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Friday, August 8, 2014

Fwd: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday – August 8, 2014 and JSC Today



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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: August 8, 2014 11:07:13 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday – August 8, 2014 and JSC Today

Happy Friday everyone. 

 As usual, it was great to see so many of you at our monthly Retirees luncheon yesterday.  My apologies for not being able to chat with you all to catch up on both our Happenings since my last opportunity to visit with you.  Especially great to have Dave Thelen join us yesterday since he recently joined the Retired Ranks!  My apologies also, if I have failed to acknowledge any other first timers at our monthly Luncheon.

Have a safe and great weekend.

 

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   Jobs and Training

  1. Space Available – APPEL Foundations of Aerospace

This five-day course is designed for all NASA employees to learn about NASA's strategic direction, its missions, governance structures, technical guidelines and mission directorate programs and projects, as well as NASA's past, present and future. The learning experience is to immerse participants into the meaning of working at NASA and the principles of technical excellence. The aerospace foundations course provides the big picture overview of NASA, its governance model and operations. NASA leadership and various technical experts will provide insight into the organization and inner workings of the agency. This course is available for registration in SATERN and is open to civil servants and contractors on a space-available basis.

Dates: Aug. 18 to 22

Location: Building 12, Room 200

Aaron Blevins x33111 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...

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   Community

  1. Falling into Fall - Pick Your Perfect Opportunity

As the kids get ready to go back to school, the opportunities for sharing NASA's messages are multiplying like times tables. Here are some cool opportunities—among the many on the V-CORPs calendar!

The International Air and Space Program is hosting a series of one-hour webcasts from Space Center Houston for students around the world. We need subject matter experts to talk about the following subjects:

Aug. 14, 2 to 3 p.m.: Water Purification Systems

Aug. 21, 2 to 3 p.m.: Spacesuit Design

Sept. 4, 2 to 3 p.m.: Outposts and Sustainable Communities on Mars

Sept. 18, 2 to 3 p.m.: Curiosity and Robotics

Oct. 2, 2 to 3 p.m.: Rocketry

Oct. 16, 2 to 3 p.m.: Commercial Spaceflight

Aug 14: We still need a few volunteers help with Bring Our Children to Work Day at Space Center Houston. BONUS: Did you know that you could be among the first to see the shuttle orbiter model Independence perched on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft?

Aug. 16, 9 to 11 a.m.: For something more interactive, we are looking for a volunteer to engage with children and their families as they visit the Legacy Community Health clinic in preparation for back to school. No "speech" required—just help get these K through 5th graders pumped up about SCHOOL in a NASA way.

Page through the calendar for more opportunities in September, October and even November! Pick the outreach opportunity (opportunities!) that work best for you.

V-CORPs 281-792-5859

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JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles.

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

 

 

 

NASA and Human Spaceflight News

Friday – August 8, 2014

 

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: ISS astronaut Reid Wiseman is the first astronaut to post Vine videos from space. Wiseman posted a 6 second #SpaceVine yesterday of lightning over Italy and it has been looped nearly 200,000 times and was shown on about 50 television broadcasts in the past day. Another video of Houston under a lightning storm has been looped over 10 million times. Wiseman is also posting the videos on his Twitter account.

HEADLINES AND LEADS

Study: Sleepless in space, astronauts rely on sleeping pills unsuited to 'hazardous occupations'

 

Fred Barbash - Washington Post

 

May cause drowsiness, decreased mental alertness, and problems with coordination. Don't drive or operate machinery. Don't engage in hazardous occupations requiring complete mental alertness or motor coordination.

 

These are among the standard warnings for lots of sleeping pills. And that's fine if you don't have to go out on the highway or operate a backhole. But what if your workplace 24 hours per day is a big, heavy, hazardous machine in outer space, like the shuttle of the International Space Station? The question is getting renewed attention in the most extensive study to date of the sleeping habits of astronauts as recorded in flight. They've got a problem sleeping, it said, and lots of them, up to three-fourths, take medication to help them doze off.

 

 

Sleeping pills in space: Astronauts are regular users

 

Kim Painter – USA Today

 

Drowsy drivers, you have company — in space. Astronauts in space get scant sleep, and the majority take sleeping pills to cope, says a 10-year study to be published Friday in Lancet Neurology. The largest-ever look at astronaut sleep habits was conducted through 2011, when the last U.S. space shuttle flew. It finds shuttle astronauts slept just less than six hours on an average night and that International Space Station astronauts slept only a few minutes more. About 75% took sleeping pills, mostly zolpidem (better known by the brand name Ambien).

