| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Space Station Research Stands Up to Cancer
- You're Invited to Watch a Model Rocket Launch
- Update: Snap a Selfie With an Astronaut & Win!
- Disability Employment Awareness Month Nomination
- National Cybersecurity Awareness Month - Organizations/Social
- Specialty Testing of Light Sources & Displays
- Have You Saved the Date for ¡Festival!?
- Lunch and Learn Virtual Seminar
- Reminder: AIAA Houston Dinner Meeting - Alan Bean - Jobs and Training
- Register in SATERN: Effective Meetings Workshop
- Engineer to Entrepreneur - Community
- Oct. 9 Shred Truck - Do You Know What to Keep?
- America Recycles Day Contests
- Help Out at Space Day Hope Village - Oct. 11
- Blood Drive: Oct. 15 & 16 |  |
| Headlines - Space Station Research Stands Up to Cancer
Are you on social media? Help us spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and more that the space station is in on the fight against cancer by posting this shareable. - You're Invited to Watch a Model Rocket Launch
On Oct. 8, meet 4-H Club members from across the state of Texas who will be participating in a 4-H National Youth Science Day activity. Students will launch air-compressed stomp rockets, and the NASA Houston Rocket Club will demonstrate a model rocket launch. Student launches begin at 3:30 p.m. The model rocket launch begins at 4:15 p.m. - Update: Snap a Selfie With an Astronaut & Win!
In the Buildings 3 and 11 cafés, an iSnap kiosk has been placed with cutouts of astronauts Luca Parmitano and Chris Cassidy. Parmitano and Cassidy are in Hawaii this week preparing for the Ironman Triathlon. Use the kiosk to send some encouragement and snap a selfie with the astronauts. Parmitano and Cassidy will choose their favorite pictures, and these winners will be selected for a very special NASA prize! Make sure to use the hashtag #TeamAstro. No social media? No problem! - Disability Employment Awareness Month Nomination
The October 2014 National Disability Employment Awareness Month theme is "Expect. Employ. Empower." The theme demonstrates the importance of having high expectations for all individuals with disabilities, offering work environments open to the talents of all qualified individuals and encouraging people with disabilities to be empowered. We would like to highlight one JSC/White Sands Test Facility employee whose story serves as an inspiration to others. Please submit your nomination, or self-nomination, for consideration to the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity via email by Tuesday, Oct. 14. Please include the nominee's name, organization, job title and why you nominate the individual or yourself in 300 words or less. The selected individual will be highlighted in JSC Features during October! - National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Cybersecurity Tip for Today: STOP, THINK, CONNECT Don't be tricked into downloading malicious software. Stop and think before you open attachments or click links in unusual emails, texts, instant messages, on social networks or in random pop-up windows. If you're unsure if a message is legitimate—even from a coworker—contact the sender to confirm using a different device and another account. Organizations/Social - Specialty Testing of Light Sources & Displays
The Lighting Environment Test Facility at JSC maintains a high-resolution imaging colorimeter. This device provides a new measurement technology to capture detailed light measurements for displays and solid-state light sources. The facility owns spectroradiometers and maintains a large darkroom for controlled testing of lights and cameras. If your project is responsible for specification, design or verification of new lighting and displays, we may have the services you need to ensure product quality. Please feel free to contact us. - Have You Saved the Date for ¡Festival!?
As part of Hispanic Heritage Month/Mes de la Herencia Hispana, the Hispanic Employee Resource Group (HERG) is hosting ¡Festival!, A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage, on Oct. 14. ¡Festival! will feature the richness of Hispanic culture. We'll have mariachis, food and drink samples, artwork and cultural displays and a dance demonstration featuring several JSC team members. We are also proud to welcome Anna Park, CEO of Great Minds in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), who will give an inspirational talk in the Teague Auditorium. Make plans to join us for this signature event of JSC's 2014 celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month! Event Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2014 Event Start Time:11:00 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: B2 Teague Auditorium
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HERG
[top] - Lunch and Learn Virtual Seminar
Interested in finding out what early career professionals are doing at other centers? Here's a chance to find out. The NASA Early Career Scientists and Engineers Working Group is co-hosting, along with the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Launching Leaders Early Career Group, a "Lunch and Learn" seminar on Oct. 15 from noon to 1 p.m. CDT. The seminar will be streamed via Adobe Connect and includes the following speakers: - "Design/Build/Test of a Throttleable LOX/LCH4 Thrust Chamber" by Michael Bedard (Purdue University) and Eric Meier (Purdue University/KSC)
- "A Modeling Approach to Untangling the Complexity of Space R&D Portfolio Management Decisions" by Alex Burg (George Washington University/NASA Headquarters)
- "NASA@Work" by Kathryn Keeton (JSC)
If you are interested in attending the seminar, contact Aaron Burton for Adobe Connect login information. Interested in presenting your work to an agencywide audience? Contact Aaron Burton. Event Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2014 Event Start Time:12:00 PM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Adobe Connect
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Aaron Burton x42773
[top] - Reminder: AIAA Houston Dinner Meeting - Alan Bean
Please join the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston Section as we welcome Alan Bean for a special presentation on "Reaching for Your Own Special Star." Bean is a former NASA astronaut and currently a painter. He was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1963. As the Lunar Module pilot of Apollo 12, Bean was the fourth man to set foot on the moon. He explored the beautifully desolate landscape of the Ocean of Storms and, later, as commander of Skylab mission II. Bean spent 59 days in orbit around our fragile, blue-and-white Earth. After retiring from the United States Navy in 1975 and NASA in 1981, he devoted himself to documenting his own experiences on the moon, as well as those of his fellow Apollo astronauts—one of the great explorations in our history. Please register at the event page by TOMORROW, Oct. 8. Jobs and Training - Register in SATERN: Effective Meetings Workshop
The Mastering Meetings to Minimize Conflicts: Effective Meetings Workshop will focus on skills that will enable participants and facilitators to have more productive, engaging and results-oriented meetings. Learn skills such as meeting facilitation basics, understanding default meeting behaviors, creating a safe space for challenging conversations and building consensus among everyone in the room. Wednesday, Oct. 15, in Building 1, Room 871, from 1:30 to 4 p.m. This training is hosted by JSC's Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity in conjunction with the New York Peace Institute, one of the nation's largest community mediation centers. Brad Heckman, CEO and adjunct professor at NY University's Center for Global Affairs, will teach the course. Accommodations for a specific disability are available upon request. - Engineer to Entrepreneur
The Houston Technology Center is pleased to host a 10-week lunch-and-learn course series entitled "Engineer to Entrepreneur." If you've ever thought about launching your own business, this is the program for you. You will learn how to establish a corporate entity, develop a business strategy, pitch your strategy and market your products. Join us for a fun-filled program instructed by some of Houston's most accomplished business executives. Classes will be held for 10 consecutive Thursdays from Aug. 21 to Oct. 30 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Building 45, Room 451. For enrollment information, contact Evelyn Boatman at 281-244-8271. Community - Oct. 9 Shred Truck – Do You Know What to Keep?
