Fwd: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Monday - September 29, 2014 and JSC Today

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: September 29, 2014 11:35:00 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Monday - September 29, 2014 and JSC Today

Hope you can join us at Hibachi Grill this Thursday for our monthly NASA Retirees Luncheon at  11:30 ! 

Hang around and eat never ending desserts with a cup of coffee or tea and then go listen to Dr. Rutley talk about the ISS Science achievements in the Gilruth Alamo room at 2:30.

 

NAL First Thursday Program Schedule:

· October 2, 2014 - Gilruth Center 2:30 - 4:00 PM - Dr. Tara Ruttley from the ISS Program Science Office will provide an Update on the science and research conducted on the International Space Station.

 

 

 

JSC SAIC/S&MA's Speaker Forum: The Evolution of Precision Medicine in Oncology; October 15, 2014; 11:30AM-12:30PM Central; JSC Gilruth Ballroom
You are invited to JSC's SAIC/Safety and Mission Assurance (S&MA) Speaker Forum featuring Dr. David C. Heimbrook, Laboratory Director, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research and President, Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc.

Dr. Heimbrook will share and discuss the following points:

•      What is precision medicine, and why is it important in Oncology?

•      How are precision medicines developed?

•      What are the limitations of highly targeted drugs in Oncology?

•      Will precision medicine be applied to other diseases and behaviors?

•      Are their ethical considerations to gathering the data needed to implement precision medicine?

As President of Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc. (formerly SAIC-Frederick), which operates Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research on behalf of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Heimbrook leads a technology-driven Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) supporting the NCI's mission at Frederick, MD.  In this role, he serves as Laboratory Director for Frederick National Laboratory, and is responsible for the comprehensive management and oversight of all scientific, operational, and business activities.

Dr. Heimbrook brings more than 20 years of experience and progressive responsibility in cancer research, translational medicine and organizational management to this position.  Prior to joining SAIC-Frederick in 2011, he was the global head of Discovery Oncology for the Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) organization at Roche, where he worked for 8 years. Prior to joining Roche, Dr. Heimbrook was the head of Cancer Research at Merck, based in West Point, PA, where he worked for 16 years.

Dr. Heimbrook has helped transition over a dozen molecules from research into clinical development and led internal discovery efforts at Roche supporting the development of vemurafenib, which was recently approved for the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma harboring a specific genetic mutation. Dr. Heimbrook earned a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University.  He has co-authored 6 patents and over seventy (70) scientific publications.

 

 

Monday, September 29, 2014

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JSC TODAY CATEGORIES Headlines -  JSC Tech Innovations in Sept. NASA Tech Briefs -  What's New at Safety and Health Day on Oct. 9? Organizations/Social -  EA Reunion 2014 -  Table Hosts Needed for ¡Festival! -  Free at the Safety and Health Fair Jobs and Training -  I&I Discussion Groups -  Space Available - APPEL - Creativity & Innovation -  Job Opportunities

Expedition 41 Crew Launches to the International Space Station

 

Headlines JSC Tech Innovations in Sept. NASA Tech Briefs The September edition of NASA Tech Briefs features 11 JSC innovations and showcases new technologies stemming from advanced research and technology programs at NASA. The latest edition includes the following advanced JSC innovations: Tissue-Equivalent Radiation Dosimeter-on-a-Chip with Plastic Scintillation Material Methods for Clock and Reset Synchronization in a CMOS Integrated Circuit Use of Solvent-Free Conditions/Dry Mixing for Functionalizing Carbon Nanotubes Fail-Safe Accumulator for Internal Active Thermal Control Loops Method for Authorizing Critical Effector Commands in a Space-Based Integrated Modular Avionics System Fully Configurable Interrupt Controller Shipping Foam Designer Software Visual International Space Station Configuration Viewing Tool Improved Math Model for Multiphoto Measurement Systems Multipurpose Attitude and Pointing System (MAPS) Version 6.2 Partition Level Application Test for Orion (PLATO) Read about these technologies and the inventors on the Strategic Opportunities and Partnership Development website. Holly Kurth x32951 [top] What's New at Safety and Health Day on Oct. 9? Team Rubicon, a disaster-response veterans' group, is an exhibitor you don't want to miss! An American non-government organization founded by retired U.S. Marines, Team Rubicon was established in 2010 after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths—with an additional 1 million people rendered homeless. Two Marines, Jake Wood and William McNulty, heard about the quake and knew they could help. Together with six other veterans and first responders, they gathered funds and medical supplies from friends and family and flew into the Dominican Republic. They rented a truck, loaded their gear and headed west to Haiti. They treated thousands of patients, traveling to camps deemed "too dangerous" by other aid organizations. Knowing they had found their calling, Team Rubicon was born. Come by their booth to learn more, and shake hands with these American heroes. Booths are open from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Event Date: Thursday, October 9, 2014   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:5:00 PM Event Location: Teague Auditorium, JSC Mall Area, Gilruth Add to Calendar Suprecia Franklin/Angel Plaza x37817/x37305 http://sthday.jsc.nasa.gov/ [top]    Organizations/Social EA Reunion 2014 Former employees of the Engineering Directorate, long known as the Engineering and Development Directorate, are holding a reunion at the Gilruth Center on Saturday, Oct. 18, from 12:30 to 5 p.m. They would like to extend an invitation to current employees, colleagues and family members to join them and reunite with veterans of the Engineering Directorate. Speakers will be former directors of Engineering. Heavy hors d-oeuvres will be served. Tickets are $16 and may be purchased online. Registration ends Oct. 6. Additionally, many organizations are having division- or office-level gatherings Friday or Saturday evening. Check the website above for additional information. Questions may be directed to Dianne Milner. Event Date: Saturday, October 18, 2014   Event Start Time:12:30 PM   Event End Time:5:00 PM Event Location: Gilruth Center Add to Calendar Dianne Milner x31206 [top] Table Hosts Needed for ¡Festival! As part of Hispanic Heritage Month/Mes de la Herencia Hispana, the Hispanic Employee Resource Group (HERG) is hosting ¡Festival!, A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage, on Oct. 14. We are looking for individuals (civil servants and contractors) to host informational tables to celebrate Hispanic countries and cultures. Table hosts will need to have their table ready by 11 a.m. and staff it from noon to 1:30 p.m. Some ideas for each table: Food samples Candies and sweets Photos and artwork Collectibles and sculptures Tourist attractions (or places that you've visited!) We want to showcase the richness of Hispanic culture. If interested, please contact the HERG and let us know which country you'd like to represent. Decorate, celebrate, participate! HERG Officers [top] Free at the Safety and Health Fair The JSC Safety and Health Action Team (JSAT) is hosting the "Why I Work Safely" photo-laminating booth on Thursday, Oct. 9, for JSC's Safety and Health Day. Don't forget to bring a photo of the reason you work safely (family, pets, sports car, boat, motorcycle, etc.), and we will laminate it for display on your lanyard. Do you always forget to bring a picture with you? You can email your photo ahead of time and then stop by the JSAT booth on Safety and Health Day to complete the emergency contact information and pick up your "Why I Work Safely" badge. Show everyone your reason(s) for working safely! Note: Please trim photos to 2 inches wide by 2.5 inches in length. Scanned photos work well, too. Reese Squires x37776 [top]    Jobs and Training I&I Discussion Groups JSC recently completed the third round of a unique program—Inclusion and Innovation (I&I) discussion groups. It was what the I&I designed as a follow-on learning activity from our advanced I&I classes. This fall, JSC will continue to offer these informative classes. The groups (comprised of 10 to 14 people) will explore several diversity and inclusion topics that are key for working in JSC's dynamic environment. Past participants indicate that the discussions heightened their awareness and improved their effectiveness as leaders and team members who engage in tough employee conversations. Give it a try. Sessions: 10 comprehensive meetings Duration: 90 minutes twice per month Scheduling: Groups meet during lunch (brown-bag lunch) Facilitators: Groups facilitated by two current or former supervisors Prerequisite: Completion of I&I course (Dr. Steve Robbins) Target Audience: Anyone interested in making JSC a great place to work To register, please contact José Bolton by Thursday, Oct. 2. Jose Bolton x37180 [top] Space Available - APPEL - Creativity & Innovation The goal of this course is to enable NASA personnel to be more creative and innovative in their work, including technical and managerial. "The excessive focus on analysis, targets and number crunching, and the absence of introspection and imagination, has resulted in a crisis in management." (Henry Mintzberg, The Globe and Mail, March 16, 2009.) This course seeks to address this crisis. Participants will learn what enables creativity and innovation, as well as what hinders it. This course is for NASA's technical and managerial workforce, including engineers and program personnel, who seek to increase their abilities to be both creative and innovative in their technical and managerial endeavors. This course is available for self-registration in SATERN until today, Sept. 29, and is open to civil servants and contractors on a space-available basis. Zeeaa Quadri x39723 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED... [top] Job Opportunities Where do I find job opportunities? Both internal Competitive Placement Plan and external JSC job announcements are posted on the Human Resources (HR) Portal and USAJOBS website. Through the HR portal, civil servants can view summaries of all the agency jobs that are currently open at: https://hr.nasa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/employees_home/239/job_opportu... To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. Lateral reassignment and rotation opportunities are posted in the Workforce Transition Tool. To access, click: HR Portal >Employees > Workforce Transition > Workforce Transition Tool. These opportunities do not possess known promotion potential; therefore, employees can only see positions at or below their current grade level. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies or reassignment opportunities, please call your HR representative. Brandy Braunsdorf x30476 [top]

 

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

Monday – September 29, 2014

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Sierra Nevada Challenges NASA Awards of Space Taxi Projects to Boeing, SpaceX

Bidder Claims Its Proposal Offered Best Value to U.S.