 

 

Space-flight sleep study reports use of hypnotics to help astronauts rest

Pills could affect crew members' performance

 

Yasmeen Abutaleb – Boston Globe

 

Astronaut Jeffrey A. Hoffman barely slept in the days leading up to his first space shuttle mission in 1985. And the adrenaline rush during the flight kept him up, so he spent his nights staring out the window instead of sleeping the eight hours NASA allotted. On the third day of the mission, he was falling asleep while performing a task, and crew members shouted at him to wake up. So he began taking sleeping pills to improve his performance. His experience was not at all unusual, according to a study published Thursday by Boston and Colorado researchers. Three-quarters of astronauts in the 10-year study reported using sleeping pills such as zolpidem and zaleplon during nights in space, a worrisome finding because the medications can jeopardize the ability to quickly wake up and respond to emergencies, the researchers said in the study published in the journal The Lancet Neurology.

 

 

Everyone Hates NASA's Asteroid Capture Program

And they're finally saying something about it

 

Loren Grush - Popular Science

 

At first, the concept behind NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) sounds nifty. In the early 2020s, the space agency will send a robotic vehicle equipped with an enormous bag to capture a 10-meter-diameter piece of a near-Earth asteroid and tug it into lunar orbit. Then, astronauts will travel to the foreign boulder, where they will explore and retrieve rock samples to bring to Earth. The problem is that practically everyone thinks this is a terrible idea, and some notable critics are now starting to voice their opinions about the project.

 

 

SpaceX Sets November, January Dates for Launch Abort Tests of Crew-capable Dragon

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. will perform a pair of crucial launch abort tests beginning later this year for the crewed version of the Dragon space capsule central to the company's bid to become NASA's post-shuttle provider of astronaut transportation. The Hawthorne, California-based company plans to conduct a pad abort test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, in November, followed by an in-flight abort test from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in January, Garrett Reisman, SpaceX Dragon Rider program manager, said here Aug. 6 at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2014 conference.

 

 

ATK Completes Critical Design Review for Five-Segment SLS Rocket Booster

 

Mike Killian - AmericaSpace.com

 

When NASA's giant 320-foot-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket flies its first unmanned Orion/SLS flight test in 2017, one of the most noticeable—if not the most noticeable—characteristics of the launch will be the incredibly bright fireball and thick plume that will follow the rocket up during its ascent toward space. Four powerful liquid-fueled RS-25 engines on the SLS won't be enough to get the job done, though; SLS simply needs more power in order to deliver the 70 Metric tons (154,000 pounds) to orbit that NASA expects to fly on the initial SLS missions.

 

 

SLS boosters pass critical design review

WAAY-TV

 

ASA's Space Launch System, the most ambitious rocket to date, hit another milestone.  The Rocket Booster team completed their critical design review at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on August 6. This means that the team can continue testing with building the actual hardware.  Manufacturing will take place at the ATK corporation in Utah, and qualifications testing will begin shortly after.

 

 

How to See Europe's Last Space Station Cargo Ship in the Night Sky

 

Joe Rao – space.com

 

A robotic European cargo vessel is closing in on the International Space Station over the coming week, and skywatchers can follow the chase. The European Space Agency's fifth Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5) blasted off July 29 and is scheduled to arrive at the orbiting lab on Aug. 12. There will be a number of opportunities to see both the space station and the cargo ship streaking across the night sky, even for observers in brightly lit cities.

 

 

Lightning Storm Seen From Space Captured By Astronaut Reid Wiseman

 

Ed Mazza – Huffington Post

 

A lightning storm viewed from space looks like it could be a deleted scene from "Independence Day."

Just check out this time-lapse video taken by American astronaut Reid Wiseman, who is currently aboard the International Space Station: https://vine.co/v/MFzIvZBq6M7

 

 

How Do You #SpotTheStation?

 

Nancy Atkinson – Universe Today

 

How would you like to have one of your astrophotos sent up to the astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station? Since arriving on the ISS back in May, astronaut Reid Wiseman has been posting beautiful images of the International Space Station passing overhead, taken by people from all around the world. There's a dedicated team of people working behind the scenes back on Earth to make sure Wiseman and his crewmates get to see as many images as possible. This is all part of the #SpotTheStation, a project to get people to look up and see the ISS — to increase the "visibility" off the space station, so to speak — to make the general public more aware of the station and what benefits it brings to science. Of course, being able to see the space station fly overhead is always a fun experience!

 

 

First look: NASA's new $39 million Huntsville building dedicated to future human space flight

 

Lee Roop – Huntsville Times

 

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Four years after a brutal Washington budget fight over NASA's future led to hundreds of aerospace layoffs in Huntsville, the Marshall Space Flight Center is ready to cut the ribbon on a $39 million office building dedicated to its new mission in human space flight. On Wednesday, Aug. 13, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Mobile) and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) will help NASA officially open the 110,000-square-foot Building 4220. It is in the southeast corner of Marshall's administrative complex at the intersection of Rideout and Neal roads and Labathe Avenue on Redstone Arsenal.

