Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Hubble) News

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 13, 2012 7:14:13 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight (and Hubble) News - December 13, 2012 and JSC Today

Thursday, December 13, 2012

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll
2.            Gangnam Style Parody 'NASA Johnson Style' to be Screened in Teague
3.            Last Day to Donate Blood
4.            Gilruth Center Closures
5.            Don't Deck the Halls ... or Anyone Else
6.            Happy New Year! ... But Not Yet ...
7.            Holiday Shopping With Starport
8.            It's About to Get Real ... Real Long Duration, That is
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
" It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. "

-- Sally Kempton
________________________________________
1.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll
Voyager is powered by plutonium, not uranium. That was a little tricky. You most want to be Roseanne Roseannadanna from "Saturday Night Live." Never mind.
This week I'm wondering about how optimistic you are about NASA's future. Are you really pumped up about our future? Feeling a little blah about it? Question two is about Houston's "harsh" winters. I almost got frostbite this week when the temperature dropped below 60. What is your favorite part of Houston winters? Sledding? Skiing?
Eskimo your Alaska on over to get this week's poll.
Joel Walker x30541 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/

[top]
2.            Gangnam Style Parody 'NASA Johnson Style' to be Screened in Teague
NASA JSC co-ops have been in the process of making a parody of the YouTube phenomenon "Gangnam Style" by international pop sensation PSY. With much support from employees all across the center, the video is now complete!
JSC External Relations, Human Resources, and the co-ops of fall 2012 invite all team members to an exclusive screening. The team of co-ops who made the video will be introduced and share more information about the video's making and purpose.
This Friday, Dec. 14, come out to the Teague Auditorium at 2 p.m. to see the premiere.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

[top]
3.            Last Day to Donate Blood
Today is the last day this year for donations at JSC.
You can donate in the Teague Auditorium lobby or at the donor coach located next to the Building 11 Starport Café from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
You can also donate in the Gilruth Center Coronado Room from 7:30 a.m. to noon.
Give the "Gift of Life" this holiday season!
Teresa Gomez x39588 http://jscpeople.jsc.nasa.gov/blooddrv/blooddrv.htm

[top]
4.            Gilruth Center Closures
The Gilruth Center Strength and Cardio Center will be closed for renovations from Dec. 20 to Jan. 2 and will re-open on Jan. 3. There will be no access to cardio equipment, free weights or weight machines. Group fitness classes and Inner Space classes will take place as scheduled.
Please note the additional changes to the Gilruth Center schedule:
o             Dec. 22: Modified hours and group fitness schedule
o             Dec. 23: Facility closed
o             Dec. 24: Facility closed
o             Dec. 25: Facility closed
o             Dec. 26: Modified hours and group fitness schedule
o             Dec. 31: Modified hours and group fitness schedule
o             Jan. 1: Facility closed
o             Jan. 2: Modified hours and group fitness schedule
Check out our website for details and to subscribe to the Gilruth Center/Starport Fitness listserv to receive updated information.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

[top]
5.            Don't Deck the Halls ... or Anyone Else
The holidays are fast approaching. With that comes the stress of time management, family challenges, finances and spending. Fill your toolbox early with strategies and tips for having positive, memorable holidays. The JSC Employee Assistance Program will present "Don't Deck the Halls ... or Anyone Else" today, Dec. 13, at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium.
Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130

[top]
6.            Happy New Year! ... But Not Yet ...
An added stress for the holidays is thinking about what you are going to do better next year. New Year's resolutions come and go. Is there a resolution that keeps coming up year after year, yet it seems that you never fulfill it? Join Takis Bogdanos, MA, LPC-S, with the JSC Employee Assistance Program, to learn how to set realistic New Year's resolutions on Tuesday, Dec. 18, at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium.
Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Clinical Services Branch x36130

[top]
7.            Holiday Shopping With Starport
Looking for something different to give this holiday season? Starport holiday gift certificates make great stocking stuffers! Purchase sessions for massage therapy, personal training and memberships to the Inner Space Yoga and Pilates Studio as a gift for friends, family members or other loved ones. Anyone can redeem these gift certificates -- you don't have to be a Starport member or work at JSC. Purchase at the Gilruth Center information desk.
Plus, check out our creative holiday gift packages on sale in the Starport Gifts Shops and the Gilruth Center. With options starting at just $10 and many themes to choose from, you are sure to find something for everyone on your shopping list! Place your order now. Click here for more information.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

[top]
8.            It's About to Get Real ... Real Long Duration, That is
NASA is taking a reeeeally in-depth look at the implications of long-duration spaceflight with the announcement of a one-year mission for two crew members: Scott Kelly of NASA and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos.
Ensuring the health of crew members today is a critical component of long-duration spaceflight. To further the current knowledge base and address the inherent risks, NASA will take an inward look at long-term human physiological responses to spaceflight. Read more about this special mission launching in spring 2015 here.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

[top]

________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.

Note from Kyle: When the Hubble news was announced yesterday, I looked at the calendar and was reminded of the first Servicing Mission by Endeavour in December 1993. That STS-61 mission restored HST to the premiere science laboratory it was intended to be. Now, 19 years later, all of those instruments have long since been replaced by much more advanced ones. The teams that built Hubble and those who teamed up in Mission Control to make it a success can look up and continue to reap the benefits of what they did – even as time passes. Our legacy is not in a museum. Just look up every once in awhile…
-KjH

Human Spaceflight News
Thursday – December 13, 2012

Soyuz TMA-07M readied for integration into its shroud ahead of mating to booster. Launch is Wednesday morning.

HEADLINES AND LEADS

House panel urges creativity for NASA
Partnerships are seen as way to achieve missions

Ledyard King - Florida Today

Better international engagement on space missions. More partnerships between NASA and private aerospace firms. Improved consensus between Capitol Hill and the White House on the direction of the nation's space program. Those were among the ideas that legislators and space advocates floated Wednesday during a House committee hearing that focused on two reports released last week questioning NASA's focus and direction.

House Science Committee Examines NASA's Strategic Direction

Dan Leone – Space News

In a preview of the debate that could occur if the next Congress drafts a new NASA authorization bill as expected, the incoming chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee questioned whether NASA's stated goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid in 2025 is anything more than a detour on the way to Mars. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who come Jan. 3 will take over as chairman of the NASA oversight committee, was among several lawmakers participating in a Dec. 12 hearing here about a congressionally mandated National Research Council (NRC) report, "NASA's Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus," released Dec. 5. The report showed NASA's rank and file are not sold on a crewed mission to an asteroid, and that the agency generally has too much program for its $17.7 billion budget.

SpaceX Discovers Cause of Falcon 9 Engine Failure

Dan Leone - Space News

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) has discovered the root cause of a premature engine shutdown during the company's first paid cargo flight to the international space station in October, but the Hawthorne, Calif., rocket and spacecraft maker is not ready to make the results of its months-long investigation public, a company executive said. "We're doing one of the final out briefs on the most probable cause for the engine issue with [NASA international space station program manager Michael Suffredini] later this week," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Dec. 11 at a Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon here. "We're not going to release what we found but I think we've got a good most probable cause identified. The data supports that." SpaceX spokeswoman Katherine Nelson said Dec. 12 that Shotwell "was merely stating that she was not going to release any information at yesterday's Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon."

Life lessons in space

Richard Hollingham - BBC News

In 2015, Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will spend a year onboard the International Space Station. In the second part of his series on living in space, our space correspondent finds out what's in store for them. If you think Russia and the US have put the Cold War behind them, think again. Onboard the International Space Station (ISS), hundreds of miles above the Earth, you only need to answer the call of nature to find it is alive and well. "You have to have permission for the Russian guys to use this toilet and the US guys to use the Russian one," explains Kathryn Bolt, chief training officer for the ISS and my guide to the world's only full-sized model of the space station.

Dueling visions stall NASA
A US plan to send humans to explore an asteroid is losing momentum

Eric Hand - Nature

Once again, NASA's human space-flight programme is looking for a destination. It happened in the early 1970s, after US astronauts had left the Moon for the last time; then in the 1990s, after the collapse of a costly vision of sending astronauts to Mars; and again in 2010, when US President Barack Obama abandoned a plan to return humans to the Moon because he did not consider it ambitious enough. He suggested visiting a near-Earth asteroid instead, but a report released on 5 December by the National Academies says that this plan, too, has misfired. "There is no broad acceptance of the asteroid as the next principal destination for space flight, despite the fact that the president has indeed said so several times," says Albert Carnesale, chairman of the committee behind the report and a former chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles. For its part, NASA — whether through inertia or out of practicality — seems unwilling to shift the focus of its human space-flight efforts away from the Moon.