Have you ever wondered what papers are safe to shred and which ones you need to keep? To answer your shredding questions, attend the free webinar, "Get it Together: Organize Your Financial Records," tomorrow, Oct. 8, from 11 a.m. to noon. Learn tips for organizing your records, identifying which records to keep—and for how long—as well as which records to shred. Then, take advantage of the shred truck on Thursday, Oct. 9, located in the C-5 parking lot next to Gate 2 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Bring old bills, bank and credit card statements, canceled checks and receipts. Your documents will be destroyed on-site, and all shredded materials will be recycled. Click here for details and to RSVP. All JSC employees and contractors are invited to participate in both the webinar and the shred-truck event. Event Date: Thursday, October 9, 2014 Event Start Time:10:00 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: C-5 Parking Lot
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Rindy Carmichael x45078
[top] - America Recycles Day Contests
JSC will be celebrating its recycling capabilities from Nov. 10 to 13. Show off your creative side AND environmental side by participating in the Environmental Poster Contest and the Recycled Art Contest. Poster Contest: Team up, or by yourself, create an 8.5" x 11" poster highlighting how recycling, reducing and reusing benefit the environment. Designs are due Oct. 9. Art Contest: Team up, or by yourself, create art using only recycled materials. Drop off recycled art in the Teague lobby on Nov. 6. Contact Alexandra Moore-VanDyke (x28255) if you are interested in participating in either contest for more information and submission details. All poster submissions and artwork will be displayed in the Teague lobby from Nov. 10 to 13. Showcase what recycling—and the environment—means to you and to JSC. Good luck! - Help Out at Space Day Hope Village - Oct. 11
In conjunction with National Disability Awareness Month, Space Center Volunteers is hosting the first "Space Day at Hope Village" to demonstrate how space exploration inspires people of all abilities and honor the important services provided by Hope Village. We seek volunteers and exhibits from 1 to 4 p.m. to support activities like: - Balloon straw rocket demonstrations
- Water bottle rocket contest
- Space arts and crafts
- Space food/equipment
- Other creative demonstrations related to space exploration
This event is only open to Hope Village residents and day-program participants and their families. Hope Village was founded by Bill and Lucille Williams in 1967 when they sought care for their daughter, who had been diagnosed as an infant with mental retardation. Dissatisfied with the few services available at that time, they sought to create a place that would be a loving home for their daughter and others with similar disabilities. Event Date: Saturday, October 11, 2014 Event Start Time:1:00 PM Event End Time:4:00 PM
Event Location: Hope Village
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Joyce Abbey/Dayni Alba 281-335-2041/281-226-6392
[top] - Blood Drive: Oct. 15 & 16
Blood makes up about 7 percent of your body's weight, and the average adult has 10 pints of blood. After a donation of whole blood, you will not be eligible to donate for 56 days—during which time your body will completely replenish the blood you have so generously donated. Immediately after your blood donation, you will also be asked to spend a few moments in our waiting area, where you will be served refreshments, cookies and other snacks. This will help replenish some of the sugar and liquids in your body and help us to ensure that you are feeling well after your donation. You can donate on Oct. 15 and 16 at one of the following locations: - Teague Auditorium Lobby - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Donor coach at the Building 11 Starport Café - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Donor coach at the Gilruth Center - Noon to 4 p.m. (Thursday only)
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday – October 7, 2014
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION:
Tune in now for a spacewalk live on NASA TV at www.nasa.gov/ntv or on the NASA app on your smartphone. The spacewalk for Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst began at 7:30 a.m. CDT and will last 6 ½ hours. This is the 182nd spacewalk in support of station assembly and maintenance and the first for both Wiseman and Gerst. The first-ever spacewalk Vine video has been posted! Check it out and follow all live updates on @Space_Station Twitter.
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Station spacewalks prelude to major changes
William Harwood – CBS News
Space station astronauts will venture outside the complex Tuesday and again next week to move a failed ammonia pump to a more secure storage location, to replace an electrical component that will restore one of the lab's solar power channels to normal operation and to carry out a variety of maintenance tasks.
Groundbreaking Tuesday for new Kennedy Space Center headquarters
Jerry Hume - News 13 of Central Florida
An Orange County construction company is getting ready to break ground on new headquarters for NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Chief engineer for Mars rover Curiosity takes his charge's mission personally
Nancy Szokan – The Washington Post
Curiosity, the robot crawling around the surface of Mars for the past two years, isn't just a piece of machinery to Rob Manning.
Private Inflatable Room Launching to Space Station Next Year
A privately built inflatable room for astronauts on the International Space Station is on track to launch into orbit next year.
Roscosmos: Russia Remains Committed to Space Tourism
The Moscow Times
The head of Russian space agency Roscosmos says that the country remains committed to space tourism, and that international cooperation in space is continuing despite international tensions over the Ukraine crisis.
Wednesday's lunar eclipse will create a 'blood' moon
Doyle Rice – USA Today
The second — and final — total lunar eclipse of 2014 will occur early Wednesday morning, just before sunrise in the Eastern Time Zone and in the middle of the night on the West Coast.
Russian Scientists Develop Mechanism for Rover's Descent to Mars
RIA Novosti
Russian scientists have developed a unique mechanism for the rover's descent to the surface of Mars, Lev Zeleny, the head of the Russian Space Research Institute said on Friday.
Europe's First Copernicus Satellite Begins Operations
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
Europe's Sentinel-1A radar Earth observation satellite — the first in a series of environment-monitoring spacecraft built for the European Commission's Copernicus program — on Oct. 6 entered routine operations with its data now freely available, the European Space Agency said.
Virgin Galactic Poised To Resume SpaceShipTwo Powered Flights
Jeff Foust – Space News
A nine-month pause in powered test flights of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle will end "imminently" as the company plans to take official possession of the vehicle and receive its launch license, company officials said Oct. 4.