 

 

Space Medicine

 

Matteo Emanuelli - Space Safety Magazine

 

Space Medicine is a branch of medicine born in the '50s, to support the human space exploration in the hostile space environment. Not only the microgravity environment, but also the increased radiations and isolation, produce effects both on human body and minds that have not yet been fully understood in a long-term scale. Medicine in space, as well as medicine on Earth progressed step by step, adapting to the new challenges and stretching the duration of spaceflights to test the limits of the current understanding.

 

COMPLETE STORIES

Study: Sleepless in space, astronauts rely on sleeping pills unsuited to 'hazardous occupations'

 

Fred Barbash - Washington Post

 

May cause drowsiness, decreased mental alertness, and problems with coordination. Don't drive or operate machinery. Don't engage in hazardous occupations requiring complete mental alertness or motor coordination.

 

These are among the standard warnings for lots of sleeping pills. And that's fine if you don't have to go out on the highway or operate a backhole.

 

But what if your workplace 24 hours per day is a big, heavy, hazardous machine in outer space, like the shuttle of the International Space Station?

 

The question is getting renewed attention in the most extensive study to date of the sleeping habits of astronauts as recorded in flight. They've got a problem sleeping, it said, and lots of them, up to three-fourths, take medication to help them doze off.

 

The study, by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School and the University of Colorado, is published in the Lancet Neurology and summarized in a release from Brigham and Women's.

 

It looked at the data from more than 4,200 nights spent in space by 64 astronauts on 80 shuttle missions and 21 astronauts aboard International Space Station (ISS) missions.

 

"Crew members attempted and obtained significantly less sleep per night" than would otherwise be the case, the study found. Though NASA recommends eight hours of sleep for astronauts, the study said as a group they averaged just less than six hours on shuttle missions and just more than six hours on the space station. They also got less sleep just before flights as well, it said.

 

To help themselves sleep, the researchers found "widespread use of sleeping medications such as zolpidem and zaleplon during space flight," said the summary. "Three-quarters of ISS crew members reported taking sleep medication at some point during their time on the space station, and more than three-quarters (78 percent) of shuttle-mission crew members used medication on more than half (52 percent) of nights in space."

 

"Sleep deficiency is pervasive among crew members," Laura K. Barger of BWH's Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, stated in the BWH press release. "It's clear that more effective measures are needed to promote adequate sleep in crew members, both during training and space flight, as sleep deficiency has been associated with performance decrements in numerous laboratory and field-based studies."

 

"The ability for a crew member to optimally perform if awakened from sleep by an emergency alarm may be jeopardized by the use of sleep-promoting pharmaceuticals," said Barger. "Routine use of such medications by crew members operating spacecraft are of particular concern, given the U. S. Federal Drug Administration warning that patients using sleeping pills should be cautioned against engaging in hazardous occupations requiring complete mental alertness or motor coordination, including potential impairment of performance of such activities that may occur the day following ingestion of sedative/hypnotics.  This consideration is especially important because all crew members on a given mission may be under the influence of a sleep promoting medication at the same time."

 

This problem is not news to NASA, though the extent of sleeplessness and of medication use is greater than earlier studies reported. In 2001, an agency press release, "Wide Awake in Outer Space," highlighted the issue:

 

Astronauts sleep poorly in space and it's no wonder. Just consider: the excitement of blasting off on a powerful rocket, the strange sensations of floating in free-fall, the novelty of mornings that return every 90 minutes.  Who could sleep through all that?

 

The study was supported by NASA and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute.

 

Sleeping pills in space: Astronauts are regular users

 

Kim Painter – USA Today

 

Drowsy drivers, you have company — in space.

 

Astronauts in space get scant sleep, and the majority take sleeping pills to cope, says a 10-year study to be published Friday in Lancet Neurology.

 

The largest-ever look at astronaut sleep habits was conducted through 2011, when the last U.S. space shuttle flew. It finds shuttle astronauts slept just less than six hours on an average night and that International Space Station astronauts slept only a few minutes more. About 75% took sleeping pills, mostly zolpidem (better known by the brand name Ambien).

 

The study, funded but not conducted by NASA, raises some safety concerns for future missions, researchers say.

 

"In ground-based studies, we know that sleeping less than six hours is associated with performance detriments," says lead author Laura Barger, a research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

 

Heavy sleeping pill use is a concern, too, she says. "If an astronaut had to be awakened in the middle of the night for some emergency situation, their performance could be impaired."

 

Even next-day drowsiness is a potential issue, she and her colleagues note. They quote from a Food and Drug Administration warning on zolpidem that says "patients should be cautioned against engaging in hazardous occupations requiring complete mental alertness or motor coordination such as operating machinery or driving a motor vehicle."

