Sent from my iPad
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: April 11, 2014 10:00:32 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday – April 11, 2014
Happy Flex Friday everyone. Looks like my home email got hijacked by malware. So my apologies if you get one from louge1@aol.com.It will probably have no subject or a weird subject—just delete it or spam it…. It has some weird malware link in it. I have changed my home email password to try and halt the malicious send outs…..Have a safe and great weekend you all.NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsFriday – April 11, 2014HEADLINES AND LEADSAtlas rocket blasts off with secret U.S. military satelliteIrene Klotz – ReutersAn unmanned Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Thursday to put a classified satellite into orbit for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.Atlas V roars to life with spy satellite onboardJames Dean – Florida TodayUpdate, 7:07 p.m. ET:United Launch Alliance has confirmed today's launch of a classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite was a success.NASA gives ABC-13 tour of new mission controlKevin Quinn – KTRK - TVIn just a few years, NASA managers will use a brand new high-tech mission control room to communicate with spacecraft on deep space missions. On Thursday, we got a sneak peek.Mission Control gets $60 million makeoverChristopher Smith Gonzalez – Galveston Daily NewsJohnson Space Center's Mission Control Center has been remodeled and retooled as NASA moves closer to putting its new spacecraft into orbit.Virginia feels effects of NASA-Russia cold shoulderOrbital Sciences, which launches from Wallops Island, relies on Ukrainian suppliers, specialists for its Antares rocketTamara Dietrich - Newport News (VA) Daily PressLast week, NASA cut most of its ties with Russia over the political crisis over Crimea, leaving observers wondering how it might impact space science and exploration — or even national security.Sierra Nevada signs agreement with Houston spaceport for Dream ChaserKristen Leigh Painter - The Denver PostSierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems signed a letter of intent Thursday with Houston leaders to explore a future for the Louisville-based company and its high-profile Dream Chaser program at the Texas city's proposed spaceport.This Ex-Astronaut Is Stalking Asteroids to Save CivilizationBryan Lufkin – WiredFormer astronaut Ed Lu thinks the biggest threat to our existence is up in the air. Way up in the air. His nonprofit, the B612 Foundation, wants to set up a defense perimeter around the planet. Not against aliens, but against asteroids—life–eradicating space rocks like the one that killed the Cretaceous dinosaurs. The first step? Completing a space telescope called Sentinel, equipped with optics to search the skies for threatening objects, scheduled for launch in 2018. Funded largely by private donors like Googler Peter Norvig and Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, the setup has a pretty light budget—just a few hundred million dollars to save whole cities from destruction.Students from Russia, Germany visit Huntsville Center for Technology before NASA Rover ChallengeAmethyst Holmes – Huntsville (AL) TimesA group of German and Russian students experienced a little Southern hospitality in preparation for this weekend's NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.Lockheed to begin building asteroid sampler for NASAIrene Klotz – ReutersA NASA mission to pluck samples from a distant asteroid and return them to Earth passed a major technical review, clearing engineers to begin building the robotic spacecraft, officials said on Thursday.COMPLETE STORIESAtlas rocket blasts off with secret U.S. military satelliteIrene Klotz – ReutersAn unmanned Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Thursday to put a classified satellite into orbit for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.The 20-story tall rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, blasted off its seaside launch pad at 1:45 p.m. ET (1745 GMT). United Launch Alliance is a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.No information about the rocket's payload was released. The secretive National Reconnaissance Office designs, builds and operates the nation's fleet of spy satellites.The rocket was outfitted with a single upper-stage Centaur engine and four strap-on solid rocket motors, all built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. In that configuration, the Atlas 5 can deliver up to about 7,800 pounds (3,500 kg) into an orbit 22,300 miles above Earth, United Launch Alliance documents show.Launch originally was slated for March 25, but a radar system needed to track the rocket during flight short-circuited, prompting a delay. The Air Force reactivated a spare radar while repairs to the damaged system are under way.The radar is part of a safety system that ensures a failed rocket will not threatened populated areas. If a rocket leaves its planned flight path, officials can detonate explosives on the vehicle so that debris rains down in the ocean.The radar problem also sidelined a Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon 9 rocket launch for NASA that had been scheduled for March 30. The rocket, now targeted to fly on Monday, will be carrying a Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles above Earth.Atlas V roars to life with spy satellite onboardJames Dean – Florida TodayUpdate, 7:07 p.m. ET:United Launch Alliance has confirmed today's launch of a classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite was a success."We are honored to deliver this national security asset to orbit together with our customers the NRO Office of Space Launch and the Air Force," said Jim Sponnick, ULA vice president for Atlas and Delta programs, in a statement.ULA's next launch, of a Global Positioning System satellite on a Delta IV rocket, is targeted for May 15 from Cape Canaveral.Original story:A powerful Atlas V rocket shot from its Cape Canaveral pad at 1:45 p.m. today, boosting a classified reconnaissance satellite toward orbit.United Launch Alliance's live webcast of the mission ended less than four minutes into the flight to help preserve the secrecy of the National Reconnaissance Office mission, just after successful separation of the rocket's payload fairing.Up to that point, the mission appeared to be off to a good start.A quiet countdown and perfect weather culminated in the 196-foot rocket igniting its Russian-made RD-180 main engine and four strap-on solid rocket boosters to leap from the pad with nearly two million pounds of thrust.The boosters fell away about two minutes into the flight, and the first stage was performing normally when the 16-foot diameter payload fairing split away.Amateur astronomers who are experienced in tracking satellites believe the satellite is headed for a geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator, where it will collect signals intelligence.The launch was ULA's 45th of an Atlas V rocket, but just the second in this configuration with the four solid boosters. And it was the company's second Atlas V mission in a week, after the launch of a military weather satellite from California last Thursday.Today's flight was delayed more than two weeks by the Air Force's loss of a critical tracking radar to an electrical short. The Eastern Range reported no problems today with a backup radar activated.The range will be tested again soon: SpaceX is targeting a 4:58 p.m. Monday launch of a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule ferrying cargo to the International Space Station for NASA.NASA gives ABC-13 tour of new mission controlKevin Quinn – KTRK - TVIn just a few years, NASA managers will use a brand new high-tech mission control room to communicate with spacecraft on deep space missions. On Thursday, we got a sneak peek.It's the first time NASA has publicly unveiled its redesigned mission control center. From inside, NASA says it plans to push the frontier of space far beyond what we know now.Mission control is the heart of every endeavor to space. It's come a long way since the days of Apollo. Push buttons and dial phones still sit in the room. It's a national historic landmark, a stark contrast to today.In the shuttle era, custom consoles and massive mainframes were built for NASA at considerable cost. Now though, as technology has advanced, even computers replaced just five years ago were ready for retirement. NASA spent the last three years and $60 million renovating the historic mission control from which so many shuttle missions were flown."Takes significantly less effort for our engineering and tech staff to maintain this equipment, to continue to provide more and more power to our flight controllers," Paul Hill said.Just Thursday, crews conducted a simulation of the first test flight for Orion and the space launch system. The real deal is expected to launch later this year."It is an incredibly important mission.. It is the first in a long milestone of mission leading us to having our capability to go deeper into space than humans have ever gone before," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said.As Bolden toured the rebuilt facility, he noted that Orion is in production. NASA, he says, is committed to flying it to Mars one day, bringing back science to benefit us all."Every single thing we do here at NASA is to bring a return here to Earth," Bolden said, "We're trying to make life better for people here on Earth."NASA says a manned mission to Mars is still about 20 years away. But this first test flight of Orion sometime this fall will be one step closer to that.Mission Control gets $60 million makeoverChristopher Smith Gonzalez – Galveston Daily NewsJohnson Space Center's Mission Control Center has been remodeled and retooled as NASA moves closer to putting its new spacecraft into orbit.The remodeling and upgrading of Mission Control, which includes flight control rooms, backrooms that support those flight control rooms, and other infrastructure upgrades, was a $60 million investment, said Paul Hill, mission operations director. The work was done during the past three years.Rather than have the furniture, equipment and technology made specifically for NASA, as the agency has done in the past, the agency was able to get what it needed straight off the shelf, thanks to advances in consumer technology, Hill said.The upgrades will lead to significant cost savings, Hill said.The goals of the remodeling, which included everything from the furniture to the computer networks and communication systems, were to modernize, bring cost down and increase power — but not disrupt the flight controller experience, Hill said."The touch and feel to them will look identical — it will look seamless — even though we have completely changed things out underneath them," he said.By October, the White Flight Control Room will house the International Space Station flight control team, he said.Flight control teams will be able to fly the space station, Orion, the heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Space