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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 2, 2014 at 10:50:53 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Tuesday – December 2, 2014
Following our monthly NASA retirees luncheon at Hibachi Grill at 11:30 this Thursday------This months NASA Alumni League speaker Thursday at 2:30 is Glynn LunneyFinal 2014 NASA Alumni League "First Thursday Program"Thursday, December 4, 2014 "A Visit with Glynn Lunney" - Flight Director; Program Manager;Location Gilruth Center Longhorn Room (upstairs)Time: 2:00 – 2:30 PM Glynn will sign his new book, Highways into Space,Book price is $21.63 (tax included)2:30 - 4:00 PM Dr. Lunney's talkNASA and Human Spaceflight NewsTuesday – December 2, 2014HEADLINES AND LEADSOrion's time finally arrivesJeff Foust – The Space ReviewOn August 31, 2006, NASA announced it had selected the prime contractor for its planned Crew Exploration Vehicle spacecraft. Lockheed Martin beat out a Boeing/Northrop Grumman team to win the multibillion-dollar contract to develop the spacecraft, which a week earlier NASA had given a new name: Orion. "The first Orion launch with humans onboard is planned for no later than 2014, and for a human moon landing no later than 2020," the press release about the selection stated.Isolated showers, gusty winds expected for Thursday's Delta 4 launchStephen Clark - Spaceflightnow.comWeather forecasters will watch for isolated rain showers and gusty winds that could delay Thursday's launch of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket carrying NASA's Orion space capsule on its first flight into orbit.Orion, EFT-1 and the future of U.S. human spaceflightJason Rhian - Spaceflight InsiderIn 2011, NASA retired its fleet of space shuttle orbiters. The spacecraft that had ferried crews into the black for three decades – were now relegated to monuments in museums and tourist destinations. The space agency then focused its crewed space exploration efforts on its new vessel – Orion. Why did NASA decide to go back to a capsule-based design? What is the purpose and capabilities of this craft – and why is it called Orion? The answers – are as fascinating as the spacecraft's future missions.NASA Langley readies for historic Orion space missionTamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily PressRick Thompson at NASA Langley Research Center has worked for years to help develop the sophisticated Orion crew capsule meant to carry American astronauts back into space from U.S. soil.NASA Homing in on Mission Design for Asteroid Relocation ExcursionIrene Klotz – Space NewsAs NASA's deep-space Orion capsule gears up for its debut test flight, a parallel effort to develop a robotic asteroid relocation mission reaches a key decision point Dec. 16.The enigma of presidential "space" politicsChris Carberry - The Space Review
It doesn't seem possible, but a quadrennial tradition in the space community is gearing up yet again. Speculation has already begun regarding who would be the best "space" President. For years, space advocates waited for a new "Kennedy moment," hoping that another president would deliver a stirring and compelling speech that would propel the nation to settle the solar system. However, this mythological speech has never materialized. To be clear, many subsequent presidents have made space exploration policy speeches, but none of them has led to programs matching the Apollo Program. One can argue that these presidential orations were not as eloquent, inspiring, and passionate as Kennedy's Rice University speech, but at best oratory played only a small role in the success of Apollo and its predecessor programs.Star Trek, Marvel and Apollo mementos set to launch on NASA's Orion test flightRobert Pearlman - Collectspace.comCaptain Kirk, Iron Man, Sesame Street's Slimey the Worm, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex are set to lift off to space later this week on the first test flight of Orion, NASA's next-generation spacecraft.Live coverage: Japanese asteroid mission set for launchStephen Clark – Spaceflight NowMONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2014Japan's H-2A rocket is set to leave its assembly building at the Tanegashima Space Center on Tuesday for a half-hour rollout to its seaside launch complex for final countdown preparations.Editorial | ISS Looms Large for ESA MinisterialSpaceNews EditorMinisters from the European Space Agency's member states have their work cut out for them at their Dec. 1-2 conference in Luxembourg intended to determine the agency's direction in the upcoming years and resolve several outstanding issues, including launcher strategy.Plummeting Rouble Hits Russia's Space ProgrammeDamien Sharkov - NewsweekRussia's federal space exploration agency Roscosmos could be forced to close down or indefinitely delay whole projects due to the worsening economic situation in the country. The plummeting Russian rouble has rendered the agency incapable of planning their spending ahead of time, national daily newspaper Izvestia reported on Monday.New Images Refine View of Infant UniverseDennis Overbye – New York TimesIn a throwback to another era in cosmic history, astronomers on Monday discussed the birth of the universe at a meeting in a 15th-century palace, the Palazzo Costabili in Ferrara, Italy, where the amenities do not include Internet access.Russian space researchers plan to create space observatory to prevent asteroid threatITAR TASSA cutting edge project has been developed capable of spotting asteroids more than 50 meters in size at a distance equal to one astronomical unitThe Astronomy Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kometa Corporation have developed a cutting edge project that envisages creation of a space observatory capable to spot asteroids more than 50 meters in size at a distance equal to one astronomical unit - the measurement used for the Earth-sun distance, and other space objects of a decameter size, similar to the Chelyabinsk meteorite, in the near Earth orbits, Director of the Astronomy Institute Boris Shustov told TASS on Monday.COMPLETE STORIESOrion's time finally arrivesJeff Foust – The Space ReviewOn August 31, 2006, NASA announced it had selected the prime contractor for its planned Crew Exploration Vehicle spacecraft. Lockheed Martin beat out a Boeing/Northrop Grumman team to win the multibillion-dollar contract to develop the spacecraft, which a week earlier NASA had given a new name: Orion. "The first Orion launch with humans onboard is planned for no later than 2014, and for a human moon landing no later than 2020," the press release about the selection stated.Now, as the year 2014 enters its final month, that statement has not held up very well. NASA has no plans for a human lunar landing in 2020 or later; that goal of the Vision for Space Exploration was scrapped by the Obama Administration in 2010. Even before that decision, the first crewed Orion flight had officially slipped to at least 2015, and the 2009 Augustine Committee concluded it would likely not take place until at least 2017.Orion, at least, will be flying in 2014, having survived the near-death experience of the cancellation of Constellation in 2010. It won't be carrying people, and it won't be going to the Moon, but it is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket at 7:05 am EST (1205 GMT) December 4. The flight, designated by NASA as Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1), will last just four and a half hours, making nearly two full orbits of the Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.That doesn't sound like much of a flight, but NASA is making a big deal of the upcoming mission, calling it a major milestone in Orion's development. Thousands of people—many working for Lockheed Martin and other companies working on Orion, as well as some space enthusiasts—are expected to converge on the Cape to witness the launch."EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," said NASA deputy associate administrator William Hill at a briefing about the mission at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) last month."You can't do a test like that on the ground"It's a big deal since it's the first time that an Orion spacecraft has flown in space. Over its long development process, Orion spacecraft and their subsystems have been scrutinized in clean rooms and high bays. Boilerplate versions of Orion have dropped from airplanes to test its parachutes, dunked in water to test its seaworthiness, and fished from the ocean to test recovery techniques. One even flew—briefly—on a test of its abort motor in 2010, flying a couple thousand meters into the air at White Sands, New Mexico, before parachuting back to the desert floor minutes later.Some things about