 

Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. said it filed a formal protest over NASA's choice of Boeing Co. BA +1.22% and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. to separately build, test and operate commercial space taxis, a decision that left the closely-held Nevada aerospace company out of the initiative.

 

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. protests NASA space contract awarded to Boeing, SpaceX

 

Christian Davenport - Washington Post

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. filed a protest of a major NASA contract late Friday, saying its proposal to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station would save money and should be given further consideration.

 

 

Sierra Nevada files protest over NASA crew contract

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. has protested NASA's award of contracts worth up to $6.8 billion to Boeing and SpaceX to fly astronauts to the International Space Station. The U.S. Government Accountability Office must rule on the legal challenge by Jan. 5.

 

 

Sierra Nevada protests to GAO over loss of NASA space-taxi contract

 

Laura Keeney - Denver Post

 

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Louisville-based Space Systems on Friday filed a formal protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over rejection of its bid for NASA's commercial crew contract. Space Systems last week lost out on the NASA contract for its Dream Chaser spacecraft, which would have shuttled astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA on Sept. 16 announced the $6.8 billion total contract would be split between Chicago-based Boeing Co., which received $4.2 billion, and Elon Musk's SpaceX, which received $2.6 billion.

 

 

SpaceX Bringing the Right Stuff to Patent Slog with Blue Origin, Expert Says

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

One patent attorney said a recently approved Blue Origin patent for landing rockets on water-going barges stands a good chance of being overturned, thanks to a review initiated by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — the company closest to actually using the technique Blue Origin wants to protect.

 

 

Sierra Nevada Protests NASA Commercial Crew Loss

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) has filed a formal protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking the congressional watchdog agency to reevaluate NASA's decision to select two rival space-capsule designs instead of the company's lifting-body Dream Chaser as a candidate to deliver U.S. crews to the International Space Station (ISS).

 

 

Sierra Nevada protests NASA commercial crew decision

 

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

 

After being left out of NASA contracts to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, Sierra Nevada Corp. said Friday it has filed a protest asking the U.S. Government Accountability Office to review the space agency's $6.8 billion award to Boeing and SpaceX.

 

 

NASA Requests Proposals for Follow-on ISS Cargo Contract

 

Jeff Foust – Space News

 

WASHINGTON — NASA released Sept. 25 a request for proposals (RFP) for a second round of contracts to transport cargo to and from the international space station, with both current providers and new entrants expected to compete. NASA plans to award one or more Commercial Resupply Services (CRS)2 contracts as a successor to its existing CRS contracts with Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. and Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

 

 

Texas celebrates winning SpaceX pad

 

James Dean – Florida Today

 

Newspaper headlines last week in the Brownsville, Texas, area read as if they could have been ripped from these pages 40 years ago. "It feels like the future," said the front page of The Monitor, quoting SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after he and Texas Gov. Rick Perry broke ground last Monday on the world's first commercial orbital launch complex, at Boca Chica Beach on the Gulf Coast.

 

 

Assembly Completed on Powerful Delta IV Rocket Boosting Maiden Orion Capsule Test Flight

 

Ken Kremer – Universe Today

 

CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, FL – Assembly of the powerful Delta IV rocket boosting the pathfinder version of NASA's Orion crew capsule on its maiden test flight in December has been completed. Orion is NASA's next generation human rated vehicle that will eventually carry America's astronauts beyond Earth on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before – beyond the Moon to Asteroids, Mars and other destinations in our Solar System.

 

 

Rocket Coming Together for New NASA Spaceship's 1st Flight

 

Mike Wall – Space.com

 

NASA's next crewed spaceship is one step closer to taking flight for the first time. Engineers have integrated the two stages of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta 4 Heavy rocket that will launch NASA's Orion capsule on a highly anticipated unmanned mission known as Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) in December.

 

 

Group set up to investigate solar array glitch

 

ITAR-TASS

 

BAIKONUR, September 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia's Federal Space Agency has established a special commission to investigate the cause of Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft's solar battery glitch, the Roscosmos chief said on Friday. "We are already investigating the case, I have selected a special group that is dealing with these issues," Oleg Ostapenko, who heads the Roscosmos agency, told reporters.

 

 

US suggested broadening space cooperation with Russia — Russian space agency

 

ITAR-TASS

 

BAIKONUR, September 26. /ITAR-TASS/. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration agency NASA is ready to increase the number of joint space experiments with Russia, head of Russia's National Space Agency Roskosmos, Oleg Ostapenko, told ITAR-TASS on Friday.

 

 

Flat Space Budgets Make Cooperation Tricky

 

Frank Morring, Jr. – Aviation Week

 

It was easy to cooperate in space across national borders during the Cold War, provided the border wasn't the Iron Curtain. The superpowers signed up their allies and went to work.

 

 

Astronaut drives effort to find missing child

 

Scott Gunnerson – Florida Today

 

An astronaut who piloted the space shuttle will look for help from the Space Coast as he embarks today on a weeklong road rally in an SUV between Texas and Missouri to raise money and awareness for missing children. Jon McBride is a celebrity participant in the eighth season of the Fireball Run, which distributes missing children flyers along a 2,000-mile route in which contestants in a variety of vehicles must solve daily questions along the way.

 

 

Blast Off! NASA App Teaches Kids About Rocket Launches

 

Kelly Dickerson – Space.com

 

NASA has developed apps to track shooting stars and iPhone games to hunt comets, but its latest app is an educational project aimed at teaching kids all about rocket launches.

The agency's Launch Services Program (LSP) released the new free app called "LSP Activity Book" available for iPad and Android users. Kids can learn about the mission planning process and the precise measurements behind creating the right kind of launch vehicle.

 

 

Toronto hosting international convention which brings world of space to Canada

 

Peter Rakobowchuk – The Canadian Press

 

Toronto will be the centre of the universe next week. The city will host the 65th International Astronautical Congress, a conference aimed at helping companies in the space business. As well as looking at where man has gone and may go in the future, the meeting will examine how the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence could affect society.

 

 

First woman in space: 'I very much wanted to go to Mars'

 

Larisa Ionova – Russia Beyond the Headlines

 

Valentina Tereshkova: I have never thought of myself as a lover of extremes. Each person does their job, comes up against difficulties and overcomes them. Back then, many people dreamed of going into space. When Gagarin first did it, it inspired so many people. Especially athletes who did air sports. <...>

 

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Sierra Nevada Challenges NASA Awards of Space Taxi Projects to Boeing, SpaceX

Bidder Claims Its Proposal Offered Best Value to U.S.

 

Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. said it filed a formal protest over NASA's choice of Boeing Co. BA +1.22% and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. to separately build, test and operate commercial space taxis, a decision that left the closely-held Nevada aerospace company out of the initiative.

 

In its announcement Friday, Sierra Nevada said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's decision last week "would result in a substantial increased cost to the public despite near equivalent technical and past performance scores."

 

The company also said NASA's own selection document and debrief "indicate that there are serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process."

 

A NASA spokeswoman said the agency wouldn't have any comment while the protest is pending with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The GAO must determine if the protest is valid, a process that can take months.

 

According to Sierra Nevada, the U.S. government stands to spend as much as $900 million more for a transportation system to take U.S. astronauts to low-earth orbit that it would if it awarded the job to Sierra Nevada.

 

Sierra Nevada was the only bidder to propose a winged vehicle able to land on a runway during its return trip from the international space station.

 

Boeing was awarded a contract that could total $4.2 billion and SpaceX was awarded a contract that could be worth as much as $2. 6 billion. NASA officials haven't publicly detailed the criteria they used or how the three companies ranked on technical, management and cost issues.

 

Sierra Nevada lagged behind the other two bidders in some technical rankings, according to people familiar with the details. In its release, the company said its submission was the second-lowest-priced proposal and "also achieved mission suitability scores comparable to the other two proposals."

 

NASA already has turned cargo trips to the space station over to contractors, and now it seeks to have industry build, test and operate rockets and vehicles designed to take U.S. astronauts to the orbiting international laboratory starting in 2017.

