Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - July 17, 2013 and JSC Today



Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: July 17, 2013 5:56:06 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - July 17, 2013 and JSC Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. Follow NASA Social on Twitter

NASA will host a one-day event for 30 social media followers today, July 17, at JSC. The NASA Social will give guests an opportunity to learn more about the International Space Station, life science research conducted onboard, and the health-stabilization process for astronauts training for, living aboard and returning from space station. JSC employees can follow the events using the hashtag #NASASocial and Twitter accounts @NASA_Johnson and @NASASocial on Twitter.

As part of the NASA Social, astronaut Mike Hopkins will discuss health, fitness and astronaut training with several elite American athletes in a Google+ Hangout at 3 p.m. To join the Hangout, click here. To view the Hangout on NASA TV, go here.

JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

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  1. Latest International Space Station Research

Astronaut Karen Nyberg has been working with the Advanced Colloids Experiment-1 (ACE-1) investigation, which is a first step along the path to understanding in detail (at the particle level) how order arises out of disorder and how nature organizes itself when not affected by gravity.

For a down-to-Earth explanation of why we study colloids in space, enjoy this entry from our blog, "A Lab Aloft."

Liz Warren x35548

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   Organizations/Social

  1. Youth Sports Camps - Basketball Camp

Starport's Summer Sports Camps 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. We are still taking registrations for Basketball Camp, so register your child before it fills up!

Basketball Camp: Focuses on the development of shooting, passing, dribbling, guarding and drills

Dates: Aug. 5 to 9

Times: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Ages: 9 to 14

Price: $200

Before/after care is available. Register your child at the Gilruth Center. Visit our website for information.

Shericka Phillips x35563 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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  1. Starport Sport Leagues - Registration Filling Fast

Registration is open for Starport's popular league sports!

Registration NOW OPEN:

    • Volleyball (Rev 4s) | Mondays | Registration ends July 16 | League starts July 22
    • Basketball (Open) | Wednesdays and Thursdays | Registration ends July 25 | Leagues start Jul 31 and Aug. 1
    • Kickball (Co-ed) | Mondays | Registration ends July 31 | League starts Aug. 5
    • Softball (Co-ed) | Tuesdays and Wednesdays | Registration ends July 31 | Leagues start Aug. 6 and 7
    • Ultimate Frisbee (Co-ed) | Mondays | Registration ends July 30 | League starts Aug. 5

Free-agent registration now open for all leagues.

Dodgeball, Flag Football, Soccer and Men's Softball will return in fall 2013.

All participants must register here.

For more information, please contact the Gilruth information desk at 281-483-0304.

Steve Schade x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/Sports/index.cfm#LS2013

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  1. Kinect CoLab Meeting Today

Are you currently working on or interested in starting a project involving Kinect, Leapmotion or other motion-tracking hardware?

If so, you are invited to the Kinect CoLAB. CoLABs provide a casual forum to share lessons learned and generate innovative new ideas and uses of technologies. We will be answering questions and providing demos of the technology. Come make cross-directorate contacts and learn more about what others are doing with these exciting technologies.

The Kinect CoLAB will be held TODAY, July 17, from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in Building 30A, Room 2085A (Armstrong Room). Feel free to bring your lunch and your co-workers.

Shelby Thompson x48701 https://collaboration.ndc.nasa.gov/CoLab/kinect/SitePages/Home.aspx

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  1. Building 4S Cosmic Cafe Closure Thursday

The Cosmic Café in Building 4S will be closed Thursday, July 18.

Shelly Haralson x39168

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  1. Environmental Brown Bag: New Solar Station at JSC

In support of JSC 2.0 and NASA's innovative spirit, the Sustainability Partnership Team at JSC is currently designing an outdoor space that allows employees to charge portable devices and collaborate in an unconventional and natural environment. The station will utilize solar power, and the team plans to build it in-house, taking advantage of some salvaged materials. Kim Reppa, a member of the Sustainability Partnership Team, will be presenting. If you would like to join the discussion or just learn more, come to Building 45, Room 751, from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday, July 22!

Event Date: Monday, July 22, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B45 room 751

Add to Calendar

Kim Reppa x42798

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   Jobs and Training

  1. NASA@work Training Opportunity

Are you interested in learning more about NASA@work? Learn how you can participate on this internal, collaborative platform, by joining us for our next NASA@work Training 101 on Tuesday, July 23, from 3 to 3:30 p.m. CDT. Sign up today, as space is limited!

Are you new to NASA@work? NASA@work is an agencywide, collaborative problem-solving platform that connects the collective knowledge of experts (like YOU) from all centers across NASA. Challenge owners post problems, and members of the NASA@work community participate by responding with their solutions to posted problems. Anyone can participate!

To add to your calendar, please click here.

Event Date: Tuesday, July 23, 2013   Event Start Time:3:00 PM   Event End Time:3:30 PM
Event Location: B12/142

Add to Calendar

Kathryn Keeton 281-204-1519 https://hhp.jsc.nasa.gov/SitePages/Home.aspx

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  1. Relief Valve Set Testing and Hydrostatic Testing

JSC-SLC-HTRV (four-hour course)

This course covers the fundamentals and requirements regarding hydrostatic testing of pressure vessels and pressure systems and pressure relief valve set-testing.

Course objectives include:

    • Define Designated Verifier (DV)
    • Test area guidelines
    • References: JPR 1710.13, NS-PRS-009, NT-QAS-024
    • Safety guidelines
    • Procedures

Re-certification required every two years.

Note: This is the FINAL class for Fiscal Year 2013.

Date/Time: Aug. 7 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. CDT

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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  1. Upcoming NASA Privacy Training Sessions

Protecting sensitive information at NASA begins and ends with our employees. Several incidents this year resulted in the loss, theft and compromise of sensitive and personal data.

The agency wants employees, civil servants and contractors, to be knowledgeable about handling and protecting Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

SBU and PII can be anything from names to personnel records to non-classified sensitive material. JSC's Information Resources Directorate is providing the following training sessions, open to all JSC employees:

Thursday, July 18, 1 to 2:30 p.m., Teague Auditorium

Thursday, Aug. 29, 1 to 2:30 p.m., Teague Auditorium

You MUST register for this event in SATERN (search for "ITS-SBUPII-013-W" and select the date you wish to attend).

For more information on SBU/PII, click here or contact JSC's Privacy Manager Ali Montasser (x39798) or JSC's Information Security Officer Mark Fridye (x36660).

Event Date: Thursday, July 18, 2013   Event Start Time:1:00 PM   Event End Time:2:30 PM
Event Location: B2, Teague Auditorium

Add to Calendar

JSC IRD Outreach x39798 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/

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   Community

  1. Register Now for the Lunar Rendezvous 5K - July 20

Run - or walk - in the 35th Annual Lunar Rendezvous 5K, sponsored by Honeywell. The race will begin at 7:30 a.m. this Saturday, July 20, starting at Space Center Houston and taking runners on-site at JSC. Registration is $22 before Friday or $25 the day of. Entry forms are available online.

Packet pickup will be at the "On the Run" Running Store (2427 Bay Area Blvd.) on Thursday, July 18, or Friday, July 19, from noon to 6 p.m. Or, get your packet on race day near the start site before 7 a.m.

The first male and female open and master runners will be awarded. Awards will also be given to the top three male and female runners in each age group.

Event Date: Saturday, July 20, 2013   Event Start Time:7:00 AM   Event End Time:8:30 AM
Event Location: Space Center Houston

Add to Calendar

Jennifer Mason x32424 http://www.lunarrendezvous.org

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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.

Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters.

 

 

 

 

 

NASA TV:

·         7 am Central (8 EDT) – Replay of Tuesday's Expedition 36 Post-Spacewalk Briefing

·         1 pm Central (2 EDT) – Expedition 37/38 Crew News Conference

·         3 pm Central (4 EDT) – Google+ Hangout: Fitness Training With The "Best of the Best"

 

Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday – July 17, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Source of 'dangerous' space helmet water leak not yet clear

 

William Harwood - CBS News

 

A dangerous leak resulting in a large blob of water weightlessly sloshing inside Luca Parmitano's space helmet forced NASA to abort a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk Tuesday, sending the Italian astronaut, struggling to hear and see clearly, back to the safety of the International Space Station's Quest airlock. Fellow spacewalker Christopher Cassidy helped him along and within a little more than a half hour, the airlock was repressurized. Astronaut Karen Nyberg and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Fyodor Yurchikhin quickly opened the airlock's inner hatch and helped Parmitano get his helmet off, using towels to soak up the free water. Flight director David Korth praised Parmitano, Italy's first spacewalker, for "grace under pressure."

 

Spacesuit water leak ends spacewalk; astronaut OK

 

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

 

In one of the most harrowing spacewalks in decades, an astronaut had to rush back into the International Space Station on Tuesday after a mysterious water leak inside his helmet robbed him of the ability to speak or hear at times and could have caused him to choke or even drown. Italian Luca Parmitano was reported to be fine after the dangerous episode, which might have been caused by an unprecedented leak in the cooling system of his suit. His spacewalking partner, American Christopher Cassidy, had to help him head inside after NASA quickly aborted the spacewalk. No one - neither the astronauts in orbit nor flight controllers in Houston - breathed easier until Parmitano was back inside and his helmet was yanked off.

 

NASA aborts spacewalk after leak into astronaut's helmet

 

Irene Klotz - Reuters

 

A spacewalk to work on the International Space Station ended abruptly on Tuesday when a water-like liquid started building up inside an Italian astronaut's helmet, NASA officials said. U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Italy's Luca Parmitano were less than an hour into a planned six-hour outing when Parmitano reported what seemed to be water inside his helmet.  "My head is really wet and I have a feeling it's increasing," Parmitano radioed to flight controllers in Houston.

 

Source of leak in astronaut's space suit remains a mystery

 

Emi Kolawole - Washington Post

 

NASA officials said they had yet to ascertain the source of a water buildup inside Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet during a spacewalk outside the international space station Tuesday. Mission Control aborted the spacewalk shortly after Parmitano reported a buildup of water in the back of his helmet. The accumulation continued to a point where the water began to collect around the astronaut's face. The abort call happened so soon after the astronauts started the spacewalk that the walk became the second shortest in history at one hour and 32 minutes. Three officials participated in a press conference late Tuesday afternoon to discuss what happened and what the next steps would be in determining the leak.

 

Leak in astronaut helmet causes scrapping of spacewalk

 

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

 

A serious water leak inside an astronaut's helmet forced NASA to cut short a spacewalk Tuesday outside the International Space Station. European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, who last week became the first Italian to walk in space, reported a buildup of water inside his helmet about an hour into an excursion with U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy. The water initially pooled in the back of Parmitano's helmet behind his head. But ultimately the water — which apparently came from Parmitano's drinking-water bag — floated into his eyes, and flight directors on Mission Control quickly called an end to the outing. Water also is piped through the long underwear worn under a spacesuit for cooling.

 

NASA Investigating Mysterious Spacewalk-Ending Water Leak

 

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

 

NASA officials aren't sure what triggered a leak of water into a spacewalking astronaut's suit, causing mission controllers to abort a planned 6.5-hour spacewalk after only one hour and 32 minutes Tuesday. European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano reported "a lot of water" inside his helmet during his excursion outside the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday. Because of the potentially dangerous situation, mission controllers on the ground decided to abort the spacewalk.

 

Space Station Spacewalk Cut Short by Space Suit Water Leak

 

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

 

U.S. and European astronauts suspended their spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Tuesday, after water leaked into the space suit helmet worn by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano. Water began to pour over the back of Parmitano's head and into his eyes, nose and mouth,  as he re-entered the station's U.S. Quest airlock at 9:15 a.m., EDT, or at the 1 hour, 18 minute mark, to end his spacewalk activities. The tasks for an excursion scheduled to last just over six hours were not considered critical and will be re-scheduled, according to NASA.

 

NASA: Spacesuit Water Leak a Mystery (For Now)

 

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

 

NASA is on the hunt for the source of a leak that prompted a hasty and early end to a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Tuesday. NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Italy's Luca Parmitano were less than an hour into a planned 6-hour, 15-minute spacewalk when Parmitano reported that the back of his head felt wet. Thinking his drink bag had sprung a leak, Parmitano emptied it, but water continued to build up inside his helmet. "It was clear that he was having trouble," flight director David Korth later told reporters on a conference call.