Orion, though, can't be tested on land, sea, or air. "EFT-1 is basically a compilation of the riskiest events we're going to see when we fly people," Mark Geyer, NASA Orion program manager, said at last month's briefing at KSC. "Some of these events are difficult or impossible to test on the ground."The Delta IV Heavy, the most powerful rocket currently available to NASA, will place Orion and the rocket's upper stage into an initial orbit of 185 by 888 kilometers. (The launch time, just a few minutes after sunrise, is driven by operational issues: it ensures the launch is illuminated, while maximizing the daylight available to the recovery team in the Pacific.) That orbit will serve as a checkout period for the spacecraft before it enters the next, and more daring, phase of the flight.One hour and 55 minutes after liftoff, after Orion completes that first orbit of the Earth, the upper stage will fire its RL10 engine again for nearly five minutes. "It's going to give us the hardest possible push it can give us," said Garth Henning, Orion program executive at NASA Headquarters, at a Space Transportation Association luncheon in Washington last month. "It's going to push the Orion as high as we can possibly get."That altitude is about 5,800 kilometers, high enough to send Orion through the lower portions of the Van Allen radiation belts. Orion will reach that peak altitude about an hour after that maneuver, and about 20 minutes later the Orion command module, descending towards the Earth, will separate from the upper stage.Four hours and 13 minutes after liftoff, Orion will reach the "entry interface," where the spacecraft's reentry into the Earth's atmosphere will begin. Traveling at about 32,000 kilometers per hour—faster than a normal reentry from orbit, and about 85 percent the reentry speed from a lunar return—that reentry will put to the test Orion's heat shield, which at five meters across is the largest such heat shield ever flown."The primary objective here is the heat shield test," Henning said, noting temperatures during reentry will reach 2,200 degrees Celsius. "You can't do a test like that on the ground. This is the test that we need to do to test this heat shield."That heating will be brief, though, as Orion quickly slows. Six minutes after entry interface, with Orion slowed to subsonic speeds, it will deploy two drogue parachutes, followed a minute later by three main parachutes. Orion will splash down in the Pacific a few minutes later, or four hours and 23 minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral.While testing that heat shield is a primary objective of EFT-1, driving its unusual flight profile, it's not the only purpose for the flight. Geyer said the mission will test several other key systems, such as those needed to separate various components in flight, like the launch abort system during ascent. Passage through the Van Allen belts will test the susceptibility of Orion's electronics to radiation effects. The mission will also provide a full test of the spacecraft's parachutes. "It'll be our first chance to make sure everything deploys and operates as it should," Geyer said.The unique nature of EFT-1The EFT-1 mission is designed to test out many key technologies needed for Orion's future missions. NASA officials say that the flight will test 10 of the top 16 risks that could lead to the loss of a crew. This mission, though, will be different from those future crewed Orion missions in a number of ways.First involves Orion itself. "We are flying a flight primary structure, so you could fly people with this primary structure. You could fly people with this heat shield," Geyer said. However, he said that engineers have found ways to reduce the structure's mass that will be implemented on future missions. The vehicle's launch abort system also won't have an abort motor on this flight, since there is no crew on board.Also, with no crew on board, much of the interior of Orion is not outfitted for EFT-1. For example, this Orion has no seats for a crew, nor displays and other controls that astronauts on board would use, Geyer said.Even Orion's exterior will look different. Illustrations and animations of Orion show it with a white exterior, courtesy of thermal paint. But the Orion flying on EFT-1 will instead look black. Henning explained that, given the short duration of the flight, that paint isn't needed. "It's just the raw black tile," he said.This Orion will also lack a full-fledged service module; in fact, the command module will remain attached to the upper stage for all but the last hour of the flight. The European Space Agency is supplying the service module for the next Orion mission, Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), using technology developed for the Automated Transfer Vehicle spacecraft that services the International Space Station. ESA awarded a contract to Airbus Defence and Space on November 17 to serve as prime contractor for the service module.Also different, of course, is Orion's launch vehicle. With the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket that will launch future Orion missions still at least three years away from its first flight, the Delta IV Heavy was the best option available to do an interim flight test before SLS launches Orion on EM-1.Less visible than the launch vehicle and the appearance of Orion, though, is how the EFT-1 mission is being carried out. While widely seen as a NASA mission, it is more accurate to say that EFT-1 is a mission for NASA being conducted—and led—by prime contractor Lockheed Martin."We took a different approach with EFT-1. We're basically buying services from Lockheed Martin," said Hill. "They are responsible for the mission. It is truly a commercial endeavor.""It's somewhat unique for this mission. NASA's asking for a service and we're providing the data back," Bryan Austin, the Lockheed Martin EFT-1 mission manager, at last month's KSC briefing.That approach—Lockheed Martin running the mission, and providing the data to NASA—manifests itself in a number of ways. For example, because this launch is being conducted by Lockheed at not NASA, United Launch Alliance had to obtain a commercial launch license for the Delta IV Heavy, a rocket previously used for national security missions. Lockheed also had to get a commercial reentry license from the FAA for Orion.Both NASA and Lockheed Martin, though, emphasize that the space agency will have plenty of insight into mission operations through the use of "blended teams" of company and agency personnel. "You're going to have all of the folks at the Cape all in the same room," said Henning. "A Lockheed person will be chairing the meeting, but it's going to be all the same folks with all the same insight."An uncertain futureWhile not technically a NASA mission, the agency has been heavily publicizing the mission, selling it as the next step towards the agency's long-term goal of humans on Mars. NASA has promoted the mission through approaches both conventional and unconventional, including a partnership with the children's television program Sesame Street. "The 10-day [EFT-1] countdown incorporates some of Sesame Street's most beloved Muppet characters including Elmo, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Slimey," NASA noted in a press release last week.But what comes after EFT-1 soon becomes vague. Orion's next mission, EM-1, will be the first for the SLS. That mission is officially planned for late 2017. However, in August, a NASA cost and schedule model developed as part of a program milestone known as Key Decision Point C (KDP-C) estimated SLS would not be ready until as late as November 2018. That KDP-C estimate was known as a "70-percent joint confidence level model," meaning that NASA estimates there is a 70-percent chance that SLS will be ready no later than November 2018.At the time, NASA officials put a positive spin on that estimate, saying that the KDP-C review helped them identify problems that will help them be ready sooner. "If we don't do anything, we basically have a 70-percent chance of getting to that date," William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said at the time. "We will be there by November of 2018, but I look to my team to do better than that."Orion has yet to pass its own KDP-C review, which is not planned until early next year. Thus, there's no similar development schedule, or cost estimate, for Orion. However, a few weeks before NASA released the SLS review, Orion officials were hinting that they would be hard-pressed to be ready to fly in late 2017 regardless of the status of SLS."We're going to be challenged to make December '17," Geyer said in an August 9 presentation at the annual Mars Society conference in Houston. He said the decision to add the EFT-1 