Launch System and commercial space vehicles from the facility, Hill said.But all the new computer power will be useless without a spacecraft in the air. That craft, the Orion Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle, will be ready to go on its first test flight near the end of this year, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.Just down the hall in the newly remodeled Blue Flight Control Room, a combination NASA and Lockheed Martin flight controller team was running through the Orion's first flight."It is an incredibly important mission because it is the first in a long milestone of missions leading us to having a capability of going deeper into space than humans have ever gone before," Bolden said.Virginia feels effects of NASA-Russia cold shoulderOrbital Sciences, which launches from Wallops Island, relies on Ukrainian suppliers, specialists for its Antares rocketTamara Dietrich - Newport News (VA) Daily PressLast week, NASA cut most of its ties with Russia over the political crisis over Crimea, leaving observers wondering how it might impact space science and exploration — or even national security.The ripples are being felt even here in Virginia, headquarters of Orbital Sciences Corp., the private space transportation company that relies on Ukraine for the main core of its big Antares rocket. Orbital launches from Wallops Island spaceport on the Eastern Shore, making crucial resupply missions to the International Space Station.NASA pointedly exempted the space station from its suspension. The U.S. needs Russia to get American astronauts to the ISS after retiring the Space Shuttle program in 2011."Obviously we're monitoring the situation," Orbital spokesman Barron "Barry" Beneski said from his Dulles office. "We're in touch with our suppliers pretty much every day. We haven't seen any disruptions. We're obviously hopeful the situation just kind of calms down and we won't see any upsets."The big first-stage core of the Antares is built by a company called Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, which once designed Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. Orbital uses Russian-derived engines for the rocket's first stage, Beneski said, but those engines are built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, based in California.Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to make eight cargo runs to the space station through 2016. The first launched in January. For the rest, Beneski said the company already has three core stages in the U.S. and two more set for delivery over the next six months or so.If Orbital needs to get its remaining cores elsewhere, he said, "I'm sure somebody in the company is thinking about that, but we haven't crossed that bridge in terms of saying things in public. We're keeping our eye on the situation, and we'll do what we need to do to protect our interests."Orbital also has up to two dozen Ukrainian nationals on site at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility to help integrate the Antares core with the engines and run tests before launches.Beneski said there has been no issue with NASA over the Ukrainian specialists.NASA Wallops referred questions about the impact of the suspension back to Orbital.Antares' next official launch date is May 6, although NASA recently said it could be postponed to mid-June because of scheduling conflicts.Orbital finished assembling its Cygnus cargo craft at MARS last Friday for that launch. Beneski said the freighter is already packed with payload for space station astronauts.Case-by-caseAccording to an official statement from NASA supplied by its Langley Research Center in Hampton, the space agency is taking its activities with its Russian counterparts on a case-by-case basis.Some programs will continue, it said, including four operational missions with Russian instruments on NASA spacecraft, and participation in the 40th COSPAR conference in Moscow. COSPAR, or the Committee on Space Research, was established in 1958 by the International Council for Science to provide an open forum for space scientists from around the world.Other programs won't continue for now, including a joint study for a potential joint mission to Venus, a meeting over Siberian boreal forest research and tests of a wide-body commercial aircraft model in a Russian wind tunnel."Suspension of these near-term activities," NASA said, "includes all associated NASA travel to Russia, visits by Russian government representatives to NASA facilities, bilateral meetings, email and teleconferences or videoconferences. Our Russian counterparts have been notified."NASA's online launch schedule for the rest of the year shows that six of 13 missions are aboard a Russian Soyuz from Kazakhstan, and a seventh is the Orbital launch from MARS.A Soyuz launched on Thursday to deliver cargo and crew supplies to the space station.Sierra Nevada signs agreement with Houston spaceport for Dream ChaserKristen Leigh Painter - The Denver PostSierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems signed a letter of intent Thursday with Houston leaders to explore a future for the Louisville-based company and its high-profile Dream Chaser program at the Texas city's proposed spaceport.The announcement gives Houston's efforts a significant boost in the emerging "new space" market, which for years sought legitimacy in the public's eye and is now quickly gaining momentum. National competition is mounting as Colorado's own spaceport efforts are faltering due to airspace concerns.Houston Airport