Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - January 3, 2014

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: January 3, 2014 9:42:53 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - January 3, 2014

Happy Friday everyone,,,,its Flex Friday again.    Hope you can join us next Thursday at Hibachi Grill for our first retirees luncheon of 2014.   Have a safe and enjoyable weekend.

 

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: The Dec. issue of Space Safety Magazine features an article, "ISS: A Nobel Prize-Worthy Partnership." Check it out on page 6: http://go.nasa.gov/1atICGE.

 

Human Spaceflight News

Friday – Jan. 3, 2014

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Congress, NASA

New year, old issues

Jeff Foust – Space Politics

The beginning of a new year is a time for change: at the very least, putting up those 2014 calendars and tossing the 2013 versions into the recycle bin. However, as 2014 begins, it will look at least initially a lot like 2013 for space policy, as Congress deals with some unfinished business regarding spending and other legislation.

Lori Garver says NASA should not build the SLS: "Where is it going to go?"

Eric Berger    Houston Chronicle

Lori Garver, NASA's powerful former deputy administrator who left the space agency in September, was once an advocate for the Space Launch System, the big rocket NASA is building. But after leaving NASA Garver appears to either have changed her mind or, more likely, she feels free to say what really is on her mind.

SpaceX delays Falcon 9 launch to next week

STEPHEN CLARK, Spaceflight Now

SpaceX has delayed the launch of a Thai communications satellite from Friday until at least Monday, according to the U.S. Air Force.

Spaceport license renewed

Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal

LAS CRUCES – The Federal Aviation Administration has renewed Spaceport America's license to operate as a launch site, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority said Thursday.

Space geckos? Sticky-footed robots could climb future spacecraft

Amina Khan -- Los Angeles Times

Gecko's sticky feet seem to let the little climbing lizards crawl wherever they want. Now researchers have used the gecko feet's trade secrets to let robots use that climbing power in space.

Dark Matter Search Considers Exotic Possibilities

As observations fail to pin down the so-far undetectable stuff, explanations once considered fringe are now getting another look

Clara Moskowitz – Scientific American

Ever since astronomers realized that most of the matter in the universe is invisible, they have tried to sort out what that obscure stuff might be. But three decades of increasingly sophisticated searches have found no sign of dark matter, causing scientists to question some of their basic ideas about this elusive substance.

Second tiny asteroid spotted before it hit Earth

Jeff Hecht – New Scientist

The first new asteroid identified this year didn't last long. Asteroid 2014 AA was spotted by a telescope early New Year's morning, and fizzled up over the Atlantic Ocean a day later.

Iran plans satellite launch in February: Official

An Iranian aerospace official says the country plans to launch an indigenously designed and manufactured satellite into orbit in early February next year.

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Congress, NASA

New year, old issues

Jeff Foust – Space Politics

The beginning of a new year is a time for change: at the very least, putting up those 2014 calendars and tossing the 2013 versions into the recycle bin. However, as 2014 begins, it will look at least initially a lot like 2013 for space policy, as Congress deals with some unfinished business regarding spending and other legislation.

The biggest near-term priority for Congress when it returns next week will be fiscal year 2014 appropriations. While the budget deal reached last month set overall spending levels for 2014 and 2015, avoiding sequestration in the process, it's still up to House and Senate appropriators to come up with a bill or bills to appropriate that money before the continuing resolution (CR) funding the government expires on January 15. POLITICO reported earlier this week that appropriators have been working on a single omnibus appropriations bill that is expected to be finalized next week.

Details about the bill aren't included in that report, although it does state that the section covering commerce, justice, and science—including NASA and NOAA—is among those "largely finalized." For NASA, that likely means falling somewhere between the $16.6 billion House appropriators approved and the $18 billion from their Senate counterparts.

Although many space advocates argue that policy should drive the budget, it's likely the opposite will remain true. The House appropriations bill, for example, blocks any spending on NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission, while the Senate is silent on it. The two bills also have significant differences in the amount available for Commercial Crew, which could drive decisions later in 2014 on how many companies NASA can support in the next phase of the program when it awards contract(s) this summer.

Besides appropriations, there is space-related legislation awaiting action. The year 2013 ended without enactment of a bill to extend the commercial launch indemnification regime. In mid-December the Senate passed an amended version of a bill the House passed in early December, changing the House's one-year extension to a three-year one. However, the House had adjourned for the year by the time the Senate took action. Launch licenses currently in place, or applications submitted by December 31, still have indemnification protection, but any new applications would not be included in the regime—at least until the House and Senate get around resolving their differences.