flight test, as well as bringing ESA into the program to develop the Orion service module, were putting schedule pressure on the program.However, he said there that the benefits of doing EFT-1 outweighed the schedule risks. "We felt it was more important to build a flight unit and fly it because we're going to learn so much about what the risks are," he said. "To us, it was worth the potential impact on EM-1."After EM-1 flies, be it in late 2017 or some time in 2018, will come EM-2, the first crewed mission for Orion. That is planned for 2021, most likely sending astronauts around the Moon, perhaps in the "distant retrograde orbit" around the Moon favored by NASA for its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which seeks to nudge a small near Earth object into that orbit to be visited by astronauts.However, assuming ARM goes forward, it appears increasingly unlikely that the asteroid would arrive in that orbit until about 2025, based on the candidate objects identified to date (see "Feeling strongARMed", The Space Review, August 4, 2014). NASA is scheduled to decide later this month on which of two options it will pursue for ARM: redirecting an entire asteroid up to ten meters across into lunar orbit, or taking a smaller boulder off a larger asteroid and moving that into lunar orbit.Yet, more than a year and a half after NASA announced ARM, it's been slow to win support for it from both the scientific community and from Congress. The latter could weigh in on ARM later this month, if Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate are able to develop a spending bill for NASA and other federal agencies for the remainder of fiscal year 2015. (The federal government has been operating on a stopgap spending bill, called a continuing resolution, since the fiscal year began October 1. That bill expires December 11, but Congress could choose to pass another short-term spending bill and defer action on the full spending bill until after the new Congress convenes in January.)If Congress decides to delay or defund ARM, it's not clear what mission would take its place in the early 2020s, at least within the budget profiles likely available to NASA for the foreseeable future. Complicating matters is the change of administrations in two years: the President who takes office in January 2017 will—eventually—turn his or her attention to NASA and may decide to revisit the agency's plans, just as the Obama Administration did in 2009. That could raise new doubts about the future of Orion, SLS, and other elements of the agency's space exploration architecture, even as the EM-1 mission approaches.But then again, Orion has already survived one change in NASA exploration plans. Perhaps it can do so again, should the need arise.Isolated showers, gusty winds expected for Thursday's Delta 4 launchStephen Clark - Spaceflightnow.comWeather forecasters will watch for isolated rain showers and gusty winds that could delay Thursday's launch of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket carrying NASA's Orion space capsule on its first flight into orbit.The official outlook released Monday by the U.S. Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron calls for a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions during Thursday's launch window, which opens at 7:05 a.m. EST (1205 GMT) and closes at 9:44 a.m. EST (1444 GMT)."Gusty easterly winds will persist this week over the Florida East Coast," the Air Force weather team wrote in a forecast summary. "Low level moisture will cause low clouds and occasional coastal showers to move in from offshore all week, particularly during the morning hours."The rain showers are not expected to contain lightning, but officials say there is a chance the weather Thursday could violate the Delta 4 rocket's rules on ground winds and flight through precipitation.Meteorologists predict broken cloud decks at 3,000 feet and 30,000 feet during Thursday's launch window. Winds are forecast to be out of the northeast gusting up to 17 mph, and the temperature should be around 72 degrees Fahrenheit.The Orion team is also receiving updates solar activity and on weather and sea conditions at the capsule's splashdown zone in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles southwest of San Diego, where U.S. Navy and NASA recovery personnel will greet the spacecraft.The United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket — the most powerful launcher in the U.S. inventory — will send the Orion spacecraft more than 3,600 miles above Earth to test the capsule's computers, avionics, software and control systems.The 19,000-pound capsule — shielded from re-entry temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit — will plunge back into the atmosphere flying west to east over the Pacific Ocean, then deploy parachutes to slow its descent for a gentle splashdown about four-and-a-half hours after launch.If the mission blasts off at the opening of Thursday's launch window, landing would occur at 11:29 a.m. EST (1629 GMT).Thursday's launch marks the first space mission for the Orion spacecraft, which will carry astronauts on subsequent flights beyond Earth orbit, reaching potential destinations like asteroids, the moon, Mars and deep space habitats. Another unmanned test flight is planned for 2018, and Orion's first crewed mission is scheduled for 2021.Orion, EFT-1 and the future of U.S. human spaceflightJason Rhian - Spaceflight InsiderIn 2011, NASA retired its fleet of space shuttle orbiters. The spacecraft that had ferried crews into the black for three decades – were now relegated to monuments in museums and tourist destinations. The space agency then focused its crewed space exploration efforts on its new vessel – Orion. Why did NASA decide to go back to a capsule-based design? What is the purpose and capabilities of this craft – and why is it called Orion? The answers – are as fascinating as the spacecraft's future missions.In 2003 space shuttle Columbia was lost, and along with her – the seven crew members of STS-107. Missions to carve endless orbits above the Earth had long since ceased to capture the public's imagination and the agency as well as officials within the U.S. government realized that not only was there a lack of direction at NASA – but the program of record, the space shuttle, had already cost the lives of 14 astronauts – and almost half the orbiters that had been produced.In 2004, then-President George W. Bush announced that NASA would have a new program – Constellation – and its purpose would be to release NASA from the shackles of low-Earth orbit or "LEO" and allow them to get back to the business they were meant for – exploration.What's in a Name?The Constellation Program had a number of so-called legacy systems that would be used to carry out the missions to the: "Moon, Mars and Beyond" (the program's mantra). These included the Ares I and Ares V boosters as well as the Crew Exploration Vehicle or "CEV."In 2006 NASA astronaut Jeff Williams accidentally unveiled (NASA had planned to reveal the name a few days later than Williams' announcement) the name of the spacecraft during his stint on board the International Space Station – Orion. The vessel's name comes from the fact that Orion – is a constellation – thus making it an apt name for an element of the Constellation Program.SurvivorIn 2010 NASA was well on its way to carrying out the development and implementation of the program. It had launched the Ares I-X rocket and it had begun renovating facilities at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Some $9 billion had been spent when it was announced that the Obama Administration had decided to cancel the program.This appeared to run contrary to President Obama's statement on the campaign trail – and drew the ire of Senate. Obama visited Kennedy Space Center in April of 2010 – and stated that Orion would survive. The U.S. leader's statements of a mission to an asteroid, perhaps Mars in the 2030s and a lack of detail on the new status of Orion – caused many to be concern.It was now unclear if Orion, who would now only be a lifeboat, would be one-of-a-kind, several vehicles or something else. The Senate had enough of vague, contradictory statements and stepped in. Orion would survive – and it would be given a new purpose – its original one.While the Ares I crew-rated vehicle was cancelled, the Ares V launch vehicle –would, in a different form, return. Known as the Space Launch System or "SLS" – this new booster would evolve from the 70 metric ton variety – to one capable of hoisting 130 metric tons to orbit. There would be another change – Orion would use SLS for its ride to orbit (whereas on Constellation Orion would ride the much-smaller Ares I aloft).Orion was now described as the vehicle that would