US space policy and planetary defense
James C. Howe – The Space Review
Our solar system is populated by a wealth of other orbiting bodies, including hundreds of thousands of asteroids and comets that have already been discovered, with some scientists estimating a total asteroid population of over a billion. While most asteroid orbits are concentrated in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, some are on elliptical trajectories that cross the orbital plane of Earth. Comets, which cross Earth's path much less frequently, have a wide range of orbital periods, from several years to several millennia.1
Editorial: A big change in U.S space travel
Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner
Believe it or not, for-profit space ventures have been around awhile. In pulp magazine stories of the 1930s and '40s, and later in sci-fi movies of the 1950s, rockets to the moon and Mars were almost always built by private companies and eccentric billionaires. When moviegoers visited the huge space station in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (released in 1968), what did they see? A Howard Johnson and a Hilton hotel.
COMPLETE STORIES
Station spacewalks prelude to major changes
William Harwood – CBS News
Space station astronauts will venture outside the complex Tuesday and again next week to move a failed ammonia pump to a more secure storage location, to replace an electrical component that will restore one of the lab's solar power channels to normal operation and to carry out a variety of maintenance tasks.
The two U.S. spacewalks will set the stage for a complex series of eight to 10 NASA EVAs and module relocations next year that are needed to prepare the station for dockings by Boeing and SpaceX commercial crew ferry craft.
Two commercial crew docking adapters will be installed, one on the front end of the forward Harmony module where shuttles once docked and the other on the module's upper space-facing port. Harmony's Earth-facing port will remain available for use by visiting cargo ships.
A pressurized storage module now attached to the Earth-facing port of the central Unity module will be moved to the forward side of the Tranquility compartment where the multi-window cupola is located, making way for equipment that will enable visiting cargo ships berth at Unity.
The relocations will be carried out remotely using the station's robot arm, but multiple spacewalks will be needed to route and re-route power and data cables and to install a universal communications and navigation system that will be used by Boeing and SpaceX crew craft during station approaches and departures.
When the work is complete, the U.S. segment of the station will be able to accommodate two commercial crew vehicles and two cargo ships at the same time, providing fully independent access to the lab complex for the first time since the space shuttle's retirement in 2011.
"When you look out a little further as to how the EVAs stack up after the first of the year and out into the spring, we're really going to start this transformation of the space station," said Kenny Todd, space station integration and operations manager. "We're going to be doing the things we need to do on these EVAs to prep for moving some modules around.
"All that is in preparation for being able to support future commercial crewed vehicles coming to station. We're trying to get out in front of that. We'll be prepping for moving modules, we'll be installing a new docking adapter system. All of that will be happening throughout the next several months."
But first, NASA is staging a pair of spacewalks to complete unfinished business, to restore an electrical power channel to normal operation and to move camera lights and equipment needed for the upcoming commercial crew reconfiguration.
Flight engineer Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst plan to kick off the first spacewalk, U.S. EVA-27, at 8:10 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) Tuesday, exiting the Quest airlock module and making their way to the forward face of the station's solar power truss where the pump module is mounted on a robot arm transporter.
A valve in the pump module failed last December, prompting two spacewalks later that month to install a replacement. The swap out was successful, but it took longer than expected and the crew did not have time to move the old pump back to an external storage platform as originally planned. Gerst, riding the station's robot arm, and Wiseman will complete the pump relocation on Tuesday.
The astronauts also will replace an external video camera light and install electrical components and wiring to route power to equipment on the mobile transporter in case of problems that might prevent the transporter from plugging into power at work sites along the truss.
The spacewalk, the 182nd since station assembly began in 1998, is expected to last about six-and-a-half hours.
Assuming all of that goes well, Wiseman and astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore will venture outside for U.S. EVA-28 a week from Wednesday, on Oct. 15, to replace a device known as a sequential shunt unit, or SSU, on the far right end of the station's solar power truss.
The space station is equipped with eight large solar panels that rotate to track the sun, providing power to eight distribution channels. Each array is equipped with an SSU to provide voltage regulation, balancing loads with demand. The SSU in power channel 3A failed last May, forcing flight controllers to re-route power from another channel to a variety of components.
Because the circuitry is electrically "hot" when the station is in sunlight, Wiseman and Wilmore will time their spacewalk to remove and replace the faulty SSU during a night pass when the arrays are not generating power.
Once that work is complete, the astronauts will relocate a spacewalk foot restraint, repair a camera on the left-side of the solar power truss and move another television camera assembly from the top of the port-1 truss segment to the upper side of the forward Harmony module.
Two Russian cosmonauts -- station commander Maxim Suraev and Alexander Samokutyaev -- plan a spacewalk of their own on Oct. 22, but that excursion will be devoted to routine maintenance and experiment swap outs and is not related to NASA's activity.
For NASA, the space station reconfiguration work begins in earnest in January when Wilmore and Terry Virts, scheduled for launch to the station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in November, will carry out a pair of spacewalks kicking off a complex sequence of EVAs needed to ready the station for the arrival of commercial crew spacecraft starting in 2017.
NASA plans to launch two international docking adapters, or IDAs, to the space station aboard SpaceX Dragon cargo ships, one in late spring or early summer and the other at the end of the year. Using the station's robot arm, one of the IDAs will be installed on pressurized mating adapter No. 2, attached to the forward port of the Harmony module where space shuttle's once docked.
The second IDA will be attached to Harmony's upper, or zenith, port. To prepare for that, PMA-3, currently attached to the left-side Tranquility module, will be moved to Harmony's zenith port and locked in place. The second IDA then will be attached to PMA-3.
Before that happens, however, a pressurized storage module attached to Unity's Earth-facing port during the final shuttle mission will be moved to Tranquility's forward port to make way for installation of equipment needed for commercial cargo ships to berth at Unity. A second cargo port will remain available at Harmony's Earth-facing port.
Up to 10 spacewalks are expected next year to route electrical cables, ethernet cables, move cameras and mount the Common Communications for Visiting Vehicles, or C2V2, equipment that will be used by approaching commercial crew spacecraft for station communications and close-in navigation.
Astronaut Scott Kelly, scheduled for launch to the station next March for a planned year-long stay, is expected to participate in four to six of those EVAs.
Groundbreaking Tuesday for new Kennedy Space Center headquarters
Jerry Hume - News 13 of Central Florida
An Orange County construction company is getting ready to break ground on new headquarters for NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday for the space center's new 200,000-square-foot headquarters.
