Saturday, October 26, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News, Oct. 22 and JSC Today



Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: October 24, 2013 8:03:34 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News, Oct. 22 and JSC Today

Happy Flex Friday Eve  J   …

 

 

Thursday, October 24, 2013

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. Joint Leadership Team Web Poll

Welcome back to the post-furlough world. It's been so long since we've had a poll that I forgot what the old questions were, so let's start fresh. Did you get enough information during the furlough? There were some weird communication rules during it, but I'm hopeful you got enough information to get by on. Let me know in question one. The second question concerns the new look Texans. With all of their injuries and personnel changes, the rest of the season is up in the air. How do you think they'll do? Case as Super Bowl MVP? First pick in next year's draft?

Andre your Cushing on over to get this week's poll.

Joel Walker x30541 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/

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  1. IT Labs Announces Dates for the FY14 Project Call

You can make NASA Information Technology (IT) better. IT Labs supports project ideas from NASA's own internal talent and develops these ideas into agency services. Both civil servants and contractors are invited to submit ideas.

Every year, IT Labs solicits applications for innovative NASA IT project ideas. The Fiscal Year 2014 (FY14) project call will run from Nov. 4 through Dec. 12. Learn more at the NASA IT Labs website (NDC credentials required).

If you have an idea, coordinate with the JSC Chief Technology Officer for IT. IT Labs' agencywide review panel will evaluate all submissions and fund a select number of projects.

Support:

Four Q&A sessions are scheduled from Nov. 6 through Dec. 9 (see Upcoming Events at bottom). Please attend one of the Q&A sessions for information about the project call and application process.

Send comments and/or questions to NASA IT Labs.

Follow IT Labs activities on the IT Labs Blog.

JSC-IRD-Outreach x45678

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  1. Time Change: Tree-Planting Ceremony on Nov. 5

JSC team members are invited to attend the tree-planting ceremony in honor of Captain Alan G. Poindexter, USN, on Nov. 5 in the Memorial Tree Grove at the new start time of 10 a.m. 

Captain Poindexter was a veteran of two spaceflights: STS-122 aboard Atlantis and STS-131 aboard Discovery. He logged more than 669 hours in space before he retired from NASA in December 2010 to return to the Navy. As an aviator, Poindexter amassed more than 4,000 hours in more than 30 aircraft types and logged more than 450 carrier landings.

Event Date: Tuesday, November 5, 2013   Event Start Time:10:00 AM   Event End Time:11:00 AM
Event Location: Memorial Tree Grove

Add to Calendar

Stephanie Castillo x33341

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   Organizations/Social

  1. Building Your Team Beyond the Furlough

You're invited to a November (rescheduled from October) JSC National Management Association (NMA) luncheon featuring Jackie Reese, MALPC, JSC's own Employee Assistance Program director. She will be discussing a new hot topic relevant to many of us: Building Your Team Beyond the Furlough.

When: Tuesday, Nov. 5

Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom  

Cost for members: Free!

Cost for non-members: $20

There are three new menu options to try:   

    • Grilled Chicken Salad
    • Vegetarian Stuffed Bell Pepper
    • Grilled Chicken

Please RSVP no later than 3 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 31, with your menu selection. Failure to do so could lead to scaaaaaaaaaary results.

Event Date: Tuesday, November 5, 2013   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Alamo Ballroom

Add to Calendar

Catherine Williams x33317 http://www.jscnma.com/Events

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  1. JSC Annual Holiday Bazaar

Come out to the Gilruth Center on Nov. 9 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for some holiday shopping! We'll have the gymnasium and ballroom packed with local craftspeople and vendors selling crafts, jewelry, bath and beauty products, home and holiday décor, candles, baked goods and more. This event is free and open to the public, so invite your family and friends to come browse through the more than 70 vendors who are ready to spread some holiday cheer.

For more information and a listing of vendors, click here.

Event Date: Saturday, November 9, 2013   Event Start Time:10:00 AM   Event End Time:4:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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  1. Family Violence Awareness

Did you know that seven percent of all Texans indicate that they, a family member and/or a friend or co-worker, have experienced some form of domestic violence (physical, sexual or verbal) in their lifetime? You might also be surprised to learn that abusive partners harass 74 percent of employed-battered partners at work. Because of this fact, we will learn the signs of battering and what to do if you suspect a co-worker is being battered. It is important to highlight the need--not to place the responsibility or blame on the abused. In recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we will explore ways to support, identify and discuss the importance of family violence. Please join Anika Isaac, MS, LPC, LMFT, NCC, CEAP, of the JSC Employee Assistance Program, in the Building 30 Auditorium on Oct. 29 at 12 noon for a presentation on Family Violence Awareness.

Event Date: Tuesday, October 29, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Occupational Health Branch x36130

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  1. Salsa/Latin Dance - Starts Nov. 1

Latin Dance Introduction

Nov. 1 from 8 to 9 p.m.

This class is mostly an introduction to Salsa, but it also touches on other popular Latin dances found in social settings: Merengue, Bachata, and even a little bit of Cha-Cha-Cha. Emphasis is on Salsa and then Bachata.

For the first-time student or those who want a refresher course. You will go over basic steps with variations and build them into sequences.

Discounted registration:

o $40 per person (ends Oct. 18)

Regular registration:

o $50 per person (Oct. 19 to Nov. 1)

Salsa Intermediate

Nov. 1 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

This class continues teaching salsa beyond what was taught in the introduction class. You should be comfortable and confident with the material from the introduction class before moving on to the intermediate class. This is a multi-level class where students may be broken up into groups based on class experience.

Shericka Phillips x35563 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/recreation-programs/salsalatin...

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  1. Photography Class Pre-Registration Ends Nov. 6

Would you like to learn how to take professional-looking pictures with your digital camera? Starport has the perfect Photography Techniques class for you!

This five-week class introduces you to the proper techniques needed to take great digital photos. In this class, you will learn the art of focus, composition, exposure and basic lighting techniques. After following the techniques you'll learn in these easy and fun classes, you will be on your way to taking better pictures in no time.

Classes start Thursday, Nov. 12, from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Prerequisites:

    • Digital camera that can be set to full manual settings
    • Access to a computer
    • Familiarity with Adobe Bridge or other photographer programs encouraged, but not required

What to bring to class:

    • Digital camera
    • Memory cards
    • Charged batteries
    • Owner's manual for camera

Discounted registration:

• $90 (ends Nov. 6)

Regular registration:

• $110 (Nov. 12)

Gilruth Center Longhorn Room

Shericka Phillips x35563 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en

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  1. Beginners Ballroom Dance - Nov. 12 & 14

Do you feel like you have two left feet?

