Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight News

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: May 24, 2013 6:00:28 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - May 24, 2013 and JSC Today

Happy Flex Friday everyone.   Have a safe and great weekend.

Friday, May 24, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Meet an IRD Innovator
2.            AIAA Awards Dinner in Honor of Jim McLane
3.            Looking to Improve Your Speaking and Leadership Skills?
4.            No JSC Weight Watchers Meeting On-Site for Monday, May 27
5.            Houston Astros Discount Tickets at Starport
6.            Starport Summer Camp -- Camp Starts in Two Weeks
7.            Youth Sports Camps -- Basketball, Baseball and Ultimate Frisbee
8.            Health and Fitness Month Fitness Challenge Next Week
________________________________________     NASA FACT
" During an average six-month period on the station, as many as 200 investigations operate, with between 70 and 100 of them being new studies."
________________________________________
1.            Meet an IRD Innovator
Do you know Chad Parks? Get to know this technical supervisor in the Information Resources Directorate, who happens to think the simple things, like eliminating wasteful steps in an established process or using tools in a different way to provide value to customers, really embody the spirit of innovation. You may also find out some ways to bribe him ... er ... interesting tidbits, like his love of spicy crawfish. Get to know Parks on JSC Features or on the JSC home page.
Do you know someone doing amazing things at Johnson Space Center (or even outside the gates)? Let us know. That person may be featured next.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x33317

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2.            AIAA Awards Dinner in Honor of Jim McLane
The annual American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston Section Awards Dinner in honor of Jim McLane welcomes Dr. Harold "Sonny" White for his talk on "Warp Field Physics." We will also be honoring fellow Houston Section members who are celebrating service anniversaries and outstanding achievements, as well as introducing the 2013-2014 AIAA Houston Section Executive Council.
Tickets are $20 for AIAA members; $25 for non-members; and $15 for students. Please RSVP by June 5. The registration link, other dinner particulars and speaker biography are located here. You may also email your intent and dinner choice to Michael Frostad or Jennifer Wells by June 5 if you plan to pay at the door. Dinner reservations after the 5th will be filled as available, but there is no guarantee.
We look forward to seeing you on June 13! Please contact Jennifer Wells with any questions.
Event Date: Thursday, June 13, 2013   Event Start Time:5:30 PM   Event End Time:9:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom

Add to Calendar

Jennifer Wells 281-336-6302

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3.            Looking to Improve Your Speaking and Leadership Skills?
Toastmasters is a world leader in communications and leadership development.
Improve your speaking and leadership skills by attending and participating in club meetings.
The Space Explorers Toastmasters Club meets on Fridays in Building 30A, Room 1010, at 11:45 a.m.
Duong Nguyen 281-486-6311

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4.            No JSC Weight Watchers Meeting On-Site for Monday, May 27
This is a reminder that JSC Weight Watchers at Work meetings are not held on Monday holidays. Members may use their Monthly Pass at any local Weight Watcher meeting for that week.
The next JSC Weight Watchers at Work meeting will be Monday, June 3, in Building 20, Room 204. Weigh-in is from 11:30 a.m. to noon, and the meeting runs from noon to 12:30 p.m.
The meeting is run by Weight Watcher leader Anne Churchill, and you weigh in privately on a Weight Watchers scale. Weight Watcher products are also available.
All Weight Watchers Monthly Pass members are invited to attend our on-site meeting. You may attend a meeting as a guest to learn more about the program. To join now, purchase your Monthly Pass through the JSC portal at the link below (JSC company ID 24156, pass code WW24156).
Summer is quickly approaching! Don't wait, join today.
Event Date: Monday, June 3, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Bldg 20, Room 204

Add to Calendar

Julie Kliesing x31540 https://wellness.weightwatchers.com

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5.            Houston Astros Discount Tickets at Starport
Discount Houston Astros tickets are now available for purchase for the July 20 game against the LA Angels and the Sept. 15 game against the Seattle Mariners. Visit the Starport website for details and to purchase your tickets!
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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6.            Starport Summer Camp -- Camp Starts in Two Weeks
Summer is a couple of weeks away, and Starport's Summer Camp is filling up fast! We have tons of fun activities planned, so get register now before it's too late. Weekly themes are listed on our website, as well as information regarding registration and all the necessary forms.
Ages: 6 to 12
Times: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Dates: June 10 to Aug. 16 in one-week sessions
Fee per session: $140 per child for dependents | $160 per child for non-dependents
NEW for this summer! Ask about our sibling discounts and discounts for registering for all sessions.
Registration is now open to dependents and non-dependents (family and friends) of the JSC workforce.
Shericka Phillips x35563 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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7.            Youth Sports Camps -- Basketball, Baseball and Ultimate Frisbee
Starport Summer Sports Camps at the Gilruth Center are a great way to provide added instruction for all levels of players and prepare participants for competitive play. Let our knowledgeable and experienced coaches give your child the confidence they need to learn and excel in their chosen sport.
Baseball Camp: Focuses on the development of hitting, catching, base running, throwing, pitching and drills.
Session Dates: July 8 to 12 and July 15 to 19
Times: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Ages: 6 to 12
Price: $200/per session
Basketball Camp: Focuses on the development of shooting, passing, dribbling, guarding and drills.
Session Dates: Aug. 5 to 9
Times: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Ages: 9 to 14
Price: $200
Ultimate Frisbee: Focuses on development of throwing, catching, offense, defense, zones and drills.
Session Dates: July 1 to 3
Times: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Ages: 9 to 14
Price: $140
Before and after care is available. Register your child now at the Gilruth Center. Space is limited! Visit our website for information and registration forms.
Shericka Phillips x35563 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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8.            Health and Fitness Month Fitness Challenge Next Week
Need a challenge to your normal workout routine? As part of the final week of Health and Fitness month, Starport will hold a fitness challenge on Wednesday, May 29, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Gilruth Center (outside). The challenge should take no more than about 10 minutes to complete. Challenge activities will include three events:
o             Consecutive pull-ups
o             Three-minute burpee maximum test
o             Half-mile run
The top three men and top three women who complete the challenges and receive the highest weighed score will get a prize, and all participants will receive a ticket to be entered into our grand prize drawing on May 31. Register for your spot at the Gilruth front desk at x30304. Everyone needs to pre-register and make an appointment time (appointments will be every 10 minutes from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.). Anyone can register -- you do not need a fitness center membership. More info here.
Event Date: Wednesday, May 29, 2013   Event Start Time:11:00 AM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Richard Wooten x35010 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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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:
·         7:30 am Central (8:30 EDT) - Live coverage of the 2013 Lunabotics Mining Competition
·         11 am Central (Noon EDT) - File of Expedition 36/37 Crew Activities in Baikonur
·         Noon Central (1 pm EDT) - Live coverage of the 2013 Lunabotics Mining Competition
·         11 am Central SUNDAY (Noon EDT) - File of Soyuz TMA-09M mating and pad rollout in Baikonur (includes interviews)

Human Spaceflight News
Friday, May 24, 2013

High above Alaska's chain of Aleutian Islands, ash spews from the Pavlof Volcano in this May 18 photo from ISS

HEADLINES AND LEADS

NASA, Bigelow Aerospace partner for human space exploration

James Dean - Florida Today

Privately developed space stations or moon bases could open opportunities for NASA to broaden its exploration reach more affordably, officials said Thursday. NASA and Bigelow Aerospace have partnered to study potential public-private collaborations in space, and they discussed the early results of their work. "We're realizing there's other ways of doing business," said Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's human spaceflight programs. Las Vegas-based Bigelow plans to have two private space station modules ready for launch by 2016, and ultimately wants to establish a commercial lunar base.

Destination Moon: Private Spaceflight Companies Eye Lunar Bases

Mike Wall - Space.com

Human exploration of deep space is looking more and more like a tag-team affair, with NASA jetting off to asteroids and Mars while the private sector sets up shop on the moon. While NASA has no plans to return humans to the lunar surface anytime soon, private industry is eyeing Earth's nearest neighbor intently, said Robert Bigelow, the founder and president of Bigelow Aerospace. "The brass ring for us is having a lunar base — as a company and in conjunction with other companies, and even other, possibly, foreign entities as well," Bigelow said during a teleconference with reporters Thursday. "That is an appetite and a desire that we've had for a long, long time."

Commercial human ventures planned for the moon: NASA study

Irene Klotz - Reuters

Corporate researchers may be living on the moon by the time NASA astronauts head off to visit an asteroid in the 2020s, a study of future human missions unveiled on Thursday shows. The study by Bigelow Aerospace, commissioned by NASA, shows "a lot of excitement and interest from various companies" for such ventures, said Robert Bigelow, founder and president of the Las Vegas-based firm. The projects range from pharmaceutical research aboard Earth-orbiting habitats, to missions to the moon's surface, he said on Thursday, citing a draft of the report due to be released in a few weeks.

