Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and State of the Union) News

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: February 12, 2013 7:24:52 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight (and State of the Union) News - February 12, 2013 and JSC Today

Another rainy day, stay dry everyone and drive carefully.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            National African-American History Month
2.            Texas Independence Trail Ride -- Feb. 19
3.            Valentine's Day Specials and Rodeo Tickets at the Starport Gift Shops
4.            Costco and Sam's Club Visits in the Cafés This Week
5.            Jerry Ross Book Signing -- This Week at Starport
6.            NASA JSC Wedding Exhibit
7.            Space Serenity Al-Anon Meeting Today
8.            Recent JSC Announcement
9.            Reassignment Opportunities Available at JSC
10.          Opportunities in Engineering
11.          Reminder: JSC Engineering Fabrication Forum
12.          In the Teague: JSAT Why I Work Safely Valentine's Day Photo Badges
13.          AIAA Houston Dinner With CPAS
14.          RLLS Translation and Telecon WebEx Training Feb. 12, 13 and 14
15.          Fire Warden Refresher Course (Two Hours)
16.          Fire Warden Orientation Course (Four Hours)
17.          Fire Extinguisher Training
18.          Professional Engineering Ethics Seminar
19.          Facility Manager's Training
20.          System Safety Fundamentals Class: March 11 to 15 - Building 20, Room 205/206
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
" Unless I accept my faults I will most certainly doubt my virtues. "

-- Hugh Prather
________________________________________
1.            National African-American History Month
Please join the JSC Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity (OEOD) as we help recognize National African-American History Month. The 2013 theme is "At the Crossroads of Freedom and Equality: The Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington." In 1926, Carter G. Woodson spearheaded the first Negro History Week to raise awareness. Fifty years later, the week was expanded to a month. February was selected because of the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two individuals who dramatically affected the lives of African-Americans. The purpose of this month is to honor the many contributions and accomplishments of African-Americans. We recognize the courage and tenacity of so many hard-working Americans whose legacies are woven into the fabric of our nation.
To read the presidential proclamation, click here. To view or print 2013 National African-American History Month poster, please visit JSC OEOD's website.
JSC Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity x30607 http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oeod/

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2.            Texas Independence Trail Ride -- Feb. 19
The Texas Independence Trail Ride will arrive JSC Tuesday, Feb. 19, at approximately 3 p.m. They will enter the site off NASA Parkway by turning onto Fifth Street, then go onto Avenue D and pass by Buildings 1, 2, 13 and 15 before making their way down Second Street. So, dust off your boots and come on out and be part of the parade! A few riders will visit the JSC Child Care Center for a close-up with the kids. Note: The Gilruth Center basketball gym will be closed all day Feb. 19, reopening at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 20. The fitness center will remain open. Group exercise will have regularly scheduled classes. Ballroom dancing will be not be held on Feb. 19.
Friday, Feb. 22, is the official Go Texan Day, so get out them Western duds for an extra 10 percent off merchandise purchases in the Starport Gift Shops. Some exclusions apply. While you are there, round up admission tickets (they work for the barbecue cook-off) and carnival packs. A rodeo special barbecue lunch will be available in the Starport Cafés on Thursday, Feb. 21, and Friday, Feb. 22. Please call the Starport Gift Shop in Building 11 for information at x47467.
Lisa Gurgos x48133

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3.            Valentine's Day Specials and Rodeo Tickets at the Starport Gift Shops
Shop Starport on Valentine's Day and get 10 percent off on anything red. Wear red and get an extra 5 percent off. Some exclusions apply (tickets, stamps, flowers, Hallmark, Valentine packages, etc.).
Valentine packages and flowers are still available at Starport. Grab-and-go a Prince Charming, Wild About You, or Hottie gift for just $6. Kids would love to hear that they are Purr-fect or Out of This World. Make your gift extra special by adding a massage, Inner Space membership or personal training session. Single roses, carnations and novelty gift packages are available at Buildings 3, 11 and the Gilruth Center. For gift options, click here.
Rodeo concert tickets are still available for Gary Allen, Dierks Bentley, Julion Alvarez and Jake Owen. Carnival packs ($131.50 value) are $51, and adult Reliant admission tickets are $11 (child - $6). The Barbecue Cook-off requires a Reliant admission ticket this year -- no separate ticket for the cook-off.
Cynthia Kibby x35352 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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4.            Costco and Sam's Club Visits in the Cafés This Week
Costco will be in the Buildings 3 and 11 cafés tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to discuss membership options to the JSC workforce. Stop by their table to chat. Plus, if you join tomorrow, you'll receive a Costco cash card.
Sam's Club will be in the Buildings 3 and 11 cafés on Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to discuss membership options. Receive a gift card on new memberships or renewals. Cash or check only for membership purchases.
If you can't make either of the dates, visit the Starport website for additional dates that both Costco and Sam's Club will be at JSC!
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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5.            Jerry Ross Book Signing -- This Week at Starport
Astronaut and author Jerry Ross will be autographing his new book "Spacewalker: My Journey in Space and Faith as NASA's Record-Setting Frequent Flyer" from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. today in the Building 3 Starport Café. On Wednesday, Feb. 13, he will be signing his book in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory Visitor Gallery from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. On Thursday, Feb. 14, he will be in the Building 11 café from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Don't miss this opportunity to meet Ross or, for many of you, to see your old friend again. Purchase your book at Starport - $29.95.
Event Date: Tuesday, February 12, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:1:30 PM
Event Location: B3

Add to Calendar

Cynthia Kibby x35352 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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6.            NASA JSC Wedding Exhibit
Are you planning a wedding and in need of some options and guidance? Gilruth Center Catering will be holding a wedding exhibit to help you plan the wedding of your dreams at an affordable price. You will be able to meet and connect with local photographers, cake decorators, florists and more. Plus, you can book your wedding at the Gilruth Center, where we will make your day unforgettable! Join us on March 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Gilruth Center. This event is free and open to the public.
Event Date: Saturday, March 2, 2013   Event Start Time:10:00 AM   Event End Time:2:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Lorna Francis x45785 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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7.            Space Serenity Al-Anon Meeting Today
"Do the next right thing" reminds Al-Anon members to live kindness. Our 12-step meeting is for co-workers, families and friends of those who work or live with the family disease of alcoholism. We meet today, Feb. 12, in Building 32, Room 146, from 11 to 11:45 a.m. Visitors are welcome.
Event Date: Tuesday, February 12, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:11:45 AM
Event Location: B. 32, room 146

Add to Calendar

Employee Assistance Program x36130 http://sashare.jsc.nasa.gov/EAP/Pages/default.aspx

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8.            Recent JSC Announcement
Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcement:
JSCA 13-007: Communications with Industry Procurement Solicitation for Engineering and Product Integration Contract
Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page.
Linda Turnbough x36246 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/DocumentManagement/announcements/default.aspx

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9.            Reassignment Opportunities Available at JSC
The Workforce Transition Tool is still the best place to find lateral reassignment and rotational opportunities available around the center. There are currently several positions posted, including:
o             AD4/Coordinator for Program for ISS Education Projects
o             DA8/Mission Operations Integration
o             JM3/Branch Lead
o             JM4/Branch Lead
o             NA/Management Analyst
o             NE/ISS Reliability and Maintainability Engineer
o             NE/ISS Vehicle Subsystem Engineer
o             NE/Lead Executive Officer
o             NE/Safety Engineer
o             NE/Safety Panels, Avionics and Software Assurance Analyst
o             NE/Safety Panels, Avionics and Software Assurance Engineer
o             OE/Strategic Analyst and Evaluation Manager
o             RC/Experimental Facility Development
o             RD/Data Acquisition and Controls Electrical Engineer
o             SA2/Human Research Program Chief Scientist
o             SK/HRP Advanced Exercise Concepts Engineer
Check back at the Workforce Transition Tool frequently to see what new opportunities are posted.
Interested parties can visit the Human Resources Portal and follow the path: Employees - Workforce Transition - Workforce Transition Tool.
Lisa Pesak x30476 http://jscpeople.jsc.nasa.gov/contacts.html

