Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - December 26, 2012

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 26, 2012 7:21:52 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - December 26, 2012

Hope everyone had a safe and Merry Christmas!   

 

 

 

NASA TV: 8:15 am Central (9:15 EST) –  E34 CDR Kevin Ford with Notre Dame Communications Office

 

Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Revealed: Nasa plan to 'lasso' asteroid the size of two buses and turn it into a 'space station' to orbit the moon

 

Sean O'Hare - London Daily Mail

 

Nasa scientists are planning to capture a 500 ton asteroid , relocate it and turn it into a space station for astronauts on their way to Mars. The White House's Office of Science and technology will consider the £1.6bn plan in the coming weeks as it prepares to set its space exploration agenda for the next decade. If approved it would be the first time a celestial object has ever been moved by humans. A feasibility report prepared by Nasa and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists outlined how they would go about capturing the asteroid.

 

Fiscal cliff cutbacks could harm NASA, NOAA

 

Florida Today

 

As negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff heat up, the loss of federal funds on the study of weather and climate change likely has been underestimated. The shortage of funding could have a great effect on the nation's civil space program and the ability to accurately forecast dangerous storms. A new economic impact analysis concludes that more than 20,000 NASA contractor jobs and more than 2,500 NOAA jobs related to weather satellites could be lost in 2013 if the Budget Control Act's sequestration mandate takes effect.

 

NASA Langley faces fiscal cliff, too

 

Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press

 

If the "fiscal cliff" isn't averted by Congress by January, triggering $109 billion in automatic spending cuts for the next 10 years, NASA Langley Research Center would be among the agencies facing serious job losses, according to a new study by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). The AIA states that an 8.2 percent sequestration cut mandated under the Budget Control Act of 2011 would eliminate 713 contract jobs at Langley. Those cuts and thousands more at other NASA facilities, the AIA claims in its report, "are the single greatest threat to our space programs' continued success."

 

Fit for Flight? Space Tourism Lacks Medical Standards

 

Elizabeth Howell - Space.com

 

The rise of space tourism is going to bring a new headache to doctors' doors: whether or not to approve their patients for spaceflight. Worse, a new paper cautions, there is no established protocol in place to judge a person fit for making the trip. The new study stops short of suggesting rigid regulation, saying that too much of it would hurt the space tourism industry before it even gets off the ground. Rather, the researchers encourage doctors to "consider developing a resource file for future reference." Lead author Marlene Grenon said her team's recent paper in the British Medical Journal was designed to make doctors aware of potential health issues related to spaceflight. How to set medical standards, and the implications for insurance, are matters for further research, she said.

 

Astronauts Celebrate Christmas on Space Station

 

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

 

Christmas in orbit might not look exactly like the holidays on Earth, but the astronauts living on the International Space Station this holiday season try to make the orbiting science laboratory as homey as possible. The six members of the station's Expedition 34 crew, three of whom just arrived last week, will all be spending Christmas and New Years Day aboard the spacecraft, but that doesn't mean they don't get to celebrate. Hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface, the spaceflyers will eat, exchange gifts, and be merry during Christmas and when welcoming in the New Year. You can send the International Space Station's Expedition 34 crew a holiday card for Christmas and the New Year by visiting: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/postcard/

 

Jerry Cook named deputy director of Stennis Space Center

 

Associated Press

 

NASA has named Jerry Cook as deputy director of its John C. Stennis Space Center. Stennis, near the Louisiana state line, is NASA's primary test facility for rocket engines and propulsion systems. Cook was formerly associate program manager of the Space Launch System Program Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. He began his NASA career in 1985 as a test engineer at Marshall, working his way into management.

 

Cleanliness is key for robotic space explorers

Welcome to an arcane niche of science called planetary protection — or, how to explore space without messing it up

 

Scott Gold - Los Angeles Times

 

The concrete-floored room looks, at first glance, like little more than a garage. There is a red tool chest, its drawers labeled: "Hacksaws." "Allen wrenches." There are stepladders and vise grips. There is also, at one end of the room, a half-built spaceship, and everyone is wearing toe-to-fingertip protective suits. "Don't. Touch. Anything." Bruce Jakosky says the words politely but tautly, like a protective father — which, effectively, he is. Jakosky is the principal investigator behind NASA's next mission to Mars, putting him in the vanguard of an arcane niche of science: planetary protection — the science of exploring space without messing it up. As NASA pursues the search for life in the solar system, the cleanliness of robotic explorers is crucial to avoid contaminating other worlds. Contaminants from Earth could inadvertently kill life forms on other planets just as we discover that they exist.