 

Spacewalk emergency highlights dangers of living on ISS

 

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

 

NASA survived a close call at the International Space Station on Tuesday when a spacewalking astronaut could have drowned in his spacesuit helmet — an incident that pointed up the dangers encountered daily building, living and working aboard the outpost. With the station soaring 250 miles above the planet, the six men and women living on board face a constant array of threats, any of which can prove swiftly fatal.

 

The Four Biggest Risks for Conducting a Spacewalk

 

Andrew Fazekas - National Geographic

 

An hour into this morning's scheduled six-hour-long spacewalk to do maintenance work on the International Space Station, astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet began inexplicably filling with water. At first Parmitano, a major in the Italian Air Force, notified ground controllers that he was feeling something unusual on the back of his head. "My head is really wet and I have a feeling it's increasing," Parmitano told flight controllers on the ground in Houston. But as the water began to accumulate further, it clearly became more than just a nuisance.

 

Five NASA spacewalks aborted thanks to bad suits

 

Victoria Jaggard - New Scientist

 

While drowning is an uncommon risk for astronauts, for Luca Parmitano, the threat seemed very real today. The Italian astronaut and his fellow spacewalker Christopher Cassidy brought their work outside the International Space Station (ISS) to an abrupt end on 16 July after water started leaking into Parmitano's helmet. The pair went back inside the station and removed their spacesuits, with Parmitano needing several towels to mop water from his face as his helmet came off. It is not yet known what caused the sudden soaking. This is not the first time that astronauts have had to deal with wardrobe malfunctions in space. Here's more on Parmitano's unexpected dousing, and some of the previous spacesuit errors NASA has had to address.

 

ISS Astronauts Have a Spacewalking Close Call

 

Tom Jones - Popular Mechanics

 

(Jones is a former astronaut & has conducted spacewalks)

 

Astronauts had to return to the ISS just one and a half hours into a spacewalk Tuesday after water began leaking into the helmet of European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano. Astronauts train for their spacewalks at the International Space Station while submerged in Houston in a six-million-gallon water tank, learning to better understand and cope with the free-fall environment of orbital flight. But they expect to leave all that water behind after launch. Tuesday at the ISS, however, an unusual and serious water leak threatened to engulf European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, nearly blinding him inside his helmet and forcing NASA to cut short their maintenance spacewalk after just 1 hour and 32 minutes. Parmitano made it back inside the station safely, and Tuesday afternoon NASA officials told the media they were still investigating how this water leak could have happened.

 

Cargo module bound for International Space Station to arrive at Wallops

 

Carol Vaughn - Salisbury Daily Times

 

A pressurized cargo module destined for the International Space Station is due to arrive at NASA Wallops Flight Facility Wednesday. It is the second cargo module for Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Cygnus spacecraft to arrive at the facility, according to a NASA press release. This one will be used for the first of Orbital's eight contracted cargo delivery missions to the International Space Station under the company's Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

 

Cygnus cargo craft to arrive at Wallops for demo flight to space station

 

Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press

 

Virginia's spaceport is taking another step toward becoming a major site for commercial cargo missions to the International Space Station with the anticipated arrival of the Cygnus spacecraft at Wallops Island on Wednesday. According to NASA, the cargo carrier is set to arrive around 6 p.m. at its Wallops Flight Facility. Over the next few months, engineers from Orbital Sciences Corp. will begin stocking it with supplies bound for the space station.

 

Blue Origin Bids for Shuttle Launch Pad

 

Irene Klotz - Space News

 

At least one other company is competing against Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)  to take over a decommissioned space shuttle launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) here. Privately owned Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, also responded to a NASA solicitation for proposals for Launch Pad 39A, company president Rob Meyerson told SpaceNews July 16. "Blue Origin is considering various sites for our orbital launch operations, and submitted a proposal to NASA related to KSC Launch Complex 39A.  We look forward to further discussions with NASA and Space Florida about the possibility of bringing our launch and vehicle assembly operations to the KSC area," Meyerson wrote in an email.

 

Senate bill favorable to $18 billion NASA budget

Showdown for votes expected on Thursday

 

Ledyard King - Florida Today

 

A key Senate panel voted Tuesday to give about $18 billion to NASA for fiscal year 2014, setting up what could be a showdown with the House over the funding of the nation's space program. The Senate bill funds continuing work on NASA's top priorities: a deep-space, crewed mission to Mars, deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope, and a joint venture with private companies to transport astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station within the next few years.

 

Mikulski Includes $18 Billion for NASA in 2014 Appropriations Bill

 

Brian Berger - Space News

 

Setting the stage for a potential showdown with the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) unveiled a 2014 spending bill that includes $18 billion for NASA — about $300 million more than the Obama administration requested and $1.4 billion more than the agency would get under a competing bill House appropriators are set to vote on this week. The Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, which Mikulski also chairs, met July 16 to mark up a $52.27 billion spending bill that assumes Congress and the White House will find a way to end the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration that took effect at the end of March.

 

Senate appropriators offer $18 billion for NASA

 

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

 

In contrast to their House counterparts, Senate appropriators appears to be more generous with NASA, at least at the overall level. A summary of the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill, marked up with little fanfare by the CJS subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday morning, reveals the committee is proposing $18 billion for NASA in fiscal year 2014.

 

Senate Approp. Subcommittee approves $18 billion for NASA in FY '14

 

Marcia Smith – SpacePolicyOnline.com

 

The Senate appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over NASA approved $18 billion for the agency for FY2014 Tuesday, a significant increase over the level recommended by its House counterpart last week and more than the Obama Administration requested. The Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee, chaired by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who also chairs the full committee, approved the bill with little discussion in a short markup session.  Full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday at 10:00 am ET.

 

Sen. Richard Shelby will vote against $18 billion for NASA, $1.6 billion for Space Launch System

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

The Senate subcommittee that funds NASA today approved $18 billion for the space agency in fiscal year 2014 - more than $1 billion more than House appropriators - and to include $1.6 billion for the Space Launch System being developed at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center. The bill OK'd by the subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies now goes to the full Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday. When it gets to the full committee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa) said today he will vote against it.

 

SpaceX gets McGregor approval to test Falcon Heavy

 

Mike Copeland - Waco Tribune-Herald

 

The city of McGregor has amended its lease with SpaceX to allow the company to test "future technologies" at McGregor's industrial park — including possibly the Falcon Heavy, which reportedly will become the world's most powerful private rocket — city and SpaceX officials confirmed.

 

Revisiting SLS/Orion launch costs

 

John Strickland - The Space Review (Commentary)

 

(Strickland is a member of the board of directors of the National Space Society and an Advocate with the Space Frontier Foundation, but he does not speak for any organization: his views are his own.)

 

A year and a half ago, I wrote an article very critical of the Space Launch System (see "The SLS: too expensive for exploration?", The Space Review, November 28, 2011). To see if this assessment should now be updated, I checked a series of sources and found that little in the situation has changed, with no reliable cost estimates of an SLS launch yet available anywhere. It is actually amazing how hard it is to get cost estimates for any part of the SLS/Orion system. Another assessment corroborates this problem. While I was working on this article, two startling pieces of information came to light. It is hard to see how a large rocket like the SLS, which is, with all of its components, destroyed in the course of a launch, could possibly cost a lot less than the Space Shuttle on a per-launch basis. It will probably cost considerably more, since all of the expensive rocket engines and other equipment will either smash into the ocean at high speed or reenter the atmosphere and burn up. Note that the Space Shuttle and SLS systems are somewhat comparable in the amount of mass that reaches orbit, although the shuttle's functional "payload" is only what it carried in its cargo bay (about 20 tons) when it was being used as a launch vehicle, rather than the roughly 100-ton mass of the orbiter itself.

 

Danger! This Mission to Mars Could Bore You to Death!

 

Maggie Koerth-Baker - New York Times

 

(Koerth-Baker is science editor at BoingBoing.net and author of "Before the Lights Go Out," on the future of energy production and consumption)

 

Right now, six people are living in a nearly windowless, white geodesic dome on the slopes of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano. They sleep in tiny rooms, use no more than eight minutes of shower time a week and subsist on a diet of freeze-dried, canned or preserved food. When they go outside, they exit through a mock air lock, clad head to toe in simulated spacesuits. The dome's occupants are playing a serious version of the game of pretend — what if we lived on Mars? Research at the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) project, funded in part by NASA, is a continuation of a long history of attempts to understand what will happen to people who travel through outer space for long periods of time. It's more than a technical problem.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Source of 'dangerous' space helmet water leak not yet clear

 

William Harwood - CBS News

 

A dangerous leak resulting in a large blob of water weightlessly sloshing inside Luca Parmitano's space helmet forced NASA to abort a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk Tuesday, sending the Italian astronaut, struggling to hear and see clearly, back to the safety of the International Space Station's Quest airlock.

 

Fellow spacewalker Christopher Cassidy helped him along and within a little more than a half hour, the airlock was repressurized. Astronaut Karen Nyberg and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Fyodor Yurchikhin quickly opened the airlock's inner hatch and helped Parmitano get his helmet off, using towels to soak up the free water.

 

Flight director David Korth praised Parmitano, Italy's first spacewalker, for "grace under pressure."

 

"As he progressed back toward the airlock, the amount of water he was reporting started to increase and increase," Korth said. "You can imagine, you're in a fishbowl. So go stick your head in a fishbowl and go try to walk around. That's not anything you take lightly.

 

"Certainly, an EVA is dangerous already, and he did a great job of just keeping calm and cool and making his way back to the airlock."

 

It's not yet clear what caused the leak. NASA spacesuits feature a built-in 32-ounce drink bag filled with potable water and more than a gallon of water used in the suit's cooling system. Engineers do not believe the drink bag was the culprit, but they do not yet know exactly where the leak originated.

 

Wherever it came from, it was a serious issue. In the absence of gravity, water tends to pool in blobs and inside the cramped confines of a space helmet, a large amount of water could trigger uncontrolled coughing and, possibly, even drowning.

 

"Choking or drowning is definitely a possibility" if enough water is present, said Karina Eversley, the lead spacewalk officer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

 

The spacewalk, the second in seven days for Cassidy and Parmitano, began at 7:57 a.m. EDT (GMT-4). The work proceeded smoothly through the EVA's early stages as both men accomplished the initial tasks on their to-do lists.

 

Then Parmitano ran into a pair of problems. A carbon dioxide sensor in his spacesuit suddenly stopped working and shortly after, he noticed the back of his head felt unusually wet. Problems with CO2 sensors have cropped up in earlier spacewalks and don't normally pose a problem; flight controllers simply monitor suit telemetry on the ground and keep tabs on how the spacewalker feels.

 

But as Parmitano continued to work, routing cables on the outside of the International Space Station, he felt more and more water pooling in his helmet.

 

"I don't understand where it's coming from," he said.

 

"It has to be (your drink) bag," Cassidy replied. "Can you suck it dry?"

 

A few minutes later, Cassidy peered into his crewmate's helmet for a closeup look, saying "so that stuff on your forehead is not sweat?"

 

"No it's not."

 

A few minutes after that, Cassidy told flight controllers in Houston that Parmitano's drink bag almost certainly was empty "so there's something left, like a liter, at the back of his head."

 

"No, it's less than that," Parmitano corrected. "Half a liter."

 

"A half a liter at the back of his head," Cassidy called. "Half of a drink bag. That's just a guess on our part."

 

But the amount of water continued to increase and began to creep around the side of Parmitano's head into the forward part of the helmet.

 

"I can still hear perfectly, but my head is really wet and I feel it increasing," Parmitano said. A few minute laster, he wondered again, "where's it coming from? It's too much."

 

"I don't know, it's a lot," Cassidy agreed.

 

"Now it's in my eyes," Parmitano said.

 

By that point, flight controllers assessing the problem at the Johnson Space Center in Houston already knew the spacewalk could not continue. In fact, it needed to end as quickly as possible.

 

"He started reporting it was coming around his ears and getting on the front of his face and it was at that point, per the rules and guidelines, we judged it was in the best interest of the crew and the mission (to) terminate the EVA," Korth said. "It wasn't prudent to try to continue tasks with water accumulating around his ears and the discomfort he had at that point."

 

Astronaut Shane Kimbrough in mission control passed the decision up to the crew.

 

"Chris and Luca just for you guys, based on what we heard with Luca saying that water's in his eyes now and it seems to be increasing, we think we're going to terminate EVA case for EV-2," he said. "So Luca, we'll have you head back to the airlock. Chris, we'll get a plan for you to clean things up here and then join him in a minute."

 

"OK. copy all, Shane," Cassidy said.

