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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: November 25, 2014 11:30:38 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Tuesday – November 25, 2014
NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsTuesday – November 25, 2014HEADLINES AND LEADSItalian Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti Spends Her First Day in SpaceAlyssa Newcomb – ABC NewsItalian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti was greeted with hugs in zero G today when she and fellow crew members arrived at the International Space Station to begin a long-term mission.First Female Italian Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti Arrives At The Space StationBrid-Aine Parnell – ForbesItaly's first female astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti was welcomed aboard the International Space Station with smiles and hugs today.This App Lets You Say Hello to an Astronaut in SpaceYou can communicate with Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from down on EarthAlexandra Sifferlin -TIMEA new app called Friends in Space allows you to say "hello" to Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti while she's stationed in the International Space Station (ISS).This App Lets You Say Hello to an Astronaut in Real TimeLiz Stinson – WiredBy the time you read this story, Samantha Cristoforetti will have just docked at the International Space Station. The Italian astronaut (the first female Italian astronaut to make it to the ISS) will be 250 miles above Earth's surface, far beyond our ability to see her with our god-given eyes, but not quite far enough that we can't say hello to her.Italy Fails in Bid for More Space Funds, Clouding Outlook for ESA MinisterialPeter B. de Selding – Space NewsThe failure of an amendment adding funds to the Italian Space Agency's budget has thrown into question Italy's ability to commit to a next-generation Ariane rocket, continued use of the international space station and Italy's next-generation civil/military radar satellite system, the head of Italy's principal space-hardware prime contractor said Nov. 24.Earth and Life Sciences, Aircraft Ops Under Microscope in NASA Consolidation EffortDan Leone – Space NewsNASA's latest attempt to right-size its 10 U.S. field centers will begin with a focus on a roughly $3 billion cross-section of the agency's nearly $18 billion budget that could affect some 10,000 civil servants and contractors, a senior agency official said here Nov. 20.Industry Worries Government 'Backsliding' on Orbital DebrisJeff Foust – Space NewsDespite growing concern about the threat posed by orbital debris, and language in U.S. national space policy directing government agencies to study debris cleanup technologies, many in the space community worry that the government is not doing enough to implement that policy.Antares Rocket Failure Pushes Tiny Satellite Company To Hitch Ride With SpaceXElizabeth Howell – Universe TodayThe various companies that had stuff sitting on the failed Orbital Sciences Antares rocket launch last month are busy looking for alternatives. One example is Planet Labs, which is best known for deploying dozens of tiny satellites from the International Space Station this year.The Future of Astronaut ActivityMadhu Thangavelu – Space NewsThe astronaut corps is a unique group of people, handpicked from a wide range of scientific and technical professions, winnowed down through very rigorous selection methods, after which the select few are trained for complex space missions that involve a lot of risk, nail-biting and adrenalin at both the space crew and mission control ends. The human spaceflight crews at NASA, Russia's Roscosmos, the European Space Agency and the China National Space Administration are still considered the pinnacle of human and technological achievement and prestige in the world's leading spacefaring economies and their space agencies.On Science: Science apps are a holiday refuge from relativesAlex Rose - Delaware County (PA) TimesAs you might have noticed from all the turkey-themed decorations adorning local store fronts, the day of giving thanks is once upon us.Time To Change a Poorly Crafted LawTomasso Sgobba – Space NewsOn Dec. 23, 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 (CSLAA). Meant to promote the development of the emerging commercial spaceflight industry, the CSLAA made the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration responsible for regulating commercial human spaceflight. It gave the FAA authority to regulate commercial human spaceflight safety only for the aspects of uninvolved public safety, but forbade FAA to levy any safety regulation for the safety of crew and flight participants onboard for a period of eight years, unless an accident happened before.Jim Watzin Returning to NASA as Mars CzarDan Leone – Space NewsVeteran NASA program manager Jim Watzin has left the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to become director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program in Washington, the space agency said in a Nov. 21 press release.Profile | Yvonne Pendleton, Director, Solar System Exploration Research Virtual InstituteDebra Werner – Space NewsWhen NASA established the Lunar Science Institute at the NASA Ames Research Center in 2008, the space agency was in the midst of the Constellation program with plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020. Since President Barack Obama announced plans in 2010 to refocus the U.S. human spaceflight program on travel to a near-Earth asteroid and ultimately to Mars, NASA officials have looked for ways to expand the mission of the institute to reflect the changing priorities of the space agency.US Government Agencies Desirous of More Space Weather DataCaleb Henry – Via SatelliteSeveral agencies of the United States government are interested in greater amounts of data on solar activity. Flares and dramatic high energy bursts called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) can and do bombard Earth's atmosphere with highly energized particles. When a CME occurs, research satellites such as NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) and the NASA-ESA Solar and Heliophysics Observatory (SOHO) make most of the observations. But, as the U.S. government seeks to improve its ability to forecast space weather, new kinds of information are needed.How Underground Sensors In Texas Will Help NASA Predict Drought and FloodsMose Buchele – NPRStanley Rabke's family has lived and worked on their Hill Country ranch since 1889. Generations of Rabkes have struggled with the extremes of Texas weather, but one storm sticks out in Stanley's memory: it came after the drought of the 1950s.Here's your chance to launch a satellite to the moonJill R. Aitoro - Washington Business JournalHave a hankering for space exploration, but don't have billions to invest like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos? You're in luck. There is another option.Ahead of the Curve: Top CTOs Discuss Where to Invest NextMark Holmes – Via SatelliteWith satellite operators competing all over the world, getting the next set of technology investments right is key for any company. We look at how some of the industry's top CTOs see the landscape and where are they placing their technology bets.For AsiaSat CTO Roger Tong, the main project right now is how to design a Ka-band HTS system that fits Asia-Pacific requirements. Tong believes this will be more of a multi-purpose Ka band practical system rather than the traditional forward and return link type. The operator expects to put a Request for Information (RFI) in this area out in the next two years.A New Capability for Suborbital Research and EducationAlan Stern – Space NewsOnly a few years ago, suborbital research was limited to occasional, expensive rocket and balloon launches, largely using expensive Cold War technologies. Today, thanks to dedicated efforts by next-gen reusable suborbital rocket firms like Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace and Blue Origin, the field is on the verge of a space access revolution that will dramatically lower prices, create orders of magnitude more frequent access to space, and allow researchers to fly with their experiments — further lowering the complexity, risk and cost of those very experiments.COMPLETE STORIESItalian Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti Spends Her First Day in SpaceAlyssa Newcomb – ABC NewsItalian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti was greeted with hugs in zero G today when she and fellow crew members arrived at the International Space Station to begin a long-term mission.Cristoforetti, who is Italy's first female astronaut, has graciously shared moments on social media from the years she spent training for the mission -- and said she hopes to stay connected to her 143,000 Twitter followers during her scheduled five-month stay in space.While Cristoforetti, 37, has yet to tweet about her new home, a video posted by the European Space Agency shows a beaming Cristoforetti and her fellow crew members being welcomed to their new home in low Earth orbit.Cristoforetti will spend the next five months controlling the International Space Station and handling many of the scientific experiments that are being run by astronauts for scientists back on Earth.Among the other guests aboard the ISS are twenty rodents, which arrived in September aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule.The animals have been living in NASA's Rodent Research Facility where researchers are studying the long-term impact of weightlessness on their bodies.Also on board the ISS is the first 3-D printer launched into space. It could potentially crank out spare parts that will allow astronauts to one day fix their vessel on the spot.Living in space may be a dream for the Italian astronaut, but she'll have to do without a few earthly pleasures. Before launch, she tweeted on Sunday that she had "what was probably my longest shower ever."Cristoforetti also enjoyed a final feast on Earth before she has to switch over to space cuisine.One other thing she'll have to do without, for now: A cup of genuine Italian espresso.ISSpresso, an espresso machine designed by engineering company Argotec and coffee roaster Lavazza in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency, is one of the many items headed to space in April 2015, which comes toward the end of Cristoforetti's visit.First Female Italian Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti Arrives At The Space StationBrid-Aine Parnell – ForbesItaly's first female astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti was welcomed aboard the International Space Station with smiles and hugs today.Although Cristoforetti, who flew to the station in an agreement between her country's space agency ASI and the European Space Agency, has yet to tweet from space, ESA has released a video clip of her entrance onto the ISS.Cristoforetti and her crewmates Terry Virts of NASA and Roscosmos' Anton Shkaplerov blasted off from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a Soyuz transport craft late last night local time and docked with the station just under six hours later.They were welcomed aboard the orbiting science laboratory by NASA station commander Barry Wilmore and Russian cosmonauts Yelena Serova and Alexander Samokutyaev.Cristoforetti will be living and working on the station for the next five months, during which the first half of Expedition 42 will set off home and Virts will take over command for the start of the overlapping Expedition 43.The Italian astronaut was assigned to the mission more than two years ago and has spent that time learning how to control the station's robotic arms and perform all the scientific experiments for her tour, as well as how to handle any emergencies that might pop up. She also learned to fly the Soyuz capsule that took them to the ISS, a hurdle every crew member has to clear, and had to go through a two-week quarantine period before setting off.According to ESA, Cristoforetti was one of the first women to apply as soon as the Italian air force opened to women and she's logged over 500 hours in military aircraft. She was one of six chosen from 8,000 applicants to join the ESA astronaut corps in 2009.While onboard the station, her main tasks will be to run science experiments that can't be performed on Earth and maintain the microgravity lab that will be her second home. Her scientific programme includes experiments in biology and human physiology as well as radiation research and technology demonstrations.She will also be the prime operator for the undocking of ESA's final Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), the station's largest unmanned support craft. ATV Georges Lemaître is the fifth in the series and was named after the Belgian astronome. The space agency announced it would be discontinuing its ATVs back in 2012, as parts for the crafts became obsolete and European member states lost the appetite for the million-dollar spaceships.This App Lets You Say Hello to an Astronaut in SpaceYou can communicate with Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from