| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Help Kirk Meet the Challenge to Knock Out Hunger
- Tech Briefs Highlights More JSC Innovations - Organizations/Social
- Save the Date - AFGE Lunch and Learn
- JSC Weight Watchers at Work -- Register Now!
- Human Systems Integration ERG Monthly Meeting
- Apollo 45th Anniversary Shirts Not Picked Up - Jobs and Training
- Cleanroom Classes: Sept. 3 at the SAIC Building
- Job Opportunities - Community
- JSC's DAG Meeting - Info about Hearing Impairments
- HERG Presents: Spanish Over Lunch
- Blood Drive Thank You |  |
| Headlines - Help Kirk Meet the Challenge to Knock Out Hunger
JSC Engineering and White Sands Test Facility have challenged the rest of JSC to Knock Out Hunger and Feed Local Families. Deputy Center Director Kirk Shireman has offered up his truck to take food to the Gilruth on Tuesday for the Stuff the Truck event. Our goal is to collect 60,000 lbs. Here's how you can participate: Monday and Tuesday (Aug. 25 and 26) - bring your personal food contributions to the Building 1 Lobby Wednesday (Aug. 27) - two options: 7:30 to 9 a.m. -- bring your personal contribution to the front of Building 1 where we'll continue to stuff my truck OR 8 -11 a.m. - bring your organization's contributions to the Gilruth's Stuff the Truck event between 8 to 11 a.m.. Just make sure to tell them to add your food to the right pile! For more information: - Tech Briefs Highlights More JSC Innovations
The current issue of NASA Tech Briefs recognizes five innovative Johnson Space Center technologies. Tech Briefs presents information on new innovations and technologies stemming from advanced research and technology programs at NASA. The latest edition includes the following advanced JSC innovations: - A Field-Reconfigurable Manipulator for Rovers (Inventor: Robert Burridge)
- Lightweight, Flexible, Freezable Heat Pump/Radiator for EVA Suits. (Inventors: Michael Izenson, Weibo Chen and Scott Phillips)
- Rotary Series Elastic Actuator (Inventors: Chris Ihrke, Joshua Mehling, Adam Parsons, Brian Griffith, Nicolaus Radford, Frank Permenter, Robert Ambrose, Lucien Junkin and Donald Davis)
- Hydrazine Absorbent/Detoxification Pad (Inventor: Merritt C. Helvenston)
- Designing Planning Information for Automation into PRL (Inventors: Russell Bonasso, David Kortenkamp, Scott Bell, and Mark Boddy)
Organizations/Social - Save the Date - AFGE Lunch and Learn
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Union Lunch and Learn is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 8 or Wednesday, Sept. 10. Open to all non-supervisory JSC civil servants. Come and hear what AFGE officials have to talk about: * Know your Rights * Union Benefits * Union Representation Stop by on your lunch break on Sept. 8 between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. in Building 45, Room 251 or on Sept. 10 between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. in Building 1, Room 376G. - JSC Weight Watchers at Work -- Register Now!
Register now for the next 12-week series of Weight Watchers at JSC. The series begins on Sept. 8, and will run through December. Meetings are held in Building 12, Rooms 148/150, on Mondays, with weigh in from 11:45 a.m. to noon, and meetings from noon to 12:30 p.m. To register, stop by before or after today's meeting (11:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m.), or contact Julie Kliesing at x31540 for registration information and forms. We need to have a minimum of 15 members registered by Sept. 3, so that we can start the series. So don't delay and register today! Event Date: Monday, August 25, 2014 Event Start Time:11:45 AM Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Bldg 12, 148/150
Add to Calendar
Julie Kliesing x31540
[top] - Human Systems Integration ERG Monthly Meeting
Please join us for the August Human Systems Integration (HSI) ERG meeting, where David Fitts will discuss the continuing efforts to update NASA's Systems Engineering (SE) processes and guidelines to include Human Systems Integration practices and principles. The latest updates will be on the SE Handbook comment dispositions and the HSI Practitioner's Guide. Also, Irene Kay will share info on the Deep Space Deep Ocean Forum with the Oil and Gas industries to be held in April 2015. This is an opportunity to pose challenges where the broader community may come up with innovative solutions that neither has developed on their own. Feel free to bring your lunch. - Apollo 45th Anniversary Shirts Not Picked Up
If you have not had the opportunity to pick up your Apollo 45th Anniversary T-Shirt by now, please pick them up as soon as possible at ShopNASA/Starport Gift Shop in Building 11, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m, Monday through Friday (closed on Flex Fridays). Don't forget, you will receive a 10 percent discount every Friday through Oct. 31 when wearing this shirt. Jobs and Training - Cleanroom Classes: Sept. 3 at the SAIC Building
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0095 Practices & Guidelines for Cleanroom & Related Operations: This course provides the technician/engineer with practical guidelines to modern cleanroom practices. SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0088 Cleanroom Protocol & Contamination Control: This course addresses the operation and uses of cleanrooms and the associated cleanroom protocols to minimize contamination. The student will learn how to prevent contamination from spreading to the product or test article in and upon removal from the clean environment. SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0087 Particle Count Training: This two-hour course provides the technician/engineer with the basic skills and knowledge for performing a particle count for determination of particle cleanliness level. A written/practical examination will also be offered. All cleanroom classes to be held in the SAIC Building, Room 344 - Job Opportunities
Where Do I Find Job Opportunities? 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: 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. Community - JSC's DAG Meeting - Info about Hearing Impairments
Join us for a JSC's Differently-abled Advisory Group (DAG) Meeting to learn about hearing impairments. Our next DAG Meeting will be held on Thursday, Aug. 28 in Building 1, Room 106G from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Whether you are an expert in a specific area or merely interested in learning more about disabilities, please join us. The JSC DAG was established to facilitate the creation of a working environment that is accessible to and inclusive of all abilities, which in turn makes our campus a safer and better place to work for the entire JSC workforce. Accommodations are available upon request. If you require special accommodation for a specific disability, call X30607. Event Date: Thursday, August 28, 2014 Event Start Time:11:30 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 1, Room 106G
Add to Calendar
David Powell X42905
[top] - HERG Presents: Spanish Over Lunch
Did you know the US has nearly 40 million native Spanish speakers? By 2050 it will become the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world! Join the HERG and learn some Spanish in a fun, informal setting once a month. Because English and Spanish share many words of Latin origin, you will already be able to recognize more than 3,000 Spanish words. Grab your lunch and join us! This month's topic will be: Learn Spanish enjoying Hispanic music. - Blood Drive Thank You
Thank you to all those who took the time to donate at last week's blood drive. St. Luke's collected a total of 222 units of blood. Each donation can help up to three people, that's 666 lives. Retirees are always welcome to return and donate. Send your e-mail address to Terese Gomez at teresa.gomez-1@nasa.gov, if you would like to be added to the mailing list for notification. Mark your calendar for the next blood drive on Oct. 15 and 16. For additional information, check our website: or contact Teresa Gomez at x39588. | |
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
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NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Monday – August 25, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Rocket Explodes During Test Flight; No Injuries
Associated Press
An unmanned SpaceX rocket self-destructed shortly after launching on a test flight at a Central Texas development site, the company said Friday.
House gearing up for CR to last until December
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
With no sign of progress on appropriations bills stalled in the Senate, the House is making plans to pass a "clean" continuing resolution that will keep the government running at least into December, a top House member said this week.
Orion's Protective Shell of 970 Space Shuttle Thermal Tiles Installed for EFT-1 Mission
Mike Killian - AmericaSpace
Things are moving forward nicely at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Operations and Checkout Building in Florida, where technicians with Lockheed Martin (Orion's prime contractor) are working hard to ready the agency's Orion spacecraft for its maiden voyage next December. The flight, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1 for short), will put the unmanned capsule in action to evaluate its launch and high speed re-entry systems, such as avionics, attitude control, parachutes, computers, software, guidance and control, the separation events, and the critical heat shield, and last week the team preparing Orion to fly installed the 970 tiles that make up the spacecraft's protective cone-shaped back shell.
Curiosity Skips Drilling, Resumes Mount Sharp Trek after Pounding Slippery Rock at Martian Valley of Slippery Sands
Ken Kremer – Universe Today
NASA's Curiosity rover will skip drilling into a possible 4th rock target and instead resume the trek to Mount Sharp after finding it was unfortunately a slippery rock at the edge of a Martian valley of slippery sands and was therefore too risky to proceed with deep drilling and interior sampling for chemical analysis.