 

Since the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet three years ago, the agency has relied on Russian hardware for manned trips to the space station. The current price is about $70 million a seat.

 

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. protests NASA space contract awarded to Boeing, SpaceX

 

Christian Davenport - Washington Post

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. filed a protest of a major NASA contract late Friday, saying its proposal to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station would save money and should be given further consideration.

 

This month, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX under what is called the "commercial crew" program, which would allow the United States, for the first time since the space shuttle was retired three years ago, to launch astronauts into space from U.S. soil.

 

The contract would end the United States's reliance on Russia, which charges more than $70 million a seat for trips to the space station aboard its Soyuz craft.

 

Boeing's contract is worth up to $4.2 billion; SpaceX, which said it could perform the work for far less, was awarded a contract valued at $2.6 billion.

 

In announcing its protest in a statement, Sierra Nevada noted that it had "never filed a legal challenge to a government contract award" in its 51-year history.

 

The Nevada-based company said it was compelled to file a protest with the Government Accountability Office because of "serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process." Sierra Nevada's proposal was the second-lowest-priced, the company said, while it "achieved mission suitability scores comparable to the other two proposals."

 

The award by NASA would mean "the U.S. government would spend up to $900 million more at the publicly announced contracted level for a space program equivalent to the program that [Sierra Nevada] proposed," the statement said.

 

Unlike SpaceX and Boeing, which would use capsules to dock to the space station, Sierra Nevada proposes using a reusable miniature shuttle, or "space plane," called the Dream Chaser. The craft "provides a wider range of capabilities and value," the statement said.

 

A NASA spokeswoman declined to comment.

 

 

Sierra Nevada files protest over NASA crew contract

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. has protested NASA's award of contracts worth up to $6.8 billion to Boeing and SpaceX to fly astronauts to the International Space Station.

 

The U.S. Government Accountability Office must rule on the legal challenge by Jan. 5.

 

A spokesman at NASA headquarters said the agency had no comment.

 

NASA announced in a Sept. 16 press conference at Kennedy Space Center its decision to award contracts worth up to $4.2 billion to Boeing and $2.6 billion to SpaceX.

 

The contracts would seek to certify Boeing's CST-100 capsule and SpaceX's Dragon capsule as safe to begin ferrying four-person NASA crews to the station by 2017.

 

Colorado-based Sierra Nevada said in a statement that its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle was rated as technically capable as those companies' capsules and offered the second-best price, coming in $900 million less than Boeing's.

 

"The company believes that, in this time of critical budget limits, it is more important than ever to deliver the best value to the American public," the statement said.

 

Sierra Nevada cited "serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process."

 

The company was considered an underdog to win a contract since it had received less money in earlier rounds of the Commercial Crew Program competition than Boeing and SpaceX, and its spacecraft design was not quite as far along.

 

However, cost was supposed count for about half of NASA's evaluation. NASA apparently was concerned that technical challenges could slow the Dream Chaser's availability compared to the two capsules.

 

NASA has not released its official explanation of why it made the selections it did, and the bid protest may delay release of a source selection statement.

 

Sierra Nevada had planned to base its flight operations at KSC, launching from Cape Canaveral and landing on the former shuttle runway.

 

The company plans to pursue a contract to use the Dream Chaser to fly cargo to the space station.

 

 

Sierra Nevada protests to GAO over loss of NASA space-taxi contract

 

Laura Keeney - Denver Post

 

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Louisville-based Space Systems on Friday filed a formal protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over rejection of its bid for NASA's commercial crew contract.

 

Space Systems last week lost out on the NASA contract for its Dream Chaser spacecraft, which would have shuttled astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA on Sept. 16 announced the $6.8 billion total contract would be split between Chicago-based Boeing Co., which received $4.2 billion, and Elon Musk's SpaceX, which received $2.6 billion.

 

Sierra Nevada, in a news release, said the awards to SpaceX and Boeing will cost the U.S. government up to $900 million more on the contract than the system Sierra Nevada proposed. In its bid solicitation, NASA weighted price equally with the combined value of the two other mission criteria: mission suitability and past performance, the company said.

 

"SNC's Dream Chaser proposal was the second lowest priced proposal in the competition," the company wrote.

 

The company also said the winged Dream Chaser is a more flexible craft than the capsule styles proposed by SpaceX and Boeing. Its design, the company wrote, "provides a wider range of capabilities and value, including preserving the heritage of the space shuttle program through its design as a piloted, reusable, lifting-body spacecraft."

 

Sierra Nevada, a 51-year-old company based in Sparks, Nev., said it has never before filed a legal challenge to a government contract award but felt it had no alternative.

 

"However, in the case of the (Commercial Crew Transportation Capability) award, NASA's own source-selection statement and debrief indicate that there are serious questions and inconsistencies in the selection process," the company wrote.

 

Space Systems this week let go about 90 people in the wake of the contract loss.

 

Space Systems announced in January a November 2016 launch date for its first Dream Chaser orbital mission, as well as an expansion along Florida's space coast, sharing NASA facilities at Kennedy Space Center with Jefferson County-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

 

Space Systems chief Mark Sirangelo said Wednesday he could not comment on how the layoffs would affect Space System's 2016 launch plans.

 

Space Systems plans to continue developing the Dream Chaser, including a near-term bid on NASA's second Commercial Resupply Services effort, according to a company spokeswoman. That contract is expected to be awarded in early 2015, according to NASA's website.

 

 

SpaceX Bringing the Right Stuff to Patent Slog with Blue Origin, Expert Says

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

One patent attorney said a recently approved Blue Origin patent for landing rockets on water-going barges stands a good chance of being overturned, thanks to a review initiated by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — the company closest to actually using the technique Blue Origin wants to protect.

 

Examiners approved U.S. Patent 8678321, "Sea landing of space launch vehicles and associated systems and methods," on March 25, giving Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin the rights to an invention that Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX claims in an Aug. 25 petition for review is "old hat" in the rocket-engineering world.

 

"The patent granted is, in my opinion and in SpaceX's counsel's opinion, invalid," said Andrew Rush, a Jacksonville, Florida-based patent attorney who blogs about space-related intellectual property matters at IPinSpace.com and helped Mojave, California-based Masten Space Systems implement an intellectual property development program during a 2011 internship. "The applications Blue Origin filed were pretty aggressive and pretty broad and written, SpaceX alleges, without a high degree of knowledge and sophistication about the space industry."

 

Key for SpaceX, Rush said, is the provision of U.S. patent law that says the mere description of an invention in the public sphere is enough to block another would-be inventor from patenting it. In other words, Blue Origin's patent "treads on technology that existed way before Blue Origin filed for the patent application," and should therefore be struck down.

 

A possible knockout blow for Blue Origin's patent is a sea-landing system described by Japanese inventor Yoshiyuki Ishijima in a collection of papers, "Re-entry and Terminal Guidance for Vertical-Landing TSTO (Two-Stage to Orbit)," published in 1998 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In its petition for a so-called inter partes review, SpaceX makes heavy reference to those papers and others published before the 2009 filing date on Blue Origin's patent application.

 

The system Blue Origin received a patent for, and the one described in the Ishijima papers, calls for launching a multistage rocket and, after first-stage separation, steering the detached core down to a floating platform for a tail-first powered landing. In July, SpaceX indicated it might be ready to try a maneuver like that as soon as December as part of a NASA cargo launch to the space station. A late December launch — for Fort Lee, New Jersey-based satellite operator Orbcomm — is another candidate for a barge landing, SpaceX said following its last launch for Orbcomm in July.

 

Still unsettled is the question of whether the inventors listed on Blue Origin's patent application, which include Amazon.com and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, knew about any of the documents referenced in SpaceX's filing prior to seeking a patent in 2009.

 

"The inventor doesn't have a responsibility to go out and look for prior art, but if he does find prior art, he has to tell the patent office," Rush said. "So If Jeff Bezos was aware of this paper SpaceX is citing, he would have had a responsibility to give a copy of that paper to the patent office because it is relevant to his technology. He would have had to do that at the time he applied for the patent."

 

Neither SpaceX spokesman John Taylor nor Blue Origin spokeswoman Brooke Crawford would comment for this story. Scott Talbot, a Reston, Virginia-based attorney for Cooley LLP, the firm that prepared SpaceX's request for an inter partes review, also declined to comment.

 

At its current pace, Blue Origin would seem to be years away from attempting to land a reusable rocket at sea. Founded in 2000, Blue Origin has conducted six suborbital test flights, the latest of which ended in an explosive failure in 2011 in the skies above the company's test range in Culberson County, Texas, about 55 kilometers north of the small town of Van Horn, Texas.

 

That is something SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk, whose company has at least 17 reusability experiments under its belt, has chided Blue Origin about in the past. Late last year, Musk pointed out that "Blue Origin has not yet succeeded in creating a reliable suborbital spacecraft, despite spending over 10 years in development."