Bigelow Aerospace to Study Moon Base in Deal With NASA

Nick Taborek - Bloomberg News

Bigelow Aerospace LLC, a maker of inflatable space habitats, will study the possible return of men to the moon as part of an agreement with NASA that may lead to more public-private partnerships for exploration. The company said it will identify options for government and private investments to advance human space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, or more than 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) from Earth's surface. Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace won't be paid for work that is scheduled to be completed this year.

North Las Vegas company to test spacecraft capable of moon landing

Eli Segall - North Las Vegas Sun

Las Vegans are used to seeing passenger planes, fighter jets and helicopters crisscrossing the congested skies. Next year, if you make the extra effort, you could also see a spacecraft. Aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow unveiled plans Thursday for a craft known as The Guide. He gave few details but described it as a "flight-like testing unit" that is smaller than a car. He plans to have test flights in early 2014 at a dry lake near Alamo, about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. Bigelow, founder and president of North Las Vegas' Bigelow Aerospace, said The Guide would be able to land as an operational base on the moon. He did not disclose its development costs but said he is "trying to get (it) in contract." It's the "simplest, least expensive base" he could build, as NASA looks more and more to the private sector for help with human space missions, Bigelow said.

NASA head views progress on asteroid lasso mission

Alicia Chang - Associated Press

Surrounded by engineers, NASA chief Charles Bolden inspected a prototype spacecraft engine that could power an audacious mission to lasso an asteroid and tow it closer to Earth for astronauts to explore. Bolden checked on the progress Thursday a month after the Obama administration unveiled its 2014 budget that proposes $105 million to jumpstart the mission, which may eventually cost more than $2.6 billion. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Glenn Research Center in Ohio are developing a thruster that relies on ion propulsion instead of conventional chemical fuel.

NASA's JPL to 'lasso' an asteroid
Project would bring body close enough for astronauts to study, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says

Tiffany Kelly - Pasadena Sun

A proposed mission to capture an asteroid and bring it into orbit in the Earth-moon system is a stepping stone to sending humans to Mars, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said Thursday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Bolden visited the La Cañada Flintridge facility to visit with asteroid experts and see an ion thruster — which could potentially nudge an asteroid — in action at the lab. The public's interest in asteroids was heightened recently after JPL tracked a near-Earth object last year on the same day a fireball exploded over Russia, injuring hundreds and scattering meteorites across the region. But JPL has been working on identifying and tracking asteroids for years, as well as on the ion propulsion system that can move objects.

Regular ISS Power Distribution Resumes After Coolant Leak Repair

Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily

NASA's Mission Control restored full distribution of solar power throughout the International Space Station on May 22, adding back in an eighth channel that was temporarily taken offline in response to a port-side ammonia coolant system leak that required a spacewalk repair earlier this month. The return to normal eight-channel distribution comes days before the scheduled May 28 launch of Russia's Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft with new Expedition 36 ISS crewmembers — cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA's Karen Nyberg and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano. Liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is scheduled for 4:31 p.m. EST.

Space station power system restored to full operations

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Convinced an emergency spacewalk fixed the problem, engineers have restored complete functionality to the International Space Station power system that sprung a coolant leak May 9, NASA officials said Wednesday. Astronauts spotted leaking ammonia flakes streaming from the vicinity of a pump May 9 and radioed mission control to report the sighting. Engineers on the ground confirmed the leak through telemetry data and shut down one of the space station's eight power cooling loops while ordering astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn to prepare for a spacewalk to locate and resolve the issue.

Astronaut aboard space station answers Talbot students' questions

Michael Gagne - Fall River Herald News

It's not something students get to see every day: an astronaut, on screen and transmitting from space, demonstrating in real-time weightlessness and conversing with them. On Thursday morning, students from one sixth-grade science class and one seventh-grade science class at Fall River's Talbot Innovation Middle School got to talk with NASA astronaut and flight engineer Chris Cassidy.

Astronaut Packs Crafts for Creative Space Station Trip

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

An American astronaut is about to get seriously crafty in space. When NASA's Karen Nyberg, the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin officially launch on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station on May 28, the American astronaut will bring a few key creative items with her. "I actually enjoy sewing and quilting and I am bringing some fabric with me and thread and I'm hoping to create something," Nyberg said. "I don't know yet what it will be but that's part of creativity is that it comes with the feeling of the day so I have the supplies in my hands to create if I get the opportunity and the creative notion to do so."

After Months in Space, Gravity's a Drag for Astronauts

Megan Gannon - Space.com

Three astronauts who recently spent months together aboard the International Space Station reunited on Earth Thursday during a Google+ Hangout to talk about their experiences aboard the orbiting lab and the challenge of readapting to life with gravity. "It's great to all be back together," said NASA astronaut Kevin Ford from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ford, who returned to Earth on March 15 after a five-month mission, joined up with two of his Expedition 34 crewmates, Canada's Chris Hadfield and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, for the live video conference. Hadfield and Marshburn came home just last week, and they talked about how it was difficult at first to their Earth legs back after spending five months floating.

NASA Efforts To Revamp KSC Get $20 Million Boost from Florida

Irene Klotz - Space News

In its quest to downsize the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), NASA has found a friend in Florida, which intends to spend $20 million over the next year to help shift shuttle-era facilities into private sector hands. The money for spaceport infrastructure projects is tucked into the $74.5 billion budget that Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law May 20. Florida's new fiscal year begins July 1. In addition, the state agreed to give Space Florida, its Brevard County-based aerospace economic development agency, $10 million for operations and business development, $7 million for financing projects, $1.5 million for space tourism marketing and $1 million to nurture fledgling space research and business ties with Israel.

Buzz Aldrin: Why NASA is 'wrong,' why English-speaking nations must lead, and why we need to go to Mars

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

Buzz Aldrin – amateur boxer, amateur dancer, inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear character and most importantly the world's most famous astronaut — is nothing if not opinionated. I recently had the chance to speak with Aldrin, 83, as part of a promotion for his new book, Mission to Mars. During the wide-ranging, 45-minute interview, Aldrin and I spoke a lot about how to build both political support for, and to pay for an ambitious plan to establish a permanent colony on Mars. Which is the goal of the second man to walk on the Moon.

Buzz Aldrin, Moonwalker, Says U.S. Must Shoot for Mars

James Clash - Bloomberg News

Buzz Aldrin was the second man to step onto the lunar surface, 19 minutes behind the late Neil Armstrong. That was July 20, 1969, nearly 44 years ago. Two years later, the Apollo 11 astronaut retired from NASA but still was thinking about space. In 1996, he wrote a science fiction novel "Encounter with Tiber" and in 2010 competed on the TV show "Dancing with the Stars." Aldrin's latest focus is Mars. I recently caught up with the 83-year-old MIT Ph.D. at The Explorers Club in New York to discuss "Mission to Mars" (National Geographic Books, May 2013), his blueprint for humans to reach the red planet by 2035…

'Star Trek' vehicle to bridge science fiction, fact

Alex Macon - Galveston County Daily News

It's been almost two years since NASA ended its space shuttle program, but a shuttle mock-up predating the agency's own 1976 Enterprise prototype will make its way to Space Center Houston this summer. The full-sized mock-up of the Galileo shuttlecraft, which made its on-screen debut in a 1967 episode of the "Star Trek" original series, is being restored at a boat-refurbishment shop in New Jersey. The fictional Galileo originally served as a small transport vessel for Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock and other crew members of the USS Enterprise, ferrying the intrepid space explorers to and from strange new worlds. By the end of the summer, when the craft is set to go on public display, its new mission will be to enchant and inspire guests at the NASA visitor center, bridging the gap between science fiction and science fact.

Air Force Museum Unveils Plans for Major Expansion

Barrie Barber - Dayton Daily News

The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force will relocate a one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft collection to a new $46 million gallery in 2015, giving hundreds of thousands of visitors a chance to see both historic and futuristic air and space planes now closed off in a hangar from museum visitors. The research and development aircraft will be added inside a fourth hangar already in the works to house the Presidential, Global Reach and Space Galleries, which will showcase former Air Force One planes, cargo jets and a Space Shuttle crew compartment trainer, according to museum officials. The presidential collection includes the plane that brought President John F. Kennedy's body back to Washington after his assassination in Dallas in 1963. President Lyndon Johnson was also sworn in on that aircraft. The collection also includes planes used by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Nixon, Reagan and others.

