Fwd: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday – August 1, 2014

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: August 1, 2014 10:54:55 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday – August 1, 2014

Happy flex Friday everyone.    Had enough rain yet?  Last nights torrential down pour reminded me a lot of tropical storm Allison – luckily it moved thru the Houston downtown area quickly. 

 

Don't forget to join us next Thursday at Hibachi Grill for our monthly NASA retirees luncheon at 11:30.  

After lunch with your retired colleagues, then head out to the Gilruth for the monthly NASA Alumni League speaker's forum.

NAL-JSC Upcoming Activities

 

.         First Thursday Series at the Gilruth.  All sessions from 2:30 -

4:00 PM 

 

o  August 7, 2014 - Morpheus Lander, Jon Olansen

            JSC's Morpheus Project accomplishments, status and future

 

o  September 4, 2014 - SpaceX, Garrett Reisman

                SpaceX Commercial Crew Program accomplishments, status and views of CCP o  October 2, 2014 - Orbital Sciences Corporation, Carl Walz

                OSC's Commercial Crew Program accomplishments, status and views of CCP

 

 

 

NASA and Human Spaceflight News

Friday – August 1, 2014

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Steamboat astronaut will run in relay race from International Space Station

 

Scott Franz - Steamboat Today

 

When Steve Swanson needs to either grab or pass the baton in the Wild West Relay race this weekend in Colorado, things could get complicated. That's because Swanson will be running on a treadmill more than 200 miles above the Earth and the handoffs to and from his fellow runners will have to be done via a very long distance call.

 

Astronaut to Run Relay on International Space Station

Steve Swanson will run 31.3 miles for the Wild West Relay.

 

Austin Schempp – Runner's World

 

What do you get when you combine three astronauts, an accountant and a physical therapist? A running relay team, of course. On August 1-2, five of the six runners will blast off from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, for the 200-mile Wild West Relay. As for the sixth runner, Steve Swanson? He'll be joining them for the relay, but he'll run his legs aboard the International Space Station.

 

NASA to test making rocket fuel ingredient on Mars

 

Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON — NASA plans to make oxygen — a key ingredient of rocket fuel — on Mars early next decade. Space agency officials Thursday unveiled seven instruments they plan to put on a Martian rover that would launch in 2020, including two devices aimed at bigger Mars missions in the future. The $1.9 billion rover will include an experiment that will turn carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen. It could then be used to make rocket fuel and for future astronauts to breathe, said NASA associate administrator for exploration Bill Gerstenmaier.

 

NASA selects instruments for next Mars rover

 

William Harwood – CBS News

 

NASA's next Mars rover will feature state-of-the-art science and technology instruments, including a device to cache rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth and another to extract oxygen from the martian atmosphere, testing technology that could help future astronauts "live off the land" to some extent, officials said Thursday.

 

Mexico To Michigan In Seven Seconds

 

Edward Cardenas – CBS Detroit

 

One of the astronauts on the the International Space Station created a video which takes viewers on a cross-country trip seconds. Astronaut Reid Wiseman is stationed aboard the space station as a flight engineer and posted a Vine video Thursday morning which takes viewers from Baja Peninsula, south of San Diego to Detroit in seven seconds. Within two hours, the video had been viewed more than 23,000 times. (END)

 

NASA's asteroid mission takes a beating

 

Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle

 

NASA can't afford to send humans to Mars. With its current plans to build a large rocket, the Space Launch System, NASA can't even afford to go back to the moon. What NASA can afford to do, in about a decade, is bring a small asteroid to a location near the moon, and then send astronauts to fly in formation with the rock. This is known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM. There is little love for the ARM in Congress.

 

Hubble Space Telescope in good shape 5 years after final servicing

 

Bill Harwood – CBS

 

Five years after a fifth and final shuttle servicing mission, the Hubble Space Telescope's instruments are operating in near-flawless fashion and while one of its six stabilizing gyroscopes has failed, project managers are optimistic the observatory will be able to operate through the end of the decade, wrapping up 30 years at the apex of astronomy.

 

First photos of moon's surface released 50 years ago

 

Desair Brown and Emily Brown - USA TODAY

 

It was 50 years ago Thursday that we got our first close-up of the moon. Up until that time no one really knew what the moon's surface looked like. That changed on July 31, 1964, when NASA spacecraft Ranger 7 – on a mission to explore the moon – made lunar impact. The spacecraft, which was made up of two solar wings and six video cameras, sent back more than 4,000 photos to Earth. There's even film from NASA showing what the moon looked like right before impact.

 

Bolden skeptical about prospects for NASA authorization bill this year

 

Jeff Foust – Space Politics

 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Wednesday he is not optimistic that Congress will pass a NASA authorization bill this year, and expects to start the 2015 fiscal year on a continuing resolution (CR). Bolden, speaking at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, said he was more optimistic about the prospects of an authorization bill last month, when the House passed its version of the legislation on a 401-2 vote. "That was not lost on me," he said of the margin of passage. "My naïveté caused me to believe that, boy, things are going to change." However, the Senate has yet to take up the House bill or even introduce its own version. "They have talked off and on about an authorization bill, but we don't see any serious movement there right now," he said, adding that Congress was about to go on its summer recess and not return until early September. "I am not optimistic that we will get an authorization bill until 2015."

