first woman to spend the holiday off the planet and German astronaut Thomas Reiter became the first non-Russian and non-US citizen to do so. From the middle of the 1990s, with the beginning of Shuttle-Mir, the opportunities for Americans opened. John Blaha, a veteran Shuttle commander, became the first NASA astronaut since Skylab to celebrate Christmas in space.

In one of his Letters Home, dated 13 December 1996, he described one of the harbingers of the holidays, as an unmanned Progress supply craft, carrying much-needed food, equipment and gifts and cards from home, approached Mir for docking. "I was in the Kvant-2 module, looking through one of the small windows," Blaha wrote. "I finally saw the Progress. It was a shining star, rising towards us at great speed from beneath the horizon. All of a sudden, the light from the Progress extinguished as we passed into the shade of the Earth. Five seconds later, four lights on the Progress were turned on. I watched the remainder of the rendezvous through a tiny window in the aft end of the Kvant module." For Blaha, and doubtless his crewmates Korzun and Kaleri, opening the Progress "was like Christmas and your birthday, all rolled together, when you are five years old". They found themselves reading mail, laughing, opening presents, eating fresh tomatoes and cheese. "It was an experience I will always remember," Blaha once said.

Christmas 1996 was memorable, as noted in a space-to-ground interview on 20 December. Iin the interview, Valeri Korzun surprised Blaha by referring to "an outstanding menu" of both Russian and American food products, including lamb, pork, "a wonderful dessert" and even Italian cheeses. "In six days," Blaha said with pleasant surprise, "we're going to have quite a feast. This is the first time I've heard about that." A year later, in December 1997, fellow astronaut Dave Wolf joined cosmonaut Anatoli Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov aboard Mir. A Progress craft brought gifts, a small Christmas tree for the space station and a package of traditional candy from Moscow's Red October factory.

The year about which Prince sang – 1999 – saw no Russians in orbit aboard Mir, for the station had been de-crewed in late August and only a two-month visit by a pair of cosmonauts in mid-2000 lay ahead before the end of the station's life. However, Christmas 1999 was celebrated in space, by the very first – and only – Space Shuttle crew to do so. NASA had expected astronauts to spend the festive season aloft on several occasions, including Mission 61C in December 1985, which was repeatedly postponed due to technical troubles and ultimately did not fly until early January, only days ahead of the Challenger disaster. Then, in December 1989, the STS-32 crew anticipated a Christmas mission to retrieve the Long Duration Exposure Facility. Their anticipation was so great, in fact, that they even had a spoof crew portrait taken, featuring them in Santa suits, hats and dark glasses. Sadly, problems getting Pad 39A ready for its first post-Challenger use shifted STS-32 into January 1990 and the Santa gag fell flat.

But on 19 December 1999, Discovery thundered into darkened Florida skies to begin the STS-103 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Aboard the orbiter was a multi-national crew: Americans Curt Brown, John Grunsfeld, Steve Smith and Scott Kelly – recently named to fly America's first year-long ISS mission – were joined by British-born Mike Foale, Frenchman Jean-Francois Clervoy and Switzerland's Claude Nicollier to support three complex EVAs to extend the upgrade the telescope's capabilities. Those EVAs were performed ahead of Christmas, with the final eight-hour spacewalk by Smith and Grunsfeld concluded at 10:25 pm EST on Christmas Eve (3:25 am GMT on Christmas morning).

After a sleep period, the seven astronauts were awakened on Christmas Day by Bing Crosby's I'll Be Home for Christmas. "Merry Christmas to y'all, down there," Curt Brown radioed to Mission Control, "and Hubble will be home for Christmas, because today we're going to set her free." The STS-103 crew made good on their promise, with Clervoy redeploying the giant observatory into orbit late on Christmas afternoon. Hubble Program Manager John Campbell paid tribute to the first Shuttle crew ever to spend Christmas in orbit. "We especially thank the families of the entire STS-103 team," he said, "who made so many personal sacrifices at this holiday season, enabling the Hubble Space Telescope to resume its voyage of discovery."

Curt Brown's crew offered its own tribute, too. "The familiar Christmas story," Brown said, "reminds us that for millennia people of many faiths and cultures have looked to the skies and studied the stars and planets in their search for a deeper understanding of life and for greater wisdom. We hope and trust that the lessons the Universe has to teach us will speak to the yearning that we know is in human hearts everywhere – the yearning for peace on Earth, goodwill among all the human family. As we stand at the threshold of a new millennium, we send you all our greetings."