allow crews to travel to an asteroid and Mars. This is inaccurate as even for a mission to an asteroid that had been towed to lunar orbit – other components would be required. For a journey to the Red Planet – the craft would merely serve as a means to LEO – and back home through Earth's atmosphere.When Orion lifts of atop SLS, a mission dubbed Exploration Mission 1 or "EM-1" – it will do so using a service module provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) which was built by Airbus Defence and Space. This international cooperation could be a sign of things to come. If so, Orion will be a multi-national program – thus making its long-term survival far more likely.By the numbersNASA's Mark Geyer detailed how Orion is designed to support a crew of four for 21 days. The spacecraft is designed to be versatile, and is capable of supporting larger crews for shorter periods.The craft stands some 11 feet (3 meters) tall, has a diameter of approximately 16.5 feet (5 meters). With a total mass of 46,848 lbs (21,250 kg) and a habitable volume of 316 cubic feet (8.95 m) – Orion is far larger than the Apollo Command and Service Module that delivered six crews to the surface of the Moon in the late 60s and early 70s."To me the volume is a big part of Orion and its flexibility to be able to do a lot of different missions. We can max the system out with four crew members flying a 21-day mission. That's four people with their suits, food, all that kind of stuff and some minimal exercise that they could do for 21 days – that basically decides the volume that you see," said NASA's Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer.Apollo was only capable of supporting a crew of 3 for about two weeks and had a habitable volume of about 218 feet (6.2 m) with a launch mass of some 32,390 lbs (14,690 kg). All total, Orion has about one-and-a-half times the volume that the Apollo spacecraft did.Early concepts had Orion touching down on land, much like Russia's Progress spacecraft. If followed through on, Orion would have touched down somewhere along the United States' West Coast and would have employed airbags for the final portion of descent. It was later decided that, like Apollo, Orion would splash down in the ocean.The CEV version of Orion was supposed to fly in 2012 and it would use liquid methane as fuel. As the vessel's design and the political winds changed – it was decided that Orion would use more-conventional hypergolic fuels.While designed to support crews for periods of about three weeks, the spacecraft can remain in a sort of hibernation mode for periods of up to six months.Although outwardly similar to Apollo, Orion is of a far-more advanced design. Although Orion is constructed by Lockheed Martin, its "glass cockpit" with its digital control systems – is based off of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner commercial aircraft.The Command Module section of Orion is comprised of an Aluminum / Lithium (Al/Li) alloy that was used on the space shuttles' external tank.Those producing the spacecraft have stated that Orion will be more than 10 times safer on both ascent and reentry than the shuttles. The first proof of this – is only a few days away.Exploration Flight Test 1For Exploration Flight Test 1, Lockheed Martin, in conjunction with United Launch Alliance and NASA will send Orion to orbit atop the massive Delta IV Heavy rocket. Scheduled to lift of from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station' Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) the booster, burningIt costs an estimated $375 million every time ULA unleashes one of these massive launch vehicles. The Heavy variant of the Delta IV family of boosters has the capacity to launch some 63,470 lbs (28, 790 kg) to LEO and 31,350 lbs (14,220 kg) to a geostationary transfer orbit (GEO).The Delta IV Heavy has only flown 7 times; six of those were successful with the remaining mission being dubbed a partial failure.The Delta IV employs three of the Common Booster Cores which are used on the Medium variant of the rocket. The Heavy variant first took to the skies in December of 2004. The booster will utilize three RS-68 rocket engines in its first stage. These engines, produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and are capable of producing 660,000 lbf (2,950 kilonewtons) of thrust – each.Orion was cleared to conduct EFT-1 by a Flight Readiness Review board on Oct. 30, 2014. With this milestone complete – Orion was now poised for integration atop the Delta IV Heavy booster.Into the BlackEFT-1 will see Orion circle the Earth twice with its apogee (the point furthest from Earth) some 3,600 miles distant. Once it has completed this – the real test begins.Screaming in at an astonishing 20,000 mph, Orion's heat shield will be put through the ultimate test. The "business end" of the shield will use an ablative material, made of fiberglass which is designed to burn away – and in so doing – carry the heat (temperatures are expected to reach 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the base of the spacecraft).NASA selected the material, Avcoat as the material which would make up the spacecraft's heat shield. Made up of silica fibers encased in a fiberglass and phenolic resin – the material was used on both the Apollo and Shuttle Programs.The outer skin of Orion will employ a series of "tiles" somewhat similar to what was used on the space shuttle.When Orion takes to the skies it will test out an array of systems and program elements that include the craft's avionics, separation events, parachutes, recovery shield and the craft's most critical component – its heat shield.In many ways, EFT-1 is very similar to the flight of Apollo 4 that the space agency carried out in 1967. Unlike Apollo 4, EFT-1 will not be an "all-up" flight of the full stack of the Saturn V and Apollo Command and Service spacecraft. Instead, NASA had decided to conduct this test flight in advanced to Exploration Mission 1 or "EM-1." EM-1 will, in terms of its core components – will visually resemble Apollo 4 very closely, with Orion stacked atop SLS and launching into the black.It is there, however, that the similarities end. EM-1 will see Orion travel much further out that its predecessor will on Dec. 4. EM-1, currently scheduled to fly in 2018, the flight will see Orion go much further than 3,600 miles out. EM-1 will fly to cislunar space, in the gravitational influence of the Moon. When the Orion that carries out that mission splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, it will mark the end of a long, winding road that began some 14 years earlier – and it could herald a new era in human spaceflight."I really can't compare this to my experiences on shuttle. This is a spacecraft tasked with exploration and it has a different role than shuttle did," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in 2013. "I think both Bob (Cabana) and John (Grunsfeld) would also offer different views than the ones I had as Bob is a former test pilot and John was inside the Hubble Space Telescope. I can say that it is an impressive vehicle and we are all very proud of it."A recent report appearing on NASASpaceFlight.com has detailed how the first mission for Orion, known as the Asteroid Retrieval or "ARM" mission – is unlikely to occur prior to 2024. Earlier dates had this mission taking place in the 2021-2022 time frame. For the ARM mission, an asteroid will be towed into lunar orbit and astronauts will then journey to it via the SLS / Orion system.There is not much information regarding what would be the follow-on for ARM, but NASA has stated repeatedly that the space agency is planning on using Orion for the first crewed mission to Mars. At present, the tentative date for this historic voyage is sometime in the 2030s.NASA Langley readies for historic Orion space missionTamara Dietrich - Hampton Roads Daily PressRick Thompson at NASA Langley Research Center has worked for years to help develop the sophisticated Orion crew capsule meant to carry American astronauts back into space from U.S. soil.The crew vehicle is scheduled to launch at last early Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard a heavy-lift Delta IV rocket on its inaugural, shakedown mission.When it does, it will carry the hopes and dreams of the post-Apollo generation, cutting-edge technology and its lone crew member — a plush red Muppet."I got pretty excited when I saw Elmo was onboard," Thompson joked Monday.Thompson works in aerothermal dynamics, and he and other NASA Langley engineers in Hampton who played key roles in getting the Orion ready for show time spoke with reporters Monday about the upcoming test flight. The revelation that a Tickle Me Elmo doll will be a passenger generated laughs, but this mission is