Space Trip With Leonardo DiCaprio Sells For $1.5 Million!
People have too much money

Claire Rutter - EntertainmentWise.com

Leonardo DiCaprio is heading for space and a ticket next to him has reportedly sold for a whopping $1.5 million. The Great Gatsby star will be boarding Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic flight, and while similar flights usually cost £132,406, a pair of tickets on Leonardo DiCaprio's space shuttle has sold for the incredible sum at an auction. It's thought that the trips to space will start running from New Mexico by the end of 2013 but no official word has been given as to when Leo will be taking off although it was said that the winning bidder would be one of the first 1,000 people to head into space.

The camera that is out of this world:
Rare Nasa Hasselblad used to photograph Earth from first orbiting space station set to be sold

Mark Prigg - London Daily Mail

It is the camera used to photograph the Earth from an orbiting space station 40 years before Commander Chris Hadfield captured the world's attention with his pictures from the International Space Station. A rare Nasa camera used aboard Skylab, the first US Space Station, which orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979, is set to be auctioned. The modified Hasselblad 500 EL/M was specially adapted to work in the cramped conditions about Skylab - and be operated while wearing spacesuits.
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COMPLETE STORIES

NASA, Bigelow Aerospace partner for human space exploration

James Dean - Florida Today

Privately developed space stations or moon bases could open opportunities for NASA to broaden its exploration reach more affordably, officials said Thursday.

NASA and Bigelow Aerospace have partnered to study potential public-private collaborations in space, and they discussed the early results of their work.

"We're realizing there's other ways of doing business," said Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's human spaceflight programs.

Las Vegas-based Bigelow plans to have two private space station modules ready for launch by 2016, and ultimately wants to establish a commercial lunar base.

NASA might use such lower-cost systems or share them with other countries or companies flying astronauts on exploration or science research missions.

As more companies invest in hardware and missions, "isn't there an opportunity in there for NASA to benefit, so that NASA isn't having to pay the perpetual heavy burden of research and development costs?" said Bigelow's founder, Robert Bigelow.

Bigelow spoke to roughly 20 companies and international space agencies to produce the first of two reports promised to NASA under an unfunded Space Act Agreement signed in March.

A draft of the first report, presented to Gerstenmaier during Thursday but not released publicly, offered a menu of commercial capabilities and areas of interest.

The draft lacked only one section related to space medicine, Bigelow said.

Its focus was on near-term opportunities in low Earth orbit, on the moon or at gravitationally stable points around the moon rather than on deeper-space missions that will take longer and cost more.

Bigelow said he solicited input under the understanding that Bigelow Aerospace would act as a general contractor, demanding services for fixed prices on strict timelines.

"We did this in the context of making it clear to them that this was not a normal NASA effort," he said.

NASA plans to launch a crew to an asteroid in 2021 using its new Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule, with a longer-term goal of reaching Mars in the 2030s.

Bigelow is focused on the moon as a training ground for technologies needed to live farther away from Earth.

But Gerstenmaier said a better overall understanding of commercial interests would help NASA develop its own plans and take advantage of synergies.

"This report implies that the private sector is very interested in lunar activity, and I think that's perfectly acceptable," he said.

"We'll combine and share with them to see what makes sense," he added, citing transportation and life support as two common needs.

Both NASA and Bigelow are counting on commercial systems to provide crews cheaper access to stations in low Earth orbit, possibly by 2017.

Super-heavy lift rockets including NASA's SLS or SpaceX's Falcon Heavy could support more remote destinations, Bigelow said.

A second report due by July is expected to propose more specific public-private mission opportunities.

Destination Moon: Private Spaceflight Companies Eye Lunar Bases

Mike Wall - Space.com

Human exploration of deep space is looking more and more like a tag-team affair, with NASA jetting off to asteroids and Mars while the private sector sets up shop on the moon.

While NASA has no plans to return humans to the lunar surface anytime soon, private industry is eyeing Earth's nearest neighbor intently, said Robert Bigelow, the founder and president of Bigelow Aerospace.

"The brass ring for us is having a lunar base — as a company and in conjunction with other companies, and even other, possibly, foreign entities as well," Bigelow said during a teleconference with reporters Thursday. "That is an appetite and a desire that we've had for a long, long time."

Two months ago, NASA tapped Bigelow Aerospace to sound out the private sector's interest and intent in going beyond low-Earth orbit, in an attempt to help map out possible public-private partnerships in deep space.

The Space Act agreement set out a two-phase study approach. Bigelow delivered a draft report of the Phase 1 findings Thursday to NASA human exploration chief Bill Gerstenmaier, who also participated in the teleconference.

Bigelow Aerospace makes expandable habitat modules designed to house astronauts in space or on the surface of the moon and other bodies. The company has long been an advocate of setting up manned lunar bases, and Bigelow said other firms see the appeal of commercial lunar operations as well.

Golden Spike, for example, aims to begin launching two-person missions to the lunar surface and back by 2020. And several different firms, such as Shackleton Energy Co. and Moon Express, plan to mine the moon's resources.

NASA had been planning on sending astronauts back to the moon until 2010, when President Barack Obama directed the space agency to work instead toward getting to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.

Gerstenmaier said NASA welcomes private industry's interest in the moon, viewing it as a complement to the agency's plans in deeper space.

"NASA and the government, we focus on maybe deep space, we focus on asteroids. The private sector picks up the lunar activity, and then we'll combine and share with them to see what makes sense," Gerstenmaier said.

"Transportation to the same region is common between us," he added. "Other aspects — life-support — are common between us. We can do lots of co-development between these that actually share what the private sector needs and what the government needs."

Cosmic Log: To the moon? Private exploration studied

Bigelow said he talked to about 20 private companies during the course of the study, including major players such as SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp.

"You would recognize most of the names," he said.

Gerstenmaier said NASA would release the Phase 1 report to the public after the agency receives the final draft. The Phase 2 portion of the study, meanwhile, is slated to last four months.

Commercial human ventures planned for the moon: NASA study

Irene Klotz - Reuters

Corporate researchers may be living on the moon by the time NASA astronauts head off to visit an asteroid in the 2020s, a study of future human missions unveiled on Thursday shows.

The study by Bigelow Aerospace, commissioned by NASA, shows "a lot of excitement and interest from various companies" for such ventures, said Robert Bigelow, founder and president of the Las Vegas-based firm.

The projects range from pharmaceutical research aboard Earth-orbiting habitats, to missions to the moon's surface, he said on Thursday, citing a draft of the report due to be released in a few weeks.

NASA intends to follow the International Space Station program with astronaut visits to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars about a decade later.

President Barack Obama's proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1 requests $105 million for the U.S. space agency to begin work on a mission to find a small asteroid and reposition it around the moon for a future visit by astronauts.

But private companies, including Bigelow Aerospace, have more interest in the moon itself, Bigelow told reporters on a conference call on Thursday.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA's head of space operations, said on the call "it's important for us to know that there's some interest in moon activity and lunar surface activity."

"We can take advantage of what the private sector is doing" in areas such as space transportation, life support systems and other technologies needed for travel beyond the space station's 250 mile high orbit, he noted.

NASA typically completes its mission planning before looking at what partnerships and collaborations may be possible, Gerstenmaier added.

"We thought that this time we would kind of turn that around a little bit, that we would ask industry first what they're interested in ... where they see human presence that makes sense, where they see potential commercial markets."

Bigelow Aerospace surveyed about 20 companies as well as foreign space agencies and research organizations for the NASA study, which the company undertook at its own expense. Bigelow has made no secret of its ambition to own, lease and operate inflatable space habitats in Earth orbit and on the moon.

Bigelow handed a draft of the first part of the report to Gerstenmaier on Thursday, 40 days ahead of schedule. The second section, which probes mission planning and other aspects of potential public-private partnerships, is due this fall.

Bigelow Aerospace to Study Moon Base in Deal With NASA

Nick Taborek - Bloomberg News

Bigelow Aerospace LLC, a maker of inflatable space habitats, will study the possible return of men to the moon as part of an agreement with NASA that may lead to more public-private partnerships for exploration.

The company said it will identify options for government and private investments to advance human space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, or more than 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) from Earth's surface. Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace won't be paid for work that is scheduled to be completed this year.

A lunar base will be part of the study announced today by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, though the space agency isn't planning to fund a moon mission. NASA instead intends to focus on landing humans on an asteroid by 2021.

The deal "signals that NASA is open to working with the private sector on lunar activities even if the agency itself does not want to lead such an effort," Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said in a phone interview.