Well, Starport has the perfect spring program for you: Beginners Ballroom Dance!

This eight-week class introduces you to the various types of ballroom dance. Students will learn the secrets of a good lead and following, as well as the ability to identify the beat of the music. This class is easy, and we have fun as we learn. JSC friends and family are welcome.

Discounted registration:

o $90 per couple (ends Nov. 1)

Regular registration:

o $110 per couple (Nov. 2 to 14)

Two class sessions are available:

o Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. -- starts Nov. 12

o Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. - starts Nov. 14

Starting Nov. 14, all classes are taught in the Gilruth Center's dance studio (Group Ex studio).

Shericka Phillips x35563 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/recreation-programs/ballroom-d...

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   Community

  1. International Quilt Festival Volunteers Needed

That's right; we are looking for volunteers to staff the International Quilt Festival NASA exhibit next week at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Shifts begin Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 30, and run through Sunday, Nov. 4. Please consider supporting this unique event! Our exhibit will incorporate the various softgoods items we design and build at NASA, as well as a special announcement from Expedition 37 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg. Transportation and parking is on your own; however, your exhibitor badge will allow you to check out the festival during your breaks.

To register, please go to our V-CORPs website and select the best date for your availability.

Susan H. Anderson x38630 http://nasajsc.force.com/vcorps

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JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles.

Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters.

 

 

 

 

Human Spaceflight News

Thursday – Oct. 24, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

 

Debut Test Flight Looms for Orion, NASA's Next Manned Spaceship

 

By Leonard David -- Space.com

 

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — NASA is gearing up for the inaugural flight of its next manned spacecraft, which is now less than a year away.

 

 

 

NASA's Resilient Opportunity Rover Starts Martian Mountaineering

 

by Ken Kremer – Universe Today

 

NASA's super resilient Opportunity robot has begun a new phase in her life on the Red Planet – Martian Mountaineer!

"This is our first real Martian mountaineering with Opportunity," said the principal investigator for the rover, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

 

 

'No Chinese Allowed' NASA's Short-Lived Rule

A poorly applied national security law nearly scuttles an international scientific conference

 

Time Magazine --By Michael D. Lemonick 

 

It was the other guy's fault, no question. That's pretty much the explanation for why a major science conference scheduled for December came close to being torpedoed. Astronomers from all over the world were planning to gather at NASA's Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, California, to talk about new results coming from the planet-hunting Kepler mission.

 

 

Ancient Galaxy Confirmed As Farthest, Oldest Ever Observed

 

By Miriam Kramer Space.com

 

Scientists have discovered the most distant and ancient galaxy ever spotted.

By using data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope and observations from the Keck I telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, astronomers have now confirmed that the galaxy designated z8_GND_5296 formed within 700 million years after the beginning of the universe, making it the oldest and most distant galaxy ever verified.

 

 

NASA's moon laser just blew your home Internet out of the water

 

Washington Post -- By Brian Fung

 

\In the nation's capital, the fastest residential Internet connection money can buy tops out at 75 Mbps. That's pretty zippy. But it doesn't compare to the 622 Mbps monster pipe that NASA just successfully tested over a distance of 239,000 miles.

 

 

Laser communications test breaks data-rate record

 

Spaceflight Now -- BY STEPHEN CLARK

High-definition 3D video postcards from Mars and lightning fast data downloads are a step closer to reality after a successful laser linkup with a communications testbed aboard NASA's LADEE spacecraft, which arrived in orbit around the moon earlier this month.

 

 

Stennis Space Center: SpaceX plans methane engine test

 

Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger

 

BAY ST. LOUIS — Private space exploration firm SpaceX will test a methane-fueled rocket engine at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center in Hancock County.State and federal officials made the announcement Wednesday.

 

 

Spaceport America keeping busy until launch – Video

 

Zach Rael – KRWG-TV, Las Cruces, N.M.

 

Spaceport America's main tenant, Virgin Galactic, is getting closer and closer to their 2014 launch date.

But until then, the spaceport is keeping busy. They give tours, letting people check out the facilities.

 

 

Asteroid-blast space cannon on track: Japan scientists

 

AFP

 

Tokyo — Japanese scientists readying to blast a crater in an asteroid to find out what it is made of said Wednesday they have successfully tested their new space cannon.The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said the huge gun would fire a metal bullet at the surface of asteroid 1999JU3 sometime in 2018.

 

 

Golden Spike promote lunar sample return options

 

by Chris Bergin – NASAspaceflight.com

 

Led by Board Chair Gerry Griffin and President/CEO Alan Stern, Golden Spike are continuing to push a business model built on sales revenue from individuals – and potentially nations – who have aspirations for trips on future missions to the Moon.

 

 

ESA: Gravity-mapping mission over

 

AFP

 

PARIS - A satellite measuring Earth's gravity since 2009 ran out of fuel on Monday and will re-enter the atmosphere within three weeks, when it will mostly disintegrate, the European Space Agency said.

Experts have said there will be little risk to humans when about 40 to 50 surviving fragments of the Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce) satellite hits our planet, though where and when this will happen is not yet known.

 

 

 

Extraterrestrial Etiquette: How Should Humanity Interact with Alien Life?

 

Space.com -- by Miriam Kramer

 

Humanity should start thinking about how to interact with alien species long before coming into contact with extraterrestrial life, experts say.

Coming up with a strict set of guidelines that govern the way people on future interstellar space missions study and interact with aliens is imperative before anyone blasts off to a distant world, according to attendees at Starship Congress in August.

 

 

Near-Mutiny on Apollo 7: Colds, Tempers Marred Mission

 

by Amy Shira Teitel – Discovery.com

 

On Oct. 22, 1968, Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean after 11 days in space. Though often overlooked, Apollo 7 was a significant mission. This first manned mission after the Apollo 1 fire not only got got NASA back on track to the moon, it proved the Apollo Block II spacecraft was fit to fly and become the workhorse of the whole program. Unfortunately, the mission was also marked by high tensions between the crew and mission control that took a toll on the astronauts' futures.

 

 

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COMPLETE STORIES

 

 

 

Debut Test Flight Looms for Orion, NASA's Next Manned Spaceship

 

By Leonard David -- Space.com

 

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — NASA is gearing up for the inaugural flight of its next manned spacecraft, which is now less than a year away.