'Thigh Bone' on Mars Is Just Another Rock, NASA Says
A photo from NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars set the Internet abuzz this week with claims that the robot had found a "thigh bone" on the Red Planet. But not so fast. That so-called bone? Just a weathered Martian rock, NASA says.
How Titan's Haze Help Us Understand Life's Origins
Astrobiology Magazine
Where did life on Earth come from? There are several theories as to what might have happened. Maybe comets came bearing organic material, or life was transported from another planet such as Mars, or something happened in the chemistry of our planet that made life possible.
Former NASA astronaut Steve Nagel dies after battle with cancer
Rae Botsford – Spaceflight Insider
Steve Nagel, United States Air Force Colonel (ret.) and a former NASA astronaut, who flew on four space shuttle missions, died on Thursday, August 21, at the age of 67. He lost a two-year battle with an aggressive form of melanoma, and is survived by his wife, former NASA astronaut Linda M. Godwin, and two daughters.
Russia May Continue ISS Work Beyond 2020 – Reports
RIA Novosti
Russia may continue working at the International Space Station (ISS) beyond 2020, Izvestia newspaper reported Monday.
A Tech Start-Up Just Restored My Faith in Humanity
Kevin Roose – New York Magazine
The email inbox of a tech writer is a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade of garbage — thousands of pitches for ill-conceived, duplicative, morally bankrupt, or otherwise useless companies that, 19 times out of 20, have no larger bearing on the world. A shovel-sharing start-up. The 347th disappearing-photo-sharing app. A Kickstarter to fund Google Glass for cats. Recently, with things like Yo and Push for Pizza actually taking off, the tech industry has seemed almost competitively dumb, with companies falling over themselves to seek attention by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
NASA Interns Explore Space Careers
Faiza Elmasry – Voice of America
The U.S. space agency has its eyes on the future - not just future missions, but the scientists who will plan and carry out those missions. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, a summer internship gives college, post-graduate and high school students a chance to work on projects in a variety of space-related fields. In return, these interns bring enthusiasm and a fresh perspective.
Galileo Launch, Initially Hailed as Success, Is a Failure
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
The Aug. 22 launch of the first two fully operational Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites, initially cheered as a success, will now be registered as a failure of the Europeanized Soyuz rocket's Fregat upper stage, which left the satellites in a useless orbit, government and industry officials said Aug. 23.
Space Florida criticizes KSC master plan
James Dean – Florida Today
Unrealistic launch pad locations. Projects so vague no meaningful environmental review is possible. A business model that could discourage, rather than attract, new commercial launch activity at Kennedy Space Center.
COMPLETE STORIES
Rocket Explodes During Test Flight; No Injuries
Associated Press
An unmanned SpaceX rocket self-destructed shortly after launching on a test flight at a Central Texas development site, the company said Friday.
Nobody was injured in the afternoon explosion at the test site in McGregor, Texas, 23 miles southeast of Waco.
The test flight involved a three-engine version of the company's reusable Falcon 9 rocket, spokesman John Taylor said in a statement. "During the flight, an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission," he said.
"Throughout the test and subsequent flight termination, the vehicle remained in the designated flight area. There were no injuries or near injuries," he said.
A representative of the Federal Aviation Administration was present for the flight.
The company offered no further details on the nature of the "anomaly."
"With research and development projects, detecting vehicle anomalies during the testing is the purpose of the program. Today's test was particularly complex, pushing the limits of the vehicle further than any previous test," Taylor said.
SpaceX will review the flight record to learn more about the rocket's performance before its next test flight, he said.
SpaceX has been using the Falcon 9 to launch satellites and the Dragon spacecraft, which delivers cargo to the International Space Station.
House gearing up for CR to last until December
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
With no sign of progress on appropriations bills stalled in the Senate, the House is making plans to pass a "clean" continuing resolution that will keep the government running at least into December, a top House member said this week.
In an interview with the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call Wednesday in Philadelphia, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, said that he expected the House to take up a CR when it reconvenes in early September that will fund the government "until Dec. 11 is what we're thinking." That CR will be a "clean" one in the sense that it will not include any controversial policy provisions that could spark opposition from Democrats.
"We will pass a clean [continuing resolution], and if for some reason the Democrats don't take that, then they will clearly have shut the government down," Ryan told Roll Call.
A CR appeared likely when Congress recessed at the end of July without any sign of progress on several key appropriations bills, including the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) one that funds NASA and NOAA, in the Senate. The House passed its CJS appropriations bill at the end of May, but debate on the Senate's version ground to a halt on the Senate floor in mid-June over non-NASA provisions of the bill. The Senate has yet to pass any of its appropriation bills for fiscal year 2015.
Ryan's comments were intended to respond to claims that Republicans were planning to try and insert policy provisions into a CR that could lead to another government shutdown like the one last October. Ryan, in a new book due out next week (the tour for which brought him to Philadelphia), admitted the shutdown was a "suicide mission" for House Republicans. He added that, along with a CR, the House would support a short-term reauthorization of the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank through the end of the calendar year to allow more time to work out a long-term solution. Many conservatives have opposed any long-term reauthorization of Ex-Im, which, among other activities, has supported commercial satellite and launch sales.
Orion's Protective Shell of 970 Space Shuttle Thermal Tiles Installed for EFT-1 Mission
Mike Killian - AmericaSpace
Things are moving forward nicely at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Operations and Checkout Building in Florida, where technicians with Lockheed Martin (Orion's prime contractor) are working hard to ready the agency's Orion spacecraft for its maiden voyage next December. The flight, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1 for short), will put the unmanned capsule in action to evaluate its launch and high speed re-entry systems, such as avionics, attitude control, parachutes, computers, software, guidance and control, the separation events, and the critical heat shield, and last week the team preparing Orion to fly installed the 970 tiles that make up the spacecraft's protective cone-shaped back shell.
If the black tiles, which are CNC machined into the proper shapes, look familiar, that's because they are the same as was used to protect the belly of NASA's now-retired space shuttles during their fiery reentries through Earth's atmosphere. However, Orion is made for deep-space exploration, not low-Earth orbit missions like the shuttles, and so Orion will hit Earth's atmosphere on reentry much faster than the space shuttle did.
The shuttles hit the atmosphere on reentry at around 17,000 mph; when Orion returns on the EFT-1 mission it will hit the atmosphere at 20,000 mph, bringing hotter reentry temperatures to go with its faster velocity. So even though the hottest the space shuttle tiles got was about 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit, the Orion back shell could get up to 3,150 degrees, despite being in a cooler area of the vehicle compared to its ablative heat shield, which is now installed at the bottom of the spacecraft and may experience temperatures of up to 4,000 degrees.
One of the lesser known tests for the upcoming EFT-1 flight will demonstrate Orion's ability to operate after sustaining damage from a micrometeoroid hit. After the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, which was caused by debris from the external fuel tank striking the orbiter's wing leading edge, NASA learned how to repair tiles in space. Although a lot of information was collected on what amount of damage warranted a repair, the punishing environment Orion will experience on its 4-miles-per-second reentry is much different than the shuttle's was, and so the old shuttle models just don't apply.
Orion's violent return to Earth in December will give engineers the chance to verify new models to better understand the heating environment for damage on Orion's heat shield, which will inform future decisions about what kind of damage may require a repair in space when Orion launches crewed deep-space missions atop NASA's mammoth Space Launch System (SLS) rocket starting next decade.
Before installing the protective back shell on Orion, engineers purposely drilled 1-inch-wide holes into two tiles on the opposite side of the back shell from Orion's windows and reaction control system jets. One of the holes is 1.4 inches deep and the other is 1 inch deep, and both are meant to mimic damage from a micrometeoroid hit. Sensors on the vehicle will record how high temperatures climb inside the holes during Orion's return.
"We want to know how much of the hot gas gets into the bottom of those cavities," said Joseph Olejniczak, manager of Orion aerosciences. "We have models that estimate how hot it will get to make sure it's safe to fly, but with the data we'll gather from these tiles actually coming back through Earth's atmosphere, we'll make new models with higher accuracy."
