Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - December 10, 2012 and JSC Today

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 10, 2012 7:40:38 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - December 10, 2012 and JSC Today

What a difference a day makes----finally some cold weather….. …now it feels more like Christmas.  

 

 

Monday, December 10, 2012

 

JSC TODAY HEADLINES

1.            Last Week for CFC Contributions -- You Can Make a Difference

2.            Toys for Tots ... Did You Know?

3.            Saying 'Godspeed' to a Spidernaut

4.            Innovation Lecture Series: Carlos Dominguez - The TechNowist

5.            IAAP Helps Administrative Professionals Turn Jobs into Careers

6.            TGCC INCOSE Holiday Dinner on the Evening of Dec. 13

7.            Space Center Houston's Winter Day Camps

8.            System Safety Fundamentals Class: Jan. 14-18

________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY

" If you don't control your mind, someone else will."

 

-- John Allston

________________________________________

1.            Last Week for CFC Contributions -- You Can Make a Difference

The holiday season can be stressful, and you may feel that your capacity to give has been maxed out. But even a small contribution can make a meaningful difference to organizations in our community and around the world.

The Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) is the only federal workplace giving program for federal employees -- and as such, you can choose to give to thousands of deserving organizations at the local, national and global levels. They include organizations to educate, shelter, feed, protect, volunteer, or any other number of charities and programs.

This year our center's monetary goal is $675,000. With your help, we can reach it. There is only one week left to donate.

1. Simply find the charity or charities you want to give to (online or in this book).

2. Federal employees can donate via payroll deductions at EmployeeExpress (EEx). (EEx Instructions.)

3. All JSC team members can make cash/check donations by using the paper pledge form. (Paper pledge forms may be dropped off with Philip Harris in Building 4N, Room 336, or with an organization coordinator near you.)

Donations of any amount are welcome, starting from $1 per pay period. Give a little. Help A LOT. (Giving is strictly on a voluntary basis.)

Mirella Lanmon x49796

 

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2.            Toys for Tots ... Did You Know?

Today is the LAST day to donate a new, unwrapped toy! We are accepting donations until 11:30 a.m. only at Building 419.

Quick Facts:

o             In 1947, Major Bill Hendricks, USCR and a group of Marine Reservists collected and distributed 5,000 toys to needy children.

o             Walt Disney designed the famous Toys for Tots train logo.

o             Toys for Tots is an official activity of the U.S. Marine Corps and Reserves.

o             Marines have distributed more than 452 million toys to more than 209 million needy children.

o             For the 11th consecutive year, the Toys for Tots Foundation appeared in the Philanthropy 400.

o             Charity Navigator again awarded the Foundation their highest 4-star rating for sound fiscal management.

o             Marine Toys for Tots Foundation is exempt under Section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, making your gift tax deductible.

Camille Major 281-513-1883

 

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3.            Saying 'Godspeed' to a Spidernaut

Space isn't just for astronauts. Did you know that Nefertiti, a "spidernaut," spent 100 days aboard the space station? Nefertiti demonstrated that, like humans, her eight-legged species can adapt to the microgravity of space, then transition back to life on Earth.

Though she survived her splashdown to Earth aboard the SpaceX commercial Resupply Services mission on Oct. 28, she passed away from natural causes on Dec. 3 at the Insect Zoo of the National Museum of History of Washington.

Read more about this amazingly adaptable and well-traveled spidernaut here.

JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

 

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4.            Innovation Lecture Series: Carlos Dominguez - The TechNowist

The Human Health & Performance Directorate is pleased to welcome Carlos Dominguez, Senior Vice President at Cisco Systems and technology evangelist, as our next Innovation Lecture Series Speaker! Carlos speaks to and motivates audiences worldwide about how technology is changing how we communicate, collaborate, and especially how we work. Carlos gives humorous, highly-animated presentations full of deep insight into how technology, and the right culture, can create winning companies.

When: Jan. 11 at 2 p.m

Where: Building 30 Auditorium

Space is limited! Register now in SATERN: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...

Carissa Vidlak 281.212.1409 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov

 

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5.            IAAP Helps Administrative Professionals Turn Jobs into Careers

For over 70 years, the International Association of Administrative Professionals has been helping office professionals reach their career goals through education, community building and leadership development. Our certification programs are recognized as the industry standard of proficiency. Our educational programs, including OPTIONS Training, help admins advance their careers without putting their life on hold. If you've been searching for a community to help you thrive in today's office culture, you've come to the right place!

In celebration of IAAP's 70th anniversary, IAAP is offering administrative professionals a special price when they join as a new member. Until Dec. 31, new members can join IAAP at the chapter, division and international level--all for $70. For more information on the local Clear Lake NASA Area Chapter, contact Ymelda Calvillo or click here. Join us as we create a better workplace, one admin at a time.

Tis the Season to be jolly. Join us for our Annual Holiday Social this Monday, December 10, 2012 at 5:45 pm at the Hilton Garden Inn, Webster Tx - Come one, Come all!

Felicia Saenz x32389 http://www.iaap-hq.org/join

 

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6.            TGCC INCOSE Holiday Dinner on the Evening of Dec. 13

The Texas Gulf Coast Chapter (TGCC) of INCOSE (InterNational Council On Systems Engineering) plans a holiday season dinner on Dec. 13, at Franca's Italian Restaurant on NASA Parkway. Please see details and plans to RSVP on the local chapter website at https://www.incose.org/tgcc/ You may also contact Larry Spratlin at larry.spratlin@escg.jacobs.com or Paul Nesrsta at paul.e.nesrsta@nasa.gov for more information.

Larry Spratlin 281 461 5218

 

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7.            Space Center Houston's Winter Day Camps

Space Center Houston offers exciting educational Day Camps for children of various ages. We are now accepting applications, availability is limited and is filling up fast. Reserve your "space" today at http://www.spacecenter.org/daycamps.html or by calling 281-283-4755.

Carla Santiago 281-483-7150

 

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8.            System Safety Fundamentals Class: Jan. 14-18

This course instructs students in fundamentals of system safety management, hazard analysis of hardware, software, and operations. The course establishes a foundation for the student to pursue more advanced studies of system safety and hazard analysis techniques while allowing students to effectively apply their skills to straightforward analytical assignments. Course content is a combination of System Safety Workshop and System Safety Special Subjects. Students who've taken those classes shouldn't take this class. SATERN Registration Required.

https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DETAILS&scheduleID=66162

Polly Caison 281-244-1279

 

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________________________________________

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

 

 

 

Human Spaceflight News

Monday – December 10, 2012

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

New finding boosts the prospect of growing crops in space or on other planets

 

James Owen - National Geographic News

 

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment. Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity.

 

NASA official thanks ATK workers

 

Bryon Saxton - Ogden Standard-Examiner

 

A senior NASA management official offered workers at ATK Space Systems an update and some encouraging words during a visit to the location this week. "It was positive," said Kay Anderson, ATK communications lead for the Space Launch Division. Todd May, space launch program manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, provided a program update, Anderson said. May applauded the ATK SLS workforce for its dedication and efforts.