System — a consortium of the Texas city's three airports — is pursuing a Federal Aviation Administration spaceport license, much like Spaceport Colorado is attempting to do at Front Range Airport in Adams County."Having Sierra Nevada be able to land here makes our project a reality," said David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute in Houston, which is one of Sierra Nevada's partners.Dream Chaser is a reusable orbital spaceship designed to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the international space station, with many other potential applications, such as scientific research.Thursday's agreement was signed just three months after Sierra Nevada made another commitment along Florida's space coast. Both of these states are considered direct competitors to Colorado's aerospace industry.While both Houston and Colorado are in the final stages of their applications — both planning to formally submit to the FAA in the summer — Houston has managed to gain greater community support by building on its NASA heritage, which furthers its spaceport initiative."The people behind the Houston Airport System really came out and found us," said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of Sierra Nevada's Space Systems. "They really went out aggressively and made their case."Colorado is attempting to overcome FAA concerns over Front Range's proximity to Denver International Airport and the potential airspace conflicts."We need a letter of agreement about how air traffic control will work together, and that's something that is in discussions right now," said Adams County Manager Todd Leopold, a member of the Front Range Airport Advisory Board. "Our regional air traffic and the national air traffic operations are the ones having the discussion."Water can be a major asset for human spaceflight in emergency situations, and Houston borders the Gulf of Mexico while Colorado's status as a landlocked state works against it.Sierra Nevada says the decision to work with Houston doesn't signal lack of support for Colorado's proposal."It's not really that we are picking Houston over Colorado, I just think that for where we are at and where Houston is at in its development, it's a good time to partner with them," Sierra Nevada spokeswoman Krystal Scordo said.For the space company, Thursday's announcement is another step in its efforts to shore up new commercial partners outside its primary client, NASA, which has awarded the space company more than $337 million so far to develop an alternative to the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.Houston makes sense for future customers, particularly those who may wish to do medical research in space using the Dream Chaser, Sirangelo said."In my view, we are building the iPad, and it's now time to build the apps on that iPad," he said. "It's a natural connection between the research that is being done in this community and the research we can do in space with our vehicle."The Dream Chaser's first orbital flight date is scheduled for November 2016, aboard an Atlas V rocket built by Centennial-based United Launch Alliance. Sirangelo, who also acts as Colorado's chief innovation officer, said Sierra Nevada should be NASA-ready by the end of 2017.This Ex-Astronaut Is Stalking Asteroids to Save CivilizationBryan Lufkin – WiredFormer astronaut Ed Lu thinks the biggest threat to our existence is up in the air. Way up in the air. His nonprofit, the B612 Foundation, wants to set up a defense perimeter around the planet. Not against aliens, but against asteroids—life–eradicating space rocks like the one that killed the Cretaceous dinosaurs. The first step? Completing a space telescope called Sentinel, equipped with optics to search the skies for threatening objects, scheduled for launch in 2018. Funded largely by private donors like Googler Peter Norvig and Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, the setup has a pretty light budget—just a few hundred million dollars to save whole cities from destruction.What got you so interested in asteroids?I spent six months aboard the International Space Station. From there, you notice a stark difference between the moon and the Earth: The moon is covered in craters. But Earth has craters too—you just can't see them, because they're underneath the oceans. So anybody who knows anything about space and probability knows that this is something you have to solve. Nothing else matters at all if you're going to get wiped out. Since 2000, there have been eight impacts roughly the size of Hiroshima or larger, and the fact that asteroids hit Earth somewhat randomly means you're basically on borrowed time. You don't know when the next one's gonna happen.I would have thought NASA was already on top of that.We—meaning all of humanity—have found about 10,000 of these asteroids, mostly supported by NASA. They've got a telescope already up there called Neowise. It was recently reactivated to study the reflectivity of near-Earth asteroids. It's not optimized to find a great number of them—only about 50 per year for a couple of years. Sentinel will find 200,000 in its first year. And there are about a million of them out there large enough to destroy a major city. So we have a long way to go, and that's what Sentinel is going to do. We're trying to protect Earth, not do scientific studies on asteroids. And while it is true that the great majority of those would not be harmful because they explode at high altitude over unpopulated areas, not all of Earth is unpopulated.How does Sentinel work?Asteroids are