All of Orion's avionics components were installed earlier this summer, and engineers have already conducted functional testing on the crew module's 59 systems—methodically powering them up one by one. Performance testing, where all of the systems work together to operate Orion as a whole, was completed last spring prior to installation of the capsule's state-of-the-art heat shield.
Orion was stacked atop its service module back in June, but the service module itself will only serve to provide engineers with the chance to test its structural elements during a real flight. The service module simply has no propulsion or power generation capability for EFT-1.
Currently scheduled to launch at 8:03 a.m. EDT on Dec. 4, 2014, Orion will carry out the first flight of a human-rated spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO) in nearly 40 years. The upcoming 4.5-hour unmanned EFT-1 flight will launch atop ULA's mammoth Delta-IV Heavy rocket, America's biggest and most powerful launcher, which will fly from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex-37B to send Orion to orbit the Earth twice while remaining attached to the upper stage of the Delta-IV.
After the first orbit (two hours after liftoff) the vehicle will perform a burn to reach an altitude of more than 3,600 miles—15 times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station and 10 times higher than any human-rated spacecraft has been since 1972, when the crew of Apollo 17 visited the Moon. Orion will then detach from the Delta-IV upper stage and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, before parachuting gently into the Pacific Ocean off the west coast United States.
The three huge booster cores that will make up the Delta-IV Heavy launcher are currently in ULA's Horizontal Integration Facility at the Cape, along with the rocket's second stage, where ULA's Delta launch team is conducting the final horizontal processing and getting the launch vehicle ready to go to the launch pad.
The rocket's upper stage, which will fire after the initial launch to send Orion farther into space than any human spacecraft has gone in four decades, arrived at the Florida launch site by barge last May, along with the spacecraft adapter and 133-foot-long port booster. The two other common core boosters, each powered by a liquid-fueled RS-68 engine capable of producing over 660,000 pounds of thrust, arrived in Florida last March. Once all three boosters are processed and checked they will be moved to Space Launch Complex 37-B and hoisted vertical, which is expected to occur in late September or early October.
"For this mission, we plan to put the launch vehicle on the pad about two months prior to launch," said ULA spokesperson Jessica Rye. "After the launch vehicle is at the pad, we will do extensive launch vehicle readiness testing, then fuel the launch vehicle with liquid Hydrogen and liquid Oxygen and perform a Wet Dress Rehearsal. Shortly after Wet Dress Rehearsal, Orion will be stacked on top of the Delta IV Heavy Launch vehicle, and a few weeks later we'll launch."
"Orion is the product of a very dedicated workforce that believes keeping America first in space exploration is critical," said Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer. "This flight, not just the launch in Dec. but the work that went into this design, sets us up very well for the next flights, and for eventually getting people into space again."
Curiosity Skips Drilling, Resumes Mount Sharp Trek after Pounding Slippery Rock at Martian Valley of Slippery Sands
Ken Kremer – Universe Today
NASA's Curiosity rover will skip drilling into a possible 4th rock target and instead resume the trek to Mount Sharp after finding it was unfortunately a slippery rock at the edge of a Martian valley of slippery sands and was therefore too risky to proceed with deep drilling and interior sampling for chemical analysis.
After pounding into the "Bonanza King" rock outcrop on Wednesday, Aug. 20, to evaluate its potential as Curiosity's 4th drill target on Mars and seeing that it moved on impact, the team decided it was not even safe enough to continue with the preliminary 'mini-drill' operation that day.
So they cancelled the entire drill campaign at "Bonanza King" and decided to set the rover loose to drive onwards to her mountain climbing destination.
"We have decided that the rocks under consideration for drilling, based on the tests we did, are not good candidates for drilling," said Curiosity Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in a statement.
"Instead of drilling here, we will resume driving toward Mount Sharp."
Bonanza King was an enticing target because the outcrop possessed thin, white, cross-cutting mineral veins which could indicate that liquid water flowed here in the distant past. Water is a prerequisite for life as we know it.
Loose, unstable rocks pose a prospective hazard to the 1 ton robots hardware and health if they become dislodged during impact by the percussive drill located at the end of the robotic arm.
It's worth recalling that whirling rocks during the nailbiting Red Planet touchdown two years ago on Aug. 6, 2012, inside Gale Crater are suspected to have slightly damaged Curiosity's REMS meteorological instrument station.
Each drill target must pass a series of tests. And the prior three at more extensive outcrops all met those criteria. By comparison, imagery showed Bonanza King was clearly part of a much smaller outcrop. See our Bonanza King photo mosaics herein.
NASA's Curiosity rover looks back to ramp with potential 4th drill site target at 'Bonanza King' rock outcrop in 'Hidden Valley' in this photo mosaic view captured on Aug. 6, 2014, Sol 711. Inset shows results of brushing on Aug. 17, Sol 722, that revealed gray patch beneath red dust. Note the rover's partial selfie, valley walls, deep wheel tracks in the sand dunes and distant rim of Gale crater beyond the ramp. Navcam camera raw images stitched and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo "One step in the procedure, called "start hole," uses the hammering action of the percussive drill to create a small indentation in the rock. During this part of the test, the rock moved slightly, the rover sensed that instability in the target, and protective software properly halted the procedure," according to a NASA statement.
This pale, flat Martian rock thus failed to pass the team's safety criteria for drilling when it budged.
Bonanza King sits in an bright outcrop on the low ramp at the northeastern end of a spot leading in and out of an area called "Hidden Valley" which lies between Curiosity's August 2012 landing site in Gale Crater and her ultimate destinations on Mount Sharp which dominates the center of the crater.
Just days ago, the rover team commanded a quick exit from "Hidden Valley" to backtrack out of the dune filled valley because of fears the six wheeled robot could get stuck in slippery sands extending the length of a football field.
"Hidden Valley" looked like it could turn into "Death Valley."
As Curiosity tested the outcrop, the rover team was simultaneously searching for an alternate safe path forward to the sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp because she arrived at Hidden Valley after recently driving over a field of sharp edged rocks in the "Zabriskie Plateau" that caused further rips and tears in the already damaged 20 inch diameter aluminum wheels.
It will take a route skirting the north side of the sandy-floored valley taking care to steer away from the pointiest rocks.
Curiosity rover looks back to the rocky plains of the Zabriskie plateau from sandy ramp into 'Hidden Valley' with 4th drill site target at 'Bonanza King' rock outcrop as shown in this photo mosaic view captured on Aug. 14, 2014, Sol 719. Sharp edged rocks at Zabriskie tore new holes into rover wheels. Navcam camera raw images stitched and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com "After further analysis of the sand, Hidden Valley does not appear to be navigable with the desired degree of confidence," Erickson said. "We will use a route avoiding the worst of the sharp rocks as we drive slightly to the north of Hidden Valley."
To date, Curiosity's odometer totals over 5.5 miles (9.0 kilometers) since landing inside Gale Crater on Mars in August 2012. She has taken over 179,000 images.
Curiosity still has about another 2 miles (3 kilometers) to go to reach the entry way at a gap in the treacherous sand dunes at the foothills of Mount Sharp sometime later this year.
Hidden Valley gives a foretaste of the rippely slippery sand dune challenges lurking ahead!
Mount Sharp is a layered mountain that dominates most of Gale Crater and towers 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky and is taller than Mount Rainier.
"Getting to Mount Sharp is the next big step for Curiosity and we expect that in the Fall of this year," Dr. Jim Green, NASA's Director of Planetary Sciences at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, told me in an interview marking the 2nd anniversary since touchdown on Aug. 6.
"Drilling on the crater floor will provide needed geologic context before Curiosity climbs the mountain."
The team may go back to its original plan to drill at the potential science destination known as "Pahrump Hills" which was changed due to the route change forced by the slippery sands in Hidden Valley.