The seven-story building will consolidate services and administrative offices.
Hensel Phelps Construction Company was awarded the two-year contract for more than $64 million.
Plans call to demolish the current headquarters building.
NASA said it will save $400 million over the next 40 years by cutting square footage, lowering operation and maintenance costs.
Chief engineer for Mars rover Curiosity takes his charge's mission personally
Nancy Szokan – The Washington Post
Curiosity, the robot crawling around the surface of Mars for the past two years, isn't just a piece of machinery to Rob Manning.
Waiting at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to get word of the Mars landing on Aug. 5, 2012, he writes: "It's as if the person you love most dearly is in a building that has been devastated by some errant force of nature and you are waiting to hear if she or he is still alive."
And when the spacecraft carrying Curiosity touches down — an event whose reporting was delayed by the 13.8 excruciating minutes it takes for a transmitted signal to make it from Mars to Earth — Manning writes: "Like a punctual guest coming to a dinner party, it has arrived exactly on schedule."
It's all personal to Manning, who says space exploration has played a role in his life "second only to my wife and child." He has spent 30 years at the JPL and is now chief engineer on a project aimed at landing astronauts and scientists on Mars. In "Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account From Curiosity's Chief Engineer," he and science writer William L. Simon describe a committed, collegial bunch of guys doing some pretty amazing science.
Upon learning that NASA had increased the number of scientific instruments that would get loaded onto the rover, he remembers thinking: "This is going to be the coolest thing we have ever sent to Mars but it's going to be damned near impossible to get off of the ground."
The engineering descriptions are strikingly easy to understand — designing the landing craft, for example, meant anticipating problems such as "If a lander came down where the ground was too tilted, it could tip and roll" and considering odd ideas: "How about [letting] our large rover bounce onto Mars surrounded by an airbag cocoon?"
Private Inflatable Room Launching to Space Station Next Year
A privately built inflatable room for astronauts on the International Space Station is on track to launch into orbit next year.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is expected to head to space inside SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft in 2015, according to a senior representative for the company Bigelow Aerospace, which is building the module. Once BEAM gets to the space station, the robotic Canadarm2 will install it on the Tranquility node's aft port to test out expandable-habitat technology.
NASA is paying Nevada-based Bigelow $17.8 million to send the demonstration module to the station, where it will be in place for at least a couple of years. Here at the International Astronautical Congress Thursday (Oct. 2), Bigelow representative Mike Gold said BEAM provides an example of what the company, and private firms in general, can do in low-Earth orbit (LEO).
"LEO will become a commercial domain," said Gold, Bigelow's director of D.C. operations and business growth.
"Maybe it's difficult to see at this point, but we go back to telecom — there was a time when every communications satellite was owned by the government," he added, noting that today, private companies are now responsible for this space domain and that it touches every aspect of people's lives, such as cellphones. "This will happen when it comes to crew operations."
Pushing for change
The BEAM mission will allow Bigelow to collect even more data about how its expandable habitat modules perform on orbit. The company blasted two other modules to orbit as stand-alone missions in 2006 and 2007 and plans to launch a private space station someday.
Private work in space, Gold noted, is hampered by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restrict the sharing of technology with other countries, particularly China. Citing "Star Trek," Gold joked that Scottish engineer Montgomery Scott would have had trouble speaking openly with Hikaru Sulu (from Japan) if ITAR were in force on the Enterprise.
After gravity, Gold said, ITAR is the second-greatest barrier to getting something off Earth. China, in particular, is the "third rail" of ITAR, Gold said, urging other companies to help him speak to government officials in an attempt to make changes.
"We cannot fight the New Space vs. Old Space battle … with so few companies," he said. "The pie is too small. We need to come together as space enthusiasts."
International standards
Speaking on the same panel as Gold, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's chief of human exploration and operations, said commercial operations are needed on the International Space Station because NASA "owes the taxpayers some return."
NASA is already starting to put together voluntary international standards that could be used for future orbiting facilities, such as methods of choosing radio frequencies that do not interfere with one another, he said. But the process still needs some work.
For example, Gerstenmaier said, astronauts could not eat any of the lettuce grown onboard the space station during a recent experiment because it had to be sent back to Earth for a health and safety check first.
"That kind of upset me a bit. Couldn't they just eat a little bit of the lettuce to see if they would survive?" he joked.
NASA will use BEAM to evaluate the radiation levels inside the module compared to those on other parts of the space station, he added. The mission is part of NASA's larger push to make low-Earth orbit a place where commercial entities will operate, whether it's through launching CubeSats or ferrying cargo to and from the space station.
Roscosmos: Russia Remains Committed to Space Tourism
The Moscow Times
The head of Russian space agency Roscosmos says that the country remains committed to space tourism, and that international cooperation in space is continuing despite international tensions over the Ukraine crisis.
Roscosmos chief Oleg Ostapenko pointed out that British pop-star Sarah Brightman will arrive in Russia in January to begin training for her Oct. 4, 2015, flight to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Brightman is scheduled to spend 10 days aboard the ISS and return to earth with a departing ISS crew in mid-October.
The British singer is the latest in a line of affluent Westerners to contract rides aboard Soyuz crafts via U.S.-based company Space Adventures. The space tourism company has organized trips aboard Soyuz craft since 2001, when American businessman Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist.
Tito paid $20 million for his flight, but the price has since risen to more than $50 million. The last space tourist was Guy Laliberte, owner of Canadian entertainment company Cirque du Soleil.
NASA, by comparison, pays about $71-74 million per seat to fly its astronauts to the ISS. The space station, which has cost $160 billion according to some calculations, involves 15 nations but is largely co-managed by the U.S. and Russia.
Wednesday's lunar eclipse will create a 'blood' moon
Doyle Rice – USA Today
The second — and final — total lunar eclipse of 2014 will occur early Wednesday morning, just before sunrise in the Eastern Time Zone and in the middle of the night on the West Coast.
The moon will appear a coppery red, so it's been called a "blood" moon. It'll look red because of all the sunsets and sunrises from the Earth that will reflect onto the lunar surface. (During the eclipse, although it's completely in the shadow of Earth, a bit of reddish sunlight still reaches the moon.)
You don't need special glasses or gizmos to view it, unlike a solar eclipse, so feel free to stare directly at the moon. Binoculars or a telescope would improve the view.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, Earth and the full moon form a nearly straight line so that the full moon passes through Earth's shadow, called the umbra.
