Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - July 3, 2013 and JSC Today



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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: July 3, 2013 6:05:25 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - July 3, 2013 and JSC Today

 

Have a safe and Happy 4th of July everyone….hope you can join us next Thursday at Hibachi Grill for our monthly NASA Retirees luncheon.

 

 

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. Monthly Test of the JSC Emergency Warning System

The Emergency Dispatch Center and Office of Emergency Management will conduct the monthly test of the JSC Emergency Warning System (EWS) tomorrow, July 4, at noon.

The EWS test will consist of a verbal "This is a test" message, followed by a short tone and a second verbal "This is a test" message. The warning tone will be the "wavering" tone, which is associated with an "Attack warning" message. Please visit the JSC Emergency Awareness website for EWS tones and definitions. During an actual emergency situation, the particular tone and verbal message will provide you with protective information.

Dennis G. Perrin x34232 http://jea.jsc.nasa.gov

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  1. Gate 2 Limited Re-opening - July 8

The Gate 2 entrance (NASA Parkway and Nassau Bay) was closed earlier this year due to dramatic budget reductions and its classification as a lower priority service. Our belief was that traffic would smooth out on NASA Parkway after a short period of adjustment. Unfortunately, morning traffic has not improved, and we continue to experience ongoing safety issues with congested traffic during a short period in the morning. To help alleviate this congestion, Gate 2 will re-open for morning traffic beginning Monday, July 8, from 6 to 8:45 a.m. Monday through Friday, excluding Flex Fridays and holidays. We will continue to experience the cost savings of not opening for lunchtime traffic and also remain closed every other Friday on Flex Friday. Some of the energy savings from Flex Friday will be used to help alleviate the cost of the limited morning re-opening, and we will conduct future cost-saving challenge events to help us seek better and more cost-efficient ways of staffing our services while maintaining appropriate security measures.

In addition, Gate 2's outbound lanes will re-open for outbound traffic onto NASA Parkway from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding Flex Fridays and holidays. This can be done with minimal cost and should help alleviate congestion near Rocket Park during the evening rush hour. Additional stop signs will be installed near Gate 2 to accommodate these changes, so please drive carefully and slowly in this area until all employees become familiar with the changes.  

Please review the following map for the traffic changes necessary to accomplish this.

Joel Walker x30541

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  1. Summer Roundup Now Online

The summer Roundup is now online, with articles detailing some of our spaceflight legacies at Space Center Houston, such as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft enhanced exhibit that will open early 2015, as well as the current Destination Station exhibit one can see right now. Read about the wonders of the Amine Swingbed and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, two amazing instruments aboard the space station. In addition, learn how the Space Shuttle Program is wrapping up; how wearable technology entwines fabric with function; and about Russian meteorite samples making an impact at JSC. Last, meet Katie Boyles, an aerospace engineer in the Applied Aeroscience and Computational Fluid Dynamics Branch.

If you don't want to wait for JSC Today to tell you when the latest Roundup is posted online, subscribe to our listserv.

JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x33317

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  1. Recent JSC Announcement

Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcement:

JSCA 13-019: Key Personnel Assignment - Kirk Shireman

Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page.

Linda Turnbough x36246 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/DocumentManagement/announcements/default.aspx

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  1. Latest International Space Station Research

Over the weekend, the International Space Station performed a maneuver on momentum management control from the nominal stage attitude to a yaw-biased attitude to support the European Space Agency-sponsored SOLAR payload data collection. The new attitude allows SOLAR to capture a full 27-day sun rotation. SOLAR is an external monitoring observatory that measures solar spectral irradiance.

Read more.

Liz Warren x35548

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   Organizations/Social

  1. INCOSE Local Chapter Program - July 18

The Texas Gulf Coast Chapter (TGCC)  invites you to "A Systems Integration Panel Discussion: Challenges and Opportunities in Advancing the State of the Art."

The program will feature a panel of systems engineering practitioners discussing system integration challenges and opportunities. The panel includes Rob Randall of Baker Hughes and Jeffrey Hahn of Jacobs Engineering. Antony Williams, also of Jacobs Engineering and a TGCC past president, will be a panelist and act as moderator.

The panel will address system integration, one of the most challenging issues facing our community. We often excel at developing individual technologies, but fail when attempting to integrate these on schedule and budget into operating systems.

Join us to hear what these experts have to say about system integration, ask questions and add your own insights to the discussion.

For more details, see our TGCC website. More details will follow soon.

Larry Spratlin 281-461-5218

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  1. Starport Summer Camp - Still Taking Registrations

Summer Camp is off and running with a great start! There are a few spots left in the upcoming sessions, so register your child before it fills up. We have tons of fun activities planned, and weekly themes are listed on our website, as well as information regarding registration and all the necessary forms.

Ages: 6 to 12

Times: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Dates: Now through Aug. 16 in one-week sessions

Fee per session: $140 per child for dependents | $160 per child for non-dependents

NEW for this summer -- ask about our sibling discounts.

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

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  1. Parenting Series: Family Stucture & Limit Setting

It is commonly said that when you have a child, the child does not come with a parenting manual. Each child and family situation is unique. Providing your child and family structure is a critical parenting responsibility. Successful parenting requires a clear understanding of how essential structure is for a child to thrive. Workshop participants will learn why structure is vital in a child's ability to establish trust, security and safety. Additionally, we will identify how parenting styles shape the effectiveness of structure. Please join Anika Isaac, MS, LPC, LMFT, LCDC, CEAP, NCC, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program on July 9 at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium as she presents "Firm, Fair and Loving Parenting," the third topic of a monthly series focused on parenting.

Event Date: Tuesday, July 9, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Occupational Health Branch x36130

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  1. Parent's Night Out at Starport - July 19

Enjoy a night out on the town while your kids enjoy a night with Starport! We will entertain your children with a night of games, crafts, a bounce house, pizza, a movie, dessert and loads of fun.

When: Friday, July 19, from 6 to 10 p.m.

Where: Gilruth Center

Ages: 5 to 12

Cost: $20/first child and $10/each additional sibling if registered by the Wednesday prior to event. If registered after Wednesday, the fee is $25/first child and $15/additional sibling.

Register at the Gilruth Center front desk. Click here for more information.

Event Date: Friday, July 19, 2013   Event Start Time:6:00 PM   Event End Time:10:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

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

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   Jobs and Training

  1. Submit a Solution to Active NASA@work Challenges

Check out our active challenges: Packing Foam Alternatives Challenge (deadline: July 31); and Seeking Solutions on the Use of Thorium Instead of Uranium (deadline: Aug. 9). The challenge owners are actively participating in the discussion, so make sure you check out these challenges and submit your solution today. And, if you are interested in learning more about NASA@work and how you can participate on this internal, collaborative platform, please join 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!