 

Mikulski to Chair Senate Appropriations Committee

 

Doug Messier - Parabolic Arc

 

Maryland Senator and NASA backer Barbara Mikulski is set to get a big promotion, moving up to become the first female chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.  The new role will give Mikulski, who has served in the Senate for 26 years, greater influence over spending on the entire federal budget. The unexpected decision came after the death last week of Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye. Several other senators in line for the position reportedly passed on the assignment. Mikulski is the current chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science, which oversees funding for NASA,  National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce, Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

 

Mikulski to lead Senate Appropriations Committee

Maryland Democrat will be spending panel's first woman chair

 

Baltimore Sun

 

In an unexpected move that could have significant implications for Maryland, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski will be named the first female chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. The Baltimore native and Maryland Democrat, who had been the most senior member of the U.S. Senate without a committee gavel, was suddenly in line to head the influential spending panel following behind-the-scenes maneuvering for chairmanships that played out after the death Monday of its former chairman, Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. The Democratic caucus is expected to formally approve her chairmanship Thursday.

 

Private venture wants to keep its wary eye out for asteroids

Deep-space telescope could be ready in 2018

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

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

 

NASA chief touts 'Gangnam' parody, 'NASA Johnson Style'

 

Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times

 

NASA's purpose and vision might be a mystery to some, but the agency's top official says there's a quick primer on the space agency's mission and accomplishments. And it's done Gangnam style. "I find, as I travel around, not very many people know what we do today," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said last Wednesday to a National Research Council committee that is reviewing the agency's human spaceflight program. Luckily, he added, there's a solution. Created by interns at Johnson Space Center, "NASA Johnson Style" spoofs South Korean pop star Psy's viral hit, "Gangnam Style," while waxing lyrical about the Houston center that's home to NASA's astronaut program. The music video has picked up 3.6 million YouTube views since being published one week ago, and features clever references describing the work at the International Space Station.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Revealed: Nasa plan to 'lasso' asteroid the size of two buses and turn it into a 'space station' to orbit the moon

 

Sean O'Hare - London Daily Mail

 

Nasa scientists are planning to capture a 500 ton asteroid , relocate it and turn it into a space station for astronauts on their way to Mars.

 

The White House's Office of Science and technology will consider the £1.6bn plan in the coming weeks as it prepares to set its space exploration agenda for the next decade.

 

If approved it would be the first time a celestial object has ever been moved by humans.

 

A feasibility report prepared by Nasa and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists outlined how they would go about capturing the asteroid.

 

A, 'asteroid capture capsule' would be attached to an old Atlas V rocket and directed the asteroid between the earth and the moon.

 

Once close, the asteroid capsule would release a 50ft diameter bag that wrap around the spinning rock using drawstrings.

 

The craft would then turn on its thrusters, using an estimated 300kg of propellant, to stop the asteroid in its tracks and tow it into a gravitationally neutral spot.

 

From here space explorers would have a stationary base from which to launch trips deeper into space.

 

The report said: 'The idea of exploiting the natural resources of asteroids dates back over a hundred years, but only now has the technology become available to make this idea a reality.

 

'The feasibility is enabled by three key developments: the ability to discover and characterize an adequate number of sufficiently small near-Earth asteroids for capture and return; the ability to implement sufficiently powerful solar electric propulsion systems to enable transportation of the captured asteroid; and the proposed human presence in cislunar space in the 2020s enabling exploration and exploitation of the returned asteroid.

 

Nasa declined to comment on the project because it said it was in negotiations with the White House, but it is believed that technology would make it possible within 10-12 years.

 

The technology would also open up the possibility of mining other asteroids for their metals and minerals.