"The eclipse will only be visible in its entirety from parts of eastern Australia, New Zealand, eastern Asia, most of Japan, the Hawaiian Islands and the western part of North America," according to Slooh.com.
Officially, the total eclipse will start at 6:25 a.m. ET (5:25 a.m. CT, 4:25 a.m. MT and 3:25 a.m. PT) and continue until 7:24 a.m. ET (4:24 a.m. PT).
If you're in the central or western parts of the USA, you'll see the total eclipse high in a dark sky well before sunrise, according to Sky and Telescope.
"Easterners will find dawn brightening and the moon sinking low in the west while the eclipse is in progress," Sky and Telescope reports. The moon will set during the eclipse in the East.
Unfortunately, clouds and rain may limit viewing of the eclipse in the heavily populated northeastern USA as a storm system swings in from the southwest, according to AccuWeather.
Much of the southern and central USA will have clear viewing under clear or partly cloudy skies. However, thick clouds and rain could hinder the view of the eclipse over the Southwest.
This full moon is called the Hunter's Moon, which is the full moon that occurs after the Harvest Moon.
The next lunar eclipse will be April 4, 2015.
If you're more into solar eclipses, there will be a partial one visible in parts of the USA later this month, on Oct. 23.
But the next total solar eclipse that's visible in the USA won't be until Aug. 21, 2017.
Russian Scientists Develop Mechanism for Rover's Descent to Mars
RIA Novosti
Russian scientists have developed a unique mechanism for the rover's descent to the surface of Mars, Lev Zeleny, the head of the Russian Space Research Institute said on Friday.
"Our European colleagues want maximum safety for the rover, for it to be able to slide down, if necessary, to the surface of Mars in any direction. We have developed such a system," Zeleny said, adding that the solution presupposes the construction of two ramps upon which the rover will be able to drive off the landing deck.
The mechanism has been designed specifically for the joint EU-Russia ExoMars research project.
In the spring of 2012, the European Space Agency and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) agreed on the development of the so-called ExoMars program.
The research program includes the launch of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in 2016, with the goal of collecting data on atmospheric gases present in low concentrations. The project also involves the exploration of ice found in Mars' soil, as well as landing the ExoMars Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM).
The Mars rover is expected to land in 2018 and perform a geological analysis of the planet's soil and search for traces of life.
In August Daniil Rodionov, a Russian scientific supervisor of the project, said that Russia will create a landing deck and provide a range of unique scientific equipment for the Russian-European Mars mission.
Europe's First Copernicus Satellite Begins Operations
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
Europe's Sentinel-1A radar Earth observation satellite — the first in a series of environment-monitoring spacecraft built for the European Commission's Copernicus program — on Oct. 6 entered routine operations with its data now freely available, the European Space Agency said.
Sentinel-1A was launched April 3 into a position that forced it to take slightly longer than expected to reach its final, polar low Earth operating orbit. As it climbed into position, the satellite made eight maneuvers to dodge space debris, ESA said.
The satellite is the first dedicated spacecraft for Copernicus, a multibillion-euro (multibillion-dollar) European Commission network of space and ground assets to monitor the environment.
The Copernicus satellites were developed by the 20-nation ESA. The Copernicus network, including the satellites, is owned by the European Commission, which is the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union.
ESA and the European Union are negotiating a legal framework under which Copernicus will be maintained and developed.
Sentinel 1A also will be the first test of Europe's future European Data Relay Satellite Service, under which Sentinel Earth observation data is relayed, by laser optics, to telecommunications satellites in higher, geostationary to speed data delivery to users. Sentinel-1A will begin testing the data-relay element of the system in the coming weeks through Europe's AlphaSat satellite.
AlphaSat's main payload is for commercial L-band mobile communications services by Inmarsat of London. The satellite includes several ESA-furnished technology demonstration payloads, including the laser communications terminal.
Airbus Defence and Space will be operating the data-relay service commercially, pending successful laser-communications trials between Sentinel-1A and AlphaBus, and the signing of an ESA-Commission Copernicus agreement.
Virgin Galactic Poised To Resume SpaceShipTwo Powered Flights
Jeff Foust – Space News
A nine-month pause in powered test flights of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle will end "imminently" as the company plans to take official possession of the vehicle and receive its launch license, company officials said Oct. 4.
"Those are going to start imminently, literally very imminently," said Mike Moses, vice president of operations of Virgin Galactic, during a media tour of the company's Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar (FAITH) here, where SpaceShipTwo and its carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, are built.
SpaceShipTwo made its last powered test flight Jan. 10. In May, the company announced it was switching the fuel used in the vehicle's hybrid rocket motor, hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene, a form of rubber, to a polyamide-based plastic.
Virgin Galactic has tested that new motor in a series of developmental and qualification, or "qual," tests on the ground, but has not yet flown it on SpaceShipTwo. "We have now one more formal qual in our program of qual fires of the plastic motor," Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said. If that test is successful, he said the engine would be ready for flight on SpaceShipTwo.
Previous test flights of SpaceShipTwo have been the responsibility of Scaled Composites, who developed the vehicle under contract with Virgin Galactic. Those flights have used an experimental permit issued by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2012.
"We have a few more development test flights that will be run by Scaled," Whitesides said. "We'll then pass the vehicles over to Virgin Galactic, at which point we will request that the FAA make a determination and issue our license."
The timing of that handover from Scaled Composites to Virgin Galactic will depend on the progress on the upcoming test flights, which Whitesides said could include a full suborbital flight. "What we'd like as a minimum is for them to demonstrate supersonic re-entry and peak heating," he said of Scaled. The two companies have already been working together on flight operations, and Virgin Galactic took over WhiteKnightTwo earlier in the year.
Complicating the transition from Scaled to Virgin is current federal law, which does not allow a vehicle to hold both an experimental permit and a launch license simultaneously. Virgin Galactic submitted an application for a launch license for SpaceShipTwo in the summer of 2013, which the FAA declared to be "sufficiently complete" in August 2013, starting a 180-day review period.
Whitesides said that Virgin Galactic asked the FAA to place a "voluntary toll" on the application early this year, with less than a month left in the review period, to prevent the FAA from issuing the license and thus invalidating the experimental permit before Scaled and Virgin were ready to transition operations. "When Scaled and us — and frankly the FAA — feel like we're ready for this big transfer, we will request that the toll be removed," he said.