Kathryn Keeton 281-204-1519 http://nasa.innocentive.com

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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: 10:40 am Central (11:40 EDT) – Exp 36's Karen Nyberg with KMSP-TV, Minneapolis

 

Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

NASA Reauthorization Offers Chance To Debate Space Program

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

 

It is time to reauthorize the U.S. civil space program again. Thanks to circumstances that have nothing to do with space exploration, there is a slim chance there may be a fundamental debate on what the nation wants to do in space. With the looming threat of additional across-the-board cuts in NASA spending under the deaf-and-dumb funding sequestration process, lawmakers and relevant White House operatives might see a need to drop the posturing that has painted U.S. civil space into a corner and make some hard choices. Don't hold your breath, but the situation is getting pretty stark. "If the budget remains approximately the same, my judgment is that there are two basic choices—a space station-focused human spaceflight program, or an exploration-focused program," says Tom Young, who joined NASA in 1961, ran the Viking program and Goddard Space Flight Center and retired as executive vice president of Lockheed Martin. "I do not believe the budget is adequate to accomplish both, and a choice needs to be made to have a credible path forward."

 

NASA Astronauts To Fly on Space Taxi Test Flights to Station

 

Irene Klotz - Space News

 

NASA expects to release a draft solicitation for the next phase of its Commercial Crew Program this summer, but one requirement already has been decided: bidders need to make at least one test fight to the international space station and NASA wants one of its astronauts aboard. "They may choose to fly un-crewed orbital test flights. They may choose to fly crewed orbital test flights that don't go to station, but eventually at a minimum they will need to fly at least one test flight to the ISS with a NASA crew member on board," astronaut Mike Good told reporters at a Kennedy Space Center program status briefing June 27.

 

SpaceX presses ahead on crew testing

Pair of abort scenarios will be played out late this year or early 2014

 

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

 

SpaceX set the stage for a critical pad-abort test coming up at Cape Canaveral, passing a NASA review that's part of an effort to certify Dragon spacecraft to fly astronauts, officials said Tuesday. Late this year or early in 2014, a Dragon spacecraft will be mounted on a test stand at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40, where SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rockets. Countdown clocks will tick to zero and abort engines on the Dragon will ignite, boosting the spacecraft to an altitude of about 5,000 feet.

 

SpaceX completes pad abort review and human certification plan

 

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

 

SpaceX has completed two additional milestones of its commercial crew integrated capability (CCiCap) agreement with NASA, having successfully presented a human spaceflight certification plan review and pad abort test review. The two reviews mark the fifth and sixth, respectively, of SpaceX's 14 CCiCap milestones. Together they will earn SpaceX $50 million in development money from NASA. The actual abort test, which will ignite the SuperDraco escape engines, will shoot the Dragon capsule at high speeds off the top of a simulated Falcon 9 launch vehicle to test potential abort scenarios.

 

NASA: Russian rocket crash won't affect astronaut transport to ISS

 

Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times

 

Russia's dramatic launch and crash of an unmanned Proton rocket holding three Glonass navigation satellites is not expected to affect upcoming manned trips to the orbiting International Space Station, NASA officials said. The Proton-M rocket began to waver roughly 10 seconds after liftoff, stalled and fell nose over tail as it crashed back onto the ground in an enormous fireball, as seen in video footage of the launch. The incident is the latest in a series of issues for Russian space launches. But Tuesday's disaster should not affect trips made by manned Russian spacecraft to the International Space Station, according to NASA officials. Russian Soyuz rockets have been used to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, particularly since the decommissioning of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011.

 

Russian rocket breaks up on liftoff, threatening next space station launch

 

Will Englund - Washington Post

 

A Russian rocket carrying three navigational satellites broke apart in a fiery explosion seconds after liftoff Tuesday morning, the ninth failure in the country's troubled space program in the past 30 months and the third this year. The dramatic disintegration of the rocket leaves in doubt a scheduled launch this month of a cargo vessel carrying water and other supplies to the international space station. On Tuesday, Russian officials put a hold on launches from the space center at Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, while they investigate the cause of the explosion and the damage done to the launch site. A spokesman for the space agency Roscosmos said it is too soon to know how long the hold will be in effect.

 

NASA Sees Potential In Composite Cryotank

 

Frank Morring, Jr. – Aviation Week

 

Successful tests of an all-composite cryogenic fuel tank for space launch vehicles hold promise for lower-cost access to space, perhaps before the decade is out. A small composite fuel tank fabricated by Boeing with funding from the "game-changing" program of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate contained 2,091 gal. of liquid hydrogen through a series of shifts in its internal pressure and three temperature cycles ranging from ambient down to minus 423F. The June 25 test at Marshall Space Flight Center with a 2.4-meter-dia. composite fuel tank paves the way for more tests next spring.

 

NASA says new composite fuel tank passed test, could save weight on future rockets

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

NASA has successfully pressure-tested a large cryogenic fuel tank made of composite materials. The space agency calls the test results obtained at Marshall Space Flight Center a "game-changing" step toward a new generation of lighter rockets. Watch a NASA video about the process.

 

Parenting From Earth's Orbit

 

Andrew Kramer - New York Times

 

What is the right stuff for a mother in space? Karen L. Nyberg, an American astronaut whose son, Jack, is 3 years old, is taking the next six months to find out. Along with docking space ships and conducting science experiments, Ms. Nyberg, 43, who blasted off in late May, is using her tour at the International Space Station to grapple publicly with the difficulty of separating from a child because of work. She is cooperating with a Scandinavian television documentary on motherhood, has spoken to magazines on parenting and embraced the question her long business trip inevitably poses: how to choose between a dream job that requires long travel and the pull of children at home.

 

Astronauts to hang around Denver for space conference

 

Denver iJournal

 

The American Astronautical Society, in cooperation with NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), will conduct the second annual International Space Station Research and Development Conference from July 16-18 in Denver. The theme of the conference is "Discoveries, Applications and Opportunities." It is the only annual conference offering details on the full breadth of research and technology development on the space station, including the full suite of prospects for future research over the life of the station.

 

Chris Hadfield to publish An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth in October

 

Mark Medley - National Post

 

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, whose savvy use of social media throughout a six-month stay about the International Space Station earlier this year is credited with re-igniting interest in space exploration — and transformed him into perhaps the most popular astronaut of his generation — will publish his first book later this year, it was announced on Tuesday. An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, which will chronicle the Sarnia-born Hadfield's years of training, career at NASA, and multiple trips to outer space. The book, the first in a two-book deal, will be published by Random House Canada on October 29.

 

Let's Stop Wasting Money Sterilizing Our Spacecraft

 

Jason Koebler - Motherboard

 

Each year, NASA spends lots of money making sure its spacecraft are properly sterilized so that our Mars landers and probes don't bring any bacterial life from Earth to mix it up with whatever may or may not be living there. The same goes for any theoretical spaceships coming back to Earth from Mars, in hopes of saving mankind from alien diseases. It's time to stop doing that. There are lots of reasons sterilization became the norm, but the more we learn about the nature of space and of life in general, the dumber it becomes for us to continue wasting money on clean rooms, disinfectants, and so-called "planetary protection."

 

Insult to injury? Houston gets a contest to name shuttle replica

 

Carol Christian - Houston Chronicle

 

It might be easy to make fun of Space Center Houston's upcoming contest to name the space shuttle replica. After all, the contest, set to start Thursday, will offer all Texans a chance to name the shuttle mock-up based at Johnson Space Center. This is the faux shuttle that Houston got, instead of one of the four real orbiters that went to other cities. According to a space center news release, the replica will "sit atop the massive 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) as part of a new $12 million, six-story attraction currently under development."

 

Is a trip to space on your bucket list?