 

USA cuts 119 jobs as shuttle work dwindles

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Lead space shuttle contractor United Space Alliance on Friday laid off another 119 Kennedy Space Center employees, about a month after NASA's last retired orbiter reached its public display site. The final shuttle mission landed in July 2011, and work to shut down the program, known as "transition and retirement," is nearing an end.

 

Speeding Space Junk Poses Risks for Spacecraft

 

Doug Bernard - Voice of America

 

The amount of space junk floating around the Earth grows every year, and increasingly can pose risks to spacecraft orbiting the planet. In the United States, NASA's Orbital Debris Program (ODP) at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, keeps an eye on the ever-expanding junkyard of space. "We define orbital debris as any man-made object orbiting the Earth that is no longer serving a useful purpose," says Gene Stansbery, project manager for the ODP. "That can be anything from very large rocket bodies and dead satellites that are no longer useful, all the way to very tiny particles that are eroded from the painted surfaces of spacecraft or rockets, the entire size range."

 

JAXA to develop firefighter garb

 

Jiji Press

 

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Thursday that it will develop clothing with cooling functions for firefighters from special underwear made for astronauts. JAXA hopes the clothing will be used also by people working under the environment that tends to cause heatstroke and other harsh conditions, including security guards and nuclear plant workers, officials said.

 

Kazakhstan mulls ending Russia's cosmodrome lease

 

Peter Leonard - Associated Press

 

The head of Kazakhstan's space agency said Monday that Russia's lease of a launch facility in the Central Asian nation, the only site worldwide currently being used to get astronauts to the International Space Station, may be suspended. Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency cited Kazcosmos head Talgat Musabayev as telling parliament that proposals are being considered to bring the Baikonur facility under Kazakhstan's jurisdiction. Russia pays Kazakhstan $115 million annually for use of the Soviet-built Baikonur cosmodrome under an arrangement set to expire in 2050. Russia spends $160 million per year operating the facility.

 

Kazakhstan Wants Russia to Hand Over Space Town

 

RIA Novosti

 

Kazakhstan and Russia are in talks over returning the city of Baikonur in Kazakhstan - home to Russia's main rocket launch center - from Russian to local jurisdiction, the head of Kazakhstan's space agency (Kazkosmos) said on Monday. "Today both nations' governments have decided to set up a new intergovernmental commission for the Baikonur complex to be headed up by first or other deputy prime ministers," Kazkosmos head Talgat Musabayev told Kazakhstan's parliament.

 

Whither NASA?

Agency's strategy, mission and vision lack clarity, expert panel finds

 

Emi Kolawole - Washington Post

 

Two years ago, President Obama told a crowd of more than 200 people assembled in Cape Canaveral, Fla., that a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025 would be among one of NASA's goals. But a scathing report released Wednesday shows that, among other issues within the agency, NASA's not really doing much in the way of making it so. The National Research Council report — commissioned by NASA at the behest of Congress — finds that "there has been little effort to initiate" the asteroid mission. The report also found the agency's overall mission and vision statements to be "generic" and that both statements could "apply to almost any government research and development (R&D) agency."

 

Ask an Astronaut: NASA Spaceflyers Open Up

 

Ira Flatow - National Public Radio

 

For the latest in our "Ask an Expert" series, current NASA astronaut Donald Pettit and former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman chat about their spaceflight experiences. From brushing your teeth to weightless dreams, the astronauts discuss the many curiosities of living in space.

 

Forty years after the final moonwalk, former NASA agent launches appeal for the missing Moon rocks

 

Jacqui Goddard - BBC News

 

As the last in a series of only 12 men to walk on the Moon and gaze back at the Earth from 250,000 miles away, Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan and lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt wanted to bring back something symbolic. As they wrapped up their third and final moonwalk on December 13, 1972, they paused to reflect on the magnitude of their achievement and the message of peace, hope and unity they felt it should represent to people back on Earth. "To remind all the people of the world that this is what we are all striving for in the future, Jack has picked up a very significant rock," Cernan told mission controllers in Houston, standing alongside his partner on the lunar surface.

 

Can Golden Spike make it to the moon?

 

Nancy Trejos - USA Today (Commentary)

 

(Trejos writes about her favorite hobby: Traveling. She's been all over, from Chicago to Colombia, Nevada to Nairobi, Boston to Beirut. She's also covered education, Iraq, and personal finance.)

 

It's been 40 years since Apollo 17 made the last manned voyage to the moon. Now, a group of former NASA executives is trying to make it back to the moon, and some space experts say they've got the brains and the business plan to do it. Startup Golden Spike on Thursday announced its plans to fly spacecraft to the moon by 2020. The price tag: $1.5 billion roundtrip for two people. The two men in charge of it have lofty resumes. Gerry Griffin, the Chairman of the Board, is a former director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston. President and CEO Alan Stern is a former head of NASA's science mission directorate.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

New finding boosts the prospect of growing crops in space or on other planets

 

James Owen - National Geographic News

 

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

 

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity.

 

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

 

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity."

 

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

 

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

 

Root Growth

 

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

 

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

 

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

 

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

 

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

 

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said.

 

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.

 

NASA official thanks ATK workers

 

Bryon Saxton - Ogden Standard-Examiner

 

A senior NASA management official offered workers at ATK Space Systems an update and some encouraging words during a visit to the location this week.

 

"It was positive," said Kay Anderson, ATK communications lead for the Space Launch Division.

 

Todd May, space launch program manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, provided a program update, Anderson said. May applauded the ATK SLS workforce for its dedication and efforts.

 

"It is always a privilege to be visited by senior NASA management," said Fred Brasfield, ATK vice president of Next Generation Solid Rocket Booster First Stage program.

 

"For them to take the time to travel to Utah, visit with our employees and share with us the latest program accomplishments and status is very much appreciated," Brasfield said in a news release issued Friday.

 

The fact NASA recognized the significant contributions from the ATK team and the progress made in increasing efficiency and lowering costs was especially gratifying, he said.

 

"Thanks for all you do," May told workers. "It has been a challenging two years for all of us, which has made us stronger. But with challenges come opportunity, and we look forward to working with our partners at ATK on the Space Launch System."

 

NASA's SLS is designed to launch humans in the Orion spacecraft on missions beyond Earth's orbit to destinations such as an asteroid and ultimately Mars.

 

It will be a platform for continuing America's tradition of human exploration to new frontiers, and provide the capability to launch entirely new science missions, which will yield new knowledge and technologies that benefit life on Earth, officials say.

 

As part of the event, NASA representatives thanked the ATK workforce for continued efforts to produce boosters for SLS at reduced costs by implementing process improvements, Anderson said.

 

ATK, under contract for six solid rocket boosters for the SLS program, is an aerospace, defense, and commercial products company with operations in 21 states, Puerto Rico and around the world.

 

USA cuts 119 jobs as shuttle work dwindles

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Lead space shuttle contractor United Space Alliance on Friday laid off another 119 Kennedy Space Center employees, about a month after NASA's last retired orbiter reached its public display site.

 

The final shuttle mission landed in July 2011, and work to shut down the program, known as "transition and retirement," is nearing an end.