The main map here shows the assortment of landforms near the location of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover as the rover's second anniversary of landing on Mars nears. The gold traverse line entering from upper right ends at Curiosity's position as of Sol 705 on Mars (July 31, 2014). The inset map shows the mission's entire traverse from the landing on Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (Aug. 6, EDT) to Sol 705, and the remaining distance to long-term science destinations near Murray Buttes, at the base of Mount Sharp. The label "Aug. 5, 2013″ indicates where Curiosity was one year after landing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Curiosity rover panorama of Mount Sharp captured on June 6, 2014 (Sol 651) during traverse inside Gale Crater. Note rover wheel tracks at left. She will eventually ascend the mountain at the 'Murray Buttes' at right later this year. Assembled from Mastcam color camera raw images and stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com Up close view of hole in one of rover Curiosity's six wheels caused by recent driving over rough Martian rocks. Mosaic assembled from Mastcam raw images taken on Dec. 22, 2013 (Sol 490). Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo 'Thigh Bone' on Mars Is Just Another Rock, NASA Says
A photo from NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars set the Internet abuzz this week with claims that the robot had found a "thigh bone" on the Red Planet. But not so fast. That so-called bone? Just a weathered Martian rock, NASA says.
The erroneous bone claim first appeared on a UFO blog and was quickly picked up by media outlets. So much so, that NASA released Curiosity's "thigh bone" Mars rock photo with a science explanation on Thursday (Aug. 21). In the photo description, NASA officials wrote that while "this Mars rock may look like a femur thigh bone," it is not the fossilized remains of a mysterious Martian. "Mission science team members think its shape is likely sculpted by erosion, either wind or water." The Curiosity rover has found evidence that Mars was once a habitable place in the ancient past, but there is no evidence that creatures large enough to leave a bone behind ever existed on the planet.
"If life ever existed on Mars, scientists expect that it would be small simple life forms called microbes," NASA officials wrote in the photo description. "Mars likely never had enough oxygen in its atmosphere and elsewhere to support more complex organisms. Thus, large fossils are not likely."
There is a long tradition of seeing shapes in Mars rocks that don't reflect reality. The phenomenon in which the human brain perceives faces, animals or other shapes that aren't really there is known as pareidolia.
That Mars illusion history dates back to the late 1800s, when astronomers reported seeing canals on the Red Planet in telescope views. Then in 1976, a photo from NASA's Viking 1 orbiter revealed a formation that gained fame as the "Face on Mars." Later observations by NASA and European spacecraft showed no face, just a large rock feature, proving the face was just a trick of shadow and light. Since the "Face on Mars," photos from Mars orbiters and rovers have captured shapes resembling a lizard, a rat and even a jelly donut — all of them just illusions or strange rock formations on the Red Planet.
NASA's 1-ton Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars since its arrival in August 2012.
How Titan's Haze Help Us Understand Life's Origins
Astrobiology Magazine
Where did life on Earth come from? There are several theories as to what might have happened. Maybe comets came bearing organic material, or life was transported from another planet such as Mars, or something happened in the chemistry of our planet that made life possible.
Luckily for researchers, there is a possible laboratory in our solar system to help us better understand the conditions on Earth before life arose — a situation sometimes referred to as a "prebiotic" environment. That location is Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.
The moon has fascinated researchers for decades, particularly after NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Saturn in the 1980s. The missions revealed a moon completely socked in with haze, which is a different experience to those used to gazing at Earth's airless, cratered moon.
A closer look came in 2004, when the Cassini-Huygens mission arrived to study the system. Since then, the spacecraft has done hundreds of flybys of Titan and peered at its surface by penetrating the clouds with radar. The European Space Agency's Huygens lander also made a soft landing on the moon in 2005.
One of the big research questions is the composition of the haze. A new study is trying to recreate substances in the atmosphere called tholins, organic aerosols which are produced when radiation bakes the nitrogen and methane-rich atmosphere. In some cases, organics are considered precursors to life.
"The study of organic chemistry on Titan's surface would extend our understanding of the diversity of prebiotic chemistry, and perhaps life's origin on Earth," said Dr. Chao He, a chemist at the University of Houston (now moved to Johns Hopkins University) who led the study.
The results were published as "Solubility and stability investigation of Titan aerosol analogs: New insight from NMR analysis" in the journal Icarus.
Dissolving tholins
According to He, the study of Titan's tholins help scientists understand the basic properties of organic materials on Titan. Questions to consider include how they are structured, whether the aerosols can be dissolved in liquid in Titan's surface or atmosphere, and how stable the organics could be. Titan's tholins are thought to contain chemical precursors of life, and studying the molecule's structure helps scientists better understand whether life's possible precursors have formed on Titan. If they have formed, the solubility study helps to hint where to find them on Titan, and the stability study suggests the most capable detection methods.
The tholins were created by making a mix of methane (5 percent) and nitrogen (95 percent) in a reaction chamber at room temperature. The mixture was exposed to an electrical discharge for 72 hours, which then created a muddy substance — the tholin — on the walls of the vessel. The substances produced had a similar optical appearance to what Cassini observed in Titan's atmosphere.
Researchers then investigated how well the tholins would dissolve in a solvent. Several solvents were investigated, including polar solvents (methanol, water, dimethyl sulfoxide and acetonitrile) and non-polar solvents (pentane, benzene and cyclohexane). Polar solvents usually have different electrical charges between atoms (such as positive-charged oxygen and negative-charged hydrogen, in water) while non-polar solvents have similar electrical charges between atoms. Generally, polar solvents dissolve polar compounds best and non-polar solvents dissolve non-polar compounds best.
The researchers found that the tholins preferentially dissolves in polar solvents, suggesting little or none of the substance would be dissolved in the lakes or oceans on Titan, which are consist of non-polar ethane/methane. Thus, the tholins should be on the surface of the land or at the bottom of the lakes and oceans, He noted.
"The tholin preferentially dissolves in polar solvents, also suggesting the tholins are composed of a large percentage of polar species," He added.
Picking future landing sites
The Huygens probe only survived on the surface of Titan for a few hours, but there are proposals out there to do extended missions. One example is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts proposal to send a submarine to explore Titan's lakes. The proposal is at the first stage of investigation and would be decades away to launch, if funding is approved.
If researchers were looking for tholins with a surface or underwater craft on Titan, He's study could help narrow down the location. Tholins break down in hot temperatures, but this is not a problem for Titan's surface, which sees an average surface temperature of -179 degrees Celsius (-290 degrees Fahrenheit). Future landing missions, however, might have to contend with avoiding heating the tholins to look at their structure, and instead should focus on nondestructive instruments and methods to accomplish this, He said. Possible methods of detecting organics could be liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). Both methods can provide detailed structural information of organic mixtures nondestructively.
Greater search for life's origins
In the midst of this analysis, He's team developed a new method to study the solubility of tholins. They found several nitrogenated organic molecules in Titan tholins.
"Some of them are very important to the prebiotic chemistry and the origin of life," He said.
While trying to understand what is happening on Titan, He is also interested in learning about the rest of the Solar System.
"My research focuses on the astrobiology on potential environments and objects," He said. "Titan is an important one. This study helps to understand the basic properties of organics on Titan. It also provides the basis for the development of in situ analysis of methods and instruments for a Titan mission and other outer planet exploration.
"He plans to continue his study of organic chemistry on Titan, and then extend that understanding to other potentially interesting environments for life in the Solar System, such as Mars, Jupiter's icy moon Europa or Saturn's moon Enceladus, which has been recorded spouting water-rich plumes into the atmosphere.
Scientists' understanding of Titan is constantly changing as the Cassini-Huygens mission beams back data from the distant moon. For example, in 2007 scientists discovered that the tholins form at much higher altitudes than previously believed, at greater than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) as opposed to a few hundred kilometers above the ground.
The results also revealed an unexpected high number of ions (negatively charged atoms) among the clouds of the moon, as well as detecting benzene, an element that is required to put together the tholins.
"The negative ions were a complete surprise," stated David Young, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, who led the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) investigation. "This suggests they may play an unexpected role in making tholins from carbon-nitrogen precursors.
"A more recent finding revealed that Titan's atmosphere is likely older than that of Saturn. This suggests that the moon did not arise from the ringed gas giant, but instead was created separately in the gas and dust floating around the young Solar System while the Sun and planets were being formed.
Former NASA astronaut Steve Nagel dies after battle with cancer
Rae Botsford – Spaceflight Insider
Steve Nagel, United States Air Force Colonel (ret.) and a former NASA astronaut, who flew on four space shuttle missions, died on Thursday, August 21, at the age of 67. He lost a two-year battle with an aggressive form of melanoma, and is survived by his wife, former NASA astronaut Linda M. Godwin, and two daughters.