down on EarthAlexandra Sifferlin -TIMEA new app called Friends in Space allows you to say "hello" to Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti while she's stationed in the International Space Station (ISS).If you're lucky, she might say hello back. That is, if she's orbiting your region of earth.The online app was created by an Italian design studio called Accurat in collaboration with Cristoforetti, and let's you follow her travels and day-to-day work while she's in space. When she's not orbiting nearby, users can communicate with other people who are also following her mission.Cristoforetti is a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut who used to be a fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force. She shares a lot of her work on social media.This App Lets You Say Hello to an Astronaut in Real TimeLiz Stinson – WiredBy the time you read this story, Samantha Cristoforetti will have just docked at the International Space Station. The Italian astronaut (the first female Italian astronaut to make it to the ISS) will be 250 miles above Earth's surface, far beyond our ability to see her with our god-given eyes, but not quite far enough that we can't say hello to her.To say hello, all you have to do is press the green button. Using Friends In Space, a new web app from Italian design studio Accurat, terrestrial humans can directly communicate with Cristoforetti with the click of a mouse—she just needs to be orbiting your section of Earth. You can do more than that though: The website lets you track her past, current, and future orbits; it visualizes the astronauts' daily log of activities; it loops in live audio and video from the ISS. Oh, and it's technically a social network, allowing you to connect with other digital stargazers by saying "hello" to them, when Cristoforetti is out of your orbit.Friends in Space was born after Accurat co-founder and design director Giorgia Lupi began corresponding with Cristoforetti on Twitter. The astronaut had seen some of the studio's work and wondered if there was a way to collaborate on her inaugural launch. Cristoforetti is a new breed of social-media savvy astronaut—she has nearly 84,000 Twitter followers and she updates her Google+ page regularly with scenes from training and her soon-to-be life on the ISS. "She liked the idea of doing something that wasn't scientific," says Lupi. "Something that reminded people on Earth that there is a human up there talking to them."The ISS makes plenty of information available to anyone who is curious, but much of it is complicated and opaque in the way scientific data tends to be. The design team wanted to distill that down to its most humanistic form. The app pulls in data from Cristoforetti's social feeds and gives context to the daily activities on the ISS by adding media (videos, photos, etc) from NASA. "We're essentially rebuilding a visual diary of her experiences," says Gabriele Rossi, co-founder and managing director at Accurat.Friends In Space is a fascinating site to toy around on. The visualizations and interactions are simple enough to make the data easy to grasp, but it's complex enough that you'll want to spend some time exploring, seeing how much more you can discover about the mission. Every so often a fuzzy conversation between the astronauts and mission control will pipe into your speaker—it's a nice reminder of the wonderment that comes with space travel. In real time you're hearing someone currently stationed far beyond our comprehension communicating with someone back on Earth. Now, we have the chance—no matter how simple a "hello" is—to communicate back. As Rossi puts it: "We're giving people the possibility to say, 'I once said hello to an astronaut and she said hello back.'"Italy Fails in Bid for More Space Funds, Clouding Outlook for ESA MinisterialPeter B. de Selding – Space NewsThe failure of an amendment adding funds to the Italian Space Agency's budget has thrown into question Italy's ability to commit to a next-generation Ariane rocket, continued use of the international space station and Italy's next-generation civil/military radar satellite system, the head of Italy's principal space-hardware prime contractor said Nov. 24.Doubts about Italy's ability to take part in Europe's launch vehicle development and continued use of the space station have been overshadowed in recent months by the Franco-German dispute on launch vehicle strategy.But with France and Germany seemingly on the way to an agreement, Italy's financial issues have now moved to center stage as European governments prepare to decide the launcher and space station issues at a Dec. 2 meeting in Luxembourg of European Space Agency governments.In a Nov. 24 briefing with journalists, Thales Alenia Space Chief Executive Jean-Loic Galle said Italy's ability to meet other ESA governments' expectations of it at the Luxembourg conference hinged on an amendment to the Italian budget giving the Italian Space Agency (ASI) 200 million euros ($250 million) in additional funds per year between 2015 and 2017.The funds would be used to assure that Italy takes its historic 19 percent share of Europe's costs associated with the space station after having lowered its contribution in 2012; funds its dominant stake in upgrades to Europe's Vega small-satellite launcher; and signs on to support the next-generation Ariane 6 rocket.Galle said the 200 million-euro cash injection was also intended to finance continued work on Italy's second-generation Cosmo-SkyMed radar Earth observation system, which Thales Alenia Space is building."Our information is that this money will not be available," Galle said. "These funds were really mandatory for Italy to fund these programs, of which Cosmo-SkyMed and Vega are the most important for Italy. So now there is really a question mark over Italy and its contribution."The German government, which leads Europe's participation in the space station program, has said Italian authorities have given informal assurances that Italy will fund its 19 percent share of the space station starting in 2015. ESA is asking for 800 million euros from its governments to cover space station costs between 2015 and 2017, including building the service module for NASA's Orion crew-transport vehicle.The Italian government in the past has resorted to inventive financing schemes to retain its rank in ESA programs, usually third place, behind France and Germany and, since 2013, about tied with a surging British ESA participation.Italy has asked ESA to take out low-interest loans on its behalf, and has entered into partnerships with Thales Alenia Space and others for co-financing and co-ownership of ostensibly government space systems.Italy's partners in ESA remained hopeful that Italy will find some creative means to permit the launcher, space station and radar satellite systems to go ahead.Galle said there was some hope that the British government may find its way to a modest space station financial contribution, especially with a British national now in training as an ESA astronaut for a future space station visit.Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian, arrived at the space station Nov. 24 for a five-month stay, an event Galle said should stimulate Italy's interest in maintaining its space program.Galle said the failure of the 200 million-euro funding package does not affect Italy's position as leader of Europe's ExoMars missions to Mars in 2016 and 2018. The 2018 mission, which includes a rover, is missing about 200 million euros in funding. Galle said indications are that these funds have been found among ESA member governments.Galle said Thales' previous concerns that the Ariane 6 launcher might be designed to favor satellites built by Airbus Defence and Space — the Ariane 6 prime contractor — have been the subject of letters sent to the European Commission by several satellite manufacturers in Europe and the United States."It's not just a Thales concern," Galle said. "The other manufacturers expessed the same concerns to the European Commission. What we want is to assure that access to Ariane 6 will be made available to everyone on equal conditions."Galle said 30 percent of Thales' satellite awards, meaning telecommunications and Earth observation combined, are in-orbit-delivery contracts. In these, the customer asks satellite bidders to include the launch in their proposals, with the winner often decided on launch price and schedule.Galle said access to Ariane 6 will be the subject of future discussion with Airbus and Safran, the two companies starting a joint venture to manage Ariane 6, when they conclude negotiations with the French government on the purchase of government shares in the Arianespace launch consortium.Earth and Life Sciences, Aircraft Ops Under Microscope in NASA Consolidation EffortDan Leone – Space NewsNASA's latest attempt to right-size its 10 U.S. field centers will begin with a focus on a roughly $3 billion cross-section of the agency's nearly $18 billion budget that could affect some 10,000 civil servants and contractors, a senior agency official said here Nov. 20.Including administrative, clerical and support personnel, NASA employs some 17,000 civil servants — who by law may not be laid off — and between 34,000 and 40,000 contractors who work on or near the agency's field centers, Lesa Roe, NASA's deputy assistant administrator, told the NASA Advisory Council's (NAC) institutional committee during a meeting at NASA headquarters here. The latest meeting was only the second for the new NAC committee.Roe, former director of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is co-leading NASA's Technical Capabilities Assessment Team (TCAT) along with her boss, NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot. TCAT began in 2012 but will not be in full force until after February, when NASA plans to appoint so-called capabilities leaders to monitor its 10 field centers and point out areas where two or more centers are spending money on the same things.Each leader will be in charge of one broad area of expertise NASA is calling a technical capability. There will eventually be 19 such agency-wide capabilities, Roe told the NAC here, but NASA has so far identified only four: aircraft operations, Earth science research, life sciences research, and human factors — a discipline focused on making crewed systems such as spacecraft more user-friendly.These four capabilities alone account for about $2.8 billion of the roughly $18 billion NASA spends a year and employ about 10,000 people, including contractors and civil servants, Roe told the NAC. There could be as much as $550 million in annual savings to be had in these four areas, Roe told the NAC, although she acknowledged the number is "a target" NASA might not be able to hit.Another target for savings under TCAT, Roe said, is mission operations. There are a total of 98 mission operations centers across NASA and the agency believes it can reduce costs in this area by about 30 percent, said Roe. The week of Nov. 10, NASA formed a team led by John McCullough, former chief flight director at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, to evaluate whether that target is realistic, Roe told the NAC.In human spaceflight, Johnson has a practical monopoly on mission operations, with the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, maintaining a backup mission control for NASA's international space station activities. But the dozens of planetary probes, Earth observation satellites and space telescopes NASA operates commonly are flown from dedicated mission operations centers comprising no more than a few desktop computers.Meanwhile, TCAT will also attempt to reduce the intra-agency infighting that sometimes occurs when centers vie for funds under competitive mission lines such as the Planetary Science Division's Discovery and New Frontiers programs, and the Astrophysics Division's Explorer program."We are spending ... quite a bit of money annually, competing for our own money, as an agency," Roe told the NAC. "We compete centers against each other, and centers then hold on to capabilities we don't really need them holding on to just so they can compete. And that model has to be addressed."One way centers hold on to capabilities outside of their core areas of expertise, Roe said, is through contractors. Certain capabilities, Roe said, should be consolidated at one center, with other centers using them as needed. An example of the model NASA would prefer, Roe said, is the agency-wide use of the Deep Space Network the Jet Propulsion Laboratory maintains to communicate with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit."No one will create new [Deep Space Network], they use the [Deep Space Network] we have," Roe said. "We need to do something like that for other assets."TCAT is only the latest NASA attempt to reorganize its organizational footprint. Previous efforts have met with resistance in Congress, where lawmakers are always eager to protect NASA centers where their constituents work.Roe acknowledged that telling the NAC that any TCAT recommendations, however sensible, will ultimately fail "if I don't align the budget in some way."TCAT is not