 

Americans Deserve Effective Science Funding

 

The Daily Caller

 

There's a growing worry that America is falling behind, with our best days behind us. Our economic strength and national security depends on technological leadership.  Since the 1940s, America has led the World in research and development (R&D) spending. But our crucial technological edge isn't guaranteed.  Experts now project the U.S. will fall behind China in R&D spending in about ten years.

 

NASA, FDIC score high marks for leadership communication

 

Federal News Radio

 

When it comes to leadership communication, NASA and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation rise to the top, according to a Partnership for Public Service analysis released Wednesday.

 

 

 

COMPLETE STORIES

Steamboat astronaut will run in relay race from International Space Station

 

Scott Franz - Steamboat Today

 

When Steve Swanson needs to either grab or pass the baton in the Wild West Relay race this weekend in Colorado, things could get complicated.

 

That's because Swanson will be running on a treadmill more than 200 miles above the Earth and the handoffs to and from his fellow runners will have to be done via a very long distance call.

 

On the plus side, the Steamboat Springs astronaut won't have to worry about the weather or any steep hills when he runs his portions of the route aboard the International Space Station.

 

"Everybody is ready to go and to support him up in space with this event," Suni Williams, a fellow astronaut who will run on Swanson's team here on Earth, recently told Space Station Live in an interview.

 

Swanson and the five other runners on his team, Friday and Saturday, each will run about 33 miles during the 200-mile run from Fort Collins to Steamboat Ski Area.

 

"It's a pretty rigorous run," Williams said.

 

Swanson has run the relay on Earth multiple times.

 

The astronauts this year will run on a team called 200 miles, 20 orbits and 90 Schillings.

 

The team name stems from the length of the relay, the number of orbits Swanson is anticipated to make around the Earth while also running during the event and the team's favorite beverage.

 

Williams knows a thing or two about running in big races up in space.

 

In 2007, she ran the Boston Marathon on a treadmill aboard the Space Station.

 

Although they don't have the same weather and terrain obstacles, Williams said the astronauts can change the resistance and speed of the treadmill to mimic the physical challenge of an incline.

 

Williams said she and astronauts like Swanson don't just run the marathons for the fun of them.

 

For one, physical activity is necessary in space to prevent the loss of muscle mass and bone density.

 

She said participating in running events also helps to bring awareness to astronauts and the research they are doing in space to learn more about combating conditions like osteoporosis.

 

Williams said running in marathons and relays from the Space Station makes the daily workout more motivating and fun.

 

Astronaut to Run Relay on International Space Station

Steve Swanson will run 31.3 miles for the Wild West Relay.

 

Austin Schempp – Runner's World

 

What do you get when you combine three astronauts, an accountant and a physical therapist? A running relay team, of course.

 

On August 1-2, five of the six runners will blast off from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, for the 200-mile Wild West Relay.

 

As for the sixth runner, Steve Swanson? He'll be joining them for the relay, but he'll run his legs aboard the International Space Station.

 

Swanson, 53, who grew up in Steamboat Springs and attended the University of Colorado as an undergraduate, has run the relay before and wanted to do it again. Last year, his training for a space mission prevented him from doing so.

 

This year, before he launched into space on March 27 for the six-month Expedition 40 mission, Swanson approached race coordinator Paul Vanderheiden about running the relay in space. Vanderheiden liked the idea and told Swanson he'd do whatever he could to help.

 

Swanson will be on an ultra team with six runners including two other astronauts, Sunita Williams and Dottie Metcalf — who will be running on the ground. Tim Flynn, Swanson's sister-in-law, Carrie Alexander, as well as childhood friend and captain of the team, Bredt Eggleston, round out the team. 

 

Typically, teams consist of 12 runners who each run three legs of the course. Because Swanson's team, "200 Miles, 20 Orbits, and 90 Shillings" — a name inspired by a local beer and a prediction of how many orbits the space station will complete during the relay —is an ultra team, each runner will complete six legs.

 

The Wild West Relay, which started in 2004, is held under the full moon near the start of August. It runs through Northern Colorado, three national forests, up two mountain passes, and dips into southern Wyoming. Entrants enjoy the opportunity to run under the stars on remote dirt roads.

 

"When you're by yourself at 1 in the morning on a Colorado trail road with the full moon out, it's spectacular," says Flynn, a physical therapist from Fort Collins, Colorado. "It's one of those races where you smile and say, 'I'm in a great place.' Every time I've done it, I get those moments of 'this is just too cool.'"

 

To run on the space station, Swanson will put on a harness that attaches to two bungees to counteract the microgravity that makes astronauts float. The system puts about 140 pounds on Swanson's back, less than his usual weight.

 

"It seems to balance out well for work output, but it makes it tough to go for long runs. Even if you slow down you still have to deal with the harness pain," says Swanson, who is Expedition 40's flight commander.