Steven R. Nagel was born on October 27, 1946, in Canton, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois and received his Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering in 1969, graduating with high honors. Nagel received his commission for the U.S. Air Force through the university's Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps. In 1978, he earned his Master of Science in mechanical engineering from California State University. The following year he was accepted as a NASA astronaut with NASA's first group of space shuttle trainees.
Though he wanted to fly on the shuttle as a pilot, Nagel was assigned as mission specialist for this first flight, STS-51G, which lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on June 17, 1985. That shuttle was the Space Shuttle Discovery, and the mission's primary cargo was three communications satellites: the Morelos, for Mexico; the Arabsat, for the Arab League; and the AT&T Telstar, for the United States. Other important payloads included the Spartan 1 carrier module, the Automated Directional Solidification Furnace (ADSF) materials processing furnace, six Getaway Special experiments, two French biomedical experiments, and the High Precision Tracking Experiment (HPTE) for the Strategic Defense Initiative. The crew's payload specialist was Sultan Salman Al Saud, from Saudi Arabia, the first Arab, the first Muslim and the first member of a royal family to fly into space. Discovery landed on June 24, 1985, at Edwards Air Force Base, California.
Nagel did get to fly as pilot on his next trip out, STS-61A, the West German D-1 Spacelab mission. It launched from KSC on October 30 that same year, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California on November 6, 1985. It was the last successful mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger, and it carried the NASA/ESA Spacelab module into orbit with more than 75 experiments. The German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, West Germany controlled payload operations, making it the first mission in which payload operations were controlled from outside the United States.
Nagel was the commander of his third space shuttle flight, STS-37, the eighth flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It launched into orbit on April 5, 1991, and landed six days later on April 11. The crew deployed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO), part of the Great Observatories program, to explore the universe's gamma ray sources. They performed the first successful unscheduled spacewalk for the purpose of freeing the satellite's high-gain antenna when it did not deploy after six attempts.
His fourth and final space shuttle mission was STS-55, the German D-2 Spacelab mission, during which he again served as commander. It lifted off on April 26, 1993, on the Shuttle Columbia, and landed in California ten days later. The mission emphasized international cooperation and scientific research, as 11 nations participated in some 88 experiments across a variety of disciplines.
Nagel retired in 1995 from both the U.S. Air Force and the Astronaut Office, and he assumed the position of deputy director for operations development at the Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance Office of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He transferred to the Aircraft Operations Division in 1996 and worked as a research pilot, chief of aviation safety and deputy division chief.
On May 31, 2011, he retired from NASA, and taught at the University of Missouri.
Nagel received a number of awards for his service with both NASA and the Air Force, including the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with seven oak leaf clusters, the Air Force Meritorious Service Medal (1978), four NASA Space Flight Medals (1985, 1991, 1993), Exceptional Service Medals (1988, 1989), the Outstanding Leadership Medal (1992), and the AAS Flight Achievement Award (1992, for STS-37), among others. He is remembered as an upbeat family man, a devout Christian, and a passionate scientist.
Russia May Continue ISS Work Beyond 2020 – Reports
RIA Novosti
Russia may continue working at the International Space Station (ISS) beyond 2020, Izvestia newspaper reported Monday.
"The issue of Russia's participation at the ISS after 2020 remains open, but there is a 90-percent chance that the state's leadership will agree to participate in the project further," the paper wrote citing a source at Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos.
Russian space enterprises continue to make new modules for the space station according to the schedule, the paper said.
NASA earlier said it had to freeze cooperation with Russian space researchers following Washington's sanctions against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, prompting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to suggest Americans would now have to "get their astronauts to the ISS [International Space Station] using a trampoline."
Later, Rogozin announced Moscow was not planning to use the International Space Station after 2020 and would instead re-focus its funding on more promising new space projects. In response, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden vowed the US and Russia would continue to cooperate on space missions and keep each other informed.
A Tech Start-Up Just Restored My Faith in Humanity
Kevin Roose – New York Magazine
The email inbox of a tech writer is a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade of garbage — thousands of pitches for ill-conceived, duplicative, morally bankrupt, or otherwise useless companies that, 19 times out of 20, have no larger bearing on the world. A shovel-sharing start-up. The 347th disappearing-photo-sharing app. A Kickstarter to fund Google Glass for cats. Recently, with things like Yo and Push for Pizza actually taking off, the tech industry has seemed almost competitively dumb, with companies falling over themselves to seek attention by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
And then, once in a long while, you come across something that reminds you that, yes, Silicon Valley is still doing some very worthwhile things.
That happened to me yesterday, with a start-up called Planet Labs.
Planet Labs is based in San Francisco. Here is its website. It is a company that makes small, cheap satellites and puts them into outer space to take high-resolution pictures of the earth. It was started in 2010 by a group of NASA engineers who got frustrated with how long government-funded space projects took to complete, and decided to strike out on their own. It has raised something like $65 million from some of the same investors who backed Facebook, Twitter, Tesla, and other popular Silicon Valley companies. If you haven't heard of them, it's because they've been avoiding most interviews with the media until they're further along in the development process. I went to Planet Labs' office yesterday, after its PR rep invited me in for a tour. (The rep said he wasn't looking for me to write a story; he just wanted to show me the place. "No agenda," he wrote. I didn't believe him, but agreed anyway.) Planet Labs' president and co-founder, Robbie Schingler, and its director of community engagement, Shannon Spanhake, led me on a tour through the office. It's a smallish space with about 70 employees on the first floor of a nondescript building that houses several other start-ups, and looks at first blush like every other tech office in San Francisco. There's a fridge full of fancy sodas and cans of sparkling yerba maté. A drum set tucked in a corner. A whiteboard with math equations on it. Rows of focused coders, some sitting on yoga balls, some parked at standing desks, all typing into their terminals. It smelled vaguely of Febreze.
Unlike most start-ups, Planet Labs' launch schedule is literal. They've put 71 satellites into orbit in the last 16 months, and are currently on the 12th build of their mini-satellite. (For purposes of comparison, most NASA satellites cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and take up to a decade to build and launch.) Planet Labs satellites, nicknamed "doves," are smaller than a loaf of bread, and are assembled using mostly off-the-shelf parts, some from cell phone and tablet manufacturers. As a result, they're very cheap to make — though the company wouldn't say how much each one costs to build, it's been estimated by outsiders that they're 95 percent cheaper than a normal satellite.
These satellites do what lots of satellites do — take photos of the Earth's surface, and transmit them back to base stations — but the difference is that there are dozens of them. Eventually, Planet Labs will have hundreds of satellites orbiting simultaneously, capturing every inch of the Earth's surface to create a comprehensive picture of what the planet looks like every 24 hours. (Again, for purposes of comparison, most existing satellite images — including the ones used by Google Maps — are patched together from multiple satellite sources, and capture images of the same spot every few weeks or months.)
Chester Gillmore, the company's director of manufacturing operations, asks me to put on a protective lab coat and takes me through the back room, where the satellites are made. I cannot emphasize this point enough: Planet Labs makes actual things, things you can hold in your hand, things that go to outer space. For a guy who's used to being pitched on beta-version apps, crowd-funding projects, and incomprehensible cloud platforms, the idea of a start-up making something as tangible as a satellite makes me deliriously giddy.
Planet Labs has fun, by the looks of things. (Tucked just off their manufacturing lab is a nap room with Star Wars sheets on the beds. About half the company is going to Burning Man next week, a data point that should not be used against it.) But its mission is very serious. They want to use the images their satellites capture to create a huge, searchable database that can be used to track changes to the Earth in real time. Some of the customers who will eventually purchase this data are conservation groups who want to see the effects of climate change on the Earth; others are insurance companies who want to track the well-being of properties they cover; others could include government agencies, hedge funds, transportation companies, and NASA itself.
But right now, Planet Labs is focusing on getting as many of these satellites up as possible. The way they do this is by paying anyone who's launching rockets — which, right now, means mostly the U.S., Japan, and Russia — to let them park their devices in a side compartment on the way up, and releasing them into space once they've reached orbiting altitude. In February, they deployed a group of 28 satellites from the International Space Station.