 

Zolpidem has also been associated with "sleep-driving," according to the FDA.

 

The study included 64 shuttle astronauts and 21 space station astronauts of various nationalities. The participants kept sleep and medication logs. They also wore movement monitors to confirm sleep times.

 

While the researchers did not collect data on performance, they have evidence astronauts were sleep-deprived. One clue: Once back on Earth, they slept more — just like many sleep-deprived workers do on weekends, Barger says.

 

Also, journals kept for another study show astronauts often complain about sleepiness, the authors say.

 

Christopher Winter, a sleep medicine specialist from Charlottesville, Va., who was not involved in the research, says the methods used for quantifying sleep in the study are not as precise as sleep lab studies. He also says people in new and stressful situations tend to underestimate their sleep. But he doesn't doubt that "getting launched out of the Earth's atmosphere" contributes to some sleeplessness.

 

NASA rules say astronauts' schedules must include 8.5 hours for sleep. Work demands and conditions such as cold, heat, noise and, of course, weightlessness, might get in the way, Barger says. So, she says, more solutions are needed, especially as the agency plans longer missions, including an eventual trip to Mars.

 

In a statement, NASA said it is "committed to fully understanding the impacts of long-duration spaceflight on our astronauts. ... Our astronauts work in harsh, complex environments where they are sometimes subjected to uncomfortable and high stress situations. The agency works hard to identify and implement countermeasures that can ensure astronauts are able to get the same quality and quantity of sleep in space as they do on Earth."

 

 

Space-flight sleep study reports use of hypnotics to help astronauts rest

Pills could affect crew members' performance

 

Yasmeen Abutaleb – Boston Globe

 

Astronaut Jeffrey A. Hoffman barely slept in the days leading up to his first space shuttle mission in 1985. And the adrenaline rush during the flight kept him up, so he spent his nights staring out the window instead of sleeping the eight hours NASA allotted.

 

On the third day of the mission, he was falling asleep while performing a task, and crew members shouted at him to wake up. So he began taking sleeping pills to improve his performance.

 

His experience was not at all unusual, according to a study published Thursday by Boston and Colorado researchers. Three-quarters of astronauts in the 10-year study reported using sleeping pills such as zolpidem and zaleplon during nights in space, a worrisome finding because the medications can jeopardize the ability to quickly wake up and respond to emergencies, the researchers said in the study published in the journal The Lancet Neurology.

 

Sleeping pills come with warnings that the ability to drive or operate heavy machinery could be impaired.

 

Most astronauts do not sleep enough in the months leading up to a mission and during the mission, even though NASA allots 8.5 hours of sleep per night for crew members, the researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Colorado found.

 

"The concern is if there's an emergency situation and crew members have just taken hypnotics, they might not perform as well. You have to weigh the benefits of hypnotics against those risks," said Dr. Laura K. Barger, the lead author and an associate physiologist in the Brigham's Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. "We need to have better countermeasures to improve sleep."

 

NASA, which funded the study, issued a statement, saying, "Our astronauts work in harsh, complex environments where they are sometimes subjected to uncomfortable and high stress situations. The agency works hard to identify and implement countermeasures that can ensure astronauts are able to get the same quality and quantity of sleep in space as they do on Earth. . . . The agency is committed to sending humans farther into space than ever before and we need to fully understand the implications of that prior to embarking on a mission to Mars."

 

Researchers recorded more than 4,000 nights of sleep on Earth and more than 4,200 nights in space from 2001 to 2011, the largest-ever study of sleep during space flight. Astronauts often complain of fatigue and sleep deprivation, the researchers wrote, and the findings suggest that sleep problems begin up to three months before space missions, during training.

 

"If people are having problems sleeping, that's a risk to mission success," said Hoffman, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If something goes wrong, you want people to be at their peak in order to deal with it."

 

The study looked at astronauts on shuttle missions, which typically last one to two weeks, and long-duration missions, which are up to six months. Although researchers expected that astronauts on long-duration missions would sleep better, they only averaged a few minutes more sleep than shuttle mission astronauts; each group averaged about six hours a night.

 

During training, they got a bit more shuteye, but still less than 6.5 hours.

 

Researchers do not know whether medications are metabolized differently in space than on Earth and whether different dosages should be given as a result, said Dr. Dorit Donoviel, deputy chief scientist at the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, a partner of NASA that helped pay for the study.Further studies are planned to examine whether sleep requirements differ in space, she added, noting that individual astronauts also have varying sleep patterns.

 

"To keep humans healthy" in space, she added, "we have to understand how much sleep (they need) and how to allow them to get the sleep they need to perform at their peak."

 

For a planned manned mission to Mars, which would run for at least a year, improving sleep patterns is more important than ever, said Barger, of the Brigham.