 

And not a moment too soon. By the time the astronauts made it back to the Quest airlock, Parmitano was having trouble seeing, hearing and even talking. The spacewalk ended at 9:29 a.m. when valves were opened to begin repressurizing the outer airlock.

 

Eight minutes later, the airlock's inner hatch was opened and Vinogradov and Yurchikhin quickly removed Parmitano's helmet, using towels to sop up the excess water. Parmitano appeared in good spirits as he dried off and Eversley said he was none the worse for the scare.

 

"Luca's doing great," she said. "He's smiling and happy and all the crew is looking at the suits and reporting anything they can to help us investigate the source."

 

Korth said the carbo dioxide sensor failure may have been a result of the water leak. Parmitano initially speculated the leak involved his drink bag, but there appeared to be more water in his helmet than the drink bag could account for. On top of that, the water didn't taste right.

 

"Luca says the water tastes really funny, not like our water from the PWD (potable water dispenser), which makes me think ... water out of the PWR (water reservoir)," Cassidy told flight controllers later. Water in the cooling system is laced with iodine to prevent bacteria from building up. "To him, the water clearly did not taste like normal drinking water.

 

"And the other important thing is when we took his LCVG (liquid cooling and ventilation garment) off, demated that connection, and felt his long underwear right by his belly button, that was all basically completely dry. Some little moisture from sweat, but not to the extent that it would have created the bubble up in his (helmet)."

 

He was referring to the location of a cooling line inside Parmitano's spacesuit.

 

Cassidy said the water was concentrated at the back of Parmitano's helmet, "kind of where the vent port is. That region seems to be the source of the water in the back of his head."

 

Cassidy and Parmitano carried out a spacewalk last Tuesday to begin working through a backlog of station maintenance and assembly tasks. Today's outing was the sixth for Cassidy and the second for Parmitano, the first Italian to walk in space.

 

The astronauts only accomplished the first two tasks on their spacewalk to-do list. Cassidy completed work at the Z1 truss atop the central Unity module to install a second set of jumper cables that will enable flight controllers to quickly reconfigure electrical loads in the wake of failures that otherwise would require a spacewalk.

 

Parmitano, meanwhile, began work to complete installation of wiring between the U.S. and Russian segments of the station. Shortly thereafter, the water problem developed and both spacewalkers were told to stand by while flight controllers assessed the problem. Within a few minutes, they were told to head back to the airlock.

 

None of the remaining items on the crew's spacewalk task list are time critical and flight controllers will assess the crew's timeline to figure out when another attempt can be made to get the work done.

 

The unfinished tasks include additional cable routing, work to move a wireless camera antenna on the station's power truss and replacement of a camera on the external deck of the Japanese Kibo lab module.

 

The astronauts also planned to reposition a balky door in a compartment on the power truss that houses electrical gear and to remove insulation blankets from a failed electrical switching unit that will be repaired later using the station's robot arm.

 

"As far as where we go from here, clearly we have a problem at this point that we don't quite understand," said Kenneth Todd, chairman of the ISS Mission Management Team. "And we're going to take the next day or two and sort through that ... trying to determine what kind of things we can do on orbit and here on the ground to try to get a better understanding of what's going on."

 

As for when NASA might attempt another spacewalk to complete the unfinished tasks, "we have no time clock that we're working to and certainly when you have an issue like this, you want to make sure you turn over every rock and make sure we've dealt with the issue completely."

 

Today's spacewalk was the 171st devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998 and the fifth so far this year. Including today's excursion, 112 astronauts and cosmonauts have now logged 1,075 hours and 22 minutes of EVA time outside the station, or 44.8 days.

 

Spacesuit water leak ends spacewalk; astronaut OK

 

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

 

In one of the most harrowing spacewalks in decades, an astronaut had to rush back into the International Space Station on Tuesday after a mysterious water leak inside his helmet robbed him of the ability to speak or hear at times and could have caused him to choke or even drown.

 

Italian Luca Parmitano was reported to be fine after the dangerous episode, which might have been caused by an unprecedented leak in the cooling system of his suit. His spacewalking partner, American Christopher Cassidy, had to help him head inside after NASA quickly aborted the spacewalk.

 

No one - neither the astronauts in orbit nor flight controllers in Houston - breathed easier until Parmitano was back inside and his helmet was yanked off.

 

"He looks miserable. But OK," Cassidy assured everyone.

 

It was the first time in years that a spacewalk came to such an abrupt halt and the first time since NASA's Gemini program in the mid-1960s that a spacewalker became so incapacitated. Spacewalking always carries high risk; a puncture by a micrometeorite or sharp edge, if big enough, could result in instant death.

 

In a late afternoon news conference, NASA acknowledged the perilous situation that Parmitano had found himself in, and space station operations manager Kenneth Todd promised to "turn over every rock" to make sure it never happens again.

 

Spacewalking is dangerous already, noted flight director David Korth. Then on top of that, "go stick your head in a fishbowl and try to walk around. That's not anything that you take lightly," he said. "He did a great job of just keeping calm and cool" as the amount of water ominously increased.

 

"Grace under pressure," Korth said.

 

The two astronauts were outside barely an hour, performing routine cable work on their second spacewalk in eight days, when Parmitano reported the leak. It progressively worsened as the minutes ticked by, drenching the back of his head, then his eyes, nose and, finally, mouth by the time he was in the air lock, the pressure chamber. He could have choked or drowned on the floating globs of water, NASA officials said.

 

Between 1 and 1 1/2 liters of water leaked into his helmet and suit, NASA estimated.

 

The source of the leak wasn't immediately known, but the main culprit appeared to be iodine-laced water that is piped through the long underwear worn under a spacesuit, for cooling. The system holds nearly 4 liters, or 1 gallon. Less likely was the 32-ounce (about 1 liter) drink bag that astronauts sip from during lengthy spacewalks; Parmitano reported the leaking water tasted odd.

 

At first, Parmitano, 36, a former test pilot and Italy's first spacewalker, thought it was sweat accumulating on the back of his bald head. But he was repeatedly assured it was not sweat. He agreed. "How much can I sweat?" he wondered aloud.

 

It was only his second spacewalk; his first was last Tuesday, six weeks after moving into the space station.

 

The water eventually got into Parmitano's eyes. That's when NASA ordered the two men back inside. Then the water drenched his nose and mouth, and he had trouble hearing on the radio lines.

 

Cassidy quickly cleaned up the work site, then joined Parmitano in the air lock.

 

The three Russians and one American who anxiously monitored the drama from inside hustled to remove Parmitano's helmet. They clustered around him, eight hands pulling off his helmet and using towels to mop his head. Balls of water floated away.

 

Parmitano blinked hard several times but otherwise looked fine as he gestured with his hands to show his crewmates where the water had crept around his head.

 

Cassidy told Mission Control: "To him, the water clearly did not taste like our normal drinking water." A smiling Parmitano then chimed in: "Just so you know, I'm alive and I can answer those questions, too."

 

He later tweeted: "Thanks for all the positive thoughts!"

 

Mission Control praised the crew for its fast effort and hooked them up with flight surgeons on the ground.

 

Parmitano used the same suit during last week's spacewalk without any problems. Before the gush of water made its way into his helmet, the astronaut reported a bad sensor for measuring carbon dioxide in his suit. NASA managers concluded the sensor likely failed due to all the water.

 

Spare spacesuits and equipment are on board for future NASA spacewalks.

 

The four remaining spacewalks planned for this year involve Russian astronauts wearing Russian suits, different than the U.S. models. They're preparing for the arrival later this year of a new Russian lab. The year's previous four spacewalks encountered no major snags. This was the 171st spacewalk in the 15-year history of the orbiting outpost.

 

There was no immediate word on when Tuesday's undone tasks might be attempted again. None of the chores was urgent, simply things that had piled up over the past couple years.

 

It was the fastest end to a spacewalk since 2004 when Russian and American spacewalkers were ordered back in by Mission Control outside Moscow because of spacesuit trouble. That spacewalk lasted a mere 14 minutes. Tuesday's spacewalk lasted one hour and 32 minutes.

 

During NASA's old shuttle program, spacewalks occasionally were stymied by stuck hatches and ripped gloves. By coincidence, Cassidy had to end a 2009 station-building spacewalk early because of a potentially dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide in his suit. This marked the sixth spacewalk for the 43-year-old former Navy SEAL, who's midway through a half-year station stint.

 

In 1966, two Gemini flights ended up with aborted spacewalks. Gemini 11 spacewalker Richard Gordon, was blinded by sweat. Gemini 9 spacewalker Gene Cernan breathed so heavily and sweated so much that fog collected inside his helmet visor and froze.

 

On the Russian side, the world's first spacewalker, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, could barely get back into his spacecraft in 1965. He had to vent precious oxygen from his suit in order to fit through the hatch. Decades passed before his peril came to light.

 

"Today was certainly a very serious issue," said Karina Eversley, lead spacewalk officer. The goal, each time, is to get the crew back inside "before things get too serious," she added.

 

In that respect, Tuesday was a success, Todd noted. "Today the team did a great job."

 

NASA aborts spacewalk after leak into astronaut's helmet

 

Irene Klotz - Reuters

 

A spacewalk to work on the International Space Station ended abruptly on Tuesday when a water-like liquid started building up inside an Italian astronaut's helmet, NASA officials said.

 

U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Italy's Luca Parmitano were less than an hour into a planned six-hour outing when Parmitano reported what seemed to be water inside his helmet.

 

"My head is really wet and I have a feeling it's increasing," Parmitano radioed to flight controllers in Houston.

 

Thinking it might be his drink bag leaking, Parmitano drained the bag, but in the weightless environment of space, blobs of liquid continued to collect in his helmet.

 

"Where's it coming from?" Parmitano said. "It's too much. Now it's in my eyes."

 

With the astronaut at risk of choking or drowning, NASA called off the spacewalk just before 9 a.m. EDT.

 

"It was clear that he was having trouble," flight director David Korth later told reporters on a conference call.

 

Preliminary analysis indicates the leak did not stem from the drink bag, leading engineers to focus on the astronaut's liquid-cooled undergarment as the source.

 

Engineers estimate about 1- to 1.5 liters of water had collected inside Parmitano's spacesuit by the time station crew members were able to get to him and take off his helmet.

 

"In zero gravity, the water pools in a big glob so it doesn't necessarily go down into the suit and there's not a lot of absorptive material in the helmet," said lead spacewalk officer Karina Eversley.

 

When asked by a reporter if Parmitano could have drowned, Eversley said, "He certainly had that risk today and that's why we took it so seriously."

 

Parmitano, who last week became the first Italian to make a spacewalk, does not seem to be suffering from any ill-effects from the incident, he added.

 

Analysis is continuing to determine the source of the leak and assess whether the problem is peculiar to the spacesuit Parmitano wore or is part of a wider issue with the suits.

 

The spacewalk began around 8 a.m. EDT with Cassidy and Parmitano ready to tackle maintenance chores left over from a previous spacewalk on July 9.

 

Parmitano was setting up an internet cable between the station's Unity connecting node and the Russian Zarya module when noticed the liquid collecting inside his helmet.

 

NASA said there was nothing time-critical on the spacewalker's to-do list, which included work to prepare the station for a Russian research laboratory slated to arrive later this year.

 

The spacewalk was Cassidy's sixth and the second for Parmitano.

 

Source of leak in astronaut's space suit remains a mystery

 

Emi Kolawole - Washington Post

 

NASA officials said they had yet to ascertain the source of a water buildup inside Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet during a spacewalk outside the international space station Tuesday.

 

Mission Control aborted the spacewalk shortly after Parmitano reported a buildup of water in the back of his helmet. The accumulation continued to a point where the water began to collect around the astronaut's face. The abort call happened so soon after the astronauts started the spacewalk that the walk became the second shortest in history at one hour and 32 minutes. Three officials participated in a press conference late Tuesday afternoon to discuss what happened and what the next steps would be in determining the leak.

 

"As far as where we go from here, clearly we have a problem at this point that we don't understand," said Kenneth Todd, the international space station's manager for operations and integration.

 

The first two tasks of the spacewalk were completed before Parmitano reported that the CO2 sensor on his suit was not working properly. He then reported the sensation of water on the back of his head, which the lead spacewalk flight director, David Korth, described as a "gush" or "bubble" of water.

 

The CO2 sensor's problems, Korth said, were attributed to the water buildup, since water tends to make the sensors malfunction. It was determined that Parmitano should continue with his tasks. But Parmitano's partner on the walk, American astronaut Christopher Cassidy, reported that the water was coming around Parmitano's ears and side of his face. It was then decided that the walk should be terminated.