 

"With the delivery of Atlantis to the KSC Visitor Complex, United Space Alliance is now winding down the closeout of the space shuttle program," company spokeswoman Tracy Yates said.

 

Houston-based USA, a joint venture between The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., has shed nearly 6,000 jobs since October 2009, more than 4,000 of them on the Space Coast.

 

Friday's cuts dropped the company's local headcount below 1,000, to 903. Twelve positions were cut in Texas.

 

On Jan. 4, another 129 KSC employees and 25 in Texas are expected to be let go, with additional layoffs planned in March and April.

 

"As the transition and retirement work scope continues to decrease, additional employees will be released from the company," Yates said.

 

The December and January layoffs combined represent 13 percent of the company.

 

Affected employees were given 60 days' notice and were eligible for severance packages ranging from four to 26 weeks of pay, depending on years of service. The company also offered help find new jobs, including training related to resumes and interviews.

 

KSC is also trimming its 2,100-person civil servant workforce through limited buyouts, though NASA officials would not say by how many.

 

As of Sept. 30, the center had just more than 8,300 total employees, down from about 15,250 three years earlier.

 

Speeding Space Junk Poses Risks for Spacecraft

 

Doug Bernard - Voice of America

 

The amount of space junk floating around the Earth grows every year, and increasingly can pose risks to spacecraft orbiting the planet.

 

In the United States, NASA's Orbital Debris Program (ODP) at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, keeps an eye on the ever-expanding junkyard of space.

 

"We define orbital debris as any man-made object orbiting the Earth that is no longer serving a useful purpose," says Gene Stansbery, project manager for the ODP. "That can be anything from very large rocket bodies and dead satellites that are no longer useful, all the way to very tiny particles that are eroded from the painted surfaces of spacecraft or rockets, the entire size range."

 

In the weightless and friction-free environment of orbit, it's not so much the size of all this junk floating in the Earth's orbit, but also the speeds at which it travels, according to Stansbery.

 

"If you look at orbital velocities and the average collision velocity, you're talking on the order of 11 kilometers a second," he says. "So even a small paint fleck can damage a sensitive component for spacecraft."

 

An example occurred during STS 7, when a window for the space shuttle had to be replaced for the first ever time after being damaged by a .2 millimeter paint fleck. If that level of damage can be caused by a particle that small, one can imagine the threat posed by larger orbiting refuse.

 

Given that space exploration has been an on-going venture since the 1950s, there's a lot of old stuff circling the planet, and much of it can pose serious risks.

 

"The Department of Defense has a world-wide network that can track objects down to about 10 centimeters in size in low Earth orbit," says Stansbery. "For those objects, there's about 22,000 that they're tracking. You go down to about one centimeter and larger, you're talking about 500,000, and if you get smaller than that and you're talking into the millions."

 

Some of that stuff, especially in low-Earth orbit, will eventually fall back to the planet, much of it burning up on re-entry. However, for junk found at higher altitudes, around 1,000 kilometers or so, Stansbery says it could remain in orbit for decades, maybe even hundreds of years. For altitudes even higher than that, junk could remain for centuries…or longer.

 

Major collisions are rare, but they do happen. On Feb. 10, 2009, two large satellites, the Iridium 33 and the Kosmos 2251, collided at a speed of about 42,000 kilometers per hour. The collision spread about 1,000 pieces of debris capable of being tracked across the skies, where much of it remains.

 

In March of this year, one of those pieces came uncomfortably close to the International Space Station. So close, in fact, that as a precaution, the ISS' six-member crew waited for a time in the Soyuz emergency exit capsule, just in case a collision occurred and they had to abandon ship.

 

More worrisome, says Stansbery, is that the crew only had 24 hours notice of the possible collision. "Unfortunately, that is too short a time to plan a re-avoidance maneuver for the space station," he says.

 

The threat posed by space junk isn't new; space scientists have been concerned about it since the 1970s. However, with more rockets taking off, more satellites in the sky, and more spacecraft – such as from China or private firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin – the skies are getting more crowded all the time.

 

This week on VOA's "Science World" radio program, you can hear the complete interview with Gene Stansbury on space junk, as well as other features on the science behind children's snack food choices, the lingering effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on corral communities, and a new web-based computer program that helps doctors save lives. Take a look at the right hand column for scheduled times.

 

JAXA to develop firefighter garb

 

Jiji Press

 

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Thursday that it will develop clothing with cooling functions for firefighters from special underwear made for astronauts.

 

JAXA hopes the clothing will be used also by people working under the environment that tends to cause heatstroke and other harsh conditions, including security guards and nuclear plant workers, officials said.

 

The government-linked agency will carry out the project jointly with three private-sector entities — Nippon Uniform Center, JAXA's partner in spacesuit development, firefighting and radiation protection clothing maker Teikoku Sen-i Co., and space equipment maker Advanced Engineering Services Co.

 

Through next March, the team will study whether the envisioned garment can be put to practical use. If the team concludes that the project is feasible, it will start developing the clothing for practical use within fiscal 2014.

 

The space underwear, for which JAXA has applied for a patent, is made of special chemical fibers. It has 24 coolant water circulation tubes, each of which is 2.6 meters long with an internal diameter of 1.6 mm.

 

For astronauts, the cooling system, as well as batteries and pumps, are installed in life-support equipment carried on their backs. For firefighters and nuclear plant workers, JAXA is considering using cold water from an outside source or ice wrapped in a heat-insulating material to ensure cooling.

 

It has been developing spacesuits since fiscal 2008 in preparation for the possible construction of an international lunar base.

 

Kazakhstan mulls ending Russia's cosmodrome lease

 

Peter Leonard - Associated Press

 

The head of Kazakhstan's space agency said Monday that Russia's lease of a launch facility in the Central Asian nation, the only site worldwide currently being used to get astronauts to the International Space Station, may be suspended.

 

Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency cited Kazcosmos head Talgat Musabayev as telling parliament that proposals are being considered to bring the Baikonur facility under Kazakhstan's jurisdiction.

 

Russia pays Kazakhstan $115 million annually for use of the Soviet-built Baikonur cosmodrome under an arrangement set to expire in 2050. Russia spends $160 million per year operating the facility.

 

It is likely that Russia will continue to use Baikonur, since its own in-country launch facilities remain underdeveloped, but the possible absence of a lease will create an air of uncertainty over how the facility will be administered in future. A three-man crew from the United States, Russia and Canada is due to leave for the space station next week onboard a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft.

 

"The rent agreement on Baikonur adopted in 1994 has run its course. The head of state held talks with (Russian President) Vladimir Putin and has tasked us with formulating a new, all-encompassing agreement on Baikonur," Interfax-Kazakhstan cited Musabayev as saying.

 

Musabayev said that if the lease agreement is rescinded, it could be done over several stages, Interfax reported. He suggested the lease for the launch facility for the Zenit vehicles used to carry satellites into orbit could be first to be cancelled.

 

It is unclear what is motivating Kazakhstan's decision to push for a revision of arrangements on Baikonur, but it is known that it has been pushing for an increased role in the space industry.

 

Observers worry that the transfer of Baikonur to Kazakhstan could lead to an exodus of specialists from the town, worsening the shortage of expertise in Russia's space program.