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10.          Opportunities in Engineering
The Crew and Thermal Systems Division/EC currently has rotational and reassignment opportunities in the Life Support Systems Branch/EC3 available for Engineering Directorate employees. Current positions are for Project Managers, Project Engineers, Systems Engineers and Subsystem Engineers for GFE and Technology Development Projects, as well as International Space Station Environmental Control and Life Support Systems Management.
Duration: Six- to 12-month detail with option for permanent assignment.
Qualifications: Background in biological, chemical, electrical, environmental, mechanical or aerospace systems preferred. GS-9 to GS-14.
For questions or additional information, please contact Dale Roberts at x37539 or Kenneth Brown at x33891.
Dale Roberts x37539 http://ctsd.jsc.nasa.gov/default.aspx

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11.          Reminder: JSC Engineering Fabrication Forum
The Engineering Directorate's manufacturing facility in Building 9S and 10 provides JSC flight and advance manufacturing services for flight and non-flight projects/programs across the center. Beginning tomorrow, Feb. 13, the JSC Engineering Fabrication Forum will convene and meet on the second Wednesday of every month. This forum will provide a vehicle for manufacturing customers to discuss their issues, required capabilities and schedule needs, as well as an educational opportunity for manufacturing personnel to provide a series of ongoing educational topics. As we transition to a new model for funding work in the manufacturing facility, we are also prepared to discuss processes and funding topics.
We encourage manufacturing customers to submit their topics to Dan Petersen.
Event Date: Wednesday, February 13, 2013   Event Start Time:1:00 PM   Event End Time:3:00 PM
Event Location: Bldg. 9E, Room 113

Add to Calendar

Dan Petersen x38387

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12.          In the Teague: JSAT Why I Work Safely Valentine's Day Photo Badges
Your JSC Safety Action Team (JSAT) is hosting a Valentine's Day event on Thursday, Feb. 14, in the Teague Auditorium lobby from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. JSAT volunteers will be on hand to laminate photos of your reason for working safely each day! Begin gathering your favorite photos now -- or take new ones. Bring extra photos and get a photo badge for your spouse or the grandparents. As a time-saver, please pre-trim your photos to 2'' x 2.5''. Photocopies also work well. Drop your photos off for laminating while you participate in the JSC blood drive!
Reese Squires x37776 http://jsat.jsc.nasa.gov

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13.          AIAA Houston Dinner With CPAS
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston Section invites you to dinner and a discussion of the Capsule Parachute Assembly System (CPAS) with Leah Romero. Romero has participated in 10 CPAS drop tests as the lead analyst on the load-train predictions, which determine margins of safety for test support equipment. Currently she is the team lead for implementing the Flight Analysis and Simulation Tool (FAST) and is co-authoring a paper discussing the cutting edge statistical methods CPAS uses to define the parachute model for the 2013 AIAA ADS conference.
This AIAA Houston dinner will be in the Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 21. Please go to the AIAA website to RSVP and make your dinner selection.
Event Date: Thursday, February 21, 2013   Event Start Time:5:30 PM   Event End Time:9:00 PM
Event Location: Alamo Ballroom at the Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Michael Martin 979-220-5517 http://www.aiaahouston.org/

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14.          RLLS Translation and Telecon WebEx Training Feb. 12, 13 and 14
TechTrans International (TTI) will provide 30-minute WebEx Translation Request training on Feb. 12   and 14 at 10 a.m. and Telecon training on Feb. 13 at 2 p.m. Training will include the following:
o             Locating Translation or Telecon support request module
o             Quick view of Translation or Telecon support request
o             Create a new Translation or Telecon support request
o             Translation or Telecon submittal requirements
o             Adding an attachment and reference documents
o             Selecting restrictions (export control, PII, confidential)
o             Adding additional email addresses distribution notices
o             Submitting Translation or Telecon request
o             Status of Translation or Telecon request records
o             View a Translation or Telecon request record
o             Searching for Translation documents in the archive
o             Contact RLLS support for additional help
Please email James.E.Welty@nasa.gov or call 281-335-8565 to sign up for these RLLS Support WebEx Training courses. Classes will be limited to the first 20 individuals registered.
James Welty 281-335-8565 https://www.tti-portal.com

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15.          Fire Warden Refresher Course (Two Hours)
This two-hour course is for previously trained Fire Wardens from JSC, Sonny Carter Training Facility and Ellington Field and is required to satisfy the JSC three-year refresher training requirement for building Fire Wardens who have previously completed the initial four-hour Fire Warden Orientation Training.
This course emphasizes a review of the duties and responsibilities of a Fire Warden during an emergency evacuation of their assigned building and conduct of the required monthly walk-around inspection of the Fire Warden's assigned area.
Newly assigned Fire Wardens must attend the four-hour Initial Fire Warden Orientation course available in SATERN for registration.
Date/Time: March 1 from 1 to 3 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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16.          Fire Warden Orientation Course (Four Hours)
This four-hour course is to satisfy the JSC training requirement for newly assigned Fire Wardens from JSC, Sonny Carter Training Facility and Ellington Field. This course must be completed before assuming these duties.
Topics covered include: duties and responsibilities of a Fire Warden; building evacuation techniques; recognizing and correcting fire hazards; and types and uses of portable fire extinguishers.
Fire Wardens who have previously attended this four-hour orientation course and need to satisfy the three-year training requirements may attend the two-hour Fire Warden Refresher Course now available in SATERN for registration.
Date/Time: March 1 from 8 a.m. to noon
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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17.          Fire Extinguisher Training
Fire safety, at its most basic, is based upon the principle of keeping fuel sources and ignition sources separate.
The Safety Learning Center invites you to attend a one-hour Fire Extinguisher course that provides instructor-led training on the proper way to safely use fire extinguishers.
Students will learn:
o             Five classes of fires
o             Types of fire extinguishers and how to match the right extinguisher to different types of fires
o             How to inspect an extinguisher
o             How to use a fire extinguisher - P.A.S.S.
o             Understand the importance of knowing the locations of extinguishers where you are
o             Rules for fighting fires and the steps to take if a fire occurs
o             Hands-on (weather permitting)
Date/Time: March 6 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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18.          Professional Engineering Ethics Seminar
Under the Texas Engineering Practice Act, each engineer licensed in the state must spend at least one professional development hour each year reviewing professional ethics and the roles and responsibilities for engineers.
The JSC Safety Learning Center invites JSC engineers to attend this one-hour Professional Engineering Ethics Seminar.
In this seminar, the student will:
o             Review portions of Chapter 137, "Compliance and Professionalism," and Chapter 139, "Enforcement," of the Texas Engineering Practice Act and Board Rules
o             Review some of the recent disciplinary actions taken by the Texas Board of Professional Engineers to enforce the Practice Act
o             Participate in class discussion regarding specific ethical questions
This seminar meets The Texas Engineering Practice Act yearly one-hour ethics requirement for continuing education.
Date/Time: March 6 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/plateau/user/deeplink.do?linkId=SCHEDULED_OFFERING_DE...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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19.          Facility Manager's Training
The Safety Learning Center invites you to attend an eight-hour Facility Manger's Training that provides JSC Facility Managers with insight into the requirements for accomplishing their functions.
o             Includes training on facility management, safety, hazard identification and mitigation, legal, security, energy conservation, as well as health and environmental aspects.
o             Attendees of this course must also register in SATERN for a half-day Fire Warden Training. *Others that need Fire Warden Training can register through the normal process.
Date/Time: March 7 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Safety Learning Center - Building 20, Room 205/206
Registration via SATERN required:
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Aundrail Hill x36369

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20.          System Safety Fundamentals Class: March 11 to 15 - Building 20, Room 205/206
This course instructs students in fundamentals of system safety management and the hazard analysis of hardware, software and operations. Basic concepts and principles of the analytical process are stressed. Student are introduced to NASA publications that require and guide safety analysis, as well as general reference texts on subject areas covered. Types and techniques of hazard analysis are addressed in enough detail to give the student a working knowledge of their uses and how they're accomplished. Skills in analytical techniques are developed through the use of practical exercises worked by students in class. This 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. This 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_...
Polly Caison x41279

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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.