 

If Swanson completes the race, he'll beat the record held by relay teammate Sunita Williams for farthest running race distance on the space station.

 

In 2007, Swanson watched Williams run a simulated Boston Marathon on the space station after her return to Earth was delayed.

 

"He came up to the space station on the shuttle flight and he was like, 'What was that like? Are you crazy?'" says Williams, who is also the only person to simulate a triathlon race in space. "I said, 'Yeah, I think I was crazy to be on that stupid treadmill all that time.' You're wearing a harness and it's not super comfortable."

 

Adding to the discomfort is sweat. Swanson says the temperature on the space station is 73 degrees with moderate humidity, and the sweat doesn't drip off.

 

"It more just pools on your skin and hair," says Swanson, who started trail running after training with NASA. "The way water behaves up here is quite fascinating, so I just use a towel to wipe it off."

 

Coordinating the relay could be tricky because the course is run on remote roads that don't always have cell phone service.

 

Swanson says 60 to 70 percent of the time he'll be able to call his team when he's finished and the next runner should start.

 

Williams says Swanson will have two options to contact the team: He can either radio Mission Control to transfer him to a teammate's cell phone, or he can call a cell phone directly from the station's Internet protocol phone.

 

"What's cool about the space station is you can call down, but nobody can call you. In an ideal world that's awesome because you don't have to listen to other people call you," Williams says with a laugh.

 

The relay will be a chance for Swanson to connect with his friends, family, and the town he considers home.

 

"I remember many things about the relays," Swanson says. "The best part of being in the relay is being part of a team — just like space flight."

 

NASA to test making rocket fuel ingredient on Mars

 

Associated Press

 

This undated graphic provided by NASA shows the Mars 2020 Rover. NASA plans to make oxygen _ a key rocket fuel ingredient _ on Mars early next decade. Space agency officials unveiled seven instruments they plan to put on a Martian rover that would launch in 2020, including two devices aimed at bigger future Mars missions. The $1.9 billion rover will include an experiment that will turn carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen. NASA Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier said it could be then used as half of what's needed for rocket fuel and for future astronauts to breathe. Taking fuel to Mars for return flights is heavy and expensive. (NASA/Associated Press)

 

WASHINGTON — NASA plans to make oxygen — a key ingredient of rocket fuel — on Mars early next decade.

 

Space agency officials Thursday unveiled seven instruments they plan to put on a Martian rover that would launch in 2020, including two devices aimed at bigger Mars missions in the future.

 

The $1.9 billion rover will include an experiment that will turn carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen. It could then be used to make rocket fuel and for future astronauts to breathe, said NASA associate administrator for exploration Bill Gerstenmaier.

 

Taking fuel to Mars for return flights is heavy and expensive.

 

The device, named MOXIE, works like an engine but in reverse, said Michael Hecht, the scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is running the test project. It will make about three-quarters of an ounce of oxygen an hour.

 

If it works, then a larger scale device — 100 times bigger than MOXIE — would be launched two years before astronauts go, currently slated for some time in the 2030s. NASA first plans to send astronauts to an asteroid.

 

The bigger device would start making enough oxygen for the return trip before astronauts ever launch to Mars, Hecht said. The other part of rocket fuel — the propellant — can be made from light hydrogen that is brought from Earth or other chemicals mined from Martian dirt or atmosphere.

 

John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, said the new rover — a clone of the chassis of the current Curiosity machine — "will lead to getting humans to Mars in the future."

 

NASA selects instruments for next Mars rover

 

William Harwood – CBS News

 

NASA's next Mars rover will feature state-of-the-art science and technology instruments, including a device to cache rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth and another to extract oxygen from the martian atmosphere, testing technology that could help future astronauts "live off the land" to some extent, officials said Thursday.

 

Modeled after NASA's hugely successful Curiosity rover now operating on the red planet's surface, the Mars 2020 rover will weigh roughly the same, about one ton, feature the same nuclear power pack and use the same "sky crane" entry, descent and landing system.

 

While it will look almost identical to Curiosity, the Mars 2020 rover is expected to cost about $1.9 billion, some $600 million less than Curiosity thanks to the common design and left over spare parts, and it will feature a different suite of instruments.

 

"This rover's going to carry new, innovative instruments like we've never seen before on Mars to conduct geological investigations on the surface to determine potential habitability, but also to look for potential signs of past life in the geological record," said John Grunsfeld, director of space science at NASA Headquarters.

 

Of 58 proposals submitted from around the world, NASA selected seven, announcing the winners during a news conference at agency headquarters. The compact intruments will weigh about 90 pounds altogether and cost some $130 million to develop.

 

Along with searching for "biosignatures" in the martian rocks and soil it studies, the 2020 rover will be on the lookout for particularly interesting samples that might warrant more detailed analysis on Earth.

 

While the details are still being considered, the 2020 rover is expected to be equipped with a caching system to store small samples in sealed tubes that could be retrieved by a future robotic spacecraft. Or an astronaut.