 

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

 

The Baby Boomer generation was born following World War II, during the years of 1946 and 1964. These men and women, now reaching the age of retirement, control an estimated 80 percent of personal financial assets, account for 80 percent of leisure travel and more than half of all consumer spending. They also came of age during the golden era of human spaceflight, when humans not just reached orbit but also flew to the moon. In short, the conquering of low-Earth orbit occurred on their watch. Now that this generation is reaching the age of retirement, and thinking of how to spend their money, will they want to do that which they watched as youth?

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

NASA Reauthorization Offers Chance To Debate Space Program

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

 

It is time to reauthorize the U.S. civil space program again. Thanks to circumstances that have nothing to do with space exploration, there is a slim chance there may be a fundamental debate on what the nation wants to do in space. With the looming threat of additional across-the-board cuts in NASA spending under the deaf-and-dumb funding sequestration process, lawmakers and relevant White House operatives might see a need to drop the posturing that has painted U.S. civil space into a corner and make some hard choices. Don't hold your breath, but the situation is getting pretty stark.

 

"If the budget remains approximately the same, my judgment is that there are two basic choices—a space station-focused human spaceflight program, or an exploration-focused program," says Tom Young, who joined NASA in 1961, ran the Viking program and Goddard Space Flight Center and retired as executive vice president of Lockheed Martin. "I do not believe the budget is adequate to accomplish both, and a choice needs to be made to have a credible path forward."

 

Young is testifying to the House Science space subcommittee, which has cranked up the NASA-reauthorization process with a draft two-year bill that provided plenty of fodder for discussion on its first public outing June 19. That same day, the lawmaker who will guide the reauthorization process in the Senate offered his summation of the future for U.S. human spaceflight.

 

"If you want to play footsie with the tea party, you might just as well say sayonara to the manned space program," Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) told the Space Transportation Association.

 

Nelson is referring to sequestration, and the tea party budget hawks who jawboned Congress into abdicating its constitutional responsibility to guide public spending. He has heard from NASA on what will happen if more blind cuts come at the end of the fiscal year.

 

"This is really going to be tough for us moving forward," William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told Nelson's Senate Commerce space subcommittee, stressing that sequestration cuts in the out years will mean "we can't deliver the programs that we've committed to you we would deliver."

 

Continued sequestration will probably delay the first flight test of the Orion crew capsule, scheduled next year to gather data on its large heat shield. Also cast into question will be the schedules for the planned 2017 first flight of the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS), the first crewed flight of an Orion in 2021 and the new asteroid-capture mission outlined in the agency's fiscal 2014 budget request.

 

That mission faces rough sledding even without sequestration, since key House Republicans consider it half-baked even as NASA scrambles to sell it as a planetary-protection tool. But the others remain in the draft reauthorization bill floated in the House. And unlike NASA and the White House, which publicly pretend sequestration will not continue, the authors of the House bill at least are considering the possibility.

 

Section 213 of the House draft requires NASA to set "contingencies" for developing commercial crew vehicles if sequestration extends into fiscal 2014, directing NASA to say how it would manage the work with appropriations of $500 million, $600 million, $700 million and $800 million "over three years."

 

Gerstenmaier testified that without about $800 million per year, the commercial partners working on commercial crew—Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX—will not be able to fly by the end of 2017, as planned. To tighten the noose, the House bill would set that as a deadline and require the agency to develop a strategy to ensure that at least one of the companies crosses the finish line before time is up.

 

Nelson worries Congress will end up trying to throw together spending, tax and other important legislation at the last minute after a year of partisan posturing. But there is an alternative—an up-front debate of what the U.S. should be doing in space, and how much the nation is willing to spend on it. If Tom Young is right about the choice facing Congress and the White House, the cramped interior of the International Space Station may be as far as we go for the foreseeable future. That would be a shame.

 

Ed Lu, the astronaut practicing on the station's keyboard in this shot of the Destiny lab module, epitomizes what would be lost if the U.S. government pulls up short of the wide-open heavens. Lu now runs the B612 Foundation, which is raising funds for a space telescope to spot asteroids that might threaten Earth. His choice illustrates the strong pull of deep space and the value of continuing to probe it. Maybe the politicians and the budget wonks will follow Lu's example this year.

 

NASA Astronauts To Fly on Space Taxi Test Flights to Station

 

Irene Klotz - Space News

 

NASA expects to release a draft solicitation for the next phase of its Commercial Crew Program this summer, but one requirement already has been decided: bidders need to make at least one test fight to the international space station and NASA wants one of its astronauts aboard.

 

"They may choose to fly un-crewed orbital test flights. They may choose to fly crewed orbital test flights that don't go to station, but eventually at a minimum they will need to fly at least one test flight to the ISS with a NASA crew member on board," astronaut Mike Good told reporters at a Kennedy Space Center program status briefing June 27.

 

The next round of NASA's ongoing efforts to nurture a commercial orbital human space transportation system will begin next summer, with the goal of having a U.S. alternative to buying from Russia by 2017. A central feature of the newly named Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCiCap) program will be test flights to the space station in 2015 or 2016, said program manager Ed Mango.

 

Three firms currently are sharing about $1.1 billion in NASA funding to develop space taxis to ferry NASA astronauts and potentially other customers to and from low-Earth orbit. Mango expects to pare that list down by at least one -- and possibly two -- depending on how much money NASA gets for the program. The agency has requested $821 million for its Commercial Crew Program for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Congress has roughly halved previous program budget requests.

 

"I'd like to keep three companies because they're very diverse," Mango said, noting the program currently supports two different launch vehicles and two different types of spaceships.

 

The rockets are Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon 9, which would be paired with the company's Dragon capsule, and United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5, which is being modified to handle both Boeing's CST-100 capsule and Sierra Nevada Corp.'s winged Dream Chaser spacecraft.

 

"When you have competition, it really helps drive innovation and design. It also keeps all three partners kind of on their toes to try to meet NASA's requirements," Mango said.

 

"It also helps with price. If you go down to one, we have the one. If all the cars were green sedans, we'd all be buying green sedans and the price would be set," he added.

 

SpaceX presses ahead on crew testing

Pair of abort scenarios will be played out late this year or early 2014

 

Todd Halvorson – Florida Today

 

SpaceX set the stage for a critical pad-abort test coming up at Cape Canaveral, passing a NASA review that's part of an effort to certify Dragon spacecraft to fly astronauts, officials said Tuesday.

 

Late this year or early in 2014, a Dragon spacecraft will be mounted on a test stand at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40, where SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rockets.

 

Countdown clocks will tick to zero and abort engines on the Dragon will ignite, boosting the spacecraft to an altitude of about 5,000 feet.

 

"They're going to pretend it's a bad day and abort off that test stand," said Jon Cowart, a deputy partner manager with NASA's Commercial Crew Program Office at Kennedy Space Center.

 

If all goes well, spacecraft parachutes will deploy, and the Dragon capsule will splash down in the Atlantic Ocean. A capsule recovery operation will follow.

 

The test will be the first of two designed to show that a Dragon and an astronaut crew could survive worst-case launch abort scenarios.

 

The second test, scheduled for next April, will be an in-flight abort test – one that demonstrates a capability to survive a launch failure under worst-case dynamic loads.

 

"We as an industry have a need to make sure that we can get off the vehicle at any point along the ascent," said Ed Mango, NASA's commercial crew program manager.