 

Some are full of iron which could be used for in the making of new space stations, others are made up of water which could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make fuel.

 

Earlier this year Planetary Resources, a company based in Seattle with billionaires including former US presidential candidate Ross Perot and Google's Eric Schmidt and Larry Page among its investors, said it plans to mine 'near Earth asteroids' within 10 years.

 

The project would coincide the Osiris-Rex project that in 2016 will see a spacecraft visit an asteroid called 1999 RQ36 and take samples of it back to Earth.

 

It is hoped that the project will increase our understanding of asteroids, and even shed new light on the origin of life on Earth.

 

The 1999 RQ36 is the most accessible organic-rich asteroid from the early solar system, its average diameter is approximately 1,600 feet or about the size of four football fields.

 

The fact the asteroid is rich in carbon, a key element in organic molecules necessary for life, means it could explain more about the building blocks of life on our own planet.

US space agency NASA has invited students from around the world to come up with a better name for the 1999 RQ36.

 

A panel will review the proposed asteroid names and the International Astronomical Union Committee for Small-Body Nomenclature will approve the winning name.

 

'Our mission will be focused on this asteroid for more than a decade," said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the mission at the University of Arizona.

 

'We look forward to having a name that is easier to say than repeated manned missions and that the undertaking would help build up experience for future jaunts into space.

 

Should any further space exploration take place, there's a good chance that the astronauts will wear the new  suit unveiled last week on the photo-sharing website Flickr.

 

Its design has led to parallels being drawn with the suit worn by Buzz Lightyear, the space ranger action figure.

 

A large hemispherical transparent dome covering the wearer's head also looks remarkably similar to that worn by Buzz - although the latest pictures do not make clear if Nasa's version comes pre-programmed catchphrases.

 

The main advance in Nasa's rather more primitive effort is that it will have an entry point at the rear to make it easier to don than previous suits.

 

Astronauts will be able to climb into it as quickly as you see in films, and not take an hour as they do now. The new suit will also effectively be its own airlock, dispensing with the need to spend time getting the pressure right.

 

There will be better bearings on the legs, ankles, hips and waist to help astronauts move more naturally whilst a urethane-coated nylon and polyester layers control the pressure more efficiently.

 

The 'Z-1 Prototype Spacesuit and Portable Life Support System (PLSS) 2.0', to give it its full title, will hopefully be ready in the next couple of years.

 

Fiscal cliff cutbacks could harm NASA, NOAA

 

Florida Today

 

As negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff heat up, the loss of federal funds on the study of weather and climate change likely has been underestimated.

 

The shortage of funding could have a great effect on the nation's civil space program and the ability to accurately forecast dangerous storms.

 

A new economic impact analysis concludes that more than 20,000 NASA contractor jobs and more than 2,500 NOAA jobs related to weather satellites could be lost in 2013 if the Budget Control Act's sequestration mandate takes effect.

 

"The biggest single threat to our space programs' continued success are arbitrary and capricious budget cuts," said AIA President and CEO Marion C. Blakey.

 

Stephen S. Fuller, Dwight Schar Faculty Chair and University Professor and Director for Regional Analysis at George Mason University conducted the study on behalf of the Aerospace Industries Association.

 

NASA Langley faces fiscal cliff, too

 

Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press

 

If the "fiscal cliff" isn't averted by Congress by January, triggering $109 billion in automatic spending cuts for the next 10 years, NASA Langley Research Center would be among the agencies facing serious job losses, according to a new study by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).

 

The AIA states that an 8.2 percent sequestration cut mandated under the Budget Control Act of 2011 would eliminate 713 contract jobs at Langley.

 

Those cuts and thousands more at other NASA facilities, the AIA claims in its report, "are the single greatest threat to our space programs' continued success."

 

NASA Langley referred comment on the matter to its Washington headquarters. There, spokesman Allard Beutel said NASA expects "all sides will reach an agreement to avoid sequestration."

 

"But that being said," Beutel said, "we're still assessing what impact it would have, if it actually goes through in a couple weeks."

 

According to the journal Nature, the federal Office of Management and Budget expects that under sequestration NASA would lose $417 million from its science budget, $346 million for space operations, $309 million for exploration and $246 million for cross-agency support, among other cuts.