Space Foundation Weighs In On NASA's Future

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

One of the engineers on NASA's Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle is an accomplished Ph.D. astrophysicist named Catherine Boone. Now working at Ball Aerospace, she helped Lockheed Martin develop a machine-vision system that Orion may one day use to dock with other spacecraft en route to Mars. She is also a descendant of 18th century American pioneer Daniel Boone. There is something extremely fitting about one of old Daniel's offspring helping pave the way into the Solar System. Apparently, it's a very strong gene. Normally the kind of work Catherine Boone does is called space exploration. Certainly exploring is what Orion—and its NASA managers—are all about. In its original incarnation, Orion was called the crew exploration vehicle. But at a time when the very reason for NASA's existence as an organization is being called into question, perhaps pioneering is a better word for what it can do.

Canada Vows Swift Action on Space Agency Reboot

David Pugliese - Space News

The Canadian government is promising quick action on a new report that calls on it to reboot its space program and provide industry with a long-term space plan to show where the country is moving in that sector. Industry Minister Christian Paradis did not provide specific details on how Canada intends to proceed on the report's recommendations but he said there is an understanding about not only the challenges the country's space industry faces but, also the sector's importance to the economy and security of the nation. "This report is not going to sit on a shelf collecting dust," Paradis said of the study conducted by David Emerson, a former Conservative government cabinet minister.

Another giant step? Last man on moon calls for return

Garrett Tenney - FoxNews.com

If NASA wants to get to Mars, the fastest way to get there is by returning to the moon -- according to the last man to walk on the lunar surface. "The moon is going to be an extraordinary resource for future generations as they go deeper into space and as they begin to settle the moon and eventually Mars," said Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, the Apollo 17 lunar module pilot. Apollo 17, the final mission to send men to the moon, launched on Dec. 7, 1972, carrying Schmitt, command module pilot Ronald Evans and Commander Gene Cernan. Schmitt was the 12th and final man on the moon; Cernan was 11th and last to depart the planet's surface.

Space-Traveling Cirque Du Soleil Founder On Elon Musk:
He Did The First Step For Galactic Tourism

Hannah Elliott - Forbes

Tuesday night at Marlborough Gallery in midtown, Guy Laliberte–the built-like-a-wrestler founder of Cirque du Soleil–showed off a selection of large-scale photographs he took during a 12-day stint aboard the International Space Station. It was an ad hoc collection. When the 53-year-old Frenchman went aboard with a Nikon 3DX he thought he'd photograph what he saw just for fun. But he changed his mind halfway through, even though he had never before used a digital camera.

Virgin Galactic future at Spaceport uncertain

Jeri Clausing - Associated Press

The deal was sold to New Mexicans in classic Richard Branson fashion. If taxpayers would build the colorful British businessman a $209 million futuristic spaceport, he would make New Mexico the launching point for a space tourism business catering to the rich and famous. Now, with Spaceport America nearly complete but still mostly empty, a Virgin Galactic official says the company will reassess its agreement if lawmakers don't pass liability exemption laws for its suppliers, raising the possibility it could take its spacecraft elsewhere. And state officials acknowledge the company — which has yet to post a deposit for what is supposed to be a $1 million-a-year lease — could walk away from the quarter-billion-dollar project.

22 GOP Lawmakers Named to House Science Committee

Dan Leone - Space News

On the same day that the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on NASA's strategic direction, the committee's incoming chairman announced the names of the 21 Republicans who will help him oversee the U.S. space program and other science and technology matters when the 113th Congress convenes in January.

With SolarCity on IPO deck, Elon Musk still eyes same path for SpaceX

Michael del Castillo - Business Journal

Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal and Tesla, today reminded everyone that he has big plans for SpaceX. No, not sending payloads into orbit in his own spacecraft (though that's certainly still the plan). It's for taking the company on a different, very public journey. Musk wants shares of SpaceX traded in the public markets, he said today via Twitter."SpaceX will go public at some point, as I think it should ultimately be owned primarily by the public," Musk wrote in a tweet this afternoon.

HUBBLE – FROM 320 MILES TO INFINITY…

Distant galaxy regains title as oldest in universe

Alicia Chang - Associated Press

A galaxy once considered the oldest has reclaimed its title, scientists reported Wednesday. Poring through Hubble Space Telescope photos, the team recalculated the galaxy's age and determined it is actually 13.3 billion years old — not a mere 13.2 billion. The dim galaxy filled with blue stars was first noticed last year by a different group of researchers, who also used the workhorse telescope to make the previous age estimate. It reigned as the most ancient galaxy observed until last month when it was knocked off its perch by another distant galaxy.

Hubble telescope spies seven galaxies from baby years of universe

Irene Klotz - Reuters

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found seven galaxies that formed relatively shortly after the universe's birth some 13.7 billion years ago, scientists said on Wednesday, describing them "as baby pictures of the universe." One of the objects may be the oldest galaxy yet found, dating back to a time when the universe was just 380 million years old, a fraction of its current age.

Hubble peers into era of first galaxies
A first survey of the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang shows they started out small, slow and packed together tightly

Dan Vergano - USA Today

Hubble space telescope astronomers reported on Wednesday that the earliest galaxies formed slowly more than 13 billion years ago after the beginning of the universe. Galaxies are the islands of stars filling the universe such as our own Milky Way. In the first census of the oldest galaxies, the Hubble team reported on seven seen in a Hubble "Ultra Deep Field" image, including the likely oldest one yet spotted, dating to 380 million years after the Big Bang.

Hubble plumbs the universe, yields images of early galaxies

Marc-Antoine Baudoux – Agence France Presse

The Hubble Space Telescope is giving scientists a look at the oldest galaxies ever seen, dating back some 13.3 billion years -- providing a glimpse into how the cosmos must have looked right after the Big Bang. NASA scientists announced Wednesday that Hubble has uncovered seven never-before-seen primitive galaxies dating back to when the universe was less than four percent of its current age.

Hubble spots distant galaxies near edge of universe's cosmic dawn

Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times

Squinting deep into the universe, the Hubble Space Telescope has picked out what may be the most distant galaxy yet found, observed as it looked about 380 million years after the big bang. This potential record-breaker is one of seven newly discovered galaxies formed more than 13 billion years ago, near the cosmic dawn, the era when the first big galaxies formed. "These galaxies are so young that they existed before many of the atoms in our bodies existed," said James Bullock, a UC Irvine physics and astronomy professor who was not involved in the study.

Hubble gazes at distant history
Galaxies from around time of 'Bang' seen

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope this year peered back further in time than ever before, uncovering seven embryonic galaxies that formed not long after the theoretical "Big Bang" created the universe, scientists said Wednesday. Its instruments trained for six weeks on a relatively uninteresting patch of sky, Hubble spotted the galaxies swirling at a time 13.3 billion years ago, just 450 million years after the dawn of the cosmos. And astrophysicists say the images give the world an unprecedented look at the universe in the early stages of its formation.

Ancient Galaxy May Be Most Distant Ever Seen

Mike Wall - Space.com

Astronomers have spotted seven galaxies that existed just a few hundred million years after the universe's birth, including one that may be the oldest found to date. The potential record-holding galaxy, known as UDFj-39546284, likely existed when the universe was just 380 million years old, researchers said, and may be the farthest galaxy ever seen. The other six distant galaxies all formed within 600 million years of the Big Bang, which created our universe 13.7 billion years ago.
__________

COMPLETE STORIES

House panel urges creativity for NASA
Partnerships are seen as way to achieve missions

Ledyard King - Florida Today

Better international engagement on space missions. More partnerships between NASA and private aerospace firms. Improved consensus between Capitol Hill and the White House on the direction of the nation's space program.

Those were among the ideas that legislators and space advocates floated Wednesday during a House committee hearing that focused on two reports released last week questioning NASA's focus and direction.

Most agreed that the space agency, like many other federal programs facing fiscal belt-tightening, must narrow its portfolio or find new ways to pay for the expensive missions.

"We've got to be creative and find new approaches, otherwise it's just going to fall apart," Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said at the hearing before the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders are negotiating over how to avoid broad spending cuts and tax hikes set to take effect Jan. 1. A study released Wednesday by the Aerospace Industries Association projects that, if no deal is reached, the resulting 8.2 percent cut to NASA's budget would mean the loss of more than 20,000 industry jobs, including 1,366 in Florida, in 2013.