 

SpaceX "really recognized those two critical points, so they wanted to go test those," he said.

 

NASA and SpaceX recently reviewed plans for the pad-abort test as well as the company's plans to certify its overall Falcon 9-Dragon system for human spaceflight.

 

The human certification review outlined the testing, demonstrations, analyses, inspections and training that will be done as part of that effort.

 

The two reviews were the fifth and sixth of 14 milestones to be completed by SpaceX by mid-2014. NASA payment for passing the pad abort review milestone was $20 million; the payment for the other review was $50 million, NASA documents show.

 

Based in Hawthorne, Ca., SpaceX is one of three companies using NASA seed money to develop commercial spacecraft to fly U.S. and partner-nation astronauts to and from the International Space Station. In the latest round of NASA financing last year, SpaceX was awarded $440 million.

 

Houston-based Boeing Space Exploration was awarded $460 million to continue development of its CST-100 capsule, which will launch on United Launch Alliance Atlas rockets.

 

Sierra Nevada Space Systems of Louisville, Colo., was awarded $212.5 million to continue development of its Dream Chaser winged spaceship, a small shuttle-like vehicle that also would launch on Atlas rockets.

 

The U.S. now is relying on Russia to fly American astronauts on round trips to the station. NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency in April inked a $424 million contract to fly six astronauts in 2016 and the first half of 2017.

 

NASA hopes to reclaim a U.S. capability to launch astronauts by the end of 2017.

 

SpaceX completes pad abort review and human certification plan

 

Zach Rosenberg - FlightInternational.com

 

SpaceX has completed two additional milestones of its commercial crew integrated capability (CCiCap) agreement with NASA, having successfully presented a human spaceflight certification plan review and pad abort test review.

 

The two reviews mark the fifth and sixth, respectively, of SpaceX's 14 CCiCap milestones. Together they will earn SpaceX $50 million in development money from NASA.

 

The actual abort test, which will ignite the SuperDraco escape engines, will shoot the Dragon capsule at high speeds off the top of a simulated Falcon 9 launch vehicle to test potential abort scenarios.

 

The certification review shows in detail how SpaceX intends to certify both the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule to fly astronauts for NASA. Human spaceflight ratings require higher tolerances and greater protections for launch systems than their uncrewed counterparts.

 

The two reviews were meant to be finished in March and May 2013 respectively. SpaceX intends to launch the first crewed Dragon to the International Space Station by 2015, should the programme remain on schedule and maintain sufficient funding.

 

The Dragon is one of three crew vehicles meant to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. The other awardees are Boeing's CST-100 capsule and Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser winged lifting body. All current transportation is done by Roscosmos, which charges the US dearly to fly Soyuz capsules and rockets.

 

CCiCap funding is a hot political issue in the USA, with a political battle brewing over its funding during NASA's coming budget reauthorisation.

 

NASA: Russian rocket crash won't affect astronaut transport to ISS

 

Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times

 

Russia's dramatic launch and crash of an unmanned Proton rocket holding three Glonass navigation satellites is not expected to affect upcoming manned trips to the orbiting International Space Station, NASA officials said.

 

The Proton-M rocket began to waver roughly 10 seconds after liftoff, stalled and fell nose over tail as it crashed back onto the ground in an enormous fireball, as seen in video footage of the launch. The incident is the latest in a series of issues for Russian space launches.

 

But Tuesday's disaster should not affect trips made by manned Russian spacecraft to the International Space Station, according to NASA officials. Russian Soyuz rockets have been used to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, particularly since the decommissioning of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011.

 

"The Proton rocket is a very different design than the Soyuz rocket, and we expect no impact to Soyuz launches," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, said in a statement.

 

The crash released 600 tons of toxic fuel at the Baikonur facility that Russia rents from Kazakhstan, according to a Times report on the incident. Work at the facility is likely to be suspended for two to three months during the cleanup, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

 

"Should they request it, NASA is prepared to assist Roscosmos in failure analysis," Gerstenmaier continued in his statement. "This is a tough loss."

 

Russian rocket breaks up on liftoff, threatening next space station launch

 

Will Englund - Washington Post

 

A Russian rocket carrying three navigational satellites broke apart in a fiery explosion seconds after liftoff Tuesday morning, the ninth failure in the country's troubled space program in the past 30 months and the third this year.

 

The dramatic disintegration of the rocket leaves in doubt a scheduled launch this month of a cargo vessel carrying water and other supplies to the international space station. On Tuesday, Russian officials put a hold on launches from the space center at Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, while they investigate the cause of the explosion and the damage done to the launch site. A spokesman for the space agency Roscosmos said it is too soon to know how long the hold will be in effect.

 

But the RIA Novosti news agency quoted an unnamed official in the space agency as saying there would probably be no launches for two to three months.

 

The next crew change at the space station is scheduled for Sept. 25, also by way of Baikonur. The United States has relied on Russian rockets to ferry astronauts to and from the station.

 

Analysts here say Russia has been careful to maintain standards in its manned spaceflight program. But unmanned launches, they say, have been plagued by obsolete design, sloppy engineering, poor training and management, and conspicuous corruption.

 

The rocket that exploded Tuesday, on live television, was a Proton-M, derived from a 1965 Soviet predecessor. In February, a Zenit naval-launched rocket carrying a telecommunications satellite veered into the ocean. A Defense Ministry satellite also failed this year, the Interfax news agency reported.

 

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev demanded the names of those responsible for Tuesday's crash. A criminal investigation was also opened. In Kazakhstan, an environmental commission was formed over fears of widespread rocket-fuel contamination at the site. A Kazakh official told Interfax that the rocket was carrying 600 tons of toxic substances.

 

When it hit the ground, it left a crater 150 to 200 yards across.

 

Interfax calculated the financial loss to Russia from the failure at about $140 million.

 

NASA Sees Potential In Composite Cryotank

 

Frank Morring, Jr. – Aviation Week

 

Successful tests of an all-composite cryogenic fuel tank for space launch vehicles hold promise for lower-cost access to space, perhaps before the decade is out.

 

A small composite fuel tank fabricated by Boeing with funding from the "game-changing" program of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate contained 2,091 gal. of liquid hydrogen through a series of shifts in its internal pressure and three temperature cycles ranging from ambient down to minus 423F.

 

The June 25 test at Marshall Space Flight Center with a 2.4-meter-dia. composite fuel tank paves the way for more tests next spring. That test will subject a 5.5-meter tank to flight-like mechanical loads as well as temperature and pressure cycles.

 

So far it appears the project is achieving its goal of reducing the cost of building tanks by at least 25% from that of conventional aluminum-lithium tanks, while cutting the weight of tanks made from the lightweight aluminum alloy by at least 30%.

 

"This is a very difficult problem," says Mike Gazarik, associate administrator for space technology. "Composites and cryos don't work well together, and these guys have done incredible work in figuring out how to design and how to fabricate these tanks."

 

During the day-long test the Boeing-built subscale tank went through 20 pressure cycles from zero to 135 psi, without leaking and with strain-gauge measurements meeting expectations.

 

"It performed nominally, and nominally is a very good thing for us," said John Vickers, project manager on the composite cryogenic tank technology demonstration project at Marshall.

 

Next up for testing will be a 5.5-meter-dia. tank already in fabrication at the Boeing Advanced Development Center in Tukwila, Wash.