 

The AIA is a trade group of manufacturers and suppliers to civil, military and business entities, including NASA. Its study was conducted by Stephen S. Fuller, a public policy expert at George Mason University. According to Fuller's analysis, more than 20,000 NASA contractor jobs overall would be lost under sequestration.

 

There's sharp disagreement on the findings, however.

 

In a scathing response to the AIA report, The Brookings Institution think tank in Washington cautioned that the association's "apocalyptic numbers" are both absurdly specific and flawed.

 

"Such amazingly specific predictions are actually based on very crude and sometimes erroneous assumptions and calculations," Peter W. Singer and Brendan Orino wrote in "The Cracked Crystal Ball" in July in response to an earlier AIA assessment of the sequestration threat.

 

Singer is director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow at Brookings; Orino is a senior research assistant with the inititiative.

 

The authors state it's impossible to devise exact numbers on job losses without knowing exactly where the budget cuts will fall. The AIA's analysis is also based on an overblown assessment of the number of workers now in the aerospace and defense industries and an overestimation of the ripple effect of job losses on the larger economy. And it ignores changes already taking place within the defense industry.

 

In addition to the impact on NASA, the AIA also predicts the loss of 2,500 jobs related to weather satellites at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, jeopardizing the ability to forecast dangerous storms.

 

A short-term gap in polar-orbiting weather satellite coverage is already expected to begin in 2017 because of delays in NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System. Losing an additional $154 million under sequestration would only extend that gap to two to four years, the group states.

 

"The importance of maintaining satellite vigilance of weather phenomena cannot be overemphasized," the report states.

 

Fit for Flight? Space Tourism Lacks Medical Standards

 

Elizabeth Howell - Space.com

 

The rise of space tourism is going to bring a new headache to doctors' doors: whether or not to approve their patients for spaceflight. Worse, a new paper cautions, there is no established protocol in place to judge a person fit for making the trip.

 

The new study stops short of suggesting rigid regulation, saying that too much of it would hurt the space tourism industry before it even gets off the ground. Rather, the researchers encourage doctors to "consider developing a resource file for future reference."

 

Lead author Marlene Grenon said her team's recent paper in the British Medical Journal was designed to make doctors aware of potential health issues related to spaceflight. How to set medical standards, and the implications for insurance, are matters for further research, she said.

 

"The question is, should there be standards set or not?" said Grenon, an assistant professor of vascular surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. "If you start [restricting] the number of people who are going to fly to the healthiest people, you're not going to encourage the market to develop."

 

More data needed

 

Aerospace is one of the most highly regulated industries in the world. In the United States, pilots and crewmembers must pass strict medical exams authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The military has its own set of exams for Navy aviators and Air Force pilots.

 

Standards are even more stringent for NASA astronauts. Laser eye surgery is permitted when an astronaut is selected, but only if it was performed more than a year ago. The ability to cope in small spaces, under high stress, is extensively tested. Nutrition, exercise and mental health are constantly evaluated and recorded in the years of training before an astronaut launches.

 

Physicians have plenty of data about these super-healthy space travellers. But there's little advice available for more ordinary specimens — people with health issues such as osteoporosis, for example. Only a handful of space tourists, politicians and other non-specialized astronauts have journeyed into orbit.

 

Doctors aren't fumbling completely in the dark, though, as they already know many of the effects of weightlessness on the human body. Microgravity hardens arteries, affects eyeballs and weakens bones. Astronauts also can get motion sickness, accumulate large doses of potentially dangerous radiation and experience kidney stones.

 

Kidney stones are never pleasant, but they can be particularly problematic on orbit. In 1982, the Soviet Union planned to evacuate an astronaut with a severe case from its Salyut 7 space station but ultimately decided against it.

 

Setting a standard

 

If a potential space tourist were to pop in Grenon's office today and ask for medical approval, Grenon said her primary tool would be standards set by the company flying the astronaut.

 

This leaves medical procedures in the hands of Virgin Galactic and other private companies, meaning that physical exams are not necessarily subject to government regulation.