The two reports released last week concluded that NASA suffers from lack of direction. One was based on an industry-backed study. The other was a National Research Council report requested by Congress.

A steady shift in NASA priorities spelled out by political leaders means long-term projects are difficult and expensive to manage, said Ronald Sega, vice chair of the commission that conducted the National Research Council study.

Bob Walker, a Pennsylvania Republican who once chaired the House science panel, suggested Washington find innovative ways, such as corporate sponsorships, to pay for missions taxpayers may find expendable.

"When the Go Daddy rover is traversing Martian terrain, we will be more solidly on our way to fulfilling our destiny to the stars," he told the committee, referring to the domain registration and web hosting giant.

House Science Committee Examines NASA's Strategic Direction

Dan Leone – Space News

In a preview of the debate that could occur if the next Congress drafts a new NASA authorization bill as expected, the incoming chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee questioned whether NASA's stated goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid in 2025 is anything more than a detour on the way to Mars.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who come Jan. 3 will take over as chairman of the NASA oversight committee, was among several lawmakers participating in a Dec. 12 hearing here about a congressionally mandated National Research Council (NRC) report, "NASA's Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus," released Dec. 5. The report showed NASA's rank and file are not sold on a crewed mission to an asteroid, and that the agency generally has too much program for its $17.7 billion budget.

Smith asked a former astronaut who helped produce the report whether NASA's plan to send crews to a yet-unspecified asteroid by 2025 should be overhauled.

"Your report showed that there is not much support in the scientific and space communities for a mission to a near-Earth asteroid in 2025," Smith said to Ronald Sega, a former space shuttle astronaut and U.S. Air Force undersecretary who served as vice chairman of the NRC's Committee on NASA's Strategic Direction. "Do you think we should reconsider that mission to a near-Earth asteroid?"

"The committee didn't address that directly, but there were many questions that concerned that as the path forward," Sega said of NASA's plan to use a crewed asteroid mission in 2025 as a steppingstone to human exploration of Mars in the 2030s. "In addition to not being widely accepted, there were some shortcomings [about a crewed asteroid mission] noted by people who appeared before the committee."

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, who on Dec. 5 was re-elected as the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, was also on the hunt for policy recommendations during the hearing.

"We're not appropriators on this committee, and we're mindful of the fact that we have very little money," Johnson said. "But I still think that with the help of experts, we can at least lay out what we consider to be the vision for our country's research and innovation through space research, and then allow the administration or the appropriators to determine what we can or cannot do."

The latest NASA authorization bill, enacted in 2010, expires at the end of 2013. The bill called for NASA to build a heavy-lift rocket and Orion crew vehicle capable of taking astronauts beyond Earth orbit. The bill also recommended an overall funding level for NASA and its various programs, but provided no actual funds. Authorization bills commonly prescribe more funding than congressional appropriators later determine is available.

"The upcoming reauthorization process … it's not so far away," said Marion Blakey, president and chief executive of the Aerospace Industries Association.

It is not yet clear what the White House thinks of the NRC's latest report, even though John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, was briefed on the NRC's findings the week of Dec. 3.

Sega told the House Science Committee that the report "was well received" by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden during a confidential briefing, but that Holdren and his staff "were mostly in the listening mode."

"We await their reaction," Sega said.

U.S. President Barack Obama proposed the 2025 asteroid mission in April 2010 during a speech at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Going to an asteroid, he argued, would be better preparation for manned Mars missions than going back to the Moon, a primary NASA objective under Obama's predecessor.

SpaceX Discovers Cause of Falcon 9 Engine Failure

Dan Leone - Space News

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) has discovered the root cause of a premature engine shutdown during the company's first paid cargo flight to the international space station in October, but the Hawthorne, Calif., rocket and spacecraft maker is not ready to make the results of its months-long investigation public, a company executive said.

"We're doing one of the final out briefs on the most probable cause for the engine issue with [NASA international space station program manager Michael Suffredini] later this week," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Dec. 11 at a Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon here. "We're not going to release what we found but I think we've got a good most probable cause identified. The data supports that."

SpaceX spokeswoman Katherine Nelson said Dec. 12 that Shotwell "was merely stating that she was not going to release any information at yesterday's Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon."

"SpaceX has conducted the investigation with the full cooperation of NASA, and results will be made public only after our customers have been fully briefed and everyone agrees with the findings," Nelson said.

One of the nine first-stage engines on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket shut down prematurely 79 seconds after liftoff Oct. 7 at the start of an otherwise successful space station cargo run. The only publicly released details about the engine failure so far come from a statement SpaceX put out the day after the launch, which boosted the company's Dragon cargo capsule toward the station.

"We know the engine did not explode because we continued to receive data from it," SpaceX said in an Oct. 8 press release. "Our review indicates that the fairing that protects the engine from aerodynamic loads ruptured due to the engine pressure release, and that none of Falcon 9's other eight engines were impacted by this event."

Josh Byerly, a NASA spokesman at the Johnson Space Center in Houston where the space station program office is located, had no immediate comment Dec. 11 about SpaceX's investigation.

NASA is SpaceX's single largest customer by revenue, but the company is adding more U.S. government business to a manifest that, on a per-launch basis, is primarily commercial, Shotwell said.

Shotwell said Dec. 11 that while about 60 percent of the launches in SpaceX's $4 billion backlog are commercial, a full 40 percent are now U.S. government launches. Commercial launches accounted for about 70 percent of the company's manifest earlier this year, she said.

The shift is due to SpaceX winning business from the U.S. military, which in late November decided it would allow several firms to compete with incumbent launch services provider United Launch Alliance (ULA), Denver, for as many as 14 of the 50 launches the Defense Department plans to buy over the next five years. ULA is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

On the commercial side of its business, Shotwell said SpaceX will debut an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket, which features the new new Merlin 1-D engine, sometime in 2013. In that launch, which will boost the Canadian Space Agency's Cascade Smallsat and Ionospheric Polar Explorer satellite to orbit, SpaceX will also debut a 5.2-meter payload fairing. Falcon 9 needs the larger fairing to accommodate the big communications satellites SpaceX is under contract to launch for commercial fleet operators Asiasat and SES, among others.

SpaceX has at least seven launches on the manifest for 2013, including the debut of the Falcon Heavy from the company's new West Coast launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

The current Falcon 9 features a 3.6-meter fairing uses nine Merlin 1-C liquid oxygen and kerosene-fueled engines, which are less powerful than the Merlin 1-D's SpaceX has been testing at its McGregor, Texas, rocket facility. The first NASA mission in which a Falcon 9 with Merlin 1-D engines will be used is a space station cargo run now scheduled for July, according to an internal NASA manifest.

Before that mission, which would be SpaceX's third for NASA under a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract awarded in 2008, the company plans to launch three commercial payloads with the upgraded Falcon 9. However, Shotwell said, there is no contractual requirement for SpaceX to test the upgraded Falcon 9 before using it to resupply the space station.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has made no firm decision on a dedicated commercial launch site, Shotwell said. The company is considering building in Texas, Florida and even Puerto Rico, although in Puerto Rico "there are some political difficulties" to consider, Shotwell told SpaceNews.

Life lessons in space

Richard Hollingham - BBC News

In 2015, Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will spend a year onboard the International Space Station. In the second part of his series on living in space, our space correspondent finds out what's in store for them.

If you think Russia and the US have put the Cold War behind them, think again. Onboard the International Space Station (ISS), hundreds of miles above the Earth, you only need to answer the call of nature to find it is alive and well.

"You have to have permission for the Russian guys to use this toilet and the US guys to use the Russian one," explains Kathryn Bolt, chief training officer for the ISS and my guide to the world's only full-sized model of the space station.

Housed at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre, the ISS mock-up is around the size of a football pitch. This impressive complex of tubular modules is used to familiarise astronauts with the layout of the station, its operation and what to do when something goes wrong. The sections are fitted out with the same equipment the six crewmembers use in space, from the computers and exercise equipment to the cooking facilities and, of course, the toilets.

The two identical ones on the ISS consist of a combination of a nozzle, tubes and vacuum pumps. When one breaks down, as happened in 2009, it can lead to a major diplomatic incident.

It is just one of the quirks of sharing a flat 350km (220 miles) above the Earth that American Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko will face when they begin a year-long stint onboard the craft in 2015. The pair are some of the world's most experienced space farers and their marathon mission is designed to help us understand the effects of long duration space flight – essential before any future expedition to Mars.