 

Out of the more than 70,000 people currently living in the town of Baikonur, around four-tenths are Russian citizens, while most of the remaining resident of subjects of Kazakhstan.

 

Although the town still formally lies within Kazakhstan's territory, it is rented out to Russia. Security is provided by both Russian and Kazakh law enforcement services, and both national currencies are used, although the Russian ruble is generally preferred.

 

Conditions in the town, which lies in a remote spot in Kazakhstan's arid southern steppes, have steadily worsened over the past few years. Abandoned apartment buildings have become a common sight and criminal activity is on the rise, while the quality of basic household utilities has degraded notably.

 

Kazakhstan Wants Russia to Hand Over Space Town

 

RIA Novosti

 

Kazakhstan and Russia are in talks over returning the city of Baikonur in Kazakhstan - home to Russia's main rocket launch center - from Russian to local jurisdiction, the head of Kazakhstan's space agency (Kazkosmos) said on Monday.

 

"Today both nations' governments have decided to set up a new intergovernmental commission for the Baikonur complex to be headed up by first or other deputy prime ministers," Kazkosmos head Talgat Musabayev told Kazakhstan's parliament.

 

Kazakhstan has demanded reestablishment of the commission which previously oversaw the main aspects of the intergovernmental agreement on Baikonur, the site of the first Soviet rocket launches and Russia's most important space launch center.

 

The issue of control over Baikonur and the rent Russia pays Kazakhstan to use the facility have been the subject of ongoing dispute between the two nations ever since Kazakhstan gained independence from the USSR.

 

The two sides signed an agreement in Astana on January 9, 2004, extending Russia's use of the space center's facilities until 2050. Russia pays an annual fee of approximately $115 million to use the space center, which currently has the world's busiest launch schedule, as well as $50 million annually for maintenance.

 

Kazakhstan ratified the deal in 2004, following Russia's threats to suspend other space projects with Kazakhstan if it did not do so.

 

Earlier this year, Kazakhstan blocked Russia from launching several rockets from Baikonur in May in a dispute over a drop zone for debris. Kazakhstan insisted this must be covered by a supplement to the main rent agreement. Kazakhstan agreed in June to let launches go ahead, following talks with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Kazakh counterpart Karim Massimov.

 

Baikonur has 15 launch pads for launching both manned and unmanned space vehicles and supports several generations of Russian spacecraft including the Soyuz, Proton, Tsyklon, Dnepr and Zenit.

 

Russia and Kazakhstan are working to build a new space launch facility at Baikonur, called Baiterek, to launch Angara carrier rockets capable of delivering 26 metric tons of payload to low-Earth orbits. The project is being implemented on a parity basis and enjoys tax and customs privileges.

 

The two countries have reportedly each allocated $223 million for the construction of the Baiterek launch site under a 2004 agreement.

Russia intends to eventually withdraw from Baikonur and conduct launches from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk Region and to complete construction of the Vostochny space center in the Far East.

 

Whither NASA?

Agency's strategy, mission and vision lack clarity, expert panel finds

 

Emi Kolawole - Washington Post

 

Two years ago, President Obama told a crowd of more than 200 people assembled in Cape Canaveral, Fla., that a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025 would be among one of NASA's goals. But a scathing report released Wednesday shows that, among other issues within the agency, NASA's not really doing much in the way of making it so.

 

The National Research Council report — commissioned by NASA at the behest of Congress — finds that "there has been little effort to initiate" the asteroid mission. The report also found the agency's overall mission and vision statements to be "generic" and that both statements could "apply to almost any government research and development (R&D) agency."

 

The NRC convened a 12-person committee in spring 2012 to assess the agency's strategic direction, with a focus on NASA's 2011 strategic plan. It found NASA to be "an agency at a transitional point" and one that "faces challenges in nearly all of its primary endeavors," including human space flight. The committee was not charged with determining what the agency's strategic objectives should be. Ultimately, the committee found NASA's 2011 plan to be "vague on details" and "of little value from the perspective of establishing clear and unifying strategic directions for NASA."

 

Ouch.

 

But the committee also found that the responsibility for that lack of clarity does not fall entirely at NASA's feet. The executive and legislative branches, they concluded, bear some responsibility for failing to clearly establish the nation's overall goals and priorities. Committee chairman and UCLA Chancellor Emeritus and professor Albert Carnesale said during a news conference Wednesday that, in terms of human space flight, it was currently unclear whether the priority was an asteroid, the moon or Mars.

 

"If you look at what the administration says and look at what Congress says and look at the strategic plan," said Carnesale, "it is not clear what the priorities are."

 

Without that guidance, the committee determined the agency "cannot reasonably be expected" to put together an effective strategy, read the report.

 

In response to the report, NASA Associate Director David Weaver said via a statement that the agency "appreciate[s] the hard work" of the committee and "look[s] forward to a closer review of its recommendations.

 

"The President and Congress, in bi-partisan fashion, established the nation's strategic goals for civil space when it enacted the NASA Authorization Act of 2010," he continued, listing the many projects NASA had in progress. "The agency will continue to prioritize its work to achieve these national goals and carry out the direction of Congress and the White House."

 

The committee also found a "mismatch" between the agency's budget and its portfolio of missions and resources.

 

"NASA plays with the one variable that it has control over: time," said Carnesale.

 

To avoid cost overruns and keep projects within reasonable time frames, the committee recommended four options: aggressively restructure the agency, comit to more cost-sharing partnerships with the private sector and other countries, grow NASA's budget, or reduce the size and scope of its mission portfolio.

 

The report also recommended against applying a "one-size-fits-all" policy in an attempt to institute change. The agency's 10 centers, including Goddard, Kennedy and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, were all determined to be so unique that pursuing a uniform plan could potentially "do more harm than good." Instead, the committee recommended that The White House and Congress adopt reforms to give NASA improved flexibility in its management of the centers, and advised NASA to integrate the centers around the agency's strategy and objectives.

 

News of the report comes a day after NASA officials announced plans for a new Mars rover to launch in 2020 — a project that is expected to cost roughly $1.5 billion. The mission's final details have yet to be worked out, but it may include the cachingof samples from Mars for eventual return — a capability the Mars rover Curiosity does not have.

 

Ask an Astronaut: NASA Spaceflyers Open Up

 

Ira Flatow - National Public Radio

 

For the latest in our "Ask an Expert" series, current NASA astronaut Donald Pettit and former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman chat about their spaceflight experiences. From brushing your teeth to weightless dreams, the astronauts discuss the many curiosities of living in space.

 

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

 

Next up, who didn't, at one time or another, now think about it, who didn't want to be an astronaut when they were growing up, especially those of us, the children of the space-age space race? Well, for those of us whose lives are a bit more Earthbound, we've got a fun edition to our Ask an Expert series. How about Ask an Astronaut? Everything you wanted to ever ask an astronaut, Flora.

 

FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: That's right. Get those dialing fingers ready everybody. Get your tweets loaded because if you had the chance to ask - you have that chance, to ask an astronaut anything you want, but the calls are screened.

 

FLATOW: Up to a certain extent.