Schingler shows me some of the photos these satellites take. Thanks to some auto-stabilizing and focusing technology I don't really understand, they're very good — much clearer and more detailed than the ones you find on Google Maps. And you can see how having lots of them coming in every day could be useful. Recently, one of the company's satellites was able to capture images of a forest fire in California and alert the authorities ten minutes before it had been reported on the news. Here are a few others they've taken:
Irrigated fields in Arizona.Photo: Planet Labs Inc.
The Castaic Reservoir in California.Photo: Planet Labs Inc.
I have no idea if Planet Labs will succeed as a business. (One of its competitors, Skybox Imaging, was bought by Google in June for $500 million, so you have to think its chances are decent.) But I hope it does. Their vision is ambitious but manageable: They're basically taking a fast, iterative softwarelike approach to the traditionally lumbering process of putting satellites into orbit, using materials and a design process that allows them to do it for much less money than the traditional methods. It won't save millions of lives, but it's cool, novel, and, yes, even a little disruptive.
I know my view of the tech world is biased toward fluff and B.S. — as a guy who writes about overwhelmingly consumer-oriented start-ups, many of the industry's boring but important projects stay cloistered from my view. But it was refreshing to see, in the course of an hour-long visit with a little satellite company, that the higher, better ambitions of Silicon Valley are still alive and well. Even if they're sometimes hard to find.
NASA Interns Explore Space Careers
Faiza Elmasry – Voice of America
The U.S. space agency has its eyes on the future - not just future missions, but the scientists who will plan and carry out those missions. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, a summer internship gives college, post-graduate and high school students a chance to work on projects in a variety of space-related fields. In return, these interns bring enthusiasm and a fresh perspective.
Louis Parent enjoyed working with space robots. The University of Illinois mechanical engineering major is wrapping up his 10-week internship at Goddard, which he calls "probably the best internship" he's ever had. "They had me work on a real project that really mattered, have some important data that what people do here and really contribute to real science and real engineering."
Interacting with his mentor and the other interns gave him a better understanding of what he needs in order to pursue a career in this field - a solid background in computer science.
"Computer science isn't my favorite course to study," he admitted, "but I finally understood that it's necessary, and seeing the applications here kind of makes you want to do it more."
Gaining experience
That sort of transformative experience is a big part of the NASA internship, says Rick Obenschain, Goddard's deputy director.
"You train somebody here, you give them experiences, you give them enthusiasm, and they're going to take it with them, whether they stay within NASA or stay in the government or in the industry," he said.
Obenschain stayed with NASA. He was an intern in 1962, a few years after the space flight center opened in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"We were making small baby steps, which today a student or an intern would say, 'Wow, this is something that you can do in 30, 40 minutes,'" he said with a chuckle. "Okay, it would take us weeks to figure something out."
The intern program has evolved a great deal since then. It's directed by Mablelene Burrell, who proudly says there are more than 400 interns in the program this summer. More than 40 percent are women. "Most of our interns are from the STEM fields. They are engineers, the full range of engineers, from mechanical to electrical. We have many civil engineers, math majors. We have physics majors."
NASA's intern programs are crucial to preparing the future workforce, says Robert Gabrys, director of the agency's Office of Education.
"We define workforce as anybody who would come to work for us, of course," he explained, "but also who is going to work for one of the contractors who support our space program, or would go and work for a higher institution in a NASA-related field, or become a STEM teacher in a school system."
Matching projects and interns
The scientists, engineers and technologists at Goddard write descriptions of the projects they want interns to work on, and students apply for the ones that interest them. That helps the researchers identify which students would be the best match for their projects.
Joseph Santanello, who also started his NASA career as an intern, says the students are an invaluable addition to the work environment.
"We get a fresh perspective on how we're working here, what we're working on, not just the science part, but generally, how we interact with the community," he said.
Intern Patricia Lawston has been working with him for the past three summers. She says the internship has been an excellent experience as she pursues a doctorate in climatology.
"Not only the computer resources that I have, but also the connections that I've made here," she said. "It's really nice coming back for my second and third summers, to walk in the building and see people who recognize and call me by name and to know that any point I can email them and email Joe [Santanello] with any questions I have about my research that's been very beneficial to me even when I get back to school."
That ongoing mentoring and collaboration helps the scientists, the students, and the U.S. space program.
Galileo Launch, Initially Hailed as Success, Is a Failure
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
The Aug. 22 launch of the first two fully operational Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites, initially cheered as a success, will now be registered as a failure of the Europeanized Soyuz rocket's Fregat upper stage, which left the satellites in a useless orbit, government and industry officials said Aug. 23.
As of midafternoon Central European Time Aug. 23 — 24 hours after launch and 20 hours after the Fregat stage inserted the satellites into orbit — launch service provider Arianespace and the European Space Agency said they were still investigating the injection anomaly and could not conclude what, if any, effect it would have on the two satellites' functionality.
Arianespace released a statement late on Aug. 23 saying the satellites, for reasons unknown, were placed into a wrong orbit by the rocket's Fregat upper stage.
"It was only a certain time after the separation of the satellites that the ongoing analysis of the data provided by the telemetry stations operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French space agency CNES showed that the satellites were not in the expected orbit," Arianespace said.
The company said the spacecraft were safe in an orbit of 26,900 kilometers instead of the 29,900 kilometers expected, with an inclination of 49.8 degrees to the equator instead of the 55 degrees expected.
An independent board of inquiry will be created on Aug. 25, the company said, adding that it is still unclear what the consequences of the bad orbit will be for the satellites' expected mission.
In what must be felt as a bitter irony in Europe, it was the U.S. Defense Department's Space Surveillance Network — which publishes initial orbital parameters, known as two-line elements, of recently launched satellites — that first disclosed the problem Aug. 22.
Among the first to pick up the U.S. military data was Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to announce the badly off-target injection data.
Climbing into correct position from a too-low perigee requires the use of fuel that would otherwise be used over the satellite's life for regular maneuvers, but does not by itself mean the loss of the mission.
The inclination error, however, appears too serious to allow much, if any, use of the satellites, according to officials. Correcting the error likely would require more propellant than the satellites carry and, even if they did reach the correct position, they would arrive with propellant levels so low that the effort would be deemed useless.
McDowell speculated that the orbit left the two identical Galileo satellites with "not quite enough dV [delta V, or change in velocity needed to maneuver] to circularize their unplanned elliptical orbit."
The satellites launched Aug. 22 were the first of a 22-satellite order to satellite builder OHB AG of Bremen, Germany. The next two Galileo satellites are scheduled for launch, also on a Soyuz-Fregat operating from Europe's Guiana Space Center spaceport, in December.
ESA and the European Commission, which owns Galileo, had counted on four more Soyuz-Fregat launches, each carrying two Galileo satellites; and three heavy-lift Ariane 5 vehicles, each with four satellites to complete deployment of the current Galileo satellite order.
That left four more satellites to build to complete the planned constellation of 30 satellites in orbit. Now the minimum next order will be for at least six satellites, not four. The loss of the two spacecraft is unlikely to have any material effect on Galileo's in-service schedule.
ESA and the European Commission, like most governments, have elected not to insure the Soyuz launches, preferring instead to invest in satellite hardware rather than in commercial insurance policies.
The investigation into the Aug. 22 failure will focus on the Fregat upper stage, built by NPO Lavochkin of Russia. Fregat is capable of being reignited in orbit some 20 times. For the Galileo launch, only two burns were used before separation. Then a third motor firing was planned to place the stage into a higher orbit, out of the medium Earth orbit traffic lanes, to mitigate its threat to other satellites as orbital debris.
The Jupiter Control Room at Europe's Guiana Space Center, located on the northeast coast of South America, receives much of its information from Moscow, where the Soyuz vehicle is monitored.
The question is what information, in the form of telemetry signals, did Fregat send to Russia, and then on to the European center, at the moment the stage released the satellites.
One official said initial conclusions are that Fregat acted as though it was at the correct orbital-injection location, and that information was relayed to ground teams, leading to the applause in the Jupiter Control Room and a series of speeches by European government and industry officials celebrating a launch success.
But somewhere in that same control room was an engineer looking at a screen showing data not from Fregat, but from the down-range ground stations that were evaluating the satellites' actual position and receiving satellite telemetry.
Enough early telemetry was received to show the satellites were healthy and sending signals. But warnings that the orbit was wrong likely would have arrived soon enough.