But just spending an hour inside the ISS mock-up in Houston gives me a sense of how big a challenge communal living in space really is. Anyone who's ever shared a house with friends will know it's not long before petty squabbles break out over who's left the washing up or stolen your milk. On Earth, you can step outside until things cool down. On the ISS, the options to "get away from it all" are limited.

Vibration station

Clamouring inside through one of the hatches, it is immediately apparent how cluttered the station is. The walls are lined with storage racks, equipment and instrument panels. Laptops jut out from the sides and cables snake through the narrow passageways between modules.

Moving through the sections, it is clear that interior decor wasn't a major priority for the ISS designers. The walls of the US, European and Japanese sections are predominantly white with occasional splashes of beige. The Russian sections are lined with what appear to be brown carpet tiles. "It's the Russian style," says Bolt, diplomatically.

We peer into the crew's bedrooms, which amount to little more than a narrow padded wardrobe. The bed – a sleeping bag – is attached to the wall and there's just about room for a lamp and laptop. When you shut the doors, it's like being stuck in an aircraft restroom.

"This is their private quarters," explains Bolt. "If they get claustrophobic they can always open the doors."

For an astronaut living on the ISS, these tiny padded cupboards they get to call their own must be the most valuable area on board. I imagine them crawling in and closing the door behind them when their fellow crew members get too much.

Personal relationships are not the only thing that crew members need to worry during their stay. Personal hygiene is also a concern and something the trainers do their best to address. "They have to wear the same clothes for a week and reuse the same gym clothes," says Bolt. Although they do get to change their underwear every 3-4 days. There's no washing machine and neither is there a shower – astronauts have to wash themselves with soapy sponges. Powerful air scrubbers are designed to refresh the air and prevent the build-up of microbes – a problem that plagued the Mir space station.

The crew will also be in trouble if they don't keep up their daily exercise regime. Otherwise muscles waste away and they will be in no fit state to return to Earth. "This is the machine that saves their muscles," says Bolt as she shows me a fearsome looking contraption: the Exercise Resistive Device. "The crew loves it, they can work out their legs, arms; they can do everything with this machine."

This arrangement of weights and pulleys is positioned above the cupola, the station's observation dome, making it the best view of any gym in the world: the view above the world. "They can open the shutters," says Bolt, "and as they're exercising they can look out of the windows to the Earth below."

But moving a mass around in microgravity can bring problems – even causing the entire ISS to move. "We've had a few astronauts getting too much of a rhythm on their weights and suddenly there's a vibration across the whole station," says Bolt, who also works in mission control. "There're sensors everywhere and we monitor that on the ground and we're like 'what's going on!' That's something we have to watch for."

The sensors are there to spot any threats or potential problems with the station. After all, if there is a problem, the crew is on its own to cope with it. As a result, a large part of Bolt's job is to simulate emergencies in the training facility – including dealing with fire or collision with space debris. From a console outside, Bolt can activate alarms, turn off the lights or even fill the modules with smoke. "Every emergency training response has the crew come to the Russian segment first, this is the gathering point" she explains. "This is where they have communications, they have computers and they have the Soyuz spacecraft."

These spacecraft are the one item that will always be shared, no matter what. The two Soyuz spacecraft are the station's lifeboats and the way home if something goes catastrophically wrong.

The obvious problem with this arrangement is if there's a fire or leak in the Russian section. "Everything is here to get them home so they are trained to fight the fire first," says Bolt. "They have to grab the Russian fire extinguishers and put the fire out."

If they don't, there's no way back.

Dueling visions stall NASA
A US plan to send humans to explore an asteroid is losing momentum

Eric Hand - Nature

Once again, NASA's human space-flight programme is looking for a destination. It happened in the early 1970s, after US astronauts had left the Moon for the last time; then in the 1990s, after the collapse of a costly vision of sending astronauts to Mars; and again in 2010, when US President Barack Obama abandoned a plan to return humans to the Moon because he did not consider it ambitious enough. He suggested visiting a near-Earth asteroid instead, but a report released on 5 December by the National Academies says that this plan, too, has misfired.

"There is no broad acceptance of the asteroid as the next principal destination for space flight, despite the fact that the president has indeed said so several times," says Albert Carnesale, chairman of the committee behind the report and a former chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles. For its part, NASA — whether through inertia or out of practicality — seems unwilling to shift the focus of its human space-flight efforts away from the Moon.

Part of the tug of war over destinations is political. The administration's choice of an asteroid is a volte-face from the 'Moon-first' doctrine espoused during the presidency of George W. Bush. By many accounts, Obama had not garnered much support for the new policy before springing it on NASA and Congress nearly three years ago. NASA's administrator, Charles Bolden, has been left to negotiate the rocky ground between a suspicious Congress and an administration that has largely neglected the space agency. Some say that Bolden — who was not the administration's first choice when he was appointed in 2009 — may face replacement as Obama heads into his second term. "It's not a happy situation," says a senior astrophysicist. "Names are being discussed."

Politics aside, the asteroid proposal remains short on details and long on technical challenges, including the problem of which asteroid to visit. Few asteroids would be close enough in the mid-2020s for a crew to reach them within a year-long round trip, the longest that many experts think practical, and NASA has not yet made a serious effort to prioritize possible targets. If the administration is serious about a rendezvous with an asteroid, Carnesale says, then "which asteroid do you have in mind, and when?".

Even if one is selected, some scientists are worried about the hazards of approaching an object that may be no more than a loosely bound pile of rubble — that could also be spinning dangerously fast. And how would astronauts anchor themselves to the potentially friable surface without kicking up dust? asks Stephen Mackwell, director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. "We have problems enough at the Moon with dust."

Then there is the problem of just getting there. NASA is increasingly concerned about the radiation exposure and bone loss that astronauts might face during a long voyage outside Earth's protective magnetosphere. "You get a bad solar storm and you're toast," says Mackwell.

Meanwhile, Carnesale notes that private companies and other nations are mobilizing to visit the Moon. And NASA itself has not written off the Moon either. On 28 November, William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA's human-exploration division, presented plans to test the agency's next generation of heavy-lift rockets with trips to the vicinity of the Moon in 2017 and 2021. Although those missions could be seen as stepping stones to a later asteroid mission, many lunar scientists view the region as a destination in its own right.

But Mark Sykes, president of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and chair of NASA's Small Bodies Assessment Group, remains a big fan of asteroids. He notes that human explorers could search for resources such as water. Scientists could seek to understand the subtle pressure of light that causes asteroids to change their spin, and could retrieve samples for dating and chemical analysis that would offer a clearer picture of Solar System material than do meteorites, which, although they are pieces of asteroids, are altered during their fall through Earth's atmosphere.

But all this could be done more cheaply with a robotic mission, says Sykes. Without a sustained drive towards something bigger — such as a human presence on Mars — even Sykes isn't terribly excited. "You go to an asteroid, then what?" he says. "If it's all performance art, that's not much of a mission."

Space Foundation Weighs In On NASA's Future

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

One of the engineers on NASA's Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle is an accomplished Ph.D. astrophysicist named Catherine Boone. Now working at Ball Aerospace, she helped Lockheed Martin develop a machine-vision system that Orion may one day use to dock with other spacecraft en route to Mars. She is also a descendant of 18th century American pioneer Daniel Boone. There is something extremely fitting about one of old Daniel's offspring helping pave the way into the Solar System. Apparently, it's a very strong gene.

Normally the kind of work Catherine Boone does is called space exploration. Certainly exploring is what Orion—and its NASA managers—are all about. In its original incarnation, Orion was called the crew exploration vehicle. But at a time when the very reason for NASA's existence as an organization is being called into question, perhaps pioneering is a better word for what it can do.

That's certainly the view of the Space Foundation, which took advantage of the election year just drawing to a close to take a long, hard look at NASA's role more than five decades after it was cobbled together to race the Soviets in a relatively harmless proxy for a hot war. The so-called space race seems quaint today, with astronauts and cosmonauts working together on the International Space Station.

Of course, NASA is still around, trying to support the ISS it built now that its space shuttles are museum pieces. But its direction is getting attention on Capitol Hill—site of a House hearing on the subject this week—and in the august halls of the National Academies of Science, which last week released a report on "NASA's Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus." That report assessed whether NASA's 2011 strategic plan "remains viable."