a secret on Capital Hill, and lawmakers so far briefed on the initiative are "very receptive to this," Roe said Nov. 20. "They think this is the right thing to do."Industry Worries Government 'Backsliding' on Orbital DebrisJeff Foust – Space NewsDespite growing concern about the threat posed by orbital debris, and language in U.S. national space policy directing government agencies to study debris cleanup technologies, many in the space community worry that the government is not doing enough to implement that policy.Some speakers at a workshop held here by the University of Maryland's Center for Orbital Debris Education and Research (CODER) expressed concern that the government was "backsliding" in its commitment to reducing the growth of orbital debris, let alone tackling the more complex issues of removing orbital debris.The 2010 National Space Policy directed government agencies to follow orbital debris mitigation guidelines designed to minimize the creation of new debris. The policy also, for the first time, directed NASA and the U.S. Defense Department to study ways to remove existing debris, a concept known as remediation."Everybody who's looked at the problem comes to the same conclusion: If we don't start removing five to 10 objects per year for the next 100 years, we'll have an unstable environment," Donald Kessler, a retired NASA scientist who was one of the pioneers in orbital debris research, said in a keynote talk at the workshop Nov. 18.NASA and Defense Department officials at the workshop said that despite the policy direction, they have only started to address orbital debris remediation issues. "This past year, we've spent a lot of time thinking about remediation," Thomas Cremins, senior adviser for policy and strategy implementation at NASA, said during a panel session Nov. 18.However, Cremins added that NASA has decided to focus on early stage technologies that may eventually be useful for debris remediation as well as other applications, including its Asteroid Redirect Mission program, rather than as a separate initiative. "We do not have an active debris remediation program," he said.Josef Koller, space policy adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said an increasing number of companies have discussed orbital debris remediation approaches with his office. While those discussions have yet to lead to formal policies and plans, he said the United States should take a leadership role in international discussions about debris cleanup."I think a lot of countries are looking to us for leadership: How do we solve not only the technical questions but also the legal questions?" he said.The Defense Department and other agencies have instead focused their attention on debris mitigation efforts. Koller said his office was working to limit the exemptions to current debris guidelines that it grants to its missions. "The goal really is to start drawing down those granted exemptions and, by 2018, have a zero environment for granted exemptions," he said.Other agencies also implement debris mitigation guidelines, either for their own satellites or those over which they have regulatory oversight. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), for example, requires companies whose satellites it licenses to follow those guidelines."The FCC, at one time, was very aggressive in its enforcement" of the orbital debris guidelines, James Dunstan, founder of Mobius Legal Group, said in a Nov. 19 keynote at the CODER workshop. He cited, as one example, the FCC's rejecting a license application because it lacked sufficient detail in its orbital debris mitigation plan.Dunstan said he believed that this strong enforcement was linked to the 2007 test of a Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon and the 2009 collision of an Iridium and Russian Cosmos satellite; both incidents created significant debris. That enforcement, he argued, has lagged as those incidents faded into the past."I would contend that there has been significant backsliding since 2010, since the fear of Iridium/Cosmos and the Chinese ASAT have gone away," he said. He noted the FCC recently allowed Iridium to amend its orbital debris plan to allow several satellites that had exhausted their fuel to naturally deorbit over 25 years, rather than actively deorbit over several months.The workshop discussed a number of technical concepts for orbital debris cleanup, from tugs that would move defunct satellites to a laser that nudges smaller pieces of debris into lower orbits. Even engineers there, though, acknowledged that orbital debris cleanup was not solely a technical problem."It's going to be a little hard for some of us to stand back and let lawyers and policy people get involved and start telling us how to solve the problem," said Eric Sundberg, principal scientist at the Aerospace Corp., in a Nov. 19 panel presentation on remediation technologies.Antares Rocket Failure Pushes Tiny Satellite Company To Hitch Ride With SpaceXElizabeth Howell – Universe TodayThe various companies that had stuff sitting on the failed Orbital Sciences Antares rocket launch last month are busy looking for alternatives. One example is Planet Labs, which is best known for deploying dozens of tiny satellites from the International Space Station this year.The company lost 26 satellites in the explosion. But within nine days of the Oct. 28 event, Planet Labs had a partial backup plan — send two replacements last-minute on an upcoming SpaceX Falcon 9 launch.In what Planet Labs' Robbie Schlinger calls "the future of aerospace", almost immediately after the explosion Planet Labs began working with NanoRacks, which launches its satellites from the space station, to find a replacement flight. Half of Planet Labs' employees began building satellites, while the other half began working through the regulations and logistics. They managed to squeeze two satellites last-minute on to the next SpaceX manifest, which is scheduled to launch in December."In space, each element is very difficult to get right by itself, and it takes an ecosystem to deliver a capability this quickly," wrote Schlinger, a president and co-founder of the company, in a blog post last week.Central to making this possible was developing our own custom design of the satellite that is free from specialty suppliers (thus decreasing lead time) and having a spacecraft design optimized for manufacturing and automated testing. Moreover, we certainly couldn't have done it without the collaboration from NanoRacks and support from NASA, and we thank them for their support. This is a great example for how to create a resilient aerospace ecosystem."There's no word on how they will replace the other satellites, nor how this will affect Planet Labs' vision (explained in this March TED talk) to have these small sentinels frequently circling Earth to provide near-realtime information on what is happening with our planet. But the company acknowledged that space is hard and satellites do get lost from time to time.The company has been testing hardware in space, Silicon Valley-style, and starting to sign partnerships with various entities who want access to the imagery. Check out some of the free stuff below.Writes Planet Labs of this image: "Water from reservoirs developed on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the past 25 years enabled the expansion of cropland in the region, including these circular fields in the ?anliurfa Province of southeastern Turkey." Credit: Planet LabsWrites Planet Labs of this image: "Forty percent of the coal mined in the United States comes from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. The North Antelope Rochelle Mine, pictured here, is both the largest in the basin, and the largest in the United States." Credit: Planet LabsWrites Planet Labs of this image: "The deep valleys and sharp ridges of the Nan Shan range in central China are highlighted in this early-morning satellite image." Credit: Planet LabsWrites Planet Labs of this image: "Vivid red maples stand out against the dark green evergreen forest and brown scrub landscape of the Pleasantview Hills." Credit: Planet LabsWrites Planet Labs of this image: "Filled in 1967, Lake Diefenbaker is a 140-mile-long reservoir along the South Saskatchewan and Qu'Appelle Rivers. Diefenbaker is renowned for harboring extremely large fish: the world record rainbow trout (48 pounds) and burbot (25 pounds) were both caught in the lake." Credit: Planet LabsWrites Planet Labs of this image: "The red, sediment-filled Colorado River contrasts with blue-green Havasu Creek in the heart of Grand Canyon National Park. The Colorado River is almost always red in spring and summer, since it collects silt from a huge watershed. Short tributaries, however, usually run clear—only picking up significant sediment during flash floods." Credit: Planet LabsWrites Planet Labs of this image: "Dark green fields stand out against the pale desert floor in Pinal County, Arizona. The region's farms rely on irrigation, since they receive less than 10 inches of rain a year. Irrigation water comes from two main sources: the Colorado River and aquifers." Credit: Planet LabsThe Future of Astronaut ActivityMadhu Thangavelu – Space NewsThe astronaut corps is a unique group of people, handpicked from a wide range of scientific and technical professions, winnowed down through very rigorous selection methods, after which the select few are trained for complex space missions that involve a lot of risk, nail-biting and adrenalin at both the space crew and mission control ends. The human spaceflight crews at NASA, Russia's Roscosmos, the European Space Agency and the China National Space Administration are still considered the pinnacle of human and technological achievement and prestige in the world's leading spacefaring economies and their space agencies.Many nations today aspire to join and participate in this exclusive club of advanced technology-savvy professionals who exude a unique kind of aura, a mix of skills, talents and yearning for high-wire drama. This select group of humans has seen the wholeness, oneness and richness of Earth from above, liberated from the air and gravity, completely free and floating, even removed from our earthly experience of night and day. They return to Earth as global ambassadors of sorts, with an expanded worldview and a refined sensitivity toward our planet's fragile biosphere.Astronaut activity is a demanding endeavor in every aspect, requiring the physical and mental rigor, agility and dexterity of the crew, the interdisciplinary technologies and skillsets involved, organizational planning with seamless cross-cutting, the meticulous following of reliability and safety protocols, not to mention the monetary resources to back up and support development and operations that are essential for success. A flight task checklist alone runs into volumes of material, making one wonder how they accomplish all this during a short mission that lasts just a few weeks. Flight crew and mission control, impeccable teamwork and organization at its best, aided by agile technologies — this is what makes astronaut activity possible today.But this effort has paid off handsomely across several other challenging national and global pursuits for those economies that have chosen to exercise it, applying the lessons learned in human space activity to other complex endeavors here on Earth.A recent, often-forgotten example occurred in 2010 when 33 miners were trapped deep underground in a Chilean copper mine. The Chilean government sought NASA's help, among others, to alleviate their misery and find ways to keep their morale up for the 10 weeks it took to extricate and bring them up safely, in a mission that taxed the deep isolation skills of human spaceflight professionals.However, the past decade has seen some of the most drastic changes and adjustments in the various astronaut corps, including disproportionate budget cuts and rapid attrition in their numbers. And as private space industry and private spaceflight activity ramp up, including space tourism, government-trained astronauts are actively moving into newly created positions in this new arena, to create, supervise and evolve new and more capable systems.Despite these changes, and during this current period of loosely defined destinations and mission goals, a new generation of NASA astronauts is being trained for deep-space missions. And while these changes are afoot, leapfrogging technologies like robotics and communications are changing the landscape for future astronaut activity.Fifty years ago, at the dawn of the Space Age, technologies were minted just to make spaceflight possible. But now, mature commercial technologies employed on Earth, from the prosaic to the profound, are finding their way into the astronaut's tool chest. These range from prospecting and mining to 3-D printing, ground- and altitude-based remote sensing and hyperspectral imaging, combined with adaptive optics and a range of laser-based applications, which include precision analyses of chemicals, separating minerals from ores, purification and welding — and we are fast approaching the development of high-energy death rays for planetary protection and missile defense