Once Virgin Galactic has the launch license, Whitesides said they will perform several test flights, including some at Spaceport America in New Mexico, before beginning commercial service. Whitesides declined to provide a specific schedule for those milestones but, in September, Sir Richard Branson said in televised interviews that he expected to fly on the first commercial SpaceShipTwo flight in February or March of 2015.
The Virgin Galactic media event was tied to the tenth anniversary of the final flight of SpaceShipTwo's predecessor, SpaceShipOne, at the Mojave Air and Space Port. That flight won the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for Mojave Aerospace Ventures, a joint venture of Scaled Composites and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who funded SpaceShipOne's development.
At a luncheon commemorating the anniversary here Oct. 4, Branson said SpaceShipTwo was about to begin commercial flights, but acknowledged the several years of delays the program has experienced.
"We're on the verge," Branson said in a panel session during the luncheon. "We're going to start soon, as I've been saying for a few years."
US space policy and planetary defense
James C. Howe – The Space Review
Our solar system is populated by a wealth of other orbiting bodies, including hundreds of thousands of asteroids and comets that have already been discovered, with some scientists estimating a total asteroid population of over a billion. While most asteroid orbits are concentrated in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, some are on elliptical trajectories that cross the orbital plane of Earth. Comets, which cross Earth's path much less frequently, have a wide range of orbital periods, from several years to several millennia.1
Numerous asteroid collisions with Earth and its atmosphere have been documented over the life of the planet: scientists believe the impact of a 10-kilometer-wide asteroid millions of years ago killed all species of dinosaurs and extinguished most life on Earth.2 In February 2013, in an event captured on hundreds of videos, an asteroid approximately 15–20 meters in diameter exploded 30 miles above Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaging buildings and injuring more than 1,000 people. While telescopic surveys have identified the vast majority of the largest asteroids that pass near Earth, only about one percent of smaller, yet nonetheless dangerous asteroids, have been cataloged.3
"Planetary defense" is the term associated with locating asteroids and comets that have the potential for impacting Earth and employing technical means for diverting them from a collision course (because of the rarity of comets, asteroids are the prime focus of planetary defense policies.) The general idea is that if a threatening asteroid can be identified years or decades ahead of impact, current space technologies and hardware can be used to nudge the asteroid off its current orbit to avoid striking Earth: even a change in velocity of a centimeter per second may be enough to prevent a collision. For large asteroids or those located only a few years before projected impact, the use of nuclear weapons to deflect or fragment the asteroid may be the only option.
The concept of defending against an asteroid strike began to generate significant policy interest after astronomers witnessed fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 striking the planet Jupiter in July 1994. American and international efforts in the wake of this event led to the identification of most of the larger asteroids that cross Earth's orbit, but hundreds of thousands of smaller asteroids undiscovered. The Chelyabinsk event has helped catalyze more intense international activity to address this threat, with the United Nation's Space Mission Planning and Advisory Group currently tasked with determining actions that could be taken in response to discovery of a threatening asteroid.4
The following review will examine what the current US space policy regarding planetary defense, and whether policy refinements should be made, The analysis will show that American policymaking efforts in the realm of planetary defense should be bolstered to improve the nation's ability to respond to a real-world event, as well as to provide stronger leadership for the world community.
International law and planetary defense
There is no language in any standing international space treaty that deals with the issue of detection and mitigation of potentially hazardous asteroids or comets. Four major space treaties have been ratified by the United States and the other major spacefaring nations, and there is no direct mention in them of the threat from collision with naturally occurring space objects. Nonetheless, there are a host of provisions in international space law that are supportive of the general concept of planetary defense, even if the topic is not overtly discussed.
The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (better known as the Outer Space Treaty), is the fundamental source of international space law. Written at the height of the Cold War, when the world's two space powers were locked in a race to establish supremacy in space, the Outer Space Treaty focused on allowing freedom of access to space and preserving the cosmos for peaceful use for the benefit of all humanity. The core elements of the treaty provide a strong conceptual foundation for an international effort to locate, track, and mitigate potentially threatening asteroids. In the treaty's preamble, for example, great emphasis is put on preserving outer space for the betterment of all nations, a sentiment repeated many times in the document. Article III mandates that space activities be carried out in accordance with existing international law in order to help preserve peace and security, while Article IX stresses the principles of international cooperation and mutual assistance.5
A second treaty that provides foundational support for notional planetary defense cooperation is the 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (aka the Moon Agreement). Although never ratified by the US or most other space powers, the Moon Agreement reflects the position of many non-spacefaring nations in regard to the utilization of natural resource found in space. This treaty reemphasizes the Outer Space Treaty's focus on the peaceful use of space, and specifically addresses the need for strong international cooperation in space activities, stating that "International co-operation in pursuance of this Agreement should be as wide as possible and may take place on a multilateral basis, on a bilateral basis, or through international intergovernmental organizations."6 Such a construct would be essential in mobilizing international actions to mitigate the projected collision of a threatening asteroid with Earth.