Also awaiting the House is legislation approved by the House Science Committee last month to stop NASA from withholding funds for termination liability for several key agency programs. The bill would also effectively make it impossible to cancel those programs—the Space Launch System, Orion spacecraft, International Space Station, and James Webb Space Telescope—unless Congress passes legislation to do so. The bill's future, though, is uncertain, even if it passes the House: it's unlikely the administration would support a bill that would, in essence, take control over the future of several key programs out of its hands.

And, if members are feeling really ambitious, they might take up the NASA authorization bills they started working on in 2013. The Senate Commerce Committee passed its version in late July on a party-line vote, after the House Science Committee approved its quite different version earlier in the month, also along party lines. Neither bill has made progress since then, and with the sharp differences in opinion both in authorized spending levels and policy, the bills might remain in legislative limbo indefinitely.

Lori Garver says NASA should not build the SLS: "Where is it going to go?"

Eric Berger    Houston Chronicle

Lori Garver, NASA's powerful former deputy administrator who left the space agency in September, was once an advocate for the Space Launch System, the big rocket NASA is building.

In 2011, for example, she said of NASA's human exploration program: "We plan a very robust future for not only human spaceflight, but for NASA generally."

But after leaving NASA Garver appears to either have changed her mind or, more likely, she feels free to say what really is on her mind.

On the Diana Rehm Show, Garver was asked what programs NASA should cancel in order to allow it to achieve more meaningful things in space. Below I've transcribed the relevant section of the interview:

Rehm: What programs do you think should be cut?

Garver: To me I think those particular programs that are built on previous technology.

Rehm: Like what?

Garver: Right now we are building a huge rocket called the Space Launch System that is really …

Rehm: The SLS?

Garver: The SLS. It was something that Congress dictated to NASA, it had to do with the Orion spacecraft. It is a holdover from Constellation, which the Obama administration tried to cancel, and it's $3 billion a year of NASA's $17 billion. Is that how you would be investing in the space program? Where is it going to go? When will it even fly?

Later Garver also says NASA should scrap its Mars 2020 rover in favor of a robotic exploration of Europa, a moon of Jupiter that may harbor life in its water oceans.

The significance of Garver's comments, in regard to the SLS, is that they are consistent with those of most observers who do not work directly for NASA, and thus are not beholden to the program of record as mandated by Congress and the White House.

Garver asks the right questions. Where is it going to go? After building such an expensive rocket — which critics have labeled a "rocket to nowhere" — there's just no money to actually build the stuff, like payloads and habitation modules, that would allow NASA to actually use the SLS. When will SLS fly? NASA says it may fly in 2021.

Further reading: A recent interview I did with Chris Kraft, a retired flight director from NASA, offers a scathing analysis of SLS. Another interview, with NASA's Dan Dumbacher, offers a defense.

SpaceX delays Falcon 9 launch to next week

STEPHEN CLARK, Spaceflight Now

SpaceX has delayed the launch of a Thai communications satellite from Friday until at least Monday, according to the U.S. Air Force.

"We're not aware of anything that would cause a mission failure, but in order to ensure the highest possible level of mission assurance we decided to conduct additional inspections of the launch vehicle," said Emily Shanklin, a SpaceX spokesperson.

Liftoff is now set for no earlier than Monday, according to a brief statement emailed by a 45th Space Wing spokesperson. The Air Force's 45th Space Wing operates communications and safety systems for all launches out of Cape Canaveral.

Backup launch opportunities are available from Jan. 8 to Jan. 12. A launch would not be possible Tuesday because the SpaceX mission shares a tracking station in Bermuda with the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket set for launch Tuesday from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on a resupply flight to the International Space Station.

The Falcon 9 rocket is slated to loft the Thaicom 6 communications satellite into a high-altitude egg-shaped supersynchronous transfer orbit.

The satellite, built by Orbital Sciences Corp., will provide broadcasters in the Asia-Pacific with improved television quality and additional high-definition channels, according to Thaicom. It carries 18 C-band and eight Ku-band transponders connected to three antennas.

SpaceX worked over the holidays to ready the Falcon 9 launch pad after the company's successful Dec. 3 launch of the SES 8 television broadcasting satellite, marking the Falcon 9's first mission to geostationary transfer orbit, the desired position for most communications spacecraft.