alike.Nanotechnology materials, precisely crafted by 3-D printers and laser technology to form metamaterials and shapes, may soon provide more efficient thermal and radiation protection for astronauts and may even be used to create nutritious, complex foods from simple chemicals.High-fidelity simulations are a dependable way to test and ferret out issues and resolve them well in advance of mission deployment. NASA uses neutral buoyancy tanks to simulate astronaut activity in zero gravity. However, partial gravity conditions are hard to simulate on Earth, especially for the substantial periods of time that are needed to test full-up assembly or other construction activities. Virtual reality and gaming applications including massively parallel computer platforms operating on cloud networks, employing visualization headgear like Oculus Rift along with haptic feedback and tactile sensitivity, could be used to seamlessly mesh real subjects in various space and extraterrestrial environments, totally immersing astronauts in virtual mission environments with realistic visualization of partial gravity reaction scenarios. Supercomputers used to simulate nuclear explosions may be used, along with real radiation exposure data being gathered about Mars, to recreate whole body effects of interplanetary expeditions on crew and systems.Synthetic biology and advances in genetics too may offer innovative ways to combat radiation damage to human tissue, which is a crucial concern, and techniques and processes from the biotechnology industry may find application in space agriculture and closed-cycle ecological life-support systems, both vital technologies for long-duration missions.Photovoltaics, the nonpolluting technology that converts solar energy into renewable power atop our homes, when coupled with high-density power storage systems, is already making compact and portable devices that are changing the way we live and work, from cellphones to emergency equipment in hospitals and in disaster management to warfighting machines and systems, and space missions are employing them regularly.Many of these technologies are being evolved and employed routinely for innovation, research and development, not only in the national labs but also in universities and private companies and conglomerates, for profit.Our romance with robots initially found a commercial home decades ago in the computer industry. Then they became an agent of change in the automobile industry and took over critical operations in heavy industry. Today robots are employed in expert systems for medical diagnostics and in delicate surgical procedures sometimes deemed too risky for the surgeon's trained hands. Nanotechnology-based products and allied systems are in the pipeline, already offering designer materials that may be suitable for space systems like astronaut suits and gloves, helmets and related critical life-support gear.Will robots and robotic systems take over all space activity? Are they capable of all human tasks? Can they operate autonomously, without human support?The answer seems to depend on the task at hand.Professional explorers, prospectors and geologists alike seem to think robots can never replace humans. The rovers that are roaming the surface of Mars over 200 million kilometers away do many tasks by themselves but are supervised from mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn 1.5 billion kilometers away is given instructions and its systems tweaked in the same manner. And much closer to home, the international space station has a humanoid robot called Robonaut 2 that is being tested and prepped to help the crew with their chores. It too is supervised from mission control. Detailed engineering studies have shown that complex projects like the last Hubble service and upgrade or previous satellite rescue missions could not have been accomplished by robots alone.Advances in communication technology will allow wideband, teleoperated supervision of robots for complex assembly of large space structures and systems as well as closely coordinated co-robotic manipulations. For example, crew and robotic assistants working to build infrastructure in tandem in the same physical domain is an expanding area of investigation. This co-robotic approach is already seen as a natural and efficient extension of human capabilities in extreme environments here on Earth, and space activity provides another realm for expanding this application. One of the reasons for astronaut crew to be in the vicinity of action is to circumvent the time lag associated with operating a robot from Earth.Depending on planetary positions, it takes between 8 and 45 minutes to send a command to the Mars rover and receive a signal back that it has executed the task, and it takes Cassini 2.5 hours to do the same. A lot of unintended things can happen over such long periods, especially when impromptu control is required for tasks that involve construction or other anomalous situations that may arise.The future of human space activity in general and the niche arena of human space exploration that space agencies focus on today are fast approaching a synergetic and explosive growth period because investors see profit to be made in space activity — building orbiting solar power stations; enhancing communications platforms and maintaining that infrastructure; keeping track of and decommissioning old and failing stations by deorbiting them rather than mothballing them in graveyard orbits where they pose a potential debris hazard; and providing station-keeping fuel and propellants to outbound vehicles and other services including correcting the orbits of spacecraft in deviant or wrong orbits. It is well known among space architects and engineers alike that human supervision on site is essential for large and complex assembly and service operations in space in order to speedily resolve anomalies that may arise during execution.Humans and robots together are ready to begin knitting space activity in our solar system into the mainstream of humanity's economic sphere of influence, making astronaut activity a routine part of our lives in which science and technology are integral to our culture, as much as progressive commerce and industry play a part in modern civilization.Does the future hold peril or promise for our astronaut corps as we expand this enterprise? Peril, for space is the ultimate unforgiving environment, as it reminds us when things go wrong and we lose the brave men and women engaged in that exo-environment. Nature never intended us in our fragile frames, evolved over a few million years, to live and work in space. Cocooned and nurtured on the mild surface of a watery world, blanketed by a thin but soothing atmosphere and shielded from the sun's wrath by an invisible magnetic field, we evolved in a biosphere like no other we know of. Even today, as we are freshly reminded, entering space, just escaping the clutches of Earth's gravity, requires complex and precision technologies and systems with extremely narrow tolerance for error.And more peril too, for the 20th-century image of the government-employed astronaut who appears a daring suited figure, braving the extreme environment, all alone in the vast, silent and treacherous darkness of space. Even today, nearly 50 years since we began spacewalking, extravehicular activity is perhaps the most strenuous astronaut activity. The suits, once inflated, are cumbersome to work in, and the astronaut has to fight the stiffness of the suit and gloves to make normal movement possible. Like the capsule technology that is being superseded, the days of the Pillsbury Doughboy- or Michelin Man-shaped astronaut are numbered.Hardsuits, or rigid suits molded from aluminum alloys, are being used in deep-sea diving missions today and may be adapted for space, employing tough and radiation-resistant materials like boron carbide to allow astronauts to move between spacecraft and the vacuum outside without the lengthy prebreathing protocol that is needed today to make the suits more flexible for movement. This slow process allows the human body to adjust to the low pressure and altered atmosphere inside the suits without risking the bends, a condition where dissolved nitrogen in the blood may bubble out and cause severe painful problems and or even death. Strategies employing semi-rigid suits are proposed to allow gradual pressure reduction while crew members are being transported to the work site as well. A new generation of suits for extraterrestrial activity on the Moon and Mars will effectively neutralize the threat posed by dust, especially on the Moon, that was quite debilitating to Apollo crew and rovers. Exoskeletal suits that help augment strength, combat fatigue and allow power amplification are being put to the test for soldiers in the battlefield and may also find application for the future astronaut. Meanwhile, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is putting competing robot assistants to the test and offering prizes for winning designs.And so there is promise for an entirely new vision of humans working alongside sophisticated robotic agents, as supervisors and directors and anomaly resolvers. They will be comfortably nested in cabins within spacecraft in a shirtsleeve environment, teleoperating swarms of robots, building huge solar power satellites and assembling massive spaceships from materials dug up and processed among the asteroids, as we expand outward into the solar system to use resources that lie scattered all over the asteroid belt, to settle our Moon and planets. A far more sophisticated and refined U.S. astronaut corps is in the making, and these 21st-century professionals may yet spring from our newly homegrown commercial and private space enterprise.Among policymakers, where logically sensible ideas often die a fiery death because of partisanship, space activity is a rare arena where all agree. Above the din and acrimony of political theater, beneath the cloak of it all, both aisles of Congress and even fringe groups among the leadership support a vibrant space program. The space station partnership has built a venerable coalition of international partners and could be extended into a global effort with the blessing of the State Department that could use it as an instrument to enhance the U.S. image, not just among partners but around the world.Astronauts' training and mission expertise, combined with their unique aura and refined sensitivity about our biosphere and the rich and complex interweave of humanity in it, make them a new generation of 21st-century global ambassadors, the few who have experienced a global view of things, literally, with a stamp that says "made in America." They may hold the key to switch the fear-and-greed paradigm that seems to run rampant in the world today with hope, awe and wonder of nature and keep alive humanity's noblest aspirations, including our place in the universe, the raison d'etre for human spaceflight.Madhu Thangavelu is conductor of the graduate Space Exploration Architectures Concept Synthesis Studio in the Department of Astronautical Engineering within the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering, and he is also a graduate thesis adviser in the School of Architecture at USC.On Science: Science apps are a holiday refuge from relativesAlex Rose - Delaware County (PA) TimesAs you might have noticed from all the turkey-themed decorations adorning local store fronts, the day of giving thanks is once upon us.For many, this is a time not for a deeper reflection about our nation's history, but rather an excuse to unhinge our jaws, devour heaping plates of food, then pass out blissfully in an armchair as the Detroit Lions continue their annual tradition of rather spectacularly phoning it in.It is also an opportunity to engage rarely seen and ludicrously uniformed family members on a slew of political and societal topics in what is sure to be a polite and courteous debate that quickly descends into recriminations accompanied by broken crockery.So. You have a few options here.First, you can choose to do battle in this Arena of Ill-Conceived Ideas, slogging through a minefield of long-harbored sleights and impractical solutions to world problems around mouthfuls of sweet potatoes (a foolhardy though valiant approach).Or you could sit back as a bemused and impartial observer, ticking off arguments and statements on a homemade Bingo card of likely events, such as "Dim-Witted Uncle Incapable of Recognizing Ironic Statements About Immigration," or "Insufferable Cousin Refuses to Eat in Misplaced White-Guilt Protest." (And let's not forget the ever popular "Racist Grandma Says Something Racist.")Many, however, will take the time-honored tradition of "the coward's way out" and keep a low profile by simply burying their heads in a smartphone or tablet. To that end, I've put together a short list of vaguely interesting science apps you can download as a refuge until it's time to get the hell away from these weirdos.For those wondering just how damaged the thought processes of their relatives are, the 3D Brain app is a great place to start. This interactive app from the DNA Learning Center allows for a full 360-degree view of