 

SpaceX, on the other hand, has practiced rocket recovery maneuvers several times during revenue launches, including two in which the company steered the core stage of its Falcon 9 rocket to a simulated landing at sea following launches this year for NASA and Orbcomm.

 

Since 2012, SpaceX has also has also conducted 13 low-altitude test flights at its experimental rocket range near McGregor, Texas. Eight of these were with the company's Grasshopper vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing test rig, Grasshopper. The remaining five were with the F9R, essentially a Grasshopper adapted to mimic the features of the Falcon 9 1.1 rocket SpaceX put into service in 2013.

 

 

Sierra Nevada Protests NASA Commercial Crew Loss

 

Frank Morring, Jr. - Aviation Week

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) has filed a formal protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking the congressional watchdog agency to reevaluate NASA's decision to select two rival space-capsule designs instead of the company's lifting-body Dream Chaser as a candidate to deliver U.S. crews to the International Space Station (ISS).

 

The company said late Friday that its bid in the NASA Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCTCap) was $900 million less than the bid submitted by Boeing, which won a contract worth as much as $4.2 billion to complete development, test fly and operate its CST-100 crew capsule. At the same time, SNC said, its proposal was "near equivalent [in] technical and past performance" source-selection scoring.

 

"[T]he official NASA solicitation for the CCtCap contract prioritized price as the primary evaluation criteria for the proposals, setting it equal to the combined value of the other two primary evaluation criteria: mission suitability and past performance," the company stated. "SNC's Dream Chaser proposal was the second lowest priced proposal in the CCtCap competition."

 

NASA also awarded SpaceX a contract worth as much as $2.6 billion to finish developing the crew version of its Dragon commercial cargo capsule, test fly it to the ISS and use it for 2-6 crew-transportation missions. Both Boeing and Sierra Nevada plan to launch their vehicles on variants of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V, while SpaceX will use its Falcon 9 to lift the crewed Dragon.

 

A GAO attorney said his agency will have 100 days to make a ruling, which would place a question mark over the NASA commercial crew contract awards to Boeing and SpaceX until Jan. 5, 2015. On Sept. 17 NASA announced its selection of the two capsules for development and crew-transportation work over the next five years. That started a 10-day clock that expired Sept. 26 for a protest from Sierra Nevada, which had received funding in earlier NASA commercial crew competitions.

 

"The company believes that, in this time of critical budget limits, it is more important than ever to deliver the best value to the American public," SNC stated in a press release. " … Given [the] facts, we believe that a thorough review must be conducted of the award decision."

 

Even before filing the protest, SNC had said it intended to continue developing the Dream Chaser with its own resources, and to enter it in the competition for the second phase of NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) commercial cargo competition. As it happened, the U.S. space agency issued its CRS-2 request for proposals on Friday.

 

NASA plans to spend between $1-1.4 billion per year on the CRS-2 cargo-delivery buy, which will cover delivery of 14,250-16,750 lb. of pressurized cargo per year, and another 1,500-4,000 kg of unpressurized gear. The agency expects to need four to five cargo missions a year under the contract, which will run 2017-2024 under present plans.

 

The Dream Chaser is a composite lifting body design based on the HL-20 NASA testbed of the early 1990s. During the NASA commercial crew competition, SNC has touted its vehicle as a flexible spacecraft able to handle a variety of human missions, and to glide to a low-g, horizontal landing on aircraft runways worldwide.

 

 

Sierra Nevada protests NASA commercial crew decision

 

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

 

After being left out of NASA contracts to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, Sierra Nevada Corp. said Friday it has filed a protest asking the U.S. Government Accountability Office to review the space agency's $6.8 billion award to Boeing and SpaceX.

 

The company cited "serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process" as the reason for filing the legal challenge to the GAO, which must decide on the protest by Jan. 5, 2015.

 

"SNC's filing seeks a further detailed review and evaluation of the submitted proposals and capabilities," the company said in a statement Friday. "SNC takes the nation's human spaceflight capability and taxpayer's money very seriously. SNC believes the result of further evaluation of the proposals submitted will be that America ends up with a more capable vehicle, at a much lower cost, with a robust and sustainable future."

 

Sierra Nevada is developing the Dream Chaser spacecraft, a lifting body designed to launch on a rocket and land on a runway, to carry astronauts and supplies to low Earth orbit.

 

NASA announced Sept. 16 it awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts to finish development of their crew-capable space capsules to begin flying NASA astronauts to the space station by the end of 2017.

 

Boeing's deal, worth up to $4.2 billion, pays for finishing the design of the aerospace contractor's CST-100 spacecraft, plus unmanned and piloted test flights to low Earth orbit.

 

SpaceX's $2.6 billion contract covers the same work to develop and certify its Dragon V2 space capsule for crewed flights, according to NASA.

 

Sierra Nevada said Friday its bid was $900 million less than Boeing's proposal -- making it the second-lowest bid -- despite "near equivalent" scoring on technical and past performance merits in NASA's source selection process.

 

"The company believes that, in this time of critical budget limits, it is more important than ever to deliver the best value to the American public," Sierra Nevada said in a statement. "With the current awards, the U.S. government would spend up to $900 million more at the publicly announced contracted level for a space program equivalent to the program that SNC proposed. Given those facts, we believe that a thorough review must be conducted of the award decision."

 

In its request for bids for the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability, or CCtCap, contracts, NASA said price was the primary evaluation criteria for its decision. Two other factors, mission suitability and past performance, were to be combined to receive equal consideration by NASA when it decided which companies would win awards.

 

"SNC's Dream Chaser proposal was the second lowest priced proposal in the CCtCap competition," the company said in a statement. "SNC's proposal also achieved mission suitability scores comparable to the other two proposals."

 

According to the Sierra Nevada press release, all three providers complied with NASA requirements and were eligible to receive awards under the CCtCap program, which follows three rounds of funding awarded by NASA since 2010.

 

NASA has not released details on the rationale for its awards to Boeing and SpaceX. Information on contract decisions are often included in source selection statements, which are usually released in the weeks after public announcements of contract awards.

 

Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight at NASA Headquarters, said Sept. 17 that the agency plans to release the CCtCap source selection statement.

 

Agency officials have said Boeing and SpaceX's proposals met the same NASA contract requirements, despite their different monetary values. NASA officials have not disclosed their reasons for bypassing Sierra Nevada.

 

"We set our requirements," McAlister told a Federal Aviation Administration advisory committee Sept. 17, the day after NASA's commercial crew contract announcement. "The companies had to meet those requirements. You go to different suppliers, you get different bids."

 

The Louisville, Colo.-based Dream Chaser program, buoyed by more than $350 million in NASA funding since 2010, is on pace for unpowered glide test flights to a runway landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., before the end of the year.

 

The glide flights will complete Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser work under its current agreement with NASA.

 

If NASA's commercial crew contract decision stands, funding for further development of a human-rated Dream Chaser spacecraft will have to come from private or foreign sources.

 

Sierra Nevada said it assembled a team of more than 30 U.S. industrial suppliers, 10 universities, and 10 international space agency and industry partners to work on the Dream Chaser program.

 

The Dream Chaser is designed to lift off on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, ferry up to seven astronauts or cargo to the International Space Station, and return to Earth for landing on a runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

 

Sierra Nevada officials said the company would continue working on the Dream Chaser program, eyeing a bid to deliver supplies to the space station under a new NASA cargo contract to follow up on logistics missions currently flown by SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp.

 

Sierra Nevada announced Friday's protest a day after officials said the company had cut its Dream Chaser workforce following the contract loss.

 

The company said it reduced its Colorado workforce by 9 percent after five years of rapid growth from 200 employees to more than 1,100 workers today.

 

"This reduction was confined to the Dream Chaser team and support staff and does not affect our other programs," said Krystal Scordo, a Sierra Nevada spokesperson.

 

 

Sierra Nevada Protests Commercial Crew Award, Lays Off Staff

 

Jeff Foust - Space News

 

Two days after laying off about 100 employees who had been working on its Dream Chaser vehicle, Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) on Sept. 26 filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office of a commercial crew contract it lost earlier in September.

 

Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of SNC's Space Systems unit, confirmed Sept. 26 that the company had filed a protest of NASA's Sept. 16 award of two Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts to Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

 

SNC maintains that its Dream Chaser system would offer substantial cost savings over the combination NASA selected with a similar level of technical capability. In a statement released late Sept. 26, the company said that one of the two companies selected "would result in a substantial increased cost to the public despite near equivalent technical and past performance scores." The statement did not identify that company, but Boeing received a significantly larger CCtCap award than SpaceX: $4.2 billion versus $2.6 billion.

 

"With the current awards, the U.S. government would spend up to $900 million more at the publicly announced contracted level for a space program equivalent to the program that SNC proposed," the company claimed in the statement. "Given those facts, we believe that a thorough review must be conducted of the award decision."