NASA TV: 10:15 am Central (11:15 EST) – E34's Kevin Ford & Tom Marshburn with WBOI-FM in Fort Wayne & News 14 Carolina

Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday – February 12, 2013

HEADLINES AND LEADS

NASA cuts leave void in Clear Lake

Harvey Rice - Houston Chronicle

Empty restaurants, a struggling floral shop and a "transition center" packed daily with job-seekers are among the lingering effects of the loss of thousands of aerospace jobs in the Clear Lake area. While the area's economy is benefiting from a surge in the oil, gas and chemical industries, the impact of the job cuts associated with the end of the space shuttle program is still evident.

Cargo ship docks with space station

William Harwood - CBS News

An unmanned Russian Progress supply ship loaded with 2.9 tons of supplies and equipment blasted off Monday and rocketed into orbit, flying a fast-track trajectory to an automated docking with the International Space Station just six hours later. The Progress M-18M spacecraft's Soyuz booster roared to life at 9:41:46 a.m. EST (GMT-5; 8:41 p.m. local time) and quickly climbed away from its launch pad through a cold, clear sky at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Russians successfully launch space station resupply ship

Justin Ray - SpaceflightNow.com

Dispatching a freighter filled with food, fuel and supplies to the International Space Station, a Russian Soyuz booster launched Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a six-hour trek to the orbiting outpost. The rocket successfully blasted off carrying the automated Progress vessel from the launch base in Kazakhstan at 9:41:46 a.m. EST (1441:46 GMT; 8:41 p.m. local time), beginning Russia's 50th delivery mission attempted to the space station since 2000.

Robotic Russian Supply Ship Docks With Space Station

Tariq Malik - Space.com

An unmanned Russian spacecraft carrying nearly 3 tons of supplies arrived at the International Space Station Monday less than six hours after blasting off. The robotic Progress 50 resupply ship docked with the orbiting lab at 3:35 p.m. EST (2035 GMT) Monday after launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:41 a.m. EST (1441 GMT). Such unmanned cargo trips have traditionally taken about two days.

Freaky Fast Delivery: Progress Blasts Off, Docks at ISS Hours Later

Nancy Atkinson - UniverseToday.com

The Progress 50 resupply ship has now arrived at the International Space Station, just hours after it launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Launch took place at 9:41 a.m. EST, (14:40 UTC) today (February 11, 2013) and it took only a four-orbit journey to rendezvous with the ISS, docking at 3:35 pm EST. "Progress 50 just docked to our Space Station!" Tweeted astronaut Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) "I was right at the hatch, it made a quick sliding scraping noise & then a solid thud. Success!"

Science Channel, UrtheCast team up for space station HD project

Barry Walsh - RealScreen.com

Science Channel and Canadian company UrtheCast (pronounced as "Earthcast") are partnering on a lofty goal – to bring viewers at home the world's first HD video of Earth, streamed in near-real time, from the International Space Station (ISS) as it orbits 200 miles above the planet. The programming will be developed once UrtheCast's HD cameras are installed on the space station, and streaming begins. The cameras, currently being built in partnership with Russian space organization RSC Energia and the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), will go live in late 2013, according to the company, with the footage to be streamed to users' smartphones and the web.

NASA administrator sees SpaceX site at VAFB

Janene Scully - Lompoc Record

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. dropped by the site of future launches for some of his agency's satellites at Vandenberg Air Force Base, offering words of appreciation to the SpaceX staff and peeking at Falcon rocket facilities. Bolden visited Space Exploration Technologies facility Monday afternoon on South Base, where the firm's first Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg is planned for June 18 to carry a Canadian spacecraft to orbit.

Jacobs keeps NASA contract worth $1.93 billion

Bloomberg News

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. beat Lockheed Martin Corp. to retain its biggest U.S. government contract, an agreement with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration valued at as much as $1.93 billion. The award is for engineering and technology work at Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA said Friday in a statement. It is for a maximum of nine years.

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Manned Mars Mission
Seventy-five percent of respondents say NASA budget should be doubled in order to put a person on Mars

Jason Koebler - US News & World Report

Americans overwhelmingly believe NASA should be working on sending a man to Mars and are optimistic that humans will reach the planet sometime in the next two decades, according to a new poll released Monday. The poll found that nearly 75 percent of Americans believe that humans will land on Mars by 2033, and more than half of Americans believe NASA should either "play a strong role" in helping a commercial company run the mission or should go there itself.

71 Percent of U.S. See Humans On Mars By 2033

Ian O'Neill - Discovery News

In the wake of the wildly successful landing of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover on Aug. 6, 2012, it may come as no surprise that the American public are currently feeling rather enthusiastic about exploring Mars. This sentiment has now been bolstered by a recent poll carried out for the non-profit corporation Explore Mars by the global communications company Phillips & Company. After surveying 1,101 people, 71 percent of the participants said they feel confident the U.S. will land a human on Mars within the next two decades. On average, the same sample said they believed the U.S. government spends 2.4 percent (with a standard deviation of 1.68 percent) of the federal budget on NASA after they were told the agency currently has two operational rovers on the Martian surface. This, sadly, is woefully overoptimistic. The current allocation for NASA is a skinflint 0.5 percent ($17.7 billion) of the 2013 federal budget. By comparison, the average federal budget allocated to NASA during the Apollo Program in the 1960's and early 70s represented 2.8 percent.

New poll finds Americans hopelessly optimistic about going to Mars

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

Last summer a group promoting the exploration of Mars — named, well, Explore Mars — dropped a large red rock in front of Houston's city hall. Designed the look like a Martian boulder, the fake rock helped build momentum for what ultimately was a successful landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. Yet the group's ultimate aim is not sending robots to Mars, but rather humans. So earlier this month the group conducted a nationwide survey of U.S. citizens that focused on the exploration of Mars.

Asking the big questions for the next ten years

Jeff Foust - The Space Review

When The Space Review started ten years ago, we sought to ask—and hopefully answer—the big questions facing spaceflight (see "Time to ask the big questions", The Space Review, February 11, 2003). At that time, of course, there were plenty of big questions about the future of space exploration, triggered by the loss of the space shuttle Columbia at put the future of that program, and of NASA, into question. A decade later, many big questions remain. Some of these are new questions, developed over the last decade through the rise and fall of the Vision for Space Exploration, its replacement by the compromise struck between Obama Administration and Congress, and the growing, but in many respects yet unproven, capabilities of commercial providers.

MEANWHILE AT THE STATE OF THE UNION…

NASA's 'Mohawk Guy' Will Sit with First Lady at State of the Union

Mike Wall - Space.com

Life is good for NASA's "Mohawk Guy." He became world famous after helping NASA's huge Curiosity rover make a dramatic landing on Mars, and now he'll sit with first lady Michelle Obama during Tuesday's State of the Union address. The Iranian-American Mohawk Guy — whose name is Bobak Ferdowsi — will sit in the first lady's box to highlight President Barack Obama's call for more visas for skilled immigrants in the fields of math, science and engineering, Southern California Public Radio reported Monday.
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COMPLETE STORIES

NASA cuts leave void in Clear Lake

Harvey Rice - Houston Chronicle

Empty restaurants, a struggling floral shop and a "transition center" packed daily with job-seekers are among the lingering effects of the loss of thousands of aerospace jobs in the Clear Lake area.