Pace, a critic of the Obama administration's focus on the asteroid program, said NASA should participate in an international mission to the moon to prepare for a possible manned exploration flight to Mars.

NASA plans to capture an asteroid with an unmanned spacecraft and re-direct it to a location near the moon. A crew would land on the space rock as early as 2021.

NASA 'Distraction'

Robert Bigelow, who made his fortune in budget hotels and has bet $500 million on his space venture, said the asteroid mission is "a distraction to other more efficacious missions that NASA should focus on."

Space technologies offered by companies such as Chicago-based Boeing Co. (BA), Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORB) and Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp. will be part of the study, Bigelow said.

While NASA focuses on asteroids, opportunities exist for the agency to collaborate with industry on lunar activities, William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said during the press conference.

NASA could potentially share rides to the lunar region with commercial interests while it pursues other missions, Gerstenmaier said.

North Las Vegas company to test spacecraft capable of moon landing

Eli Segall - North Las Vegas Sun

Las Vegans are used to seeing passenger planes, fighter jets and helicopters crisscrossing the congested skies.

Next year, if you make the extra effort, you could also see a spacecraft.

Aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow unveiled plans Thursday for a craft known as The Guide. He gave few details but described it as a "flight-like testing unit" that is smaller than a car.

He plans to have test flights in early 2014 at a dry lake near Alamo, about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.

Bigelow, founder and president of North Las Vegas' Bigelow Aerospace, said The Guide would be able to land as an operational base on the moon. He did not disclose its development costs but said he is "trying to get (it) in contract." It's the "simplest, least expensive base" he could build, as NASA looks more and more to the private sector for help with human space missions, Bigelow said.

"We are very serious about this," he said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters.

A company spokesman did not return a call seeking more details on the project.

Bigelow was in Washington to discuss a deal he reached in March with NASA to explore how private companies can contribute to missions beyond the area known as "low earth orbit," about 1,200 miles above sea level.

The two sides are working to determine which companies can contribute to such missions, what expertise they would bring to the table and what types of missions they could work on.

No money will change hands between Bigelow and NASA as part of the study.

NASA typically develops plans for various projects and then asks the private sector to contribute. With the study, agency officials decided to flip that process and ask companies from the get-go where they see business opportunities, said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of human exploration and operations at NASA.

Bigelow said his company has also talked with officials from space agencies in Japan, the United Arab Emirates and "a few other folks" in the Middle East, all of whom want to ramp up their space exploration.

He and NASA officials must "constantly assure and reassure them" that, despite what they hear and read about NASA's budget woes, space transportation "will be a reality," Bigelow said.

President Barack Obama has proposed a $17.7 billion budget for NASA for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. If the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration remain in place, NASA reportedly would lose almost $1 billion in funding next year.

Bigelow Aerospace, founded in 1999, develops expandable space-habitat technology. The company launched two prototype modules into space in 2006 and 2007 aboard converted Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles. The spacecraft remain orbiting Earth once every 96 minutes.

NASA officials announced in January that they awarded the company a $17.8 million contract to provide a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, to the International Space Station. The BEAM is an inflatable room that can be compressed into a 7-foot tube.

If it proves durable, it could help lead to space stations on the moon and missions to Mars.

The company has taken part in at least one other test flight near Alamo.

About a year ago, the Boeing Co. completed a parachute test drop of the CST-100 spacecraft, which it developed with help from Bigelow.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the CST-100 can transport up to seven people, and Bigelow plans to use it to ferry people to and from its space modules.

NASA head views progress on asteroid lasso mission

Alicia Chang - Associated Press

Surrounded by engineers, NASA chief Charles Bolden inspected a prototype spacecraft engine that could power an audacious mission to lasso an asteroid and tow it closer to Earth for astronauts to explore.

Bolden checked on the progress Thursday a month after the Obama administration unveiled its 2014 budget that proposes $105 million to jumpstart the mission, which may eventually cost more than $2.6 billion.

Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Glenn Research Center in Ohio are developing a thruster that relies on ion propulsion instead of conventional chemical fuel.

Once relegated to science fiction, ion propulsion - which fires beams of electrically charged atoms to propel a spacecraft - is preferred for deep space cruising because it's more fuel-efficient. Engine testing is expected to ramp up next year.

During his visit to the JPL campus, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles, Bolden viewed an engineering model of the engine and peered through a porthole of a vacuum chamber housing the prototype.

NASA is under White House orders to fly humans to an asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars. Instead of sending astronauts to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, as originally planned, the space agency came up with a quicker, cheaper idea: Haul the asteroid close to the moon and visit it there.

Bolden said the original concept was impractical given the flat budget and praised the alternative as "ingenious."

"If you can't get to the asteroid, bring the asteroid to you," Bolden said.

The space agency would launch an ion-powered unmanned spacecraft to snare a yet-to-be-selected small asteroid in 2019 and park it in the moon's neighborhood. Then a spacewalking team would hop on an Orion space capsule that's currently under development and explore the rock in 2021.

Besides preparing astronauts for an eventual trip to Mars, NASA said the asteroid-capture mission is designed to test technologies to deflect threatening space boulders on a collision course with Earth.

"Anytime that you can get up close to an asteroid and understand its composition and its characteristics ... that's getting to know the enemy," said Don Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near Earth Object Program at JPL.

Scientists have a dozen potential small asteroids in mind for the mission, but Yeomans said more observations are needed before settling on a target. Whatever asteroid NASA chooses to redirect, it won't pose a threat to Earth because it would burn up if it inadvertently plunged through the atmosphere, scientists said.

Bolden's JPL stop is part of his annual spring tour of NASA centers around the country. His California journey began Wednesday at the Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert where Sierra Nevada Corp. is preparing its Dream Chaser spaceship for test flights later this year before it can make supply runs to the International Space Station. On Friday, Bolden was set to visit the Ames Research Center in the Silicon Valley where engineers are working on various space technologies.

NASA's JPL to 'lasso' an asteroid
Project would bring body close enough for astronauts to study, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says

Tiffany Kelly - Pasadena Sun

A proposed mission to capture an asteroid and bring it into orbit in the Earth-moon system is a stepping stone to sending humans to Mars, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said Thursday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Bolden visited the La Cañada Flintridge facility to visit with asteroid experts and see an ion thruster — which could potentially nudge an asteroid — in action at the lab.

The public's interest in asteroids was heightened recently after JPL tracked a near-Earth object last year on the same day a fireball exploded over Russia, injuring hundreds and scattering meteorites across the region. But JPL has been working on identifying and tracking asteroids for years, as well as on the ion propulsion system that can move objects.

The Asteroid Retrieval Initiative would take about five to eight years from launch until the asteroid came into the Earth-moon orbit. A separate mission would then send astronauts to explore the captured asteroid and bring back samples.

The rock would be about 23 to 32 feet in diameter and slightly larger than the 340-ton "Levitated Mass" boulder on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

"This is a transportation problem like no other," said John Brophy, an electric propulsion engineer at JPL. "Space is big; asteroids are heavy."

The mission would use an unmanned spacecraft with four ion thrusters that would "lasso" the asteroid. The solar-powered propulsion system would ionize 12 tons of xenon gas and shoot the positive particles toward the asteroid at 80,000 mph.

JPL developed a prototype of the thruster with NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, which engineers showed off to Bolden at the lab.

"Moving an asteroid is hard, so you have to thrust on it for a long time with a very efficient device," Brophy said. "You can't have those devices wearing out, and they have to be able to process a lot of power. This is the only technology that can do that."

The mission will be an expensive one. NASA officials have so far set aside $105 million to study the proposed mission, which has an expected overall budget of $2.6 billion.

In 2010, President Obama expressed interest is sending astronauts to an asteroid, and eventually to the Red Planet. Obama set 2025 as a possible time frame in which to have humans explore the asteroid, but amid budget cuts at the agency, it didn't seem possible.

That's when engineers dreamed up a way to slash costs and bring an asteroid near the moon so humans could explore the rock by 2025.

"If you can't get to the asteroid, bring the asteroid to you," Bolden said. "So, sort of simplistically, that's what we're going to do."

After that, he added, the space agency would focus on sending humans to Mars, which Obama hopes will happen sometime in the 2030s.

"We're using this asteroid as a driver to filling the technological gaps that we need to put humans on Mars," Bolden said. "This is totally different than saying we're going to go back to the moon. We don't need to develop any of this technology to go back to the moon, but going back to the moon doesn't help us get to Mars."