 

Both test tanks are built up with thin-ply composites that don't require a pressurized autoclave for curing. The out-of-autoclave fabrication helps hold the cost down, says Dan Rivera, Boeing's project manager on the tanks, while the thin-ply approach, already in use on satellite structures and other Boeing products, prevents microcracking that causes leaks.

 

"It's been known theoretically that thin plies could reduce permeability of the hydrogen through the laminate," Vickers says. "But the work we've done recently has been quite comprehensive and has shown that not only can it reduce permeability through the laminate, but it can eliminate it completely."

 

Boeing halved the 5.5-mil plies used previously, adopting plies weighing 70 grams per square meter instead of 145, Rivera says. In the 5.5-meter tank, the design will also tackle the honeycomb substructure that is believed to have contributed to the X-33 tank failure by substituting a "fluted" core structure.

 

"It varies significantly from honeycomb in that the core of that structure is essentially a hollow tube," Rivera says. "So if you do have any escape of gases they're very easily vented or purged through that hollow structure."

 

The test at Marshall came a short distance from the test structure where NASA's X-33 single-stage-to-orbit testbed came to an ignominious — and expensive — end in November 1999 when its composite hydrogen tank delaminated after it was filled. Vickers says the new composite tanks can be retrofitted into existing launch vehicles, passing the weight savings along directly to increase payload capacity.

 

That is attracting attention in the launch-vehicle industry as new players like SpaceX and Blue Origin crank up the competition.

 

"There is a lot of excitement about this technology," Vickers says. "We are being approached by other organizations, both government and industry, to transition this technology to their products."

 

NASA says new composite fuel tank passed test, could save weight on future rockets

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

NASA has successfully pressure-tested a large cryogenic fuel tank made of composite materials. The space agency calls the test results obtained at Marshall Space Flight Center a "game-changing" step toward a new generation of lighter rockets. Watch a NASA video about the process.

 

Cryogenic propellants are gases such as liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that are chilled to subfreezing temperatures and compressed inside separate tanks. When combined and ignited at liftoff, they provide the thrust to lift a rocket out of Earth's gravity to space. Today's technology requires metal tanks strong enough to withstand the pressures involved, but the weight of the metal counts against the engines' lifting power and limits other cargo. NASA has been trying to develop lighter composite tanks but the composites have had a tendency to leak at the joints. The new tank, built by Boeing in Washington, solved those problems, NASA said.

 

"The tank manufacturing process represents a number of industry breakthroughs, including automated fiber placement of oven-cured materials, fiber placement of an all-composite tank wall design that is leak-tight and a tooling approach that eliminates heavy-joints," Dan Rivera, Marshall center Boeing cryogenic tank program manager, said in a statement.

 

In the tests at Marshall's historic west test area, engineers pressurized the tank with liquid hydrogen, cooled it to -423 degrees Fahrenheit and put it through 20 pressure cycles. The tank held.

 

Now, engineers will build a much bigger composite tank with an 18-foot diameter and test it at Marshall next year.

 

"Boeing has experience building large composite structures, and Marshall has the facilities and experience to test large tanks," said John Fikes, cryogenic tank deputy project manager at Marshall. "It has been a team effort, with Boeing working with NASA to monitor the tests and gather data to move forward and build even larger, higher performing tanks."

 

Stephen Gaddis, program manager of the Game Changing Development Program at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., said the breakthrough could "ripple throughout the aerospace industry and change the way we do business."

 

Parenting From Earth's Orbit

 

Andrew Kramer - New York Times

 

What is the right stuff for a mother in space?

 

Karen L. Nyberg, an American astronaut whose son, Jack, is 3 years old, is taking the next six months to find out.

 

Along with docking space ships and conducting science experiments, Ms. Nyberg, 43, who blasted off in late May, is using her tour at the International Space Station to grapple publicly with the difficulty of separating from a child because of work. She is cooperating with a Scandinavian television documentary on motherhood, has spoken to magazines on parenting and embraced the question her long business trip inevitably poses: how to choose between a dream job that requires long travel and the pull of children at home.

 

"It's a challenge because my son is 3. He will do a lot of growing in six months," Ms. Nyberg told journalists before the launching, speaking from behind a glass wall to prevent last-minute infections.

 

"But I will see a lot of video of him," she said. "We will be very well connected. And he will be home with Daddy" — Doug Hurley, who is also an astronaut.

 

"I think it will be fun for him to see me there," she added.

 

A mother in space is not a new phenomenon: The first, Anna Fisher, an American, blasted off in 1984 aboard the space shuttle Discovery, leaving behind a 1-year-old daughter, Kristin. (Space authorities do not keep records on how many astronauts, the vast majority of whom are male, are also parents.)

 

But with the International Space Station occupied by six people nearly permanently, and no fewer than three at any time, many more mothers and fathers are spending long spells away in space.

 

Neither NASA nor the Russian Federal Space Agency, the lead partners in the International Space Station, has a policy on parenting and work at the station, where astronauts and cosmonauts typically spend six months on rotations. The choice to go, or not, is individual.

 

Still, turning down too many trips can eventually harm a career — a point taken in Russia's labor law, which allows mothers of children age 3 or younger and single fathers to opt out of work travel without repercussions. If they do choose to travel, the law specifies that they must provide their employer with a letter waiving their right to stay at home. U.S. labor law has no similar provision.

 

"In Russia, normally, bringing up a child is more a woman's obligation," Nadezhda Ilyushina, a labor lawyer with the Goltsblat law firm in Moscow, explained. "A child needs female attention."

 

The contrast of today's space moms — gregarious public figures, open to media attention — with the experience of the first woman in space is striking.

 

When Valentina Tereshkova, Russia's first female cosmonaut and the first woman to fly in space, took off 50 years ago from this same site, she did not tell her family where she was going. She said she was headed to a competition of parachutists, as preparation for the flight was secret.

 

Only two Russian women have followed since — Svetlana Y. Savitskaya in the 1980s, and Elena V. Kondakova in the 1990s, who spent more than five months away from her daughter for her first spaceflight. Of the remaining 54 women who have been in space, 45 are American.

 

For today's working mothers in space, as for earthbound peers, the key to managing the conflict between work and home sometimes lies in blurring the distinction between the two realms.

 

Nicole Stott, an American who flew to the International Space Station in 2009 when her son, Roman, was 7, said it helped to show him her training and to introduce him to her crewmates.

 

"It's like a kid getting to see the toys their parents get to spend time with," she said. "You want to make sure your family is involved with that adventure you are about to have."

 

Cady Coleman, an American astronaut who spent Mother's Day in space in 2011, took a stuffed tiger with her to photograph beside her experiments to amuse her 10-year-old son.

 

Ms. Nyberg, too, has taken some of her son's toys so that he can see them float in zero gravity during video calls.

 

As female astronauts look for ways to cope with long separations from their families, they say they can count on the experience, and the example, of their male counterparts.

 

Because liftoffs are emotional, and the fear lurks that Mom or Dad will not return, NASA prefers to keep families cloistered from public view as a launching approaches, a spokesman said.

 

The Russian Space Agency takes a different approach. Families are very much welcome at the spartan launch site in Kazakhstan, although there is little room to allow even a few moments of privacy.