 

LICHTMAN: Up to a certain extent, that's right. So we've got two space travelers on the line to answer your questions, 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. If you're on Twitter, tweet us @scifri.

 

FLATOW: And our astronauts this hour, or returning champions as they might say, Don Pettit is a NASA astronaut who spent more than 350 days in orbit. Just this past July, he returned to Earth after spending six and a half months aboard the International Space Station. I have questions already going through my mind. He's joining us by phone from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Welcome back.

 

DON PETTIT: Ira, it's really good to be on your program, and it's good to hear Flora's voice, as well.

 

LICHTMAN: Thanks, Don, glad to have you back.

 

PETTIT: You're usually in the backdrops, pulling all the strings that make Ira operate.

 

LICHTMAN: Ira let me sneak in today.

 

FLATOW: We're looking behind the curtain today.

 

PETTIT: OK.

 

LICHTMAN: We also have Jeffrey Hoffman. He's a NASA astronaut for almost 20 years, and during that time he flew in space five times, including once to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. He's now a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at MIT. Welcome back to the program, Dr. Hoffman.

 

FLATOW: Hi, Jeff.

 

JEFFREY HOFFMAN: Well hi, Ira, it's always good to talk. We go back a long way.

 

FLATOW: A long way, back to the first shuttle launch.

 

PETTIT: Jeff, we're going to have to stop conversing on the radio like this and just meet face to face again sometime.

 

HOFFMAN: I'll be in Houston in January. I'll send you an email about it. We'll get together.

 

FLATOW: We're going to charge you for this phone call.

 

FLATOW: We have just a couple minutes before we take our break and go to our audience for all the questions. So let me start off, with a couple minutes to go. The question: What is the most challenging part for your life as an astronaut? What tests do most candidates wash out in in astronaut school? What's the biggest challenge? Let me ask you, Jeff, first.

 

HOFFMAN: Well, actually it's in the selection process. A remarkable number of people don't pass the physical, and particularly these days when we're selecting astronauts specifically for long-duration space flights, there's a lot of things which even if you're a perfectly normal, healthy person, just because of special situation involved in long-duration space flight, you would not qualify.

 

Once you're in, NASA will do everything possible, even if you develop medical problems, to keep you healthy and keep you flying. But getting in in the first place is tough.

 

FLATOW: Don?

 

PETTIT: And I agree with Jeff on that, and talking about the category of once you're in, some of the challenges of just doing the job is how you juggle excelling at work and still maintaining your family because this job can take every waking hour, and you have to figure out to juggle your work and maintain your family at the same time, which is not that different for many jobs all across America.

 

FLATOW: All right, we're going to take a break and take phone calls. Ask an astronaut, our number 1-800-989-8255. We're here with Flora Lichtman and astronauts Don Pettit, Jeffrey Hoffman. You can also tweet us @scifri, @-S-C-I-F-R-I. Here's your chance to ask an astronaut. It may not come again. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.

 

LICHTMAN: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. It's our Ask an Astronaut hour. Our guests are NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who's flown three times in space, and his most recent trip wrapped up earlier this summer, after the six-and-a-half months aboard the International Space Station. And we have Jeffrey Hoffman, who was a NASA astronaut for almost 20 years, and now he's a professor at MIT. But he made five trips to space before hanging up that spacesuit.

 

And we have one, I think, that's good for you, Don. It comes from Twitter, from Walt on Twitter: What does it smell like in the ISS?

 

PETTIT: Oh, well, inside the space station, there's a lot of machinery and things like that, and it kind of reminds me of being in an engine room on a ship, or around a bunch of machinery and mechanical parts. And what it doesn't smell like is an Alpine forest or a woodland meadow or anything that reminds you of nature.

 

FLATOW: Jeff, you had even closer quarters in the Shuttle. Was the odor any different?

 

HOFFMAN: Well, I will say that one of the fortunate aspects from the olfactory point of view in space flight is that without gravity constantly pulling on your body, the fluids tend to shift to your upper body, including in your head, and the sense of smell is somewhat reduced. It's a little bit like when you have a sinus, stuffy nose, headache, which I think, given the smells that are present up there - remember, we don't have showers in space. We sort of take a sponge bath. We don't do laundry. So you tend to wear clothes for - until you can't wear them anymore. So it's probably just as well that the sense of smell is somewhat diminished.

 

PETTIT: Yeah, I agree with that, particularly after about six months.

 

HOFFMAN: I've watched the faces of some of the crew after you land, when the hatch to the Shuttle opens, and the first person comes in. It's interesting to watch how their noses wrinkle up when they get the first whiff of the air that we've become used to and aren't really that sensitized to. So I suspect it's as Don says: It's not an Alpine meadow up there.

 

FLATOW: Timothy Grant(ph) from Twitter asks: What's the emotional feeling when the clock his T-zero, and you start to feel that thrust?

 

HOFFMAN: You'll get different answers from different astronauts. There are some people who tell you that they really don't like launches because of the risk involved, and they love being in space, but they'd just as soon there were a safer way to get up there.

 

Everybody has their own way of dealing with risk. I guess I'm fortunate enough, I've always been able to take the attitude that it - I'm prepared for something. Everything that I can possibly do if we have a problem, I've been trained in. I'm confident that I and my crewmembers can do it. And if something happens that I don't have any control over, well, there's no point worrying about it.

 

So I remember my very first flight, when I realized, you know, I've been dreaming of doing this since I was six years old. Sit back and enjoy the flight. And it really is quite an experience. I mean, when the engines light and you get that big kick in the pants and you look out the window and ground is falling away from you and you break the speed of sound and about 45 seconds going straight up, I mean, it is a feeling of immense power. And, for me, it's always been incredibly exciting. At the same time, I'm sort of holding on and hoping, geez, I hope this thing holds together. And it always has.

 

LICHTMAN: Let's go to the phones. Jim in Birmingham, Alabama, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. Do you have a question?

 

JIM: Hello, yes. I'm a baby boomer, born in 1954. Sputnik was launched in 1957, when I was three. Twelve years later, astronauts were walking on the moon. And there was just such a tremendous rate of progress. You know, many in my generation came to expect that, well, by the year 2012, people will be living in colonies on the moon and on Mars.

 

You know, it's - we built this wonderful International Space Station, but, you know, nature gave us a great space station right up there only a quarter of a million miles away. And I kind of feel a little ripped off that we didn't get that future. And I want to know if you guys kind of feel that way, too.

 

FLATOW: Don?

 

PETTIT: Well, I don't feel - I feel that we've been moving slowly, but we've been making steady progress. And the best is yet to be in terms of human beings expanding away from Earth. And one thing that I think history will show, when the space station - when we're looking back and space station years like we're currently looking back at the Apollo years, people will remark on, one, how difficult how that was, and how much we learned from that.

 

But right now, we're right in the middle of all of that, and we really don't see the forest for the trees - at least those that aren't intimately involved in the program. And I kind of think it might have been that way with the Apollo program, as well. After the first trip to the moon, people were wondering: Why are we keeping - keep going back? And afterwards, we say: Gosh, why did we quit going to the moon?