NASA's Orion capsule is slated to launch atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in September 2014. The unpiloted mission, known as Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), features a high-altitude, high-speed plunge into Earth's atmosphere to assess the craft's heat shield and ends with a parachute-aided splashdown into the Pacific Ocean.

"We're on track," said Larry Price, Orion deputy program manager at Lockheed Martin, the aerospace firm that is building Orion for NASA. Final checks, testing of the avionics and software, structural testing of the craft and a myriad of other risk mitigation appraisals means "you're at the end of the road," he said.

SPACE.com sat down last month with Price at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SPACE 2013 conference here to discuss Orion's upcoming maiden voyage.

Not your father's Apollo

Despite the early description of Orion as "Apollo on steroids," it's clear that the 21st-century spacecraft is not simply a retread of the capsule that took astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"Apollo on steroids is challenging. It sure looks like it because of its shape," Price said. That shape was chosen, he added, because it minimized the risk associated with Orion's aerothermal environment, the heating induced by the very high speeds of re-entry.

"We had all the data on full-scale Apollo. Sizing that up a little bit, by 30 percent, was straightforward. That's why the outer mold line (Orion's outer surface) is the way it is. But then after that, it really is all different," Price said.

For one, Orion's computer systems and the built-in redundancy are far different than they were on spacecraft 50 years ago, Price said. "We've got a million lines of software code. And when we go to the moon, we'll have another million."

The Orion spacecraft is imbued with autonomy, failure detection systems and the ability to reroute things — say, a balky thruster that's automatically rebalanced by redundant thrusters, Price said.

"It's a lot more complexity," Price said, "so that it can be safer and more reliable. It makes for an amazing machine."

Trial by fire

The upcoming EFT-1 — which will take Orion about 3,600 miles (6,000 kilometers) away from Earth — is focused primarily on checking a dozen or so issues. Evaluating Orion's heat shield is "a big one," Price said. "We haven't returned at this speed since Apollo, and it's faster than [the space] shuttle came back."

That heat shield needs to withstand a true trial by fire — the 20,000-mph (32,000 km/h) plunge through Earth's atmosphere.

Orion's heat shield incorporates a different formulation of Apollo-era "Avcoat," a material designed to ablate as it heats up to safeguard the inside of the spacecraft from the severe temperatures of re-entry. Avcoat ablator material fills up some 330,000 cells of a honeycomb matrix that constitutes the heat shield.

Price said that Avcoat's provider, Textron Defense Systems in Wilmington, Mass., is fabricating Orion's heat shield — the world's largest, measuring some 17 feet (5.2 meters) in diameter.

"They haven't made Avcoat for 40 years," Price said, adding that NASA convinced the company to restart production of the material.

Building a space transportation system

Another challenge faced in the Orion program was building the electrical systems, including the computers and processors, Price said.

"We're going through the Van Allen radiation belts. So we've done a lot of testing to assure they survive the radiation environments," he said. "We aggressively tried to put as much as we could on this first flight. But as funding was reduced ... we moved some things around. Most of the crew systems that we don't need for this flight, we deferred until the 2017 flight."

Also an unpiloted mission, that 2017 flight would fling Orion on a circumlunar trajectory — with details still being evaluated — using NASA's Space Launch System mega-rocket, which is also in development. Early Orion missions will be lighter than later flights, similar to what was experienced in building and flying the space shuttle fleet, Price said.

Next year's EFT-1 flight should be a booster shot in the arm for NASA's deep-space mission plans, he added.

"Building Orion is building a capability," Price said. "As science and politics drive us in a different direction, we can do different things with the same system. We can use this system with kit modifications to do the durations we need. It's a tool beyond Apollo that was a point design to go to the moon."

Over the next several months, the march toward Exploration Flight Test-1 is loaded with calendar milestones to ready Orion, Price said.

"And then we're on the range in September. We've got the range date. There's a lot of exciting things going on," he said.

Government shutdown should have no impact

The recent government shutdown, which forced NASA to stop most work from Oct. 1 through Oct. 16, should not alter the timeline for EFT-1, Lockheed Martin officials said.

During the shutdown, all Orion contractor personnel located at NASA centers were redirected to alternate work locations so they could continue making progress on the Orion spacecraft, Allison Rakes, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, told SPACE.com via email on Oct 7.

Orion's heat shield is continuing final assembly at Textron Defense Systems in Massachusetts, and fairings are being tested at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, Calif. In addition, the attitude control system is being tested at Aerojet in Sacramento, Calif., and the Delta launch system is being assembled at United Launch Alliance's facility in Decatur, Ala.

"Right now, we do not anticipate an impact to the EFT-1 launch date," Rakes told SPACE.com.

 

Regardless, the company noted they will have access to large areas of the near side of the Moon via their initial capability, with specific destinations to be customer-driven.

Enabling sample return missions would not have to involve a robotic precursor mission. However, the workshop noted that the rover/lander mission concept would allow the sample return efforts to be more extensive, since it includes samples collected by the rover from miles away.

The company added it would also give a country's national space program an expanded role by having to develop their own lander/rover.

"Golden Spike's workshop demonstrated a different and fiscally viable approach to getting back to the Moon after an absence of more than 40 years," added Lunar scientist Clive Neal, of the University of Notre Dame. "Golden Spike will not only enable lunar science, it will open up this frontier to many more nations."

Interest in the Moon increased when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) produced the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites back in 2011.

However, it is unlikely Golden Spike missions will be able to facilitate sight-seeing missions to the landing sites, given their historical importance and ongoing efforts to ensure they remain protected.

Regardless, such returnees to the Moon won't be NASA astronauts, with the current Agency leadership steadfast in resolve to guide NASA on an undefined roadmap that only includes missions involving Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), prior to eventually setting their sights on Mars.

However, the argument for returning to the Moon continues, even within some political circles, with Golden Spike the only ongoing planning effort – bar some notional plans from Bigelow Aerospace – to allow humans to once again step foot on the lunar surface.

"There is no match for the scientific return from human exploration of the Moon, and there are more outstanding (research) questions today than any other time in the past," added Professor Mahesh Anand of the UK's Open University.

Next up for Golden Spike will be another meeting of minds with the international lunar scientific community, beginning at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston in March, 2014.

 

 

NASA's Resilient Opportunity Rover Starts Martian Mountaineering

by Ken Kremer – Universe Today

 

NASA's super resilient Opportunity robot has begun a new phase in her life on the Red Planet – Martian Mountaineer!