For G. Ryan Faith, principal author of the foundation study, the answer is clearly "no." Faith notes that the 2011 plan does not even mention "space" in its vision and mission statements. It is time, the foundation says, to find a job for NASA and stick to it. And the job for a "healthy national civil space enterprise," says the report, is pioneering.

"The Space Foundation defines 'pioneering' as: 1. being among those who first enter a region to open it for use and development by others; and 2. being one of a group that builds and prepares infrastructure precursors, in advance of others," the report states right up front.

The foundation argues that NASA needs to drop tasks and infrastructure that do not support a "pioneering doctrine" of providing access to new regions, exploring them, beginning to utilize them and turning them over to another government or private organization for more routine operations. Faith and his colleagues have plenty of suggestions for how to go about that, starting with a rewrite of the Space Act that created NASA, which sets as the agency's first priority "expansion of the human sphere of influence throughout the Solar System."

Drawing on military precedent such as the U.S. Navy's nuclear propulsion organization and the National Defense Sealift Fund, the Colorado Springs-based foundation's report urges a fixed five-year term, with an option to renew, for the NASA administrator and a revolving fund to pay for the program he or she develops. The administrator would get to pick a deputy—thus avoiding the petty executive-branch sniping that continues to plague Administrator Charles Bolden—but remaining in the office would depend on staying within budgets outlined in 10- and 30-year plans.

Faith interviewed more than 100 people in preparing his report (including this writer), and concluded that "there is something deep at NASA's core that needs to be fixed."

"Whatever afflicts the space program is deeply entrenched and will not be easily changed by issuing a few recommendations without significant follow-through from NASA, Congress and the administration," the report states, noting that then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s was able to double the budgets for the National Institutes of Health to more than $30 billion a year in fiscal 2010 money.

In constant dollars, that is comparable to the level of funding NASA enjoyed during the height of the space race, and the report's authors found "a similar increase in NASA's budget is both reasonable and achievable." The analysis, arguments and recommendations are worth reading in full at www.spacefoundation.org/research/pioneering

"It's important to remember that NASA is still an extraordinary organization," says Elliot Pulham, the foundation's CEO. "In contrast to other reports on the agency, this one wasn't prompted by a crisis. It was really prompted from the point of view that this is an agency with tremendous capabilities, and a tremendous cadre of supporters who want it to do well. It's a great agency that really needs more focus."

Canada Vows Swift Action on Space Agency Reboot

David Pugliese - Space News

The Canadian government is promising quick action on a new report that calls on it to reboot its space program and provide industry with a long-term space plan to show where the country is moving in that sector.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis did not provide specific details on how Canada intends to proceed on the report's recommendations but he said there is an understanding about not only the challenges the country's space industry faces but, also the sector's importance to the economy and security of the nation.

"This report is not going to sit on a shelf collecting dust," Paradis said of the study conducted by David Emerson, a former Conservative government cabinet minister.

Emerson's report, a strategic review of the country's aerospace and space sector, was released Nov. 29. It calls on the government to recognize the importance of space to national security and economic prosperity and recommends the Industry Minister produce annual, 5-year and 10-year plans for the Canadian space program. Those plans would be brought to a cabinet committee for discussion and approval each spring.

Emerson also called for better-defined roles for the Canadian Space Agency, noting it should not be involved in policy-making or directly involved in designing space assets purchased by government. Instead it would act as a technical adviser for the federal government on procurement of major space assets. CSA would also continue to run the Canadian astronaut program, Emerson recommended in the 49-page report titled "Reaching Higher: Canada's Interests And Future In Space." The Canadian government commissioned the report.

Emerson also recommended that major Canadian space projects be funded from multiple sources, both within and outside the federal government and that increased international cooperation be pursued as a way of sharing costs.

Emerson had a warning for his former government colleagues: "The Canadian space program has foundered," he said. "This cannot continue."

Canadian space industry officials have long complained the country has been without a long-term space plan since 1994. The Conservative government had planned to produce one in 2008 but despite months of work by Canadian Space Agency President Steve MacLean nothing was ever made public.

Various Canadian space industry firms welcomed the Emerson report, noting that the recommendations will help provide a way forward for action by the Canadian government.

"There is a clear recognition of the strategic role of space and aerospace to the economic well-being of Canada and this report is a critical first step towards revitalizing this sector," Dave Caddey, MDA Corp.'s executive vice president, said in a statement. It was one of several similar statements issued by industry.

MacLean called Emerson's report "astute," adding that it will be key in driving home the strategic importance of space to decision-makers in the federal government.

"It's a first step," he told SpaceNews. "What happens now is that industry and all the players will get together and develop an action plan that the minister will take a look at and decide what he wants to do.

"MacLean said he expects action on the report to happen relatively quickly," said Kevin Shortt, the former president of the Canadian Space Society. Shortt said the recommendations from Emerson's report reflect what representatives from the country's space community have been saying for years.

But Shortt also said the jury is still out on whether the government will take action. "The optimist in me would like to say this is the report that finally sparks some reaction on the government's part but at the same time I look at the history," he explained. "What's different with this report; what about it is going to spark the government into action?"

He noted that the Canadian-government sponsored Chapman Report, written in 1967, also contained similar acknowledgements of the importance of the country's space sector but much of the advice from that major study was not followed by government.

Emerson's report comes amid concerns from industry representatives that Canada is facing a brain drain of some of its top space industry talent because of a lack of key government projects for the future.

Both MDA and Com Dev, the country's two largest space industry firms, have laid off staff because of the lack of work from the Canadian Space Agency and are warning that workers will leave the country if more government work isn't forthcoming.

Mike Pley, chief executive officer of Com Dev of Cambridge, Ont., said the only major project on the books for the space agency is the Radarsat Constellation Mission or RCM. "If there are no programs of significance in the pipeline outside of RCM you're going to see a loss of talent," Pley explained. "I'm not sure if it's going to be easily reconstructed."

Com Dev has laid off 31 employees, citing the lack of forecasted work and new projects from the Canadian Space Agency. Those laid off were from the company's division that worked on space agency payloads and scientific instruments. Pley says the decision about whether more layoffs will follow will depend on whether Com Dev receives news business, mainly from RCM.

Pley expects many of the workers who were laid off will be picked up by other firms, likely from outside Canada.

MDA has laid off more than 100 employees, mainly from its robotics division. MDA President Daniel Friedmann has warned there could be more restructuring depending on what happens with RCM. RCM was to have seen the construction of a number of radar-imaging satellites to conduct maritime and Arctic surveillance but MDA, the prime contractor on the project, has raised doubts about whether there is enough government funding to proceed.

A Canadian Space Agency official said the agency is currently in negotiations with MDA on RCM and cannot comment. But Canadian government representatives have stated they are committed to the project.

Space industry consultant Mike Kirby, who has worked for a number of organizations including the Canadian Space Agency, said that without long-term planning that identifies projects for the future, talented employees question why they should work in Canada or in the industry itself. "There is definitely a concern people are leaving," he said. "I think there is a lot of insecurity in the industry."

Another giant step? Last man on moon calls for return

Garrett Tenney - FoxNews.com

If NASA wants to get to Mars, the fastest way to get there is by returning to the moon -- according to the last man to walk on the lunar surface.

"The moon is going to be an extraordinary resource for future generations as they go deeper into space and as they begin to settle the moon and eventually Mars," said Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, the Apollo 17 lunar module pilot.

Apollo 17, the final mission to send men to the moon, launched on Dec. 7, 1972, carrying Schmitt, command module pilot Ronald Evans and Commander Gene Cernan. Schmitt was the 12th and final man on the moon; Cernan was 11th and last to depart the planet's surface.

Schmitt visited the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL Tuesday evening to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 17 moon landing, Dec. 11, 1972.

'The moon's resources include a light isotope of helium that is an ideal fuel for fusion power reactors here on Earth.'- Apollo 17 lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt

Speaking to FoxNews.com, Schmitt said he believes the moon holds many of the answers we need to safely travel to other planets such as Mars.

"There are many aspects of the Mars mission that need the moon and the Earth's upper atmosphere as places to train, and to simulate and test the equipment that's going to be needed on Mars," he said.

The former astronaut -- a geologist and now an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin -- believes the moon could also help lead to the development of a fusion rocket capable of accelerating and decelerating in space on a continuous basis. Such a vehicle would be ideal for deep space journeys.

"The moon's resources include a light isotope of helium that is an ideal fuel for fusion power reactors here on Earth, as well as for interplanetary spacecraft," Schmitt said.

But even with rockets capable of reaching the Martian planet, research is needed before man can actually land on its surface.