 

When orbiting Earth, light and dark alternate every 90 minutes, disrupting circadian sleep patterns, Hoffman said. In 1990, his crew was scheduled to launch at midnight, but the astronauts were worried that they would not be fully alert.

 

A Harvard researcher proposed shifting their circadian rhythms so they would be prepared for the mission. The crew members were put in an all-white room where bright fluorescent lights shone at midnight, and darkness fell in the middle of the day. Their bodies adjusted in about two days. Now, all astronauts go through the process before each mission.

 

"If you're sleep-deprived, you start to make cognitive mistakes," Hoffman said. "Long-duration space flight has a whole new set of challenges with respect to sleep."

 

 

Everyone Hates NASA's Asteroid Capture Program

And they're finally saying something about it

 

Loren Grush - Popular Science

 

At first, the concept behind NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) sounds nifty.

 

In the early 2020s, the space agency will send a robotic vehicle equipped with an enormous bag to capture a 10-meter-diameter piece of a near-Earth asteroid and tug it into lunar orbit. Then, astronauts will travel to the foreign boulder, where they will explore and retrieve rock samples to bring to Earth.

 

The problem is that practically everyone thinks this is a terrible idea, and some notable critics are now starting to voice their opinions about the project.

 

On July 30 at NASA's 11th Small Bodies Assessment Group meeting in Washington, for example, MIT professor Richard Binzel presented a scathing takedown of the ARM program, claiming it could ultimately destroy NASA's Planetary Science Division.

 

"I love the idea of humans going to asteroids, but the retrieval idea is a dead end," Binzel, a planetary scientist who studies asteroids, tells Popular Science. "It's a one-and-done stunt."

 

Overall, ARM is touted as a way to advance NASA's much more significant goal of going to Mars. The space agency says that the mission will help astronauts become more familiar with a deep space environment (which has more cosmic radiation), as well as demonstrate flight capabilities that the Mars mission will inevitably use--notably, advanced solar electric propulsion.

 

Yet Binzel argues those reasons are, well, bogus. He says there's really no strategic merit for ARM, since bringing a small asteroid closer to Earth will do very little to lay the foundation for a manned mission to the red planet.

 

Additionally, retrieving a small sample of an asteroid wouldn't be exactly groundbreaking for science; 10-meter space objects pass between Earth and the Moon every week, and there are already tons of meteorite samples located in museums across the globe. Humankind has even retrieved samples of comet dust.

 

And to top things off, the entire ARM mission is set to cost billions of dollars.

 

"It really is an exercise of giving astronauts something to do that sounds cool and sounds important, but the scientific merit is not compelling," Binzel says.

 

When reached for comment, NASA declined to make a statement on the presentations made at SBAG.  They noted it would be "inappropriate" to say anything before NASA came out with their own official findings from the meeting.

 

In 2010, when President Barack Obama set the agenda for NASA, he challenged the agency to send astronauts to an asteroid and then to Mars. But a tight budget forced NASA to scale back the idea, and thus, ARM was born.

 

"Within the constraints the U.S. Congress put on NASA, this is the best use in the near term for getting humans into near-Earth orbit," says Charles Miller, president of NexGen Space LLC and former senior advisor for commercial space at NASA. "They don't have the money … so they get to fly to a point in space where there's really nothing there."

 

Both Miller and Binzel agree that in order to get to Mars, NASA is going to have to practice traveling to large objects in space. For Binzel, that means going to where the asteroids are found--not towing the goal post to Earth.

 

"I think doing something with asteroids in the future is important, but the magic words are 'asteroids in their native orbit,'" Binzel says. "They naturally exist between here and Mars, so if we build a ship with the capability to go to Mars, then we'll have the capability to go to an abundant number of asteroids."

 

Miller, on the other hand, is of a different mindset, and it's a growing sentiment among those in the scientific community: Return to the Moon first. NASA could mimic the design of a Moon mission to get to Mars or use Earth's satellite as a jumping off point, making the million-mile trip somewhat shorter. And Miller says a Moon trip won't necessarily break the bank.

 

"I led a NASA study that leveraged commercial launch and demonstrated we could return humans to the moon within NASA's existing budget," Miller says. "It would be a completely different strategy, using existing launch vehicles such as the Atlas V and Delta 4, but we could get to the moon in the next decade."

 

Regardless of which route to Mars is best, practically every person we've spoken to with a vested interest in human spaceflight (and who works outside NASA's walls) agrees that ARM has got to go. Even the National Research Council, the operating branch of the National Academy of Sciences, came out against ARM, saying it "failed to engender substantial enthusiasm either in the Congress or the scientific community."

 

"This sense that this mission doesn't cut the mustard is so widespread but so whispered about for fear of retribution that I felt it was important as a professor at a private university to speak what one sees as the honest truth," Binzel says.