the human brain, as well as detailed explanations about specific brain locations, make-up and functions, as well as their corresponding roles in brain damage and mental illness. You can get lost in this stuff for minutes or hours, depending on just how thoroughly you want to cite all of the apparent brain problems manifesting in your father's unflagging support for a new House Committee on Un-American Activities.Of course, when it comes to arguing over Thanksgiving, there is no topic more likely to be dismissed by some irritably smug relative than that of climate change (because seasons still exist, I guess?) and no better app than Skeptical Science for a quick and easy slap-down of same. The app, presented by Shine Technologies, comes preloaded with a variety of anticipated assertions – such as "it's not us" or "the modeling is wrong" – which users can simply tap to access a wealth of citable, evidence-based information to the contrary.Not that anyone will listen, of course. In fact, they'll probably just yammer on even more, which is why the Mobento app is a must-have for those interested in drowning out the world around them via headphones. The app allows for search navigation of more than 4,300 videos using keywords that can then be re-found within selected results, meaning you can simply jump to the part of a two-hour video you are interested in seeing rather than wait for the topic to come up. With content from TED, NASA, Cambridge, Yale and other venerable institutions in 27 categories spanning math to biology to history, there's something for everyone here.If you simply can't stand to be locked inside with these animals any longer, take your phone outside with the What's Invasive app downloaded and look around for some flora and fauna. This app provides info on local invasive species to keep an eye out for, as catalogued by the National Park Service and other services. Users can snap pics of these plants and animals, providing GPS positioning that helps researchers pinpoint exactly where and to what extent these invasive species have spread.A similar app called Project Noah (not to be confused with Project NOAH, which is something else entirely) helps users identify animal and plant species in their area through a community forum and provides a location-specific field guide. The really neat thing about this app, though, is that it also has a "mission" option in which users can participate in (again) helping identify and track invasive species, but also contribute to ongoing research projects such as documenting bird migration patterns.While you're out there (and if it's a cloudless night) you might be able to catch the International Space Station go whizzing by overhead. If you've download the ISS Detector app, it will tell you precisely where the station is at any given moment and give you an alert when it's about to come into view. The station, resting in a low-Earth orbit some 270 miles above ground, moves at an astonishing average speed of 17,100 miles per hour and has an orbital period of about 93 minutes, so don't worry if you miss it – much like Thanksgiving, it will come back around again before you know it.All of these are free, by the way, so you don't even need to buy anything. Simply download and get started on ignoring these strangers until they go away. If anyone should succeed in forcing you to mingle, however, remember that booze is always a viable alternative.Time To Change a Poorly Crafted LawTomasso Sgobba – Space NewsOn Dec. 23, 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 (CSLAA). Meant to promote the development of the emerging commercial spaceflight industry, the CSLAA made the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration responsible for regulating commercial human spaceflight. It gave the FAA authority to regulate commercial human spaceflight safety only for the aspects of uninvolved public safety, but forbade FAA to levy any safety regulation for the safety of crew and flight participants onboard for a period of eight years, unless an accident happened before.The CSLAA requires operators to provide prospective customers with written information about the risks of spaceflight and a statement of the fact that the U.S. government has not certified the vehicle as safe for carrying crew or spaceflight participants.The rationale behind the CSLAA moratorium and subsequent extensions until October 2015 was to allow industry to acquire experience to create future regulations. The CSLAA moratorium is a gross mistake — not because it prevents the FAA from intervening, but because it does not require instead that industry develop its own initial safety program and rules.Hardware and software can be designed to the best of our knowledge, but our knowledge is not perfect. We can apply the most rigorous quality control during manufacturing, yet perfect construction does not exist and some defective items will be built and escape inspection. A "safe" system is essentially one that through the selection of additional margins, redundancies, barriers and capabilities (escape, for example) will "tolerate" (to a certain extent) hardware failures, software faults and human errors; mitigate harmful consequences; and/or lower the probability of their occurrence.By not requiring industry to establish safety rules up-front, in line with the experience gained through government space programs, the unintended effect of CSLAA has been to encourage industry to set the clock of its safety practices back to the early 1960s. The CSLAA may have planted the seeds of the first suborbital flight accident, the Oct. 31 fatal crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. The CSLAA allows companies to apply whatever level of failure tolerance they like in the design, without even requiring independent verification of the correct implementation.In the early 1970s, I was a student of aeronautical engineering at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy, and I had the privilege of having as professor Giuseppe Gabrielli, one of the most prolific aircraft designers of all time, with more than 140 designs spanning a 50-year career. During one class, Gabrielli commented on the crash of his G91 fighter prototype back in 1961 by saying that "every good airplane is smeared with blood." Gabrielli was not a cynical guy; he was just expressing with crude words the approach of the early times of aviation, still in use in the 1960s: "Fly-Fix-Fly." You design an airplane, build a prototype and fly it. You discover flaws through accidents, incidents or close calls; fix them; and keep flying. At that time there was no other way: Safety programs and hazard analysis did not exist yet.There was no safety program and no safety analyses were performed when the Atlas and Titan ICBMs were initially developed in the 1950s. Within 18 months after the fleet of 71 Atlas F missiles became operational, four blew up in their silos during operational testing. The worst accident occurred in Searcy, Arkansas, on Aug. 9, 1965, when a fire in a Titan 2 silo killed 53 people. As a response to those accidents, the U.S. Air Force developed a major safety standard, MIL-STD-882, establishing novel system safety engineering techniques and management concepts.When North American Aviation developed the Apollo capsule in the 1960s, there was no safety program and no safety analysis was performed. A number of choices were made to optimize the mass of the vehicle. The early design used a pure oxygen atmosphere to lower the capsule internal pressure so that the shell could be made thinner and therefore lighter. A lighter inward-opening hatch was preferred to a heavier outward-opening design.Flammable thermoplastic materials were extensively used, and electrical wire bundles were made as light as possible by the choice of thinner, and therefore hotter, harnesses. The ingredients for a raging fire were all in place. On Jan. 27, 1967, during a ground test, a spark, probably caused by an electrical short circuit, triggered a fire. The internal capsule pressure rose, thus sealing the hatch and the three astronauts' fate with it.Modern safety analyses allow us to identify causes of potential accidents (called hazards) and to remove or mitigate them through the application of predefined best practices (e.g., safety rules like failure tolerance). Safety analyses and safety measures have been increasingly used over the last 40 years in government space programs, including in the development and operation of the international space station. Independent safety verification of correct implementation is a daily activity for NASA and its international ISS partners, performed by interdisciplinary groups of experts, so-called safety review panels. Because of massive use of safety analyses in the ISS program, seven safety review panels are in place: four at NASA and three at international partner agencies.On the contrary, the commercial human suborbital spaceflight industry has been making the point that no safety regulation should be levied in the "learning period" and no independent verification performed, stating that these would stifle progress and kill the business. More recently, the industry has asked to extend the learning period indefinitely. The media and the public seem to have generally supported this position, possibly as a legitimate defense against utopian rules and red tape. But the risk here is wasted money and human lives just to reinvent the wheel.During a February hearing of the U.S. House Science space subcommittee, George Nield, FAA associate administrator for space transportation, said that industry's plea for a longer learning period ignores government expertise about crewed space systems gathered by NASA's long-running human exploration program. It would be "irresponsible" to ignore the lessons from those programs and force regulators to collect a new set of data, Nield said.Another bold message often echoed is that of the technological novelty and superiority of commercial suborbital vehicles compared with government programs. This is just marketing.Yes, space travel is a risky business and for that exact reason the most modern safety practices must be applied and continuously improved. Industry can propose rigorous self-regulation as an alternative to government regulation. The safety practices developed by NASA could be formally adopted as reference and further updated and improved as industry accumulates new experience and knowledge.The International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS) has published a collection of such heritage safety rules in a standard, available from our website (http://iaass.space-safety.org/publications/standards/). With the exemption of two quantitative safety goals, a crashworthiness requirement and a data collection requirement, all safety rules in the IAASS standard are the same or similar to those applied in past and current government space programs, and by ISS commercial service vehicles.No regulation is not a viable option. The return to the old-fashioned "Fly-Fix-Fly" approach can bring only the terrifying prospect of a stream of incidents and accidents possibly exhausting any residual public faith in the future of human spaceflight. Believing that space travel risks are forever inevitable, that substantial improvements are almost impossible, and relying on public acceptance of high levels of risk while society is increasingly risk-averse is a recipe for failure.To paraphrase the finding of the U.S. Presidential Committee that investigated the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster of 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico: The commercial human spaceflight industry must move toward developing a notion of safety as a collective responsibility. Industry should establish a "Safety Institute. … an industry-created, self-policing entity aimed at developing, adopting and enforcing standards of excellence to ensure continuous improvement in spaceflight safety.It is time to change the CSLAA of 2004.Jim Watzin Returning to NASA as Mars CzarDan Leone – Space NewsVeteran NASA program manager Jim Watzin has left the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to become director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program in Washington, the space agency said in a Nov. 21 press release.Watzin, who will manage NASA's roughly $500-million-a-year Mars portfolio beginning Dec. 1, succeeds Doug McCuistion, who left his post in December 2012 after eight-and-a-half years on the job. McCuistion was the longest-servicing Mars czar in the history of the post, which was created in 2000 to get the Mars program back on track after back-to-back mission failures.Watzin was most recently technical director and deputy program executive for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance at the Missile Defense Agency in Huntsville, Alabama. Before that, he did a stint as director of space programs at ATK and spent many years at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, leading numerous flight projects and program offices.Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, has been acting Mars Exploration Program director since McCuistion's departure.Profile | Yvonne Pendleton, Director, Solar System Exploration Research Virtual InstituteDebra Werner – Space NewsWhen NASA established the Lunar Science Institute at the NASA Ames Research Center in 2008, the space agency was in the midst of the Constellation program with plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020. Since President Barack Obama announced plans in 2010 to refocus the U.S. human spaceflight program on travel to a near-Earth asteroid and ultimately to Mars, NASA officials have looked for ways to expand the mission of the institute to reflect the changing priorities of the space agency.In late 2013, the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) officially took over the work of the Lunar Science Institute. SSERVI supports research designed to shed light on fundamental questions related to the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos, and the space environments near each of those bodies.Yvonne Pendleton, who became director of the Lunar Science Institute in 2010 and now leads SSERVI, is shepherding the organization through the transition. In November 2013, SSERVI selected nine teams to embark on five-year research projects. The teams are led by Bill Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute, Dan Britt of the University of Central Florida, Ben Bussey of the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, Bill Farrell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Tim Glotch of Stony Brook University, Jennifer Heldmann of NASA Ames, Mihaly Horanyi of the University of Colorado, Carle Pieters of Brown University and David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute.SSERVI also has international partners: the Canadian Lunar Research Network, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, the Saudi Lunar and Near Earth Objects Science Center, the Israel Network for Lunar Science and Exploration, the German Network for Lunar Science and Exploration, Frascati National Laboratory of Italy's National Nuclear Physics Institute, nine institutions that form a SSERVI node in the Netherlands, and 15 institutions that form the United Kingdom node.Pendleton, an astrophysicist, decided she wanted to work for NASA when she was a child in Key West, Florida, watching rockets launch from the Kennedy Space Center. She obtained a bachelor's and a master's degree in aerospace engineering before shifting her attention to astrophysics and earning a Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz.In 2007 and 2008, Pendleton served as the senior adviser for research and analysis programs for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.Pendleton spoke recently with SpaceNews correspondent Debra Werner.Why was SSERVI formed?The institute was created because complex science and engineering challenges require expertise and resources across many disciplines. By eliminating geographical constraints, the virtual institute model enables us to select the best investigations, teams and resources to address NASA's current goals, regardless of where team members or infrastructure are located.What do you focus on?We tried to come up with questions we would need to answer before people travel beyond low Earth orbit. The topics include things like trying to understand how small bodies would outgas material. If you were approaching one, you would need to understand that. From a science perspective, volatiles are incredibly interesting to people who want to understand the origin, evolution and composition of these bodies.How much funding does SSERVI have?If you add up every single dollar, including the dollars for civil servant salaries, the total budget is $15.2 million per year. The central office gets roughly $2.8 million. The teams, on average, can expect to get about $1.2 million per year for five years.Five years is a long time for a research project.Yes. That is one of the reasons we have the flexibility and the stability that we have. Five years is a long enough time for someone to take a graduate student from the early days all the way through. We have seen students graduate from one team and become postdocs in another team. Students provide this unique glue that binds the institute together in a way I had not anticipated.How often will SSERVI seek new research projects?Every two-and-a-half years, we plan to have another call for proposals. That way we can add new teams before the old teams finish their five-year projects. That provides continuity and enables people to share the philosophy and culture of the institute.What has SSERVI accomplished?We picked teams in November. I got the teams together in December and asked them to come up with ideas for collaboration. They formed a long list and they've been marching right down that list.One was the idea of having a shared repository of samples that team members collect. If they go into the field to collect meteorites or rock samples that other teams want to analyze, they work from the same rock. They also share facilities, laboratory resources and students. Some teams are taking other teams' students with them on trips to analog work sites.The teams are already publishing papers together. We use the publication rate to measure productivity. In six months this group has published 35 papers and there are more in the works.What's ahead for SSERVI?At the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 15, we will have an entire day dedicated to SSERVI research topics. We hope to draft a second Cooperative Agreement Notice to be released in late spring of next year.We have recently been asked to take on management of NASA's Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project (LMMP), which includes data from multiple instruments on multiple lunar missions. All of this data is put into a system with very sophisticated modeling capabilities. It allows users to combine different layers of data. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is doing the work. Now that we've taken over management, we have asked them to expand beyond the Moon. As SSERVI's scope grows, so should LMMP's. We have included Vesta and Mars, and we hope to include the moons of Mars in the near future.What role do SSERVI's international partners play?They play a huge role. On a no-exchange-of-funds basis, we collaborate. Some space agencies are making discoveries at a breakneck pace. Our job is to connect them, to help disseminate each country's expertise and results across the globe in a way that makes them useful to everyone.How do international partners join SSERVI?They write proposals with an eye toward how they can fit into the kind of work our teams already are doing. They often offer to send students here or bring U.S. students there. Some of our teams do a lot of analog work, trying to understand the moons of Mars or asteroids by going to remote places on Earth. Canada has some ideal places for this kind of work. The partnership with Germany enabled one of our teams to build a dust accelerator in record time. Mihaly Horanyi's German colleagues gave him the plans to build a duplicate of their accelerator. It is now open to the entire scientific community.How many people work on the SSERVI staff and what role do they play?There are 14 people on the SSERVI central staff. We oversee the teams and make sure they get their funding. We track their budgets and learn about their progress in monthly meetings. We enable a lot of the virtual communication both for our teams and for the whole community. NASA is getting very interested in using virtual tools for a number of meetings.Why is SSERVI at NASA Ames?Ames is home to all of NASA's virtual institutes: the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the NASA Aeronautics Research Institute and SSERVI. Ames is an innovative center. People here are very interested in cost-savings approaches to exploration. I think the institutes are thriving because we are in the heart of Silicon Valley. We pick up a lot of virtual tools hot off the press and introduce them to our community.What made you switch from aerospace engineering to astrophysics?When I was 10 years old, I told anybody who would listen that I wanted to work for NASA and study the stars. I went into aerospace engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The year I graduated I had an opportunity to work for Ames and get my master's degree at Stanford University. Once I got here, I realized Ames had a space science division. I wandered over there one day and fell in love with everything they were doing. This was the time of the Voyager and Pioneer missions. I was mesmerized. At the time, I was working in a wind tunnel. Fortunately, human resources let me switch, and the rest is history. NASA put me through to get my Ph.D. in astrophysics. I ended up having the career that was right for me.So now you work for NASA and study the stars?That's right. In my personal research, I look for the cosmic origins of life in a grain of interstellar dust. Now I have the joy of directing an institute focused on our place in the solar system. I believe the Moon and other small bodies in our solar system hold the pieces of the puzzle we need.You also have your own asteroid, 7165 Pendleton.I was blown away when that happened. It was a huge honor.US Government Agencies Desirous of More Space Weather DataCaleb Henry – Via SatelliteSeveral agencies of the United States government are interested in greater amounts of data on solar activity. Flares and dramatic high energy bursts called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) can and do bombard Earth's atmosphere with highly energized particles. When a CME occurs, research satellites such as NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) and the NASA-ESA Solar and Heliophysics Observatory (SOHO) make most of the observations. But, as the U.S. government seeks to improve its ability to forecast space weather, new kinds of information are needed."Right now we are relying a lot on the NASA research fleet. We have two operational satellites systems we use for forecasting: the GOES system and the DSCOVR satellite, which will launch next year. Outside of that we are relying on research satellites to do our job, and these research satellites are not specifically tailored to operational forecasting," Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center at NOAA/National Weather Service, said Nov. 20 at the "Beyond the Flare" space weather briefing cohosted by the Secure World Foundation (SWF) and the American Astronautical Society (AAS).Space weather can have significant impacts on satellites and end users. High-energy protons or sometimes galactic cosmic rays can cause single-event upsets in satellite electronics. Lower energy electrons, however, tend to collect on the spacecraft's surface, potentially disabling components when discharged.The sun is currently at the peak of its 11-year solar cycle. During this time, it has more sunspots than normal as well as an increase in solar activity. When the sun emits an Earth-directed CME, it impacts the upper atmosphere, causing currents in the ionosphere, among other effects. Earth's upper atmosphere heats and expands, requiring satellite operators to adjust their spacecraft's orbit to resist the increased drag."All of this combines to generally take one or two satellites out per solar maximum," said Berger. "This solar cycle has been a little weaker than others; I don't think we had any catastrophic losses of spacecraft, but during the last one we had several."Perhaps the most famous CME is the Carrington Event — an enormous burst of solar particles that hit Earth in 1859, causing auroras at latitudes well below the norm, and damaging telegraphs, which were the main technology impacted at the time. Today the influence of such an event would be felt much more severely. If a solar geomagnetic storm created another Earth-directed, Carrington-type blast, the radiation could inhibit Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, telecommunications, power grids and other modern technologies.The consequences of such an event would be far reaching, but Berger noted that equally, or perhaps more powerful storms have already occurred over the past 150 years."We tend to focus on the Carrington event as being the largest in history. In fact, research is showing that it is perhaps not that unusual to have an event that large. We just haven't had one hit Earth since 1859," he said.Furthermore, since this solar storm occurred well before the dawn of space exploration, our understanding of its true magnitude is limited."We don't know what a Carrington-type event is because we never had the measurement to detect what such a flare could do on the ground," added Madhulika Guhathakurta, STEREO program scientist, Heliophysics Division at NASA's Science Mission Directorate.The U.S. Air Force and Navy have heavily funded research on space weather and the Earth's ionosphere due to its effects on navigation and long haul communications, according to Col. Robert Swanson, chief of the Weather Strategic Plans and Interagency Integration Division at the Air Force's Directorate of Weather. The high-energy particles can sometimes be perceived as stars, resulting in satellite disorientation since these