 

SNC, in its statement, also suggested there were irregularities with how NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX. "NASA's own Source Selection Statement and debrief indicate that there are serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process," the company stated. "SNC, therefore, feels that there is no alternative but to institute a legal challenge." The statement added this was the first time in SNC's 51-year history the company had protested a government contract award.

 

Under government procurement regulations, NASA has 30 days to file a response to the protest. GAO is required to rule on the protest no later than 100 days after filing, or Jan. 5, 2015.

 

SNC's announcement of a protest comes two days after the company laid off about 9 percent of the Colorado-based workforce at the Space Systems business unit, which had grown from 200 people in 2009 to more than 1,100 prior to the layoffs. Company spokeswoman Krystal Scordo said the layoffs affected only those working on Dream Chaser.

 

"As a result of not being selected by NASA, SNC needed to conduct a limited staff reduction of our Dream Chaser team of the personnel that have come on board in anticipation of the growth a win would have provided," Scordo said in a Sept. 24 email.

 

"We spent considerable time exploring every avenue and doing all that we could think of to keep the impact as minimal as possible," Scordo said. "We have retained as many people as we were able."

 

In the months leading up to the CCtCap announcement, SNC executives said they were exploring alternative uses of Dream Chaser in addition to, or in place of, international space station crew transportation. The company announced a number of partnerships with other space agencies and organizations, and will continue those efforts.

 

"We are aggressively pursuing commercial and international paths for our program," Scordo said. "SNC has made the decision to continue the development of the Dream Chaser to flight."

 

SNC will continue to work with NASA on the company's remaining milestones for its existing Commercial Crew Integrated Capability award it received from the agency in August 2012. The company is working on the final two milestones in that agreement, including a glide flight of a Dream Chaser test vehicle.

 

Scordo said SNC plans to pursue additional NASA business with Dream Chaser, such as a recompete of the Commercial Resupply Services contracts for ISS cargo transportation. NASA released the request for proposals for the second Commercial Resupply Services contract Sept. 26, with proposals due Nov. 14.

 

 

NASA Requests Proposals for Follow-on ISS Cargo Contract

 

Jeff Foust – Space News

 

WASHINGTON — NASA released Sept. 25 a request for proposals (RFP) for a second round of contracts to transport cargo to and from the international space station, with both current providers and new entrants expected to compete.

 

NASA plans to award one or more Commercial Resupply Services (CRS)2 contracts as a successor to its existing CRS contracts with Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. and Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

 

Like the existing CRS contracts, CRS2 awards will cover the transport of pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the ISS, and the disposal or return to Earth of cargo from the station.

 

In a Sept. 26 press release, NASA said the CRS2 contracts will cover ISS cargo transportation through 2020, with options through 2024. The solicitation requests companies provide pricing information for between one and five missions per year for 2018 through 2024. Each CRS2 contract will cover a minimum of six missions, according to the RFP.

 

Orbital Sciences and SpaceX are currently carrying out their existing CRS contracts. SpaceX launched the fourth of its twelve CRS missions Sept. 21, while Orbital is scheduled to launch the third of its eight CRS missions no earlier than Oct. 20. On NASA's current ISS manifest, both companies are scheduled to fly their final CRS missions by late 2016, although NASA has options for additional missions to 2018.

 

While Orbital and SpaceX are expected to submit CRS2 proposals, they will likely face competition from other companies. Sierra Nevada Corp. said Sept. 24 that they planned to submit a CRS2 proposal involving their Dream Chaser vehicle after failing to win a commercial crew contract. Boeing, who won a commercial crew contract along with SpaceX Sept. 16, has previously expressed interest in bidding on commercial cargo contracts with its CST-100 spacecraft.

 

Responses to the RFP are due to NASA by Nov. 14, and the agency expects to award contracts in May 2015.

 

 

Texas celebrates winning SpaceX pad

 

James Dean – Florida Today

 

Newspaper headlines last week in the Brownsville, Texas, area read as if they could have been ripped from these pages 40 years ago.

 

"It feels like the future," said the front page of The Monitor, quoting SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after he and Texas Gov. Rick Perry broke ground last Monday on the world's first commercial orbital launch complex, at Boca Chica Beach on the Gulf Coast.

 

"To Mars from Brownsville," read the Brownsville Herald, above another quote from Musk, saying, "It could very well be that the first person that departs for another planet could depart from this location."

 

That sort of mission used to be Kennedy Space Center's birthright, but maybe not anymore.

 

The Space Coast once dominated launches of commercial satellites, but they moved almost entirely overseas — until SpaceX began bringing some back over the past year.

 

That's where the company's $100 million South Texas pad will initially come into play, as soon as 2016.

 

According to news reports and tweets from last week's groundbreaking event, Musk said he hoped to move launches of commercial communications satellites headed to equatorial orbits to Texas as soon as possible.

 

Those missions represented four of SpaceX's last six launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. They won't stay here unless SpaceX has so much demand that it needs both sites to meet its manifest.

 

SpaceX aims to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station from KSC by 2017, but Musk said a non-NASA crew could launch from Texas.

 

"Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg (Air Force Base in California), they're great launch sites, but they're military launch sites, so they're optimized for defense of the country and that kind of thing," Musk explained to reporters, in a video posted on Perry's Web site. "What's important for the future of space exploration is to have a truly commercial launch site, just as we have commercial airports."

 

Musk said SpaceX would continue to make "heavy use of Cape Canaveral, Cape Kennedy and Vandenberg, but those will be primarily for U.S. government activity."

 

SpaceX has two launch pads in Florida, one at KSC and one on the Air Force side, but his push for a commercial launch site that could operate independently of NASA and the Air Force won little traction here. Another emerging launch company, Blue Origin, wants the same set up.

 

KSC's master plan envisions new commercial pads near existing ones, but state officials consider them poorly conceived. The Air Force hasn't budged on carving out a commercial zone at the Cape, despite pressure from U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.

 

Space Florida has proposed the Shiloh commercial launch complex on 200 acres at the north end of NASA-owned land in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is now under environmental review. But community members mostly skewered the idea during a public forum in Titusville earlier this year.

 

In Texas, Musk said the outpouring of support from local residents and government officials — who are supporting the project with at least $15.3 million in state funding — was significant: "We want to be in a place where we're truly wanted," he said.

 

Meanwhile, Georgia is quietly advancing plans for the next Brownsville, just north of the Florida border.

 

 

Assembly Completed on Powerful Delta IV Rocket Boosting Maiden Orion Capsule Test Flight

 

Ken Kremer – Universe Today

 

CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, FL – Assembly of the powerful Delta IV rocket boosting the pathfinder version of NASA's Orion crew capsule on its maiden test flight in December has been completed.

 

Orion is NASA's next generation human rated vehicle that will eventually carry America's astronauts beyond Earth on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before – beyond the Moon to Asteroids, Mars and other destinations in our Solar System.

 

The state-of-the-art Orion spacecraft is scheduled to launch on its inaugural uncrewed mission dubbed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) in December 2014 atop the Delta IV Heavy rocket. It replaces NASA's now retired space shuttle orbiters.

 

The triple barreled Delta IV Heavy is currently the most powerful rocket in America's fleet following the retirement of the NASA's Space Shuttle program.

 

Engineers from the rockets manufacturer – United Launch Alliance (ULA) – took a major step forward towards Orion's first flight when they completed the integration of the three primary core elements of the rockets first stage with the single engine upper stage.

 

All of the rocket integration work and preflight processing took place inside ULA's Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF), at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

 

Universe Today recently visited the Delta IV booster during an up close tour inside the HIF facility last week where the rocket was unveiled to the media in a horizontally stacked configuration. See my Delta IV photos herein.

 

The HIF building is located at Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37), on Cape Canaveral, a short distance away from the launch pad where the Orion EFT-1 mission will lift off on Dec. 4.

 

"The day-to-day processing is performed by ULA," said Merri Anne Stowe of NASA's Fleet Systems Integration Branch of the Launch Services Program (LSP), in a NASA statement.

 

"NASA's role is to keep a watchful eye on everything and be there to help if any issues come up."

 

The first stage is comprised of a trio of three Delta IV Common Booster Cores (CBCs).

 

Each CBC measures 134 feet in length and 17 feet in diameter. They are equipped with an RS-68 engine powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants producing 656,000 pounds of thrust. Together they generate 1.96 million pounds of thrust.

 

This past spring I visited the HIF after the first two CBCs arrived by barge from their ULA assembly plant in Decatur, Alabama, located about 20 miles west of Huntsville.

 

The first CBC booster was attached to the center booster in June. The second one was attached in early August, according to ULA.

 

"After the three core stages went through their initial inspections and processing, the struts were attached, connecting the booster stages with the center core," Stowe said. "All of this takes place horizontally."