 

"It wasn't prudent to try to continue tasks," given Parmitano's discomfort, Korth said. "It was clear that he was having trouble."

 

The astronauts then proceeded to the airlock, with Parmitano entering first. Roughly 20 minutes passed between the time the call was made to terminate the spacewalk and the time Cassidy entered the airlock. It was then reported that more water was accumulating in Parmitano's helmet. In all, between one and 1.5 liters of water had accumulated in the suit, mostly in the helmet.

 

"It's a good day today. The crew is inside and safe," said Karina Eversley, lead spacewalk officer.

 

In attempting to determine the source of the leak, one of the first things the team thought about was the drink bag inside the spacesuit, which holds 32 ounces. Parmitano also reported that the water tasted odd, all but certainly ruling out the drink bag, which is needed to keep the astronauts hydrated during the multi-hour spacewalks. Another source of moisture, Korth noted, is sweat, but the volume of water was too large for that to be the source. The cooling and ventilation system in the suit holds about a gallon of water.

 

"We have not seen a problem like this before," Eversley said, though she added that they do worry about the anti-fog. "We've seen a small amount of water get in that, and then get in the crew's eyes. And that can be very painful."

 

Enough water was in Parmitano's communications cap that it blocked his ability to hear. If there's enough water, it is possible for an astronaut to drown. "He certainly had that risk," said Eversley.

 

"Luca's doing great. He's smiling and happy," she said. Earlier, Parmitano had taken to Twitter to let the world know he was doing okay:

 

Luca Parmitano @astro_luca

Thanks for all the positive thoughts! Ringrazio tutti per avermi avuto nei loro pensieri!

 

Korth described the astronaut's performance as "grace under pressure," calling on reporters to imagine walking around with a fishbowl on their heads as an experience comparable to what Parmitano went through. While Parmitano was clearly in discomfort, Korth and his team on the ground determined that the mission did not need to go into full emergency procedures. Still, the astronauts' re-entry to the space station was sped up slightly.

 

In terms of next steps, the crew is discussing the day's events in detail with team members on the ground as well as taking photographs and video of the suit. "Nothing is jumping out right now," Korth said, referring to the possible source of the water.

 

As for whether this means the end of extravehicular activities, it doesn't. But they are being put on hold until the source of the leak can be determined.

 

"We have to do EVAs," said Todd, "EVAs are part of this business."

 

Leak in astronaut helmet causes scrapping of spacewalk

 

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

 

A serious water leak inside an astronaut's helmet forced NASA to cut short a spacewalk Tuesday outside the International Space Station.

 

European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, who last week became the first Italian to walk in space, reported a buildup of water inside his helmet about an hour into an excursion with U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy.

 

The water initially pooled in the back of Parmitano's helmet behind his head. But ultimately the water — which apparently came from Parmitano's drinking-water bag — floated into his eyes, and flight directors on Mission Control quickly called an end to the outing. Water also is piped through the long underwear worn under a spacesuit for cooling.

 

NASA mission commentator Dan Huot said neither of the astronauts was in danger.

 

"The team down here in Mission Control is taking the cautious path," Huot said.

 

Parmitano was told to head back into the U.S. Quest airlock, and Cassidy followed. Once inside, it appeared the water leak caused the communication system in Parmitano's suit to fail. He apparently could not hear questions about his condition.

 

"Squeeze my hand if you're fine," Cassidy told Parmitano. "He looks fine. He looks miserable. But he's OK."

 

U.S. astronaut Karen Nyberg and two Russian cosmonauts — Pavel Vinogradov and Fyodor Yutchikhin — scrambled to remove Parmitano's helmet once he was back inside the station. They used towel to soak up water blobs that floated from the helmet.

 

"Great job getting those guys out of their suits in a timely manner," Mission Control said. "It was a great team effort."

 

Mission Control asked Nyberg to take photographs of Parmitano's spacesuit, particularly anything that might seem amiss. And she was asked to make certain they documented the condition of the suspect water bag.

 

The planned 6-hour, 15-minute spacewalk came to an end 1 hour and 32 minutes after it started. The two astronauts were able to get some maintenance work done outside the station. But not nearly the amount of work they had set out to do.

 

The excursion was the second in seven days for the astronauts. Cassidy and Parmitano ventured outside the station July 9 and performed myriad maintenance tasks. They also retrieved two science research experiments.

 

Parmitano, a former test pilot, arrived at the space station 1½ months ago. Cassidy, a former Navy SEAL, is a longtime spacewalker. He has been on board since March.

 

On Tuesday, the astronauts had planned a variety of maintenance and assembly-related tasks. Among them: laying electrical power and Ethernet cabling to the juncture between the U.S. and Russian sides of the outpost.

 

The cabling ultimately will be extended to a Russian multipurpose module that will be launched late this year from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

 

The Nauka, or "Science," module will triple as a laboratory, a docking compartment and an airlock. It will replace the Russian Pirs, or "pier" module, which was launched to the station in August 2001.

 

The spacewalkers also aimed to install jumper cables that will enable electricity to be rerouted, with the flip of a switch inside the station, in the event of power generator or cooling system failures. And they had planned to do the following:

 

·         Replace a video camera on the Japanese Kibo research facility.

·         Relocate wireless television camera equipment.

·         Set up equipment that would be used in the event a 40-foot radiator failed and had to be removed and replaced.

 

The spacewalk was the 171st to be performed in the assembly and maintenance of the station, the construction of which began in late 1998.

 

The shortest spacewalk in ISS history: 14 minutes. On June 24, 2004, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke ventured outside the outpost. However, their outing was called off when a pressure problem was detected in the oxygen tank within Fincke's suite.

 

NASA Investigating Mysterious Spacewalk-Ending Water Leak

 

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

 

NASA officials aren't sure what triggered a leak of water into a spacewalking astronaut's suit, causing mission controllers to abort a planned 6.5-hour spacewalk after only one hour and 32 minutes Tuesday.

 

European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano reported "a lot of water" inside his helmet during his excursion outside the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday. Because of the potentially dangerous situation, mission controllers on the ground decided to abort the spacewalk.

 

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Parmitano returned safely to the U.S. Quest airlock, and engineers began trying to figure out what caused the mysterious and unprecedented leak.

 

"Clearly we have a problem at this point that we don't quite understand," Kenneth Todd, the ISS mission management team chair, told reporters Tuesday.

 

NASA officials have already made some progress in narrowing down the source of the leak. Initially, Parmitano and Cassidy thought that the astronaut's drinking water may have been leaking into the suit. However, the spacewalk team says that the cooling system in Parmitano's suit is a more likely candidate.

 

Parmitano is doing well after the incident.

 

"Luca's doing great," spacewalk officer Karina Eversley told reporters. "He's smiling and happy. All the crew is looking at the suits and reporting information."

 

The spacewalk by Parmitano and Cassidy began at 7:57 a.m. EDT (1157 GMT) and was scheduled to last 6.5 hours. However, it ended at 9:29 a.m. EDT (1329 GMT) — just 92 minutes in — because of the water in Parmitano's helmet.

 

"There is some in my eyes, and some in my nose," Parmitano said during the spacewalk. "It's a lot of water."

 

Officials have now determined that a total of 34 to 51 ounces (1 to 1.5 liters) of water leaked into Parmitano's spacesuit. Most found its way into his helmet, but other parts of his suit were affected as well, Eversley said.

 

Parmitano and Cassidy were scheduled to continue to prepare the outside of the orbiting laboratory for the arrival of a new Russian multipurpose laboratory module expected to arrive later this year, as well as work on a variety of other maintenance tasks.

 

 

NASA officials have said that the scheduled spacewalk activities are not urgent and can be completed during a later spacewalk, but nothing has been scheduled as of yet.

 

Tuesday's spacewalk was the second in eight days for Parmitano and Cassidy and the 171st excursion supporting building and maintenance of the International Space Station. It marked Cassidy's sixth spacewalk and Parmitano's second. Cassidy has clocked 31 hours and 13 minutes of spacewalking time while Parmitano holds seven hours and 39 minutes.

 

On July 9, Parmitano became the first Italian astronaut to walk in space.

 

NASA's Karen Nyberg and Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin, Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin share space with Parmitano and Cassidy aboard the orbiting lab. Together, the six spaceflyers make up the crew of Expedition 36 .

 

The $100 billion International Space Station is the product of five space agencies representing 15 different countries. Construction of the laboratory began in 1998, and rotating crews of astronauts have continually staffed the orbiting laboratory since 2000.

 

Space Station Spacewalk Cut Short by Space Suit Water Leak

 

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

 

U.S. and European astronauts suspended their spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Tuesday, after water leaked into the space suit helmet worn by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano.

 

Water began to pour over the back of Parmitano's head and into his eyes, nose and mouth,  as he re-entered the station's U.S. Quest airlock at 9:15 a.m., EDT, or at the 1 hour, 18 minute mark, to end his spacewalk activities.

 

The tasks for an excursion scheduled to last just over six hours were not considered critical and will be re-scheduled, according to NASA.

 

"Neither astronaut was in serious danger," according to a space agency spokesman.

 

Parmitano was paired with lead NASA spacewalker Chris Cassidy for a follow on spacewalk to their successful July 9 outing.

 

Tuesday's spacewalk got underway at 7:57 a.m., EDT. It concluded at 9:29 a.m. EDT.

 

By 8:43 a.m., Parmitano was reporting a water buildup in the back of his helmet. The source, possible a space suit drink bag or the space suit cooling system, was unclear.

 

"It feels like a lot of water. I don't know where it's coming from," reported Parmitano, who tried to sip it away.

 

"It's a lot of water," reported Cassidy, as he joined his colleague at the intersection of the station's U. S. and Russian segments. "It's in his eyes, as well as his nose and mouth."

 

During the spacewalk, the two men planned to extend an Ethernet cable from the U.S. to the Russian segment of the station to support the arrival of Russia's Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module later this year.

 

Cassidy managed to complete external power cable re-configurations that will provide a second source of electricity to an assortment of critical systems, including control moment gyros, thermal control and Ku communications links, in response to external component failures.

 

The alteration will enable astronauts to re-route power to critical systems from inside the station rather than interrupt other activities to prepare for a spacewalk. Cassidy began the reconfiguration on July 9.

 

NASA: Spacesuit Water Leak a Mystery (For Now)

 

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

 

NASA is on the hunt for the source of a leak that prompted a hasty and early end to a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Tuesday.

 

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Italy's Luca Parmitano were less than an hour into a planned 6-hour, 15-minute spacewalk when Parmitano reported that the back of his head felt wet.

 

Thinking his drink bag had sprung a leak, Parmitano emptied it, but water continued to build up inside his helmet.

 

"It was clear that he was having trouble," flight director David Korth later told reporters on a conference call.

 

"We don't expect any water — above and beyond just normal sweating — to be inside the helmet and when he started reporting that it was accumulating around his ears, that's the point at which we said we are not comfortable."

 

In microgravity, water collects into blobs that float around. Too much water in the helmet could cause an astronaut to choke or even drown.

 

"He certainly had that risk today and that's why we took it so seriously," said lead spacewalk officer Karina Eversley.

 

NASA has run into problems with spacewalkers' suits before, but never anything like what happened on Tuesday.

 

Initially, engineers focused on Parmitano's drink bag as the source of the leak, but that doesn't seem to be the problem, Korth said.

 

Another option is the spacesuit's liquid-cooled undergarment. For now, NASA doesn't know if the problem is limited to Prmitano's suit or part of a wider issue.

 

The spacewalk was a continuation of maintenance chores started during a previous outing on July 9. Parmitano, who wore the same spacesuit last week, is the first Italian astronaut to walk in space.

 

NASA said he apparently has suffered no ill-effects from the incident.

 

Spacewalk emergency highlights dangers of living on ISS

 

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

 

NASA survived a close call at the International Space Station on Tuesday when a spacewalking astronaut could have drowned in his spacesuit helmet — an incident that pointed up the dangers encountered daily building, living and working aboard the outpost.

 

With the station soaring 250 miles above the planet, the six men and women living on board face a constant array of threats, any of which can prove swiftly fatal.

 

Space rocks or orbital debris can poke a hole in the ship's hull.

 

A medical emergency — one that could be handled with a quick trip to the emergency room on Earth — can prove insurmountable in space.

 

Fire, toxic air and hundreds of other potential risks are carefully studied by NASA, so that crews in orbit and on the ground understand the steps they need to take when something goes wrong.