With Discovery's landing on 27 December 1999, the 20th century of human space exploration officially came to a close. No human being would be off the planet to witness the birth of the year 2000, but as tomorrow's article will reveal, Americans and Russians – and a handful of other nationalities, too – have routinely occupied the International Space Station on every Christmas since.

As we celebrate the festive period over the coming days, spare a thought for six men from three discrete nations who are presently in orbit, 250 miles above the Earth, aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford of NASA and his Russian colleagues, Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeni Tarelkin, have been in space since late October and were joined on Friday by Canada's Chris Hadfield, Russia's Roman Romanenko, and US astronaut Tom Marshburn. They will spend a quiet Christmas together aboard the multi-national outpost…although 'quiet' by no means implies that they will not be breaking into their food stores and opening gifts on the day itself. In fact, this year marks the 25th anniversary in which at least two human beings have been off the planet on every Christmas. Yesterday's article explored the missions of the 20th century, but from Christmas 2000 onwards Americans and Russians and Japanese and Italians—and from this year, a Canadian, too—have unwrapped their yuletide presents in a seriously unearthly place.

In his pre-flight NASA interview, Kevin Ford spoke about his plans for Christmas. As a Capcom, he frequently worked in Mission Control over the holidays, talking with fellow astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the station, and he described the experience as "not too big a deal for me". For him, it was hard asking forgiveness from his family for not being with them over the holidays—"but they know how special it is, how long we've waited to do this kind of thing, and they'll forgive us this one time around"—and there will certainly be plenty of opportunity for all six Expedition 34 crewmen to speak privately to their loved ones on the day itself. As the man in command, Ford has "tried to plan ahead to have some things up there to make it seem like the holidays". Judging from the voluminous nature of his Thanksgiving food stash, last month, few can doubt his resolve.

It may be somewhat more difficult for crewmate Tom Marshburn, whose young daughter will be without her father, in the flesh, this Christmas. "We planned for it a long time ago," Marshburn told a NASA interviewer, ahead of his launch last Wednesday from Baikonur, "and so we're ready for it." He admitted that thinking about her on Christmas morning, waking up and opening presents, would be "tough", but that internet connectivity from the International Space Station will enable him to interact with his family and share some of their joy and the looks on their faces. "It'll be a little bit tough for me," Marshburn said, "as it would be for anybody, but I think the price is certainly well worth it, to be up there."

For Chris Hadfield, who becomes the first Canadian to celebrate Christmas in space, it will simply represent another family member in another exotic location. He has sons who live in China and Germany, a daughter in Ireland, and his wife shuttles between the United States and Canada. With this in mind, Christmas is typically the only time that the Hadfield family got together, so they celebrated before launch in Kazakhstan. The extremely cold winters and snowy conditions in the Central Asian country—and home of the Baikonur Cosmodrome—provided a good backdrop. "Makes a nice card," said Hadfield before launch, "Christmas in Kazakhstan." He also expects to share a video conference with his family on Christmas Day, but stressed that they understand that 2012 is "a very special year", neither normal or typical, but one which the Hadfields will "talk about for the rest of our lives".

For the three Russian cosmonauts aboard the station, of course, Christmas is a somewhat different affair. Under Russian Orthodoxy, which follows the older Julian Calendar, Christmas occurs 13 days later than the Gregorian Calendar and will fall on 7 January. Nonetheless, it has been a tradition on the multi-national outpost since the outset that different cultures and faiths and nationalities try to celebrate each other's festive periods and Romanenko, Novitsky, and Tarelkin intend to do just that. "We'll be dressing up, we'll be decorating the station, maybe we'll have some presents that will arrive," Romanenko said, "which will make us very happy and will support us during this special time." His previous six-month mission to the ISS, in May-December 2009, missed the Christmas period, but saw the birthdays of himself and crewmates Frank de Winne and Bob Thirsk. "Now," he said of his present voyage, "it's a little bit different. We're flying in the wintertime. We're skipping our holiday, our birthdays, but we'll be celebrating other holidays, including Christmas and the New Year."