 

Doctors are working to fill the gap. In June, an FAA-sponsored medical group suggested guidelines for flight crew and spaceflight participants.

 

The 23-page document suggests pre-flight measures such as medical questionnaires, screening for certain mental health conditions, and chest X-rays and electrocardiograms.

 

The guidelines are not binding, and the FAA's center of excellence for commercial space transportation cautioned that it does not necessarily endorse the recommendations. But Grenon said this effort is the best one put forth so far.

 

Medical tests will matter even more during lengthier space missions, Grenon added. On the first flights, tourists will "only be in microgravity for a few minutes. But as we step more into space and we go into a space hotel, those [conditions] are all things that will need to be better understood."

 

Grenon's co-authors have affiliations with the Canadian Space Agency, Virgin Galactic and several Canadian and U.S. medical schools. One has even been to space — Millie Hughes-Fulford flew on the space shuttle's STS-40 mission in 1991.

 

Astronauts Celebrate Christmas on Space Station

 

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

 

Christmas in orbit might not look exactly like the holidays on Earth, but the astronauts living on the International Space Station this holiday season try to make the orbiting science laboratory as homey as possible.

 

The six members of the station's Expedition 34 crew, three of whom just arrived last week, will all be spending Christmas and New Years Day aboard the spacecraft, but that doesn't mean they don't get to celebrate. Hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface, the spaceflyers will eat, exchange gifts, and be merry during Christmas and when welcoming in the New Year. 

 

The space station crew will be off duty for both Christmas Eve and Christmas. That means that they won't need to work on any of the 110 experiments aboard the station, and they can take as much time for meals as they want, NASA spokeswoman Nicole Cloutier-Lamasters told SPACE.com.

 

The space station residents have a few different decorating options available to them. An earlier expedition left the crewmembers a Christmas tree and stockings made from nomex, a flame resistant fiber that's safe to stow onboard.

 

The week before Christmas was an eventful one for the orbital crew as well. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko arrived on Friday, joining Kevin Ford of NASA, and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin to fill out the $100 billion science laboratory to its usual 6-person capacity.

 

The spaceflyers also have some presents to look forward to. The Progress 48 cargo freighter — a robotic Russian supply ship that launched in early August of this year— carried more than just basic supplies to the ISS. The Progress also brought holiday presents for the spaceflyers who'd be spending Yuletide in space.

 

As well as a traditional meal complete with turkey and candied yams, the crewmembers will also get the chance to video conference with their families. This is a particular treat because video chatting is usually possible only once a week, and involves a lot of planning for mission control and the spaceflyers.

 

Despite NASA's best efforts to make the holidays in space as warm as they are on Earth, that doesn't mean astronauts won't get homesick.

 

Marshburn, for example, has a 10-year-old daughter.

 

"That'll be tough, thinking about her waking up in the morning, enjoying things," said Marshburn during a preflight interview with NASA, "but the fact is we've got some technology that'll allow me, hopefully through an internet or I guess an internet protocol session, to be able to join in with them and see their faces and they can see me. It'll be a little tough for me, as it would be for anybody, but I think the price is certainly well worth it, to be up there."

 

Hadfield celebrated the holidays with his family before leaving for this, his second visit to the space station. Most of his family is spread around the world, Hadfield said during another preflight interview with NASA, so they celebrated the season early by flying to Kazakhstan to spend time with each other before his liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome there. Hadfield is also an avid musician and guitar player, so music — and a guitar that lives on the station — will likely be a part of the Christmas celebration, Cloutier-Lamasters said.

 

For his part, Romanenko said the prospect of a space Christmas is exciting.

 

"I think it will be a big adventure, a big moment in our space life," Romanenko said in a NASA preflight interview. "And we'll be dressing up, we'll be decorating the station, we'll put up a Christmas tree, maybe we'll have some presents that will arrive on the cargo vehicles, which of course will make us very happy and will support us during this evening, this special time."

 

You can send the International Space Station's Expedition 34 crew a holiday card for Christmas and the New Year by visiting: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/postcard/

 

Jerry Cook named deputy director of Stennis Space Center

 

Associated Press

 

NASA has named Jerry Cook as deputy director of its John C. Stennis Space Center.