 

The most danger a station astronaut encounters in orbit is when he or she steps out of the airlock and into open space, something NASA and its international partners do with far more regularity in the station era than any previous one. Every danger faced inside ISS is aggravated outside.

 

"You know, you are embarking in your own little spaceship, and so it has to be fully operational and as safe as the one you are leaving before you commit to it," said Tom Jones, a former astronaut and veteran of four shuttle flights and three spacewalks.

 

That's precisely where Italian Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency got into trouble Tuesday. He was performing routine maintenance outside when water started trickling into the back of his helmet.

 

No big problem. Engineers thought the leak came from a quart-sized drinking water bag inside his suit. There was no immediate danger.

 

That changed fast. Engineers expected the bag to empty and the water flow to stop. It didn't. The flow increased, and water started moving around his ears toward the front of his helmet.

 

Spacewalking partner Chris Cassidy, a U.S. astronaut, took a look: "It's a lot of water. His hair is saturated. It's in his eyes as well as his nose and mouth."

 

Mission Control was alarmed. NASA quickly aborted the spacewalk, cut it short by five hours. Parmitano and Cassidy were ordered back to the U.S. Quest airlock, where they would be out of the deadly vacuum environment in low Earth orbit, and into the relative safety of the space station.

 

The tide kept rising in Parmitano's helmet during his 20-minute retreat to the airlock. And yes, NASA said he was in danger of drowning.

 

"Imagine you're in a fish bowl," said David Korth, NASA's lead spacewalk flight director. "So, go stick your head in a fish bowl and try to walk around, and that's not anything you would take lightly. And certainly, (spacewalking) is dangerous already."

 

Parmitano could not hear or respond to questions after he reentered the airlock.

 

"Hey, Luca, from Houston, how're you doing? Give us a status," astronaut Shane Kimbrough said from Mission Control.

 

"Luca, did you hear that?" Cassidy asked.

 

He didn't.

 

"Squeeze my hand if you're fine," Cassidy said, peering into his crewmate's visor.

 

"I'm trying to see him," Cassidy said. "He looks fine. He looks miserable, but OK."

 

NASA is investigating. The initial suspect, a drinking water bag, no longer is thought to be the culprit. Jones, the veteran spacewalker, said his best guess is the leak came from Parmitano's astronaut underwear.

 

Astronauts don form-fitting garments called Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garments. They are cooled by chilled water lines running throughout. Jones suspects a rupture in a cooling line near Parmitano's neck.

 

"The closest water line to where he was experiencing (trouble) is in the neck area of the LCVG," Jones said.

 

The spacewalk was the second in seven days for Cassidy and Parmitano.

 

It was the 171st in assembly and maintenance of the station since that work began in late 1998.

 

Rotating crews have staffed the ISS continuously since November 2000. Spacewalking assembly and maintenance work will continue to be part of doing business there.

 

Jones said cutting short the 6.5-hour spacewalk after 92 minutes was "smart."

 

In weightlessness, water clings to surfaces.

 

"And if you get it in your eyes, you can't clear them because of the liquid just adhering to your skin around your eyes. You could be blinded, and that could be operationally serious."

 

Choking is a hazard. "You could ingest or inhale droplets of water while you're trying to breathe, and if you get it down the wrong pipe, that could really be a serious medical hazard," Jones said.

 

Kenny Todd, chairman of NASA's Mission Management Team, which is responsible for flight safety during missions, said it is unclear when another attempt might be made to complete the unfinished maintenance.

 

"We'll find the right time to go do this once we understand what happened on orbit today and how we can ensure it won't happen again," Todd said.

 

Space station risks

 

A sampling of "top risks" to the space station and its crew, according to a 2011 NASA study:

 

·         A micrometeorite or orbital debris strike, causing serious damage or even catastrophic loss: 1 in 100 chance.

·         Crew needing medical evacuation: 1 in 23 chance in any six-month expedition.

·         A crewmember dying from illness, injury, or exposure to toxins or smoke: 1 in 94 chance during a similar period.

 

The Four Biggest Risks for Conducting a Spacewalk

 

Andrew Fazekas - National Geographic

 

An hour into this morning's scheduled six-hour-long spacewalk to do maintenance work on the International Space Station, astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet began inexplicably filling with water.

 

At first Parmitano, a major in the Italian Air Force, notified ground controllers that he was feeling something unusual on the back of his head.

 

"My head is really wet and I have a feeling it's increasing," Parmitano told flight controllers on the ground in Houston.

 

But as the water began to accumulate further, it clearly became more than just a nuisance.

 

"It's too much … Now it's in my eyes," he relayed.

 

Ground controllers became concerned that Parmitano could choke on the floating blobs of water, so the spacewalk was immediately halted. Parmitano was then assisted back to the airlock by American Christopher Cassidy, a veteran spacewalker. Once fellow crewmates removed his helmet, they noticed that it contained quite a bit of water — as much as half a liter or 2 cups.

 

As of Tuesday, NASA is still trying to figure out the exact source of the water.

 

Astronauts like Parmitano constantly train for various emergency scenarios that may crop up during walks outside the International Space Station. But there are risks involved in the activity, including:

 

1.Suit leaks

Micro-meteors or tiny shards of metal  - even those the size of a grain of sand – could cause a puncture and create a catastrophic leak in the spacesuit. Spacewalkers conduct regular examinations of their gloves and suit for leaks while on spacewalks.

 

2.Decompression sickness or 'the bends'

If an astronaut puts on his/her spacesuit too quickly and then heads outside the station, there's reason for alarm. Because of the rapid change in air pressure, nitrogen gas bubbles would expand in their blood vessels, causing severe pain, cramping and even paralysis or death. To prevent decompression sickness astronauts undergo a denitrogenation process prior to all spacewalks because the ambient pressure in their spacesuits is much lower than inside the space station.

 

3.Exhaustion-loss of consciousness

Despite having its own heating/cooling system, spacesuits can get really hot, especially when astronauts are conducting physically demanding walks that go on for many hours. Ground controllers therefore monitor astronaut vital signs making sure they breathing regularly and don't overheat and pass out.

 

4.Accidental detachment from spaceship

Astronauts go through countless hours of training for spacewalks to familiarize themselves with the exact route they will take once leaving the airlock. Spacesuits are directly tethered to the ISS. However if a spacesuit would detach somehow, there's a way back in: NASA spacesuits all have mini-jet packs allowing the spacewalker to float back to the station.

 

Five NASA spacewalks aborted thanks to bad suits

 

Victoria Jaggard - New Scientist

 

While drowning is an uncommon risk for astronauts, for Luca Parmitano, the threat seemed very real today. The Italian astronaut and his fellow spacewalker Christopher Cassidy brought their work outside the International Space Station (ISS) to an abrupt end on 16 July after water started leaking into Parmitano's helmet. The pair went back inside the station and removed their spacesuits, with Parmitano needing several towels to mop water from his face as his helmet came off. It is not yet known what caused the sudden soaking.

 

This is not the first time that astronauts have had to deal with wardrobe malfunctions in space. Here's more on Parmitano's unexpected dousing, and some of the previous spacesuit errors NASA has had to address.

 

Helmet rain

 

A damp head would not usually be a life threatening issue on Earth. But in the microgravity of space, water floats in blobs that tend to stick to surfaces. In Parmitano's case, enough water seeped out at the back of his helmet that it began flowing around his face and pooling in his ears. "I can still hear perfectly, but my head is really wet and I am feeling that it's increasing," he told mission control. A few minutes later: "Now it's in my eyes."

 

Once the suit was removed, crews reported that between 1 and 1.5 litres of leaked water had accumulated inside it, according to lead spacewalk officer Karina Eversley of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "Choking or drowning is definitely a real possibility," she said of the incident during a press briefing today.

 

Parmitano is not the first to have this problem. In February 2004 Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri ended a spacewalk early because he also experienced watery build-up in his helmet. "It's strangely warm," Kaleri told Russian flight controllers at the time. "It's amazing. I have rain inside the helmet. I have water on the visor." Crews on the ground saw signs of a problem with his suit's cooling system and sent Kaleri and US astronaut Mike Foale back inside the ISS.

 

Underneath a spacesuit's pressurised outer layer, astronauts wear a spandex garment lined with narrow tubes that circulate chilled water to help keep the bottled-up spacewalkers cool. Foale found a kink in one of these tubes in Kaleri's suit. He straightened out the tube, and water once again flowed normally.

 

Under pressure

 

The shortest spacewalk yet happened in June 2004, when a mission had to be aborted after just 14 minutes. US astronaut Mike Fincke was headed outside the ISS to repair a circuit breaker, but the main oxygen tank on his Russian Orlan spacesuit began rapidly losing pressure almost as soon as he left the airlock. Flight controllers sent the astronaut back inside to troubleshoot. They found that an injector switch inside the suit, designed to let astronauts control the flow of oxygen, was not fully in the "off" position before Fincke headed out. The suit was once again cleared for flight, and the spacewalk was rescheduled for a few days later.

 

Ruin the gauntlet

 

In space, a cut on your glove is a reason to get indoors in a hurry. A 2007 spacewalk ended early when US astronaut Rick Mastracchio noticed a cut in the thumb of his pressurised glove. The cut only affected the top two layers of the five-layer protective material, so Mastracchio was not in immediate danger. But NASA rules required him to stop the spacewalk as a precautionary measure. The astronaut noticed the hole during a regular visual inspection of the gloves, which NASA made mandatory after crews on the ground discovered a similar cut on a suit worn during a spacewalk in December 2006.

 

Future suits might use smart materials such as self-healing polymer gels to repair these kinds of cuts on the fly.

 

Bad air

 

US astronaut Cassidy is no stranger to spacesuit dilemmas – he had his own spacewalking glitch in 2009. Cassidy was outside the ISS installing new batteries for the space station's solar array when the carbon dioxide level in his air supply suddenly shot up. The level stayed within accepted limits, but NASA ended the outing early to be on the safe side. The lead spacewalk officer at the time, Keith Johnson, said the problem was probably with the suit's CO2 scrubber, so crews put a replacement instrument in the suit and Cassidy was able to resume working outdoors the next day.

 

"Spacewalks are a key part of the human spaceflight programme and can do some spectacular things. But of course all spaceflight does have risk," Eversley said today. NASA will spend the next day or two talking to Parmitano and the rest of the crew and evaluating the leaky suit, to see if the problem can be found and fixed. In the meantime, Parmitano is enjoying his drier surroundings aboard the ISS. "Luca's doing great," Eversley said. "He's smiling and happy."

 

ISS Astronauts Have a Spacewalking Close Call

 

Tom Jones - Popular Mechanics

 

(Jones is a former astronaut & has conducted spacewalks)

 

Astronauts had to return to the ISS just one and a half hours into a spacewalk Tuesday after water began leaking into the helmet of European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano.

 

Astronauts train for their spacewalks at the International Space Station while submerged in Houston in a six-million-gallon water tank, learning to better understand and cope with the free-fall environment of orbital flight. But they expect to leave all that water behind after launch.

 

Tuesday at the ISS, however, an unusual and serious water leak threatened to engulf European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, nearly blinding him inside his helmet and forcing NASA to cut short their maintenance spacewalk after just 1 hour and 32 minutes. Parmitano made it back inside the station safely, and Tuesday afternoon NASA officials told the media they were still investigating how this water leak could have happened.

 

About an hour into the EVA (extravehicular activity), Parmitano first reported water building up inside his helmet, spreading on the back of his head. "I don't understand where it's coming from," Parmitano said. Initially, both he and partner Chris Cassidy suspected the source was a 32-oz. drink bag, which rides inside the front torso of the spacesuit, its drinking valve positioned for sipping just above the suit's neck ring. But Parmitano, an Italian air force pilot and engineer, reported that he felt the water slowly expanding, threatening to envelop his head and face in a clinging, choking blanket of H2O. "I can still hear perfectly, but my head is really wet and I feel it increasing," Parmitano said.

 

In the free-fall of Earth orbit, water's surface tension, (the cohesive force that draws water molecules together) causes it to coalesce into a drifting blob. Once a globule strikes a surface, it clings to it and spreads, forming an enveloping film. I encountered this same phenomenon when working out vigorously on the shuttle's bicycle ergometer: Perspiration clung to my neck and face, spreading into and stinging my eyes.