While the area's economy is benefiting from a surge in the oil, gas and chemical industries, the impact of the job cuts associated with the end of the space shuttle program is still evident.

About 5,000 laid-off workers have used the Aerospace Transition Center since it opened in February 2010, said Veronica Reyes, manager for Workforce Solutions, which runs the center.

The layoffs that began two years ago have dwindled but are continuing. Reyes said layoffs by aerospace contractors are expected this week and in March.

About 78 percent of those laid off have found new jobs in the Houston region, mostly in the oil and gas, chemical and health care industries, said Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.

Ricardo de la Fuente, 61, is still looking. De la Fuente, laid off in August 2011 from aerospace contractor United Space Alliance, spends every day at the transition center contacting potential employers or polishing his résumé. He wrote flight software for the defunct space shuttle program, but has since retrained in quality assurance.

"It's frustrating in that I have not been successful in getting a job," de la Fuente said.

De la Fuente's unemployment insurance runs out this year, and the Transition Center will cease operation in June. "We just have to be prudent," he said of his family's spending habits. "We don't go out to dinner anymore and travel only if we can drive in a day and come back."

Although the Houston regional economy has led the top 20 metro areas in the country the past three years, small businesses that depended on the space center are still feeling the pain. Lunch business at Frenchie's Italian Restaurant, a traditional aerospace hangout, is down 30 percent, owner Frankie Camera said.

Real estate prices fell

The Rev. Wencil Pavlovsky, pastor of St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Nassau Bay, a few blocks from the space center, said he is often the only lunchtime customer in nearby restaurants. Church collections have remained about the same over the past two years, even though the congregation has swelled from 2,000 to 2,600 families.

Clear Lake Flowers, about 4 miles from the center, also suffered.

"We saw a double digit loss of business," owner Ken LeBlanc said. LeBlanc said he expanded into wedding planning to make up for the loss.

The space center cutbacks also have affected the real estate market. Real estate prices in the bay area were up slightly in 2012 after dropping steadily since 2008, according to data provided by Evert Crawford of Crawford Realty Advisors Inc. The average residential price per square foot fell from $78.61 in 2008 to $72.97 in 2011 before rising to $74.68 last year.

Crawford said the softness in the real estate market was due to the 2009 economic slowdown as well as the space center job cuts.

"The market has not fallen apart; they are not continuing to decline," Crawford said. "It has not performed as well as it has in the past, nor is it performing as well as the rest of the market."

In 2007, about 17,500 aerospace jobs were connected to NASA's space shuttle and Mars programs at the Johnson Space Center, according to a report by Bob Hodgin, director of the Center for Economic Education at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

That number has shrunk to 13,400 - 3,400 NASA employees and 10,000 working for contractors, Mitchell said. The budget for the Johnson Space Center has remained close to $17 billion over the past four years, Mitchell said.

'Heart and soul'

"I would say that NASA Johnson Space Center is the heart and soul of this region," Mitchell said. "But that being said, we have all worked very hard to diversify the economy over the last six to seven years and been very successful in doing that."

The space center contributes about $4.4 billion to the 13 cities that make up the Bay Area economy and about $1.5 billion in salaries, Mitchell aid. The Bay Area overlaps Harris and Galveston counties and includes 12 small cities and a piece of Houston. Mitchell said sales tax revenues increased in every one of the 13 Bay Area cities last year.

Although the space center is important, "it's not a powerhouse for the Houston economy in the sense of being a main driver," said Robert Gilmer, director of the University of Houston Bauer Institute for Regional Forecasting.

Oil and gas, chemicals and the health care industry are much larger economic influences, he said. The region is lucky that oil and gas and chemical industries surged as the aerospace industry weakened, he said. Gilmer said the oil-and-gas industry added 85,000 jobs last year, a number he expects to be revised upward.

The future of the space center remains uncertain, but a spokesman said its work on the International Space Station will last until 2020 under a multinational contract that could be extended to 2028.

The budget has been "relatively constant for a long time, and we have a lot of projects we expect to continue," said Sid Schmidt, space center associate chief financial officer.

Keith Cowing, editor-in-chief of NASA Watch website, said a smaller Johnson Space Center would be in line with the current trend.

"I can't fathom that it will have a budget that will grow a lot," Cowing said. "I can envision where the Johnson Space Center takes a real dip."

Cargo ship docks with space station

William Harwood - CBS News

An unmanned Russian Progress supply ship loaded with 2.9 tons of supplies and equipment blasted off Monday and rocketed into orbit, flying a fast-track trajectory to an automated docking with the International Space Station just six hours later.

The Progress M-18M spacecraft's Soyuz booster roared to life at 9:41:46 a.m. EST (GMT-5; 8:41 p.m. local time) and quickly climbed away from its launch pad through a cold, clear sky at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

After a flawless climb to space, the supply ship was released into its planned preliminary orbit eight minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff. A few moments after that, the vessel's two solar arrays and navigation antennas deployed as planned.

The space station was just 870 miles downrange from the launch site at the moment of liftoff, giving the crew a ringside seat for the fiery nighttime climb to space.

"The cameras on the International Space Station (were) pointed ... to look at the launch as the station passed off to the northeast and in fact Kevin Ford, the commander of Expedition 34, did report he was able to see first stage separation, which occurred about two minutes after launch," said NASA commentator Kyle Herring.

Launched directly into the plane of the space station's orbit, the Progress M-18M completed an automated approach to the lab complex and after a final check to make sure all systems were operating normally, the cargo craft moved in for a picture-perfect docking at the Earth-facing Pirs compartment at 3:35 p.m., five hours and 55 minutes after liftoff.

"We have capture," a crewman radioed from the station as the docking system engaged.

"Congratulations on automatic docking," a Russian flight controller said a few moments later, speaking through a translator.

The Progress M-18M spacecraft is loaded with 1,764 pounds of space station propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 3,000 pounds of spare parts, science gear and other dry cargo. It is scheduled to remain docked at the space station until late April.

Progress supply ships and manned Soyuz Spacecraft typically are launched on trajectories that require two days -- 34 orbits -- to reach the space station. But Russian flight controllers have been testing a single-day four-orbit rendezvous sequence on recent Progress flights and tentatively plan to implement the procedure for the next manned Soyuz flight in March.

From the crew's perspective, spending less time in the cramped confines of the Soyuz ferry craft is a clear positive. But it leaves little margin for error. The trajectory requires considerable planning due to the extreme precision required and additional time between launch attempts would be needed if bad weather triggered a delay or an unplanned space station maneuver was required.

Progress M-18M, the 50th Russian supply ship launched to the station, is the first of four Russian cargo ships scheduled for launch this year and the third to follow an abbreviated four-orbit rendezvous.

"A four-orbit rendezvous means you have to know precisely where ISS is within pretty tight tolerances at launch time," Mike Suffredini, NASA space station program manager, told reporters last month. "Because you don't really have time for the Soyuz to make up the phasing differences that are inherent in a system like ISS.

"You can do no burns on ISS on any given orbit and just because of the size and the nature of the ISS and the environment it flies in, (atmospheric) drag alone can vary enough that the ISS won't be where you expect it to be. Because you're talking about such tight tolerances, that can be significant."

As a result, space station maneuvers relatively close to launch can trigger launch delays and extensive replanning.

"If I do a debris avoidance maneuver (in January), I have to consider whether that impacts a flight in March," Suffredini said. "So you can see from an ops standpoint, it becomes much, much more difficult. ... That's turning out to be an enormous amount of work for the ops team.

"So that's part of what we have to work with our Russian colleagues, to talk about the gain from the savings of time getting to ISS quicker, does that offset the impacts we're going to have just flying the ISS day to day?"

He said space station managers have tentatively agreed to "do this once or twice to show we have the capability in case we need to get to ISS quick for any reason."