 

Stennis, near the Louisiana state line, is NASA's primary test facility for rocket engines and propulsion systems.

 

Cook was formerly associate program manager of the Space Launch System Program Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

 

He began his NASA career in 1985 as a test engineer at Marshall, working his way into management.

 

Cook has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Alabama. He has received NASA's Exceptional Service Medal and two NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals.

 

Cleanliness is key for robotic space explorers

Welcome to an arcane niche of science called planetary protection — or, how to explore space without messing it up

 

Scott Gold - Los Angeles Times

 

The concrete-floored room looks, at first glance, like little more than a garage. There is a red tool chest, its drawers labeled: "Hacksaws." "Allen wrenches." There are stepladders and vise grips. There is also, at one end of the room, a half-built spaceship, and everyone is wearing toe-to-fingertip protective suits.

 

"Don't. Touch. Anything."

 

Bruce Jakosky says the words politely but tautly, like a protective father — which, effectively, he is. Jakosky is the principal investigator behind NASA's next mission to Mars, putting him in the vanguard of an arcane niche of science: planetary protection — the science of exploring space without messing it up.

 

As NASA pursues the search for life in the solar system, the cleanliness of robotic explorers is crucial to avoid contaminating other worlds. Contaminants from Earth could inadvertently kill life forms on other planets just as we discover that they exist.

 

The decontamination of spacecraft, an obscure arm of space science, has grown in importance as NASA turned its attention to places such as Mars, Titan and Europa that have environments that are potentially conducive to life.

 

Jakosky's immediate concern is a $671-million probe named the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN orbiter, or MAVEN, which Lockheed Martin Space Systems is building south of Denver.

 

The craft is scheduled to launch in late 2013. Its mission is to delve into Mars' transition from a wet and warm planet to one that is dry and cold — vital research for determining whether Mars ever harbored life.

 

MAVEN should help determine how Mars lost its atmosphere — whether it disappeared, in layman's terms, down or up.

 

Many scientists surmise that the carbon dioxide, water and other hallmarks of early Mars were absorbed into the planet's subsurface. "But they haven't found evidence," Jakosky said. "So maybe it was lost into space. Until we know that, we can't understand how the atmosphere evolved through time."

 

The probe will conduct a thorough examination of Mars' upper atmosphere. The rover Curiosity, which landed in August, is to conduct a similar study of the surface atmosphere.

 

The MAVEN spacecraft needs to be scrubbed so that when it impacts Mars, it is carrying no more than 500,000 spores of microbial life, so few they could fit on the head of a pin. The goal is simple, said Jakosky, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor: "Don't contaminate Mars or jeopardize your science." The trick is in the execution.

 

Many of the achievements that marked the onset of the Space Age meant sending astronauts into space. Today, scientists have entered a gilded age of robotic space exploration.

 

The rover Curiosity is just one in a suite of machines that have been sent to study new corners of space. Other missions will send probes to intercept an asteroid and visit a distant moon that could contain three times as much water as Earth.

 

It is an era fraught with anxiety for those who have the curious task of keeping space free of contamination.

 

"This business is not for the faint of heart," Jakosky says.

 

Planetary protection must operate on three levels at once.

 

First, spacecraft must not bring a potentially harmful level of microbes from Earth to another planet or celestial body. Scientists also must be careful not to mess up their own work — signs of extraterrestrial life could be "discovered" but could actually be false-positives born on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

 

"Taking life from Florida to Mars might give you the wrong impression about Mars," said John D. Rummel, NASA's former planetary protection officer, now a professor of biology at East Carolina University.

 

Most pressingly, when robots or astronauts return with samples from space, scientists must take care not to expose the Earth to alien contaminants. No one knows what would happen — probably nothing, but considering how the Earth struggles with its own invasive species, such as zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, no one wants to find out.

 

Mikulski to Chair Senate Appropriations Committee

 

Doug Messier - Parabolic Arc

 

Maryland Senator and NASA backer Barbara Mikulski is set to get a big promotion, moving up to become the first female chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.  The new role will give Mikulski, who has served in the Senate for 26 years, greater influence over spending on the entire federal budget.