dead serious.America's vaunted deep-space ambitions — a crewed mission in the 2020s to redirect and retrieve an asteroid, and another mission in the 2030s to send humans to Mars — hinge on getting this technology right.And much depends on a successful test flight. The capsule is set to launch at 7:05 a.m. Thursday and splash down in the Pacific Ocean about 4 1/2 hours later. Much could happen in the interim."What we do is very dangerous," said Kevin Rivers, project manager of the new launch abort system, or LAS, that sits atop the Orion. That system is designed to carry a crew to safety should a launch go wrong. It would activate automatically in milliseconds in a catastrophic launch event, such as when the unmanned Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff in October from NASA Wallops on the Eastern Shore."The level of energy that we deal with in a launch system is phenomenal," River said. "So any time you do this, we know that there are risks. That we could fail. But we've looked very carefully at our launch system and our spacecraft and we feel very confident that it's going to do what it's commanded to do and that we're going to have a great day."Many NASA centers have had a hand in developing the Orion. NASA Langley led the LAS development, conducted countless wind tunnel and impact tests, helped the U.S. Navy hone sea-based spacecraft recovery techniques and helped Lockheed Martin validate the strength and integrity of the heat shield that must withstand temperatures of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit upon re-entry."Every team has contributed to the safety of the Orion space capsule in its own way," said NASA Langley spokeswoman Kathy Barnstorff.The space agency hopes the test mission will spark the enthusiasm of the general public.On Wednesday, the center is hosting a NASA Social for participants to tour the facility, meet researchers and use various social media platforms to Tweet, blog or post about their experiences. The social is invitation-only, but the public can participate by following on Twitter using #Orion, #NASASocial, #NASA and @NASALangley. NASA TV will also broadcast a social media briefing from 1 to 3 p.m. that day.And on Thursday, the NASA-affiliated Virginia Air & Space Center in downtown Hampton will open its IMAX theater at 6:15 a.m. so the public can view the Orion launch and splash-down for free on a huge screen."My hope is that, when we fly successfully on Thursday, that it will energize the public," said Thompson, "and energize that middle-schooler that isn't quite sure what he wants to do, but he likes math and science. And he'll follow along and go into engineering and come to work at NASA. That happened to me. I was 10 years old when I watched Apollo fly to the moon, and carried that dream … with me all these years."According to NASA, the Orion will be packed with sensors to record and measure every second of its flight. Shortly after lift-off it'll jettison its launch abort system to demonstrate that ability, then lap once around the planet at 17,000 mph.Once that's done, it'll fire its upper-stage rockets to begin its "big climb" — 3,600 miles above Earth, 15 times higher than the International Space Station, higher than a crew vehicle has traveled since the Apollo missions 40 years ago.Then it'll head home again.The Orion will fire its jets to position itself for re-entry, plummeting through the atmosphere at a blistering 20,000 mph, enveloped in a field of superheated plasma twice as hot as lava. This is where the heat shield will undergo its literal crucible.Once the capsule is safely through, a series of parachutes will deploy, slowing it down to 300 mph, then 175 mph and, finally, 20 mph for an easy splashdown fit for an actual crew.The heat shield will be removed from the capsule and shipped to NASA Langley, where it will be integrated into a model for even more splash-down tests in 2016, said Richard Boitnott, lead test engineer.In 2017, NASA plans to send another unmanned Orion on a mission to orbit the moon, this time boosted by the supersized Space Launch System rocket being built especially for deep-space manned missions.If all goes well, the Orion and the SLS could carry their first humans into space as early as 2019."It's about exploration," Boitnott said. "I just hope I live long enough to see us land on Mars."NASA Homing in on Mission Design for Asteroid Relocation ExcursionIrene Klotz – Space NewsAs NASA's deep-space Orion capsule gears up for its debut test flight, a parallel effort to develop a robotic asteroid relocation mission reaches a key decision point Dec. 16.A team led by NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot will be briefed on the technical maturity, cost, risk, scientific appeal and other aspects of two ideas to relocate an asteroid into a high, retrograde lunar orbit, positioning it for a future Orion crew as well as for commercial entities and other countries interested in mining and exploration initiatives.Plan A of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) entails capturing an asteroid small enough to fit inside a 15-by-12-meter inflatable bag. Once it is inside, the bag's petals would close and an attached robotic spacecraft, outfitted with massive solar panels, would fire up its xenon ion engine. The asteroid's path would be slightly diverted so that it would fly as close as about 100 kilometers from the Moon's surface, picking up a gravitational bump to slingshot into a distant, stable retrograde lunar orbit.Plan B would have the robotic spacecraft rendezvous with a larger asteroid, possibly hundreds of meters in diameter, and, after a preliminary scouting mission, land on its surface. A pair of robotic arms would deploy to pick up a 2- to 4-meter-wide boulder that would then be flown back toward the Moon and bounced out into a similar distant retrograde lunar orbit.Both missions would take about three years."We trade efficiency for time," Brian Muirhead, robotics manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters at a Nov. 19 media day at the Johnson Space Center here."If we tried to do this mission with chemical propellants, we would need 20 times as much propellant," he said.Current mission designs include 10 tons of xenon for the spacecraft's electric engine, compared with 200 tons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. The ARM spacecraft is based on technology now being used by NASA's Dawn probe, which is en route to its second destination in the asteroid belt, the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn began its mission in 2007 with a half-ton of xenon.NASA considers ARM primarily a technology demonstration mission for large, high-power solar arrays, such as what might be needed for future human missions to destinations beyond the international space station, which orbits about 418 kilometers above Earth.A relocated asteroid also would serve as a target for a sample-return mission by astronauts on the first U.S. human excursions into deep space since the 1969-1972 Apollo program. That effort kicks off Dec. 4 with the debut test flight of NASA's Orion capsule. The two-orbit, 4.5-hour mission will position the spacecraft as far as about 5,800 kilometers from Earth so that it can slam back into the atmosphere at a speed of about 32,000 kilometers per hour, close to the force Orion would experience upon a return trip from lunar orbit. The test is intended to prove out Orion's heat shield, which should reach temperatures of around 2,200 degrees Celsius, as well as parachutes, avionics and other equipment.A third objective for ARM is to develop techniques that could be used to deflect a potentially hazardous asteroid. Overall, NASA is asking for about $1.25 billion for ARM, with Plan B running about $100 million more than Plan A. The mission could be launched on either a Delta 4 Heavy, which is what NASA is using for the Dec. 4 Orion test flight, or NASA's still-under-development Space Launch System rocket, which is expected to debut in November 2018.ARM could launch as early as 2019 but more likely would not occur until 2020, Muirhead said. The asteroid would be expected to reach its cislunar orbit in 2023 or 2024 and possibly be a target for Orion's Exploration Mission 2 flight.So far, NASA has three targets if Plan A is selected and four for Plan B. Ground-based observatories worldwide are continuing the search. Technically, a decision would not have to be made until a year before launch, though the target could be identified in time for a mission review in 2016 or 2017.Engineers have been testing prototypes for both Plan A and Plan B, with results to be presented to NASA headquarters in Washington for review Dec. 16. Scientists also will make their case for the value of returned samples for both mission designs and detail the benefits and shortfalls for planetary defense objectives. Also figuring into the decision about which path to pursue is how valuable the mission will be as a steppingstone to human expeditions to Mars, the ultimate goal of NASA's human space program.The enigma of presidential "space" politicsChris Carberry - The Space Review