 

Anyway, I think we are making progress with human exploration in space and with robotic exploration of space, and hang on to your hats, because what we will uncover in the future, I think people will find amazing.

 

FLATOW: We're got a tweet here from ScottMo(ph), who says: Did traveling to space affect your faith, and if so, how? Any comments on that?

 

HOFFMAN: Well, I'll mention - a lot of people ask that. Being in space, it's not a sectarian experience, in that sense of affecting faith. I mean, we've had people from all the major religions, as well as agnostics and atheists. I think the one common thing that everybody will say is that being up there, looking back at the Earth, looking out at the universe from a completely different perspective, it gives you a sense of true awe, and I mean in the deepest sense of the word.

 

And in some cases, that is translated into a personal religious faith, in other cases not. That really depends more on the individual's, you know, personal religious feelings. But that sense of awe, I think, is something which we all share.

 

LICHTMAN: Here's a question from Facebook, from Rebecca Starr(ph). She asks: Would you rather help build a moon base or go to Mars on a manned mission? Don, either?

 

PETTIT: I will take whatever falls in my lap. However, I think it's wise to go to the moon and build a moon base before we venture off on Mars. And that's a personal opinion, and I know these opinions vary widely. I like a quote that I heard from Krafft Ehricke, who was a German rocket scientist that came to the United States and helped us with our program after World War II.

 

And I heard him give a talk, and he said that if God had intended man to be a space-faring species, he would have given us a moon.

 

FLATOW: That's quite interesting.

 

HOFFMAN: On the other hand, I have to say, I don't think, at the moment, that we really need to build a moon base, because I'd like to explore the moon. The moon is a big place, and there's a lot of places to explore before we actually commit ourselves to building a base at any one specific part. I think what we really should do is take off kind of where the late Apollo missions left off and apply 21st-century technology and figure out how to do it affordably.

 

This actually relates back to one of the previous questions of, you know, why didn't we keep doing it? I mean, it really was amazing that we developed this incredible capability to go to the moon, and then we threw it all away. But people have to remember that when President Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon, it was never planned to be a continual, sustained process.

 

We were there to beat the Russians, and we did, and then we stopped. We've got to learn now how to do it more affordably and do it sustainably so that we can keep on going, and that's, I think, what the big challenge is going to be.

 

LICHTMAN: Let's go to the phones - Daniel in El Cerrito, California.

 

DANIEL: Hi. I just want to say thank you, first off, for SCIENCE FRIDAY. I listen every Friday at work, and it's always good entertainment. And I just wanted to thank Don for his Science off the Sphere YouTube channel, because I watch that all the time, and I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to check it out. And I'll take the comments off the air, thank you.

 

LICHTMAN: Thanks.

 

FLATOW: Well, we do the best we can in bringing you our stuff. And Don?

 

PETTIT: I thoroughly enjoyed making the raw material that the APS site and Science off the Sphere were able to warp into a presentable manner for viewing. And I think they have about 15 or 16 episodes now. I made enough material for about 40 to 45 episodes.

 

FLATOW: Wow. Wow.

 

PETTIT: So, again, the best is yet to be.

 

FLATOW: We're going to have you and Flora get together.

 

LICHTMAN: Yeah. Let's talk about that later.

 

FLATOW: Well, you know, one thing that you have in common, both of you - and we will - I was thinking about this before - is that you both investigated how toys work in space. You spent a lot of time doing that.

 

HOFFMAN: Yeah, I - it was on my very first space flight. We did the first toys in space. We really started it as an educational project. You know, how do you do something that young kids can relate to? Because you talk about weightlessness and gravity and Newton, and, you know, that's fine at high school and college. But elementary school students haven't really studied a lot yet, but they sure know how toys work. And to see how differently a lot of them behave in space really brings home to them that you're in a very different environment.

 

And I think this has been - this whole theme has been taken on other flights, and Don's done a great job with it. And, you know, anything that we can do to excite these young kids, get them interested, get them thinking about how things work, you know, that's what creates budding scientists and engineers, and we need more of them.

 

PETTIT: And there's a common scientific engineering thread in many of our toys, and I think that can be demonstrated by people like Jeff and I. We just haven't grown up. We're still playing with our toys.

 

LICHTMAN: I'd like to remind people...

 

HOFFMAN: We haven't grown up. You sound like my wife.

 

LICHTMAN: People should go to our website and check out some of Don's videos, which we have. Remember that the classic "Candy Corn in Space" video came from Don Pettit.

 

FLATOW: I just showed that at the AGU...

 

LICHTMAN: Oh, yeah?

 

FLATOW: ...previously, a little bit of that. Yeah, it's a great - great stuff there. And I remember Jeff used to come on. When we did Newton's apple, we had some of his stuff on.

 

HOFFMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

 

PETTIT: Oh. And...

 

HOFFMAN: We had yo-yos in space. That was a lot of fun.

 

PETTIT: And speaking of the candy corn, I reshot that again in high definition on this last mission where I started earlier in the sequence of shoving the candy corns into the sphere. So I - when I find that video chunk in some - some 10 terabytes of data that came back from my mission, I'll be able to put together a candy corn version two.

 

FLATOW: All right. We'll have to get - I'll have to have Leslie Taylor bring our - our webmaster bring up that "Candy Corn in Space" on our website because that feature is great also. And...

 

LICHTMAN: Yeah. I look forward to the sequel. I have a question for you that I've been wondering about, flip one of my own in. When you dream in space, do you start dreaming in zero G?

 

FLATOW: Hmm.

 

HOFFMAN: I tend not to remember a lot of dreams because you only remember your dreams if - when you wake up while dreaming. But I do remember one dream on my very first spaceflight, and I actually dreamed that I was back on Earth, which is bizarre.

 

I will say that when I was back on Earth during my 20 years as an astronaut, I never dreamed about space. But once I left the astronaut office and I realized I wasn't going to get into space again, I started to have dreams about being in space, which obviously shows that it did have some impact on my psyche.

 

FLATOW: This is NPR - this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow with Flora Lichtman, talking with two astronauts: Don Pettit, Jeff Hoffman. Don, did you dream in space?

 

PETTIT: Yes. When I'm on Earth, I dream frequently about flying, and I don't have to flap my arms. I just kind of lean back, and I'm floating around the room, not like Peter Pan, but - because if I say that, then some of my colleagues will put my face on a Peter Pan and tape it to my office door. But anyway, it's sort of like Peter Pan.

 

When I'm in space, I dream about walking, you know, walking in fields of grass and walking through the woods. And I think it just shows that human beings are malcontent, that wherever they are, they want to be someplace else.

 

FLATOW: Hmm. Let me get a tweet in from Thomas Burns(ph), who says: My nine-year-old son wants to know how long they train to be astronauts, and what should he do now to start training?

 

PETTIT: Ooh. Math, science and engineering.

 

FLATOW: STEM. Yeah.

 

HOFFMAN: And don't forget your English and foreign languages because we've got to communicate, and spaceflight these days is more and more an international enterprise. But I think the general thing in particular for younger students is excellence in everything you do, and that's what NASA will look for when they select astronauts.