Regular ISS Power Distribution Resumes After Coolant Leak Repair

Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily

NASA's Mission Control restored full distribution of solar power throughout the International Space Station on May 22, adding back in an eighth channel that was temporarily taken offline in response to a port-side ammonia coolant system leak that required a spacewalk repair earlier this month.

The return to normal eight-channel distribution comes days before the scheduled May 28 launch of Russia's Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft with new Expedition 36 ISS crewmembers — cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA's Karen Nyberg and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano. Liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is scheduled for 4:31 p.m. EST.

A May 11 spacewalk in response to the ammonia coolant leak by previous ISS crewmember Tom Marshburn and current NASA flight engineer Chris Cassidy replaced a suspect Pump and Flow Control Systems (PFCS) electronics box on the oldest of the orbiting lab's four U.S. solar power modules, the 13-year-old P-6.

While NASA's flight control team intends to monitor the system closely for weeks, flight controllers have already noted that residual coolant in the older PFCS unit has since drained away, suggesting the pump unit was indeed the source of a worrisome 5-lb.-per-day coolant loss first noted on May 9.

"That leak rate is gone," Mike Suffredini, NASA's ISS program manager, told a May 22 news briefing at the Johnson Space Center. However, controllers will continue to monitor the P-6 cooling system for a pair of previously known leaks, deemed small enough to replenish with ammonia during NASA-led maintenance spacewalks.

Space station power system restored to full operations

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Convinced an emergency spacewalk fixed the problem, engineers have restored complete functionality to the International Space Station power system that sprung a coolant leak May 9, NASA officials said Wednesday.

Astronauts spotted leaking ammonia flakes streaming from the vicinity of a pump May 9 and radioed mission control to report the sighting. Engineers on the ground confirmed the leak through telemetry data and shut down one of the space station's eight power cooling loops while ordering astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn to prepare for a spacewalk to locate and resolve the issue.

During a May 11 spacewalk, Cassidy and Marshburn replaced the suspected culprit - an ammonia pump located at the end of the space station's port-side truss. The spacewalkers observed no obvious signs of a leak when mission control powered up the fresh pump.

Ground controllers reconfigured the space station's primary system in the wake of the leak, isolating one of the lab's eight electricity channels crippled by a cooling failure and spreading the outpost's power load across the other seven solar arrays as officials planned a repair.

Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager, said Wednesday the spacewalk fixed the serious leak that appeared May 9.

"A couple of weeks ago, we changed out a pump on the port outboard solar array cooling system, and that seemed to be the source of the big leak that we saw," Suffredini told reporters. "So we today finished transitioning all the [power] loads back on to that particular solar array, and everything is in a nominal fashion as we proceed forward."

The restored cooling system, which services the space station's 2B power channel, ensures the outpost's laboratories and residents continue working on scientific research at a feverish pace easily eclipsing NASA's self-imposed objective of 35 hours of hands-on experiment work per week.

The 2B channel draws power from one of two 115-foot-long wings of the space station's P6 truss lying on the far left end of the space station's structural backbone. The leaky coolant loop dissipates heat from the electronics on the power truss.

The bulk of the space station's electricity comes from four sets of solar arrays mounted on both ends of the 450-ton outpost's 357-foot-long truss. The P6 solar panels, launched on a space shuttle mission in 2000, are the oldest of the four U.S.-built power truss segments.

Suffredini it will take up to a year to determine whether the 2B power channel's coolant system is still leaking at all. Engineers first noticed a minor leak in the same coolant loop in 2007, prompting a spacewalk in 2011 to refill the system with ammonia coolant. After the leak rate increased - likely due to the development of another leak elsewhere in the system - another spacewalk in November 2012 attempted to isolate the location of the slow leak with a bypass of a suspect radiator.

The leak from 2007 until May 9 was at a much slower, more manageable rate only requiring astronauts to recharge the cooling system's ammonia supply every few years.

"It will take us some time to sort that out," Suffredini said. "But if either of those [previous leaks] are still with us, we're talking years and that's sort of in our plan to refill this every so often."

Astronaut aboard space station answers Talbot students' questions

Michael Gagne - Fall River Herald News

It's not something students get to see every day: an astronaut, on screen and transmitting from space, demonstrating in real-time weightlessness and conversing with them.

On Thursday morning, students from one sixth-grade science class and one seventh-grade science class at Fall River's Talbot Innovation Middle School got to talk with NASA astronaut and flight engineer Chris Cassidy.

Cassidy is currently orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station. He occasionally did flips and let his microphone float in front of him, and he answered the wide variety of questions students asked him.

Talbot science teacher Ben Squire, instrumental in organizing the event, introduced the class to Cassidy.

Some questions were scientific — for example, weight versus mass. Others were about how long the trip was from Earth to outer space.

Normally, the trip from the ground to the space station would take two days. This expedition took only six hours.

The flight from the ground to the edge of the atmosphere lasts for only eight and a half to nine minutes, Cassidy explained. Then the ship "is safely in orbit."

The difficulty is boarding the space station, which moves through space at a speed of 17,500 mph — about five miles a second.

Cassidy compared it to a quarterback throwing a pass and hitting a fast-moving target perfectly.

NASA scientists use complex calculation and geometry to compute when targets can be hit. It usually takes about two days to get from the ground to the station, but Cassidy's recent trip to station in March lasted only six hours under the right conditions. He and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin launched from Kazakhstan.

Sixth-grader Anastasia Monte asked about the mass and weight question.

In space, one has no weight — because it's the number you get when you multiply mass by gravity. That number is zero in outer space because of the lack of gravity, Cassidy said.

"Hopefully, I weigh a little bit less when I get back," he said.

There was only a slight delay of a few seconds between questions and answers. That's because the video and audio feed bounced from the space station via satellite from Houston and Florida and then to Talbot's auditorium by Internet.

Using water, Cassidy demonstrated how, in space, liquids form a bubble.

One student asked whether Cassidy thought humans would travel to Mars.
"I definitely think humans to Mars is possible," Cassidy said. "Maybe not in my time, but in yours."

The link lasted 20 minutes.

"I thought it was very interesting," said seventh-grader Joseph Billotte, adding he was impressed with Cassidy's answers to the students' questions. "He just knew them."

Before the downlink began, students got a glimpse of NASA's mission control center in Houston.

Their time was limited, but students said they had plenty of other questions they didn't get to ask, including whether man-made structures other than the Great Wall of China were visible from space.

Prior to the downlink, the station had just passed the eastern coast of South America.

"You can see the blues of oceans, the white mountain tops, the green of vegetation and the stark brown of desert," Cassidy told the students.

"It's hard to describe how beautiful it is. … You can't see the whole globe at once."

He added, "It makes me want to take care of it and enjoy it even more."

One student asked which ride was scarier — leaving Earth or returning from space.
"Coming home," Cassidy responded, because of the possibility that the shuttle could burn up upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.

"The ride to space is a tremendous experience," he said.

Cassidy will remain aboard the space station until September.

In the months and weeks leading up to the event, students in Squire's science classes had been learning about space. One class had a bottle rocket launch.

"The questions they asked were based on things that we've learned in the classroom," Squire said.

Talbot was one of six schools selected to participate in a NASA Teaching from Space program. Talbot was selected because of its emphasis on STEM education — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The event, also broadcast on NASA TV and its website, is designed to encourage students to study and pursue careers in those fields.

"That was one of my favorite events all year," said Fall River Superintendent Meg Mayo-Brown. "It speaks to being able to help kids connect with real-world applications of learning."

Cassidy's father, Jack Cassidy, a Marshfield resident, was on hand for the event. "The kids asked great questions," Jack said. "It's always a thrill for him."

Astronaut Packs Crafts for Creative Space Station Trip

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

An American astronaut is about to get seriously crafty in space.

When NASA's Karen Nyberg, the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin officially launch on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station on May 28, the American astronaut will bring a few key creative items with her.

"I actually enjoy sewing and quilting and I am bringing some fabric with me and thread and I'm hoping to create something," Nyberg said. "I don't know yet what it will be but that's part of creativity is that it comes with the feeling of the day so I have the supplies in my hands to create if I get the opportunity and the creative notion to do so."

Although the six-month-stint will be Nyberg's longest in space, it is not her first time visiting the International Space Station.

"I'm looking forward to the most this time actually living there," Nyberg told SPACE.com. "I visited space station in 2008 on the space shuttle Discovery, and it was a very, very quick trip, only 14 days and honestly, I don't really remember a lot of it because it just flew on by so fast."

Nyberg, 43, is planning on sharing her experiences on board the station with the world using social media, although she has only be using Twitter (where she posts from the account @AstroKarenN) for a little over a month. She is also on Pintrest with the handle: knyberg.