The coming days will mark the 13th continuous Christmas to have been enjoyed aboard the station. The first crew to put up decorations were the Expedition 1 team—Commander Bill Shepherd of NASA and Russian crewmates Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko—who arrived in early November 2000 and were thus only eight weeks into their five-month mission. For them, Christmas was a busy time, since an unmanned Progress supply craft had been undocked some weeks earlier and inserted into a close 'parking orbit' to enable Russian flight controllers to correct a software glitch with its automatic rendezvous system. On 26 December, Gidzenko took manual control to guide the Progress in to a smooth docking at the rear port of the station's Zvezda service module. Despite the work, the three men managed to enjoy a quiet Christmas, opening presents, talking to their families, eating rehydrated turkey, and even receiving Christmas greetings from NASA Administrator Dan Goldin.

A year later, the station had grown significantly, with the addition of the United States' Destiny laboratory, the Quest airlock, and the Canadarm2 robotic manipulator. Christmas 2001 was observed by Expedition 4 crewmen Yuri Onufrienko, Carl Walz, and Dan Bursch with a day off and an opportunity to break into the pantry to sample turkey and other traditional holiday foods. The following Christmas came just five weeks before the Columbia tragedy, and the Expedition 6 team of Ken Bowersox, Nikolai Budarin, and Don Pettit also enjoyed a day with only minor duties. Whilst they were required to check the station's environmental control system and the status of several Destiny payloads, each crewman opened presents, "selected favourite dishes for their holiday dinner", and spent 15 minutes privately talking with family members. They also spoke to NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. Shortly afterwards, one of the worst years in the space agency's history unfolded, but the ISS remained occupied, thanks to the assured crew return capability offered by Russia's Soyuz. Christmas 2003 was a shadow of what it should have been—construction having ground to a halt for all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, Expedition 8's skeleton staff of Mike Foale and Aleksandr Kaleri displayed not one Christmas tree, but two: a small artificial one and another embroidered on a blanket.

Christmas 2004 was celebrated by Expedition 10 crewmen Leroy Chiao and Salizhan Sharipov, who actually received a scheduled visitor that evening, in the form of a Progress resupply craft. In addition to its normal quota of food, propellant, oxygen, water, and experiment hardware, the Progress carried holiday gifts for the crew. A year later, with the first post-Columbia Shuttle mission having flown, but the fleet grounded again, Expedition 12's Bill McArthur and Valeri Tokarev spent a quiet day dining on packaged Russian foodstuffs, including soup and bread, fish and meat dishes, vegetables, and pastries. Poignantly, Tokarev paid tribute over the space-to-ground link to fellow cosmonaut Gennadi Strekalov, who had died a year earlier on the previous Christmas Day.

By the time the festive season rolled around in 2006, construction of the station had been driven back into high gear and long-duration crews had returned to their original three-strong capacity. Aboard the ISS were Expedition 14 Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria, his Russian crewmate Mikhail Tyurin…and the first American woman to celebrate Christmas in orbit, Suni Williams. For them, the big day fitted in the middle of a busy week unpacking, recording, and stowing supplies brought by the recent STS-116 Shuttle visitors. In one of her Mission Logs, Williams noted that crew members were allocated a handful of off-days throughout the year and these were picked on the basis of operational constraints. "Remember we have our international partners here as well," she wrote, "so not all holidays are ones that are observed in the US. I voted for taking all the holidays off, but that didn't go over too well…"

A year later, in 2007, the 20th continuous Christmas celebrated by humans saw the International Space Station's first female skipper, Peggy Whitson, aboard the outpost, alongside Russia's Yuri Malenchenko and NASA astronaut Dan Tani. The season was tinged with some sadness, for Tani's mother, Rose, had been killed on 19 December when her car was struck by a freight train in Chicago, Ill. By Christmas 2008, the station had received its European Columbus and Japanese Kibo modules, and Expedition 18 crew members Mike Fincke, Yuri Lonchakov, and Sandy Magnus were aboard.

Only two days before Santa's arrival, Fincke and Lonchakov completed an EVA outside the Russian Segment, but their efforts were amply rewarded by Magnus, who prepared mesquite grilled albacore steaks, with a lemon and garlic paste sauce, together with Russian crab salad from the contents of her bonus food containers. She also made a point to request red, green, yellow, blue, and white icing to be among her foods to decorate some cinnamon, shortbread and butter cookies, which she distributed to her crewmates over the festive period. According to NASA, Magnus' efforts contributed to "the high-calorie traditions so common on Earth this time of year". A quick glance at the crew's Christmas dinner is more than adequate to whet the appetite: smoked turkey, cornbread dressing, and mashed potatoes, together with asparagus, shrimp cocktail, dried blueberries, various tropical fruits, wheat flatbreads, and brown rice.