dark—almost black or charcoal-colored. They don't reflect a lot of light. So Sentinel is going to scan the sky in infrared, and rescan about an hour later, then do that again the next day, and then repeat that every 26 days. That infrared imaging detector, incidentally, which is the heart and soul of this thing, is only about the size of a sheet of paper. By looking at multiple images, Sentinel can measure the velocities of these asteroids down to a millimeter per second, which is amazing. Then you can calculate their trajectories to know if any of them are going to hit us.And how fast are they going, exactly?Typically an asteroid is moving at roughly the same speed as Earth. Earth moves at about 65,000 miles per hour. That's about 1.6 million miles per day, right? So in one month it'll travel nearly 50 million miles.And if they are going to hit us, then what?That's the easy part. You only need to change an asteroid's speed by about a millimeter per second to prevent a collision. So we just run into the asteroid with a small spacecraft.That doesn't sound so easy.The difficult part is seeing a business model: When you find something that's going to hit Earth, how do you monetize that? Do you make people pay for the data? That's why we're doing this as a nonprofit. The other challenge is human nature—people bury their heads in the sand. Did New Orleans know that the next major hurricane would destroy that city? Yup. Did they fix the levees? Nope.Students from Russia, Germany visit Huntsville Center for Technology before NASA Rover ChallengeAmethyst Holmes – Huntsville (AL) TimesA group of German and Russian students experienced a little Southern hospitality in preparation for this weekend's NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.The Huntsville Center for Technology welcomed the Russian Highschool and German College teams to use workshop facilities to create parts of the buggies they left behind. After disassembling and shipping their buggies in suitcases ahead of their arrival to the Rocket City, team members noticed that adapters for the front wheels didn't make the trip to the states."Unfortunately when putting the stuff together in Germany, we didn't know that some parts were missing here in America," German team member Mathilda Drews said.With one challenge solved, Drews and her teammates are looking forward to the challenge of competing under NASA's new requirements for this year's race.The competition, known for the past 20 years as the Great Moonbuggy Race, was created in honor of the Lunar Rover designed and built in Huntsville. The space center staff will also introduce five new obstacles on the race course. Teams will now have 15 courses to master.The agency has encouraged students to think beyond maneuvering around on the moon and focus on building rovers that can explore other planets, asteroids and comets. Due to the added challenge, students had to create buggies that couldn't have inflatable wheels."I'm curious to see what the other teams came up with," Drews said.Team supervisor Ralf Heckel says it took nine months with 200 activities in four countries to form the two multinational European teams that will compete in the race this weekend. Team members vary in age with the youngest being 13-year-old Catherine Trsuheva.Heckel says he enjoys seeing the students so interested in space science and works to instill a passion for space exploration in them that he discovered at a similar age."You must give the dreams to the students. You must give them motivation,"Heckel said.The Russian and German teams will join area high schools and college teams along with about 80 others in the student engineering competition.The race will be streamed live on NASA-TV and space center visitors can watch the race with their paid admission.Lockheed to begin building asteroid sampler for NASAIrene Klotz – ReutersA NASA mission to pluck samples from a distant asteroid and return them to Earth passed a major technical review, clearing engineers to begin building the robotic spacecraft, officials said on Thursday.The $800 million mission, known as OSIRIS-Rex, is targeted for launch in September 2016 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.The spacecraft would rendezvous with asteroid 1999 RQ36, nicknamed Bennu, two years later for mapping and surveys, then use a robotic arm to collect samples for return in 2023.Scientists are keenly interested in studying what minerals and chemicals the asteroid contains. Similar asteroids crashing into early Earth are believed to have provided the organic materials and water needed for life to form."This is a pioneering effort, both technologically and scientifically," lead scientist Dante Lauretta, with the University of Arizona in Tucson, said in a statement.An independent review panel completed a comprehensive technical assessment of the mission, clearing prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp to begin building the spacecraft, flight instruments and ground system, the company said in a press release."The OSIRIS-Rex team has consistently demonstrated its ability to present a comprehensive mission design that meets all requirements within the resources provided by NASA," Lauretta added.NASA in August signed a separate $183.5-million contract with United Launch Services for an Atlas 5 rocket and related flight services for OSIRIS-Rex. United Launch Services, along with sister company United Launch Alliance, which markets to the U.S. military, is a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co.END
No comments:
Post a Comment