"But the decision to fly like this long term is still out there to be determined," he said.

The first Landsat, originally named Earth Resources Technology Satellite 1, was launched in July 1972. Landsat 7, the most recent in the series, was launched in April 1999.

Russians successfully launch space station resupply ship

Justin Ray - SpaceflightNow.com

Dispatching a freighter filled with food, fuel and supplies to the International Space Station, a Russian Soyuz booster launched Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a six-hour trek to the orbiting outpost.

The rocket successfully blasted off carrying the automated Progress vessel from the launch base in Kazakhstan at 9:41:46 a.m. EST (1441:46 GMT; 8:41 p.m. local time), beginning Russia's 50th delivery mission attempted to the space station since 2000.

The preliminary orbit was achieved after a nine-minute ascent provided by the three-stage rocket, and onboard commands were issued to unfurl the craft's communications and navigation antennas and extend two power-generating solar arrays that span 35 feet.

A series of precise engine firings over the next six hours guided the Progress toward an automated rendezvous with the station for docking at 3:35 p.m. EST (2035 GMT).

The 24-foot long ship attached itself to the open port on the Pirs compartment on the underside of the station, which became available Saturday when the previous Progress flew away to fly solo for deorbiting into the South Pacific.

Today's launch was known in the station's assembly matrix as Progress mission 50P. The spacecraft's formal Russian designation is Progress M-18M.

The craft ferried nearly three tons of supplies to the station. The "dry" cargo tucked aboard the Progress amounts to 3,000 pounds in the form of food, spare parts, life support gear and experiment hardware.

The refueling module carries 1,764 pounds of propellant for transfer into the Russian segment of the complex to feed the station's maneuvering thrusters. The vessel also has 926 pounds of water and 110 pounds of oxygen and air.

It'll remain attached to the station through April 23.

The space station is staffed by the Expedition 34 crew of commander Kevin Ford and Tom Marshburn of NASA, Chris Hadfield from the Canadian Space Agency and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Evgeni Tarelkin and Roman Romanenko.

The cosmonauts were ready to take over manual control of the approaching Progress spacecraft if the autopilot experienced a problem, but the ship docked in automatic mode.

Russian plans additional Progress missions in 2013 to continue the resupply chain to the space station in April, July and October.

Robotic Russian Supply Ship Docks With Space Station

Tariq Malik - Space.com

An unmanned Russian spacecraft carrying nearly 3 tons of supplies arrived at the International Space Station Monday less than six hours after blasting off.

The robotic Progress 50 resupply ship docked with the orbiting lab at 3:35 p.m. EST (2035 GMT) Monday after launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:41 a.m. EST (1441 GMT). Such unmanned cargo trips have traditionally taken about two days.

The Progress 50 spacecraft is packed with about 2.9 tons of supplies for the space station's six-man Expedition 34 crew. On Saturday (Feb. 9), the station astronauts discarded an older unmanned cargo ship, called Progress 48, in order to make room for Progress 50.

The outgoing Progress vehicle was filled with tons of trash and unneeded items and intentionally destroyed by burning up in Earth's atmosphere. [Space Station's Robot Cargo Ship Fleet (Photos)]

Progress 50, meanwhile, is delivering about 764 pounds (346 kilograms) of propellant, 110 pounds (50 kg) of oxygen and air, 926 pounds (420 kg) of water and about 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of spare parts, science gear and other supplies, according to a NASA description.

The Russian Federal Space Agency's Progress spacecraft are disposable vehicles similar in design to its three-segment Soyuz crew capsules, but with a propellant module in place of the central crew return capsule on the Soyuz.

Progress vehicles are designed to be disposable and are intentionally ditched into Earth's atmosphere at the end of their mission. Robotic resupply ships for the station built by Europe and Japan are also disposed of in the same way.

The only robotic supply ship for the space station that can return supplies back to Earth is the Dragon space capsule built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX.

Dragon space capsules visited the space station twice in 2012, with the next one slated to launch from Florida atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in March. Dragon vehicles are equipped with a heat shield to protect them during re-entry and are built for ocean splashdown landings in order to return experiments and other gear to Earth.

The space station's current Expedition 34 is commanded by NASA astronaut Kevin Ford. The other crewmembers are fellow NASA spaceflyer Tom Marshburn, Canadian Chris Hadfield and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Evgeny Tarelkin and Roman Romanenko.

Hadfield will become the first-ever Canadian to command a station mission when he takes over Expedition 35, which will begin in March with the departure of Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin.

Freaky Fast Delivery: Progress Blasts Off, Docks at ISS Hours Later

Nancy Atkinson - UniverseToday.com

The Progress 50 resupply ship has now arrived at the International Space Station, just hours after it launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Launch took place at 9:41 a.m. EST, (14:40 UTC) today (February 11, 2013) and it took only a four-orbit journey to rendezvous with the ISS, docking at 3:35 pm EST (20:35 UTC).

"Progress 50 just docked to our Space Station!" Tweeted astronaut Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) "I was right at the hatch, it made a quick sliding scraping noise & then a solid thud. Success!"

This is third successful execution of the new, modified launch and docking profile for the Russion Progress ships, and its success is paving the way for its first use on a manned mission – possibly as early as March 2013 for Soyuz TMA-08, Roscosmos said via Facebook. Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka has been quoted as saying it is every cosmonaut's dream to only have a 6-hour flight in the cramped Soyuz.

Normally, Progress supply ships –and manned Soyuz capsules — are launched on trajectories that require about two days, or 34 orbits, to reach the ISS. The new fast-track trajectory has the rocket launching shortly after the ISS passes overhead — today, the space station was just 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) downrange from the launch site at the time of liftoff. Then additional firings of the Progress engines early in its mission expedites the time required for a Russian vehicle to reach the complex.

Science Channel, UrtheCast team up for space station HD project

Barry Walsh - RealScreen.com

Science Channel and Canadian company UrtheCast (pronounced as "Earthcast") are partnering on a lofty goal – to bring viewers at home the world's first HD video of Earth, streamed in near-real time, from the International Space Station (ISS) as it orbits 200 miles above the planet.

The programming will be developed once UrtheCast's HD cameras are installed on the space station, and streaming begins. The cameras, currently being built in partnership with Russian space organization RSC Energia and the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), will go live in late 2013, according to the company, with the footage to be streamed to users' smartphones and the web.

In addition to developing programming with that footage, Science Channel will also develop content surrounding the UrtheCast project, including a special program examining its history and technology.

The company was co-founded by space industry veterans Wade Larson and Dr. George Tyc, and has its head office in Vancouver.

"Our viewers expect us to have the best, most authoritative television programs about space," said Debbie Adler Myers, executive vice president and general manager, Science Channel, in a statement. "UrtheCast helps us build on that promise, giving Science Channel the most stunning live images of Earth for use online and on-air."

"The Science Channel speaks to a large audience of inquisitive minds; it's precisely the type of audience that UrtheCast appeals to," added Larson. "We're looking forward to working with the Science Channel team, and can't wait to see the programming it leads to."

NASA administrator sees SpaceX site at VAFB

Janene Scully - Lompoc Record

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. dropped by the site of future launches for some of his agency's satellites at Vandenberg Air Force Base, offering words of appreciation to the SpaceX staff and peeking at Falcon rocket facilities.

Bolden visited Space Exploration Technologies facility Monday afternoon on South Base, where the firm's first Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg is planned for June 18 to carry a Canadian spacecraft to orbit.

The launch of the Jason-3 satellite aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in 2015 will be the first NASA science mission on a SpaceX booster. Jason-3 will study ocean surface topography.

"I want to thank you for all you do. You're making history, you're doing great stuff. Hopefully, you're still having fun," he said, before being distracted by one especially young-looking worker.

"You look like you're in high school," he told her. 'I'm not going to ask you how old you are, but where are you from?"