It doesn't seem possible, but a quadrennial tradition in the space community is gearing up yet again. Speculation has already begun regarding who would be the best "space" President. For years, space advocates waited for a new "Kennedy moment," hoping that another president would deliver a stirring and compelling speech that would propel the nation to settle the solar system. However, this mythological speech has never materialized. To be clear, many subsequent presidents have made space exploration policy speeches, but none of them has led to programs matching the Apollo Program. One can argue that these presidential orations were not as eloquent, inspiring, and passionate as Kennedy's Rice University speech, but at best oratory played only a small role in the success of Apollo and its predecessor programs.We all want presidential leadership, but we can't wait for a "magical presidential moment" that may never come again. In reality, the success of Kennedy's speech was almost completely dependent on a particular moment in time and political (and other) circumstances that occurred in the 1960s. If Kennedy made a comparable speech today, it would likely be no more successful than other less famous presidential space speeches.Apollo was unquestionably spectacular and historic, but the Apollo model is decidedly not a model we should try to—or even can—replicate in our current age. First of all, the Apollo Program proved to be an unsustainable model. There was only one official reason for going to Moon—to beat the Soviet Union in a race—but once that goal was achieved, there was no politically compelling reason to continue. The 1960s was also a time when the nation was willing and able to spend upwards of four percent of the federal budget on that program. The allocation of such a significant portion of the federal budget to the Apollo Program was possible only because the race to the Moon was seen as an important component of the battle for global dominance between the superpowers. A similar geopolitical dynamic is unlikely to happen again. We also can't discount the power of need—that is, the need of the nation to get to the Moon before that decade was out in order to fulfill the dream of our fallen leader. The country felt obligated to land humans on the Moon to honor John F. Kennedy.There is always great hope in the space community that candidates will embrace space exploration in the next campaign, but history has shown that when space exploration enters the campaign dialogue, it often hasn't gone well. Newt Gingrich learned this when he proposed a Moon base and other ambitious plans, which prompted Mitt Romney to state that if Gingrich were one of his employees, he would fire him for suggesting such a plan. And sometimes the space community fights back. When then-Senator Obama suggested that he would take money from NASA to fund science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, he quickly backpedaled when he was attacked by space supporters, particularly in the key electoral state of Florida. Unfortunately, there have been few occasions when an open dialogue regarding space exploration has benefited the candidates, or the space exploration cause, during a campaign. Rational discourse on the subject has been elusive.Yet today we have many positive variables that simply didn't exist in the 1960s. Private capabilities are blossoming worldwide, international partnerships are likely to play a pivotal role, and there are support networks, advocacy groups, and other mechanisms. As a result, space is far more democratized than in any time in the past. Perennial commercial space advocate Rick Tumlinson may have said it best: "We must be our own Kennedys, set the path ourselves, and do what it takes to make it happen." This doesn't necessarily mean that space doesn't need the President, NASA, or Congress, but we must collectively take on leadership enabling NASA and independent players to proceed. Not everything needs to be dictated from the top. We can create inevitability that can transcend political fluctuations over the upcoming decades.Presidential leadership is still important, but government is no longer the only player. NASA still should be the leader in space exploration, but in a manner that will unite, harness, and stimulate all of these players, as it is doing with cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) and commercial crew programs. The President, working with Congress, needs to enable that process and provide policy and budgetary consistency.However, as with the numerous historical efforts to "recreate" the Roman Empire, trying to recapture a moment from the past—such as Kennedy's Moon speech—will inevitably fail. The more one tries to replicate past glory, the more one is distracted from new achievements. Collectively, we need to stop waiting for another speech like Kennedy's and move beyond the Apollo Program.Star Trek, Marvel and Apollo mementos set to launch on NASA's Orion test flightRobert Pearlman - Collectspace.comCaptain Kirk, Iron Man, Sesame Street's Slimey the Worm, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex are set to lift off to space later this week on the first test flight of Orion, NASA's next-generation spacecraft.
This eclectic 'crew' flying aboard NASA's unmanned Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) are among the souvenirs and mementos packed for the four-hour, two-orbit mission. The Orion capsule with its cargo of sensors, instruments, and memorabilia is scheduled to launch Thursday (Dec. 4) at 7:05 a.m. EST (1205 GMT) on board a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta 4 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The mementos, which include a Star Trek action figure, a Marvel challenge coin, a muppet, a dinosaur fossil, and an Apollo lunar spacesuit part, were collected for the flight by Lockheed Martin, NASA's prime contractor for Orion and the company responsible for the EFT-1 mission.The toys and artifacts packed aboard the Orion continue a long tradition dating back to the early days of U.S. human spaceflight, when astronauts carried small trinkets for their families, friends, and organizations that helped make their mission possible.
To boldly go
The Orion is NASA's first crewed space capsule since the Apollo command module. It is designed to take astronauts farther into the solar system than ever before. The EFT-1 mission will test systems that are critical to future human missions to an asteroid and ultimately to Mars.
During the flight, the Orion will fly 15 times farther out than the International Space Station before plummeting back to Earth to test its heatshield at speeds nearing what it would experience if it was returning from the moon. After reentry, the Orion will deploy parachutes and then splash down in the Pacific Ocean, where it will be recovered by the Navy.To raise public awareness about EFT-1, Lockheed worked with the Entertainment Industries Council (EIC) to recruit items from science fiction-related celebrities to fly onboard Orion.
"A noted space enthusiast, William Shatner is thrilled to send Kirk back to space and support Orion, while inspiring future generations about space travel," EIC vice president Skylar Jackson told collectSPACE.
Shatner provided his "Captain Kirk in Environmental Suit" collector's edition action figure to symbolize his iconic role on "Star Trek."
Director Jon Favreau offered an "Iron Man" challenge coin to represent engineering, technology and flight.
"'Iron Man' transcends generations and even has had his own adventures in space making this contribution one that will further enhance the conversation among young people about the importance of space research and discovery for years to come," Jackson said.Other sci-fi celebrity items flying on Orion include signed cast photographs and Delorean time machine model from "Back to the Future" actress Claudia Wells, and photos of Mayim Bialik's ancestors given by "The Big Bang Theory" actress and real-life neuroscientist. EIC's co-founder Brian Dyak and executive vice president Larry Deutchman also provided a "Crash Test Dummy" action figure, a character they invented to promote the use of seat belts.
In a similar collaboration to Lockheed's and EIC's, NASA and Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind the children's television show "Sesame Street," partnered to fly items that will inspire a new generation of explorers.