A close analysis of Arianespace's habitual video sweep of the Jupiter center after the cheering began might show at least one control team member still hunched over a screen in a pose not normally associated with celebration.
Space Florida criticizes KSC master plan
James Dean – Florida Today
Unrealistic launch pad locations. Projects so vague no meaningful environmental review is possible. A business model that could discourage, rather than attract, new commercial launch activity at Kennedy Space Center.
Those are among significant concerns state officials identified with KSC's new 20-year master plan in a broad critique submitted as part of the plan's environmental review.
Space Florida said neither option being considered by NASA's environmental review — to adopt the master plan or not — represents "the best interests of either the nation or the State of Florida," and master plan revisions may be necessary.
"Space Florida suggests more dialogue and collaboration between KSC and its stakeholders before proceeding" with the review, Chief Operations Officer Jim Kuzma wrote last month in a 12-page letter to NASA, which FLORIDA TODAY obtained through a state public records request.
KSC unveiled the master plan in late May. It proposes up to two more launch pads, a second runway for horizontal launches and landings, two new seaports and development of vacant land to support new commercial activity. Existing facilities would support NASA's human exploration program, and KSC has already transferred some unneeded facilities to new users, including the lease of launch pad 39A to SpaceX and former shuttle hangers to the state and a military program.
KSC said in a statement that its master plan "provides a roadmap for KSC's future development as a multi-use spaceport supporting both NASA programs and growing commercial markets."
"NASA and potential commercial providers are our highest priorities, as we continue to dialog with Space Florida and other strategic partners to provide a comprehensive plan that supports KSC's next 20 years," said Scott Colloredo, head of the Center Planning and Development office.
After its release, some environmentalists applauded the master plan's concentration of any new infrastructure within KSC's existing operational area, bordered on the north side by the road to Playalinda Beach.
They preferred that to Space Florida's proposal to build two commercial launch pads farther north in a publicly accessible part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge known as Shiloh, an option NASA's master plan does not entertain.
"The master plan supports commercial industry and confines development within KSC's secure perimeter, continuing NASA's commitment to preserving the environment — which the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process will ensure — while remaining America's premier launch site for human and scientific exploration," Colloredo said.
But in its letter, Space Florida said it chose Shiloh after concluding that NASA's proposed sites were inadequate for both environmental and operational reasons.
The pads NASA labels 39C and 39D, just north of KSC's two existing pads, "would be prohibitively impactful to wetlands, the Mosquito Lagoon and the seashore environment," Kuzma wrote.
In addition, he said, they are too close to each other, to NASA's pad for the Space Launch System exploration rocket and to a proposed new runway, increasing the chance that work at one location would interfere with another. The pads appear on KSC's map to be too small to support launches of large rockets, and would result in "dramatically curtailed" access to Playalinda Beach.
Space Florida said NASA should better define the launch sites' capabilities and environmental viability, including inviting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help assess "how realistic it is to baseline this future development option."
The same concerns apply to the master plan's proposed seaports, which Space Florida said would require extensive dredging. One would be located near the former shuttle runway that Space Florida is negotiating to take over from NASA, potentially impacting flight operations there.
In general, the proposed new projects — none of which NASA would pay for — "are too vague to enable meaningful environmental analysis," Kuzma wrote.
Space Florida said federal government dominance of the spaceport has "increasingly disadvantaged" the state compared to others like Texas and New Mexico that are winning commercial launch business. (Virgin Galactic will fly space tourists from New Mexico, and SpaceX recently confirmed plans to build a private complex in Texas for launches of commercial satellites.)
But in its letter, Space Florida said it chose Shiloh after concluding that NASA's proposed sites were inadequate for both environmental and operational reasons.
The pads NASA labels 39C and 39D, just north of KSC's two existing pads, "would be prohibitively impactful to wetlands, the Mosquito Lagoon and the seashore environment," Kuzma wrote.
In addition, he said, they are too close to each other, to NASA's pad for the Space Launch System exploration rocket and to a proposed new runway, increasing the chance that work at one location would interfere with another. The pads appear on KSC's map to be too small to support launches of large rockets, and would result in "dramatically curtailed" access to Playalinda Beach.
Space Florida said NASA should better define the launch sites' capabilities and environmental viability, including inviting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help assess "how realistic it is to baseline this future development option."
END
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Irrigated fields in Arizona.Photo: Planet Labs Inc.
The Castaic Reservoir in California.Photo: Planet Labs Inc.I have no idea if Planet Labs will succeed as a business. (One of its competitors, Skybox Imaging, was bought by Google in June for $500 million, so you have to think its chances are decent.) But I hope it does. Their vision is ambitious but manageable: They're basically taking a fast, iterative softwarelike approach to the traditionally lumbering process of putting satellites into orbit, using materials and a design process that allows them to do it for much less money than the traditional methods. It won't save millions of lives, but it's cool, novel, and, yes, even a little disruptive.I know my view of the tech world is biased toward fluff and B.S. — as a guy who writes about overwhelmingly consumer-oriented start-ups, many of the industry's boring but important projects stay cloistered from my view. But it was refreshing to see, in the course of an hour-long visit with a little satellite company, that the higher, better ambitions of Silicon Valley are still alive and well. Even if they're sometimes hard to find.NASA Interns Explore Space CareersFaiza Elmasry – Voice of AmericaThe U.S. space agency has its eyes on the future - not just future missions, but the scientists who will plan and carry out those missions. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, a summer internship gives college, post-graduate and high school students a chance to work on projects in a variety of space-related fields. In return, these interns bring enthusiasm and a fresh perspective.Louis Parent enjoyed working with space robots. The University of Illinois mechanical engineering major is wrapping up his 10-week internship at Goddard, which he calls "probably the best internship" he's ever had. "They had me work on a real project that really mattered, have some important data that what people do here and really contribute to real science and real engineering."Interacting with his mentor and the other interns gave him a better understanding of what he needs in order to pursue a career in this field - a solid background in computer science."Computer science isn't my favorite course to study," he admitted, "but I finally understood that it's necessary, and seeing the applications here kind of makes you want to do it more."Gaining experienceThat sort of transformative experience is a big part of the NASA internship, says Rick Obenschain, Goddard's deputy director."You train somebody here, you give them experiences, you give them enthusiasm, and they're going to take it with them, whether they stay within NASA or stay in the government or in the industry," he said.Obenschain stayed with NASA. He was an intern in 1962, a few years after the space flight center opened in Greenbelt, Maryland."We were making small baby steps, which today a student or an intern would say, 'Wow, this is something that you can do in 30, 40 minutes,'" he said with a chuckle. "Okay, it would take us weeks to figure something out."The intern program has evolved a great deal since then. It's directed by Mablelene Burrell, who proudly says there are more than 400 interns in the program this summer. More than 40 percent are women. "Most of our interns are from the STEM fields. They are engineers, the full range of engineers, from mechanical to electrical. We have many civil engineers, math majors. We have physics majors."NASA's intern programs are crucial to preparing the future workforce, says Robert Gabrys, director of the agency's Office of Education."We define workforce as anybody who would come to work for us, of course," he explained, "but also who is going to work for one of the contractors who support our space program, or would go and work for a higher institution in a NASA-related field, or become a STEM teacher in a school system."Matching projects and internsThe scientists, engineers and technologists at Goddard write descriptions of the projects they want interns to work on, and students apply for the ones that interest them. That helps the researchers identify which students would be the best match for their projects.Joseph Santanello, who also started his NASA career as an intern, says the students are an invaluable addition to the work environment."We get a fresh perspective on how we're working here, what we're working on, not just the science part, but generally, how we interact with the community," he said.Intern Patricia Lawston has been working with him for the past three summers. She says the internship has been an excellent experience as she pursues a doctorate in climatology."Not only the computer resources that I have, but also the connections that I've made here," she said. "It's really nice coming back for my second and third summers, to walk in the building and see people who recognize and call me by name and to know that any point I can email them and email Joe [Santanello] with any questions I have about my research that's been very beneficial to me even when I get back to school."That ongoing mentoring and collaboration helps the scientists, the students, and the U.S. space program.Galileo Launch, Initially Hailed as Success, Is a FailurePeter B. de Selding – Space NewsThe Aug. 22 launch of the first two fully operational Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites, initially