He was talking to Jessica Marshall, a recent graduate of Georgia Tech with a master's degree, and later spent more time chatting with her.

In recent years, SpaceX has remodeled Space Launch Complex-4 for the Falcon rocket, removing an old Titan 4 rocket gantry and building a huge new hangar and other features.

"Keep doing what you're doing, because it's really, really, really important," Bolden added. "Hopefully, I'm going to get the opportunity to maybe see the beginnings of the pad and then get down into the hangar.

"This is an exciting time and it's a real exciting time for us," Bolden said. "My job is to facilitate your success because I think you all are the future of a viable commercial space industry for the nation. We just can't do it without you."

He also urged them to keep their spirits up — "stay excited" — noting that everyone has down days.

"You're in a tough business, so just hang in there," he added.

The Hawthorne-based SpaceX is a relatively new aerospace company started by Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal Internet payment system. SpaceX was incorporated in 2002.

Musk, the CEO and chief designer of SpaceX, also is the CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors, which manufactures all-electric vehicles.

Jacobs keeps NASA contract worth $1.93 billion

Bloomberg News

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. beat Lockheed Martin Corp. to retain its biggest U.S. government contract, an agreement with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration valued at as much as $1.93 billion.

The award is for engineering and technology work at Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA said Friday in a statement. It is for a maximum of nine years.

Jacobs, based in Pasadena, Calif., has held the contract since at least 2004, according to a NASA statement.

Michelle Jones, a spokeswoman for Jacobs, didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed bid on the contract and doesn't plan to protest NASA's decision, Lindsay Wilson, a company spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

"Although we are disappointed with the decision, Lockheed Martin remains committed to delivering critical capabilities for NASA," she said.

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Manned Mars Mission
Seventy-five percent of respondents say NASA budget should be doubled in order to put a person on Mars

Jason Koebler - US News & World Report

Americans overwhelmingly believe NASA should be working on sending a man to Mars and are optimistic that humans will reach the planet sometime in the next two decades, according to a new poll released Monday.

The poll found that nearly 75 percent of Americans believe that humans will land on Mars by 2033, and more than half of Americans believe NASA should either "play a strong role" in helping a commercial company run the mission or should go there itself.

The poll was prefaced with information that NASA spending (about $18.4 billion in 2011) represents about half a percent of the overall federal budget. Poll respondents incorrectly estimated that NASA's budget represents about 2.5 percent of the total budget. Given that information, 75 percent of poll respondents said that NASA's funding should be increased to about 1 percent of the total federal budget in order to fund a Mars mission.

NASA has vowed to send humans into Mars' orbit in the 2030s using its Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which is currently in development. But private space explorers have set a more aggressive timeline. Last month, Mars One, a nonprofit organization set a goal of putting a permanent human colony on Mars by 2023.

Chris Carberry, executive director of Explore Mars, a nonprofit dedicated to sending humans to Mars, says the survey results suggest Americans are ready for a renewed dedication to exploring the solar system. Explore Mars and Boeing funded the survey, which was conducted by Phillips & Company, an independent polling organization.

"It's good to see the public support for this—I think there's been a lot of good Mars news with the landing of the Curiosity rover," he says.

Poll respondents said they believe money or political barriers, not motivational or technological shortfalls, will be the biggest barrier to a future Mars mission. Carberry says the fact that a Mars mission must be planned years in advance makes some politicians reticent to approve such a project.

"People like to get things done in shorter timelines," he says. "But we'll have to test hardware, perform intermediate missions [to the moon or an asteroid]. If we go too long without showing the end is in sight, it can be difficult to keep any program moving in Washington."

Carberry says there are still a ways to go from a technological standpoint, but the landing of the Curiosity rover, which weighs about a ton, was a good start, but that any human mission will need a much larger ship.

"When we're talking humans, it'll be a bigger mass because we'll have to land the habitat they'll live in, the supplies they'll have to use," he says. "But if we just wanted to return a sample using robots, we could probably do that by the end of the decade."

71 Percent of U.S. See Humans On Mars By 2033

Ian O'Neill - Discovery News

In the wake of the wildly successful landing of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover on Aug. 6, 2012, it may come as no surprise that the American public are currently feeling rather enthusiastic about exploring Mars. This sentiment has now been bolstered by a recent poll carried out for the non-profit corporation Explore Mars by the global communications company Phillips & Company. After surveying 1,101 people, 71 percent of the participants said they feel confident the U.S. will land a human on Mars within the next two decades.

On average, the same sample said they believed the U.S. government spends 2.4 percent (with a standard deviation of 1.68 percent) of the federal budget on NASA after they were told the agency currently has two operational rovers on the Martian surface. This, sadly, is woefully overoptimistic.

The current allocation for NASA is a skinflint 0.5 percent ($17.7 billion) of the 2013 federal budget. By comparison, the average federal budget allocated to NASA during the Apollo Program in the 1960's and early 70's represented 2.8 percent.

Needless to say, when informed that NASA gets such a small slice of the federal pie, 75 percent of the respondents said they "Strongly Agree" or "Agree" that it is "worthwhile to increase NASA's percentage of the federal budget to 1 percent to fund a mission to Mars."

"Despite difficult economic times, the American people are still inspired by space exploration and are committed to human exploration of Mars," said Chris Carberry, Executive Director of Explore Mars. "This is a wakeup call to our leaders that Americans are still explorers."

On top of the respondents' "to do" list on Mars was to first achieve a greater understanding of the red planet, followed by search for extraterrestrial life in the red soil. Another priority was "to maintain U.S. leadership in commercial, scientific and national defense applications."

Despite the politics, NASA keeps surprising the world by what they can do with the tight budget they've been allocated. But landing a one-ton rover on Mars, although mind blowing, costs a lot less than mounting a human expedition. So if the 71 percent want to see a NASA-led human mission, they'll have to start bugging their representatives to support an increase in the space agency's budget. Otherwise, it's down to the commercial space sector to spearhead mankind's next great interplanetary adventure.

New poll finds Americans hopelessly optimistic about going to Mars

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

Last summer a group promoting the exploration of Mars — named, well, Explore Mars — dropped a large red rock in front of Houston's city hall. Designed the look like a Martian boulder, the fake rock helped build momentum for what ultimately was a successful landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars.

Yet the group's ultimate aim is not sending robots to Mars, but rather humans. So earlier this month the group conducted a nationwide survey of U.S. citizens that focused on the exploration of Mars.

The group has not released the full results of the survey of 1,001 Americans, but it did issue a summary. And what sticks out to me is the seemingly hopeless optimism of Americans that we'll put a human on Mars within two decades, by 2033.

Some of the results pertaining to the statement, "I am confident humans will go to Mars by 2033."

·         71% of Americans are confident that humans will walk on Mars by 2033
·         Young people are more confident.
·         73% of Americans ages 18-24 are confident humans will go to Mars by 2033.
·         This age group of 18-24 has the highest confidence percentage that humans will go to Mars by 2033 and in their lifetime.
·         71% of both white and black Americans are confident humans will go to Mars by 2033.
·         79% of Asian Americans are confident humans will go to Mars by 2033, and 80% of Native Americans are confident of this.

I'd love nothing more than to see a human walk on Mars within two decades, but to believe this suspends reality in a couple of ways.

First of all, under the very best of scenarios, ones in which NASA delivers a rocket and space capsule on time and on budget, the space agency will launch humans into an orbit around the moon in 2021.

Alas that's probably a date that should be taken with a grain of salt.

Officially NASA has a goal of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s, but that's not actually to the surface, just into orbit around the red planet. In other words, even from an optimistic, eyes-wide-shut to reality point of view, NASA is not planning to send humans to the surface of Mars in the 2030s.