The launch of Thaicom 6 will duplicate the Dec. 3 flight, sending the 3.6-ton satellite to an orbit stretching more than 50,000 miles from Earth at its highest point. The mission will take about a half-hour from launch to spacecraft separation.

It will mark the eighth flight of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010, and the third launch of the launcher's newest version since its debut in September in a flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Hardware for Friday's launch, including the Falcon 9 rocket and Thaicom 6 satellite, was delivered to Cape Canaveral in late November and put in storage before the launch of SES 8 cleared room for technicians to begin fueling the spacecraft and assembling the two-stage booster.

On Dec. 28, ground crews put the rocket through a full countdown rehearsal. The launch team loaded propellants into the Falcon 9 rocket and ended the countdown with a brief ignition of the first stage's nine main engines. The rocket remained on the launch pad in the grip of hold-down clamps.

Technicians this week were expected to connect ordnance charges responsible for staging and fairing separation during the Falcon 9's ascent into orbit Friday evening. This week's milestones were also supposed to include the encapsulation of Thaicom 6 inside the Falcon 9's payload fairing and attachment of the spacecraft and fairing to the Falcon 9 rocket.

Spaceport license renewed

Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal

LAS CRUCES – The Federal Aviation Administration has renewed Spaceport America's license to operate as a launch site, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority said Thursday.

The FAA requires a launch site operator license for spaceports hosting licensed vertical and horizontal launches. Seven other U.S. spaceports hold active launch site licenses, including two in California, two in Florida and one each in Alaska, Virginia and Oklahoma.

Spaceport Executive Director Christine Anderson said in a statement that the spaceport has "worked hard to grow our launch customer base" since receiving its first license in 2008.

The spaceport is awaiting the arrival of Virgin Galactic and SpaceX launches this year.

Virgin Galactic is still testing its spacecraft at its Mojave, Calif., location, while SpaceX is preparing to begin high-altitude testing of its reusable rocket at the spaceport.

Spaceport America's current five-year license expires on Dec. 14, 2018.

Space geckos? Sticky-footed robots could climb future spacecraft

Amina Khan -- Los Angeles Times

Gecko's sticky feet seem to let the little climbing lizards crawl wherever they want. Now researchers have used the gecko feet's trade secrets to let robots use that climbing power in space.

The idea, which received backing from the European Space Agency, mimics the pads of the gecko's feet to allow small robots to climb up the hulls of larger spacecraft to maintain and even repair them. Such repair bots could extend the lives of expensive spacecraft, save them from sudden and untimely deaths, and perhaps one day minimize risky spacewalks for future astronauts.

Gecko feet use a "dry adhesive" technique to cling to walls. This doesn't rely on sticky glues, but on bunches of exceedingly tiny hairs on their feet with ends just 100 to 200 nanometers across – about the size of individual bacteria. These structures are so small that they take advantage of the van der Waals force, where atoms in close contact – in this case, the gecko's foot and the surface it's stepping on – are attracted to each other.

The van der Waals force only works on very small scales, when atoms are in very, very close contact – and most smooth surfaces are actually quite rough on the micro and nanoscales, said Carlo Menon, an engineer and professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada who is working on the climbing robots. The gecko's tiny foot hairs fill those gaps in, maximizing the contact area between foot and wall, and allowing the van der Waals force to do its work.

This kind of sticking power would be useful in space, Menon said.

"It's a fundamental problem," Menon said. "In space there are not many options if you want to adhere to a surface and detach multiple times in a vacuum."

The researchers decided to use the technique because it's a far better option than using traditional adhesives in space. Wet glues – the kind that make scotch tape sticky – lose their stick as they're repeatedly lifted and then reapplied, and could also give off fumes that damage sensitive electronic equipment.

Using magnets to stick to a metal spacecraft wouldn't work either, as they don't stick to composites and the magnetic fields they generate could affect scientific instrument readings. Velcro only works if the other surface also has Velcro, and broken-off hook fragments could also contaminate the electronic equipment.

A gecko-based solution would have no such drawbacks, so the scientists used a polymer to create hairlike structures on the adhesive. They're not as small as those keratin-based structures on the gecko feet – about 100 times larger – but made of softer stuff that could slightly mold onto a rough surface and improve the surface contact. They tested the adhesive in a vacuum and it held up well, Menon said.

Using the adhesive, he and his team have created two different robot designs – a rolling, tank-like system and a six-legged walker named Abigaille. Both come with their own set of advantages, he said.