"This is our first real Martian mountaineering with Opportunity," said the principal investigator for the rover, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

And it happened right in the middle of the utterly chaotic US government shutdown! That harmed some US science endeavors. And at a spot destined to become a science bonanza in the months and years ahead – so long as she stays alive to explore ever more new frontiers.

On Oct. 8, mission controllers on Earth directed the nearly decade old robot to start the ascent of Solander Point – the northern tip of the tallest hill she has encountered after nearly 10 Earth years on Mars.

The northward-facing slopes at Solander also afford another major advantage. They will tilt the rover's solar panels toward the sun in the southern-hemisphere winter sky, providing an important energy boost enabling continued mobile operations through the upcoming frigidly harsh winter- her 6th since landing in 2004.

Opportunity will first explore outcrops on the northwestern slopes of Solander Point in search of the chemical ingredients required to sustain life before gradually climbing further uphill to investigate intriguing deposits distributed amongst its stratographic layers.

The rover will initially focus on outcrops located in the lower 20 feet (6 meters) above the surrounding plains on slopes as steep as 15 to 20 degrees.

At some later time, Opportunity may ascend farther upward, which peaks about 130 feet (40 meters) above the crater plains.

"We expect we will reach some of the oldest rocks we have seen with this rover — a glimpse back into the ancient past of Mars," says Squyres.

NASA's powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) circling overhead recently succeeded in identifying clay-bearing rocks during new high resolution survey scans of Solander Point!

As I reported previously, the specially collected high resolution observations by the orbiters Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) were collected in August and being analyzed by the science team. They will be used to direct Opportunity to the most product targets of interest

"CRISM data were collected," Ray Arvidson told Universe Today. Arvidson is the mission's deputy principal scientific investigator from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

"They show really interesting spectral features in the [Solander Point] rim materials."

The new CRISM survey from Mars orbit yielded mineral maps which vastly improves the spectral resolution – from 18 meters per pixel down to 5 meters per pixel.

This past spring and summer, Opportunity drove several months from the Cape York rim segment to Solander Point.

"At Cape York, we found fantastic things," Squyres said. "Gypsum veins, clay-rich terrain, the spherules we call newberries. We know there are even larger exposures of clay-rich materials where we're headed. They might look like what we found at Cape York or they might be completely different."

Clay minerals, or phyllosilicates, form in neutral water that is more conducive to life.

At the base of Solander, the six wheeled rover discovered a transition zone between a sulfate-rich geological formation and an older formation. Sulfate-rich rocks form in a wet environment that was very acidic and less favorable to life.

Solander Point is located at the western rim of the vast expanse of Endeavour crater – some 22 kilometers (14 miles) in diameter.

Today marks Opportunity's 3466th Sol or Martian Day roving Mars – for what was expected to be only a 90 Sol mission.

So far she has snapped over 185,200 amazing images on the first overland expedition across the Red Planet.

Her total odometry stands at over 23.89 miles (38.45 kilometers) since touchdown on Jan. 24, 2004 at Meridiani Planum.

Meanwhile, NASA is in the final stages of processing of MAVEN, the agencies next orbiter.

It is still scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral on Nov.18 – see my photos from inside the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center.

MAVEN's launch was briefly threatened by the government shutdown.

 

 

'No Chinese Allowed' NASA's Short-Lived Rule

A poorly applied national security law nearly scuttles an international scientific conference

 

Time Magazine --By Michael D. Lemonick 

 

It was the other guy's fault, no question. That's pretty much the explanation for why a major science conference scheduled for December came close to being torpedoed. Astronomers from all over the world were planning to gather at NASA's Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, California, to talk about new results coming from the planet-hunting Kepler mission. The spacecraft was pronounced more or less dead in August, but there's still extraordinary new science coming out of its backlog of archived observations of newly discovered planets orbiting distant stars—and the best may be yet to come.

But in September, Ji Wang, a postdoctoral student in astrophysics at Yale, got an email saying he couldn't attend. The reason, it turned out: Public Law 113-6, Section 535, subsection b, passed by Congress last spring. NASA was forbidden to use any funds "to effectuate the hosting of official Chinese visitors at facilities belonging to or utilized by NASA."

It's understandable that Congress is worried about the security of research centers that house any of America's high-tech secrets. Those kinds of intellectual assets have plenty of peaceful purposes, but they also have military ones, and countries that fail to guard them carefully do so at their peril. What's more, the clause's author, Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf, took particular note of a Chinese scientist named Bo Jiang, a NASA contractor nabbed on his way out of the U.S. last March with a NASA-issued laptop. Sure enough, Bo had unauthorized information on the computer—though it was porn and illegal movie downloads, not defense secrets. But clearly there was good reason to worry about what the next guy might steal.

That didn't cut it with Debra Fischer, though, the head of Yale's exoplanet research group, or with the others on her team. "'This guy is like my brother,'" Fischer recalls another postdoc saying of Ji. "'I'm in no position to be boycotting meetings [at this point in my career], but if he can't go, I won't go either.'"

Fischer's entire group decided to skip the meeting—a big loss for the conference, considering that she's one of the world's pre-eminent planet hunters. By then, word was spreading through the astronomy grapevine. "Geoff Marcy [a co-investigator for the Kepler mission] asked for details," says Fischer, "and when he heard what was going on, he said 'this isn't right." Both Marcy and Fischer had been at San Francisco State University (he was a professor, she a grad student) when Mario Savio, hero of the 1960's-era student Free Speech Movement returned to school for a master's degree in physics, and, says Fischer, "he made a big impression on us."

Shortly afterward, Marcy announced he'd be boycotting the meeting as well—and if Fischer's absence would hobble the conference, Marcy's, given his status as the world's greatest planet-hunter by far, with at least 250 previously unknown worlds to his credit, would more or less destroy it. The conference organizers couldn't move the meeting off NASA property, in part because the venue was free, while an off-site location would cost a small fortune. But if the big guns didn't show up, it would be a huge embarrassment for all concerned.

It was at this point that the scrambling began. Wolf put a letter on his website saying NASA had misunderstood the law; it wasn't any Chinese citizen who was banned from NASA facilities, he said. It was just representatives of the Chinese government or of Chinese corporations who were banned.

But Wolf couldn't just clarify: he had to scold as well. Reacting to Marcy's declaration to The Guardian newspaper that the ban would be an "ethical breach that is unacceptable. You have to draw the line," Wolf wrote, "I hope Dr. Marcy will draw a similar line when it comes to cooperation with Chinese government funded agencies and programs due to their systemic human rights abuses. In fact, as a Nobel nominee himself, has he publicly advocated for the 2010 Nobel Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo who to this day languishes in Chinese detention?"