 

Of course, I had a towel ready to deal with too much sweat. Inside his sealed helmet, Parmitano could not wipe the water from his face. Shaking his head might throw some of the clinging water off his face, but it might then adhere to the inside of the helmet visor, cutting off his vision. And drifting water could pose a choking hazard should Parmitano inhale droplets into his lungs.

 

As the seconds went on, the accumulating water kept spreading toward Parmitano's face. "Now it's in my eyes," he reported. Ground controllers reacted quickly, ordering the pair to end the spacewalk and return to the airlock.

 

In just the few minutes it took for the Italian astronaut to reach the Quest airlock, water had seeped into his communications headphones and microphone. Unable to talk to Parmitano by radio during their repressurization from vacuum, Cassidy directed, "Squeeze my hand if you're fine." Radioing Mission Control, Cassidy added, "He looks fine. He looks miserable, but he's okay."

 

Using an expedited suit-doffing procedure that skipped some routine steps to save time, the pair's ISS crewmates quickly equalized the air pressure between Quest and the station interior. Within ten minutes, they had Parmitano out of his helmet, toweling him dry. In the hours after the spacewalk, both crewmembers reported no ill effects.

 

Late on Tuesday, NASA flight controllers continued their search for the source of the water leak. The drink bag, the initial suspect during the EVA, doesn't hold enough water to have doused Parmitano so thoroughly. But the suit's water supply system, which circulates chilled water through an astronaut's "long underwear" cooling garment and feeds a sublimator heat exchanger, contains about a gallon. That's more than enough to have caused the flood in Parmitano's helmet, estimated at about 1 to 1.5 liters.

 

ISS mission management team leader Kenneth Todd, joined by flight director David Korth and EVA officer Karina Eversley, confirmed the seriousness of the problem at an afternoon press conference. Korth noted that EVAs are already dangerous. For Parmitano, this experience was like plunging one's head into a sloshing fishbowl, with no way to get it off.

 

Eversley agreed that the choking hazard from inhaled water was real, and it eventually caused flight controllers to terminate the spacewalk. Todd said he was proud of the way the ISS team handled the near-emergency, one they had never encountered before. "The crew was cool and expert in reporting and diagnosing the problem. Our training on the ground paid off, and the team kept its eye on the main objective"—the crew's safety.

 

Cargo module bound for International Space Station to arrive at Wallops

 

Carol Vaughn - Salisbury Daily Times

 

A pressurized cargo module destined for the International Space Station is due to arrive at NASA Wallops Flight Facility Wednesday.

 

It is the second cargo module for Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Cygnus spacecraft to arrive at the facility, according to a NASA press release.

 

This one will be used for the first of Orbital's eight contracted cargo delivery missions to the International Space Station under the company's Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

 

The module is scheduled to arrive around 6 p.m. Wednesday on an Antonov An-124 aircraft—the world's second largest cargo aircraft.

 

It is being shipped from the Thales Alenia Space facility in Turin, Italy, where it was built.

 

The module will be unloaded and taken to a payload processing facility at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, where over the next few months it will be loaded with supplies for the International Space Station and integrated with the Cygnus spacecraft service module.

 

The first Cygnus, which is already at Wallops, is scheduled to go to the International Space Station aboard Orbital's Antares rocket in September in a demonstration mission under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

 

The demonstration mission will carry around 1,550 pounds of cargo to the space station.

 

The launch date for the demonstration mission is Sept. 14, with a launch window of Sept. 14 to 19.

 

A successful demonstration mission is the final milestone Orbital must achieve before the company can begin carrying out regular cargo supply missions to the space station from Wallops.

 

Information on the Cygnus spacecraft is available on the Internet at:

http://www.orbital.com/Antares-Cygnus/

 

Information on NASA's commercial space transportation efforts is available on the Internet at:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/index.html

 

Cygnus cargo craft to arrive at Wallops for demo flight to space station

 

Tamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily Press

 

Virginia's spaceport is taking another step toward becoming a major site for commercial cargo missions to the International Space Station with the anticipated arrival of the Cygnus spacecraft at Wallops Island on Wednesday.

 

According to NASA, the cargo carrier is set to arrive around 6 p.m. at its Wallops Flight Facility. Over the next few months, engineers from Orbital Sciences Corp. will begin stocking it with supplies bound for the space station.

 

NASA awarded Orbital a $1.9 billion contract to build the Cygnus and the medium-lift Antares rocket to make eight resupply missions to the station. Orbital is a private space transport developer based in Dulles. The Cygnus is being shipped from Turin, Italy, where it was built by an Orbital subcontractor.

 

Orbital launched a successful test flight of the Antares in April. A demonstration flight of the booster carrying a working Cygnus carrier is scheduled in the fall to show the craft can successfully dock with the station. The eight resupply missions are expected to begin after that.

 

According to Orbital, the launch window for the demonstration flight is Sept. 14-19 and marks the "final milestone … in the joint development effort with NASA." The Cygnus for that flight is already loaded with 1,300 pounds of payload and will begin integrating soon with the rocket. It's scheduled to berth with the station on Sept. 22.

 

Virginia built a $145 million liquid-fuel launch pad at its Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, or MARS, on Wallops Island to accommodate medium-lift rockets in hopes of luring more commercial space missions to the commonwealth.

 

Orbital is one of only two private companies NASA granted Commercial Resupply Services, or CRS, contracts to carry cargo to the space station. The other went to the California-based SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, which last year became the first commercial contractor to dock with the space station. SpaceX resupply missions fly out of Florida.

 

Blue Origin Bids for Shuttle Launch Pad

 

Irene Klotz - Space News

 

At least one other company is competing against Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)  to take over a decommissioned space shuttle launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) here.

 

Privately owned Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, also responded to a NASA solicitation for proposals for Launch Pad 39A, company president Rob Meyerson told SpaceNews July 16.

 

"Blue Origin is considering various sites for our orbital launch operations, and submitted a proposal to NASA related to KSC Launch Complex 39A.  We look forward to further discussions with NASA and Space Florida about the possibility of bringing our launch and vehicle assembly operations to the KSC area," Meyerson wrote in an email.

 

Hand-held cam view of Blue Origin's New Shepard's short-hop flight testUnited Launch Alliance, ATK, Orbital Sciences and Space Florida all passed on the project.

 

Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is developing a reusable space vehicle called New Shepard. The company has an unfunded partnership agreement with NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which is aimed at restoring a U.S. human space transportation system to the international space station.

 

With the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011, Russia now operates the only system to fly people to the station, a service that costs NASA about $71 million per person.

 

Senate bill favorable to $18 billion NASA budget

Showdown for votes expected on Thursday

 

Ledyard King - Florida Today

 

A key Senate panel voted Tuesday to give about $18 billion to NASA for fiscal year 2014, setting up what could be a showdown with the House over the funding of the nation's space program.

 

The Senate bill funds continuing work on NASA's top priorities: a deep-space, crewed mission to Mars, deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope, and a joint venture with private companies to transport astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station within the next few years.

 

It does not mention NASA's proposal to retrieve an asteroid as part of its steppingstone approach to Mars. A NASA funding bill in the House includes language barring NASA from spending any money on the asteroid mission, which lawmakers have called poorly conceived.

 

The $18 billion spending plan was approved without dissent by the Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The full committee is expected to approve the measure Thursday.

 

The bill, part of a $52.2 billion bill that also funds federal law enforcement and science programs, provides more than the $17.7 billion NASA requested in the president's budget. And it provides considerably more than the $16.6 billion measure that the House Appropriations Committee is expected to pass today.

 

That means that funding for NASA — and many other federal programs — is on a collision course between the Republican-led House and the Democratic-led Senate.

 

GOP lawmakers are assuming the automatic budget cuts that began this year, known as sequestration, will continue into next year and want proposed budgets to reflect that. Democrats, meanwhile, are banking that a deal will be reached to end the across-the-board reductions and want budgets to reflect real program needs.

 

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski said she's worried "the whole budget is in trouble" unless Republicans relent.

 

"As long as (House Budget Chairman Paul) Ryan insists that Appropriations uses sequester as the new normal, the (spending) bill along with critical national agencies like NASA will be back to where they were even before 2007," she said after Tuesday's vote. "So am I concerned? Yes."

 

Senate Republicans already are lining up against the appropriations bill.

 

Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the subcommittee, voted for the $52.2 billion measure Tuesday, but said he would vote against it Thursday when it comes up before the full committee. He'd like to see a spending plan closer to $47 billion, which is the amount the House is looking to approve.

 

Aside from the overall budget number, the Senate bill provides good news for NASA: $775 million for the partnership with private companies known as "Commercial Crew."

 

That would be far more than the roughly $500 million the program got this year and reasonably close to the $821 million the agency says it needs to keep the program, which is designed to replace the space shuttle on a 2017 schedule. The House bill includes $700 million.

 

The bill does include language, inserted by Shelby, to study the future of the space station and make sure, as most predict, that the orbiting lab will remain in use past its current 2020 expiration date. Otherwise, aides to Shelby said, there's little point in funding a program if there's nowhere to fly.

 

Shelby said he put in the provision, as well as others aimed at improving government performance, "to ensure taxpayers are getting the best bang for their dollar."

 

Mikulski Includes $18 Billion for NASA in 2014 Appropriations Bill

 

Brian Berger - Space News

 

Setting the stage for a potential showdown with the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) unveiled a 2014 spending bill that includes $18 billion for NASA — about $300 million more than the Obama administration requested and $1.4 billion more than the agency would get under a competing bill House appropriators are set to vote on this week.

 

The Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, which Mikulski also chairs, met July 16 to mark up a $52.27 billion spending bill that assumes Congress and the White House will find a way to end the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration that took effect at the end of March.

 

"The $18 billion in the bill for NASA will preserve a NASA portfolio balanced among science, aeronautics, technology and human space flight investments. Moreover, it will keep NASA in the forefront of innovation, inspiring private companies to build new crew transportation and spawning a new satellite servicing industry that can revive, refuel, and rejuvenate defunct communications satellites," Mikulski wrote in a bill summary posted July 16 on the committee's website.

 

The seven-page summary is short on specifics, saying only that the bill would provide "better balance [than the House bill] for all of NASA's important missions, including $373 million more for Science that helps us to better understand Earth and own solar system while peering at new worlds way beyond the stars.

 

"The Senate also provides $597 million more to let humans explore beyond low earth orbit while safely sending our astronauts to the space station on U.S. made vehicles."

 

Mikulski's bill would also provide $5.6 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a sum that includes "$1.95 billion to keep our next generation weather satellites on budget and on schedule."

 

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the committee's top Republican, praised the bill for providing NASA with the money it needs "to maintain key schedules for ongoing missions and activities, including development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle," but promised to vote against it July 18, when the full Senate Appropriations Committee is due to take it up.

 

Shelby said Democrats are ignoring the fiscal realities imposed by sequestration, a provision of the Budget Control Act of 2011.

 

Republicans are "going by the law right now," Shelby told reporters after the markup. "And they're [Democrats] going just like they didn't have it. But sooner or later, it's going to have to be worked out, one way or the other."

 

Despite his vow to vote against the bill, Shelby said he was happy the proposal included "language that provides greater accountability and budgetary transparency to the Commercial Crew Program."

 

The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to release a copy of the bill or the accompanying report.  A Senate aide, however, said Mikulski's bill would fund the Commercial Crew Program next year at $775 million — significantly more than Congress has been willing to provide so far, but less than the $821 million the White House requested.

 

The $16.6 billion NASA budget the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee approved July 10 would fund the Commercial Crew Program at $500 million. NASA officials have said commercial crew needs at least $800 million next year to keep the program  on track to meet a 2017 deadline for fielding at least one of the competing systems Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada are developing for transporting astronauts to the international space station.

 

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to vote on the NASA budget July 17 as part of a broader $47.4 billion commerce, justice, science spending bill.

 

Senate appropriators offer $18 billion for NASA

 

Jeff Foust – SpacePolitics.com

 

In contrast to their House counterparts, Senate appropriators appears to be more generous with NASA, at least at the overall level. A summary of the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill, marked up with little fanfare by the CJS subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday morning, reveals the committee is proposing $18 billion for NASA in fiscal year 2014.

 

"The $18 billion in the bill for NASA will preserve a NASA portfolio balanced among science, aeronautics, technology and human space flight investments," the summary states. "Moreover, it will keep NASA in the forefront of innovation, inspiring private companies to build new crew transportation and spawning a new satellite servicing industry that can revive, refuel, and rejuvenate defunct communications satellites."