 

The Delta IV cryogenic second stage testing and attachment was completed in August and September. It measures 45 feet in length and 17 feet in diameter. It is equipped with a single RL10-B-2 engine, that also burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant and generates 25,000 pounds of thrust.

 

"The hardware for Exploration Flight Test-1 is coming together well," Stowe noted in a NASA statement.

 

"We haven't had to deal with any serious problems. All of the advance planning appears to be paying off."

 

This same Delta IV upper stage will be used in the Block 1 version of NASA's new heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).

 

Be sure to read my recent article detailed the ribbon cutting ceremony opening the manufacture of the SLS core stage at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, LA. The SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built by humans, exceeding that of the iconic Saturn V rocket that sent humans to walk on the surface of the Moon.

 

The Delta IV rocket will be rolled out to the SLC-37 Cape Canaveral launch pad this week.

Assembly of the Orion EFT-1 capsule and stacking atop the service module was also completed in September at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

 

I was also on hand at KSC when the Orion crew module/service module (CM/SM) stack was rolled out on Sept. 11, 2014 on a 36 wheeled transporter from its high bay assembly facility in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building.

 

It was moved about 1 mile to its next stop on the way to SLC-37 – the KSC fueling facility named the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHFS). Read my Orion move story – here.

 

The two-orbit, four and a half hour EFT-1 flight will lift the Orion spacecraft and its attached second stage to an orbital altitude of 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) – and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.

 

Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Orion, SLS, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, SpaceX, commercial space, Curiosity, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.

 

 

Rocket Coming Together for New NASA Spaceship's 1st Flight

 

Mike Wall – Space.com

 

NASA's next crewed spaceship is one step closer to taking flight for the first time.

 

Engineers have integrated the two stages of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta 4 Heavy rocket that will launch NASA's Orion capsule on a highly anticipated unmanned mission known as Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) in December.

 

"The hardware for Exploration Flight Test-1 is coming together well," Merri Anne Stowe, of NASA's Fleet Systems Integration Branch of the Launch Services Program, said in a statement today (Sept. 26). "We haven't had to deal with any serious problems. All of the advance planning appears to be paying off." [Orion: NASA's Next Crewed Spaceship (Photos)]

 

A United Launch Alliance technician monitors progress as core booster elements of a Delta IV Heavy rocket are being integrated in preparation for Exploration Flight Test-1, which is due to launch in December 2014.

 

The rocket-assembly work took place at ULA's Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and was led by ULA. First, engineers attached three elements known as Common Booster Cores to build the rocket's first stage. Each core is 134 feet long by 17 feet wide (42 by 5.2 meters), and together they generate 1.96 million pounds of thrust.

 

This work was done by early August, NASA officials said. The second stage — which is 45 feet long by 17 feet wide (13.7 by 5.2 m) and generates 25,000 pounds of thrust — was then mated to the first stage's central core in mid-September.

 

Technicians will soon check out the rocket stages to make sure all is well, then conduct a "test readiness review."

 

"These meetings are held to bring together all the interested parties to be sure the Delta 4 rocket is ready for the move to the launch pad where the Orion spacecraft will be mated," Stowe said.

 

Orion is a crew capsule designed to carry NASA astronauts to deep-space destinations such as asteroids and Mars. During manned missions, Orion will launch atop the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) mega-rocket.

 

But SLS won't be ready to fly until late 2017, so a Delta 4 Heavy will be used for EFT-1, which is set to blast off Dec. 4 from Cape Canveral.

The three first-stage booster cores for United Launch Alliance's Delta 4 Heavy rocket are seen here inside the Horizontal Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on May 7, 2014. The Delta 4 Heavy will launch

 

This unmanned test flight will send Orion 3,600 miles (5,800 km) from Earth. Four hours later, the capsule will re-enter the planet's atmosphere at 20,000 mph (32,190 km/h), generating and enduring temperatures as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius) before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

 

The goal is to see how Orion's critical crew-safety systems perform in a real flight environment, NASA officials have said. Data gathered during the test will inform future work on the capsule, which is slated to fly astronauts for the first time in 2021.

 

 

Group set up to investigate solar array glitch

 

ITAR-TASS

 

BAIKONUR, September 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia's Federal Space Agency has established a special commission to investigate the cause of Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft's solar battery glitch, the Roscosmos chief said on Friday.

 

"We are already investigating the case, I have selected a special group that is dealing with these issues," Oleg Ostapenko, who heads the Roscosmos agency, told reporters.

 

Ostapenko said cosmonauts will inspect the faulty solar-cell panel of the Soyuz TMA-14M during a spacewalk in October.

 

"As for a spacewalk, which is to be taken shortly, we are sure to inspect it /the solar-cell panelNote by ITAR-TASS/ and puzzle everything out," he said.

 

The Roscosmos chief said all the preparation works and the launching process of the Soyuz spacecraft was carried out in a normal regime. However, one of the solar batteries failed to unfold after the separation of the spacecraft.

 

The Soyuz spaceship with an international crew on board was launched from Baikonur spaceport early Friday, at 00:25 Moscow time (20:25 GMT). Despite the emergency situation, the crew managed to implement a six-hour scheme docking with the station. The crew had sufficient energy in the battery of the vehicle for rendezvous and docking.

 

The faulty solar battery finally unfolded after the spacecraft berthed with the International Space Station (ISS).

 

The crew of Russia's Soyuz TMA-14M manned spaceship opened hatches at 09:08 a.m. Moscow time (05:08 GMT), about three hours after docking with the ISS, the Mission Control Center said.

 

Russian Yelena Serova, her fellow cosmonaut Aleksandr Samokutyayev and NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore were met by Maksim Surayev, Gregory Wiseman, and Alexander Gerst, who have been working aboard the station since May this year. The new crew will work in orbit for 169 days.

 

 

US suggested broadening space cooperation with Russia — Russian space agency

 

ITAR-TASS

 

BAIKONUR, September 26. /ITAR-TASS/. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration agency NASA is ready to increase the number of joint space experiments with Russia, head of Russia's National Space Agency Roskosmos, Oleg Ostapenko, told ITAR-TASS on Friday.

 

"Today our American colleagues have offered to widen cooperation regarding the joint experiments in space", he said, adding that most of the experiments on the International Space Station /ISS/ during the forthcoming year will be conducted with close participation of Russian and American space crews.

 

Early April, 2014 NASA announced suspending space cooperation with Russia, except for ISS projects, due to the political crisis in Ukraine; however, by the end of the month NASA's head personally assured his Russian counterpart that no space projects would be suspended and Russia-US space ties remain strong enough.

 

 

Flat Space Budgets Make Cooperation Tricky

 

Frank Morring, Jr. – Aviation Week

 

It was easy to cooperate in space across national borders during the Cold War, provided the border wasn't the Iron Curtain. The superpowers signed up their allies and went to work.

 

Today the former superpowers maintain a sometimes uneasy joint operation in orbit on the International Space Station (ISS). While the vestiges of a space race remain in the form of export controls on dual-use space hardware—in the U.S. primarily aimed at China for now—the inability of would-be partners to keep their financial commitments is becoming at least as big a problem in setting up space-cooperation deals.

 

In a sense, that is nothing new. When the ISS was in development, Japanese human-spaceflight officials joked that they started out with the smallest pressurized module on the drawing board and wound up with the largest because the others kept shrinking while Kibo remained the same size. But tight budgets forced by competing priorities have made unpleasant surprises more common.

 

Perhaps the best recent example is NASA's 2012 decision to pull the plug on its 50% share of Europe's long-planned ExoMars program, which envisioned a methane-detecting orbiter and landing demonstrator at the red planet in 2016, followed two years later by a pair of terrestrial rovers capable of drilling into the surface and caching soil samples (AW&ST Feb. 20, 2012, p. 33).

 

With NASA no longer a partner, the European Space Agency (ESA) turned to Moscow, hastily forging a cooperative agreement that has so far kept the €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) campaign largely on track. The two-pronged mission will still send the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and an Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) to Mars in January 2016, though the 2018 leg has been scaled back to deliver a single terrestrial rover equipped with a drill.

 

Both missions are to launch on Russian Proton heavy-lift rockets, with NPO Lavochkin leading development of a descent module with ExoMars prime contractor Thales Alenia Space of Italy. That module is to carry the European rover to the Martian surface in 2018.

 

"We were lucky that the Russians were interested in taking over the very significant role NASA had in this cooperation and deciding to do so in a relatively short timeframe," says Rolf de Groot, head of ESA's coordination office for the robotic exploration program at its Estec facility in the Netherlands.

 

De Groot says one of the biggest challenges has been the development of the 2018 lander, a NASA responsibility under the original partnership agreement.

 

"With the Russians, we have a mixed lander, with key components coming from the 2016 mission," he says. "It makes management of that part more difficult, because it's an integrated descent module, rather than having very clean interfaces like we had with NASA."