Once Wolf denied that he or his law bore any responsibility for the mess, says Fischer, "The finger of blame pointed to [NASA administrator Charles] Bolden. Then Bolden sent an email saying mid-level management at Ames was the culprit for reading the law wrong."

Last Friday, says Fischer, Ji got an email informing him that his clearance was approved. The meeting will go on, with Fischer's team as well as Marcy's and representatives from most other planet-hunting groups there to announce and chew over new results. In the end, Fischer thinks the entire matter was indeed something of a misunderstanding, though one from which both scientists and national security officials must learn. "Now I think it was an unintended consequence of other stuff going on. I don't think they were actually trying to exclude our postdoc. But if we hadn't reacted the way we did," she says, "the organizers might have looked the other way for the 'greater good' of science.'" The toll on fairness and common sense would have been another matter.

 

 

Ancient Galaxy Confirmed As Farthest, Oldest Ever Observed

 

By Miriam Kramer Space.com

 

Scientists have discovered the most distant and ancient galaxy ever spotted.

By using data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope and observations from the Keck I telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, astronomers have now confirmed that the galaxy designated z8_GND_5296 formed within 700 million years after the beginning of the universe, making it the oldest and most distant galaxy ever verified.

Because the galaxy is so far from Earth, scientists were able to observe z8_GND_5296 as it would have appeared about 13.1 billion years ago.

"The most exciting aspect in general of what I do is the fact that we can learn about what things were like in the very early universe," Steven Finkelstein, the lead author of an astronomer at the University of Texas, Austin, said. "Because the speed of light is not constant, light takes time to get here, we're not seeing these galaxies as they are now. We're seeing them as they were 13 billion years ago which is 95 percent of the way back to the Big Bang."

Scientists are seeing the galaxy as it was when it was very young. Many of the now old stars that were part of the galaxy are probably still in existence today, but they might be part of a bigger galaxy, Finkelstein told SPACE.com

It's possible that Hubble has detected galaxies that are farther away, but z8_GND_5296 is the farthest galaxy confirmed by follow-up observations using other astronomical instruments, scientists said.

Hubble's CANDELS (Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy) survey has discovered about 100,000 galaxies, and the team of astronomers observed 43 of them for the new study, published in the journal Nature.

Scientists use hydrogen to calculate distances of galaxies. The research team searched for a hydrogen emission line in the 43 galaxies they observed, but they only saw the emission line in z8_GND_5296. This surprised the astronomers because they were expecting to find about six galaxies with the emission line,

"This work shows that, with new technology, it has finally become possible to make significant advances in the detection of yet more distant galaxies," Dominik Riechers, an astronomer who wrote a commentary about the new study, told SPACE.com via email.

"However, the work also mentions that they expected to find six galaxies at similar distances, but just were able to confirm one," he added. "Thus, we know now that we will be able to push the frontiers in studies of the early universe further, but it may be even harder than anticipated."

It's possible that scientists got these results from peering deeply into "the era when the universe made its transition from an opaque state, in which most of the hydrogen gas between galaxies is neutral, to a translucent state, in which most of the hydrogen is ionized," representatives from the University of Texas at Austin said in a statement.

Galaxy z8_GND_5296 has another extraordinary quality: The most distant and ancient galaxy also produces stars about 150 times more quickly than the Milky Way. While the Milky Way may produce about one or two sunlike stars each year, z8_GND_5296 birthed about 300 per year approximately 13 billion years ago, according to the astronomers' observations.

The new record holder for distance is in the same part of the sky as the previous record holder, which also has a high rate of star formation.

"It could be that we found two weirdoes, but now we've found two weirdoes in the same Hubble image in this tiny little region of the sky," Finkelstein said. "More than likely, they're not weirdoes. I think what it's telling us is that in the distant universe you can actually make a decent number of these galaxies."

 

 

NASA's moon laser just blew your home Internet out of the water

 

Washington Post -- By Brian Fung --

\In the nation's capital, the fastest residential Internet connection money can buy tops out at 75 Mbps. That's pretty zippy. But it doesn't compare to the 622 Mbps monster pipe that NASA just successfully tested over a distance of 239,000 miles.

Unfortunately, to take advantage of those speeds, you'd have to be downloading data from the moon. That's because NASA's system consists of a laser that's pointed at Earth's natural satellite — or more specifically, at a spacecraft orbiting the moon called LADEE.

Why a laser? NASA says the radio spectrum it's traditionally relied on to transmit signals is getting increasingly overloaded with traffic. Capturing radio signals from space also requires gigantic sensors. Sending information as a laser is much more efficient, and will allow new capabilities like 3D video and other high-bandwidth applications. In addition to downloading data at tremendous rates, NASA also successfully tested uploading information via the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration at a more stately 20 Mbps.

Eventually, this technology might help NASA stay in contact with very distant spacecraft. For now, I just wish they'd point the laser at my house.

 

 

Laser communications test breaks data-rate record

Spaceflight Now

 

High-definition 3D video postcards from Mars and lightning fast data downloads are a step closer to reality after a successful laser linkup with a communications testbed aboard NASA's LADEE spacecraft, which arrived in orbit around the moon earlier this month.

A ground station in White Sands, N.M., made a connection with a laser terminal aboard LADEE over the weekend and achieved breakneck data transfer speeds unmatched by any scientific spacecraft stationed beyond low Earth orbit.

The White Sands ground station shot a laser toward LADEE's expected position in lunar orbit, and the spacecraft's laser package locked on to the signal and responded by emitting its 4-inch-diameter, 0.5-watt light beam back to a receiving telescope in the New Mexico desert.

Over the 239,000-mile distance between the Earth and the moon, the 4-inch-diameter laser column disperses to a width of 3.5 miles by the time it reaches the ground. But the light beam still covers an much smaller than traditional radio waves coming from space missions, and laser communications is less forgiving of tiny pointing errors between ground and space terminals.

NASA said the laser test achieved a record-breaking download speed of 622 megabits per second and an error-free upload rate of 20 megabits per second. Both values fell within preflight predictions.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, arrived in lunar orbit Oct. 6 after a one-month transit following its successful launch from Virginia on Sept. 5 aboard a Minotaur 5 rocket.

LADEE's primary mission is to study the lunar atmosphere, a nebulous collection of atoms and molecules that scientists hope to observe over a 100-day science mission. Researchers hope to find out what mechanisms drive the moon's ultra-thin atmosphere by measuring its response to phenomena such as solar storms, impacts on the lunar surface and sunlight.