 

"As you might imagine, we're still early on in the mission design and how exactly the cache is going to be is still being worked out," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist with NASA's Mars exploration program.

 

"The expectation is it will be on the rover, the samples will be cached and then there is some debate whether or not we drop the cache and the rover goes off and does its own thing somewhere else, or whether or not it just stays with the rover the whole time," he said.

 

A third option is to drop some of the cached samples off at some point during the mission and to keep other samples with the rover.

 

Like Curiosity, the 2020 rover will be equipped with an imaging mast carrying a pair of "souped up" cameras. One, called Mastcam-Z, will be capable of panoramic and stereo imaging, providing the same sort of perspective an astronaut might have standing on the surface. The "Z" refers to the camera's ability to zoom, something Curiosity's cameras cannot do.

 

Grunsfeld said the new camera will "knock our socks off."

 

"You're going to feel like you're on Mars," he said. "It's going to be fantastic."

 

A second mast-mounted camera system is known as SuperCam. Similar to the ChemCam instrument aboard Curiosity, SuperCam will be able to vaporize rock samples with a powerful laser and study the components blasted away for analysis of chemical composition and mineralogy, including remote detection of organic compounds.

 

A body-mounted instrument known as PIXL, for "Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry," will use an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer to map out chemical elements in targeted samples with greater detail than ever before. Another instrument known as SHERLOC will be built around an ultraviolet laser spectrometer designed to study mineralogy and search for organic compounds.

 

A Spanish weather station will measure temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure and humidity, along with studying the dust suspended in the martian atmosphere. And in a first for Mars exploration, the 2020 rover will be equipped with a ground-penetrating radar capable of detecting geologic structures three tenths of a mile down.

 

The seventh instrument in the 2020 rover's scientific arsenal is the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment, or MOXIE, designed to extract oxygen from the carbon dioxide making up the thin martian atmosphere.

 

"It's not so much we're going to actually use the oxygen, but can we actually generate the oxygen, what kind of rates can we generate it at, what kind of efficiency can we do?" said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's director of space operations.

 

Being able to generate oxygen in situ, and possibly water and even rocket fuel at some point in the future, "really changes the dynamics" of possible crewed missions to Mars, Gerstenmaier said.

 

"If you can get propellant, or get oxidizer, for your ascent stage to come off of Mars and you don't have to carry that with you, that really changes your mission design," he said. "If you can actually cache and put oxygen in storage tanks before the crew even arrives and you know they have a habitable environment and a place to go when they get there, that's tremendously important to us.

 

"This will buy down the uncertainty of that it will make sure we understand the risks associated with that."

 

Mexico To Michigan In Seven Seconds

 

Edward Cardenas – CBS Detroit

 

One of the astronauts on the the International Space Station created a video which takes viewers on a cross-country trip seconds.

 

Astronaut Reid Wiseman is stationed aboard the space station as a flight engineer and posted a Vine video Thursday morning which takes viewers from Baja Peninsula, south of San Diego to Detroit in seven seconds.

 

Within two hours, the video had been viewed more than 23,000 times.

 

NASA's asteroid mission takes a beating

 

Eric Berger – Houston Chronicle

 

NASA can't afford to send humans to Mars. With its current plans to build a large rocket, the Space Launch System, NASA can't even afford to go back to the moon.

 

What NASA can afford to do, in about a decade, is bring a small asteroid to a location near the moon, and then send astronauts to fly in formation with the rock.

 

This is known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM.

 

There is little love for the ARM in Congress.

 

"I don't think there's a clear consensus on a lot of things in Congress, but we all agree that pushing a rock around in space is a waste of taxpayer dollars that we don't have to spare," John Culberson, a Houston Republican, told me.

 

On Wednesday, at two separate space policy meetings, the mission was also savaged.

 

At one, a meeting to prioritize asteroid and other non-planetary targets in the solar system for NASA to explore, MIT planetary scientist Richard Binzel characterized the asteroid mission as a farce:

 

During his remarks Binzel characterized ARM  as a "one and done" stunt that did not advance NASA's efforts to reach Mars. It was perhaps the most savage attack on the asteroid mission yet from the scientific community. Here's a copy of his presentation.

 

Across town, during a gathering of NASA's advisory council, members there were also expressing doubts about ARM. Among them was Thomas Young, former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, president and COO of Martin Marietta and chairman of SAIC.

 

Both Binzell, Young (as well as many others) are frustrated because they view ARM as make-work for the rocket (SLS) and capsule (Orion) that NASA is building. Because of the rocket building costs NASA can do little else but fly to a space rock.

 

These points were also made in a recent National Research Council report, which found the ARM mission really wasn't on the pathway to Mars, as NASA has said it is.

 

The reality is that NASA came to ARM because with its current budget it can't afford to do anything else. That's reality we either live with, we give NASA a lot more money to actually use the SLS and do something meaningful like return to the moon or Mars, or we change NASA's strategy.

 

It's not pleasant to criticize NASA, but it is important to have an honest discussion about the state of the agency and not pretend everything is hunky dory.