Now there are other possibilities. Elon Musk has talked of sending humans to the surface of Mars within 15 years. And China is a rising space power. Nevertheless the same challenges that face NASA will face them: Mars is 600 times more distant than the moon, there's space radiation, and there's much more challenging gravity to launch from than the surface of the moon. And all of this is darned expensive.

The fact of the matter is that to believe humans will walk on Mars by 2030 is either hopelessly naive, blindly optimistic, or both. I'd love to be wrong.

Asking the big questions for the next ten years

Jeff Foust - The Space Review

When The Space Review started ten years ago, we sought to ask—and hopefully answer—the big questions facing spaceflight (see "Time to ask the big questions", The Space Review, February 11, 2003). At that time, of course, there were plenty of big questions about the future of space exploration, triggered by the loss of the space shuttle Columbia at put the future of that program, and of NASA, into question.

A decade later, many big questions remain. Some of these are new questions, developed over the last decade through the rise and fall of the Vision for Space Exploration, its replacement by the compromise struck between Obama Administration and Congress, and the growing, but in many respects yet unproven, capabilities of commercial providers. Some, though, are more fundamental questions, still unanswered, about why we pursue spaceflight—questions that, more than ever, will demand answers over the next ten years as the political and societal landscape evolves.

Whither the ISS?

Just prior to the loss of Columbia ten years ago, the central focus of NASA's human spaceflight program was to complete the assembly of the International Space Station. In fact, the schedule pressure NASA created to get the station done by a specific date was a contributing factor in the loss of the Columbia and its crew, delaying completion of the station by several years.

The final flights of the Space Shuttle program two years ago completed the ISS at long last, although some minor tweaks remain: Russia plans to replace the Pirs module with a multipurpose lab module next year, while NASA announced an agreement last month with Bigelow Aerospace to temporarily add an experimental inflatable module to the station in 2015 (see "The benefits (and limitations) of space partnerships", The Space Review, January 21, 2013). Today, unlike a decade ago, the question is not how to finish building the ISS, but what to do with it, and for how long.

NASA and space station research advocates see the ISS as the lynchpin for future human exploration plans and scientific studies. "The International Space Station, of course, is the cornerstone of operations in space and key to our future in exploration," said Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for policy and plans within NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD), in a briefing last week to the Human Spaceflight Technical Feasibility Panel, part of the ongoing study of human spaceflight by the National Research Council. "The space station provides the foundation, framework, and the experience base from which we can begin to expand our international endeavors in space."

William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator in charge of HEOMD, sees the ISS as a facility capable of demonstrating the potential for research in microgravity, serving as a pathfinder for later commercial research activities. "The real benefit of station is that is can do much, much more than what it's doing today with just the government research," he said in a speech at the 16th Annual FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington last week. "We need to use station as a way to show that space-based research is really an important tool for industry."

That potential is still something yet to be fully demonstrated, though, as space station research ramps up with the support of NASA and a non-profit organization, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), established to manage research on the US elements of the station designated by Congress as a national laboratory. ISS supporters see plenty of potential for attracting commercial users of the station. "The thing we need to do now is to expose the commercial market, companies that are doing research today in labs and research facilities, to space, and show them what they can gain from this unique environment," Gerstenmaier said.

The challenge will be to demonstrate that the gains from performing research in space are worth the expense and hassles involved with flying experiments to the ISS. That's a challenge history suggests will be a steep one, given the past promises of the benefits of microgravity research dating back several decades that have fallen short.

A lot may be riding on the ability of NASA, its ISS partners, and other users to demonstrate the scientific utility of research there. The ISS partners have agreed to operate the station to 2020, but have taken a wait-and-see approach to extending the life of the station beyond that although analyses indicate that, from a technical standpoint, the ISS could operate to 2028. If the benefits from operating the station aren't worth the considerable expense, one could see some or all partners hesitant to continue investing in the station past 2020.

An end to the ISS in 2020 could bring to an end an anchor tenant for commercial cargo and crew transportation systems, the latter expected to enter service just a few years before that date. Moreover, a perceived failure of ISS research could affect the business plans of companies like Bigelow Aerospace to develop private space stations to support commercial and government research efforts, if the outcome of the ISS efforts leads potential customers to conclude there's little utility in human-tended research in orbit.

"If we just stay with the government-funded research from now on, I don't think that's sustainable," Gerstenmaier said. "We've got a finite window with the space station over these next several years to prove that research in space provides real, tangible benefits."

How viable is commercial orbital human spaceflight?

As noted above, one of the key aspects of the ISS is that is provides an existing market for transporting humans to and from low Earth orbit. And NASA's need to have the ability to get astronauts to and from the ISS—something provided solely by the Russians with the shuttle's retirement in 2011—has stimulated a sometimes controversial effort to support the development of commercial systems to do that.

The three companies that won the latest round of NASA awards last August—Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and SpaceX (see "Commercial crew's winners and losers", The Space Review, August 6, 2012)—say that, six months into the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) program, they're making good progress. The companies have all achieved several milestones of their awards as they progress towards hardware tests. For example, glide tests of a test article of Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser are slated to begin within the next two months at Edwards Air Force Base in California, company officials recently stated.

But commercial crew transportation faces several challenges over the coming decade. There are, of course, technical challenges associated with developing a crewed spacecraft that can safely transport up to seven people to and from low Earth orbit. While companies have ambitious schedules—SpaceX currently plans to perform a test flight of the crewed version of its Dragon spacecraft, with non-NASA astronauts on board, by the end of 2015—the technical challenges inherent in almost any major aerospace program suggest those schedules will slip, by months or possibly years, as has already happened with Orbital Sciences and SpaceX on their commercial cargo development efforts.

A challenge potentially larger than technical issues is that of policy and funding. Limited budgets and, perhaps, a degree of skepticism on Capitol Hill that commercial providers are up to challenge of carrying people to orbit, have made it difficult for NASA to secure the funding it has sought for the program. NASA sought $830 million for commercial crew for fiscal year 2013, and while Congress has yet to complete spending bills for the fiscal year, the program is unlikely to get more than about $500 million.

There have also been calls for NASA to save money by supporting only a single company, something that NASA has rejected because it wants to preserve competition in the program. Last year, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), who has since retired, was one key member who pressed for a commercial crew downselect now, but not because she was philosophically opposed to the program. "What she wanted to do was to try and make it possible for NASA to do a good job with commercial crew development in light of the lack of available resources," explained Senate staffer Jeff Bingham at the FAA conference last week.

Beyond the technical and fiscal challenges for commercial crew is the question of the business case: is there enough non-NASA business to sustain one or more of these companies, especially if the NASA business goes away with the ISS's retirement as soon as 2020? Companies have cited a number of potential markets, from space tourists to commercial researchers to so-called "sovereign clients", governments without indigenous human spaceflight programs who would be interested in flying their own astronauts. Bigelow Aerospace has shown an interest in being a customer of these systems, but will also be looking for customers from those same markets. Demonstrating there's a viable market at a given price point and set of capabilities may turn out to be the biggest challenge for commercial crew companies.

When will suborbital spaceflight finally take off?

Ten years ago, as much of the space industry reflected on the loss of Columbia and its implications for the future of NASA's space efforts, a commercial effort emerged from its veil of secrecy in the California desert. In April 2003, Scaled Composites publicly displayed for the first time SpaceShipOne, the suborbital vehicle it was developing to win the $10-million Ansari X PRIZE (see "Rutan aims for space: A look at SpaceShipOne", The Space Review, April 21, 2003). A year and a half later, SpaceShipOne captured the prize.

At the time, there was unbridled enthusiasm for commercial suborbital spaceflight, and understandably so. SpaceShipOne demonstrated that companies could develop such vehicles relatively affordably (the entire program cost less than $30 million), attract financing (in Scaled's case, from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen), and also stimulate new ventures, such as the deal Scaled reached with Sir Richard Branson to develop a vehicle for a venture called Virgin Galactic. And since Scaled was just one of about two dozen teams competing for the prize, it seemed the skies would soon be buzzing with suborbital spacecraft.