US national space policy
As a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, US space policy has been written to conform with the general provisions of accepted international space law. Similar to these treaties, there has not been, until very recently, any direct mention in US top-level policy of the hazards posed by asteroid collisions with Earth. The most recent strategic space policy document, the National Space Policy of the United States of America, issued in 2010, is the first to address the topic: it directs NASA to pursue technology "to detect, track, catalog, and characterize near-Earth objects (NEOs) to reduce the risk of harm to humans from an unexpected impact on our planet."7
The 2010 space policy stresses international cooperation and identifies several specific areas for possible expanded collaboration, including environmental monitoring, communications, search and rescue, science, and exploration, but makes no mention in this section of locating and deflecting potentially hazardous space objects. Throughout the document, however, are sprinkled several broader policy goals that generically would support international efforts to counter an asteroid threat: a pledge for reinvigorated US leadership to expand space operations for the betterment of all nations, reinforcement of the right to use space to benefit all mankind, assurance that the US may use space for collective self-defense, and a dedication to enhanced responsible behavior and security in space.8 The potential for US leadership in an asteroid deflection mission also is supported by a second policy document, the National Space Transportation Policy, which directs the development of heavy lift space systems capable of escaping low Eerth orbit for exploration of other celestial bodies, "including an asteroid and Mars."9
The George W. Bush administration's space policy, while not directly mentioning planetary defense, makes three key supportive assertions. First, the policy stresses the need to encourage enhanced cooperation with other nations for peaceful purposes and to bolster national and homeland security. Second, the document places emphasis on using space-based resources to improve disaster warning systems (while intended to increase readiness for hurricanes and other terrestrial disasters, the concept applies to the detection of threatening asteroids). Third, the policy mentions the need to improve international cooperative efforts to enhance national security interests, including planetary observation systems.10
Interestingly, the Clinton Administration's top-level space policy, issued during a period of significantly heightened awareness and concern over NEOs, makes no mention of the asteroid threat phenomenon. The policy lists five major goals, the first two of which can be construed as obliquely applying to planetary defense: enhancing scientific knowledge of the solar system and universe, and improving the national security of the US. Aside from these generalities, the policy also provides several specific directives, including, for example, for NASA to establish a robotic presence on Mars by 2000 and to develop a new program to ascertain characteristics of planets orbiting other stars. Yet despite the policy specificity established for similar niche missions, there is no stated policy for detecting and countering threatening asteroids and comets.11
The space policies of the George H.W. Bush, Reagan, and Carter Administrations placed emphasis on general goals supporting the use of space for the betterment of all nations, but also had no mention of NEOs. National Space Policy Directive 1, issued in 1989, mentions twice in its opening paragraphs the need to cooperate with other spacefaring nations for peaceful purposes and to "enhance the security and welfare of mankind"12 —policy goals that would be supportive of an international planetary defense mission. The 1982 and 1988 space policies issued by President Reagan included even more general assertions of the need for international cooperative efforts, and specifically mentioned enhancing the nation's civil space program to expand understanding of the solar system and its component bodies.13 President Carter's space policy made more generalized statements on the goal of increasing knowledge of the universe and enhancing international cooperation.14
Earlier policy, back to the start of the Space Age, was no different in respect to its lack of mention of planetary defense. For example, with the Apollo program at its height, President Nixon sought recommendations on future direction for the nation's space program, and directed Vice President Agnew to conduct a thorough analysis. The report of the Space Task Group in 1969 offered three visions for the nation's future space policies, including manned missions to Mars.15 Throughout the Space Task Group's report were numerous detailed recommendations concerning the direction of scientific effort, technological development, and manned space missions, along with a strong emphasis that the US "promote a sense of world community through a [space] program which provides opportunity for broad international participation and cooperation."16 There was, however no mention of asteroids or the NEO threat.
While national space policy only recently came to address the NEO issue, the fundamental precepts of previous policies has been indirectly supportive of efforts that would be needed to detect and mitigate a threatening asteroid. But because planetary defense never was seen as a priority for America's space efforts, it did not garner until very recently any specific mention or direction in these strategic-level policies.
Congressional, agency, and nongovernmental policy actions
While not receiving primary policy attention, solid work in the arena of planetary defense was being carried out for decades in the research community, the executive branch, and through the direction of Congress. Much of this activity was catalyzed by the seminal Shoemaker-Levy comet strike in 1994.
During the first three decades of the space age, as American policy focused on manned space flight and a host of other national priorities, the scientific community took rudimentary steps to detect and track threatening asteroids. By the late 1980s a number of planetary defense workshops had been held that built consensus around establishing a coordinated international effort to address the threat of potentially hazardous objects (PHOs).17 In 1990, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) released a position paper that highlighted the threat from NEOs; this paper gained wide attention and prompted Congress to direct NASA to more thoroughly analyze the issue.18 In 1992, NASA presented to Congress a report titled The Spaceguard Survey, which outlined the threat posed by PHOs and advocated for an enhanced and coordinated international effort, led by the United States, to detect threatening asteroids and comets.19 In response, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a public hearing on March 24, 1993, the first ever to address the issue of Earth-threatening asteroids.20
The timing of this Congressional attention was fortuitous, for only a year later millions of people around the world watched telescopic images that showed Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 colliding with Jupiter, the first direct observation in human history of a collision between celestial bodies. Torn by Jupiter's gravitational pull into 21 separate pieces, each up to two kilometers in diameter, the impacts from the comet created massive clouds of debris, thousands of miles in diameter: the combined force of the impacts released far more energy than was contained in all nuclear weapons on Earth.21 The implication was strikingly clear: the solar system was a dangerous place and a similar impact on Earth would have catastrophic consequences for humanity.
The Shoemaker-Levy event prompted intense congressional interest in the NEO issue. Late in 1994, the House of Representatives passed the Aeronautics and Space Policy Act of 1994, which in Section 129 included prescriptive action for NASA:
(a) REQUIREMENT- To the extent practicable, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in coordination with the Department of Defense and the space agencies of other countries, shall identify and catalogue within 10 years the orbital characteristics of all comets and asteroids that are greater than 1 kilometer in diameter and are in an orbit around the sun that crosses the orbit of the Earth.
(b) PROGRAM PLAN- By February 1, 1995, the Administrator shall submit to the Congress a program plan, including estimated budgetary requirements for fiscal years 1996 through 2000, to implement subsection (a). 22
Unfortunately, the Bill did not make its way to the President for signature and the legislation remained in limbo. Nonetheless, NASA convened a second working group—this one headed by Dr. Gene Shoemaker, co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy comet—to refine the 1992 Spaceguard Survey.23 The results of these findings were presented to Congress in 1995 and the effort formally named the Near Earth Object Survey. In early 1997, Dr. Shoemaker testified about the need for added funding to accelerate the NEO detection program: the House of Representatives concurred and in the Civilian Space Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999, indicated the House's support for an accelerated detection regime by NASA, requiring the agency to develop a cost-estimate and plan for detecting all NEOs within 10 years. The House had made clear their legislative intent: in 1998 NASA announced new and improved goals that centered on locating 90 percent of NEOs larger than one kilometer in diameter within a decade.24
The congressional and NASA activities were mirrored by progress made overseas. Following an organizing meeting in Vulcano, Italy, in 1995, NEO detection programs were implemented in a number of countries, coordinated under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).25 The United States, Japan, and the European Space Agency played key leadership roles in these efforts. A non-profit organization called the Spaceguard Foundation was established with headquarters in Italy; the Minor Planet Center of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics was designated the clearinghouse for all NEO-related observations and data; and dozens of observatories around the world were enlisted in the NEO detection effort. Through this international coordination a vast library of information about NEOs and PHOs was and continues to be cataloged, with all observations made available to the public.26
A firm congressional mandate to further improve NEO detection policies was set in 2005 with the passage of the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act, which was enacted as part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005. This legislation markedly improved the US goals for detection of NEOs, mandating that NASA oversee a program to detect, catalog, and track 90 percent of all NEOs greater than140 meters in diameter within 15 years.27 The new policy requirement vastly expanded the population of asteroids and comets that NASA would be responsible for locating. However, as with past policies, there was no mention of activities related to mitigation should a threatening asteroid be detected.