 

The summary doesn't break out how that spending is allocated among the various accounts, but the summary does note that NASA's science account would get $373 million more than the House version (or $5.154 billion, slightly above the administration's request) and $597 million more for exploration (to $4.2 billion, again above the administration's request.)

 

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chairwoman of both the CJS subcommittee and and the full appropriations committee, said nothing about the NASA budget in her opening statement at the brief markup session, but Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), the ranking member of the subcommittee and full committee, did mention the budget. "These funds will give NASA the ability to maintain key schedules for ongoing missions and activities, including development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle while funding ongoing activities of the International Space Station and other important research activities." Shelby added that he worked with Mikulski to include language in the appropriations bill to provide "greater accountability and budgetary transparency to the commercial crew program, to ensure that taxpayers are getting the best value for their dollar."

 

Shelby, though, revealed that he will not vote for the full appropriations bill, because the total funding in the bill is too high. "For that reason, and that reason alone, I will vote against the bill at the full committee," he said.

 

The full Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the bill in a markup session Thursday morning, one day after the House Appropriations Committee marks up their bill.

 

Senate Approp. Subcommittee approves $18 billion for NASA in FY '14

 

Marcia Smith – SpacePolicyOnline.com

 

The Senate appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over NASA approved $18 billion for the agency for FY2014 Tuesday, a significant increase over the level recommended by its House counterpart last week and more than the Obama Administration requested.

 

The Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee, chaired by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who also chairs the full committee, approved the bill with little discussion in a short markup session.  Full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday at 10:00 am ET.

 

Little mention was made of NASA during the markup and the press release provides few details.   The subcommittee approved $18 billion for FY2014, an increase above the $17.7 billion requested by the Obama Administration and significantly more than the amount approved by its House counterpart -- $16.6 billion (the full House Appropriations Committee will consider its subcommittee's recommendations tomorrow, but major changes are not expected).

 

What can be gleaned so far from the Senate subcommittee's action this morning is that NASA would receive $18 billion.  The press release adds that the funds:

 

·         will "preserve a NASA portfolio balanced among science, aeronautics, technology and human space flight investments";

·         includes $373 million more for Science than the House CJS subcommittee's recommendation; and

·         provides $597 million more [presumably more than the House subcommittee] "to let humans explore beyond low Earth orbit while safely sending our astronauts to the space station on U.S. made vehicles."

 

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking member of the subcommittee and of the full committee, said during the markup that the bill also includes language to increase transparency in the commercial crew program.  Shelby added that although the bill was developed in a bipartisan manner and he agrees with its priorities, because the total funding level that was allowed under the Senate Budget Resolution is too high in his opinion, he plans to vote against it.  The total amount of funding provided by the bill is $52.3 billion.

 

Sen. Richard Shelby will vote against $18 billion for NASA, $1.6 billion for Space Launch System

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

The Senate subcommittee that funds NASA today approved $18 billion for the space agency in fiscal year 2014 - more than $1 billion more than House appropriators - and to include $1.6 billion for the Space Launch System being developed at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center. The bill OK'd by the subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies now goes to the full Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday.

 

When it gets to the full committee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa) said today he will vote against it. In a statement to the subcommittee, Shelby praised the bill's priorities, specifically its "balance between the competing priorities of law enforcement, terrorism prevention, research, scientific advancement and U.S. competitiveness." Shelby, who is currently vice chairman and ranking minority member on the Appropriations Committee, also noted that he had worked closely on the bill with subcommittee and committee Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md) and hopes they can agree on a funding measure later in the process.

 

But Shelby said the current bill's bottom line would contribute to breaking the current sequestration spending limit, and he can't support that. Specifically, Shelby said the $52.3 billion in the bill is the full amount the subcommittee was allocated in an overall $1.058 trillion Senate Budget Resolution earlier this year. Spending of $1 trillion-plus next year would break the $967 billion limit imposed on federal spending by the sequestration law. "For that reason, and that reason alone," Shelby said, "I will vote against the CJS bill at full committee."

 

Shelby's staff says the sequestration issue is complicated, but Shelby's position really isn't. He voted against the Budget Control Act that mandated it and has said sequestration's across-the-board cuts are no way to run the government. Shelby's staff said he prefers making decisions about national priorities through the regular legislative process. And he has argued for more flexibility for agencies to meet sequestration's limits. But Shelby's position is that the spending limits are now law and must be followed. 

If the full Senate passes the NASA funding level of $18 billion, it will set up a conflict with the House. Appropriators there have proposed giving NASA $16.6 billion next year. The White House asked for $17.7 billion.

 

Shelby staffers said the $1.6 billion figure for SLS is based on a 2009 NASA cost assessment of what is needed to keep the new rocket system moving forward on schedule. The number does not include ground operations support for the new rocket, as the House allocation of $1.8 billion for SLS does.

 

The Senate subcommittee's budget also appropriates $775 million to commercial space programs, but at Shelby's initiative withholds $250 million until NASA does a study that certifies how long the International Space Station will be usable after 2020, its current projected lifespan.

 

SpaceX gets McGregor approval to test Falcon Heavy

 

Mike Copeland - Waco Tribune-Herald

 

The city of McGregor has amended its lease with SpaceX to allow the company to test "future technologies" at McGregor's industrial park — including possibly the Falcon Heavy, which reportedly will become the world's most powerful private rocket — city and SpaceX officials confirmed.

 

"The basic change is that more thrust will be allowed than under the original lease," McGregor City Manager Kevin Evans said.

 

SpaceX and McGregor also reached on agreement on how late crews can perform rocket tests, some of which can be heard for miles.

 

Tests on the Falcon Heavy would have to end by sunset, while those of the Falcon 9 could continue until 10 p.m., two hours earlier than the previous deadline of midnight.

 

With 3.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, the Falcon Heavy will have the ability to carry satellites or interplanetary spacecraft weighing more than 53 metric tons to low Earth orbit.

 

That is nearly twice the payload of NASA's space shuttle, whose use has drawn to a close.

 

SpaceX communications director Christina Ra would not say when testing of the Falcon Heavy would begin, calling it a "proprietary matter."

 

But the California-based company already has landed its first customer — Intelsat, a Washington, D.C.-based provider of satellite services worldwide — for the new rocket.

 

Ra, in a phone interview, said SpaceX wanted more options at its McGregor-based Rocket Motor Testing Zone "because it is our main rocket facility with an ever-growing footprint. There are a lot of projects, future technologies, that we will be working on there."

 

Evans said SpaceX employs more than 200 people at its complex in McGregor, a figure that Ra confirmed.

 

SpaceX in recent weeks has been testing the Falcon 9-R — a next-generation version of the company's Falcon 9 rocket, with the "R" standing for reusable — in a series of louder-than-normal firings that began in May. The company also has been testing individual engines for the Dragon orbiter and Falcon rockets.

 

The Falcon 9 has nine Merlin engines in its first stage, while the Heavy will have three nine-engine cores, Ra said.

 

Like the Falcon 9 — which made it to orbit in an October 2012 despite losing an engine — the Heavy is designed to tolerate the failure of several engines and still complete its mission, according to the SpaceX website. A disabled engine is shut down and the remaining engines compensate for it.

 

"Anticipating potential astronaut transport needs, the Heavy also is designed to meet NASA human (safety) rating standards," SpaceX reports.

 

The Falcon Heavy will have commercial, civil and national security applications, Ra said, adding that customers will pay $81 million to $135 million per launch, depending on the weight of the payload and the rocket's destination.

 

That is about twice the price of a Falcon 9 launch, Ra said.

 

On Sunday, SpaceX test fired the core stage of the next-generation Falcon 9-R rocket that will be used to launch Canada's CASSIOPE space weather satellite in September from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., Ra confirmed in an email.

 

She said the Falcon 9 will have the same updated design on all flights moving forward, including continued supply trips to the International Space Station by the company's Dragon cargo ship under a contract with NASA.

 

SpaceX also is flying its Grasshopper rocket as a testbed for technology in the Falcon 9-R, whose stages are eventually planned to return to the launch site for reuse instead of becoming space junk or breaking up as they re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.

 

Company founder and CEO Elon Musk has said that early Falcon 9-R launches will test that return capability by trying to bring the first stage back to an ocean splashdown.

 

SpaceX has signed a three-year lease for land and facilities at Spaceport America near Las Cruces, N.M., for higher and farther Grasshopper flights, but also will continue Grasshopper tests in McGregor.

 

Revisiting SLS/Orion launch costs

 

John Strickland - The Space Review (Commentary)

 

(Strickland is a member of the board of directors of the National Space Society and an Advocate with the Space Frontier Foundation, but he does not speak for any organization: his views are his own.)

 

A year and a half ago, I wrote an article very critical of the Space Launch System (see "The SLS: too expensive for exploration?", The Space Review, November 28, 2011). To see if this assessment should now be updated, I checked a series of sources and found that little in the situation has changed, with no reliable cost estimates of an SLS launch yet available anywhere. It is actually amazing how hard it is to get cost estimates for any part of the SLS/Orion system. Another assessment corroborates this problem. While I was working on this article, two startling pieces of information came to light.

 

It is hard to see how a large rocket like the SLS, which is, with all of its components, destroyed in the course of a launch, could possibly cost a lot less than the Space Shuttle on a per-launch basis. It will probably cost considerably more, since all of the expensive rocket engines and other equipment will either smash into the ocean at high speed or reenter the atmosphere and burn up. Note that the Space Shuttle and SLS systems are somewhat comparable in the amount of mass that reaches orbit, although the shuttle's functional "payload" is only what it carried in its cargo bay (about 20 tons) when it was being used as a launch vehicle, rather than the roughly 100-ton mass of the orbiter itself.

 

The shuttle, which consisted of two "re-manufactureable" solid boosters, an expendable external tank, and a refurbishable orbiter, cost about $1 billion per launch, based only on average annual program costs, and $1.5 billion per launch if development costs were also included, based on a 2011 study.

 

Several launch cost estimates for the SLS/Orion system can be made. The lowest and least believable, of $500 million per launch, is from an unofficial NASA document that does not specify if the figure includes the estimated $30-billion development cost or even the annual operating budget, exclusive of costs for specific launches. We will assume that this is their estimate of the actual minimum cost of replacing all of the rocket equipment destroyed during a successful launch. It certainly does not include annual operations costs or payload costs.

 

None of the new solid rocket booster casings for the SLS would be reused. At any rate, re-use via remanufacturing only saves about 20% of the cost of brand new solid booster segments. There also seems to be no effort to make the proposed advanced liquid fuel boosters reusable either.

 

The combined development cost of the SLS and Orion is about $3 billion a year for at least 10 years. If the program were run operationally for 30 years (similar to the shuttle), the prorated development costs (not including the financing costs that would be incurred by a private company), with one launch per year, would be about $1 billion a year. The annual operating cost of the shuttle program, needed to maintain the "standing army" required to do launch operations, was about $3–5 billion. We will assume that due to the reduced maintenance costs (there being no re-usable orbiters to maintain), that the annual operating budget would be at about $2 billion.

 

I had recently been seeing conflicting reports about the cost and ability to reuse the Orion spacecraft. The Orion capsule is theoretically reusable, but will land in salt water due to the decision of the designers not to use a dry land (pusher type) launch abort and landing system that would use up only 1/40th of the vehicle's entire 20 metric ton mass and instead choosing to use an old-fashioned expendable puller escape system instead. The more modern pusher system could have been used as a landing system and an abort system. It is similar to those being designed for use on the Dragon capsule, the CST-100, and the Dream Chaser, and these are reusable. The SLS launch abort system and the Orion's service module are both expendable.

 

The penetration of the salt water inside the unpressurized portions of the Orion capsule makes it unlikely that it can be re-used, as it would have to be disassembled and rebuilt each time. The salt water probably would not penetrate inside the pressurized cabin, but could damage the outside of the cabin and all wiring going into it. It is unclear how much salt water penetration there would be.

 

The PICA-X materials used on the Dragon capsule have been designed to withstand entry from a return lunar trajectory and were derived from NASA-developed PICA. If the Orion could be reused, the older style heat shield used on Orion would need to be replaced after each flight.

 

Based on several external estimates, the SLS/Orion combination can be launched once a year, assuming NASA's current limited, flat budget continues. Equipment at Michoud would probably allow two first (core) stages to be built each year. So, if we assume an annual SLS operating budget of $2 billion, with one launch per year at $1 billion for the rocket and $1 billion for the spacecraft, that brings us up to $4 billion a year, similar to the Shuttle's operating budget. In this case, the cost of replacing the rocket and spacecraft take up a much larger portion of the total budget, and the cost of maintaining the workforce and maintaining and refurbishing the existing vehicle fleet a much smaller portion. The cost of maintaining the launch facilities would be similar. However, the operating budget is the most uncertain value.