cheered as a success, will now be registered as a failure of the Europeanized Soyuz rocket's Fregat upper stage, which left the satellites in a useless orbit, government and industry officials said Aug. 23.As of midafternoon Central European Time Aug. 23 — 24 hours after launch and 20 hours after the Fregat stage inserted the satellites into orbit — launch service provider Arianespace and the European Space Agency said they were still investigating the injection anomaly and could not conclude what, if any, effect it would have on the two satellites' functionality.Arianespace released a statement late on Aug. 23 saying the satellites, for reasons unknown, were placed into a wrong orbit by the rocket's Fregat upper stage."It was only a certain time after the separation of the satellites that the ongoing analysis of the data provided by the telemetry stations operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French space agency CNES showed that the satellites were not in the expected orbit," Arianespace said.The company said the spacecraft were safe in an orbit of 26,900 kilometers instead of the 29,900 kilometers expected, with an inclination of 49.8 degrees to the equator instead of the 55 degrees expected.An independent board of inquiry will be created on Aug. 25, the company said, adding that it is still unclear what the consequences of the bad orbit will be for the satellites' expected mission.In what must be felt as a bitter irony in Europe, it was the U.S. Defense Department's Space Surveillance Network — which publishes initial orbital parameters, known as two-line elements, of recently launched satellites — that first disclosed the problem Aug. 22.Among the first to pick up the U.S. military data was Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to announce the badly off-target injection data.Climbing into correct position from a too-low perigee requires the use of fuel that would otherwise be used over the satellite's life for regular maneuvers, but does not by itself mean the loss of the mission.The inclination error, however, appears too serious to allow much, if any, use of the satellites, according to officials. Correcting the error likely would require more propellant than the satellites carry and, even if they did reach the correct position, they would arrive with propellant levels so low that the effort would be deemed useless.McDowell speculated that the orbit left the two identical Galileo satellites with "not quite enough dV [delta V, or change in velocity needed to maneuver] to circularize their unplanned elliptical orbit."The satellites launched Aug. 22 were the first of a 22-satellite order to satellite builder OHB AG of Bremen, Germany. The next two Galileo satellites are scheduled for launch, also on a Soyuz-Fregat operating from Europe's Guiana Space Center spaceport, in December.ESA and the European Commission, which owns Galileo, had counted on four more Soyuz-Fregat launches, each carrying two Galileo satellites; and three heavy-lift Ariane 5 vehicles, each with four satellites to complete deployment of the current Galileo satellite order.That left four more satellites to build to complete the planned constellation of 30 satellites in orbit. Now the minimum next order will be for at least six satellites, not four. The loss of the two spacecraft is unlikely to have any material effect on Galileo's in-service schedule.ESA and the European Commission, like most governments, have elected not to insure the Soyuz launches, preferring instead to invest in satellite hardware rather than in commercial insurance policies.The investigation into the Aug. 22 failure will focus on the Fregat upper stage, built by NPO Lavochkin of Russia. Fregat is capable of being reignited in orbit some 20 times. For the Galileo launch, only two burns were used before separation. Then a third motor firing was planned to place the stage into a higher orbit, out of the medium Earth orbit traffic lanes, to mitigate its threat to other satellites as orbital debris.The Jupiter Control Room at Europe's Guiana Space Center, located on the northeast coast of South America, receives much of its information from Moscow, where the Soyuz vehicle is monitored.The question is what information, in the form of telemetry signals, did Fregat send to Russia, and then on to the European center, at the moment the stage released the satellites.One official said initial conclusions are that Fregat acted as though it was at the correct orbital-injection location, and that information was relayed to ground teams, leading to the applause in the Jupiter Control Room and a series of speeches by European government and industry officials celebrating a launch success.But somewhere in that same control room was an engineer looking at a screen showing data not from Fregat, but from the down-range ground stations that were evaluating the satellites' actual position and receiving satellite telemetry.Enough early telemetry was received to show the satellites were healthy and sending signals. But warnings that the orbit was wrong likely would have arrived soon enough.A close analysis of Arianespace's habitual video sweep of the Jupiter center after the cheering began might show at least one control team member still hunched over a screen in a pose not normally associated with celebration.Space Florida criticizes KSC master planJames Dean – Florida TodayUnrealistic launch pad locations. Projects so vague no meaningful environmental review is possible. A business model that could discourage, rather than attract, new commercial launch activity at Kennedy Space Center.Those are among significant concerns state officials identified with KSC's new 20-year master plan in a broad critique submitted as part of the plan's environmental review.Space Florida said neither option being considered by NASA's environmental review — to adopt the master plan or not — represents "the best interests of either the nation or the State of Florida," and master plan revisions may be necessary."Space Florida suggests more dialogue and collaboration between KSC and its stakeholders before proceeding" with the review, Chief Operations Officer Jim Kuzma wrote last month in a 12-page letter to NASA, which FLORIDA TODAY obtained through a state public records request.KSC unveiled the master plan in late May. It proposes up to two more launch pads, a second runway for horizontal launches and landings, two new seaports and development of vacant land to support new commercial activity. Existing facilities would support NASA's human exploration program, and KSC has already transferred some unneeded facilities to new users, including the lease of launch pad 39A to SpaceX and former shuttle hangers to the state and a military program.KSC said in a statement that its master plan "provides a roadmap for KSC's future development as a multi-use spaceport supporting both NASA programs and growing commercial markets.""NASA and potential commercial providers are our highest priorities, as we continue to dialog with Space Florida and other strategic partners to provide a comprehensive plan that supports KSC's next 20 years," said Scott Colloredo, head of the Center Planning and Development office.After its release, some environmentalists applauded the master plan's concentration of any new infrastructure within KSC's existing operational area, bordered on the north side by the road to Playalinda Beach.They preferred that to Space Florida's proposal to build two commercial launch pads farther north in a publicly accessible part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge known as Shiloh, an option NASA's master plan does not entertain."The master plan supports commercial industry and confines development within KSC's secure perimeter, continuing NASA's commitment to preserving the environment — which the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process will ensure — while remaining America's premier launch site for human and scientific exploration," Colloredo said.But in its letter, Space Florida said it chose Shiloh after concluding that NASA's proposed sites were inadequate for both environmental and operational reasons.The pads NASA labels 39C and 39D, just north of KSC's two existing pads, "would be prohibitively impactful to wetlands, the Mosquito Lagoon and the seashore environment," Kuzma wrote.In addition, he said, they are too close to each other, to NASA's pad for the Space Launch System exploration rocket and to a proposed new runway, increasing the chance that work at one location would interfere with another. The pads appear on KSC's map to be too small to support launches of large rockets, and would result in "dramatically curtailed" access to Playalinda Beach.Space Florida said NASA should better define the launch sites' capabilities and environmental viability, including inviting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help assess "how realistic it is to baseline this future development option."The same concerns apply to the master plan's proposed seaports, which Space Florida said would require extensive dredging. One would be located near the former shuttle runway that Space Florida is negotiating to take over from NASA, potentially impacting flight operations there.In general, the proposed new projects — none of which NASA would pay for — "are too vague to enable meaningful environmental analysis," Kuzma wrote.Space Florida said federal government dominance of the spaceport has "increasingly disadvantaged" the state compared to others like Texas and New Mexico that are winning commercial launch business. (Virgin Galactic will fly space tourists from New Mexico, and SpaceX recently confirmed plans to build a private complex in Texas for launches of commercial satellites.)But in its letter, Space Florida said it chose Shiloh after concluding that NASA's proposed sites were inadequate for both environmental and operational reasons.The pads NASA labels 39C and 39D, just north of KSC's two existing pads, "would be prohibitively impactful to wetlands, the Mosquito Lagoon and the seashore environment," Kuzma wrote.In addition, he said, they are too close to each other, to NASA's pad for the Space Launch System exploration rocket and to a proposed new runway, increasing the chance that work at one location would interfere with another. The pads appear on KSC's map to be too small to support launches of large rockets, and would result in "dramatically curtailed" access to Playalinda Beach.Space Florida said NASA should better define the launch sites' capabilities and environmental viability, including inviting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help assess "how realistic it is to baseline this future development option."ENDMore at www.spacetoday.net-----No virus found in this message.Checked by AVG - www.avg.comVersion: 2014.0.4745 / Virus Database: 4007/8046 - Release Date: 08/16/14Internal Virus Database is out of date.
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