 

De Groot says the 2016 mission is on schedule at Thales Alenia Space, with the launch campaign expected to begin in October next year. But delays in completing the design of the Russian descent module have put a preliminary design review of the 2018 mission three months behind schedule.

 

"The Russians finalized the descent module design review in July, and there are still some actions ongoing—it was not completely successful," de Groot says. "But these actions are taken up now in our system preliminary design review process, and there is no reason to assume we will not be ready for the 2018 launch date."

 

De Groot says ESA and its industrial partners are working closely with their Russian counterparts to bring the 2018 descent module to completion on time. "We are doing the parachutes, the radar and the onboard computer, and all of those will have had heritage from the hopefully successful landing demonstrator in 2016," he says.

 

The 2018 rover is also a challenge, according to de Groot, although lead contractor Airbus Defense and Space U.K. has had ample time to refine the development, which he says is in the advanced "C/D" stage.

 

"We have confidence that the rover will work because we have had so much time to work on it due to the different cooperation schedules that kept changing," he says.

 

Of course, funding shortfalls like the one that drove NASA out of the project are endemic in the space-science field, where researchers must convince politicians to allocate scarce public funds to pay for the expensive hardware necessary for most missions. While Roscosmos recently secured its share of ExoMars funding, including money for both Proton launch vehicles and Russian work on the 2018 descent module, Europe is still short by €200 million to complete its contributions to the latter half of the mission.

 

Managers like de Groot understand that in the long run, it usually is less expensive to stick to the original plan, if at all possible. Tight funding for one partner can add expense to the others.

 

"The reformation of the ExoMars program made it more expensive than the original cooperation with the U.S., because NASA was supposed to do the full landing system," de Groot says. He adds that the 20-nation ESA will be asked to provide the additional ExoMars funding during a key budget ministerial meeting in early December. "All the member states are fully aware of the program's need, and it will definitely mean we miss our launch date of 2018 if we don't get the money in time," he says.

 

De Groot says ExoMars is currently financed through the end of 2015, but that the program needs "to make commitments for the C/D/E phase of the whole mission early next year, and for that we don't have full coverage."

 

The need for additional ExoMars funding comes at a difficult time for ESA, which is faced with hard choices over how and when to finance around €4 billion for Europe's existing and future launchers while continuing support for the ISS through 2020.

 

"The ISS and ExoMars are really the pillars of ESA's exploration strategy," de Groot says.

 

The same could have been said of NASA before it bailed out of ExoMars, an event that reflects the changes in the way the U.S. has executed its space policy over the past two decades, according to Lennard Fisk, a solar physicist and former NASA associate administrator who recently became the first U.S. citizen to serve as president of the International Council of Science's Committee on Space Research (Cospar).

 

"I wasn't up close and personal on that one, but I believe it's probably a classic example of the inability of the U.S. to make any kind of a commitment when your partners wanted to do so, and yet it was a priority in the U.S. program as well," says Fisk, who is now the University of Michigan's Thomas M. Donohue Distinguished University Professor of Space Science.

 

Despite its setbacks on ExoMars, ESA is in better shape than NASA when it comes to consistent space-science funding, according to Fisk. He notes that ESA's mandatory-program structure allows its managers "to essentially have an expectation of what their budgets will always be when they commit to something, whereas in the case of the U.S. we get appropriations every year."

 

Fisk was NASA's associate administrator for space science and applications in 1987-93. Among the missions launched during his tenure were the Hubble Space Telescope and the Ulysses solar orbiter, both NASA/ESA collaborations. Fisk credits his personal relationships with counterparts at ESA and other space agencies, and the relatively steady funding line at NASA, with making it easier to set up cooperative missions in those days.

 

"There was an enormous authority given to the [associate administrator] late '80s early '90s, so my word on what we were going to do carried some weight," he says. "Today there are many, many players in that process—[the Office of Management and Budget] at all sorts of levels, Congress at all sorts of levels, and there are fewer degrees of freedom to the associate administrator to make commitments that his partner thinks he will honor. That really is a serious impediment in being able to enter into agreements, particularly since the U.S. cannot commit to anything more than a year at a time because of the appropriations process."

 

At roughly $5 billion a year, NASA's science budget alone is larger than most other space agencies' total funding, and comparable to the total budgets of Russia and ESA. Despite the uncertainty over the U.S. agency's long-term plans, NASA's list of its cooperative programs fills a 150-page book. According to that NASA-published tome—Global Reach: A View of NASA's International Cooperation—noteworthy international missions and collaborations underway today include the James Webb Space Telescope (with ESA and the Canadian Space Agency); the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency); and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the ISS.

 

Despite the congressional prohibition on NASA collaboration with China, China is among the 16 nations participating in the AMS, which is basically a particle physics detector that collects natural particles arriving from celestial sources instead of being generated in large linear accelerators. Designed to help science better understand the origin and structure of the Universe by studying mysterious dark matter and dark energy, among other phenomena, it is led by the U.S. Energy Department.

 

The magnet at the core of AMS was built in China, in collaboration with experts from the U.S., Germany and Switzerland. And while NASA is not allowed to cooperate with China in space (unlike the Energy Department, as well as the U.S. military and other U.S. government organizations), the space agencies of NASA's traditional partners are increasingly looking to China for access to space. The U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) impede the process when dual-use hardware with U.S. provenance is involved, but China's planned space station and unmanned spacecraft offer an attractive alternative to the ISS (AW&ST Sept. 30, 2013, p. 24; Sept. 16, 2013, p. 50).

 

For scientists like Fisk, who have taught generations of Chinese students at U.S. universities, a pivot to China in space science would make more sense than the current restrictions, particularly as NASA takes on new and expensive human-spaceflight projects with a flat future-budget profile.

 

"You have a space program in the case of the Chinese which has money," he says. "It's kind of like the height of the Apollo program. They can't do things technically as well as we can, but they certainly have the resources to do so, and the Europeans are collaborating with them, the Russians are collaborating with them, and the Americans aren't allowed to. That works to our detriment."

 

 

Astronaut drives effort to find missing child

 

Scott Gunnerson – Florida Today

 

An astronaut who piloted the space shuttle will look for help from the Space Coast as he embarks today on a weeklong road rally in an SUV between Texas and Missouri to raise money and awareness for missing children.

 

Jon McBride is a celebrity participant in the eighth season of the Fireball Run, which distributes missing children flyers along a 2,000-mile route in which contestants in a variety of vehicles must solve daily questions along the way.

 

McBride, director of astronaut education at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, and his navigator, Bonnie King, deputy director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism, have organized support back home.

 

"We've got social media, a couple of computers, iPhones, iPads and people on call," said McBride, who lives in Cocoa. "A lot of people will be working the problem. It's a team effort."

 

Along the way, the Space Coast team will hand out flyers of Jacob Calhoun, who was last seen in Tamarac in April 2009. The flyer displays a photo of Jacob before he went missing and an enhanced image of what he could look like today at 9 years old.

 

Each day, about 40 teams open envelopes with clues to what they must accomplish en route to the next city.

 

"You never know what they are going to ask us to do," King said. "To have people in Brevard County helping is a big advantage. It really helps a lot because we need all the help we can get."

 

Their final destination is Independence, Missouri, on Saturday.

 

Next year, the event will start in Connecticut and conclude in Cocoa Beach. At least four astronauts are expected to compete in the "Space Race" version of the Fireball Run.

 

In 2011, Melbourne was the starting point for the fifth season, which featured former NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine, astronaut Winston Scott and actors Kevyn Major Howard and Tim Colceri.

 

With the finish line in Brevard in 2015, McBride and King will have more to talk about this year as they hand out material promoting the Space Coast along with flyers to help find Jacob.

 

"It gives us the opportunity to talk about our area," King said. "It puts us on a map and people know where we are."

 

 

Blast Off! NASA App Teaches Kids About Rocket Launches

 

Kelly Dickerson – Space.com

 

NASA has developed apps to track shooting stars and iPhone games to hunt comets, but its latest app is an educational project aimed at teaching kids all about rocket launches.

The agency's Launch Services Program (LSP) released the new free app called "LSP Activity Book" available for iPad and Android users. Kids can learn about the mission planning process and the precise measurements behind creating the right kind of launch vehicle.

 

LSP prepares NASA's unmanned spacecraft for launch. The organization engineers and purchases the launch vehicles for spacecraft. LSP matches rockets to spacecraft based on payload. The payload of a given spacecraft can include instruments like satellites, cameras and landers. [10 Best Space Apps in the Universe]

 

A character named "Peter the Payload" guides kids through the activity book that includes a series of pictures to color, word searches, mazes and matching games.

The app also includes a no-bake "moon cookie" recipe.

 

Kids can color 24 NASA-inspired pictures with their choice of 14 colors and several different coloring methods. Younger kids can use paint buckets to fill in the pictures while older kids can pick a freestyle coloring method with an adjustable pen size.