 

PETTIT: And if you look at what the job entails, we're going someplace where human beings really weren't meant to be. And the only reason we can be there is because we take machines with us, mechanisms to give us the things that we need, whether it's propulsion and attitude control or life support.

 

And you have to understand how these machines work, or you're literally not even a babe lost in the woods. You're a babe lost in space. And you got to know how these machines work. You got to know how to fix them when they break because they always seem to be breaking, and that's just the way it is. And that takes math and science and engineering.

 

And so I tell students of all ages that if you want to fly in space, at least in this era of time, you got to know how to do these things, because if something breaks down or you don't know what to do, it's no longer minus 10 points on an exam.

 

FLATOW: You know, Jeff's comments about another - speaking another language is relevant even more so. I know he didn't mean it this way, but we may not be the country that goes back into space. You may want to learn another language for the country that may beat us going back there in - to the moon or to Mars. Flora, you got...

 

LICHTMAN: Yeah. We have a tweet that asks: Does food taste different in space? Just to lighten it up.

 

FLATOW: Does food taste different in space?

 

HOFFMAN: Well, I commented how your sense of smell is decreased. Because of that, a lot of astronauts tend to put hot sauce, extra, you know, Tabasco sauce - they give us a lot of Tabasco sauce and I used a lot more in space than I do back home.

 

FLATOW: Maybe it's because you were based in Houston.

 

FLATOW: I think that did it.

 

HOFFMAN: Well, we like our spicy food down there, the jalapeno peppers. People have taken jalapeno peppers out there. It's, yeah. So, you know, you don't go into space to have a three-star gourmet experience.

 

FLATOW: Yeah.

 

HOFFMAN: But the food, in reality, is a lot better than it used to be. If anybody who's done backpacking, the dehydrated foods, the meal's ready to eat that were originally developed for the military, is certainly a far cry from, you know, squeezing your dinner out of a tube like they did back in the Mercury and Gemini days a long time ago.

 

FLATOW: All right. We're going to take a break and come back and talk lots more about space. Our number, 1-800-989-8255. You can also tweet us @scifri, S-C-I-F-R-I. Don't go away. We'll be right back after this break.

 

LICHTMAN: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

 

FLATOW: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow, with Flora Lichtman. It's our Ask an Astronaut hour.

 

LICHTMAN: Our guests are NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who's flown in space three times and just got back from a six-and-a-half month stint aboard the ISS, and Jeffrey Hoffman, who is a NASA astronaut for almost 20 years and is now a professor at MIT. And let's go straight to the phones. Eric in San Francisco. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

 

ERIC: Hi, thanks a lot and thanks for being on the show. My question is whether or to you believe that intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe, and if so, have humans been noticed by it?

 

LICHTMAN: Don?

 

PETTIT: I have not seen any evidence that intelligent life exists elsewhere, no green men with almond-shaped eyes in flying saucers and things like that. So if there - in the terms of is there life out there, there could very well be life on Mars. We've seen some evidence that there might be life on Mars from fossils found in Martian meteorites that have ended up on Earth. And it will be interesting to see as time unfolds with our Martian exploration whether we ultimately run across some form of simple life forms on Mars and whether or not we call them intelligent, I guess we'll just have to see what happens when we run across them.

 

FLATOW: I have one other question while we're talking about, Don, you spent six months in space. NASA just announced that they're going to be putting a program together to put an astronaut in the space station for a year. What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to that person who's going to be - or people who are going to be spending a year in the space station?

 

PETTIT: Pack your bags wisely.

 

PETTIT: There's a lot to it in terms - if you're going to be off the planet for that length of time, you need to make sure that you have a number of personal and family things taken into account before you go. And where you're going, you want to carefully think about what you might bring with you. You're allowed to bring a small volume of personal things and you need to make sure that you're going to have hobbies, basically, that you can work on in your off-duty time. There is some off-duty time and you can't work all the time. And during your off-duty time, you need some meaningful way to spend these off-duty moments,

 

LICHTMAN: Let's go to Ken in Clarksville, Tennessee. Hi, Ken.

 

KEN: Hello?

 

LICHTMAN: You're on SCIFRI.

 

KEN: Yes. OK. I just want to ask if - what they think of - somebody mentioned terra-forming Mars and the moon earlier and I was going to ask what would they think of putting sulfur hexafluoride plus two earth gases like nitrogen and oxygen, you wouldn't need a lot because all we need to do, if the plant's growing, it would make the oxygen. Some nitrogen would be needed. But the sulfur hexafluoride is to get the - to cause a greenhouse gas warming of Mars, because at 80 degrees, you know, average temperature of 80 degrees below zero, I don't think plants are going to do well. But...

 

LICHTMAN: Bring climate change to Mars.

 

HOFFMAN: I can talk about that a little bit. We actually believe from what we've learned about Mars, that at one time Mars probably did have an atmosphere and there was liquid water on the surface. The problem is that Mars, we think, once had a magnetic field which blocked cosmic rays and the solar wind from coming in. Mars cooled off, the magnetic field stopped and the solar wind basically ripped away Mars' atmosphere which - and that's the problem. If you- to try to terra-form Mars without creating another Martian magnetic field, you would just loose the atmosphere all over again, unless, we could figure out some other way of maintaining the atmosphere. I don't want to say it's impossible to do, but it would take a tremendous amount of energy and technology which, at the moment, we absolutely do not have.

 

FLATOW: Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Don Pettit, NASA astronaut who has logged more than 350 days in orbit. He just got back from spending a six-and-a-half months living aboard the International Space Station. Jeff Hoffman, who was a NASA astronaut for almost 20 years. He has flown in space five times including this Herculean effort that he and his colleague did to repair - the famous repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. We have you and your fellow astronauts to thank for that. He is now professor in the department of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Thank you, guys, for taking time to be with us.

 

Forty years after the final moonwalk, former NASA agent launches appeal for the missing Moon rocks

 

Jacqui Goddard - BBC News

 

As the last in a series of only 12 men to walk on the Moon and gaze back at the Earth from 250,000 miles away, Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan and lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt wanted to bring back something symbolic.

 

As they wrapped up their third and final moonwalk on December 13, 1972, they paused to reflect on the magnitude of their achievement and the message of peace, hope and unity they felt it should represent to people back on Earth.

 

"To remind all the people of the world that this is what we are all striving for in the future, Jack has picked up a very significant rock," Cernan told mission controllers in Houston, standing alongside his partner on the lunar surface.

 

The sample, comprised "many fragments, many sizes and many shapes, probably from all parts of the Moon, perhaps billions of years old, sort of living together in a very coherent, very peaceful manner," he noted. Schmitt requested that pieces of the rock be distributed to museums and agencies worldwide, representing their hopes for the future of mankind.

 

Yet 40 years on, most of those goodwill gifts – and others brought back by the first men on the Moon, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – have instead become symbols of greed, carelessness and criminality.

 

President Nixon distributed 269 fragments of Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 moon rock to 135 nations. Today, 159 of them are unaccounted for, either lost, stolen or destroyed.

 

In addition, each of America's states and the District of Columbia were given two pieces, one from each mission; of those 100 samples, 19 are missing, plus one belonging to Puerto Rico and another to the US Virgin Islands.