The main science phase of LADEE's mission will begin in mid-November. LADEE's three science instruments have passed their initial activation tests and deployed their aperture covers, according to Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The mission's laser payload, conceived as a technology demonstrator, is a pathfinder for future deep space probes, including NASA's next Mars rover set for launch in 2020.

The ground and space terminals for LADEE's laser test were built by MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

"NASA has a need for faster download speeds for data from space," said Don Cornwell, the laser communication demonstration mission manager from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We'd like to be able to send high-resolution images, movies in 3D even, from satellites that not only orbit the Earth but also from probes that will go to the moon and beyond."

NASA does not plan to exchange real science data during LADEE's demonstration, but the laser beam will carry code and information packets during its 30-day test to prove future missions could use the system for heaps of science observations, images and high-definition 3D video.

Laser linkups foster much faster data transfers between ground controllers and spacecraft than possible with radio transmissions. Officials compare the difference to the speed gained by switching from a dial-up modem to a fiber-optic line.

To illustrate the difference, NASA says the LADEE spacecraft's conventional S-band radio would take 639 hours to downlink the average-length HD movie. A system using laser technology could do the job in less than eight minutes.

Light waves in the optical bandwidth are more than 10,000 times shorter than in radio bands, according to MIT scientists, meaning laser communications systems can be smaller and weigh less, making them that much more attractive for mission designers.

"I think there's no question that as we send humans farther out into the solar system, certainly to Mars, if we want to have high-definition 3D video, we want to have laser communications sending that information back," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate.

The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration is the first test of optical communications beyond Earth orbit.

"LLCD is the first step on our roadmap toward building the next generation of space communication capability," said Badri Younes, NASA's deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation in Washington. "We are encouraged by the results of the demonstration to this point, and we are confident we are on the right path to introduce this new capability into operational service soon."

A follow-on to LADEE's laser mission is scheduled for launch in 2017 aboard a commercial communications satellite built by Space Systems/Loral.

NASA will fund a hosted payload for the Loral-built satellite to relay data between the ground and other missions in low Earth orbit, including the International Space Station.

 

 

Stennis Space Center: SpaceX plans methane engine test

 

Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger

 

BAY ST. LOUIS — Private space exploration firm SpaceX will test a methane-fueled rocket engine at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center in Hancock County.State and federal officials made the announcement Wednesday.

Mississippi will spend $500,000, and NASA will spend $600,000 to help upgrade a rocket test stand so it can use methane to fuel SpaceX's Raptor engine.

SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., is to begin testing in 2014.

"This agreement supports SpaceX's efforts for continued engine research and development in parallel with our growing operational testing programs," Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president, said in a news release from Gov. Phil Bryant's office.

Bryant noted in the news release that the agreement reflects the state's commitment to "bring new opportunities to Stennis Space Center."

Mississippi Development Authority spokesman Jeff Rent says the testing could support a handful of jobs but is important because it could make Stennis more attractive to other private users. The facility will be owned by NASA.

Sen. Thad Cochran said the agreement bodes well for future job growth at the Stennis Space Center.

He said officials have been trying to recruit SpaceX for years.

"I hope this is just the beginning of their endeavors in our state," he said.

NASA tests engines at Stennis for itself and works with two other commercial space companies, Orbital and Blue Origin.

Another rocket and missile maker, Aerojet Rocketdyne, also leases a test stand at Stennis to test its RS-68 engines, which power Delta IV rockets. Rolls-Royce Group PLC recently opened a $50 million facility to test jet airplane engines at Stennis, with plans to hire up to 35 people.

NASA has 300 direct employees at Stennis and more than 1,100 contractors. Including other government agencies, research institutes and private companies, about 5,000 people work at the complex near the Louisiana border.

Cochran, a long-standing member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has supported appropriations measures to upgrade aging Stennis infrastructure, including resources for the E-complex that SpaceX will be further outfitting for methane rocket experiments.

A fiscal 2012 appropriations provision he authored requiring NASA to report on the condition and necessity of the massive B-2 test stand led to the an agency decision to request $12 million in to begin the rehabilitation and reuse of the test stand to support the NASA Space Launch System program.

"Mississippi is a major player in the global aerospace sector, and the decision by SpaceX to begin operations at Stennis further solidifies that leadership position," MDA Executive Director Brent Christensen said in the release from Bryant's office.

 

 

Spaceport America keeping busy until launch – Video

 

Zach Rael – KRWG-TV, Las Cruces, N.M.

 

Commercial spaceflight is looking to take people out of this world But back on Earth, crews are preparing for the world's first commercial launch.News22′s Zach Rael recently went on a tour of Spaceport America and Virgin Galactic's "Gateway to Space".

Spaceport America's main tenant, Virgin Galactic, is getting closer and closer to their 2014 launch date.

But until then, the spaceport is keeping busy. They give tours, letting people check out the facilities.

Chad Rabon, General Operations Manager at Spaceport America, oversaw the construction here. Now he looks over the day-to-day operations as well as help give tours.

"We wanted to provide access to as many people as possible," Rabon said. "To make them inspired to what the future looks like for all of space activities."

The highlight of the tour is this terminal.

Virgin Galactic's "Gateway to Space" entrance is where paying customers can go and catch their flight. There are three doors. On the right, the door for staff. In the middle, astronauts who pay the $250,000 price tag are the only once allowed through the double doors in the middle The door to the right is for the public.

It might not look like much right now, but once complete, it will be a state of the art lounge.

Joe Bullington works at White Sands Test Facility. He is also the chair of the commercial space committee for the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce.

"In addition to the people coming here to fly, their families and friends are going to come from all over the world just to see this place," he said.

The hangar inside is empty, but the large white room is where Virgin Galactic will house their space crafts.

Spaceport America also has its own safety crews, with state of the art emergency vehicles.

And they are now looking ahead.

"We are hoping to find more entrepreneurs that are interested in playing in space," Rabon said.

And another company, SpaceX, just announced they are planning to launch test rockets from Spaceport America in December.

 

 

Asteroid-blast space cannon on track: Japan scientists

 

AFP

 

Tokyo — Japanese scientists readying to blast a crater in an asteroid to find out what it is made of said Wednesday they have successfully tested their new space cannon.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said the huge gun would fire a metal bullet at the surface of asteroid 1999JU3 sometime in 2018.