"Right now all we know is that the Martian atmosphere is just enough to cause a lot of problems and not enough to be of much help. Those kind of issues have to be addressed and learned," he told FoxNews.com.

Apart from space travel, Schmitt believes the moon can also help us understand the origins of our own planet. But for any of this to be possible, a younger generation needs to be educated, prepared and inspired to carry out the future of space exploration.

"Young people provide the patriotism, the imagination, the stamina and the courage that you just have to have when you undertake these kinds of efforts," he said.

"The education system in this country is fundamentally broken, and until we focus on that it's not just space that's going to suffer," Schmitt told FoxNews.com. "It's almost every national endeavor that you can imagine is going to suffer."

Much of the responsibility for inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers lies with politicians in Washington, Schmitt believes. And the failure of the space program's continual expansion since his trip to the moon 40 years ago also lies with those leaders.

"The main thing that's missing right now is leadership in Washington that will activate the interest of the national media and therefore the interest of the American people and the taxpayer, because eventually for these kinds of...space initiatives the American taxpayer has to be part of the picture…unless they understand and feel that the national political leadership is on the right track, well that's very difficult to see these types of programs go forward."

Space-Traveling Cirque Du Soleil Founder On Elon Musk:
He Did The First Step For Galactic Tourism

Hannah Elliott - Forbes

Tuesday night at Marlborough Gallery in midtown, Guy Laliberte–the built-like-a-wrestler founder of Cirque du Soleil–showed off a selection of large-scale photographs he took during a 12-day stint aboard the International Space Station.

It was an ad hoc collection. When the 53-year-old Frenchman went aboard with a Nikon 3DX he thought he'd photograph what he saw just for fun. But he changed his mind halfway through, even though he had never before used a digital camera.

"I don't pretend I'm a great photographer–I'm just a little kid who likes to take pictures," he told me. He had used 35mm film for years and he found it difficult to get the hang of switching lenses while weightless.

"I got into this state of mind where, you know, when you're in space you're a little high, in many senses. A spacial high. You're overwhelmed by what you're experimenting. And coming from a creative world, you cannot be insensitive to what you're seeing."

Stunning among the lot are shots of the Afghan landscape from 75 miles up, and concisely modern images of the Gulf of Mexico and Kazakhstan (above). Laliberte says many of his images came from his excitement at seeing "organic" things like elephants or ice cream cones in the topography below; he used GPS data to pinpoint exactly what he photographed.

The trip aloft made him even more hopeful about the future of space travel–he sees it as the leading edge of space travel for civilians. But Elon Musk with SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic may be slightly ahead of the game when it comes to a booming space tourism industry, he said.

"They actually did the real first step of popularizing access to space," he says. "It's a first step. But I think there's a limit in terms of hours [required for civilians to travel]. I spent five-and-half months training for this."

Most of the fun for him, he said, was preparing for the ride. It's also a key reason he says we've got a long way to go before we'll get the masses into space. The physical toll is considerable.

"As soon as you hit space you start mutation," he says. "That's actually one of the challenges of space flight. The human body is not fit for it."

Suffice it to say, Laliberte hasn't exactly maintained that optimum level of fitness ("No way!" he laughs). But would he go up again?

"Anytime."

Pricing for the work–most prints were done in runs of 35–starts at around $4,000. Assouline has also published GAIA, a large book of of unseen photographs from the trip. Proceeds go to ONE DROP, Laliberte's charity.

Virgin Galactic future at Spaceport uncertain

Jeri Clausing - Associated Press

The deal was sold to New Mexicans in classic Richard Branson fashion. If taxpayers would build the colorful British businessman a $209 million futuristic spaceport, he would make New Mexico the launching point for a space tourism business catering to the rich and famous.

Now, with Spaceport America nearly complete but still mostly empty, a Virgin Galactic official says the company will reassess its agreement if lawmakers don't pass liability exemption laws for its suppliers, raising the possibility it could take its spacecraft elsewhere.

And state officials acknowledge the company — which has yet to post a deposit for what is supposed to be a $1 million-a-year lease — could walk away from the quarter-billion-dollar project.

"They really could, if they are not committed. I would hope that they are and I think that they are," Spaceport America Executive Director Christine Anderson said.

Asked if she thought the state failed to properly protect itself in the deal, she said, the agreement negotiated under former Gov. Bill Richardson and approved by lawmakers in 2005 was for the state to build the spaceport and Virgin Galactic to develop the spacecraft.

"It's easy to second guess what was in people's minds," she said. "I'm sure everybody was excited to have Virgin Galactic as an anchor tenant."

Paul Gessing, president of the conservative Rio Grande Foundation, said the lack of protections for the state was not surprising, "given the Richardson administration's record of throwing money at 'development' of these big vision projects" like the spaceport and a $400 million commuter train.

Richardson's spokeswoman did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Other states, including Texas and Florida, are also developing spaceports and aggressively courting commercial space businesses with incentives. Most of them are revamping old airports or other facilities. New Mexico's is unique because it is the first to be developed from scratch.

With an elegant and futuristic design, the spaceport is intended to become an attraction unto itself.

Building the spaceport with taxpayer money could be likened to governments spending taxpayer dollars on stadiums or arenas for sports teams, Gessing said, noting that building a stadium "is not completely speculative with an industry in mind that may never materialize."

"What is truly unique about this project is that it was completely, 100 percent speculative," he said.

Tourism and spaceport officials have estimated as many as 200,000 people a year will visit the first-of-its kind center. And officials promised it would spur economic development and bring high-paying jobs to the mostly rural state.

But other space companies have passed New Mexico over and there is growing skepticism about whether Virgin, which has pushed its estimated date for starting flights from 2011 to 2014, will ever move into the spaceport.

A provision in the development agreement prohibiting it from operating its aircraft at competing spaceports without permission expires at the end of the month, and Virgin has entered a deal with a Middle East investment group to develop another spaceport in the emirate of Abu Dhabi.

Investors from Abu Dhabi have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to help Virgin Galactic develop its spacecraft.

Due to delays in both the construction of Spaceport America and development of Virgin's spacecraft, the company has yet to begin paying rent on the facility, which is located in remote southern New Mexico, about 45 miles from Las Cruces and 200 miles from Albuquerque.

An unsigned, undated copy of the lease agreement provided by the state calls for Virgin Galactic to be penalized $2 million if it breaks it lease with New Mexico and then begins flying elsewhere within two years. But state officials said Wednesday the company won't post that deposit until it activates the lease.

When asked for copies of the quarterly business plans Virgin Galactic is supposed to submit to the state, officials with the state economic development said those updates were given orally to Anderson.

Anderson and state Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela said they expect the company to begin paying rent next month.

Virgin Galactic President and CEO George Whitesides was less specific and noted the company, which is testing its spacecraft in the Mojave Desert, has an office in Las Cruces and will move to Spaceport America "when the Spaceport Authority finishes the level of the work that it has agreed to provide on our building."

Whitesides denied news reports that quoted him as saying Virgin might leave if lawmakers for a third year in a row refuse to approve exemptions for parts suppliers from being sued for liability by any passengers on spacecraft launched from New Mexico. But he also didn't rule it out.

He said that it was "very concerning" that companies were not coming to the spaceport. The company, he said, signed up for a "healthy spaceport" with multiple businesses that could divide the costs. Whitesides said Virgin Galactic would work with lawmakers, and then reevaluate.

New Mexico has exempted spacecraft operators from liability lawsuits from passengers, but competing states have also extended that exemption to parts suppliers.

Virgin Galactic officials "have not told me that they are going to leave if they do not get this done," Barela said. "By the same token, I can assure you they are getting calls constantly from other states saying, 'New Mexico hasn't passed the law and we can get you a better deal.'"

In Sierra County, one of three counties that implemented a special tax to help develop spaceport infrastructure, some remain optimistic about project.

"I think Richard Branson is not where he is by luck," said Gary Whitehead, a car dealer in Truth or Consequences and a former Spaceport Authority board member, adding that he feels encouraged because of Branson's history of success.

Rancher Jim Taylor, however, calls the project a "terrible, terrible rip-off.

"Some people are concerned that Virgin might leave, conversely some wish it would all just go away," he said. "Maybe they could convert the 'hangar' into a concert hall for 'Woodstock West' or something that would actually generate money."