 

 

SpaceX Sets November, January Dates for Launch Abort Tests of Crew-capable Dragon

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. will perform a pair of crucial launch abort tests beginning later this year for the crewed version of the Dragon space capsule central to the company's bid to become NASA's post-shuttle provider of astronaut transportation.

 

The Hawthorne, California-based company plans to conduct a pad abort test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, in November, followed by an in-flight abort test from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in January, Garrett Reisman, SpaceX Dragon Rider program manager, said here Aug. 6 at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2014 conference.

 

In the pad-abort test, Dragon will be mounted to a mocked-up SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and use its hydrazine-fueled SuperDraco thrusters to boost itself up and away from the pad, as it might need to do in the event of a major problem just before or during liftoff. The in-flight test will attempt to repeat the feat at altitude.

 

If the schedule, announced Aug. 6, holds, SpaceX will complete the abort tests about a year later than it planned when the company signed its Commercial Crew Integrated Capabilities agreement with NASA in 2012. The pact, now worth $440 million, was one of three NASA awarded under the program's third major phase. As in all previous phases, NASA's commercial crew partners are paid for completing negotiated milestones. The two abort tests are worth a combined $60 million to SpaceX.

 

The fourth and final commercial crew award is now expected in late August or early September. The fixed-price deal, known as Commercial Crew Transportation Capability, will cover development and safety certification of at least one commercially designed system. The deal will also cover the selected providers' first round-trip astronaut flight to the international space station.

 

SpaceX is competing against Boeing Space Exploration of Houston and Sierra Nevada Space Systems of Louisville, Colorado, for a Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract. NASA plans call for launching its first astronauts aboard the winning spacecraft by December 2017.

 

 

ATK Completes Critical Design Review for Five-Segment SLS Rocket Booster

 

Mike Killian - AmericaSpace.com

 

When NASA's giant 320-foot-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket flies its first unmanned Orion/SLS flight test in 2017, one of the most noticeable—if not the most noticeable—characteristics of the launch will be the incredibly bright fireball and thick plume that will follow the rocket up during its ascent toward space. Four powerful liquid-fueled RS-25 engines on the SLS won't be enough to get the job done, though; SLS simply needs more power in order to deliver the 70 Metric tons (154,000 pounds) to orbit that NASA expects to fly on the initial SLS missions.

 

That's where ATK and their five-segment solid rocket boosters (SRB's) come in to play: the critical extra "push" SLS needs to break away from Earth's gravity to send astronauts on deep space missions of exploration. This week the Utah-based SLS booster supplier completed the Critical Design Review (CDR) for the boosters, which will be the largest human-rated solid rocket motors ever to fly.

 

"Achieving this milestone is a tremendous accomplishment for ATK and NASA as we continue building the boosters for America's Space Launch System," said Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager of ATK's Space Launch division. "Deep space exploration requires a heavy lift vehicle, and SLS is the only vehicle with the mass, volume and speed required for human missions to destinations such as the moon, an asteroid or Mars."

 

The five-segment motor is based on the space shuttle's four-segment boosters, which were also provided by ATK, but the new version for SLS has been upgraded to incorporate new materials and technologies and will provide 30 percent more power than the boosters which launched NASA's now retired shuttle fleet.

 

According to ATK, each motor will consist of five rocket motor segments, thrust vector control, and an aft exit cone assembly (153 feet long and 12 feet in diameter). The entire booster, including nose cap, frustum, and forward and aft skirts, will be approximately 177 feet long, and of the booster's 1.6 million pounds total weight, the propellant alone will account for 1.4 million pounds.

 

If the heat energy of ATK's five-segment SLS boosters could be converted to electric power, the two SRBs firing for two minutes (which is how long they burn before going dry) would produce 2.3 million kilowatt hours of power, enough to supply the entire power demand of over 92,000 homes for a full day.

 

Having now completed the CDR, ATK's SLS booster design can now proceed toward qualification testing. According to ATK, the booster avionics qualification efforts are also in work and will be incorporated into the vehicle qualification effort, which is scheduled for completion in 2016.

 

"ATK's technology innovation, process improvements and lean manufacturing will enable SLS to deliver humans and cargo to deep space faster, safer and more affordably than any other existing or planned vehicle," said Precourt, who is also a four-time space shuttle astronaut. "It is exciting to see that the teams working on SLS and the Orion crew capsule are all making steady progress toward NASA achieving a human mission to Mars by the 2030's."

 

A full-scale ground static firing of the booster, Qualification Motor-1 (QM-1), is planned for late this year/early next year at ATK's facility in Promontory, Utah. The next major booster milestone will be the Design Certification Review scheduled for fall of 2016.