 

Hubble Space Telescope in good shape 5 years after final servicing

 

Bill Harwood – CBS

 

Five years after a fifth and final shuttle servicing mission, the Hubble Space Telescope's instruments are operating in near-flawless fashion and while one of its six stabilizing gyroscopes has failed, project managers are optimistic the observatory will be able to operate through the end of the decade, wrapping up 30 years at the apex of astronomy.

 

If those forecasts hold up, NASA will be able to use Hubble in concert with its successor, the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, giving astronomers a golden opportunity to compare HST's visible-light images with Webb's deep infrared views to better understand the structure and evolution of the early universe.

 

"Hubble's doing great," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's director of space science operations and one of the spacewalkers who helped service Hubble during a final visit in 2009. "We've had one gyro failure, but that's to be expected.

 

"If we can keep Hubble going through 2020, with an October 2018 James Webb Space Telescope launch, the scientific opportunity is tremendous. Now we can't guarantee that. It's space, it's really hard. (But) knock on wood, we can keep Hubble going a long time."

 

Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University, is equally optimistic.

 

"Hubble seems to be in remarkably good conditions, the gyros are holding out, the instruments are holding out far better than we anticipated," he said in an interview.

 

"The real issue for us, which is what's proving very exciting, is though the instruments have now been up for almost five years, we're finding news ways to use them and new ways to correct the effects of being in space," he said. "And so they're becoming even more sensitive than they were when we went up there."

 

The Space Telescope Science Institute still receives five to six times more applications for observing time that can be honored and Grunsfeld said NASA will continue funding the observatory, at more than $90 million per year, as long as it remains scientifically viable. NASA has spent more than $10 billion on Hubble since the program was approved in 1977.

 

"When we get to 2020, if we're down to a single instrument, maybe we only have Wide Field Camera 3 left and we're on the cusp of launching a wide-field survey telescope ... the science community may decide funding isn't worth it and we ought to put it into the next-generation telescope," Grunsfeld said.

 

"If the over-subscription (rate) drops down to a much lower number, and I don't know where that threshold would be, and there's more pressure on James Webb or a new telescope, then we would put it into a senior review where it competes against those other instruments."

 

All that said, Grunsfeld added, "I think we'll get to 2020 with Hubble."

 

Hubble was launched 24 years ago, on April 24, 1990, aboard the shuttle Discovery. In what became the opening chapter of a space drama rivaling the "Perils of Pauline," engineers discovered its presumably near-perfect 94.5-inch primary mirror suffered from spherical aberration, a condition that prevented it from bringing starlight to a sharp focus.

 

In a remarkable display of Apollo 13-style ingenuity, engineers precisely mapped the aberration and designed corrective optics that were installed during a December 1993 shuttle servicing mission, the first of five that eventually were launched.

 

With its razor-sharp vision restored, Hubble quickly became one of the most scientifically productive observatories ever built, chalking up a steady string of major discoveries and sending down spectacular images that now grace everything from scholarly journals to grade school textbooks, T-shirts and posters.

 

"It's images have become part of our culture in our textbooks, magazines, art and even popular movies and TV programs," Ed Weiler, former Hubble project scientist and Grunsfeld's predecessor at NASA Headquarters, said before the final shuttle visit. "Although we probably never will be able to visit these places or objects, Hubble actually allows our human minds and spirits to travel light years and even billions of light years to the farthest reaches of the cosmos."

 

Along with helping astronomers pin down the age of the universe -- 13.7 billion years -- with unprecedented precision, Hubble observations confirmed the existence of super-massive black holes and played a key role in supernova observations confirming the presence of "dark energy," a mysterious force that appears to be speeding up the expansion of the universe.

 

More recently, Hubble has been used to search for minor planets beyond Pluto, to look for planets orbiting other suns, to improve the accuracy of astronomical distance measurements and to study gravitational lenses created by galaxy clusters that magnify the light from even more distant, and ancient, galaxies that formed shortly after the big bang.

 

The secret to Hubble success was NASA's ability to launch shuttle servicing missions to replace outdated or malfunctioning components, to repair systems that could not be replaced and to install new, state-of-the-art instruments to keep the observatory at the forefront of astronomy.

 

"The spherical aberration story is one for the history books," James Jeletic, deputy project manager of Hubble operations at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told CBS News. "And then the astronauts and the whole idea of the servicing, which allowed us to put new instruments on board and things of that nature, that has worked just absolutely spectacularly."

 

Four years after Hubble was equipped with corrective optics, astronauts on a second servicing mission installed two new instruments -- the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, or NICMOS -- replaced a fine guidance sensor, a gyroscope and installed a solid-state data recorder.

 

After multiple gyroscope failures in the late 1990s, NASA managers decided to split a third servicing mission into two shuttle flights.

 

During Servicing Mission 3A, launched in December 1999, spacewalking astronauts installed a new flight computer, a second solid-state data recorder, another fine guidance sensor and a full set of six gyroscopes. During Servicing Mission 3B, launched in March 2002, another shuttle crew installed two new solar arrays, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, an experimental cooling system for NICMOS and a replacement power control unit.