A year later, the mid-winter festivities appeared to have died down and until the final few days before Christmas 2009 only two men—NASA's Jeff Williams and Russia's Max Surayev—occupied the outpost. All that changed on 22 December, when Soyuz TMA-17 docked and brought the final three members of the Expedition 22 increment: Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, US astronaut Timothy 'T.J.' Creamer, and Japanese spacefarer Soichi Noguchi. And they arrived in style. Floating from their craft into the station, the three men were attired in the costumes of Santa's helpers and elves and bore a Christmas tree—topped by a dangling decoration of Mr. Claus himself—on their shoulders and a large white sack full of presents. Kotov manhandled the tree, whilst Noguchi carried the sack, and Creamer, sporting genuine pointed ears and elven shoes, brought up the rear.

By this time, Christmases were turning in busy affairs at the International Space Station, which had reached the capability to house a full crew of six long-duration occupants. Noguchi's arrival made him the first Japanese to spend Christmas in space, and Italy also added its name to the tally in December 2010, when Paolo Nespoli launched aboard Soyuz TMA-20, alongside Russian cosmonaut Dmitri Kondratiev and NASA astronaut Catherine 'Cady' Coleman. Upon docking, they joined incumbent Expedition 26 crew members Scott Kelly, Aleksandr Kaleri—spending his third Christmas in orbit, following previous holiday stints aboard the ISS and Mir—and Oleg Skripochka.

"The holidays are a time where we treasure being with our family and our friends," said Coleman, in a pre-recorded Christmas message in the station's Kibo module, as she floated alongside Kelly and Nespoli, "and we think about what we have and how much more we have than others do." Nespoli added that from his vantage point, he saw just one planet and one world, with no borders, and his awareness of the enormity of mankind's responsibility was clear. On Christmas morning, their crewmates from the Russian Segment photographed them bailing out of their sleep stations to eagerly access their stockings and gifts. The most recent yuletide occupants of the ISS were last year's Expedition 30 crewmen—NASA astronauts Dan Burbank and Don Pettit, Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoli Ivanishin, and Oleg Kononenko, and Dutchman Andre Kuipers—who shared a Christmas meal and presents in one of the most spectacular settings imaginable.

"My collateral damage toll," wrote Pettit in an online NASA blog, "includes being on-orbit for two Thanksgivings, Christmas, New Year, birthdays, anniversaries, a science fair, school plays, recitals, and Valentine's Day." With Expedition 30, he added, his damage toll was steadily rising, although he acquiesced that "with our new internet capability on space station, I can at least send flowers!" Humanity had come a long way from the tiny gifts of cufflinks and man-in-the-Moon and figure-8 tie pins from the wives of Apollo 8 to their menfolk, way back in 1968, and Pettit offered the tongue-in-cheek remark in his blog that the real essentials for surviving in the new 'wilderness' of space "are not flint, steel, and powder…but your credit card number and network login".

Since the dawn of the Space Age, and including the six-strong Expedition 34 team, no fewer than 79 astronauts and cosmonauts have spent Christmas away from their loved ones, high above Earth. Among their number are Americans and Russians, Swiss and French, Germans and Japanese, Italians and Dutchmen—and, this week, a Canadian, too. Ten people, including NASA's Mike Foale, Scott Kelly, and Don Pettit, have spent two Christmases aloft, and a trio of intrepid Russians—Sergei Avdeyev, Sergei Krikalev, and Aleksandr Kaleri—have celebrated the festive season on three occasions. And when Kelly participates in the scheduled year-long ISS mission in 2015-16, he will earn a personal and national record as the first American to spend three Christmases away from Earth.

For the combined crew of Expedition 34, Christmas Day on Tuesday will be time to reflect, as Cady Coleman said two years ago, upon how much more 'we' have, materially, in comparison to others on our Home Planet. There will be time for them to privately speak to their families and share some of the holiday festivities. There will be time for them to open gifts and break into stockings and wear Santa hats, perhaps, and enjoy hearty—though often certainly thermostablised, rehydratable, or irradiated—Christmas fayre.

And with Kevin Ford in charge, the chances of a hearty and festive dinner for Expedition 34 are pretty much guaranteed.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Monday, December 24, 2012

Fwd: CHRISTMAS EVE EDITION: Human Spaceflight News - December 24, 2012

No comments:

Post a Comment

Space news