 

ATK booster avionics and control tests were completed in December 2013. Booster avionics test was completed April 3, 2014, and completion of a significant structural test of the booster's main attachment mechanism, the forward skirt, was completed May 20, 2014.

 

Although ATK is tasked with providing the SRB's for at least the first two SLS flights in 2017 and 2021, later missions on the evolved SLS, which would be able to carry 130 Metric tons (286,000 pounds) to orbit, may fly on liquid-fueled boosters.

 

 

SLS boosters pass critical design review

WAAY-TV

 

ASA's Space Launch System, the most ambitious rocket to date, hit another milestone.  The Rocket Booster team completed their critical design review at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on August 6.

 

This means that the team can continue testing with building the actual hardware.  Manufacturing will take place at the ATK corporation in Utah, and qualifications testing will begin shortly after.

 

Over 350 NASA and contractor employees met and went over 1,200 pages of documents, diagrams and drawings during the review.

 

The boosters are an even larger 5 segment version of the successful Space Shuttle 4 segment boosters, which will be responsible for over three-quarters of the SLS's 130 metric ton lift capacity.

 

Watch the full interview with Deputy Project Manager Bruce Tiller here:

http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/play/5266878

 

 

How to See Europe's Last Space Station Cargo Ship in the Night Sky

 

Joe Rao – space.com

 

A robotic European cargo vessel is closing in on the International Space Station over the coming week, and skywatchers can follow the chase.

 

The European Space Agency's fifth Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5) blasted off July 29 and is scheduled to arrive at the orbiting lab on Aug. 12. There will be a number of opportunities to see both the space station and the cargo ship streaking across the night sky, even for observers in brightly lit cities.

 

ATV-5, which is named "Georges Lemaitre" after the Belgian astronomer and priest, is stocked with 7.3 tons of experiments, spare parts, clothing, food, fuel, air, oxygen and water for the space station's six-person crew. Georges Lemaitre's launch marked the last flight of the ATV fleet, which has been helping to resupply the station since 2008.

 

 

Lightning Storm Seen From Space Captured By Astronaut Reid Wiseman

 

Ed Mazza – Huffington Post

 

A lightning storm viewed from space looks like it could be a deleted scene from "Independence Day."

Just check out this time-lapse video taken by American astronaut Reid Wiseman, who is currently aboard the International Space Station: https://vine.co/v/MFzIvZBq6M7

 

Wiseman has been active on social media since reaching the ISS in May. In June, he sent the first-ever Vine from space, and regularly shares images via both Vine and Twitter.

 

 

How Do You #SpotTheStation?

 

Nancy Atkinson – Universe Today

 

How would you like to have one of your astrophotos sent up to the astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station? Since arriving on the ISS back in May, astronaut Reid Wiseman has been posting beautiful images of the International Space Station passing overhead, taken by people from all around the world.

 

There's a dedicated team of people working behind the scenes back on Earth to make sure Wiseman and his crewmates get to see as many images as possible. This is all part of the #SpotTheStation, a project to get people to look up and see the ISS — to increase the "visibility" off the space station, so to speak — to make the general public more aware of the station and what benefits it brings to science. Of course, being able to see the space station fly overhead is always a fun experience!

 

The #SpotTheStation project is getting photographers more involved, too. We get several images a week posted on our Flickr site of space station passes (see the gorgeous one above by David Murr).

Tweet #SpotTheStation if you see us fly over. Thanks Pete Glastonbury for sharing this great photo from Thursday. pic.twitter.com/DmUwYlCb0e

— Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) August 2, 2014

 

As you can see, a map of #SpotTheStation Tweets is being created here.

How do you get your images sent up to the ISS? You can email your picture to ISS@visual-aerials.com and include a description of your images of the ISS (location, date, times, maybe exposure information and techniques involved). Please also include your Twitter handle, Facebook or website information.

 

You can also just share your image through your social media outlets using #SpotTheStation hashtag.

How do you find out how to see the ISS? There are several different tools:

 

NASA's Spot the Station website: Enter your Country, Region, City along with an email address or mobile phone number. Then give your preference for notifications in the evening, morning or both and that's it. About twelve hours before the station is due to fly overhead, you'll get a notification from NASA.

 

Heaven's Above: A great website that will provide times and locations of where to look for the ISS and many more satellites that are flying over your location.

 

ISS Tracker: A real-time location tracker.

Satellite Flybys: A site that finds dates/times and the ccoordinates of a flyby at your location.

Fraser also put together a video (and article) about how to see the ISS:

You can find out more info this website, too.

We've also got a detailed guide on how to View the International Space Station for Beginners, and How to Photograph the International Space Station.