Oscar the Grouch's pet worm Slimey, who previously flew to the moon as part of the TV show, is launching on Orion, as are Ernie's rubber ducky, Cookie Monster's cookie and Grover's cape (from when the furry blue monster becomes "Super Grover"). The Muppets' items, once back from the mission, will take prized spots on the Sesame Street set where millions of children will be able to see them.From Jurassic Park to Tranquility Base
Also packed aboard the historic Orion test flight are some historical artifacts.
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science, located near Lockheed Martin's space systems division in Colorado, is loaning part of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The prehistoric fossil "will make the flight as a reminder of how much life the Earth has seen during its existence," NASA explained on its website.
From the land before time to the moon landings, Orion is also launching an Apollo spacesuit oxygen hose. A spare that did not fly in space prior to this mission, the 45-year-old artifact is on loan from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Together with the hose, Orion is holding a small sample of lunar soil that NASA says will be used to inspire students toward science and engineering fields."The artifacts chart humanity's progress and technological advancement as the nation takes a critical step forward on the journey to Mars," the space agency stated.Art aboard Orion
Lockheed Martin also commissioned several artistic works to fly on Orion.
The recordings include "Mars" from Gustav Holst's "The Planets" performed by the National Symphony Orchestra and "We Shall Overcome" by Denyce Graves, as arranged by Nolan Williams. The latter features the words "we shall live in peace," which NASA explains is "a theme common throughout America's civilian space program and efforts."
Several poems by Marshall Jones and Maya Angelou will also be on Orion, including Angelou's "Brave and Startling Truth," as will a small sculpture, titled "Pioneer Woman," by sculptor Ed Dwight. Dwight was the United States' first black astronaut candidate.
"The [flown] works will help expand the cultural connection between the arts and science," the space agency stated.
Medallions, mementos and a microchip
Lockheed Martin, collaborating with NASA, loaded several lockers aboard the Orion spacecraft with an assortment of flags, medallions, patches and pins that after the flight will be given to EFT-1 team members, museums and schools.The Lockheed Martin medals are inscribed with the Latin phrase, "Cum Spiritus Novus, Itur Ad Astra," or translated, "With Renewed Spirit, We Shall Go To The Stars." Each features the Exploration Flight Test-1 emblem on one side and the Space Launch System rocket on the reverse.
Among the banners flying aboard the capsule is a custom flag created by EIC using the image of the astronomical constellation Orion. The flag's design "shows the unity of entertainment [and] journalism [with] science, engineering and technology to create "The Art of Making a Difference," Skylar said.
Rounding out the Orion EFT-1 commemorative payload is a microchip with the names of more than a million people who signed on to be a part of NASA's "Journey to Mars" program. The online campaign collected 1,379,961 names from more than 200 countries on digital boarding passes.Live coverage: Japanese asteroid mission set for launchStephen Clark – Spaceflight NowMONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2014Japan's H-2A rocket is set to leave its assembly building at the Tanegashima Space Center on Tuesday for a half-hour rollout to its seaside launch complex for final countdown preparations.The 17-story rocket is set for liftoff at 0422:04 GMT Wednesday (11:22:04 p.m. EST Tuesday) with Hayabusa 2, a robotic spacecraft embarking on a six-year roundtrip journey to collect samples from and asteroid and return the materials to Earth.Fitted with two solid-fueled boosters and hydrogen-burning first stage and second stage engines, the H-2A launcher will roll out on rails to Launch Pad No. 1 at Tanegashima. Rollout is expected about 12 hours before liftoff.The launch base is located on Tanegashima Island, which lies off the southern coast of Kyushu at the southwest end of the Japanese main islands.Once the rocket arrives at the launch pad, technicians will connect the vehicle to the facility's electrical and propellant supplies before fueling of the launcher with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2014Poor weather at the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan has grounded until at least Wednesday the launch of a $300 million robotic mission to fly to an asteroid, pick up samples and return them to Earth.Read our full story.Editorial | ISS Looms Large for ESA MinisterialSpaceNews EditorMinisters from the European Space Agency's member states have their work cut out for them at their Dec. 1-2 conference in Luxembourg intended to determine the agency's direction in the upcoming years and resolve several outstanding issues, including launcher strategy.The days leading up to the meeting brought signals from Germany that it had settled its seemingly intractable differences with France over launcher strategy, apparently acquiescing to the latter's desire to forgo an Ariane 5 upgrade and proceed directly to an Ariane 6 rocket. But that very positive news was offset by Italy's subsequent acknowledgment that it might not have as much funding as expected for ESA programs over the next couple of years.This will necessarily affect the launcher negotiations as well as other key programs on the meeting agenda, including the ESA participation in the international space station beyond 2015, funding for the two-launch ExoMars mission and upgrades to the Vega small launcher. The Italian Space Agency, or ASI, has a key role in station and is leading the ExoMars and Vega projects.ASI also is keen on pursuing a second-generation Cosmo-SkyMed radar satellite constellation, which is a domestic Italian program but will nonetheless draw funds that otherwise might go toward ESA activities.ASI President Roberto Battiston says the compromise on Ariane 6 remains intact and that Italy is determined to see ExoMars through despite a still looming shortfall of 200 million euros ($250 million). But he acknowledged that the size of Italy's future contribution to the space station, a top German priority, is still in question.That presents a bit of a problem given that ESA's formal commitment to space station operations is set to expire at the end of 2015. NASA had hoped that the meeting would produce an agreement to extend ESA participation to 2020, but the Europeans have signaled that a commitment through 2017 is more realistic for now.Nonetheless, ESA recently signed a contract with Airbus Defence and Space for the service module for NASA's initial Orion deep-space crew capsule, a deal that fulfills its station obligations for the next several years. The question now becomes how much funding ESA will have for station utilization.Germany has been insisting that ASI restore its traditional 19 percent contribution to ESA's space station budget starting next year. ASI's contribution had dropped considerably in 2012 due to Italy's financial problems. Whether Germany can impose its will on Italy, or persuade other ESA members to pick up the slack, however, remains to be seen.ESA has survived previous ministerial showdowns with minimal bloodletting through a combination of creative financing schemes and by deferring the toughest decisions. The upcoming meeting promises to tax the accounting and negotiating skills of the ministers to the fullest.Plummeting Rouble Hits Russia's Space ProgrammeDamien Sharkov - NewsweekRussia's federal space exploration agency Roscosmos could be forced to close down or indefinitely delay whole projects due to the worsening economic situation in the country. The plummeting Russian rouble has rendered the agency incapable of planning their spending ahead of time, national daily newspaper Izvestia reported on Monday.According to Izvestia, Russia's Gonets satellite system, launched by the Ministry of Defence and intended to restore Russia's status as a major aerospace power, may not meet its upcoming deadline for government funding from 2016 to 2025."Due to the complete unpredictability of prices in November the scientific engineering council was not able to reconcile anything concerning the orbital system of communication Gonets," the anonymous source from the central strategic planning of Roscosmos told Izvestia.Roscosmos's dependence on EU imports for its satellites and other aerospace projects has made it very sensitive to the exchange rate of roubles to the euro.Projects like Gonets - a surveillance and communication satellite system - are almost entirely dependent on imports for its construction."90% of the apparatus is imported, which is normal. It ensures that projects are not dated and remain at the cutting edge. The industry-wide average for