Nyberg follows in a line of female astronauts who have spent time on board the International Space Station.

"The females that have lived on space station before me are incredible people and have given me a lot of advice on living there and also dealing with having a child at home while living there," Nyberg said. "So it's just fantastic to follow in their footsteps."

The Minnesota native admits that she will miss a few things about life back on Earth aside from her family.

"I also will definitely miss coffee in the morning out of a cup," Nyberg said. "It's just not quite the same when you drink your coffee from a bag."

Nyberg, Parmitano and Yurchikhin will complete the space station's Expedition 36 crew when they join NASA's Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov on the orbiting laboratory at the end of the month.

The $100 billion International Space Station was constructed by 5 space agencies representing 15 different countries.

After Months in Space, Gravity's a Drag for Astronauts

Megan Gannon - Space.com

Three astronauts who recently spent months together aboard the International Space Station reunited on Earth Thursday during a Google+ Hangout to talk about their experiences aboard the orbiting lab and the challenge of readapting to life with gravity.

"It's great to all be back together," said NASA astronaut Kevin Ford from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ford, who returned to Earth on March 15 after a five-month mission, joined up with two of his Expedition 34 crewmates, Canada's Chris Hadfield and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, for the live video conference.

Hadfield and Marshburn came home just last week, and they talked about how it was difficult at first to their Earth legs back after spending five months floating.

"There's this gigantic magnet that's sucking you and every part of your body into the ground," Marshburn said of the feeling he had when he touched down aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on May 13.

"When we get to space, your body immediately starts to adapt to weightlessness," Hadfield added. "It starts turning you from an Earthling into a spaceling … But then when you come home, gravity just feels so unfair."

Hadfield's social media following skyrocketed while he was at the orbiting lab thanks to his Twitter updates, photos, and home movies that included David Bowie covers and cooking lessons.Though Hadfield once showed how to make a peanut butter and honey sandwich in microgravity, he said a real sandwich was one of the things he savored most upon his return.

"Living on the space station, the food is really good but there's no way to preserve the texture," Hadfield said. "It's sort of like eating the world's best baby food. It's nothing like a big, messy, crunchy sandwich."

Sandwiches aside, Hadfield takes his online presence seriously.

"I've been trying for 20 years to share the experience that we're trusted with of flying in space," the astronaut said. "This is an enrichment of the overall human experience … and we now have a way to make it interactive."

The same three astronauts held the first-ever Google+ Hangout in space back in February. This time around, Ford, Marshburn and Hadfield all highlighted the astounding range of research going on in the hundreds of experiments at the ISS, with some tests for tracking climate change on Earth and others aimed at making discoveries about the makeup of the universe.

The astronauts' own bodies are often testing grounds for experiments. With longer missions to other planets in mind, scientists and mission planners are very interested in knowing about the physiological effects of space. Hadfield pointed out that data from the space station astronauts could help scientists figure out what it will take for humans to acclimate to the gravity of Mars after spending months in weightless conditions.

They also discussed the international politics involved in the orbiting lab, as a handful of groups from the Model United Nations were participating in the hangout.

"I don't think there's any turning back at this point in terms of international cooperation," Ford said. "Future major endeavors like this are going to be international endeavors … That will be a good legacy for the space station."

Hadfield highlighted the cooperation of the international crew during the emergency spacewalk on May 11 to try to fix a leak of ammonia, which cools down the orbiting lab's power systems.

"To me it was just a lovely little microcosm of how we all can be when we decide for whatever reasons to work together in a common direction," Hadfield said.

The International Space Station has been permanently staffed with rotating crews since 2000, when the first three-person team took up residence. Construction of the $100 billion orbiting laboratory began in 1998, with five different space agencies and 15 countries participating in its assembly.

As Hadfield and Marshburn acclimate to life on Earth, another NASA astronaut, Karen Nyberg, is counting down to her May 28 launch. She will head to the orbiting lab with European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin next week. They will join NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin as the crew of Expedition 36.

NASA Efforts To Revamp KSC Get $20 Million Boost from Florida

Irene Klotz - Space News

In its quest to downsize the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), NASA has found a friend in Florida, which intends to spend $20 million over the next year to help shift shuttle-era facilities into private sector hands.

The money for spaceport infrastructure projects is tucked into the $74.5 billion budget that Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law May 20. Florida's new fiscal year begins July 1.

In addition, the state agreed to give Space Florida, its Brevard County-based aerospace economic development agency, $10 million for operations and business development, $7 million for financing projects, $1.5 million for space tourism marketing and $1 million to nurture fledgling space research and business ties with Israel.

Space Florida has not yet determined how it will allocate the $20 million earmarked for projects at the newly emerging Cape Canaveral Spaceport, a commercial zone that is gradually taking over real estate and facilities at the Kennedy Space Center, the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and other regions falling under Space Florida's expanding footprint. Its most recent acquisition is the Space Coast Regional Airport in Titusville.

For 2013, Space Florida earmarked $15 million for spaceport infrastructure that was divided among three initiatives: $5 million to support Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s (SpaceX) commercial heavy-lift launch program; $5 million for revamping the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) Bay 3, a project backed by Boeing's Commercial Crew Development efforts; and $5 million for work on OPF Bays 1 and 2 under a project codenamed "Coyote" that also is backed by Boeing, which is believed to be the U.S. military's X-37B. The program is built around two reusable miniature robotic shuttles, designated Orbital Test Vehicles, one of which has been in orbit since December on a classified mission.

Space Florida had requested $36.5 million to continue work on those and several other new projects, including Paul Allen-backed Stratrolaunch Systems and XCOR Aerospace's Lynx suborbital spaceplane, both of which would make use of the shuttle's runway. Space Florida also is looking at nanosatellite launchers, such as the Army's Soldier-Warfighter Operationally Responsive Deployer for Space, or SWORDS, program.

"The small launch vehicle market is really starting to heat up," said Mark Bontrager, vice president of spaceport operations for Space Florida. "Most of the time, we're more ready than a lot of these companies are to execute, which is I guess the right place to be. As we try to divide the baby here, we keep in mind what is the maximum return to the people of Florida and what will grow the industry. That's our primary metric. We want to put infrastructure in place at the right time to grow the industry."

The spaceport development projects, which are funded through the Florida Department of Transportation, must be matched dollar-for-dollar by nonstate funds. In addition, Space Florida has $7 million it can use for financing.

A clearer picture of which projects move to the front of the funding line will come after June 7, the due date for what Space Florida calls "advocates" to update their proposals and make pitches for fiscal 2015 initiatives.

One of the most visible projects is Kennedy's Launch Pad 39A, one of two complexes NASA used for the now-retired space shuttles. ATK, which pitched its Liberty rocket to NASA for the Commercial Crew Program, last year submitted a proposal to Space Florida for Pad 39A development, but the project has been dormant. Another potential customer for the launch pad is SpaceX.

Use of the launch complex may not be exclusive, NASA wrote in a solicitation notice released May 23, which also noted that the agency is looking for a commitment that begins no later than Oct. 1 and lasts at least five years.

"With the completion of shuttle retirement activities, NASA will no longer fund the maintenance of the dedicated infrastructure and systems located at LC-39A. In order to maximize the utility of the facility and avoid the deterioration that results from lack of regular maintenance," NASA wrote.

Proposals are due July 5.

NASA already has whittled down the number of facilities at KSC from more than 400 during the shuttle program to about 240, center director Robert Cabana said at the May meeting of the National Space Club Florida.

"We got rid of 1,000 square feet that we would have to pay for to maintain. A lot of that transferred to commercial use and that's our goal. If it's a good facility and we don't have a use for it, we want to transition it to commercial operations and make a commercial spaceport," Cabana said.

Buzz Aldrin: Why NASA is 'wrong,' why English-speaking nations must lead, and why we need to go to Mars

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

Buzz Aldrin – amateur boxer, amateur dancer, inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear character and most importantly the world's most famous astronaut — is nothing if not opinionated.

I recently had the chance to speak with Aldrin, 83, as part of a promotion for his new book, Mission to Mars. During the wide-ranging, 45-minute interview, Aldrin and I spoke a lot about how to build both political support for, and to pay for an ambitious plan to establish a permanent colony on Mars.

Which is the goal of the second man to walk on the Moon.

The key, Aldrin said, is international cooperation. But he recognizes that in the 21st century we're not quite the interstellar federal polity that Star Trek's United Federation of Planets is in the 23rd century.

Aldrin lives in the real world.