The Hayabusa-2, which will launch the weapon, will then land on the surface and take samples of the newly-disturbed soil as part of a project searching for organic materials or for any sign of water.

"The Hayabusa-2 project is progressing as planned," a JAXA spokesman told AFP.

The craft is set to be carried into space next year by one of JAXA's dedicated H2A rockets, which are launched from southern Japan.

The probe will be flung on a trajectory that its operators hope will take it into the path of 1999JU3 four years later.

The unpoetically-named 1999JU3 is thought to be more likely than many asteroids to harbour the building blocks of life.

Once it has reached its destination, Hayabusa-2 will hover above the asteroid to release the space cannon, which is intended to drift gently towards the barren surface.

As the weapon floats down, Hayabusa-2 will make its way around to the other side of the asteroid, where it can shelter its delicate sensor array from any flying debris or shrapnel.

With its mothership safely out of the way, the canon will detonate itself, hurling a large bullet-like object into the surface below it.

After the dust has settled, Hayabusa-2 will return to inspect the crater, touching down on the asteroid's surface where it will scoop up samples for analysis back on Earth.

The probe is expected to find its way home sometime in 2020, carrying with it a valuable scientific load that is expected to be seized on by scientists.

The pristine materials the blast will expose are an essential part of the puzzle for researchers trying to understand how planets are formed, and -- possibly -- will help them to learn about the way lifeforms could arise, JAXA said.

Hayabusa-2 is a successor to the original "Hayabusa", a deep-space probe that picked up asteroid dust from a potato-shaped space rock and returned to Earth 2010.

Scientists hope Hayabusa-2 will build on the work of its predecessor, which was only able to collect surface dust samples that could have been altered by years of exposure to the various forms of energy it encountered in space.

 

 

Golden Spike promote lunar sample return options

 

by Chris Bergin – NASAspaceflight.com

 

The Golden Spike company have revealed interest in conducting lunar missions that combine robotic landers with human expeditions to the Moon. The company recently hosted a workshop with an international audience of scientists, focusing on landing sites, sample returns, and aspirations of the international lunar scientific community.

Golden Spike:

Led by Board Chair Gerry Griffin and President/CEO Alan Stern, Golden Spike are continuing to push a business model built on sales revenue from individuals – and potentially nations – who have aspirations for trips on future missions to the Moon.

Their aim is to provide a commercial option for individuals who wish to step foot on the Moon, with missions set to become available by 2020 – following a test program that should begin in 2017.

The company announced their plans with a large range of space flight companies on board, along with a high calibre roster of space professionals, but failed to inspire the general public as much as they had envisioned, with a fundraiser amassing less than 10 percent of its monetary target.

Regardless, Golden Spike have continued to push forward, initiating a contract with Northrop Grumman to design their Lunar Lander, before recently hosting the international scientific workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Science Institute in Houston, Texas.

The aim of the event – according to the company – was to communicate the planned capabilities of Golden Spike's planned lunar expeditions and receive feedback from the international scientific community.

"Golden Spike received great feedback regarding scientific priorities for our lunar expeditions from researchers from across the world, which is already informing our business model and helping us create new products to offer in our lunar expeditions line," noted Dr. Stern.

As highlighted in a company release that reviewed the workshop, new concepts advanced included robotic-human missions, facilitated by a company or nation sending its own rover to collect and store samples from the Moon's surface, ahead of a crewed Golden Spike expedition to retrieve the robot's cache.

As to where the first lunar mission will land, no decisions have been taken at this time.

 

ESA: Gravity-mapping mission over

 

AFP

 

PARIS - A satellite measuring Earth's gravity since 2009 ran out of fuel on Monday and will re-enter the atmosphere within three weeks, when it will mostly disintegrate, the European Space Agency said.

Experts have said there will be little risk to humans when about 40 to 50 surviving fragments of the Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce) satellite hits our planet, though where and when this will happen is not yet known.

"The Goce satellite has run out of fuel and the end of mission has been declared," said an ESA statement.

The one-ton satellite's stock of 41km of fuel finally ran out at about 03:20 GMT, Goce mission manager Rune Floberghagen told AFP.

"We think it will take no less than two weeks, and no more than three weeks" for the satellite to re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

Goce was launched into orbit in March 2009 at an altitude of 260km - later lowered to 224km - the lowest ever for a research satellite.

The €350m mission has lasted twice as long as its initially-scheduled 20 months.

Having now run out of fuel to keep it in orbit, the satellite will lose altitude and become unstable.

Its main gravity-mapping instrument has stopped working, but other gauges will continue gathering data for about two more weeks, according to Floberghagen.

Most of the 5.3m spacecraft will break up at an altitude of about 80km, ESA spacecraft operations manager Christoph Steiger said last week.

But about a quarter of its mass, some 250kg, will survive - hitting the Earths' surface in a trail of fragments over an area of a few hundred kilometres. Whether this will be on land or sea is not yet known.

"A few hours before, we will be able to tell with... a few thousand kilometres of precision" where the fragments are likely to impact, said Steiger - insisting the chances of a human being hit were about 65 000 times lower than getting struck by lightning.

In 50 years of spaceflight, there have been no casualties from manmade space debris, despite about 20-40 tons impacting somewhere on Earth each year, said Steiger.

Scientists say Goce has returned the most accurate data yet on Earth's gravity field and ocean circulation.

It was designed and built before 2008, when international recommendations were adopted that a scientific satellite must be able to execute a controlled re-entry, or burn up completely after its mission.

Steiger said a global space debris coordinating committee was monitoring the satellite to predict its point of re-entry, "and we are passing on the information to national authorities".

 

 

Extraterrestrial Etiquette: How Should Humanity Interact with Alien Life?

 

Space.com -- by Miriam Kramer

 

Humanity should start thinking about how to interact with alien species long before coming into contact with extraterrestrial life, experts say.

Coming up with a strict set of guidelines that govern the way people on future interstellar space missions study and interact with aliens is imperative before anyone blasts off to a distant world, according to attendees at Starship Congress in August.

While a "prime directive" — the rule that prevented Star Fleet officers from interfering with the business of alien life-forms on TV's "Star Trek" — might be a little extreme, such a rule could help govern interactions between aliens and humans.

"In the event that we discover evidence of intelligent life on another world, that will be a social, cultural and technologically influential event to human affairs which will need to be managed with great care and to ensure our culture and their culture remains intact and not disrupted by this new knowledge," Kelvin Long, the founder of Project Icarus, said during a panel on Aug. 16.