 

The unexpected decision came after the death last week of Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye. Several other senators in line for the position reportedly passed on the assignment.

 

Mikulski is the current chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science, which oversees funding for NASA,  National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce, Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

 

Mikulski has been a strong supporter of the space program because her state includes the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She has been instrumental in preventing the James Webb Space Telescope from being canceled over the program's massive cost overruns and lengthy schedule delays.

 

Mikulski was also instrumental in convincing Orbital Sciences Corporation to launch its new Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Virginia. The Goddard field center runs the Wallops Flight Facility where the spaceport is located. The state of Maryland supports MARS through a cooperative agreement with the commonwealth of Virginia, which owns and operates the launch facility.

 

The senator's efforts to protect the Webb telescope and Maryland's interests have come at a cost to other parts of NASA's budget as the space agency has struggled to field a new generation of human spacecraft to replace the space shuttle and carry out a range of other programs with a flat budget. The Mars exploration program suffered a severe cut, with NASA pulling out of the European-led ExoMars rover program and abandoning any efforts to send a spacecraft to the Red Planet during the 2018 launch window.

 

How Mikulski's promotion will affect NASA, Maryland and federal spending overall is uncertain due to a series of political and budgetary limitations.

 

Mikulski, 76, will take over the panel at a time when the federal government is focused on deficit reduction, meaning the committee will face more hard choices about cuts than about investments. Its influence has waned somewhat since lawmakers banned earmarks — or pet projects often traded for votes — last year.

 

But the committee nevertheless has tremendous sway over federal purse strings, which means Mikulski will be in a position not only to set national policy but to protect the significant presence the federal government has in Maryland — including several agencies that are based in the state….

 

Mikulski has served on the Appropriations Committee since she joined the Senate in 1987 — a rare assignment for a freshman member. Now the most senior woman in Congress, Mikulski has a reputation for fiery oratory on the floor and for a persistent resolve in fighting for Maryland's interests.

 

"There is still a significant federal presence in the state of Maryland, and as chair she is in a position to make sure that those federal entities and those federal employees in her state get a fair shake in the budget appropriations process," said J. Keith Kennedy, a former Appropriations Committee staff chief who is a managing director at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz in Washington….

 

The federal government is supposed to be funded through a series of appropriations bills that pass through the committee, though gridlock has recently forced Congress to keep the government running through stop-gap measures or massive spending bills that cover multiple departments. Mikulski said she hoped to change that practice.

 

Mikulski to lead Senate Appropriations Committee

Maryland Democrat will be spending panel's first woman chair

 

Baltimore Sun

 

In an unexpected move that could have significant implications for Maryland, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski will be named the first female chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

 

The Baltimore native and Maryland Democrat, who had been the most senior member of the U.S. Senate without a committee gavel, was suddenly in line to head the influential spending panel following behind-the-scenes maneuvering for chairmanships that played out after the death Monday of its former chairman, Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.

 

The Democratic caucus is expected to formally approve her chairmanship Thursday.

 

Mikulski, 76, will take over the panel at a time when the federal government is focused on deficit reduction, meaning the committee will face more hard choices about cuts than about investments. Its influence has waned somewhat since lawmakers banned earmarks — or pet projects often traded for votes — last year.

 

But the committee nevertheless has tremendous sway over federal purse strings, which means Mikulski will be in a position not only to set national policy but to protect the significant presence the federal government has in Maryland — including several agencies that are based in the state.

 

"Senators don't sit around waiting for these things, so this came as a surprise," Mikulski said in an interview Wednesday. "It's a big honor to chair this committee."

 

Mikulski has served on the Appropriations Committee since she joined the Senate in 1987 — a rare assignment for a freshman member. Now the most senior woman in Congress, Mikulski has a reputation for fiery oratory on the floor and for a persistent resolve in fighting for Maryland's interests.

 

"There is still a significant federal presence in the state of Maryland, and as chair she is in a position to make sure that those federal entities and those federal employees in her state get a fair shake in the budget appropriations process," said J. Keith Kennedy, a former Appropriations Committee staff chief who is a managing director at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz in Washington.

 

"She's been doing that her entire political career," he said.