"Each of them has pros and cons," Menon said. "If you want to have more dexterity, you go with the leg. If you are more concerned about power consumption, probably the tank is a better choice."

Dark Matter Search Considers Exotic Possibilities

As observations fail to pin down the so-far undetectable stuff, explanations once considered fringe are now getting another look

Clara Moskowitz – Scientific American

Ever since astronomers realized that most of the matter in the universe is invisible, they have tried to sort out what that obscure stuff might be. But three decades of increasingly sophisticated searches have found no sign of dark matter, causing scientists to question some of their basic ideas about this elusive substance.

In October the most sensitive experiment looking for proof of the leading candidate for dark matter—theorized particles called WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles)—reported null results, disappointing scientists once again. Now some researchers are reexamining dark matter candidates once written off as unlikely, and considering less satisfactory ideas such as the possibility that dark matter will turn out to be made of something more or less undetectable.

Physicists still have no proof that dark matter exists at all, but the evidence for it is substantial. The movements of stars and galaxies can apparently be explained only if there is much more gravitating matter in the universe than the visible stuff of atoms and molecules. Attempts to correct the discrepancy by rewriting the rules of gravity in Einstein's general theory of relativity have repeatedly failed.

WIMPs have long been the favored explanation for dark matter, in part because they could fit in with other popular ideas in physics such as supersymmetry—the suggestion that all known particles in the universe have as-yet-undiscovered partner particles. The lightest of these supersymmetric particles, it is thought, could be a WIMP, and could constitute the universe's dark matter. Attempts to detect WIMPs during the rare occasions that they do bump into regular matter particles have been ongoing since the 1980s, but none have been successful. Most recently the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) project in South Dakota—by far the most sensitive search yet undertaken—reported that three months of data showed no signs whatsoever of dark matter.

If WIMPs do exist, they are running out of places to hide. "We are tightening the noose; we're closing in," says LUX co-spokesman Richard Gaitskell of Brown University, who estimates that more than half of the possible WIMP models have already been disproved. The next five or 10 years should largely wrap up the WIMP search, either by discovering the particles at last or by essentially ruling out their existence. But if dark matter is not made of WIMPs, what is it?

Theoretical particles called axions are another oft-mentioned candidate. Much less massive than WIMPs and likely to interact even less frequently with regular matter, they are more difficult to search for—a fact that partly explains why only one major experiment is looking for axions today, whereas more than a dozen projects are hunting WIMPs. Yet axions, too, have a solid theoretical foundation and could easily explain an abundance of dark matter in the universe. "I don't understand why axions tend to get ranked as number two," says Leslie Rosenberg of the University of Washington, who heads the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX). "I would invert the order. But that's my opinion." ADMX began in 1995, however, and has found no signs of axion dark matter so far. A more sensitive iteration of the experiment recently came online, and within three years the project will have either found axions or proved they do not exist, Rosenberg predicts.

With the searches for both WIMPs and axions nearing the finish line with no glimpses of success yet, more and more theorists are considering alternatives. "When people got nervous about WIMPs, other candidates came out of the woodwork," Rosenberg says. Some have suggested that a plenitude of small black holes throughout the universe could account for dark matter. Targeted astronomical searches have found no signs of such black holes, which should bend light from background objects in an effect called gravitational lensing. The idea could be resurrected with some theoretical finagling, however.

Another exotic possibility attracting increased interest is quark matter—an extremely dense phase of matter made of strange quarks (exotic cousins of the up and down quarks that form protons and neutrons). Quark matter could be created inside very massive neutron stars, and in sufficient quantities it could make up a population of quark stars that would emit no light but could exert a gravitational pull on normal matter.

Those are just a few of the ideas populating the wide-open landscape of potential explanations for dark matter. "I doubt we've thought through all the interesting possibilities," says theorist Matt Strassler, a visiting physicist at Harvard University. "We may get lucky" and find the answer soon, he says, "or this may drag on for 100 years or more."

The scariest possibility may be that dark matter is made of something impossible to find—some particle that interacts with regular matter only via gravity and no other force. In such a case researchers would have no hope of catching it in a detector. "If we move into a mode where our most favored particles are simply not detectable, we have the classic scientific challenge, which is how do you verify such a theory?" Gaitskell asks. "At that point you're almost a failure—you have a theory that's almost impossible to test."

Perhaps thankfully, such a particle seems somewhat unlikely from a theoretical standpoint. "With a particle that really only interacts gravitationally, you have to ask how it ever got produced in the universe in the first place," says Stanford University theoretical physicist Peter Graham. "Axions and WIMPs both have very nice natural production mechanisms and reasons why they might be here in such abundance. That's what disfavors these other models." Still, they remain on the table.