 

When Ms. Nyberg blasted off last month aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, her crewmates included two other parents: Luca Parmitano, an Italian fighter pilot and flight engineer, and Fyodor N. Yurchikhin, a Russian space veteran.

 

Mr. Yurchikhin parted with his wife, Larisa, and daughters, Lena, 11, and Dania, 19, before a crowd of officials, pressing his gloved hand against the glass, winking and saying, "Don't worry, my girls, everything will be all right."

 

When he first flew, he said, Lena was 1 year old. "When I got back I asked, 'Where was Daddy?' and she pointed to the television set," he said. Lena squirmed now at the recollection.

 

Ms. Nyberg, who had trained with the two men for years, said the three would "support each other knowing we have families at home whom we miss."

 

Astronauts to hang around Denver for space conference

 

Denver iJournal

 

The American Astronautical Society, in cooperation with NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), will conduct the second annual International Space Station Research and Development Conference from July 16-18 in Denver.

 

The theme of the conference is "Discoveries, Applications and Opportunities." It is the only annual conference offering details on the full breadth of research and technology development on the space station, including the full suite of prospects for future research over the life of the station.

 

Plenary sessions will discuss top station discoveries in microgravity; benefits and applications in Earth science, materials and education; uses of the station for medical advancements and Earth applications; and station technology applications for future space exploration. Parallel technical sessions will include findings from the life, physical, Earth and space sciences; human research; education; and technologies enabling exploration. Scientists will receive updates on significant accomplishments within their areas of expertise.

 

Keynote speakers include International Space Station Program Manager Michael Suffredini and CASIS Chief Operating Officer Duane Ratliff.

 

Special guests include NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier and station program managers from the Canadian, European, Japanese and Russian space agencies. In a recorded presentation, Nobel laureate Samuel Ting will present preliminary results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment currently under way aboard the space station. Astronaut Don Pettit will share his experiences living and working aboard the orbiting outpost. Organizations that manage and fund research on the space station, including NASA and CASIS, will provide overviews of upcoming opportunities.

 

The conference will include a workshop designed to help interested users develop their own ideas for experiments aboard the space station. Potential future station users will learn what they can accomplish, how to get started and sources for funding.

 

Chris Hadfield to publish An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth in October

 

Mark Medley - National Post

 

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, whose savvy use of social media throughout a six-month stay about the International Space Station earlier this year is credited with re-igniting interest in space exploration — and transformed him into perhaps the most popular astronaut of his generation — will publish his first book later this year, it was announced on Tuesday.

 

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, which will chronicle the Sarnia-born Hadfield's years of training, career at NASA, and multiple trips to outer space. The book, the first in a two-book deal, will be published by Random House Canada on October 29.

 

"Not only has there never been an 'astronaut book' like this one, there has never been another book like this one," said Anne Collins, publisher of Knopf Random Canada Publishing Group, in a press release. "Chris has a delightful capacity to bring home the fascinating details of what it takes to be an astronaut and what it's like to live in microgravity, and then to dig deeper into all the surprising training and lessons learned that help him, and the whole astronaut corps, do the impossible as if it's another day at work. On top of that, he might be the best witness we've ever had to the wonders of space, the fragility and beauty of our planet, and the necessity to keep pushing the envelope of space exploration."

 

More from the press release:

 

Chris Hadfield is one of the most seasoned and accomplished astronauts in the world. The top graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School in 1988 and U.S. Navy test pilot of the year in 1991, Hadfield was selected by the Canadian Space Agency to be an astronaut in 1992. He was CAPCOM for 25 Shuttle launches and served as Director of NASA Operations in Star City, Russia from 2001–2003, Chief of Robotics at the Johnson Space Center in Houston from 2003–2006, and Chief of International Space Station Operations from 2006–2008.

 

Most recently, Hadfield stayed on board the International Space Station from December 21, 2012 until May 13, 2013, serving as the station's commander for the final two months of his stay, making him the first Canadian to occupy the position. While in orbit, Hadfield was a constant presence on Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media — his photographs of the world below were unavoidable — and, before returning to Earth, produced what is considered to be the first music video shot in space; the clip for his version of David Bowie's Space Oddity has been viewed over 16 million times.

 

The coming months will feature a number of books from prominent Canadians. In addition to Hadfield, there are new books forthcoming from former Liberal Party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff, hockey legend Bobby Orr, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose book about hockey will publish in November.

 

Let's Stop Wasting Money Sterilizing Our Spacecraft

 

Jason Koebler - Motherboard

 

Each year, NASA spends lots of money making sure its spacecraft are properly sterilized so that our Mars landers and probes don't bring any bacterial life from Earth to mix it up with whatever may or may not be living there. The same goes for any theoretical spaceships coming back to Earth from Mars, in hopes of saving mankind from alien diseases.

 

It's time to stop doing that.

 

There are lots of reasons sterilization became the norm, but the more we learn about the nature of space and of life in general, the dumber it becomes for us to continue wasting money on clean rooms, disinfectants, and so-called "planetary protection." Two scientists said as much, in kinder terms, in a paper called "The Overprotection of Mars," published Thursday in Nature. Others say that sterilization is a "farce" that's been impeding Mars science for nearly four decades.

 

It's unclear how much money NASA spends on its clean rooms, developing microbial-resistant materials, and ultimately launching sterile spacecraft, but the agency has an "Office of Planetary Protection" whose mission is to "assist and promote the responsible exploration of the solar system by minimizing the biological contamination of explored environments" and to "preserve our ability to study other worlds as they exist in their natural states."

 

The official budget lumps "planetary protection" in with its Mars Program Management line item, which also includes "advanced mission studies and program architecture, program science, and telecommunications coordination and integration." In 2012, NASA spent $23.4 million on Mars Program Management, and $341.4 million on its overall Mars program, with much of that coming on the Curiosity Rover and the Mars Science Lab.

 

The money dedicated to planetary protection is wasted, argue a Cornell astronomer and a Washington State University environmentalist in the Nature paper. That's because either all microbes are killed by the trip to Mars (or soon after landing on the surface), making sterilization unnecessary, or Mars is already so riddled with Earth's microbes that it doesn't matter if we send a little more on future rovers or probes.

 

From a logical standpoint, it makes sense. Each year, roughly 500 kilograms of Martian soil makes its way to Earth, launched from its atmosphere by asteroid impacts. We can assume, then, that similar amounts of Earth's crust land on Mars each year. Here's what the paper has to say about it:

 

"If life on Mars originated independently and has not yet died out, life indigenous to Mars and life imported from Earth by interplanetary transport are already coexisting and have coexisted for eons. Possible microorganisms onboard our spacecraft would not interact with the indigenous Mars life in a different way than previous Earth life transported to Mars. Any competition between Mars life and Earth life would have played out long before the arrival of human spacecraft. Future missions would simply find the survivors of this natural selection process, and these survivors would be expected to be better adapted to martian conditions than new arrivals from Earth."

 

That's what scientist Robert Zubrin, head of the Mars Society, has been screaming for years. In his book The Case for Mars, he has a whole chapter dedicated to picking apart NASA's argument that we must preserve the ecological integrity of Mars.

 

But NASA is still abiding by protocols developed in the 1960s, when the United Nations' Treaty on the Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies stated that all countries "shall pursue studies of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination."