 

It is the first time a Maryland lawmaker has held a chairmanship of one of the Senate's 16 standing committees since former Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes led the Banking Committee a decade ago.

 

As late as Wednesday afternoon, Mikulski was considered most likely to take over the chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The shuffle for committee assignments occurred largely out of sight as senators were still mourning Inouye's death. Mikulski and other senior lawmakers in line for a committee remained mum.

 

But by Wednesday evening it became clear that Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy had turned down the Appropriations gavel even though, as the Senate's most senior member, he was entitled to take it. Leahy will remain chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The next in line for the post was Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, who decided against the position in favor of remaining atop the Senate's committee on health issues.

 

Leahy broke the news about Mikulski in a message on Twitter Wednesday night.

 

"She'll be great," he wrote. "Already is."

 

The federal government is supposed to be funded through a series of appropriations bills that pass through the committee, though gridlock has recently forced Congress to keep the government running through stop-gap measures or massive spending bills that cover multiple departments. Mikulski said she hoped to change that practice.

 

"I've been concerned over the past several years that because of obstruction in the institution … we have not followed" the regular course of paying the government's bills, she said.

 

Though she is an outspoken liberal on many issues, several Republicans on the committee — including the incoming top Republican, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby — said they have strong relationships with Mikulski. Shelby and Mikulski were both elected to the House of Representatives in the late 1970s — Mikulski in 1976 and Shelby two years later — and they both entered the Senate after the 1986 election. Mikulski said Shelby was the first person she called after she heard from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that she would take over the committee.

 

"Senator Shelby has an excellent, longstanding working relationship with Senator Mikulski and he looks forward to continuing to work with her in this new capacity," Shelby spokesman Jonathan Graffeo said.

 

Mikulski is one of her party's most ardent advocates on women's issues. In 2009, she successfully pushed through a law that extended the statute of limitations for suing an employer over wage discrimination. The bill was the first major piece of legislation President Barack Obama signed into law when he took office in 2009. She also successfully pushed to include expanded preventive health services for women in Obama's health care law.

 

Private venture wants to keep its wary eye out for asteroids

Deep-space telescope could be ready in 2018

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

NASA chief touts 'Gangnam' parody, 'NASA Johnson Style'

 

Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times

 

NASA's purpose and vision might be a mystery to some, but the agency's top official says there's a quick primer on the space agency's mission and accomplishments. And it's done Gangnam style.

 

"I find, as I travel around, not very many people know what we do today," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said last Wednesday to a National Research Council committee that is reviewing the agency's human spaceflight program.

 

Luckily, he added, there's a solution.

 

Created by interns at Johnson Space Center, "NASA Johnson Style" spoofs South Korean pop star Psy's viral hit, "Gangnam Style," while waxing lyrical about the Houston center that's home to NASA's astronaut program. The music video has picked up 3.6 million YouTube views since being published one week ago, and features clever references describing the work at the International Space Station. Observe:

 

Orbiting Earth, International Space Station

Where we work and live in space with a crew from several nations

Got Japanese, and Russians, that European charm

Throw them up, like the Canada Arm!

 

"It tells a tremendous story about NASA and the vision for exploration, and it's also entertaining," Bolden said. "It's one of the best that I've seen in a long, long [time]. So if you have a moment … it's worth it."

 

"Just Google 'NASA gangman,'" Bolden said, inadvertently misspelling the name. (It's G-A-N-G-N-A-M, for the record.)

 

This isn't the first time NASA has embraced a pop culture sensation. In fact, the agency's PR strategy has been pretty savvy about tapping into the Web, social media and mobile technology, as we described in a recent story.

 

The video follows another viral hit, "We're NASA and We Know It," which spoofed LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It" while rapping about the Mars Curiosity rover. The two brothers who masterminded that satire were later invited to Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where NASA's Mars program is based. 

 

"NASA Johnson Style" hasn't been embraced by all NASA generations, Bolden jokingly pointed out.

 

"I get a lot of notes from my friends from the Apollo era who say we're lost, we don't know what we're doing. They're wondering what's going on," Bolden said. "And after one of them saw this YouTube video, they were completely convinced we are really messed up."

 

END