 

The bill for an SLS launch, at the flight rate of one launch per year, might then look like this:

 

·         Orion capsule with service module and escape system $1 billion

·         SLS first stage, second stage and upper stage $1 billion

·         Annual operating and launch facility maintenance costs $2 billion 

·         1/30 share of development cost $1 billion

·         TOTAL $5 billion cost per launch

 

The actual annual expenditure would be only $4 billion, but due to the currently flat NASA budget, declining due to both inflation and politics, a $4-billion share of the budget is a bigger share than the shuttle took up in the past. The $1 billion per year during the operational period that is charged to the development is a real cost, since that money was not available to develop other vehicles or equipment for an entire decade.

 

The current large SLS/Orion development budget of about $3 billion a year precludes any development of any other payloads for the SLS. In an article in 2012, Chris Kraft and Tom Moser point out that development of "the crewed lunar lander, a multi-mission space exploration vehicle (MMSEV), a deep space habitat, a lunar surface rover and other lunar infrastructure" are being crowded out by the SLS development effort, so that by the time the SLS would be ready to use, there would be little or no hardware for it to launch. The same would be true for any specialized hardware needed for asteroid or Mars exploration. In addition, they point out that the "the extra $4 billion to $5 billion per year needed to make an SLS-based exploration strategy work" will be unaffordable given the worsening fiscal situation. The dilemma posed by this situation is that NASA can afford to slowly develop a giant rocket, or develop payloads to launch on the rocket, but not both at the same time.

 

Coincidentally with my new analysis, a recent article appears to support those who have been saying that NASA cannot and will not launch the SLS very often. A June 28, 2013, article in Space News, covering an official media tour of the Michoud plant and touting its new welding equipment, seems to indicate that NASA intends to fly the SLS only about once every four years even after the rocket's development is completed. Previously the slowest launch rate anyone predicted was every two years. Even if NASA wants to fly the SLS more often, the cost of preparing new payloads for it may still greatly limit its flight rate. The Space News article quotes Steven Squyres, chairman of the NASA Advisory Council, as saying, "We have no experience with a human-rated flight system that only flies every two or three or four years." This then brings into question the readiness of a launch team to do safe launches at rare intervals. This is a significant issue if you remember the problems of starting up shuttle launches again after the long launch gaps after the two shuttle accidents.

 

Information in another unofficial schedule posted on the Wikipedia page for the SLS (current as of July 1, 2013), indicates that NASA now does not plan to complete development of the 130-ton Block II version of the SLS until as late as 2030. Estimates of the payload up to those dates are between the initial 70 tons and up to 105 tons. This also implies a stretched out program and continuing development costs for another 15 or more years.

 

This information radically changes the assumed cost of each launch, since now, over a presumed 28-year lifespan, starting in perhaps 2022 and lasting presumably until 2050, the rocket would be used only seven times, and for more than a third of its lifespan, not able to launch the promised 130 tons. Its $30-billion development cost would then need to be divided among the few actual launches, not over all the years of the 28-year period, and would be about $4.3 billion per launch. This share of the launch cost represents money that could have been spend on payloads in years past. The per-launch cost of the rocket now jumps from $5 billion up to about $9 billion. The continuing annual cost of maintaining the workforce that allows launches to occur are rare intervals would need to be counted as part of each launch cost. The lesson learned from the Space Shuttle era is that the manpower costs are the largest cost, which is demonstrated again here. The cost table shown above now looks very different. Note that launch prices per ton and per pound for the initial 70-ton SLS version would be almost double that for the 130-ton version.

 

Revised bill for one SLS launch (one launch every 4 years):

 

Orion capsule with service module and escape system

$1 billion

SLS first (core) stage, and upper stage

$1 billion

Annual operating and launch facility maintenance costs

$8 billion (cost over 4 years)

1/7 share of development cost

$4.3 billion

TOTAL

$14.3 billion cost per launch

 

So, compared to the shuttle, how much would an SLS launch (of 130 tons) cost per pound if it was launched at several different conceivable rates. I have put the numbers for the intermediate launch frequencies into the figure below. Prices per pound for the SLS would be 86% higher if it launches only 70 tons.

 

So the full-sized payload version of the SLS is slightly cheaper that the shuttle at one launch per year, due to the roughly five-fold increase in actual payload compared to the shuttle when it was used as a payload delivery system. This means that the SLS launched once a year will be six times as expensive as a Falcon 9 expendable launch and 15 times as expensive as a Falcon Heavy expendable launch.

 

The upshot is that the situation described by my previous assessment (and those of many others) remains accurate and in some respects is worse:

 

·         No hardware to be launched by the SLS other than the crew capsule can be developed until the SLS is developed.

·         The SLS will only be able to perform single launch manned space "stunts" or a few super-expensive science launches at very rare intervals.

·         Due to the available share of the NASA budget that would be taken up by single SLS launches, the SLS will not be able to support base construction anywhere in space, at L1/L2, GEO, on the Moon, or on Mars.

·         The SLS is draining away the lifeblood—funding—of the space program, which should, by all rights, be used to speed up the development of private rockets and end payments to the Russians for space station crew launches as soon as possible.

·         The SLS is a ridiculously expensive way to launch astronaut crews into orbit. With a crew of six, and assuming that each astronaut's share of the Orion's 20-ton mass is about three tons, the lowest conceivable cost per seat is $88 million and the most expensive is $368 million, even assuming that some other payload is being launched along with the Orion capsule. It would be much cheaper to continue to use the expensive Russian launch service.

 

The US government should either decide to turn the SLS into a reusable HLV booster, (something that a private company with a tiny fraction of the US government's capabilities is already trying to do), or open a competitive bidding for a privately designed and built reusable HLV. Working on a reusable HLV, even one based on the SLS, would not reduce the current work force, and once it was ready for flight, it would enable a great expansion of the space work force in other areas such as spacecraft development and construction. We really do need a HLV booster to launch very wide payloads (up to 15 meters in diameter), but we cannot afford to launch such payloads on an expendable booster.

 

Some of the money being spent on the SLS/Orion program may not be wasted, such as the programs to redevelop modern versions of large Apollo-era rocket engines that could be used on a variety of other vehicles.

 

The fact that, in spite of my best efforts, the estimates used in this reassessment of the SLS may or may not be accurate or fair is countered by the reality that getting hard flight cost, hardware construction cost, and annual operational cost numbers out of NASA officialdom is impossible. In no way should criticism of a NASA program decision should be interpreted as criticism of NASA employees, especially as this program is, to a large degree, being forced on NASA by the Congress.

 

Danger! This Mission to Mars Could Bore You to Death!

 

Maggie Koerth-Baker - New York Times

 

(Koerth-Baker is science editor at BoingBoing.net and author of "Before the Lights Go Out," on the future of energy production and consumption)

 

Right now, six people are living in a nearly windowless, white geodesic dome on the slopes of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano. They sleep in tiny rooms, use no more than eight minutes of shower time a week and subsist on a diet of freeze-dried, canned or preserved food. When they go outside, they exit through a mock air lock, clad head to toe in simulated spacesuits. The dome's occupants are playing a serious version of the game of pretend — what if we lived on Mars?

 

Research at the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) project, funded in part by NASA, is a continuation of a long history of attempts to understand what will happen to people who travel through outer space for long periods of time. It's more than a technical problem. Besides multistage rockets to propel a spacecraft out of Earth's atmosphere, years of planning and precise calculations and massive amounts of fuel, traveling the tens of millions of miles to Mars will take a tremendous amount of time. With current technology, the journey takes more than eight months each way.

 

Which means that astronauts will get bored. In fact, a number of scientists say that — of all things — boredom is one of the biggest threats to a manned Mars mission, despite the thrill inherent in visiting another planet. And so, attention is being paid to the effects of boredom at HI-SEAS, and on the International Space Station. But because of the causes of chronic boredom, scientists say, research facilities in Antarctica might actually provide a better simulation of the stress of a journey to Mars.

 

Most living things constantly seek out sensory stimulation — new smells, tastes, sights, sounds or experiences. Even single-celled amoebas will move to investigate new sources of light or heat, says Sheryl Bishop, who studies human performance in extreme environments at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Animals deprived of naturalistic environments and the mental stimulation that come with them can fall into repetitive, harmful patterns of behavior. Anybody of a certain age will remember zoos full of manically pacing tigers, bears gnawing on their metal cages and birds that groomed themselves bald — all a result, we now know, of their rather unstimulating lifestyles.

 

Human boredom isn't quite as well understood, says James Danckert, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo. He's currently working on what he says may be the first study of how our brain activity changes when we're bored. Danckert is hoping to find out whether boredom is connected to a phenomenon called the "default network" — a background hum of brain activity that seems to remain on even when you aren't directly focused on something. There's a lot of observable activity in the brains of people who are staring at a blank screen — way more than anybody expected, Danckert says. The default network maps closely to the brain-activity patterns scientists see when someone's mind is wandering. It suggests that what we call a restless mind is just that — a mind desperate for something to amuse it, searching frantically for stimulus.

 

Boredom, it turns out, is a form of stress. Psychologically, it's the mirror image of having too much work to do, says Jason Kring, president of the Society of Human Performance in Extreme Environments, an organization that studies how people live and work in space, underwater, on mountaintops and other high-risk places. If your brain does not receive sufficient stimulus, it might find something else to do — it daydreams, it wanders, it thinks about itself. If this goes on too long, it can affect your mind's normal functioning. Chronic boredom correlates with depression and attention deficits.

 

Astronaut candidates go through two years of training before they're even approved to fly. And before they are chosen to be candidates, they have to compete against thousands of other applicants. The 2013 class, for instance, had more than 6,000 applicants and only 8 were chosen. Astronauts are rigorously tested for psychological as well as physical fitness. But no mission in NASA's history has raised the specter of chronic boredom to the degree that a Mars mission does, because none have involved such a long journey through nothingness.

 

What if, millions of miles from home, a chronically bored astronaut forgets a certain safety procedure? What if he gets befuddled while reading an oxygen gauge? More important, Danckert and Kring say, bored people are also prone to taking risks, subconsciously seeking out stimulation when their environment bores them.

 

The cognitive and social psychologist Peter Suedfeld says that people will sometimes do reckless, stupid things when they suffer from chronic boredom. In Antarctica, where winter can cut scientists and crew off from the rest of the world for as long as nine months, the isolation can lead to strange behavior. Suedfeld told me he has heard about Antarctic researchers venturing outside in 40-below weather without proper clothing and without telling anyone else they were going out.

 

The diaries of early polar explorers are full of tales of extreme boredom, depression and desperate attempts at entertainment reminiscent of prisoners' stories from solitary confinement. An important lesson that Antarctica can impart on a Mars expedition is this: even scientists on important missions can get excruciatingly bored.

 

One effective way astronauts combat boredom is by staying busy with work. That's a strategy at HI-SEAS, where the crew member Kate Greene told me that her schedule is packed — every hour planned and accounted for, from the time she wakes up to the time she goes to bed at night. Life on the International Space Station is similar. (In fact, historically, NASA's problem has been overworking people: in 1973, the exhausted crew of Skylab 4 actually staged a relaxation rebellion and took an unscheduled day off.) But Antarctica is different from HI-SEAS or the International Space Station. Communications are limited. There's nobody outside the base directing your day. Spectacular views vanish in a haze of white. It's just you, the people you came in with, no way out and little to break up the monotony.

 

And so some researchers there have learned to actively fend off boredom by creating what you might call a unique office culture. They celebrate a ridiculous number of holidays, both traditional and invented. You need something to look forward to, Suedfeld says, and planning the events helps change the routine. Even Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic crew found ways to put on skits and concerts. On one expedition, Shackleton brought a small printing press. At McMurdo Station, the 1983 winter crew created costumes, learned lines and acted out scenes from the movie "Escape From New York." It's possible that we may, someday, watch recordings of Mars-bound astronauts acting out other John Carpenter films. (It's not so far-fetched. Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, made a tribute to David Bowie's "Space Oddity" that racked up more than 16 million views on YouTube.)

 

It might sound absurd, but many scientists say strategies like this are necessary because, without proper mental stimulus, we risk making a physically and technologically challenging endeavor into a psychologically grueling one. It would be catastrophic if humanity's greatest voyage were brought low by the mind's tendency to wander when left to its own devices.

 

END

 

 

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