 

Back then, sterilization made sense, says Alberto Fairen, one of the authors of the Nature paper.

 

"I can't put myself in the minds of the scientists in the 70s, but I absolutely understand the concerns and the reasons why the [sterilization] programs were implemented," he said. "What we say now is that maybe it's a good time to to reevaluate the situation."

 

Here, according to NASA, is what all of its rovers undergo prior to launch:

 

Each Mars Exploration Rover complied with requirements to carry a total of no more than 300,000 bacterial spores on any surface from which the spores could get into the martian environment. Technicians assembling the spacecraft and preparing them for launch frequently cleaned surfaces by wiping them with an alcohol solution. The planetary protection team carefully sampled the surfaces and performed microbiology tests to demonstrate that each spacecraft meets requirements for biological cleanliness. Components tolerant of high temperature, such as the parachute and thermal blanketing, were heated to 110 degrees Celsius (230 Fahrenheit) or hotter to kill microbes.

 

Despite all that, we're not even terribly good at keeping spacecraft sterile. Roughly 250,000 bacterial spores are believed to have survived the transit aboard Curiosity, and tests before launch showed that the Martian atmosphere does most of the work for us. In a paper published in 2011, researchers contaminated a Curiosity stand-in with more than 100,000 times the amount of expected bacteria that could survive. More than 97 percent of that was killed within hours of being exposed to UV light designed to mimic Mars' atmosphere.

 

Two major events have made sterilization programs almost entirely unnecessary, Zubrin says.

 

In 1976, Viking determined the makeup of the Martian atmosphere, and a meteorite that landed on Earth from Mars in 2001 had gas bubbles in it that confirmed "we were being bombarded with Martian rocks, and we were able to tell many of these rocks were not sterilized" by the trip through space.

 

"This makes the entire protocol a very costly farce, and it's one of the primary impediments for a Mars sample return," Zubrin said. "And there's unquestionably been terrestrial contamination on Mars. We go to heroic lengths to sterilize our own spacecraft, when Mother Nature has already sent Mars millions of her own contaminants."

 

That makes it possible, even likely, that any life on Mars initially came from Earth. Does that make those hypothetical microbes "alien?" Probably, Fairen says.

 

"If Earth life was transferred to Mars say 3 billion years ago, when Mars was wetter and more Earth-like, and life actually endured, and it has evolved to adapt to the particular changing environmental conditions on Mars, then i think the descendants of those early voyagers are by all means Martians," he said.

 

Last year, Catharine Conley, head of NASA's Planetary Protection Office, defended her position, saying that invasive species often decimate environments on Earth--and that the same goes for bringing back samples from Mars.

 

"If you bring [Martian] soil back to Earth, we have to contain it at the same level of security we use to contain things like the Ebola virus," she said. "We also have to make sure Earth life doesn't get into the samples."

 

That's nonsense for several reasons, Zubrin says, most notably because there are no macro-life forms on Mars, which would be necessary for microbes to evolve to be dangerous to humans.

 

"The life cycle of a Martian pathogen is impossible to hypothesize," he said. "Earth pathogens have particularly adapted for millions of years ever since we've evolved. Only those can infect us."

 

And, like I mentioned earlier, soil from Earth and soil from Mars have been getting blasted back and forth between each other for billions of years. When a rock from Mars enters our atmosphere, it doesn't stop for a Lysol bath on the way. The most damage a Mars rock has ever done, according to at least some tall tales, is kill a dog in Egypt 100 years ago when it hit the poor guy in the head.

 

The idea that any sample returned from Mars would first have to be sterilized, Zubrin says, is like "finding a viable dinosaur egg and then sterilizing it. This hysteria is an insult to the science."

 

The other major NASA argument for sterilization, and one that Fairen sort of agrees with, is to prevent "false positives" like the one Viking found in the 70s--that is, finding life on Mars that came on the spaceship from Earth. Fairen says that sterilization should be used "only in life-searching missions, and only to avoid false positives."

 

That, on its face, makes more sense, but in the case of any sort of sample return mission, it'd likely be wholly unnecessary. Analyzing soil samples from millions of miles away is tough, but analyzing them on Earth, where DNA can be sequenced and we can use high-powered microscopes, separating out that which is "Martian" from Earth microbes would be cake.

 

Zubrin points to the fact that researchers were able to trace microbes used in the 2001 anthrax terrorist attacks to a specific lab in Iowa to point out how easy it'd be to separate alien from familiar microbes.

 

"They were able to trace that anthrax to a certain strain developed in Ames, Iowa, and furthermore, the degree of genetic drift apparent in that sample allowed them to tell it had been removed from the lab in 1987," Zubrin said. "That's how specific they could be. Microorganisms are not generic, they're specific."

 

All this talk of sterilization, by the way, goes out the window the second you send a human to Mars.

 

"You can't sterilize humans," Zubrin said. "As soon as a human goes outside on Mars, there will be bacteria that escape."

 

Insult to injury? Houston gets a contest to name shuttle replica

 

Carol Christian - Houston Chronicle

 

It might be easy to make fun of Space Center Houston's upcoming contest to name the space shuttle replica.

 

After all, the contest, set to start Thursday, will offer all Texans a chance to name the shuttle mock-up based at Johnson Space Center. This is the faux shuttle that Houston got, instead of one of the four real orbiters that went to other cities.

 

According to a space center news release, the replica will "sit atop the massive 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) as part of a new $12 million, six-story attraction currently under development."

 

Contestants are asked to submit an original name that symbolizes the spirit of Texas and its "unique characteristics of independence, optimism and can-do attitude."

 

Full contest details will be available on Thursday at www.nametheshuttle.com. The contest is scheduled to close at noon Sept. 2, with the winner to be announced in mid-September.

 

In its media advisory, Space Center Houston said that its exhibit, slated to open in 2015, will be the only place in the world where visitors can climb aboard the 747 space carrier as well as the shuttle replica.

 

This will be a big attraction, predicted Robert Pearlman, editor of the website www.collectspace.com.

 

"It's the top question that they get at other museums - 'Can I go inside?' and you can't," he said. "Space Center Houston has always been a hands-on place, sharing and educating about space." Pearlman said he has visited all four cities where the original orbiters are housed.

 

It will be interesting, Pearlman said, to see what names are suggested during the contest.

 

"I think it's a good opportunity to engage the entire state in embracing this mock-up and the eventual display it's going to be part of as its tribute to the space shuttle program," he said.

 

A Strategy for NASA?

 

G. Ryan Faith.- Huffington Post (Opinion)

 

(Faith is a research analyst with the Space Foundation)

 

Last week, the House Subcommittee on Space released a draft of their proposed NASA Authorization bill, which lays out in law NASA's goals and objectives over the next three years. The House bill opposes the White House's proposal for NASA to capture an asteroid and put it in orbit around the Moon. This is the third major tectonic shift in NASA's top-level objectives in the 10 years following the 2003 disintegration of the Shuttle Columbia as it turned to Earth.

 

The Columbia disaster sparked a debate about NASA's purpose and strategy. Yet, too frequently, the word "strategy" is thrown around with zestful abandon to mean tactics, plans, vision, mission, goal, objective, budgeting, methodology, or anything that involves deciding how to allocate resources going forward. The increasingly arbitrary use of the term "strategy" vastly complicates the task of evaluating the agency's options.