Even if physicists cannot detect dark particles directly, they hold out the hope that they might find indirect evidence of dark matter with particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. The LHC could produce WIMPs or other dark matter candidates when it smashes protons together in powerful collisions. Another hope is that astrophysical signals, such as gamma-ray light from the center of the galaxy, might reveal the presence of dark matter particles if dark matter annihilates itself when two particles make contact. Some hints of such signals have been claimed, but they are far from definitive.

Ultimately, most physicists in the hunt say they do not care whether their particular conception of dark matter turns out to be right, as long as they eventually get an answer. "As in all research, there is never a guarantee of success. All we can do is to continue to attempt to answer the most important science questions," says Blas Cabrera of Stanford University, who leads the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), another WIMP-detection experiment. Lately, more physicists are facing the specter of possible failure. "I would be horrifically disappointed if we didn't discover dark matter," Rosenberg says. "It is within our grasp, and I really want to know what it is."

Second tiny asteroid spotted before it hit Earth

Jeff Hecht – New Scientist

The first new asteroid identified this year didn't last long. Asteroid 2014 AA was spotted by a telescope early New Year's morning, and fizzled up over the Atlantic Ocean a day later.

2014 AA is only the second incoming object astronomers have tracked before it hit the Earth – and they almost missed it. The first such object, 2008 TC3, was discovered on 6 October 2008 about 20 hours before it became a fireball over Sudan.

Word of 2008 TC3's approach spread quickly, allowing observers to track it and predict when and where it would hit the atmosphere to within about a second and a kilometre, says Bill Gray, an amateur astronomer in Maine who calculates asteroid orbits. Thanks to that precision, a team from the University of Khartoum, Sudan, was able to recover fragments that reached the ground.

Astronomers were not so lucky with 2014 AA. Like 2008 TC3, the new asteroid was discovered with an automated telescope in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson by the University of Arizona's Mount Lemmon Survey. The survey automatically tracks moving objects and calculates preliminary orbits, and then posts the data to a network of astronomers for follow-up observations.

But 2014 AA's holiday-period arrival meant it nearly slipped by unnoticed. With only 90 minutes of automatic observations recorded, Gray calculated the object's orbit in the evening of 1 January and realised it was on a collision course with Earth. He had insufficient data to pinpoint the time and place of impact, but preliminary analysis of infrasound observations has since narrowed it down to around 0200 GMT in the mid-Atlantic, says Steve Chesley of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The asteroid was 2 to 4 metres wide, which makes it a little smaller than 2008 TC3 and much smaller than the 17-metre-wide meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013.

Objects of 2014 AA's size hit Earth every few months, and are too small to pose a threat to the planet. But tracking their motions through the atmosphere could help astronomers recover the pieces that survive, says Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who led the effort to collect meteorites from 2008 TC3 and the Chelyabinsk meteor.

Although 2014 AA is probably lost to the sea, learning to track others like it could have big payoffs for science. "It's like a low-cost sample-return mission," he says.

Iran plans satellite launch in February: Official

An Iranian aerospace official says the country plans to launch an indigenously designed and manufactured satellite into orbit in early February next year.

Deputy head of Iran Space Agency (ISA), Hamid Fazeli, said on Tuesday that final tests are being carried out on several indigenous satellites. They include Sharif Sat, developed by Iranian students and academics from Sharif University of Technology, and AUT Sat, developed by Iranian scientists at Amir Kabir University of Technology.

He added that the launch is intended to mark the Ten-Day Dawn celebrations, which commemorate the 35th anniversary of the victory of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and will be held on February 1-11, 2014, in Iran and several other countries.

Sharif Sat reportedly weighs less than 50 kilograms and is planned to be placed into a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at an altitude between 350 kilometers (217 miles) and 500 kilometers (310 miles) above the Earth's surface.

The satellite will capture images with a high degree of accuracy and transmit them to stations on earth.

AUT Sat is a monitoring and telecommunications satellite, which weighs 100 kilograms. It is expected to have a lifespan of two years.

Iran launched its first indigenous satellite, Omid (Hope), in 2009. The country also sent its first bio-capsule containing living creatures into the space in February 2010, using the indigenous Kavoshgar-3 (Explorer-3) carrier.

The country is one of the 24 founding members of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which was set up in 1959. \

 

END

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