 

Then, 11 months later, the shuttle Columbia was destroyed during re-entry by a breach in its wing leading edge heat shield. Plans for a fifth shuttle visit, Servicing Mission 4, were put on hold and eventually cancelled by then-NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe.

 

He made the decision in large part because Hubble and the International Space Station were in different orbits and a Hubble repair crew could not reach safe haven aboard the station if their shuttle suffered a Columbia-class problem.

 

But NASA and contractor engineers eventually came up with heat-shield repair techniques and O'Keefe's successor, Michael Griffin, reinstated the fifth servicing mission.

 

During the final visit in 2009, four spacewalkers working in two-man teams carried out five back-to-back spacewalks, installing six new stabilizing gyroscopes, a full set of six nickel-hydrogen battery packs, a new data computer and two new instruments, the $126 million Wide Field Camera 3 and the $81 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.

 

The repair crew also installed an upgraded fine guidance sensor, new insulation blankets and a grapple fixture that will permit attachment of a rocket motor at some point down the road to enable a controlled re-entry when Hubble's orbit decays to the point of no return.

 

Grunsfeld and his crewmates also repaired two science instruments, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which suffered a power supply failure in 2004, and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which malfunctioned in 2007.

 

Jeletic said other than a single gyro failure, the observatory is operating in near-flawless fashion five years after the final shuttle crew departed.

 

"Batteries are fine, solar arrays are fine, all the communications equipment is fine, we don't see any glitches with the computers, the instruments are all fine," he said. "In fact, an interesting statistic, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which was repaired by the astronauts during the last servicing mission, that's actually now run longer on the repair than it did originally for the Wide Field Camera part of it."

 

The ACS, like the repaired Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, no longer has any internal redundancy.

 

"It's amazing. It truly is," Jeletic said. "Given all the things that can fail, a lot of people were hoping for one or two years of continued work with it. Now we've gotten over five."

 

Likewise, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which also is operating in "single-string" mode, is still going strong.

 

"It shares the load in spectroscopy with COS (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph)," Jeletic said. "COS gets a little bit more work, but STIS gets its fair share."

 

The only other instrument issues have been transitory space radiation-triggered

single-event upsets "where a particle came down and hit some part of the computer circuitry and caused a bit to flip."

 

"You reset the electronics and you're back in business," Jeletic said. "So no damage or anything like that, and we were back up and running in less than 30 hours. So that's a no brainer. We get those on different parts of the spacecraft, that's not unusual."

 

Neither is shrinkage caused by a phenomenon known as desorption, in which atoms and molecules making up a spacecraft's components can slowly migrate to the surrounding environment. As a result, the telescope's structure has actually shrunk ever so slightly over the years. One of Hubble's Fine Guidance Sensors, while still operating normally, is suffering from a slightly reduced aperture.

 

"We see that, for example, with the optical telescope assembly, which is the structure that holds the mirrors," Jeletic said. "Every so often, every two or three years, we'll actually do a secondary mirror move to pull it back into focus. Similarly, with the Fine Guidance Sensors, there's still some of that going on. Nothing that we can't manage right now, just watching that trend."

 

The only other issue of any significance is the March 7 loss of a gyroscope, apparently due to the failure of a hair-thin flex wire that carried current to the unit. The gyro had operated for more than 50,000 hours when it failed, a near record.

 

Three of the six gyros installed in 2009, including the one that in March, used an older style flex wire design while three incorporated silver-coated "enhanced" flex wires to improve durability. In an unrelated event, another gyro was put in powered-down reserve because of "noise" in its circuitry. Engineers have since uploaded software to compensate and the gyro is considered fully operational.

 

In any case, Hubble normally operates with just three gyroscopes with the others in reserve, powered off but ready for use if needed. The gyro with the noise issue is one of the two currently held in reserve.

 

Jeletic said the loss of one gyro poses no issues for Hubble, especially given that engineers have developed software that would permit science operations to continue with two gyros or even with one.

 

"They're all ready to roll," Jeletic said of the software packages. "The two-gyro (software) was the first one, we actually used that before the previous servicing mission and then the one gyro we've implemented and tested as well. That's ready to go."

 

While engineers could improve Hubble's life expectancy by putting more gyros in reserve now, three are required to maximize the observatory's science return.

 

"We want to optimize that situation and get as much science back as we can while all the instruments are truly working," Jeletic said. "So we're going to stay in three-gyro mode. If that changes, if all the sudden we've lost two instruments or something, we may take another look at that. Or, if we end up losing gyros over time and we're down to two gyros, then we will automatically jump to the one-gyro mode and put one in reserve. That's the game plan."

 

Operating Hubble much beyond 2020 will be technically and politically problematic. And no matter what happens, the telescope will continue slowly but surely losing altitude because of atmospheric drag, a phenomenon that depends in large part on the 11-year solar cycle and how much the sun causes the atmosphere to heat up and expand.