 

The hunt to locate them and restore them to the purpose for which they were intended, led by a law professor who was formerly a senior special agent in Nasa's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), has lasted for more than a decade.

 

As America marks the 40th anniversary this week of man's final lunar foray, reflecting on the accomplishments of the Apollo era and looking ahead to new space exploration challenges, he has issued a call for lunar larcenists to search their consciences and relinquish their haul.

 

"This was what the sacrifice of astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan was all about – they brought back the Moon to the people of the Earth. The Moon!" said Prof Gutheinz.

 

"Some people were in awe of it. Some people put it in boxes and forgot about it. Some people stole it. They stole the Moon and it's time we got it back."

 

As an undercover agent with the OIG, Prof Gutheinz led a sting operation that led to the recovery of Guatemala's Apollo 17 rock, which had been stolen from the state by a retired military officer, sold to a Florida businessman and then offered for sale for $5 million.

 

Since leaving the OIG ten years ago, Prof Gutheinz and his criminal justice students at the University of Phoenix, in Arizona, and others, have located dozens of rocks whose whereabouts were previously unknown. Among them were rocks presented to the people of Colorado, Missouri and West Virginia but found to have been retained for decades by past governors in their homes or offices.

 

Ireland's Apollo 11 rock was accidentally discarded at a landfill site. Nicaragua's ended up with a Las Vegas collector. Malta's Apollo 17 souvenir was stolen from a museum that failed to keep it under lock and key, Romania's was appropriated by dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and then sold to an unknown buyer as part of his estate following his death in 1989. Spain's was last thought to be in the possession of the former dictator General Francisco Franco's grandchildren.

 

Alaska's Apollo 11 relic found its way into the hands of a crab fisherman, Coleman Anderson, who claimed that he retrieved it in 1973 from the debris of a museum fire. When finally tracked down by Elizabeth Riker, one of Prof Gutheinz's students, in 2010, he launched a lawsuit against the state maintaining that he was the rightful owner and that if it wanted it back, they must pay him.

 

Last week, Mr Anderson – whose foster father was the museum's curator – finally dropped his case, after state prosecutors obtained witness testimony countering his version of events. On Thursday, the rock – encased in an acrylic ball and mounted on a plaque – was returned to the state to go on public display.

 

"Many times I feel that plaintiffs are asking for the Moon," said Alaska's assistant Attorney General Neil Slotnick. "This is the first time that that was literally true."

 

Prof Gutheinz now hopes to make several overseas trips in search of lost lunar snippets.

 

"It just amazes me that all these pieces of the Moon – Cyprus's piece, Malta's, Spain's, Romania's – are all out there and yet I don't see much energy on the part of law enforcement to do what they should be doing to find them. That bothers me," he said.

 

"It's like a shot to the gut when you think of how these astronauts brought back a piece of the Moon to inspire and send a message to the children of the world – children that have never seen them because someone stuck them in a drawer, or took them home for themselves, or stole them.

 

"Each of these pieces of the Moon has a story and in too many cases that story is a case of 'Well, what the heck happened?"

 

Can Golden Spike make it to the moon?

 

Nancy Trejos - USA Today (Commentary)

 

(Trejos writes about her favorite hobby: Traveling. She's been all over, from Chicago to Colombia, Nevada to Nairobi, Boston to Beirut. She's also covered education, Iraq, and personal finance.)

 

It's been 40 years since Apollo 17 made the last manned voyage to the moon.

 

Now, a group of former NASA executives is trying to make it back to the moon, and some space experts say they've got the brains and the business plan to do it.

 

Startup Golden Spike on Thursday announced its plans to fly spacecraft to the moon by 2020. The price tag: $1.5 billion roundtrip for two people.

 

The two men in charge of it have lofty resumes. Gerry Griffin, the Chairman of the Board, is a former director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston. President and CEO Alan Stern is a former head of NASA's science mission directorate.

 

Stern told Today in the Sky that the Colorado-chartered venture should be able to start operations with about $8 billion. To keep costs down, the company plans to partner with other private companies that are already developing rockets and capsules. Once they have a rocket and a capsule, all they have to come up with is a lunar lander and spacesuits.

 

Rather than target wealthy individuals who want to go to the moon, Golden Spike is primarily going after nations that can't develop their own spacecraft to get there.

 

"The news here is, wow, we can go back to the moon, and American industry is coming up with ways to the moon a lot sooner than we thought," said James Muncy, president of the space policy consulting firm PoliSpace in Alexandria, Va.

 

NASA relinquished its near- monopoly on U.S. space transportation by retiring the Space Shuttle program last year. Since then, at least a dozen private companies have emerged to build spaceships to replace the shuttle's duties.

 

Last Spring, private firm SpaceX came the closest when its Dragon spacecraft made a successful cargo flight to the International Space Station.

 

But no company has set out to send humans into space until Golden Spike. Its name refers to the gold spike that completed the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

 

"The time is right," Stern said. "Five years ago, even three years ago, we didn't have the private space capsule and rockets to make this work … And I think five years from now we will be in catch-up mode with our competition."

 

Muncy said the technology already exists to make trips to the moon. Private companies have developed rockets and capsule that can make it to the moon, perhaps with some adjustments, he said.

 

Much of that has been done with NASA funding, said Jonathan Card, executive director of the Space Frontier Foundation.

 

"The pieces have all been built largely with various aspects of NASA money, as part of NASA contracts," he said. "The pieces are already in place."

 

At a press conference, Golden Spike said getting to the moon would require four separate launches. During the first two, existing rockets would propel spacecraft and the lander into the moon's orbit. The second two launches would deliver the people to the lander.

 

David Livingston, host of popular Internet radio program The Space Show, said he has confidence in Golden Spike's leaders. "They're really tops of the tops," he said.

 

Still, they face significant challenges, Livingston said.

 

For one, the rockets and capsules they will rely on to get them to the moon are still being tested and developed.

 

They are also raising money for the venture in a weak domestic and global economy.

 

Regulation could also become an issue. They don't know what regulatory hurdles they could face from the U.S. Congress, Livingston said. "The regulatory world for space is still a little bit of an unknown," Livingston said. "They're really braving a new world here."

 

Muncy said the other unknown factor is how big the company's clientele will be. "The question is will the countries actually sign up?" he said.

 

Stern acknowledged that the mission he and his partners have undertaken isn't an easy one.

 

"We have a lot of hurdles," he told Sky. "Let's face it, we are recreating the capability of NASA's Apollo program in the 1960s."

 

He said he's not worried that the rockets and capsules are still in development. "We designed our schedule to match exactly that," he said.

 

The economy, he said, could improve. And the regulatory landscape is an unknown for anyone in aerospace.

 

But the company has some heavyweight supporters from both sides of the aisle, including former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat.

 

"That's why our Board of Advisors has some pretty amazing people on it to help us work through that," he said.

 

He estimates that there are 20 to 30 nations that could be interested in working with Golden Spike.

 

"We think it's a pretty healthy marketplace and there's no competition," he said.

 

He added: "We're very confident in our numbers. I've been doing this my entire life and we have the best people in the world."

 

END