22 GOP Lawmakers Named to House Science Committee

Dan Leone - Space News

On the same day that the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on NASA's strategic direction, the committee's incoming chairman announced the names of the 21 Republicans who will help him oversee the U.S. space program and other science and technology matters when the 113th Congress convenes in January.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is replacing fellow Texan Ralph Hall, who is being forced by a six-year limit on House committee chairmanships to surrender the gavel. In addition to Smith and Hall, the other Republican members of the committee will be:

·         Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin
·         Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California
·         Rep. Frank D. Lucas, Oklahoma
·         Rep. Randy Neugebauer, Texas
·         Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas
·         Rep. Paul Broun, Georgia
·         Rep. Scott Rigell, Virginia
·         Rep. Steven Palazzo, Mississippi
·         Rep. Mo Brooks, Alabama
·         Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland
·         Rep. Larry Bucshon, Indiana
·         Rep. Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming
·         Rep. Bill Posey, Florida
·         Rep. David Schweikert, Arizona
·         Rep. Steve Stockman, Texas
·         Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky
·         Rep. Jim Bridenstine, Oklahoma
·         Rep. Kevin Cramer, North Dakota
·         Rep. Chris Stewart, Utah
·         Rep. Randy Weber, Texas

With SolarCity on IPO deck, Elon Musk still eyes same path for SpaceX

Michael del Castillo - Business Journal

Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal and Tesla, today reminded everyone that he has big plans for SpaceX. No, not sending payloads into orbit in his own spacecraft (though that's certainly still the plan). It's for taking the company on a different, very public journey.

Musk wants shares of SpaceX traded in the public markets, he said today via Twitter.

"SpaceX will go public at some point, as I think it should ultimately be owned primarily by the public," Musk wrote in a tweet this afternoon (see it below). "My big worry would be long (hopefully) term when I'm dead, eg v sad situation with once great HP," he wrote in another tweet later on, presumably referring to Hewlett Packard which has seen its stock drop from $53.87 per share in April of 2010 to $14.57 per share today.

Also mentioned by Musk in a later tweet, seemingly as additional worries about going public, was Douglas Aircraft, "creator of the awesome DC-3," and North American Aviation," mention by @chrisbrandow.

The informative Twitter dialogue about the billionaire Musk's Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technolgies (SpaceX) kicked off in response to an earlier post in which the entrepreneur shared two links posted within 30 minutes of each other calling stock from another of his companies, Tesla, a "screaming buy," and likely to be "DESTROYED."

SpaceX has been leading the private space race in many ways of late, most recently snagging a contract with the U.S. Air Force to take on "the big boys in aerospace," Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and the Boeing Company (NYSE: BA), both successful public companies.

HUBBLE – FROM 320 MILES TO INFINITY…

Distant galaxy regains title as oldest in universe

Alicia Chang - Associated Press

A galaxy once considered the oldest has reclaimed its title, scientists reported Wednesday.

Poring through Hubble Space Telescope photos, the team recalculated the galaxy's age and determined it is actually 13.3 billion years old — not a mere 13.2 billion.

The dim galaxy filled with blue stars was first noticed last year by a different group of researchers, who also used the workhorse telescope to make the previous age estimate. It reigned as the most ancient galaxy observed until last month when it was knocked off its perch by another distant galaxy.

Now it's back on top after the team used a longer exposure time to get a clearer view of the earliest and far-off galaxies. Seeing the most distant galaxies is like looking back in time and this one existed when the universe was in its infancy — about 380 million years old. More observations are needed to confirm the result, but astronomers think it's the best candidate to date.

Besides refining the galaxy's age, they found six more early ones.

"People have found one object here and there," but never so many early galaxies, said Richard Ellis, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology who led the new work.

The findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Scientists are excited about the bounty of early galaxies, which should help refine theories about the formation of the first stars and galaxies. Astronomers think galaxies started appearing about 200 million years after the Big Bang, the explosion believed to have created the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Our Milky Way — one of hundreds of billions of galaxies — formed about 10 billion years ago.

The new study adds further evidence that galaxies formed gradually over several hundred million years and not in a single burst.

"We want to know our cosmic roots, how things got started and the origins of the galaxies that we see nowadays," said Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who had no role in the latest research.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has consistently peered back in time to reveal ancient and distant objects. The farther away something is, the longer it takes for its light to travel to Earth, which scientists use to estimate its age.

As far back as Hubble can see, it still can't capture the earliest galaxies. That job is left to its more powerful successor, the James Webb Telescope, to be launched in 2018.

Hubble telescope spies seven galaxies from baby years of universe

Irene Klotz - Reuters

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found seven galaxies that formed relatively shortly after the universe's birth some 13.7 billion years ago, scientists said on Wednesday, describing them "as baby pictures of the universe."

One of the objects may be the oldest galaxy yet found, dating back to a time when the universe was just 380 million years old, a fraction of its current age.

"These early galaxies represent the building blocks of present-day galaxies," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, told reporters in a conference call.

The discovery of galaxies dating back to the universe's early years should help scientists figure out what happened after the "dark ages," a period of time about 200 million years after the Big Bang explosion when cooling clouds of hydrogen, clumped together by gravity, began to ignite, triggering the first generation of stars.

"It was a very important moment in cosmic history," said astronomer Richard Ellis, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Scientists do not know exactly when this "cosmic dawn" occurred and whether it was a single, dramatic event that caused all the galaxies to form their first stars, or whether it happened more gradually over millions of years.

The discovery of seven galaxies spanning a period between 350 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang supports theories that the cosmic dawn was a drawn-out affair, with galaxies slowly building up their stars and chemical elements over time, said Brant Robertson of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Astronomers plan follow-up studies after Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, launches in 2018.

The research appears in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Hubble peers into era of first galaxies
A first survey of the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang shows they started out small, slow and packed together tightly

Dan Vergano - USA Today

Hubble space telescope astronomers reported on Wednesday that the earliest galaxies formed slowly more than 13 billion years ago after the beginning of the universe.

Galaxies are the islands of stars filling the universe such as our own Milky Way. In the first census of the oldest galaxies, the Hubble team reported on seven seen in a Hubble "Ultra Deep Field" image, including the likely oldest one yet spotted, dating to 380 million years after the Big Bang.

Completed in September, the deep space image required Hubble to peer to the absolute limits of its resolution, focusing on a small patch of the sky to capture a view of the first generation of stars and galaxies to form. They date to roughly 400 million to 600 million years after the Big Bang, which took place about 13.7 billion years ago.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," says Caltech astrophysicist Richard Ellis, who headed the observation effort that took more than 100 hours of Hubble staring at one small spot in the sky. "We are seeing a very smooth development in the number of observations."

Light obeys a speed limit, where the speed of light is about 5.9 trillion miles per year. So peering farther and farther away allows astronomers to see further back in time in the universe. At the time of these early galaxies, space was 1,000 times thicker with "pristine" hydrogen gas left from the Big Bang, which condensed to form the first stars.

"These early galaxies represent the building blocks of today's galaxies," say Harvard astronomer Abraham Loeb, who was not part of the discovery team. "It's the scientific story of Genesis, basically."

The census also shows that the first galaxies were packed more closely together than ones today, but were also smaller and "more feeble," Ellis says. The light from these first stars cooked the gas in clouds surrounding them, making the universe more transparent. And the explosive death of these early, massive stars first spewed out the heavier elements, such as carbon, calcium and oxygen that life depends upon today, Loeb says.

"We need to find a group of such infant galaxies in order to understand their properties and their role in ending the cosmic 'Dark Ages,' " says astronomer Wei Zheng of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who led a team reporting a galaxy from around 500 million years after the Big Bang earlier this year.

The Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, which manages Hubble, recently announced a new Deep Fields Initiative that would take advantage of so-called "gravitation lensing" where light from distant stars is amplified by the gravity of more nearby stars and galaxies, to observe four to six clusters of infant galaxies in the next two to three years, Zheng notes. "We are encouraged that many more infant galaxies would be found in the near future," he says via e-mail.

Hubble plumbs the universe, yields images of early galaxies

Marc-Antoine Baudoux – Agence France Presse

The Hubble Space Telescope is giving scientists a look at the oldest galaxies ever seen, dating back some 13.3 billion years -- providing a glimpse into how the cosmos must have looked right after the Big Bang.

NASA scientists announced Wednesday that Hubble has uncovered seven never-before-seen primitive galaxies dating back to when the universe was less than four percent of its current age.

These archeological images from Hubble were gleaned from an intensively studied patch of sky known as the Ultra Deep Field (UDF).

A team of astronomers led by Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC 3) to peer deeper into space than any previous Hubble observation.