often use stars to track their orientation relative to the Earth. They can also interfere with a satellite's performance — something the Air Force would then need to determine the cause to make sure it is not a technical anomaly or a deliberate attack, he said. The Air Force is building the Next Generation Ionosonde (NEXION) ionospheric sounder network, and the Space and Missile Command is in the process of fielding operational ground-based receivers that can measure scintillation in the ionosphere for the Air Force weather agency. Swanson said these sensors would be stationed in or near the magnetic equatorial region where scintillation is most present.There is interest in commercial space weather from companies such as Sentinel Satellite, but traction here is less than what is currently being seen with Earth-weather space companies such as Tempus Global Data, PlanetiQ, GeoMetWatch, GeoOptics and others. Berger said NOAA would be excited to see commercial solutions arise if they can overcome the unique mission requirements."We would be interested in anything that would develop [commercially] because these are very complex missions and any help we can get is welcome," he said. "They are however typically deep space missions, which require large propulsion systems, very robust communications systems, and planet-spanning communications networks to download the data. Unlike a weather satellite, which is in [Low Earth Orbit] LEO or [Geostationary Earth Orbit] GEO where you have one dedicated antenna for instance, in deep space, space weather observatories have to have a very extensive network of communications, but it's not outside the realm of a commercial operator who is ambitious enough."How Underground Sensors In Texas Will Help NASA Predict Drought and FloodsMose Buchele – NPRStanley Rabke's family has lived and worked on their Hill Country ranch since 1889. Generations of Rabkes have struggled with the extremes of Texas weather, but one storm sticks out in Stanley's memory: it came after the drought of the 1950s."It rained and rained and rained," he says. "Back then we raised turkeys, we lost thousands of turkeys that washed away in the creek."The disaster underscores an irony of life in Texas. "You hope and pray that you're going to get a good rain, [but] on the other side of it, you hope you don't get a flood," says Rabke.A quick walk from where the turkeys met their fate, some new technology that will help manage that risk is being installed — soil monitoring sensors in the ground.Dr. Todd Caldwell and his team have dug a pit and they're connecting wires and setting up a tripod monitoring station. They're part of a project called the Texas Soil Observation Network. It's an effort to better understand the condition of the earth throughout the state. Today, they've run into some difficulty."You see the sensors have about a 15 centimeter-long tine that's thin metal, and we have to push those into the clay when it's dry. This is kind of set up like a concert," Caldwell says. "So, we have to push really hard to get them in, so we're struggling a bit right now…"The tines measure the how much water is in the soil. That information travels on buried wires to the tripod. It gathers more data. then it feeds it on a cellular network back to the landowner, and then to the University of Texas. That's where Caldwell works, at UT's Bureau of Economic Geology.Why does soil moisture matter? Think back to those turkeys. The floods that washed them away came after years of drought, when the ground was, in Caldwell's words, "set up like concrete."It seems counter-intuitive, but it's common for floods to occur in Texas not only when the earth is over-saturated, but when also when it's too dry. So monitors help predict flooding.That's not all. They also tell farmers when to irrigate and reveal how water seeps through the soil to refill aquifers. Monitors can help the state predict how Texas reservoirs will refill after a rainfall. Will that runoff go to the reservoir, or get sucked up into the ground?That means the folks at LCRA and in the Highland Lakes system, they can make decisions on how much water to release by having that information," says Michael Young, also with the Bureau of Economic Geology. "It would be the same for first responders for flood prediction: by knowing what the soil moisture is, we can do a better job of predicting floods."The monitors will be used to reveal more about global weather patterns as well."We're kind of under the gun right now, trying to get this all knocked out in time for the satellite launch," Caldwell says.The satellite he's talking about is part of NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive Project. It will measure the earth's soil moisture globally every three days.The satellite will carry two devices to do that: one to measure heat from the earth's surface and the other a radar sensor. The information they gather will estimate soil moisture levels globally. But it needs to be validated by local sensors on the ground. That's where monitors like the one on the Rabke ranch come in."These local measurements are very important. We may not be able to resolve many issues using satellite data," says Nerendra Das, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab who is working on the project.With all the data points put together, NASA hopes to improve weather forecasting, better predict drought and reveal more about how the sun's energy hits the ground to make weather happen in the first place.It's a big, ambitious, project. But that doesn't make it an easy sell."It's been a struggle, let's just say," says Caldwell. "That's why we hopscotch between property owners that are available that day, or even willing to talk to us."Back at the ranch, Todd Caldwell says he's having trouble finding landowners to let him set up his monitoring stations. Distrust of government has been around for a long time in Texas."It is suspicion that the government is watching them," Caldwell says. "And satellites are watching us there's no joke about that."It's just, in this case, he says all they want to watch, is the soil moisture.Here's your chance to launch a satellite to the moonJill R. Aitoro - Washington Business JournalHave a hankering for space exploration, but don't have billions to invest like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos? You're in luck. There is another option.NASA is calling upon inventors and small businesses to compete in the Cube Quest Challenge by designing, building and launching a cubesat to a lunar distance and/or beyond. Information was published in the Federal Register Monday.And what is a cubesat you ask? Well, if you're asking, then you — like me — might not be the best fit for the competition. Nonetheless, for those interested anyway, as I was, a cubesat is a type of miniaturized satellite for space research. According to NASA, they're typically about four inches long, have a volume of about one quart, and weigh about 3 pounds.As for the challenge, prizes will be awarded for putting a cubesat into a stable lunar orbit, communicating the largest amount of data from the lunar distance in a 30-minute time frame and in a 28-day span, communicating the largest amount of data from 4 million kilometers from Earth in a 30-minute time frame and in a 28-day span, for being the last cubesat communicating and for communicating from the furthest distance from Earth.The total purse for the challenge is $5 million. As is the case for all of NASA's Centennial Challenges, prizes are offered to independent inventors, including small businesses, student groups and individuals, with the goal being to engage the public in the process of advanced technology development.Ahead of the Curve: Top CTOs Discuss Where to Invest NextMark Holmes – Via SatelliteWith satellite operators competing all over the world, getting the next set of technology investments right is key for any company. We look at how some of the industry's top CTOs see the landscape and where are they placing their technology bets.For AsiaSat CTO Roger Tong, the main project right now is how to design a Ka-band HTS system that fits Asia-Pacific requirements. Tong believes this will be more of a multi-purpose Ka band practical system rather than the traditional forward and return link type. The operator expects to put a Request for Information (RFI) in this area out in the next two years."The implementation of HTS in Asia is only in its infant stage. The problems we see are that there are a lot of spots [and] the total aggregate of the satellite doesn't translate into where, when and how we want the high throughput. Therefore, we are looking at how we can design the HTS in a different way to meet market requirements," Tong says. "It will be evolving over the next few years, and will take years before we see HTS fully matured. We need to work out how HTS can meet market requirements and to look at areas like China. It is not just about multiple spot beams."Tong says everyone is focused on HTS and building more powerful satellites right now, but this presents a number of challenges for technology providers. "You need more efficient solar arrays, better thermal designs, and more powerful RF systems; thus, more flexible filters," he says. "The focus of the satellite industry right now is to make all these things better. As you build more hardware into the satellite, you have to look at its structure and to make your payload more effective and efficient."Yuichi Hayasaka, executive officer and deputy group president of the engineering and operations group at SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation, says the operator is still seeing strong demand for C-band services in the region. Hayasaka was a little non-committal on the the company's HTS strategy saying that the choice between Ka-band HTS or conventional satellites will heavily depend on the application. He believes that certain applications, such as consumer broadband, are very much cost driven when a large pipe is required."We are confident that conventional satellite services will not fade into obscurity for this region. HTS is not limited to Ka band only, so we see potential in providing HTS-like performance using multiple high-power C- or Ku-band spot beams to cover targeted regions and still satisfy the rain resistance requirements. We certainly recognize the cost- performance benefits of HTS and its difference versus conventional satellites. Even for conventional satellites, we are constantly trying to bring the cost per bit down. Our part is to provide satellite capacity that meets the technical and commercial requirements of our customers in the region. The more likely scenario would be for HTS to coexist with conventional satellites, each occupying its unique place in the market."Ali Ebadi, senior vice president of regulatory and business affairs for space systems development at Measat Satellite Systems, says HTS platforms represent an important component of the satellite industry to serve the global communications market in the foreseeable future."Today's HTS platforms are capable of delivering broadband speeds of up to 25 Mbps to the user making it comparable to terrestrial-based solutions both in terms of quality and affordability. Hence, HTS certainly has a strong value proposition in bridging the digital divide. In addition to consumer-based broadband, M2M type communication is also increasingly evolving adding to the number of devices that need to be connected," Ebadi says. "At the moment, we are only scratching the surface of the potential of M2M with concepts such as smart grids, Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics, which are starting to become everyday norms."New TechnologiesOne of the key challenges facing any CTO of a satellite operator is where to invest in new technologies. David Bestwick, technical director at Avanti Communications, says a particular technology that could play a major part of Avanti's future satellites is large Ka-band antennas. He says these larger antennas would enable the company to develop even smaller spot beams, increasing its capacity and ability to focus on even smaller areas. Avanti could even consider such a satellite being devoted to serving a single country, Bestwick says but also admits there are advantages for multimedia content delivery using wider coverage spot beams to enable efficient broadcast and multicast over national markets.Tong said he believes that the satellite manufacturing community is moving "too slow" and that manufacturers have been "too conservative" in rolling out new technology."Technologies we were talking about years ago have still not been commercialized," he says. "Things such as digital channelizers and flexible payloads are still not commercially affordable. Implementing these technologies would allow us to leverage satellites much better."Ebadi says new bent pipe payload technology will be gradually eclipsed with newer generation software-defined payloads that are spinoffs from the military domain."The technology is moving toward satellites that fully mesh with the global communication infrastructure, adaptable to varying business requirements and emergency situations," he says. "Newer satellites