 

Based on an average solar cycle, the latest projections show atmospheric friction will cause Hubble to fall back to Earth around 2036. In a worst-case scenario, re-entry could come as early as 2027.

 

NASA still plans to attach a small rocket motor to the base of the telescope at some point to make sure it can be guided to a safe entry, one that will ensure surviving debris falls into the ocean.

 

But planning for Hubble's re-entry is many years away. In the near term, as a recent senior-level NASA management review concluded, "Hubble is operating at or near the highest level of performance and scientific productivity in its history."

 

First photos of moon's surface released 50 years ago

 

Desair Brown and Emily Brown - USA TODAY

 

It was 50 years ago Thursday that we got our first close-up of the moon.

 

Up until that time no one really knew what the moon's surface looked like. That changed on July 31, 1964, when NASA spacecraft Ranger 7 – on a mission to explore the moon – made lunar impact.

The spacecraft, which was made up of two solar wings and six video cameras, sent back more than 4,000 photos to Earth. There's even film from NASA showing what the moon looked like right before impact.

 

"It looks as though this particular shot has been indeed a textbook operation," William Pickering, the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the mission, said at the time.

 

Ranger 7 took the first picture of the moon by a U.S. spacecraft that day at 9:09 a.m., about 17 minutes before impacting the lunar surface. In that 17 minutes it took 4,308 high-quality pictures and transmitted them back to earth in real time. The images were to be used for scientific study, as well as selecting landing sites for the Apollo moon missions.

 

The moon still draws fascination from scientists. Some have even debated whether or not it has a lumpy middle (yes, there actually is a study out that says that).

 

Bolden skeptical about prospects for NASA authorization bill this year

 

Jeff Foust – Space Politics

 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Wednesday he is not optimistic that Congress will pass a NASA authorization bill this year, and expects to start the 2015 fiscal year on a continuing resolution (CR).

 

Bolden, speaking at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, said he was more optimistic about the prospects of an authorization bill last month, when the House passed its version of the legislation on a 401-2 vote. "That was not lost on me," he said of the margin of passage. "My naïveté caused me to believe that, boy, things are going to change."

 

However, the Senate has yet to take up the House bill or even introduce its own version. "They have talked off and on about an authorization bill, but we don't see any serious movement there right now," he said, adding that Congress was about to go on its summer recess and not return until early September. "I am not optimistic that we will get an authorization bill until 2015."

 

On the appropriations side, Bolden said that that the increase in funding offered in the House bill over the administration's request "was a very pleasant surprise for all of us." He added that he was "disappointed" the bill didn't fully fund commercial crew, offering $785 million versus the requested $848 million, "but we'll take it." He added he was also concerned about cuts in the bill in the request for Space Technology.

 

The Senate's version of the appropriations bill provides similar funding levels, but has stalled out on the Senate floor because of unrelated issues. "There's a strong possibility that the federal government could be funded through a continuing resolution for a period of time during fiscal year 2015," he said. (Reports suggest that a CR would fund the government at least past the November elections.)

 

That's a setback after the progress made though last month indicated a chance the appropriations would become law before the fiscal year begins on October 1. "Once again, we've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory," Bolden said. "Everybody was really excited and looking forward to a really healthy budget."

 

Bolden also offered a bit of news about the ongoing review of proposals submitted to the next round of the commercial crew program, Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). "Our progress on commercial crew source selection deliberations has been evidently better than we anticipated," he said. He said that those awards would come "much sooner than later this year," but was not more specific. NASA officials have generally said over the last few months that the CCtCap contract or contracts would be announced in August or September.

 

Americans Deserve Effective Science Funding

 

The Daily Caller

 

There's a growing worry that America is falling behind, with our best days behind us. Our economic strength and national security depends on technological leadership.  Since the 1940s, America has led the World in research and development (R&D) spending. But our crucial technological edge isn't guaranteed.  Experts now project the U.S. will fall behind China in R&D spending in about ten years.

 

Five years after the Obama administration announced the end of the recession, unemployment remains at historically high levels, including nearly 3.5 million long-term unemployed and millions of recent college graduates who are jobless. Our gross domestic product (GDP) fell almost three percent in the first quarter of this year, which makes this the worst GDP report in five years.

 

China now operates the world's fastest supercomputer. American astronauts rely on Russia to transport them to and from the International Space Station. High-energy physicists look to research conducted in Europe over research conducted in America.  And we also risk losing our lead in other areas such as nano-technology, the health sciences, and lasers.  This is the wrong direction for our country's future.

 

We can't have innovation without research and development. Efficient and effective investments in research and development (R&D) can curb this trend. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is leading our country toward a future in which new technology-driven businesses and jobs will be created elsewhere. The president's science advisor says that America should get used to being second (or third) in R&D, conceding, "We can't expect to be number one in everything indefinitely."

 

We must re-direct public investments in research to the areas that boost economic growth and job creation:  biology, computer science, mathematics and engineering. Smart use of taxpayer dollars geared toward R&D will help fuel the economy, create jobs and lead to new technologies that benefit Americans' daily lives. The investments in R&D today will lead us to the innovative technologies and ideas of tomorrow.