Congressional direction to the executive branch continued in an effort to further refine the NEO detection effort. In the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008, the National Research Council was chartered to study both the detection of near earth objects as well as potential mitigation strategies. This study, published in 2010, found that NASA funding was grossly insufficient for meeting the policy goals set in 2005.28 Following that study, funding for NEO detection programs increased to more than $20 million per year, and the 2011 NASA Strategic Plan included a specific policy goal of identifying and characterizing small asteroids with the potential for threatening life on Earth.29 This strategic focus was built off legislation in 2010 that codified NASA's role in planetary defense:
Congress declares that the general welfare and security of the United States require that the unique competence of the Administration be directed to detecting, tracking, cataloguing, and characterizing near-Earth asteroids and comets in order to provide warning and mitigate the potential hazard of such near-Earth objects to the Earth.30
Policy and funding are closely inter-related, and the NASA budget request for NEO detection activities in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 was set at $20.4 million. However, the Administration's funding request for fiscal year 2014, issued in the wake of the Chelyabinsk event, showed growing awareness of the need to further enhance NEO detection efforts, nearly doubling federal spending on NEO observations to $40.5 million. From 2015 and forward, however, spending was projected to return to the lower level of $20.5 million per year.31 The omnibus appropriations legislation signed into law in January 2014 supported this one-year boost in funding.32
Additionally, in June 2013, NASA issued a "Grand Challenge" to the public at large to obtain ideas and recommendations related to finding and mitigating threatening asteroids. This initiative is designed to unearth innovative and cost-effective means for detecting all potentially threatening PHOs and protecting Earth from them, and is designed for NASA to engage "other government agencies, international partners, industry, academia, and citizen scientists."33
Policy initiatives were not limited to Congress and NASA, however. One highly innovative nonprofit institution set out to make a major contribution to the NEO detection effort. Retired astronauts Rusty Schweikart and Ed Lu establishsed the B612 Foundation in 2002, initially to determine means for mitigating a known asteroid threat. After several years of research, they came to the conclusion that asteroid deflection was possible using existing technologies, but that much work was needed in identifying the thousands of mid-sized asteroids that remained undetected by terrestrial telescopes.34
In 2012, the B612 Foundation announced a program to finance and build the Sentinel space telescope, which would be placed in an orbit around the sun similar to the orbit of the planet Venus. Facing away from the Sun at all times, Sentinel's infrared telescope is designed to have an unobstructed view of the cosmos and will be able to detect a vast number of city-killer and nation-killer NEOs in its expected six-and-a-half years of operation. Sentinel will be manufactured by Ball Aerospace, the company responsible for developing the Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes, and is slated to be launched as soon as June 2018. The B612 Foundation expects to identify hundreds of thousands of previously unknown mid-sized NEOs during the lifespan of the Sentinel mission, and will share this data worldwide. Funding for the Sentinel program is through charitable contributions, with no federal expenditures currently expected.35
Finally, the Chelyabinsk event spurred greater international action on the NEO issue, particularly with the United Nations' Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. In October 2013 the UN General Assembly authorized the creation of an International Asteroid Warning Network, tasked with sharing information about threatening asteroids, to build on the existing capabilities of the Spaceguard Foundation and the Minor Planet Center, and to accelerate detection efforts for mid-sized asteroids. Further, a Space Mission Planning and Advisory Group (SMPAG) was established to serve as an international forum for developing profiles for asteroid deflection missions. The SMPAG's first round of policy discussions were held in early February 2014 and the group is expected to develop its first set of recommendations by 2016.36
Editorial: A big change in U.S space travel
Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner
Believe it or not, for-profit space ventures have been around awhile. In pulp magazine stories of the 1930s and '40s, and later in sci-fi movies of the 1950s, rockets to the moon and Mars were almost always built by private companies and eccentric billionaires. When moviegoers visited the huge space station in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (released in 1968), what did they see? A Howard Johnson and a Hilton hotel.
Real life, it appears, is catching up with science fiction.
NASA, whose astronauts have been hitching rides on Russian rockets to reach the International Space Station since the last American shuttle was mothballed in 2011, announced on Sept. 16 its new plan for getting the U.S. back into space on American-owned hardware. It's hiring private companies to do the job. Specifically, veteran flier Boeing and newcomer SpaceX will get the contracts. Boeing will be paid $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion. The space agency hopes to launch the program no later than 2017.
SpaceX, the California-based baby of billionaire Elon Musk — the company's full name is Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — is already delivering supplies to the space station. But the company "was not founded to bring T-shirts and food and water up to space; it was founded to bring people into space," its program manager said last month.
That's the spirit.
It's a spirit, by the way, seldom seen at NASA. The agency that took Americans to the moon in 1969 is today hobbled by bureaucracy and constant complaints of funding woes. A recent report faulted even its program of counting asteroids and comets. The project required that NASA coordinate the efforts of various observatories to find and track space rocks that could pass near Earth, and the space agency fumbled the task.
Let's hope it won't fumble the next one, because it is not only important to furthering science but restoring some national pride. We've already gone far too long without manned rockets lifting off from nearby Kennedy Space Center, a sight many in Central Florida would drop everything they were doing to climb to the nearest rooftop to watch — if they hadn't already driven to Cape Canaveral to get an up-close view.
"Today's announcement sets the stage for what promises to be the most ambitious and exciting chapter in the history of NASA and human spaceflight," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in making the announcement.
NASA hopes that once Boeing and SpaceX start ferrying astronauts to the space station, the government's lumbering, decades-old space program can concentrate on boldly going where no one has gone before — to the asteroids and Mars.
Assuming, of course, that private companies don't get there first.
Let's hope it won't fumble the next one, because it is not only important to furthering science but restoring some national pride. We've already gone far too long without manned rockets lifting off from nearby Kennedy Space Center, a sight many in Central Florida would drop everything they were doing to climb to the nearest rooftop to watch — if they hadn't already driven to Cape Canaveral to get an up-close view.
"Today's announcement sets the stage for what promises to be the most ambitious and exciting chapter in the history of NASA and human spaceflight," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in making the announcement.
NASA hopes that once Boeing and SpaceX start ferrying astronauts to the space station, the government's lumbering, decades-old space program can concentrate on boldly going where no one has gone before — to the asteroids and Mars.
Assuming, of course, that private companies don't get there first.
END
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