Through NASA, the United States presently works with a former enemy, Russia, as well as many European partners, Japan and Canada in a successful international partnership aboard the International Space Station. But that partnership does not include burgeoning space-faring nations such as China and India. Nor, despite NASA administrator Charles Bolden's controversial comments about the space agency reaching out to Muslims, does it include any Middle Eastern nations, which have deep pockets and ambitions too.

When he flew to the moon, Aldrin saw the United States lead in space as other nations fell behind. More recently he's seen funding for spaceflight fall behind many other priorities. Now he's seeing America fall behind in space and doesn't like it, nor the politics that have led to it.

If America is to succeed in space, it and its closest allies must get their stuff together on Earth, he says. Here, then, is Aldrin speaking about why English-speaking nations should lead the way in space:

"The United States must lead cooperation in Earth orbit and above, emphasizing the English speaking nations — U.S., Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and especially India — so that they are a bit more cohesive in their balance to the China-Russia coalition which seems to thwart the United States in many ways. English is the technical language, not German; English is the diplomatic language, we need peace and cooperation above the atmosphere. Openness that will hopefully filter down. There will always be human rights violations, piracy, hacking, stealing things, territorial aggression and I have failed to say that the English nations most likely will be the nations that protect the world against jihadism. Now that's a sensitive subject for your paper and me. I don't mind saying that, I'm a private citizen. I grew up as a Protestant. I took communion on the moon. But I'm a little wider in what Einstein would call a cosmic religious understanding."

Clearly, then Aldrin sees a connection between terrestrial policy and success in space.

A bit later in the interview he discussed his concerns about NASA's current approach to space (the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Space Launch System) and his concerns that while NASA is trying to rope a small asteroid and maybe bringing it into lunar orbit, China will pass us by.

More Aldrin:

"Obama didn't cancel the space program. Now I'm a conservative, and always have been. But I've worked with whoever is overseeing the space program. Unfortunately Orion, renamed the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, is wrong. (Wernher) Von Braun's big big big lander was multi-purpose crew vehicle in Apollo and we segmented the mission into a command module and a service module. At the moon we had to have a descent and an ascent stage. We really stripped the weight off. Von Braun's vehicle required two Saturn V rockets. The plan we used required one Saturn V. The big fact is that we went to the moon with one rocket, not two, because we didn't use a multi-purpose crew vehicle. Orion doesn't even have enough propulsion to put itself and a lander into a lunar orbit. It puts the United States at a distinct disadvantage even in going to the moon. We've got to do more than just Apollo 11 or Apollo 17. All the Chinese have to do is land one Taikonaut, take a few pictures out the window, and launch. And they've beat the United States."

Aldrin isn't saying NASA should race China back to the moon. Instead, he's saying we need to get our national and geopolitics together, forget about flying to lunar orbit to look at a space rock, and push forward an ambitious program to go to Mars. Not to visit. To stay there.

Buzz, by the way, will be in Houston next month to sign copies of his new book. But I suggest not accusing him of faking the moon landings. I imagine he can still throw a punch.

Buzz Aldrin, Moonwalker, Says U.S. Must Shoot for Mars

James Clash - Bloomberg News

Buzz Aldrin was the second man to step onto the lunar surface, 19 minutes behind the late Neil Armstrong. That was July 20, 1969, nearly 44 years ago.

Two years later, the Apollo 11 astronaut retired from NASA but still was thinking about space.

In 1996, he wrote a science fiction novel "Encounter with Tiber" and in 2010 competed on the TV show "Dancing with the Stars."

Aldrin's latest focus is Mars. I recently caught up with the 83-year-old MIT Ph.D. at The Explorers Club in New York to discuss "Mission to Mars" (National Geographic Books, May 2013), his blueprint for humans to reach the red planet by 2035.

Clash: Let's start with Apollo 11. Your historic landing with Neil Armstrong was a bit dramatic.

Aldrin: Neil saw we were coming in over a crater, not exactly the spot to land. We had four choices: veer left, veer right, land short or fly over. The last is best, but has the disadvantage of using more fuel. When we got down to 100 feet, I began to get concerned.

A light came on and [Mission Control] said "60 seconds" meaning that's how much fuel we had left. Now I didn't want to disturb my partner because he was concentrating, but I did exercise body language to the effect of "Hey Neil, get it on the ground" [laughs]. By 30 seconds, I was pretty confident as we were only 10 feet up. I began to pick up the shadow of the spacecraft. As soon as the lander probe touched, I said the first words from the moon: "contact light, engine stop."

'Magnificent Desolation'

Clash: Your quoted words are more poetic: "magnificent desolation."

Aldrin: Neil mentioned something about beautiful. I looked around and didn't think it was beautiful, but I couldn't argue with my commander. I did feel I had to say something significant. I was thinking of all the centuries humans had been on Earth and how we were now demonstrating our most magnificent technical achievement. And yet there was the other side: desolation. You cannot find a place on Earth more lifeless -- rolling shades of gray until it gets to a very crystal-clear horizon curving away against velvety blackness.

Clash: Any emotions at the time?

Aldrin: Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don't have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what's going on and what you should be involved in.

Clash: On to Mars. Your plan calls for one-way missions to the red planet.

Plymouth Rock

Aldrin: The pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. To my knowledge, they didn't wait around for a return trip to Europe. You settle some place with a purpose. If you don't want to do that, stay home. You avoid an awful lot of risks by not venturing outward.

We have an opportunity for American leadership to go down in history making a commitment that will be remembered for thousands of years. Why would we not take it?

My plan emphasizes a moon of Mars, sending three-person crews there first. The missions won't be to look around and see what this little moon is like for a year and a half, but to assemble successive habitats and major elements of an International Mars Base. Once established, we would take people to the surface of Mars from that.

Clash: The Apollo astronauts are divided on whether the U.S. should go back to the moon first, or directly to Mars.

Space Race

Aldrin: If we go back to the moon, we're guaranteed second, maybe third place because while we are spending all that money, Russia has its eye on Mars. Landing people on the moon will be terribly consuming of resources we don't have. It sounds great -- "Let's go back. This time we're going to stay." I don't know why you would want to stay on the moon.

Clash: Your Mars vision involves the world -- China, Russia, Japan -- but with the U.S. leading.

Aldrin: It's imperative we stay at the forefront of space activities. Look what's happened to our education system, which was at its peak during the Apollo years. It's descended down. We need an inspiration like Mars to get it back up again. Not just STEM, but STEAM - science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

Clash: Some physicists are working on plasma rockets that could get to Mars within 40 days versus eight months using chemical rockets. Thoughts?

Aldrin: That requires a nuclear reactor, and people are leery about nuclear reactors coming back into the atmosphere. Second, if you're going to spend the rest of your life on Mars, why do you want to get there in 40 days with such a high-thrust, complicated system?

Clash: Your Apollo 11 crew-mate passed last year. Miss him?

Aldrin: I think we all miss such an outstanding test pilot, someone who was so good in emergency situations. On Gemini 8, Neil had to stop a thruster that was stuck and come down early, then the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle lost control and he had to eject.

He was a guy who understood all the things that were going on in a quiet, unassuming but highly professional way.

'Star Trek' vehicle to bridge science fiction, fact

Alex Macon - Galveston County Daily News

It's been almost two years since NASA ended its space shuttle program, but a shuttle mock-up predating the agency's own 1976 Enterprise prototype will make its way to Space Center Houston this summer.

The full-sized mock-up of the Galileo shuttlecraft, which made its on-screen debut in a 1967 episode of the "Star Trek" original series, is being restored at a boat-refurbishment shop in New Jersey.

The fictional Galileo originally served as a small transport vessel for Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock and other crew members of the USS Enterprise, ferrying the intrepid space explorers to and from strange new worlds.

By the end of the summer, when the craft is set to go on public display, its new mission will be to enchant and inspire guests at the NASA visitor center, bridging the gap between science fiction and science fact.

"Star Trek" inspired all kinds of people to go work on the space program, said Adam Schneider, a management consultant in New Jersey who bought the model at an auction last June. "It was a more mature vision of what we could do and become with space travel," he said.

The 20-foot prop was originally built for "Star Trek" in 1966, and, despite several episodes featuring the spacecraft's fiery destruction, appeared on the show well into 1969, when the original series was cancelled.

The Galileo repeatedly changed hands, moving from a braille institute for young students in Los Angeles to a front lawn in Palos Verdes, Calif., before being sold and restored ahead of a "Star Trek" convention in 1986.

Its journey gets a bit murkier after that, as other efforts to restore and display the ship ended in failure.

For more than 20 years, the Galileo was "lost in the wild," and the mystery of its location fueled endless speculation among "Star Trek" fans online.