 

People are getting involved in this project, even if they've never taken a picture of the ISS previously. For example, photographer George Krieger who had never taken an image of the ISS before he heard of the #SpotTheStation project. He got right to it and on June 3 he captured two amazing ISS passes over Hollister, California. Take a look below:

 

Join in and maybe you can tell all your friend that YOUR image has been sent up to the International Space Station!

 

 

First look: NASA's new $39 million Huntsville building dedicated to future human space flight

 

Lee Roop – Huntsville Times

 

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Four years after a brutal Washington budget fight over NASA's future led to hundreds of aerospace layoffs in Huntsville, the Marshall Space Flight Center is ready to cut the ribbon on a $39 million office building dedicated to its new mission in human space flight.

 

On Wednesday, Aug. 13, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Mobile) and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) will help NASA officially open the 110,000-square-foot Building 4220. It is in the southeast corner of Marshall's administrative complex at the intersection of Rideout and Neal roads and Labathe Avenue on Redstone Arsenal.

 

The new building will house 400 engineers and technologists working on NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS). That's the new deep-space rocket Congress forced on the Obama administration in 2010 after the administration canceled NASA's Constellation rocket program for being behind schedule and over budget. U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa), who is not scheduled to be at the ribbon-cutting, was critical in assuring that development of SLS came to Huntsville, which has been NASA's lead propulsion center since Wernher von Braun.

 

SLS is now moving from design to construction - with Obama administration support - and will launch the first time in 2017, according to the current schedule. The long-term consequences of the end of the space shuttle program and the fight over NASA's role in human spaceflight are still shaking out.

 

The new building was designed for energy and water efficiency and has earned LEED Silver Certification. It follows modern practices by omitting most private offices in favor of open design with cubicles, conference rooms and collaboration spaces. A popular feature with workers already in the building is a white noise generator that muffles neighboring conversations.

 

The building replaces Building 4202, a 1960s' era construction that Marshall Operations Director Steve Doering says cost between $600,000 and $800,000 a year to maintain. "That's just fixing stuff that breaks," Doeing said this week. This week, schools and other government agencies claimed used - but still usable - furniture from Building 4202.

 

The cost to refurbish 4202 was estimated at $76 million, Doering said, mainly because of asbestos throughout the inside. The building will come down, and a virtual duplicate of Building 4220 will rise in its place, another modern construction technique that saves design costs.  Doeing said Marshall will end up with two new energy-efficient buildings for basically the cost of refurbishing one old building.

 

 

Space Medicine

 

Matteo Emanuelli - Space Safety Magazine

 

Space Medicine is a branch of medicine born in the '50s, to support the human space exploration in the hostile space environment. Not only the microgravity environment, but also the increased radiations and isolation, produce effects both on human body and minds that have not yet been fully understood in a long-term scale. Medicine in space, as well as medicine on Earth progressed step by step, adapting to the new challenges and stretching the duration of spaceflights to test the limits of the current understanding.

 

Origin and Evolution of Space Medicine

 

Initially, at the dawn of space age, the astronauts were military test pilots, a natural choice since the space race was driven mostly by political reasons. Later, doctors and scientists were introduced in order to provide medical expertizes on-board and conduct experiments. The first of them to be selected in 1967 was Story Musgrave who has flown six Space Shuttle missions, from 1983 to 1996.

 

Musgrave, when he was not flying in space, provided also his expertize as medical doctor to design medical equipment for Space Shuttle program. The medical kits that have flown through the years on every manned mission are clear examples of space medicine's evolution. From few drugs to complex diagnostic devices and tools to treat the majority of the conditions that can happen while in orbit. However, the current medical kits rely always on the possibility of returning home in few hours and the International Space Station (ISS) is not equipped with facilities to actually conduct surgical operations in microgravity or with improved diagnostic machines as the ones it would be possible to find in most of the hospitals of the world.

 

Space And Earth's Medicine

 

Zero-gravity, power requirements, and size are the most important limits preventing the direct transfer of medical technology from ground applications to orbit. However, these same restrictions create incentives to find innovative solutions. In order to support not only the current low-Earth orbit outpost, but also and especially the future human planetary missions, the efforts are now directed towards miniaturization and teleoperated surgical robots as well as new technologies to decrease the time of inactivity after an operation and prevent infections.

 

The space environment does not influence only humans. Bacteria and viruses are influenced as well and the scientific research conducted in space can greatly contribute to find effective vaccines for diseases on Earth. The terrestrial medicine has been also improved by some specific applications of space technologies: robot arms able to berth SpaceX's Dragon to the ISS, if miniaturized, can successfully operate a brain tumor and space-graded material can contribute to a Paralympic record.

 

Great improvements are still necessary, in order to fully support human life in space, however, space medical research has demonstrated to be able to greatly foster the development of medicine on Earth for the benefit of everyone.

 

 

END

More at www.spacetoday.net

 

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