carry more flexible payloads with improved traffic capacity, improved fill factor and lower operating cost with the introduction of digital processors, multipoint amplifiers, flexible TWTAs, digital beam forming antennas and flexible frequency plans."Marcus Vilaca, executive director of engineering and technology strategy at Yahsat, says the operator is very excited about new Robotic Refueling Technologies currently under testing by NASA."NASA has successfully concluded a remotely controlled test of new technologies that would empower future space robots to transfer propellant into the tanks of operational satellites. NASA is incorporating results from the tests and the Robotic Refueling Mission on the International Space Station to prepare for an upcoming ground-based test of a full-sized robotic servicer system that will perform tasks on a mock satellite client," Vilaca says.InnovationOne of the big questions at any recent satellite conference is the innovation of satellite manufacturers and whether they are able to keep pace with operator demands. Ebadi admits that even new HTS missions largely keep following basic designs."Innovation seems limited to some niche markets. The main example is the development of digital processors for mobile and military applications. Leading companies in the space business have been investing very large R&D for these units which open a range of new capabilities such as sub-channelization, beam forming, Galium Nitride (GaN) chips and GaN high power amplifiers, etc. Although these new capabilities are of interest to commercial satellite operators, they are not present on common telecommunications missions," Ebadi says.According to Hayasaka, even after decades of commercial history, satellites are still "very expensive tailor-made dresses" suitable for each satellite operator and its designated orbital location. He says the industry needs a "one satellite fits all" design."One standardized satellite design, which can cover every orbital slot with its flexibility in such frequency, beam forming and capacities will be able to elicit a drastic change in the way of satellite manufacturing and its costs structure, sustaining high reliability in qualities built up by experience in the past," Hayasaka adds.He also believes manufacturing cycles for new satellites are still too long. A satellite usually will be operational two or three years after the contract has been singed "while the clock of innovation and development ticks," he says. By the time the satellite is operational, what was cutting-edge technology at the moment of signing, has now been replaced by newer upgrades and developments. This is one of his major concerns.The Electric RevolutionWhen announced in 2012, Boeing's deal with Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) and Satmex (now Eutelsat Americas) was a game-changer. However, while many have praised this deal, they have not exactly been a slew of contracts to follow based on all-electric propulsion. Ebadi attributes this mainly to the long orbit raising period these satellites inherently bring about."Satellite manufacturers should be improving the time to final orbit with higher Isp thrusters, or perhaps with the help of a small solid rocket engine like the traditional Apogee Kick Motor, as this would significantly improve the orbit raising period," he says. "There is also a concern about no revenue generation during the orbit raising while the satellite operator may have to start paying back the financing obligation after the launch."Tong agrees and adds his concerns about the extended orbit raising environment and its effect on reliability. "Most satellite operators do not want to wait for these additional months for their satellites to get into orbit. The longer it stays there, the greater impact the radiation belt on its electronics," Tong says, adding that the Boeing 702SP's success will be key to define the industry's perception of all-electric satellites. "I think people are watching and trying to understand how it may change the landscape. Electric satellites have the potential to reduce launch costs, but it adds to the project timeline."Ebadi adds another challenge with the Boeing 702SP is that it is being primarily marketed in a dual-launch configuration for SpaceX's Falcon 9. This means any operator has to find a co-passenger compatible with its own satellite requirements in terms of antennas, weight, etc., as well as in terms of schedule.Bestwick, however, sees many satellite operators as being quite conservative when it comes to new technologies. He does believes electric satellites will "undoubtedly become popular;" although he does not expect an overnight transition. Bestwick also admits that Avanti is studying the potential use of hybrid chemical-electric orbit raising and full electrical orbit raising for future satellites.Trends & OpportunitiesWhether looking at new HTS or all electric satellites, FSS operators in some ways have never had as many choices as they do now. While they would undoubtedly like shorter manufacturing cycles, the overall health of the industry is strong. While Tong agrees, he still believes the entire industry can do better when it comes to new technologies."[Satellite manufacturers] need to be a little bit more aggressive. We are happy to see Boeing returning with the electric satellites, and Lockheed moving back to the commercial space market — all these developments are positive. SpaceX offers an alternative launch vehicle solution and its recent successes of several satellite launches including our AsiaSat 6 and AsiaSat 8 have proved it, but I would like to see things moving a little faster; otherwise there is no way the satellite community can support the 4K broadcasts as well as the demand for 4G/5G backhaul," Tong says.Bestwick says he also believes the satellite industry is in good health and points to data connectivity as the largest part of unmet demand in the world. He says the satellite industry is now showing telecommunications companies around the world that HTS can provide the quality and return on investment needed to encourage them to make large-scale deployment.Also, as Vilaca notes, there is a severe lack of infrastructure and technology solutions across many African and Asian markets in terms of connectivity. With no land-based broadband Internet and no 3G/4G in many parts of Africa and Asia, one of Yahsat's objectives is to roll out solutions to these areas using new satellite technologies."HTS have the ability to provide significantly more throughput than a classic FSS satellite; these multiple spot beam satellites deliver reduced cost-per-bit, increased capacity and high-quality broadband Internet service," Vilaca adds.There are some challenges ahead for the industry, however. The constant need for spectrum is key and the satellite industry needs to ensure a good result at the World Radiocommunication Conference 2015 (WRC-15) to enable more innovation to take place."Recent sky rocketing rapid development of mobile network causes drain of frequency resource. Cellular companies try to take every opportunity to gain frequencies as impractically as possible, including those frequencies that have been assigned to satellite communications in every country," Hayasaka says. "Especially in the Asia region, demands on C-band capacity are still firmly favored because of its rainy monsoon climate; some portions of C-band frequency have actually been requested to transfer [to cellular players]."Besides the spectrum war, Ebadi notes that, while DTH and Ultra-HD are a big opportunity for a company like Measat, trends in broadcasting need to be watched carefully. "Internet/IP-based video broadcasting could probably be a threat to traditional DTH. In this light, IP based satellites would be a better move in certain markets for the satellite industry," he adds.A New Capability for Suborbital Research and EducationAlan Stern – Space NewsOnly a few years ago, suborbital research was limited to occasional, expensive rocket and balloon launches, largely using expensive Cold War technologies. Today, thanks to dedicated efforts by next-gen reusable suborbital rocket firms like Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace and Blue Origin, the field is on the verge of a space access revolution that will dramatically lower prices, create orders of magnitude more frequent access to space, and allow researchers to fly with their experiments — further lowering the complexity, risk and cost of those very experiments.At World View, we applaud the efforts of these suborbital rocket companies to open space access for the research and education market. We also applaud the efforts of government agencies like NASA to begin offering grants to researchers and educators to build and fly payloads aboard reusable, next-gen suborbital rocket vehicles. And we salute the research and education community's deeply positive interest in next-gen suborbital research through attendance at conferences, through proposal writing to win awards to fly on next-gen vehicles, and through the efforts within the Commercial Spaceflight Federation to foster this new field.At the same time that reusable rockets are preparing to come on line to service research and education needs, we're adapting our balloon-borne suborbital tourist vehicle, itself called World View, to be an effective, routine platform for the research and education marketplace in 2016-2017. We're also putting in place smaller suborbital vehicles in our Tycho line that can carry research and education payloads into service earlier, beginning in 2015.World View's near-space access distinction is that our vehicles do not require rocket propulsion to reach high altitude. Instead, our vehicles use balloon technology capable of lifting payloads ranging from a few kilograms to a few metric tons to altitudes as high as 40 kilometers. At these altitudes — where the sky is black and Earth's horizon is curved — important applications exist in a wide variety of research and education fields, including atmospheric science, Earth remote sensing, instruction and astronomy.Important applications also exist for the in-space demonstration of systems, subsystems and sensors destined for orbit, i.e., "TRL (technology readiness level)-raising." And a host of commercial surveillance, communications and entertainment opportunities present themselves at these altitudes as well.While rockets and balloons are complementary tools that serve different functions in space access — just as are forks and spoons at the dinner table — there are many attributes that balloons can offer that no suborbital rocket can.These include:Gentler rides, so that payloads do not have to be designed and tested to withstand sustained high-acceleration G-forces during launch and entry, simplifying development and test challenges, and therefore also lowering costs for payloads and payload specialists.Longer flight durations, of hours (and even days) at altitude on balloons versus the minutes at altitude that currently envisioned next-gen suborbital rocket systems offer.Lower altitudes, where both research and commercial applications can achieve higher ground resolutions, which are better suited, for example, to research in the crucial altitude regimes of the stratosphere.Greater range over Earth than rockets, which plan to fly back to their launch site and can't traverse significant ground, air and space paths for research and education applications.An absence of zero-g, which in many cases creates unwanted research and education payload design and operational complexities. Avoiding zero-g simplifies development and testing and typically lowers the cost to fly both payloads and payload specialists.A lower cost of flight, which expands markets and widens opportunities for frequency of flight.We believe these attributes will foster many new research and education applications in space, and we are proud to already be involved in demonstrating that in two important ways. First, we have placed three pathfinder payloads under agreement to fly as research and education demonstrators on our Tycho and World View vehicles. These pathfinder payloads include in situ radiation monitoring, remote sensing imaging of the upper atmosphere to study its meteoroid environment, and an education payload centered on detecting the ozone layer. Second, we and our partner Paragon Space Development Systems have been recently been awarded a NASA Flight Opportunities Program contract to provide flight services to NASA suborbital, near-space payloads during 2015-2017.At Word View, we believe that suborbital research and education applications are as unlimited a green field now as personal computer applications were in the late 1970s.Alan Stern is a founder of World View and serves as chief scientist for the company. He is an experienced suborbital, Earth orbital and planetary mission researcher, the former chairman of the research and education committee of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, and a former NASA associate administrator for space science. His email is astern@worldviewexperience.comENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
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