Schneider, a lifelong "Star Trek" enthusiast who has collected and restored props from the franchise since 2006, said the Galileo popped up on his radar in June, when the long-lost shuttle appeared at an auction.

Schneider and his wife, Leslie, paid about $70,000 for the model, sight-unseen. His initial reaction on seeing the condition of the ship: "What is this hunk of junk?"

For help, he enlisted Alec Peters, a "Star Trek" archivist and blogger who manages a massive collection of props and costumes from the franchise. Schneider also consulted with the craft's original builder, Gene Winfield, who is now 85 years old.

Original blueprints for the model disappeared long ago, so Schneider and crew improvised, using fan input and old images to help put the craft back together.

He took the disintegrating Galileo to Master Shipwrights in Atlantic Highlands, N.J.

"These are master European craftsmen who work on 50-year-old boats," Schneider said.

The work has been extensive: the craft's original metal frame remains in place, but almost everything else, including the wood paneling, had to be replaced.

Restoration work began late last year on a "wing and a prayer," but the crew is now applying the last few coats of paint, and Schneider hopes to wheel the ship out of the shop in the next week or two.

"It's in the best shape it has ever been in," he said.

He had always planned to donate the finished model to a museum of some sort for the public to enjoy, and said Space Center Houston would make the best home for the Galileo.

Space Center Houston spokesman Jack Moore said the craft will be on display by the end of the summer, and will likely be placed in the center's Zero-G Diner, which already features a science fiction motif.

He said the craft was a great way to bridge the gap between fiction and fact without blurring the line between the two.

Air Force Museum Unveils Plans for Major Expansion

Barrie Barber - Dayton Daily News

The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force will relocate a one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft collection to a new $46 million gallery in 2015, giving hundreds of thousands of visitors a chance to see both historic and futuristic air and space planes now closed off in a hangar from museum visitors.

The research and development aircraft will be added inside a fourth hangar already in the works to house the Presidential, Global Reach and Space Galleries, which will showcase former Air Force One planes, cargo jets and a Space Shuttle crew compartment trainer, according to museum officials.

The presidential collection includes the plane that brought President John F. Kennedy's body back to Washington after his assassination in Dallas in 1963. President Lyndon Johnson was also sworn in on that aircraft. The collection also includes planes used by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Nixon, Reagan and others.

A giant, delta-winged Mach-3 bomber called the XB-70 and the record-setting, hypersonic X-15 manned rocket plane which skirted the edge of space will land in the new home attached to the main museum complex. More than two dozen other experimental aircraft, such as the flying saucer shaped Avrocar, will also move to the gallery.

"Each one of these artifacts, those exhibits, are engineering marvels," said Richard V. Reynolds, chairman of the Air Force Museum Foundation, Inc. Board of Managers and a retired Air Force lieutenant general.

Museum officials temporarily shut down public tours of the off-site Presidential and Research and Development hangar May 1 because of mandatory budget cuts known as sequestration, upsetting some visitors. Before the closure, those who wanted to tour the hangar had to show identification at the museum, then board a shuttle bus and travel through the gates of Wright-Patterson to Area B.

Halting the shuttle and curbing utility costs will save about $120,000 a year, said John "Jack" Hudson, museum director and a retired Air Force lieutenant general.

"When sequestration was implemented, we had to make some tough decisions," he said. "That was it."

The old hangar will be used to store aircraft once the planes are moved. The off-site hangar has attracted a fraction, or about 90,000 people, of the more than 1.2 million people who travel to the museum each year.

To make room in the new gallery, the museum has scuttled plans to roll in a C-5 Galaxy and a KC-135 Stratotanker, Hudson said.

Cargo planes in the museum's outdoor air park, such as the C-141 Starlifter known as the "Hanoi Taxi" that brought the first American POWs home from Vietnam, will be brought inside the expansion to protect the planes from the weather, Hudson said.

The additional planes will mean more opportunities to teach science, technology, math and engineering lessons, Hudson said.

Tough fundraising, and long-term planning and environmental studies have pushed back the initial opening date of the new gallery by at least a year. Construction would begin in the summer of 2014 and finish about a year later.

"It does take time to do that and as plans were solidified and we got more realism in the timeline, 2015 just became the right time frame to shoot for for building completion," Hudson said.

Thus far, the museum's foundation has raised more than $38 million for the privately funded expansion through gift, ticket and food sales at the museum, foundation membership, and individual and corporate donations, Reynolds said.

"We started back just a couple of months after the economic crisis of 2008," Reynolds said. "We've been at it for about five years now and we've actually done very, very well. It's a tough environment, make no mistake about it. All the economic pressures that are affecting companies large and small and individuals come to bear when we go engage them for potential support of this project."

The Air Force pays the costs to operate the museum. This season, however, because of sequestration that led to $374,000 in cuts, the foundation will contribute $42,000 to pay utility expenses one day a week through the summer.

Space Trip With Leonardo DiCaprio Sells For $1.5 Million!
People have too much money

Claire Rutter - EntertainmentWise.com

Leonardo DiCaprio is heading for space and a ticket next to him has reportedly sold for a whopping $1.5 million.

The Great Gatsby star will be boarding Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic flight, and while similar flights usually cost £132,406, a pair of tickets on Leonardo DiCaprio's space shuttle has sold for the incredible sum at an auction.

It's thought that the trips to space will start running from New Mexico by the end of 2013 but no official word has been given as to when Leo will be taking off although it was said that the winning bidder would be one of the first 1,000 people to head into space.

The event, which was held at the five-star Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France, near Cannes saw 37-year-old Vasily Klyukin, win the bid and he will have to spend three days training with Leo before their flight.

According to The Independent, he apparently told press that he's always wanted to go into space: "I want to be a bit daring. I will have to give up smoking now for sure!"

Sharon Stone, who hosted the auction, also revealed that tickets were available on the flight and they also fetched a hefty sum.

The auction was held to raise funds at amfAR's annual gala at Cannes Film Festival and it wasn't the only prize to attract big attention.

According to E! News, a huge prize containing two tickets to the premiere and after party of Leonardo's 'Wolf on Wall Street' and an Oscar package including accommodation at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a Chopard watch, tickets to the Weinstein, Sir Elton John's and Vanity Fair's parties sold for £1.5 million.

The 38-year-old had been partying in Cannes, and promoting his latest movie, which also features Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan. But he was not able to attend this week's Australian premiere.

Leo is said to have tried his luck with British model Cara Delevingne while in the south of France, but the Burberry model apparently turned him down.

"Normally all Leo has to do is look at a girl and they fall at his feet. Though Cara was having none of it," a source has said. "He spent the night chasing after her and essentially she blew him out. They spoke and he was pretty forward inviting her to a party back at his suite. They swapped numbers but that was it."

Leo is known for his love of beautiful models, having previously dated the likes of Gisele Bundchen, Bar Refaeli and Erin Heatherton. So it's no real surprise that Cara was on his hit list.

"He tried every trick in the book and apparently kept lunging for her but she kept dodging them," the source claimed. "Everyone is howling at the fact she actually knocked back the biggest actor in the world. She thought he was too forward and too old."

The camera that is out of this world:
Rare Nasa Hasselblad used to photograph Earth from first orbiting space station set to be sold

Mark Prigg - London Daily Mail

It is the camera used to photograph the Earth from an orbiting space station 40 years before Commander Chris Hadfield captured the world's attention with his pictures from the International Space Station.

A rare Nasa camera used aboard Skylab, the first US Space Station, which orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979, is set to be auctioned.

The modified Hasselblad 500 EL/M was specially adapted to work in the cramped conditions about Skylab - and be operated while wearing spacesuits.

The space agency worked with Hasselblad to develop the cameras, known as 'moon cameras', even thought this particular one did not make it to the lunar surface.

The Hasselblad cameras were selected by NASA because of their interchangeable lenses and magazines.

Modifications were made to permit ease of use in cramped conditions while wearing spacesuits, such as the replacement of the reflex mirror with an eye-level finder.

In this model along with other modifications the mirror was removed to reduce weight.

A special large locking mechanism was also added in order to change film magazines with bulky space gloves on.

Similarly a larger, sturdier shutter release plate was added to the camera and the special reseau plate with matching body number '42' to imprint on taken images.

The camera - which is expected to fetch 50 to 60,000 euros - is set to go under the hammer in Vienna, Austria, on Saturday.

The same camera model was also taken to the moon - and twelve Hasselblads still remain on the lunar surface.

They were left there to allow for the 25kg of lunar rock samples that were brought back instead.

Only the film magazines were brought back to Earth.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Friday, May 24, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - May 24, 2013 and JSC Today

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