Hubble scientists said the most ancient of the seven new galaxies came into being about 13.3 billion years ago -- some 380 million years after the Big Bang.

With this newest discovery, scientists nudge even a little closer to the very origins of the universe.

"Looking at these galaxies allows us to learn many, many things about the universe after the Big Bang -- about our origins," said Abraham Loeb, chairman of the Astronomy Department at Harvard University.

"For instance, we discovered that the galaxies then were 1,000 times denser than the galaxies today," he said.

"These pictures are like the first ultrasound of an infant. It's the oldest archeology material on the universe," said Loeb.

He expressed hope that Hubble may be able to plumb the depths of space for even older galaxies, perhaps nearly as old as the universe.

"To find the first galaxies we will have to look further, but there is less light, the galaxies are smaller," Loeb told reporters.

The never-seen-before galaxies are key to interpreting the development of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies that later evolved into the elliptical galaxies like our own Milky Way that now populate the universe, the space agency said.

One major goal of the program is to determine how rapidly the number of galaxies increases over time in the early universe. This measure is the key evidence for how quickly galaxies build up their constituent stars.

Hubble has transformed the field of astronomy since it was first launched in 1990.

Ellis said Hubble continues to make breakthroughs in space research, thanks to the sheer power and precision of the oft-rehabbed space telescope.

Hubble underwent repair during a shuttle mission in 2010 that left it with a new camera and spectrograph as well as fixed and spruced up scientific instruments.

"For the first time in 23 years we could use Hubble full tilt," Ellis said.

"Our study has taken the subject forward in two ways," Ellis explained during a telephone press conference.

"First, we have used Hubble to make longer exposures. The added depth is essential to reliably probe the early period of cosmic history," he said.

"Second, we have used Hubble's available color filters very effectively to more precisely measure galaxy distances," Ellis added.

First launched in 1990, the telescope was repaired and upgraded in 1993, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2008 and 2010. The final upgrade extended the life of Hubble another five years, through 2015.

Hubble spots distant galaxies near edge of universe's cosmic dawn

Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times

Squinting deep into the universe, the Hubble Space Telescope has picked out what may be the most distant galaxy yet found, observed as it looked about 380 million years after the big bang. This potential record-breaker is one of seven newly discovered galaxies formed more than 13 billion years ago, near the cosmic dawn, the era when the first big galaxies formed.

"These galaxies are so young that they existed before many of the atoms in our bodies existed," said James Bullock, a UC Irvine physics and astronomy professor who was not involved in the study.

The work, accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal Letters, helps researchers learn about the building blocks that helped form the universe we know today, said Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb, who was not involved in the study.

They do so by measuring what's known as redshift of the light they see coming from a galaxy. As the universe rapidly expands and the galaxies speed up, light from those galaxies stretches out into longer, and redder, wavelengths. Astronomers can measure this redshift to determine how fast an object is moving away, and thus how far away it must be. The more extreme the redshift, the farther it must have traveled, and the older Hubble's snapshot of it is.

Astronomers have a good grasp of how the universe began – in a big bang, roughly 13.7 billion years ago – because they see evidence from the cosmic background radiation that permeates the universe. They have a good sense of its adolescence and adulthood, because telescopes can look far enough into space to capture snapshots of what it looked like millions and billions of years into the past. But this period lasting a few hundred million years after the big bang remains something of a mystery, Ellis said – and this study helps to start filling in the gaps.

One question that theoretical astronomers have toyed with is whether the once-dark universe began to light up all at once, as ultraviolet light from the growing number of stars and coalescing galaxies ionized surrounding gas, rendering the universe transparent and allowing us to see into the distant past. The sloping decline of the number of galaxies as the astronomers looked farther back in time suggest that this was a gradual process, not a sudden one, Ellis said.

The galaxies the team found were formed about 350 million to 600 million years after the big bang, when the universe was less than 4% of its present age – practically a toddler. But this is about as far back as astronomers can look for now, Ellis said; Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, will look even deeper into the infrared wavelengths of light and should pick up more galaxies hovering even closer to the universe's birth.

Hubble gazes at distant history
Galaxies from around time of 'Bang' seen

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope this year peered back further in time than ever before, uncovering seven embryonic galaxies that formed not long after the theoretical "Big Bang" created the universe, scientists said Wednesday.

Its instruments trained for six weeks on a relatively uninteresting patch of sky, Hubble spotted the galaxies swirling at a time 13.3 billion years ago, just 450 million years after the dawn of the cosmos.

And astrophysicists say the images give the world an unprecedented look at the universe in the early stages of its formation.

"It's the scientific version of the story of Genesis, basically," said Abraham Loeb, Chair of the Astronomy Department at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

"This is the beginning of everything," added John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate and a former astronaut who serviced Hubble on three shuttle missions.

"And these images are starting to give us the picture of what emerges from that early period in the universe."

The deepest images to date from Hubble are the result of an ambitious survey conducted with the telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 in August and September. A team of scientists led by Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., made the observations.

The results show an evenly paced decline in the number of galaxies evident in observations that look back over 97 percent of time dating back to the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

They support the idea that galaxies formed continuously over time and also might have provided enough radiation to reheat matter after a period when all matter cooled in the wake of the Big Bang.

"You know, this period of re-ionization is when the universe emerged from the 'dark ages,' as it's called, when light couldn't propagate through the universe. And so these images are giving us the tantalizing view of what happened in those very early stages of the universe," said Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist.

"This is the time when the universe, filled with hydrogen, started to make stars and galaxies that made the chemical elements that we are literally made out of. You know, the oxygen that we breathe, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones," he said.

Loeb likened the images to "the first ultrasound of an infant."

"I mean, these early galaxies represent the building blocks of the present-day galaxies that we have," he said.

Hubble detected the galaxies as they appeared 350 million to 600 million after the Big Bang. Their light just now is arriving at Earth.

Grunsfeld and spacewalking shuttle crewmate Andrew "Drew" Feustel installed the Wide Field Camera 3 during NASA's fifth and final Hubble servicing mission in May 2009.

But not before overcoming problems with a stuck bolt holding the camera's predecessor – the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 – into the observatory.

Had that bolt sheared, the astronauts would not have been able to extract the old camera. The new, state-of-the-art Wide Field Camera 3 would have been returned to Earth.

Grunsfeld remembers the situation vividly.

"I was on the side of Hubble, wondering how we were going to get out of this mess. And what occurred to me is — if we don't get this new Wide Field Camera 3 in (the telescope), no longer will we be able to unravel the mysteries of the universe," Grunsfeld said.

Ancient Galaxy May Be Most Distant Ever Seen

Mike Wall - Space.com

Astronomers have spotted seven galaxies that existed just a few hundred million years after the universe's birth, including one that may be the oldest found to date.

The potential record-holding galaxy, known as UDFj-39546284, likely existed when the universe was just 380 million years old, researchers said, and may be the farthest galaxy ever seen. The other six distant galaxies all formed within 600 million years of the Big Bang, which created our universe 13.7 billion years ago.

UDFj-39546284 was detected previously, and researchers had thought it formed just 500 million years or so after the Big Bang. The new observations, made using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, push its probable formation time back even further.

The seven galaxies constitute the first reliable census of the epoch from 400 million to 600 million years after the universe's birth, researchers said. This census detects a steady increase in galaxies over this period, suggesting that the formation of the first stars and galaxies — the so-called "cosmic dawn" — happened gradually rather than suddenly.

"The cosmic dawn was probably not a single, dramatic event," study lead author Richard Ellis, of Caltech in Pasadena, told reporters today (Dec. 12).

Ellis and his team pointed Hubble at a small patch of sky known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which the telescope observed for many hours to build up enough light to spot extremely faint, distant objects. The researchers used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to study the deep field in near-infrared wavelengths during August and September 2012.

The astronomers used special filters to measure the galaxies' redshifts — how much their light has been stretched by the expansion of space. From the redshifts, the researchers were able to calculate the distance to each galaxy, revealing their ages.

The results "reprensent our cosmic roots," said Harvard astronomer Abraham Loeb, who was not involved in the study. The new Hubble data "comes from the biggest archeological dig that we have of the universe."

The team pushed Hubble to its limits, and the telescope probably won't be able to see back in time any further, Ellis said. But NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to launch in 2018, will dig even deeper into the universe's past.

"Hubble has, in a sense, set the stage for Webb," team member Anton Koekemoer, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said in a statement. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."

The new study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Hubble) News - December 13, 2012 and JSC Today

No comments:

Post a Comment

Space news