People traveling to distant stars will be carrying tangible and intangible aspects of human culture with them, so it should be curated responsibly before being sent to an alien planet, one expert said.

"I think it comes down to how we're going," Armen Papazian, the CEO of the International Space Development Hub, said. "Do we trust that this is a beautiful universe, an incredible cosmos? Do we really believe that it's an amazing landscape, it's a bed of stars? What do we think we're going out there to find and are we going to embrace it or are we going to utilize? Are we trying to export our scarcity economics or are we trying to enjoy the abundant cosmos? … Whatever we are here, we're going to export wherever we go."

It's possible that humans in the future will have no desire to land on exoplanets after free-roaming in space for years at a time, Icarus Interstellar president Richard Obousy said.

"I'm not convinced that when we have the capabilities to build starships … that we'll want to go from one gravitational abyss to another gravitational abyss," Obousy said. "I'm not convinced that settling on planets or even moons is going to be necessary."

Humans can't help but explore and interact with the world around them, Icarus Interstellar's James Benford said during the panel.

"We won't leave them alone," Benford said. "We would like to explore alien ecology extensively to understand if there are any interactions leading to incompatibilities. We would need to establish human research stations to do that because it's a complex problem. It seems unlikely that there would be interference between separately evolved ecologies, especially if we minimize contamination and wear the appropriate suits."

Les Johnson, of the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop, takes Benford's ideas a little further. Johnson and his group have developed three moral principles that he hopes will serve as a guide for any interactions with all kinds of extraterrestrial life:

--Learn all you can learn before risking any kind of direct interaction

--If it seems to be alive, leave it alone.

--Avoid bringing samples to the home world because it might not be totally incompatible with our ecosystem.

When developing a strategy for first contact, it might also be important to think about the mental and physical well-being of the aliens with whom humans could come into contact, panel members stated.

Finding out that a more advanced civilization exists somewhere in the universe could be as jarring for humans around the globe as it was for native peoples when the conquistadors came to North America for the first time, Benford said.

"It wasn't just guns, disease and steel, it was the shock of finding out that you're not even No. 1, you're not even No. 3," Benford said. "That is a thing to really worry about."

In spite of all of these rules, it will be up to the people on the starship to ultimately enforce or do away with whatever rules were in place before they left the planet.

"A vibrant interstellar civilization will be essentially ungovernable, and that observing such guidelines will be strictly left up to each and every first contact team to obey or not obey at their discretion," Johnson said. "When someone is several light-years from home and they've encountered something they never encountered before, they're going to be making the decisions regardless of what the guiding moral principles might have been when they left home."

 

 

History of Space

Near-Mutiny on Apollo 7: Colds, Tempers Marred Mission

 

by Amy Shira Teitel – Discovery.com

 

On Oct. 22, 1968, Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean after 11 days in space. Though often overlooked, Apollo 7 was a significant mission. This first manned mission after the Apollo 1 fire not only got got NASA back on track to the moon, it proved the Apollo Block II spacecraft was fit to fly and become the workhorse of the whole program. Unfortunately, the mission was also marked by high tensions between the crew and mission control that took a toll on the astronauts' futures.

Apollo 7 launched atop a Saturn IB rocket on Oct. 11, 1968, with Commander Wally Schirra, Walt Cunningham, and Donn Eisele on board. It was a relatively simple Earth orbital mission with just the Command and Service Modules, but the flight plan was packed with experiments and tests to prove the spacecraft was up for its lunar task. The crew was charged with testing their sextant's calibration; spacecraft attitude control, evaporator, and navigation systems; rendezvous radar by rendezvousing with their S-IVB upper stage during their first two days in orbit; thermal control system; and service module propulsion systems. They were also the first crew to do a live television broadcast from orbit, something Schirra had unwillingly agreed to do.

Before launch tensions were high. The crew felt their schedule was too full and Schirra fought to have the TV broadcast cancelled since it didn't accomplish any technical or scientific goals. And things only got worse when the crew reached orbit and Schirra reported a cold coming on.

By the second day in space, all three men were congested with the same head cold. And they were miserable. The Earth's gravitational environment mean that any fluid accumulating in the sinuses with a cold drains. But in a pressurized cabin in a microgravity environment, that natural drainage doesn't happen. The only relief the crew had was blowing their noses, hard, which led to a painful pressure in their ears and increased their risk of a burst ear drum.

The three men took aspirin and decongestant, but there was otherwise little they could do. They were stuck being uncomfortable. In short order, discomfort led to bad moods. As the mission wore on, conversations with mission control became increasingly terse. And Schirra as commander of his craft, began arguing with and defying mission control.

The crew argued with mission control about the TV transmissions seeking to cancel the first broadcast scheduled for their second day in orbit. They fought back against changes and additions to their flight plan, be it an additional engine burn or a test of the TV circuit. They berated "the man" who had designed a particularly clunky piece of equipment over an open line. Everyone in NASA could hear their complaints, and no one appreciating the astronauts they were working so hard to keep safe insinuating they were idiots.

Adding to the crews frustrations was NASA's order that one crewman be awake at all times so mission control could have a constant link with the spacecraft. This mean that one man would always be talking over the headset while the others were trying to sleep. For those resting, taking their headsets off did little to help; the Apollo spacecraft was so small there weren't any quiet corners to hide out in.

Exhausted, uncomfortable, and frustrated, the crux of the crew's arguments with mission control came at the end of the flight. Procedures stipulated that the crew wear pressure suits and helmets throughout reentry as a defense against sudden loss of cabin pressure. But Schirra didn't like the idea of wearing a pressurized helmet with a cold, fearing the inability to blow his nose might result in a burst eardrum. It had happened before when he'd flown with a cold years previously. Schirra won the fight. Each astronaut took a decongestant pill and, cushioning their heads with whatever they could find, settled their unhelmet heads on headrests for reentry.

Unfortunately for the crew, Apollo 7 was the last mission for all three of them. Schirra and Eisele left NASA shortly after, though Cunningham did stay with NASA long enough to work on the Skylab program. Lead Flight Director Chris Kraft is said to have vowed that none of the men would ever fly again, and Deke Slayton, head of the astronaut office and flight assignments, seems to have obliged. He couldn't assign anyone to a crew that Kraft's people wouldn't work with, not when there were other astronauts waiting for flights of their own.

Head colds aside, Apollo 7 was a striking success. The crew proved the spacecraft was ready for a lunar mission, prompting NASA to send Apollo 8 in lunar orbit two months later and setting the stage for the agency to make the final push to land men on the moon within the decade.

 

 

 

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