 

On one front, decision-makers argue about the destination to which astronauts should be sent to spark a space race-like sense of purpose. Meanwhile, others petition Washington and NASA alike, asking that the space agency direct its efforts to address a narrow scientific question or parochial interest. This kind of advice cannot generate a clear sense of purpose for the space agency, let alone an understandable and easily articulated strategy.

 

This torrent of advice has hobbled NASA's strategic planning. Like so many of the plans mentioned in a February 5 post in the Harvard Business Review blog by Roger Martin, NASA's strategic plans essentially amount to a budget with "lots of explanatory words attached." By contrast, a true strategy informs vision and mission, providing a algorithm for planning specific future activities and linking those plans together into a coherent, purposeful whole.

 

Even when strategic thinking is not discussed openly, an organization's strategy can sometimes be inferred by closely examining vision and mission statements that the strategic thinking has produced. In NASA's case, the clues provided by the agency's vision and mission statements imply an underlying strategy that NASA cannot openly announce. Rather, it is the emergent, implicit strategy that has arisen from decades of NASA's institutional experience.

 

NASA's current vision is "To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind."

 

NASA's current mission is to "Drive advances in science, technology, and exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality, and stewardship of Earth."

 

A December 2012 report by the National Academies NASA's Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus notes:

 

"Both the NASA vision and mission statements are generic statements that could apply to almost any government research and development (R&D) agency, omitting even the words 'aeronautics' or 'space.' NASA's current vision and mission statements do not explain NASA's unique role in the government and why it is worthy of taxpayer investment. The non-specificity of the vision and mission statements is a contributing factor to the confusion about NASA's overall strategic direction."

 

The report is correct in finding that NASA's vision and mission statements yield little obvious guidance about the agency's direction. However, the nebulous nature of these statements reveals NASA's emergent strategy. NASA does have a strategy, but political considerations discourage the agency from coming right out and announcing it. NASA's true strategy can be described as: Find a way to continue carrying out activities in the current NASA portfolio while operating in a climate of austerity and uncertainty, with erratic and contradictory guidance from its leadership.

 

There now seems to be a general consensus supporting robotic (and probably human) exploration beyond LEO. Nonetheless, at the highest level, NASA's activities still appear to be constrained by a number of factors:

 

1.     NASA's budget is and will continue to be limited for the foreseeable future

 

2.     Continuity of guidance from Congress and the White House is unlikely. Nonetheless, NASA can probably expect a measure of long-term continuity for select major programs with congressional support.

 

3.     NASA's base of public support, while broad, is shallow. Space activities (and especially budgets) are very poorly understood by the public. Therefore, NASA has to have a little something for everyone at all times to maintain the current level of public engagement.

 

4.     Domestic economic factors (i.e. jobs) and matters of civic pride are going to tie NASA to a handful of congressional supporters for the foreseeable future, none of whom NASA can afford to alienate.

 

Navigating these constraints is made more difficult because of the nature of the guidance that NASA so often receives. In particular, NASA is often called upon to send probes or people to certain destinations or generate specific benefits, any of which may be changed at a moment's notice in response to political shifts.

 

 

At first glance, specifying destinations to reach or benefits to seek would seem to be obvious ways to inform NASA's strategic thinking, but both approaches are problematic. First, destinations for their own sake are poor goals. An agency whose purpose it is to send people to a given address for the first time soon finds itself at a loss once the destination is reached. Establishing access to some location becomes the entirety of the mission and lacks further meaning or purpose. The appropriate question is not where to send people and robots, but what should be done with them once they arrive. If the only objective is landing someone someplace to plant a flag, one destination is as good as the next.

 

The second approach -- describing NASA's strategic direction in terms of a shopping list of benefits to be obtained -- has also proven ineffective. Space activities have been and will continue to be tremendously costly and hardware intensive. It is difficult to justify a robust exploration program based on a specific benefit alone. The Apollo program prompted revolutionary advances in microelectronics, but it is fair to ask if sending a person to the Moon was a necessary part of a program to improve electronics.

 

Confusing the many beneficial outcomes of a space program with a strategic direction is a tempting but serious mistake, even though such benefits should inevitably arise from a robust program of exploration. An agency geared toward achieving as many benefits as possible cannot devote sufficient resources toward slowly and methodically building up its capabilities and infrastructure for the future.

 

The people giving NASA direction have essentially instructed NASA to focus on creating strategy that can overcome austerity and sudden changes in direction and priority without having to abandon long-term and highly complex programs. Yet, NASA cannot simply be turned loose with a pile of taxpayer funds - no agency can operate without accountability to the public and oversight by elected officials.

 

The way to solve this is to change the kind of guidance NASA is given. Rather than focusing on destinations or desirable side effects of space activity, NASA should be tasked with an open-ended and continually renewable mission that does not hinge on a specific location or outcome. One approach is described in a December 2012 report by the Space Foundation, "Pioneering: Sustaining U.S. Leadership in Space" which suggests that NASA focus on "pioneering." As defined by the report, "pioneering" consists of "being among those who first enter a region, in order to open it for use and development by others" or "being one of a group that builds and prepares infrastructure precursors, in advance of others."

 

The Space Foundation report described this concept (and the associated doctrine) in greater detail. At its heart the idea is that NASA is the agency that does the hard and difficult early work necessary before others in government or the private sector can easily and effectively make use of space. The questions the agency must then address when developing a strategy become more reasonable: Can anyone else make use of a given destination? What needs to be done before others can make use of a specific location? Will further exploration reveal additional opportunities and risks at some destination? These questions are ones that the space agency is well equipped to answer and, in turn, present to political leadership as an array of options.

 

In the current paradigm, the primary driver animating NASA's top-level decision-making process is pure uncertainty: NASA is compelled to defend and carry out very complex technological missions without adequate budgetary and leadership stability. NASA is one of the few government agencies that generates exciting and inspirational good news as a matter of course. The nation would be much better served by encouraging NASA to continue doing so, rather than debating and micromanaging details about how NASA is supposed to meet its goals.

 

Is a trip to space on your bucket list?

 

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy

 

The Baby Boomer generation was born following World War II, during the years of 1946 and 1964.

 

These men and women, now reaching the age of retirement, control an estimated 80 percent of personal financial assets, account for 80 percent of leisure travel and more than half of all consumer spending.

 

They also came of age during the golden era of human spaceflight, when humans not just reached orbit but also flew to the moon. In short, the conquering of low-Earth orbit occurred on their watch.

 

Now that this generation is reaching the age of retirement, and thinking of how to spend their money, will they want to do that which they watched as youth?

 

Most of you are familiar with Virgin Galactic's plan to begin flying paying customers ($200,000 a pop) into suborbital space for a few minutes. But they're not the only company. A Texas-based business, XCOR, has announced plans to send customers into space for four minutes, beginning in 2015, at a cost of $95,000. These are not long trips, but they will include the thrill of rising above Earth's atmosphere, being able to experience weightlessness, and seeing our fair planet from above.

 

Participants will be able to say they have traveled in space.

 

So what we'll have by the middle of this decade is a situation where older Americans can spend, perhaps, a tenth of their nest egg on achieving a lifetime dream. Will they go for it? Would you?

 

You only live once, after all.

 

END

 

 

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