 

A crossword teaches kids about the planets in the solar system and an "asteroid maze" mimics asteroid belts that spacecraft navigate. The app provides feedback when some activities are completed and kids can get a certificate of achievement once they "complete the mission" and make it through the whole activity book.

 

Most of the NASA rockets launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Other launch locations include Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean and Kodiak Island in Alaska. The launch rockets that propel spacecraft beyond the Earth's atmosphere range from about 55 feet (17 meters) long to 240 feet (70 m) long.

 

LSP is also involved in education outreach and works with universities to launch small satellites called CubeSats for short-term missions and has sponsored robotics competitions at schools.

 

LSP is based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Kennedy Information Technology Mobile Team developed the new app.

 

 

Toronto hosting international convention which brings world of space to Canada

 

Peter Rakobowchuk – The Canadian Press

 

Toronto will be the centre of the universe next week.

 

The city will host the 65th International Astronautical Congress, a conference aimed at helping companies in the space business.

 

As well as looking at where man has gone and may go in the future, the meeting will examine how the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence could affect society.

 

The Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute is hosting the week-long event, which begins Monday with 3,000 participants from about 70 countries.

 

"It's a great convening of the global space community," Geoff Languedoc, the institute's executive-director, said in an interview. "We have brought the world of space to Canada."

 

Besides industry, the congress brings together academia and government representatives from countries that include Russia, China, the United States and Europe.

 

The Americans are sending almost 600 delegates while Germany and China will also have large contingents.

 

Languedoc says the gathering will try to develop relationships with other space organizations throughout the world "that will propel Canadian industries forward."

 

"We don't have a big enough domestic government-run space program," he added.

 

Space-related industries are now being challenged by tight government budgets and more than 150 companies and organizations will be visible at the Toronto convention.

 

One highlight will be a plenary session Monday afternoon where leaders of the world's major space agencies will outline the latest developments in their countries.

 

The session could also provide some insight into the future of the International Space Station and its Canadarm.

 

The United States will continue to support the giant orbiting space lab until at least 2024, but Canada so far is only committed to 2020.

 

Pierre Jean, who manages the Canadian Space Agency's involvement, says the space station should be able to operate until 2028.

 

"When we did the initial structural analysis of the system, we planned it for 30 years," he said in an interview. "We wanted to make sure the design was robust (and) if anything, it was over-designed."

 

Jean said the Canadian government would need to decide "within the next two or three years" whether to extend its support.

 

"The latest it could be would probably be in 2018," he said, adding that the space station's other partners need enough lead time to know whether Canada is in or out.

 

Jean also pointed out that the Canadarm2 on the space station is being used extensively to grab the commercial spacecraft that deliver supplies to the astronauts.

 

"If you look ahead a year, we roughly have anywhere from four to six vehicles we're going to capture every year," he added.

 

The robotic arm has been "up there" since 2001 and, even though light bulbs have blown out, its cameras are still functional and operations are carried out during daytime.

 

"Basically, there's nothing that precludes Canadarm2 from operating indefinitely on orbit," he added.

 

But grabbing visiting spacecraft isn't Canada's only involvement on the space station.

 

Canadian activities during 2013 will be the focus of a presentation by Nicole Buckley, the CSA's chief scientist in charge of life sciences.

 

She says Canadian scientists have been doing a lot of work on how the bones and hearts of astronauts have been affected by extended visits.

 

"One of our scientists has commented that, after six months in space, the cardiovascular system can age something like 10 to 20 years," Buckley said in a recent interview.

 

"There are many parallels between some of the changes that occur in space and what occurs with an aging population."

 

Bone loss in space is being closely studied.

 

"Based on six months, we know that you're losing bone at 10 times the rate of a woman with osteoporosis," she said.

 

Buckley said combining age research in space with what's being done on Earth may lead to some real advances.

 

She was optimistic when asked if that research could be used to slow down aging.

 

"I'm a scientist,"' she said. "I think anything is possible"

 

"One day, that bone research is going to help my mom, who's 90, if we can do it fast enough."

 

Canada's presence on the International Space Station is well known when compared with other countries like Israel, which is hosting next year's International Astronautical Congress.

 

Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel, the head of the Israel Space Agency, says there's an explanation for that.

 

"There is no big difference in the capabilities, the number of satellites, etc.," he said in an interview. "If you ask me, the main reason for this is the Canadian arm on the space station and the Canadian flag" which is visible on the arm.

 

Israel took steps in 2012 to advance its own space program.

 

"Usually we've spent money only on defence space activities and years ago we changed it and started to invest government money in civilian space activities -- on science, research, commercial and things like that," he said.

 

Ben-Israel noted the Futron space index published in the United States puts Israel one step behind Canada.

 

"If you read the analysis they gave, they always say that in terms of technology, we are a leading country, but what lowers our mark, our grade, is the scale of civilian activity and this is what we are trying to change."

 

 

First woman in space: 'I very much wanted to go to Mars'

 

Larisa Ionova – Russia Beyond the Headlines

 

Valentina Tereshkova: I have never thought of myself as a lover of extremes. Each person does their job, comes up against difficulties and overcomes them. Back then, many people dreamed of going into space. When Gagarin first did it, it inspired so many people. Especially athletes who did air sports. <...>

 

In late 1961, I was invited to undergo selection for a space mission. Five young women were selected from over 1,000 contenders from all over the country.<...>

 

We were supposed to test new equipment. We had to undergo comprehensive checks: of our physical training, emotional resilience, etc. Starting from early 1962, we began active training. The head of the team, Yuri Gagarin, was a very demanding leader despite all his charm. The training was focused more on the psychological than the physical aspects. We all were experienced parachute jumpers who had made parachute jumps during the day and at night, on land and on water. <...>

 

But each time there was something new for us. Starting with zero gravity. Back then there was no special simulator, or hydro laboratories. Instead, an aircraft would perform special figures to create brief moments of weightlessness so that we could feel it and get used to that feeling. Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova before her space flight on June 16, 1963. Source: RIA Novosti In a special spinning chair, we had not just to sit but also bend our upper body forward. In the heat chamber, we had to remain in a spacesuit at temperatures of 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit) above zero. Another test consisted of spending 10 days in a soundproof isolation chamber. R.G.: How did you cope with being alone and in a confined space? V.T.: I never suffered from claustrophobia. The isolation chamber test was used to check trainees' emotional state, heart condition, and numerous other parameters, like eyesight for example. Back then, cosmonauts were allowed to take only one book with them on a mission. I chose a book of poetry. On Sep. 26, 2014, Yelena Serova became the first Russian woman to go into space in the last 20 years. She will spend several months on the International Space Station doing research alongside her male colleagues. Some people think that while in space, a cosmonaut is left to their own devices and therefore feels lonely. In fact they have a busy program to complete. One part of this was obligatory physical exercises. I had to measure my blood pressure at given times, take blood samples, and do all the other tasks. In addition, I had to thoroughly study the spacecraft, all its equipment and devices. Each space mission is an ordeal and each has brought something new to space exploration. <...>

 

Women in space have a lot of prospects. The space training center that we set up with our own hands is now training women for space missions too. Incidentally, speaking of sanctions. American astronauts are training together with ours and are flying on our spacecraft. It is not in their interests to impose any sanctions. We work together with them when they come to our space training center to learn how to fly on our spacecraft, while our cosmonauts go to the NASA center in Houston. However, the Americans are now breaking the terms of our cooperation. We have warned them: If they introduce sanctions, we shall retaliate. R.G.: Would you like to go into space once again? V.T.: Of course. Sadly, my age is not right for that. I very much wanted to go to Mars. I had spent many years studying the planet, reading everything that had been written about it. R.G.: In June 1963, you, under the call sign of Chaika, orbited the Earth 48 times. At take-off you said those now famous words: "Hey, the sky out there! Take off your hat!" Do you celebrate that date? International Space Station to receive its first female cosmonaut International Space Station to receive its first female cosmonaut V.T.: We maintain the traditions that were started by Yuri Gagarin. We gather together, we recollect the old times and talk about our profession, and the new and interesting things in it. It is a meeting of professionals. We share the little joys of our earthly lives too. <...>

 

I have among my friends American astronauts, and two female astronauts - French and British. Our profession brings people closer, it shows who is worth what. Politics is completely out of place here, the only thing that matters is a cosmonaut's professionalism. R.G.: Having been to space, do you believe that there is extra-terrestrial intelligence out there? V.T.: So far, all scientists' efforts to find some sentient form of life outside Earth have failed. But the universe is immense. We cannot rule out that there are planets in it where life does exist. If there are living creatures out there, they are very, very far away. And they are not making contact. We send information about our Earth and people on it out there all the time. But we have not yet heard anything back, although we have been scanning the universe for decades already.

 

END

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