 

The White House budget cuts funds for research in the medical and physical sciences and instead increases spending for social and political science studies. The National Science Foundation (NSF), a critically important outlet for taxpayer-supported basic research, has spent millions of taxpayer dollars in recent years on frivolous and expensive projects such as "The Great Immensity," a climate change musical that closed after three weeks, and "Re-live Prom Night," an online game.

 

When taxpayer money is spent on frivolous musicals, there is less money to support scientific research that can yield technological breakthroughs and opportunities for economic growth. I and others in Congress have asked repeatedly for information about many questionable grants, but the NSF refuses to provide answers.

 

Earlier this summer, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which I chair, passed the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology Act, or FIRST Act.  Our bill prioritizes public investments in high quality research in the so-called "hard sciences." In sum, our legislation will enable America to remain "FIRST" in crucial areas of science and research.

 

The FIRST Act also requires the National Science Foundation to be accountable for its actions. Americans deserve to know what federal science agencies are doing. Federal sciences agencies should be accountable to the American taxpayer for their funding decisions. They should explain why grants that receive taxpayer funding are important and have the potential to benefit the national interest. It's not the government's money; it's the people's money.

 

Continuing public support for important, high quality scientific research is essential to America's future economic and national security. But with limited funding, we must prioritize.  Americans are right to question why NSF chooses to fund studies of animal pictures in National Geographic instead of projects that could help our wounded warriors or save lives or create jobs.

 

Congress has a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and are focused on national priorities. We can still be that great nation that the revolutionaries fought to establish over 200 years ago. Smart investments in R&D will ensure that we will remain an extraordinary nation for years to come.

 

Congressman Lamar Smith represents the 21st Congressional District of Texas.

 

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/31/americans-deserve-good-science-funding/#ixzz399QLPqZ9

 

NASA, FDIC score high marks for leadership communication

 

Federal News Radio

 

When it comes to leadership communication, NASA and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation rise to the top, according to a Partnership for Public Service analysis released Wednesday.

 

The report is part of the partnership's Best Places to Work analysis.

 

In conducting the analysis, the partnership and Deloitte examined the results of three questions from the Office of Personnel Management's 2013 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The questions address how satisfied employees are with communication and information they receive from senior management.

 

As with job satisfaction and morale, employees' views on the effectiveness of leadership communication are dropping across the federal government.

 

Data from the analysis shows that 44.8 percent of the federal workforce is satisfied with communication it receives from agency leadership — a 3.9 percent drop since 2009.

 

In addition, government employees report less satisfaction than their private sector counterparts. According to data from the Hay Group, 60 percent of private sector employees are satisfied with the information they receive from management

 

Based on 2013 data, NASA scores highest among large agencies on the leadership communication index, with 68 points out of 100.

 

NASA hosts Virtual Executive Summits, which allow Administrator Charles Bolden to connect with employees online. Employees across the nation are able to virtually participate in live sessions and activities through NASA's human resources portal.

 

"This initiative demonstrates how agency leaders can leverage technology to engage in meaningful interactions with employees, even when these employees are based in diverse geographic locations," the report stated.

 

Managers at regional NASA offices also hold focus groups and surveys with their employees to ask for feedback.

 

FDIC tops the list of mid-sized agencies, with a leadership communication score of 68.8.

 

Agency leaders hold quarterly call-ins that allow employees — both in Washington, D.C., and at regional offices — to speak directly with Chairman Martin Gruenberg.

 

FDIC managers host virtual and in-person town hall meetings to pass down information from senior leadership to frontline employees.

 

Top 5 - Leadership Communication Rankings by Agency Size

Large	Mid-size	Small
NASA (68.0)	Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (68.8)	Surface Transportation Board (75.9)
Intelligence Community (61.8)	Nuclear Regulatory Commission (65.9)	Federal Labor Relations Authority (73.7)
Treasury Department (58.0)	Federal Trade Commission (64.6)	Overseas Private Investment Corporation (70.3)
Social Security Administration (57.3)	Federal Communications Commission (60.5)	Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (69.3)
Commerce Department (56.7)	Office of Personnel Management (60.2)	National Endowment for the Humanities (66.4)

 

The departments of Homeland Security, Interior, Housing and Urban Development and the Broadcasting Board of Governors round out the bottom of the lists, each scoring less than 50.

 

The Office of the Trade Representative receives the lowest ranking among all agencies, with a score of 34.1 points.

 

"There is a statistically significant correlation between effective workplace communication and employee job satisfaction," the report said.

 

Trends in the leadership communication rankings match strongly with Best Places to Work rankings. NASA and FDIC were among the highest ranked, while HUD and EPA were at the bottom of the list.

 

For the agencies with less-than-desirable scores, the partnership recommends making communication a "consistent priority for leadership."

 

It also advises agency managers to use both conventional and innovative platforms when communicating with employees. Agencies can continue to hold one-on-one meetings and send emails, but they can also explore newer techniques, such as video conferencing and social media.

 

 

More at www.spacetoday.net

 

END