imported components in satellites is 70%."But what can we estimate from the rates of 2014, if we have to base the cost of 90% of our equipment on the euro?" the source told Izvestia.The EU's intensifying economic sanctions on Russia have contributed to a steep fall of Russia's rouble and the price of oil, a key export for Russia, has also plummeted to below €56 per barrel.On Monday the rouble experienced its biggest one day fall since Russia's 1998 financial crisis with a poll last month showing half of all Russians believe EU sanctions will cause a new economic crisis in Russia in the near future.Gonets alone is estimated to cost some 43.6 billion roubles (€673.7 million) and was initially planned to consist of 24 fully operational satellites by 2025 positioned globally under the development of Russia's Ministry of Defence."In February the one euro was 48 roubles, at the end of November it is 60 roubles. What will the exchange rate be in a year or two? We cannot afford to guess and we cannot estimate that. Therefore any figure in roubles in the Federal Space Agency's project can not have any substance," the source told Izvestia.New Images Refine View of Infant UniverseDennis Overbye – New York TimesIn a throwback to another era in cosmic history, astronomers on Monday discussed the birth of the universe at a meeting in a 15th-century palace, the Palazzo Costabili in Ferrara, Italy, where the amenities do not include Internet access.The subject of Planck 2014, as the meeting is called, is a new baby picture — and all of the accompanying vital statistics — of the universe when it was 380,000 years old and space was as hot as the surface of the sun. The portrait taker was the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, which spent three years surveying a haze of microwave radiation left over from the last moments of the Big Bang with a bevy of sensitive radio receivers.The data will not be published until Dec. 22 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, and the lack of Internet access frustrated astronomers who had planned on watching a webcast of the proceedings but found themselves relying on Twitter feeds instead.At least, they reported, the coffee was suitably strong.The new data largely confirms and refines the picture from a temperature map of the microwaves that Planck scientists, a multinational collaboration led by Jan Tauber of the European Space Agency, produced in 2013, showing the faint irregularities from which gargantuan features like galaxies would grow. Its microwave portrait reveals a universe 13.8 billion years old that is precisely mysterious, composed of 4.9 percent atomic matter, 26.6 percent mysterious dark matter that is not atomic, and 68.5 percent of even more mysterious dark energy, the glib name for whatever it is that seems to be blowing the universe apart.The result is a resounding victory for a sort of standard model of cosmology that has grown up over the last two decades, said Lyman Page, a Princeton astrophysicist, in a phone call from Ferrara. "What we see is pretty impressive," he said. "It's amazing that just six parameters describe the universe."Cosmologists still do not know what dark matter — the material that provides the gravitational scaffolding for galaxies — is, but the Planck results have increased their knowledge of what it is not, according to the French Center for National Scientific Research.Recently space experiments like NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer have recorded excess cosmic ray emissions that, some say, could be evidence of a certain kind of dark matter particles colliding and annihilating one another.After Planck, we need another answer for those experiments, the French agency concluded in a statement.Neal Weiner, a particle theorist at New York University, who is not part of Planck, concurred. That model of dark matter, he said in an email, if not completely excluded, now could be severely constrained. "If this holds up, at the very least a possibility to discover dark matter is now diminished."Planck dealt a blow to another possible dark matter candidate, namely a brand of the ghostly particles known as neutrinos. Physicists have known of three types of neutrinos for some time and have wondered if there were any more, whose accumulated mass would affect the evolution of the universe. Planck's results leave little room for a fourth kind, so-called sterile neutrinos.Compounding the frustration of cosmologists in the room in Ferrara and at large was an issue that has galvanized them for the better part of a year: whether astronomers had detected the very beginnings of the Big Bang in the form of space-time ripples known as gravitational waves.The added value of the new Planck data is a map showing how the microwaves are polarized, information that could shed light on what was going on when the universe was a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old, and in the grip of forces about which physicists can only speculate.Among the hottest topics of speculation these days is the idea — known as inflation — that the universe underwent a violent and brief surge of expansion in the earliest moments, settling the geometry and other aspects of the present universe. Such an explosion, theorists say, would have left faint corkscrew swirls, known technically as B-modes, in the pattern of polarization of the microwaves.In March there was much excitement when a team of American astronomers operating a radio telescope at the South Pole called Bicep2 announced they had detected such a pattern. Alan Guth of M.I.T., one of the inventors of inflation, was at the news conference at Harvard announcing the results.After three months of spirited debate, the astronomers conceded, however, that their signal could have been caused by interstellar dust, which can also twist the microwaves.Enter Planck, which observed the microwaves in nine different frequencies, making it easy to distinguish dust. Bicep2 had only one frequency.A preliminary report from Planck in September confirmed that there was enough dust in Bicep2's patch of sky to account for the twisting, but there are still large uncertainties that leave room for primordial gravitational waves.Subsequently, Planck and Bicep agreed to pool their data for a joint analysis.Planck scientists have meanwhile published their own polarization maps, which astronomers say will be useful for studying how the anti-gravitational push of dark energy and the gravitational pull of dark matter orchestrated the growth of galaxies and the universe when it was two or three billion years old — a sensitive age.The bumps in the microwave maps that eventually grow to galaxies amount to a temperature difference of only about 75-millionths of a Kelvin, in an otherwise uniform hiss. To measure polarization, radio astronomers have to discern temperature differences about a tenth of that.The difficulty of doing this research, while the world looks on, can be gauged by the number of missed deadlines. Planck researchers originally hoped to have their polarization studies done this summer. Recently they had set November as their deadline, aiming to present the results at this conference in Ferrara. Likewise, the joint Bicep/Planck paper is now expected this month or in January.Asked about this, David Spergel, a Princeton cosmologist and veteran of cosmic microwave studies who had spent the day fielding Twitter messages from Ferrara, said he had adopted an acronym often used by NASA in announcing launch dates: NET, meaning "No Earlier Than."Russian space researchers plan to create space observatory to prevent asteroid threatITAR TASSA cutting edge project has been developed capable of spotting asteroids more than 50 meters in size at a distance equal to one astronomical unitThe Astronomy Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kometa Corporation have developed a cutting edge project that envisages creation of a space observatory capable to spot asteroids more than 50 meters in size at a distance equal to one astronomical unit - the measurement used for the Earth-sun distance, and other space objects of a decameter size, similar to the Chelyabinsk meteorite, in the near Earth orbits, Director of the Astronomy Institute Boris Shustov told TASS on Monday."We have been advocating the project as the Russian one, but which might be integrated into world systems of mass detection and monitoring of hazardous space objects. We expect Roscosmos (the Russian Federal Space Agency) and the Council for studies of space to give their support to the project of creation of a Russian system for prevention of space threats," Shustov said.He expressed hope that in the near future the parliament's upper house committees on science and defense would resume discussions of a problem of planetary defense, which were started in March in the framework of a round table organized by the upper house.ENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
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