The future has turned out a little differently than what people expected in the heady days of October 2004. The final, prize-winning flight of SpaceShipOne on October 4, 2004, remains to this day the last human commercial suborbital spaceflight. SpaceShipOne was put into the Smithsonian while development of a lager successor vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, dragged on. The other X PRIZE competitors turned out to be far behind Scaled and either retooled their plans or, in most cases, simply faded away.

There are signs, though, that after eight years, and a few false alarms, suborbital human spaceflight is about to return to center stage. Virgin Galactic is inching towards its first powered test flights of SpaceShipTwo. In December, SpaceShipTwo performed its first glide flight in what the company called "powered flight" configuration, with its rocket motor installed but not ignited. The vehicle hasn't flown since then, and Virgin said at the time that at least two more such glide flights are planned before the first powered flight.

Virgin's closest competitor in the suborbital human spaceflight market, XCOR Aerospace, is also making progress with its Lynx spaceplane, under construction, like SpaceShipTwo, at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. It's expected to begin test flights later this year. Blue Origin is working in secrecy on its suborbital (and, eventually, orbital) vehicles, while Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems focus, for the time being, on uncrewed suborbital vehicles.

The success of one or more of these companies, in particular those developing crewed vehicles, would be a major milestone for the commercial space industry, open up new markets for tourism, research, or other applications. But, after years of delays, the patience of some potential customers may be beginning to wear thin.

Can NASA match its programs to its budgets?

NASA has a lot more on its plate than just utilizing the ISS and supporting the development of commercial cargo and crew systems. It's working on the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket and Orion crew vehicle for human missions beyond Earth orbit; the James Webb Space Telescope and a panoply of other science missions, including a 2020 Mars rover that will likely be the first step in a multi-mission effort to return samples from Mars; and aeronautics and space technology research.

And that's perhaps NASA's biggest problem: that impressive array of missions and programs doesn't match up with the budgets allocated to the space agency. The 2010 NASA authorization act, the latest such bill, authorized NASA to spend just under $20 billion in fiscal year 2013, which has been underway since October. NASA's final budget for the year is likely to be considerably less: no more than the $17.7 billion it got in 2012, and possibly much less, depending on the outcome of the ongoing budget debate and the potential for automatic across-the-board spending cuts, known as "sequestration," set to kick in on March 1 unless Congress and the White House act.

One solution to the growing mismatch between missions and budgets is to give NASA more money. "NASA needs to have more than one half of one percent of the federal budget," Bingham said at the FAA conference last week, emphasizing he was speaking only for himself. That call has been echoed by others in recent years who have sought to at least double NASA's share of the federal budget to one percent.

But the space advocacy community has had limited success in the best of times, and fiscally speaking, these are not the best of times. Asking for a sharp increase in NASA's budget when there's pressure to cut overall spending is a battle space advocates are unlikely to win. Simply keeping NASA's budget flat would be a major success. Bingham suggested that it might be possible to raise NASA's budget if there was "absolute unanimity" across industry to "make it politically indefensible to keep NASA underfunded." But how often do you see absolute unanimity in the space community?

A flat or declining NASA budget will force NASA to make hard decisions in the coming years about just what it should be doing. Should it abandon plans for the SLS and/or Orion, or end its support for commercial crew efforts? What science missions will it be able to afford? Does it need to close one or more of its centers? The easy solution would be to simply stretch programs out to fit them within smaller budgets, but that approach is likely to only delay when those hard decisions will be made.

Is there a justification for human spaceflight?

If and when that time for hard decisions about NASA's programs comes, one debate likely to erupt again is whether any kind of human spaceflight program makes sense. Supporters of human spaceflight have long had to justify the purpose for spending billions of dollars a year and risking lives to send people into space, and in an era of not only diminished budgets but also growing capabilities in robotic spaceflight, that argument will be all the harder.

"The failure to articulate and mount a program of human piloted missions to deep space, rather than being a crisis, rather than being a bungle of leadership and political process, represents a triumph of rationality and success in the political process," argued Rice University professor Eugene Levy during a space policy forum at the university's Baker Institute for Public Policy last month. "No convincing case has been made for mounting a program of deep space piloted missions." He noted he's not opposed to human spaceflight, only that the reasons put forward for human missions beyond Earth orbit don't justify the expenditure in an era where NASA "is getting about as much of the national resource as it is likely to get on any time horizon worth planning for."

He and other panelists at the event didn't hold out much hope for major changes in space policy that might support a more robust human spaceflight program in the near future. "The perception of the need is there, but it's not a widely shared perception," said another panelist, John Logsdon. "And it's hard to change things in our system of government."

There is, arguably, one ultimate rationale for human spaceflight: survival of the species, be it from threats natural or human-made. But that's a tough sell when people are more concerned about near-term issues that may be more mundane but are far less nebulous.

It could be that the future of human spaceflight rests in the hands of the commercial efforts. If they can find a way to profitably fly humans in space, be it for tourism, research, or other purposes, they may be able to do something that governments have struggled to do for decades: create a sustainable, affordable human presence in space that could be the springboard for more ambitious efforts, including government exploration beyond Earth orbit.

If commercial efforts fall short, though, and government budgets remain flat, it may be that there is no future for human spaceflight, beyond perhaps suborbital hops and the occasional mission to Earth orbit, for the foreseeable future. (China does have plans for its own space station by the end of the decade and, eventually, human missions to the Moon, but appears in no rush to carry them out.) There might still be robust activities going on in Earth orbit and beyond, but these would be primarily robotic.

Those are some pretty big questions to try and answer—or, at least, to better articulate—here in the next ten years.

MEANWHILE AT THE STATE OF THE UNION…

NASA's 'Mohawk Guy' Will Sit with First Lady at State of the Union

Mike Wall - Space.com

Life is good for NASA's "Mohawk Guy." He became world famous after helping NASA's huge Curiosity rover make a dramatic landing on Mars, and now he'll sit with first lady Michelle Obama during Tuesday's State of the Union address.

The Iranian-American Mohawk Guy — whose name is Bobak Ferdowsi — will sit in the first lady's box to highlight President Barack Obama's call for more visas for skilled immigrants in the fields of math, science and engineering, Southern California Public Radio reported Monday.

A White House official confirmed the news to SPACE.com.

Ferdowsi will be joined in the box by a number of other people from various walks of life, whose presence may help the president drive home points about some of his policy proposals. The speech begins Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST.

Ferdowsi's American flag-inspired hairstyle — a red- and blue-streaked mohawk set off by white stars on the side of his head — rocketed the mission flight director to international fame during Curiosity's nail-biting landing on the night of Aug. 5.

In a complex maneuver that had never been tried before on another planet, the 1-ton rover was lowered to the Martian surface on cables by a rocket-powered sky crane, which then flew off and crash-landed intentionally a safe distance away.

The president even gave Ferdowsi a public shout-out shortly after the landing.

"I understand there's a special mohawk guy that's working on the mission," President Obama said in a congratulatory call to Curiosity's handlers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Aug. 13. "He's been one of the many stars of the show last Sunday night. I in the past thought about getting a mohawk myself."

Ferdowsi is not a mohawk loyalist, however. He said he has tried out various hairstyles over the years to mark major milestones in the development of Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission, which seeks to determine if the Red Planet can, or ever could, support microbial life.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments, 17 cameras and several other tools to aid in this quest. Over the weekend, it completed a major milestone, drilling a 2.5-inch-deep (6.35 centimeters) hole in a Martian rock and collecting samples. No robot had ever done this on Mars or any other planet before.

Ferdowsi also marched in President Obama's inaugural parade last month, along with life-size models of Curiosity and NASA's Orion manned space capsule.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and State of the Union) News - February 12, 2013 and JSC Today

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